It’s another edition of Show Us Your Books! But, before I kick off what I’ve been reading lately, I wanted to remind all of my readers about my 1 Year Blogiversary Giveaway! This Friday, August 11th is your last chance to enter to win a free book - pick the book you most want to read from my first full year of blogging at The Hungry Bookworm, and you could be chosen to win! Full details in last week’s post. Good luck 🙂
Linkup Guidelines:
This linkup happens the second Tuesday of every month. The next is Tuesday, September 12, 2017.
1. Please visit and comment with both of your hosts, Jana & Steph
2. Please display the button or link back to me and the linkup hosts on your blog post
3. Please visit a few other blogs who've linked up and get some book talk going!
Engrossing Reads
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine - We picked this book for my September Good Reads & Good Eats book club, but my library hold happened to come in sooner than I expected. This book reminded me a lot of A Man Called Ove, except that the curmudgeon was 30-year-old Eleanor. I found her oddly relatable and caught myself chuckling at her wry, sometimes out-of-touch observations. Definitely can’t wait to discuss this next month!
Passed the Time Just Fine
Cloud Atlas - People love this book, but I’m not one of those people. It was long and confusing and sometimes too on-the-nose about itself. The characters and chapters I enjoyed, though, kept me from hating it. I’m glad I read it - at over 500 pages, it was a feat! - but I just won’t be reading it again.
Geek Love - Weird is an understatement for this book! Katherine Dunn created a carnival of freaks that had me cringing but also kept me reading for more. It prompted interesting discussion at my book club, and it led to some tasty popcorn and another ice cream recipe, so I can’t complain. 🙂
Pachinko - Another book club pick, I was looking forward to Lee’s saga about Koreans living in Japan, a slice of life I honestly knew nothing about. The writing was excellent, but the story was full of sadness. It was good, but it was emotionally rough - as I said in my book club, I liked it, but I don’t think I’d recommend it.
Not Worth It / Did Not Finish
I may not have read a lot this past month (some of my choices took a while to get through…), but I didn’t have any I disliked nor did I have any I left behind. It was a good month!
Currently Reading
The Other Einstein - I’m smack dab in the middle of Marie Benedict’s novel about Albert Einstein’s first wife Mileva Maric, who was also a physicist. As a feminist, the story intrigued me as soon as I heard of it, and I’m certainly enjoying it so far. More to come, of course 🙂
East of Eden - I haven’t technically started this, but it’s next in my queue! I’m mostly putting it here to hold myself accountable, since it’s been hanging out on my TBR list for a while now…
Until next time!
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Way to go on finishing Cloud Atlas! That's a brick.
Ha, thank you! It was a bit of an endurance test.
I haven't heard of The Other Einstein but I'm definitely intrigued now!
I'm like #50 in line for Eleanor Oliphant. I'm getting tired of waiting.
I loved Geek Love. So bizarre but so good.
i keep hearing about Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, i'll have to add it to my list. the other Einstein sounds interesting!
Cloud Atlas is one of those books, like Infinite Jest, that I keep telling myself I should read and then never do.
Infinite Jest might stay that way for me...but I totally get where you're coming from on Cloud Atlas!
How have I not heard of any of the books you read this month?! I just added Eleanor Oliphant to my to read list. Still need to get to A Man Called Ove too!
I'm not sure! But I think that's part of the appeal of these linkups / book lists - finding books you hadn't discovered before is always an exciting thing!
I'm curious about Eleanor Oliphant - I'm glad that was an engrossing read!!
-Lauren
I'm glad I liked it too 🙂 Sometimes the hype ends up making a book a little more disappointing than you expected it to be. In this case, Eleanor lived up to it. Quite a good book!
I'm reading Ove right now, and enjoying it. I'll have to add Eleanor Oliphant! In a bit of a slump and hoping to pull out this month! 🙂 Here from SUYB. XO - Alexandra
Simply Alexandra: My Favorite Things
Glad you're liking Ove! Good luck on your slump - I hate when those happen :/ But it's always awesome to have a book that can pull you out of it! It's usually a good one 🙂
I really want to read about Einstein's first wife. Thanks for sharing Megan.