Halfway Through January And What I'd Read

My 2024 year of reading has started off very strangely. It's very rare that I do not finish a book and, in the first half of this month I did not finish two books. As of right now I am partway through four separate books. I often have more than one book on the go, but I rarely have four books on the go. Anyways, with that introduction, here are the books I've actually finished so far this year, sort of!

I really liked The Dinner List and I thought In Five Years was also pretty good. However, I didn't love this book. For some reason, in this book, the premise fell apart for me. Reading this book did make me want to go to Italy though, especially the Amalfi coast as I've never been there.

I only read two-thirds of this book. The parts about climate change were too stressful for me to read so I skipped most of "Reckoning." While I feel guilty about not finishing this book, I also was not prepared for an in depth discussion of climate change and the ways in which we are killing the Earth. I already knew we were in dire straits and didn't need to read 100 pages as to why...

Another reason I found this book stressful is because members of my immediate family escaped the Ft Mac fire (their house was not burned) and it was terrifying to imagine them in that situation. They were four of the 88,000 people who were evacuated. Yet, another reason I found this book stressful is because of our neighbours' house fire this past June. While it wasn't as intense as the Ft Mac fire, I had an all too clear visual in my mind of houses burning. (Although our neighbours' house was left partially standing and didn't vaporize to ash in five minutes flat like the houses in Ft Mac did.)

If you are looking for a book about why huge forest fires are more frequent and out of control, plus A LOT about climate change, then this is the book for you. Otherwise, skip it. 

Note: Since I did not finish this book, I will not be counting it as a part of my yearly book total, although I did read over two-thirds of it, so I wanted to give a review.

  

I don't normally love Shari Lapena books, which is sad because she's Canadian and I think she doesn't live that far from me. I don't love twisty novels where I can't pick a character to root for and that's how I felt about this book. It reminded me of Gone Girl in that I didn't think anyone was very likeable.

 

I really loved this book. I love romcoms, I loved what I learned about "face blindness," I just really enjoyed all of it. I read this book in one sitting and stayed up way too late to finish it. I also took the test for "face blindness" because I get people mixed up all the time. I definitely don't think I have face blindness (even though I scored lower than "normal") but this is definitely something I struggle with. My colleagues find it amusing how often I get students confused with each other.

Oh Jenny Colgan. I used to be able to count on her books as favourites and I really haven't enjoyed the last few of hers that I've read. This book was... okay... but I wouldn't highly recommend it. I think I just had trouble getting into the setting and caring about any of the characters until quite far along.

I thought this book was okay but again, it wasn't quite as engaging as I remember Boyfriend Material being. There were parts of this book I really liked but there were also parts I thought dragged a little. I just didn't care as much about Luc and Oliver's story as I wanted to.

This is seriously the actual picture on Goodreads for this book! Hahaha!!! This is a series I loved as a teen. In fact, I searched and bought copies of all the books, and this was before everything was easily found on Amazon. This is a series set in the early 1900s and I just love everything about it, still.

I feel like many people have loved this book and I was left a little disappointed. While it was interesting to learn about Marjorie Post, I was a little put off by all the accounts of all the money she (and her husbands) spent. I was also very surprised to learn that Marjorie Post was the one who built Mar-A-Lago! I spent a bunch of time on Wikipedia when I read that fact!

So that's been my 2024 reading thus far. I feel like I haven't read much which I've really loved and I've maybe been a bit grumpy in reviewing books. And not finishing a few books has not helped. But I think I might be the problem, not the books, and that's irritating.

Do you not finish books? Like I said above, it's a rare thing for me to do.