Recent arrivals:
- Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
- Night Came with Many Stars by Simon Van Booy
It's been about 6 weeks since I did a Malarkey post (and then I took a lengthy break, after a few more days). Since then, I've only acquired two books. Where the Crawdads Sing is my F2F book group's July selection. Night Came with Many Stars is my signed, finished copy of Simon's book.
I did accidentally buy one book and I'm not even kidding, but I've forgiven myself because I got it for crafting purposes, not for reading. <shrugs> I just totally forgot I was on a book-buying ban, the night I ordered it. That makes a grand total of 4 books purchased in 2021: 2 for F2F discussion, 1 by a friend, 1 booboo purchase. I granted myself a Book Closeouts purchase to my exceptions as a mid-year break from the buying ban but I haven't had any interest in buying more books so I'll leave that for a time when I feel like I need an upper. Or, maybe it just won't happen.
Books finished since last Malarkey:
- The Temple House Vanishing - Rachel Donohue
- Stories of Your Life and Others - Ted Chiang
- Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir
- Hamnet - Maggie O'Farrell
- Remo: The Adventure Begins - Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir
- Summer - Edith Wharton
- The Days of Abandonment - Elena Ferrante
- To All the Boys I've Loved Before - Jenny Han
- Where the Crawdads Sing - Delia Owens
- They Came Like Swallows - William Maxwell
Currently reading:
- Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
My plan (since January) has been to dedicate July to Gone With the Wind and I'm on it. But, it's definitely going to take a good chunk of the month (although probably not the entire month). I've got three other books with bookmarks in them but I haven't touched a single one of them since I opened Gone With the Wind. I'm just enjoying the story too much to divert my attention away from it, when I have the time to read.
Posts since last Malarkey:
- Night Came with Many Stars by Simon Van Booy (book review)
- The Gap by Benjamin Gilmour (book review)
- Milkman by Anna Burns (book review)
- Fiona Friday - Awkward family photos (cat photos)
- The Musician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo, Rose Mellie Rose by Marie Redonnet, and The Address by Fiona Davis (mini reviews)
In other news:
Why'd you go away, Bookfool? Well, I guess I had a case of burnout. I just felt like I was done with blogging, at least for a while, and stopped. As I've said before, I have to write. It's just something that's in my blood and has been since childhood. So, I decided that I would not announce an official departure in case I wanted to come back. And, here I am. Can't go long without writing but for once I absolutely needed to stop writing (at least about books) for a short time.
I am still watching Chuck, now on Season 4, Episode 22. Otherwise, we've just watched a few random episodes of this or that when we're bored but very little else. We spent our holiday weekend cleaning, going through boxes, setting aside things to donate, and rearranging things. Family was at the beach so it was just the two of us, again. That was fine because we had big plans for getting our messy closet tidied and we got a lot done and 4 bags of donations out the door. Success! Also, we had some nice grilled food on the 4th so it was all good.
I will start hitting the backlog of reviews, this week, but some may be super short. It just depends on how I feel about them. Hope everyone is doing well and my American friends had a great weekend!
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I liked Crawdads even though I felt the story was a stretch. They are filming the movie now.
ReplyDeleteNetGalley works for me but not as well as Edelweiss.
That's exactly how I felt. I could practically hear the author plotting, "I have to get rid of X characters to leave the MC on her own. How do I get them all to leave and when is she capable of fending for herself?" But, after that, it was enjoyable reading about how she managed to cope, even if a few plot points were predictable.
DeleteNetGalley doesn't work for me at all. If someone sends me a widget and I click on it, NG doesn't recognize me. I spent hours trying to figure it out, one day, but it still wasn't fixed at the end of the day so I gave up. There are times I wish it worked, in spite of my hatred of e-books.
Some parts of Where the Crawdads Sing really made me roll my eyes, but I did like it regardless. Always wanted to read Gone With the Wind, someday I hope to get to it. Glad you're back-hopefully the long break was rejuvenating!
ReplyDeleteI felt the same about Crawdads. She made her plotting a little too obviously deliberate but it was still a good story and I enjoyed it. Gone With the Wind is so absorbing. I can't believe it took me so long to finally get into it. This is my 4th attempt! I'm not including the one time it did click but my original copy literally fell to pieces in my hands so I had to give up on it (I was on vacation at the time and it took me a while to find a new copy).
DeleteThanks! Taking a break really helped. I just couldn't get myself to write but I'm back to it being no big deal, at least for now.