It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? Button
" data-orig-size="474,356" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" aperture="aperture" /> Hosted by Kathryn from Book Date, “It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?” is a weekly event to share what we’ve read in the past week and what we hope to read, plus whatever else comes to mind. Here is what I read the week ending 19 November 2018. To learn more about each book, click on the book cover!It was another not-so-great reading week. I wonder if this is my new norm. If it is, I am okay with that. I have not stopped reading after all. It is time to focus on the positives.
FINISHED SINCE THE LAST UPDATE:
The only thing The Incredible True Story of the Making of the Eve of Destruction has going for it is the nostalgia factor it evokes with its setting and with the protagonist that carefully annotates all cultural references she makes in her journal. Anyone who grew up in the eighties and nineties will enjoy the clothes, the food, the attitudes towards everything. You will remember the duck and cover drills and may even think about your own fear about nuclear holocaust during the height of the Cold War. I enjoyed those parts of the story, even as it brought back some long-forgotten concerns of World War III and mutually assured destruction. That is where my enjoyment ends, however. The remainder of the story is too flippant for pleasure, mocking the movie industry and the fallout of having a movie made in your hometown. It tends to lighten the genuine threat of atomic warfare that was that era through poorly concealed jokes and way too much gallows humor. It is not even well-written enough to allow you to forgive some of its faults. I muddled through to the end because I was mildly curious to find out how it ended, and I am glad that I was able to assuage my curiosity to that end. I don’t regret reading it, but I do wish it had been better than it was.
My thoughts on My Sister, the Serial Killer are all over the place. On the one hand, I want to love it because I know it is getting a TON of press right now, popping up on best of lists already even though it was just published. On the other hand, I am not certain why it is being added to such lists. I read it. I enjoyed it. I get the satire, just as I get the enabling. I understand the idea of nature versus nurture. I don’t understand what others see in it though. It is entertaining, but it didn’t make me feel that giddiness I associate with a stellar novel. It won’t make me think beyond writing a review. As of right now, I feel it will be one of those books that I will remember reading but won’t be able to extract much more than that.
DID NOT FINISH:
Nothing
CURRENT READ:
CURRENT LISTEN:
NEXT UP:
More witchy fantasy I think. I enjoy that genre too much and have a ton more of it to read.
So, what are you reading?