It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? – 30 July 2018

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, this 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 30 July 2018. To learn more about each book, just click on the book cover!

FINISHED SINCE THE LAST UPDATE:

Book Cover Image: The Completionist by Siobhan Adcock

" data-orig-size="265,400" sizes="(max-width: 199px) 100vw, 199px" aperture="aperture" />

Siobhan Adcock’s novel about a post-natural disaster society in which there is no more water and sharply declining birth rates is a slow burner. I was not certain I wanted to continue with it at first for several reasons. The main character is a mess, and PTSD does not sufficiently explain his symptoms. The Wars too are nebulous in the beginning. We do not know what CG did there nor why we have been in a war for decades. Add to that the confusion about this new society built on top of the old one. However, when you stick with it, you not only receive answers to these questions, you get a real sense of the society and the issues facing each of the Quinn siblings. The society is a chilling one and should not be as realistic as it is, but it is all too easy to envision not only the well-meaning regulations that eventually do more to hamper than to help. Most people are not going to have the patience for this story, which is a shame because I do think it has relevance for today.

DID NOT FINISH:

Book Cover Image: The Book of M by Peng Shepherd

" data-orig-size="265,400" sizes="(max-width: 199px) 100vw, 199px" aperture="aperture" />

After a full week of this one sitting on my nightstand and me finding excuses to do something else other than read it, I know this is not a book I want to finish. At just shy of the halfway mark, I find myself not really involved in the story on any level. I care nothing for the characters; the story is just mediocre. The pacing is glacial; too much time is spent describing this new world of shadowless and shadowed and not enough time actually doing something or getting somewhere. Plus, Ory’s story is so repetitive. It is one thing to know how much he loves his wife; it is another thing entirely to be told that over and over again at each little change in his search for her. I do think this is one novel best read in one or two sittings because it is fairly easy to become superficially immersed in the story while reading. It is once you set it down that all desire and curiosity disappears, or so I find. If I were to keep reading, it would be to find out whether they ever discover a cause and potential cure for the missing shadows and subsequent memory loss, and I can flip to the last few chapters to make that determination if the desire to do so gets to me. Otherwise, I am perfectly happy putting this permanently to the side and moving on to the next book.

CURRENT READ: