The beginning of January feels like so long ago! I’ve had my mind on the Whole 30, plus the usual whirlwind of settling back into work after the holidays and mentally preparing for a new year.
I did do some reading, though! The first weekend of the year was the tail end of my vacation, and my reading proves it.
I won’t even dignify these with a rating or much of a recap. They were enjoyable and helped me through the first blah weekend of my Whole 30. I think why this quartet particularly captivated me was because of the female friendships in them, not just the romance (though that was more than acceptable). Roberts created this amazing little world of four close friends, who then all conveniently fell in love with men who are friends, and they all live together on an estate and work together and it’s not believable, really, but it was good.
This was another sweet read (no pun intended), although also full of improbable coincidences, like the number of attractive men who populate the desolate fishing village. Evidently there’s a sequel coming out in March, and I’m sure I’ll dive into that one, too.
I started reading this book at about 9PM one Sunday night when I thought, “I’ll get in bed to read for a bit and then go to sleep early.” NOPE. I blazed through 40% of the book that night because I was so engrossed in the story. It terrified and fascinated me. I kept thinking, “What if this happened to me? Who would notice? Who would I be if my life changed this dramatically?” The last third or so of the book was less engrossing and felt more like an infomercial, but I can understand why Cahalan took that route. She had a platform in the form of her book and I can’t blame her for using it. This was a book club read, and I intended it to also be “a book with a main character that has a mental illness” for the 2016 Read Harder Challenge, but, it’s really not about mental illness, so I guess I’ll keep searching on that front.
I’m currently reading Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry, which will be both “a book over 500 pages long” (though I have other choices there, too) and “a book originally published in the decade you were born” for the reading challenge.
It’s good, but so far I don’t see what all the fuss is necessarily about. I think I like John Jakes’ Heaven and Hell series more in the “big book” category. But I’m “only” 512 pages into the 943 behemoth, so that could change. Oh, and how’s this for a first world problem? Part of why it’s taken me so long to read Lonesome Dove is that my copy is a big fat paperback that, until I made it halfway, was too hard to hold open, so I kept finding excuses not to read it! Like, I couldn’t read it while eating or standing up on the train because I needed both hands on the book. Anyway, it stays open better now that I’m in the middle, so I’ve been picking it up more frequently.
Full report on it next month, I’m sure.
