The list of what I read in December and January is shorter than other months. I spent several weeks reading one book, and only managed to fit in a few others. But, I’m really excited to share about the book I just finished yesterday, and it’s going to get a post of its own. Tell me, what are you reading?
Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng: Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving but broken father, a former linguist who now shelves books in a university library. His mother Margaret, a Chinese American poet, left the family when he was nine years old without a trace. Bird knows to not ask too many questions, stand out too much, or stray too far…and he’s okay with that for a while.
I really liked her other books, but this one just didn’t do it for me. It was a cautionary tale of a dystopian world, but I felt it was slow, and I just didn’t love the characters.
Nora Goes Off Script by Annabel Monaghan: Nora Hamilton knows the formula for love better than anyone. As a romance channel screenwriter, it’s her job. But when her too-good-to work husband leaves her and their two kids, Nora turns her marriage’s collapse into cash and writes the best script of her life. No one is more surprised than her when it’s picked up for the big screen and set to film on location at her 100-year-old-home. When former Sexiest Man Alive, Leo Vance, is cast as her ne’er do well husband Nora’s life will never be the same.
I LOVED this one. Nora is awesome, and so relatable. I loved her relationship with her children, and the love story had me hooked. The perfect balance of light with substance.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin: On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn’t heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom.
This is the book that took me forever. It was dense, and as someone who isn’t a gamer, a lot of the lingo was lost on me. I really wanted to like it because so many people did, and there were parts that I liked. But, it was really a slog for me to get through.
Where the Forest Meets the Stars by Glendy Vanderah: After the loss of her mother and her own battle with breast cancer, Joanna Teale returns to her graduate research on nesting birds in rural Illinois, determined to prove that her recent hardships have not broken her. She throws herself into her work from dusk to dawn, until her solitary routine is disrupted by the appearance of a mysterious child who shows up at her cabin barefoot and covered in bruises.
My mom gave me this one after she read it for book club. It was heavy, but whimsical, and I liked watching the relationships develop. Sometimes people are meant to meet, and the universe works in mysterious ways.
