Books, Recently

I need a better system for recording the books I’ve read. Those that I read on my Kindle are easy enough to recall, but the ones that I check out from the library are wiped from my  memory the moment I return them. So, here’s an incomplete list of books I’ve read somewhat recently. It would appear that the last time I did one of these was August, and I know I’ve read far more than I can recall since then.

Emily, Alone I loved this. Loved it. It’s not very exciting, there are no cliffhangers or twists. I just loved every minute of this story, right up to and including the ending.

What Alice Forgot We discussed this at book club last night, and the first thing someone said was, “I would like memory loss!”  What if we could go back? Ten years ago I hadn’t even met my husband yet, but what if I could go back to the first year of our marriage. How would I feel waking up tomorrow with those eyes? I liked this book, and it’s a quick fun read.

Days of Blood and Starlight After Daughter of Smoke and Bone, I felt let down by this book. If we’re going to make everything into a trilogy, would it be so hard to make the second book not suck so much? This was just too violent for me. I’m really hoping that the third book will redeem this series for me, but the ending of this book doesn’t lead me to believe that this book is headed back in the direction of the first, which I loved so much.

Gathering Blue and Messenger I read these out of order accidentally. I read The Giver first in high school, and then I taught it in a summer school class a few years ago. I’ve always meant to read the follow up books, although they’re not exactly sequels in the strictest sense. I liked Messenger much more than Gathering Blue, which holds if we’re looking at this as a trilogy. It’s now a quartet, and writing this reminded me to request Son from the library. Of these three books The Giver is still my favorite.

The Night Circus Despite this being so very long, I loved reading this. The language is really beautiful, and I enjoyed the story quite a bit. I would have enjoyed it more if it were maybe 30% shorter (the  book seemed to add pages as I was reading) but this was still a mark in the YES column for me.

Mrs. Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children So, I liked this fine, but I didn’t love it. I also didn’t realize that this was the first book in a series when I started. I prefer to read a series in  one chunk, since I have the memory of a goldfish for books that I’ve read. I originally held off reading because the cover of the book gave me the creeps, but the book itself isn’t particularly creepy.

On deck: I’m hoping my book club will pick Where’d You Go, Bernadette, since I just bought that, instead of Gone Girl, which I’ve read and would probably have to reread in order to be able to participate in any sort of discussion. I’m not sure I can handle the Gone Girl rage again. I also have Last Night at the Lobster from the library, and Flight Behavior from the lovely Jennie waiting for me.