Halfway Through April And What I've Read

I guess it's all the book posts right now on the blog :) Here are the books I read during the first part of April.

I thought this book was okay. It was interesting reading about London in the 1920s although I did wonder about the ease of the biracial relationship which Jewell wrote about. Was London in the 1920s really so open or was the author glossing over the more difficult aspects of it?

I really liked this book. I loved the quirky characters and the ways in which they struggled. There was one piece towards the end that I thought was a little far fetched but other than that, I would recommend this one!

I'd heard about Whittier, Alaska, where all the residents live in one apartment building before so was curious to read a book loosely based there. What this book brought home to me is that, while sometimes I am tempted to live in isolation (Whittier, Alaska, Pitcairn Island, etc) I realize that I would not survive. I need more people, and am not quirky enough (!), to handle this kind of isolation. The smallness of the community makes the book's story that much more intense though.

I really enjoyed this book which I read for my book club. Ruta Sepetys is becoming a "must read" author for me. This book told the story of Romania's last few months of communism from the perspective of a 17-year-old Romanian boy. This story reminded me of my very brief visit to East Germany in June 1989. I can't imagine living in such a suspicious, colourless, and restricted society.

I thought this book was just okay. I was really looking forward to reading it but the story didn't engage me and I would put it down for a few days at a time. This is not one of the stronger Jenoff books I've read and that's sad because it seemed like it was promising.

Why did I enjoy a book about car racing so much?!?!?! I have no idea but I found this book oddly engaging. It also hit home how much Mercedez-Benz (and other German car companies) were tied to the Nazis, how dangerous car racing was (and probably still is), and how inane of a sport it is (driving round and round in circles). I clearly am not a person who will ever love car racing but I did really like this book! (This was a Decades Reading Challenge book.)

 So that's been my April reading thus far. It's been fairly entertaining with some surprisingly intriguing reads.