→ books on a spring day

[libbi]

DNF
» The Art of Taking It Easy - Brian King. I was liking this, but the author's insistence that he doesn't stress out as much as other people, combined with an anecdote about him driving to school with a stranger who had fallen asleep in his car (and then wondering why his classmates reacted the way they did) drove me mad. I looked him up-he appears to be a white man. I can't imagine ever driving around with a stranger in my car, and it would be foolish to do so. He implies that what he did was the right thing to avoid the stress of being late for class. The guy just lives in another world.

» Black Sunshine - Karina Halle. As predicted, this was too dark for me.

Read
» Delicates - Brenna Thummler. This graphic novel is the sequel to Sheets. The story deals with death and grief and ghosts and being a preteen. I think the characters are in middle school. I liked this a little more than Sheets, but that may be because the sequel had already set up the world. I recommend this series.

» Anxious People - Fredrik Backman. The reviews I've seen about this appear to be polarized, but I loved it. It's about a hostage situation in a small town in Sweden, but really, the hostage situation isn't the point, but the people involved. I love Backman's characters; they're unique, yet realistic. Through the course of the novel, it's revealed how the characters are connected outside of the hostage situation. Some of the connections are a little far-fetched, but given the setting of a small town, it's not improbable.

» Genuine Fraud - E. Lockhart. The author credits inspiration for this book to The Talented Mr. Ripley. There's a fine line between inspiration, and writing the same story. It's not exactly the same, but it's so close that it's questionable. I appreciated the technique of how the story was told though. It started with the present, and then went a couple weeks back, and then another few weeks, and so on and so on, until the reader knows the full story. The reader knows what happened, but not how or why. So while I appreciated the technique, the story wasn't that original.

Currently Reading
» The Downstairs Girl - Stacey Lee. This is the May book selection for the Modern Mrs. Darcy book club. I am currently enjoying it in audiobook form. Jo Kuan is a Chinese girl living in the South, just after the end of the Civil War. She's a lady's maid, but moonlights as an advice columnist for a newspaper anonymously. She lives under the newspaper agency, so she is privy to some interesting conversations. This is why I like being a part of a book club. I would not have picked this book up otherwise, but I'm enjoying it very much.