A Great Reading Streak - Books Read 4/28/19

Ah, a lazy Sunday!!  A great day to read!
I've had a great reading streak since I last posted.  The four reviews here were all fairly quick but enjoyable reads.  I've now started our book club book which requires me to slow WAY down if I have any chance of understanding what's going on.  
Otherwise, all has been well.  Later this week I'm going to post some of the most hilarious things that people have asked or commented to me since I'm walking around with a watermelon under my shirt.  People are so much fun, and I'm going to miss this daily source of comedy in my life when this baby is hacked out of my belly (which is still a million years away).

Tell Me More by Kelly Corrigan
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Wow, this book was terrific.  I’m not much for self-help, and I don’t have much tolerance for people psycho-analyzing themselves, but I DO love when I book can strike a wonderful balance of providing solid advice, personal stories, and meaningful insights to chew on for a while and potentially apply to our own lives.  Kelly Corrigan definitely gets in right in Tell Me More, and I pretty much loved every minute of it.  It’s a fast read, so check it out!
I especially enjoyed the section on “No.”  She discusses how her mom unapologetically set boundaries.  Not only did she say NO to doing anything that she didn’t want to do, but when her children became adults she asked them, as a birthday request, to stop venting to her about issues that she couldn’t fix.  She was even saying no to worrying about stupid stuff.  Incredible!

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The Afterlives by Thomas Pierce
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A super trippy read to devour over Easter weekend, as our protagonist searches for the meaning of life after his own brief death and resurrection.  The actual storytelling was awesome, and I was right there for all of it, flipping pages and hardly putting it down.  Some of the directions the author took the story, though, were pretty quirky, to say the least.  I did enjoy the setting in the near future, though, and the idea that holograms will be all over the place once the technology is perfected.  Will we be able to record holograms of ourselves so that our loved ones can see us again, sort of, after we’ve passed?  What does the future hold that will help us to defy death? 
I’m still processing this one, but I think I loved it.  I think I would’ve loved it more if just a few more loose ends had been tied up within the ghost story.  But it was great, and was a genre-buster with sci-fi, romance, ghost story, and some amount of spirituality.

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Young Jane Young by Gabrielle Zevin

I more or less read this one in two sittings.  I don’t know why, but here lately I’ve chosen books that I’ve just been able to whip through like nothin!  This was an easy read and incredibly interesting.  I’d heard good things and I *loved* The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, but had been avoiding this a little bit because the premise just sounded trying.  Intern sleeps with Congressman and blogs about it, is found out, and she suffers the backlash but he doesn’t.  So I got a sense that this would be “She’s good but human, he’s bad, life is unfair in general.” 
Instead I was delighted to find that the story is told from a variety of perspectives, which is always my FAVORITE, and it really helped shape this book into something meaningful and not so predictably one-note.  Frankly, everyone is likeable but does awful and weird things throughout the 20-some years this book spans, and it’s actually a lot of fun. 
Young Jane Young is nothing like Storied Life, other than it’s a fast and satisfying read.  

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​Why Not Me? By Mindy Kaling
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Expectations:  Hilarious, quick read that makes me like Mindy Kaling even more. 
Reality:  Hilarious, quick read that made me like Mindy Kaling even more.  
I have to admit I loved the fact that Mindy didn’t even get serious about anything hardly at all.  Sometimes these sorts of books have a “But seriously though…” chapter and while they can be illuminating, they have the potential to drag the energy of the book down.  I especially enjoyed the chapter where she references society’s interest in her weight and she’s just like, “I don’t know, I’m not going to deny myself delicious food, I just can’t even imagine doing that.”  I can relate to that 100%.  She’s very “meh” about the whole thing, while understanding that everyone expects her to have this empowering or significant stance on her own body image.  It’s just whatever, and she’s got things to do so let’s move on.  But she makes this point in a hilarious way, and truly she’s LOL funny throughout. 
Good stuff!  Now I want to read her first book!

Up Next:
After I finish my book club book, which so far features lots of ice, I'm going to dive into a book about a band that other book bloggers all seem to love, so we'll see if it lives up to the hype.  
​What are YOU reading now??!?

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