Book 26:
Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry
Rough Review:
4 stars. Let’s see, where does this go on my Emily Henry ranking list? I think 3rd, after Book Lovers (one of my favourite reads this year and maybe in many years; it’s been a remarkable first third of the year for reading and The Wedding People, The Nix, and Unruly are all also some of my absolute favourites, and that’s not even mentioning the eight or so really awesome and ten or so quite enjoyable ones) and Funny Story? Maybe a bit higher than Beach Read?
I don’t quite get the hype/complaints that this is a departure and so different from her usual fare. It seemed pretty (excuse the pun-adjacent reference) by-the-book, to me. Yes, each EH novel is its own thing and the characters well-rounded, but mostly it’s a white woman (usually in a writing-related job) in her late 20s or early 30s and a white man (also usually some sort of writer, and usually with dark hair, and hey, I’m into it) in his slightly later 20s or 30s, and one of them will have a dead parent, and both of them will have unresolved trauma, and they meet or re-meet and get off on the wrong foot and think they are ENEMIES but in fact they are SOUL MATES and they kiss and then apologize and promise not to do it again, and then they spend the middle half of the book doing all the touching, and then finally sex, and then one final argument, and then a decision is made and trauma worked through and a HEA bestowed, and usually an epilogue where a proposal or a baby is about to happen and the fun of her books is in the banter and the characters and, let’s be real, the porn, so (and I don’t exactly think this is a spoiler) how was this any different? This book had that exactly, it just also had Margaret’s story.
Whatever:
https://media.tenor.com/9chaxCcojJUAA…
(Does this work? I’ve never used a gif in a review before. But I’m hoping to read and review 52 books for the Cannonball Read this year, so I have to have enough in these draft reviews so that I’ll remember what I thought when I finally get around to writing the real ones, and I HAVE used gifs in WordPress articles.)
I liked Hayden, and I thought Alice was one of the more believable happy golden retriever characters, which is an especially difficult bar to clear when you’re writing from the golden retriever’s POV and not the black cat’s. I thought Margaret’s story was mostly believable and appropriately melodramatic, and I only semi-guessed the twists. Yes, the 0 to I Love You was a bit fast, but a month was the same time period in Book Lovers (although I do think we as readers got to know Charlie more and deeper because we met his family and because he was a bit more open and talkative than Hayden) and I guess I was okay with suspending my disbelief there. I DO wish we got to know Hayden better, and anything about his time with Len and who Len was to him. And more about Alice’s friends.
What else do I have to say? Oh right, caught some weird typos again, would love to read a whole book ANYWHERE without that please. I really like the character work on this cover and I just always appreciate consistent covers for an author or series. You do not understand how much this matters to me. Unfortunately, I have all of Henry’s books on Kindle, which means when the inevitable movie versions come out, my lovely matching covers will be replaced with some bland movie tie-in and I dread that day’s arrival. You know how the best birthday presents are things you’d never buy yourself? I would never get myself hard copies of these books when I already own them on Kindle, but if someone should happen to present a matching set to me on July 8th, I will not be upset about it.
Now that it’s the end of April and I really am 1/3 through the year, I would like to take stock quickly. I’ve read 26 books. 18 female authors, 15 digital copies, 15 fiction, 2 over 500 pages (and 5 under), 3 books published this year (and 15 from the last 5 years, with 2016 being the oldest). For the next 4 months, I’m going to aim to read a bit more male authors, a bit more non-fiction, and work through more of my hard copies of books. I also want to read some older publications – classics and buzzy books I missed when they were first released. Next up: The Body: A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson, which is male, hard copy, and non-fiction, although published in 2019. I think it’s just short of 500 pages, though, which is annoying.
Final Review: 815 words and check.
Book 27:
The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams
Rough Review:
4 stars. This is a tough one for me to rate/review. The writing was beautiful, like a warm, comforting hug. It was S L O W read, not only because I read it for a book club and knew I had until May to finish, but because it was difficult to get into at first, and once I did, I didn’t want certain things to happen and would avoid reading for that reason (I am a mature adult). It was so meticulously researched and felt real, but at the same time curiously detached – Esme suffers so many losses in this book, and I barely felt anything from the book itself; any emotions I felt were from my own imagining of the situation, not the expressed feelings and reactions of Esme herself, and it’s written in first person so this is particularly odd.
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SPOILERS
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END SPOILERS
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I’m hugely interested in a feminist view of language and the development of the dictionary, and understand that events such as the fight for suffrage and WWI did really occur during the time period in which the novel is set, but for some reason those felt like detours from the main part of the novel. I understand that those events in the historical context were used to highlight the exclusion of women and their words from the society, and the fight for representation, the way that the loss of so many young men had the effect of finally allowing more room for women, how what we ignore and words we dismiss obscure truth, whether because it’s considered unimportant (like women’s words) or unsavory (like war, foul language). But because of the way the book was written, the incorporation of those events still felt messy or unfinished to me.
I also could not get my head around the way the book was divided. Why certain words for certain parts? Was it based on the real fascicles that were released during that period of time? Why start a chapter with the heading of, say May 1915, but within the same chapter move on to December 1915? How the heck are you deciding when to put a chapter break versus a page break versus a section break? It all seemed incredibly arbitrary.
I really like Mr. Sweatman. I wish we had some insight about what happened to Lizzie after the book’s end. I was pleased to learn about the Thompson sisters and Dr. Murray and his family, and I hope I’ll read The Professor and the Madman soon. I like the way Pip described getting around using real people by altering their names to acknowledge that it’s not a factual account. I liked the tie in at the end to newer editions of the dictionary and how we keep striving to be more inclusive and recognize our biases. I enjoyed reading the afterword and Pip’s thoughts on the almost near-extinction of the language of the Kaurna people and how documentation from missionaries in the 1800s has helped in its revival.
So my feelings are all over the place. I enjoyed the book. It has great value. I don’t know if I’d want to pick up anything else by the author, but I admire the work she has done.
https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/…
Final Review: 763 words.
Book 28:
The Body by Bill Bryson
Rough Review:
“It is a little ironic that two of the lightest things in nature, oxygen and hydrogen, when combined form one of the heaviest” or is it a little IONIC BILL I will see myself out.
3.5 stars? 3.75?
I like Bill Bryson. There was a time when I would have said I loved him, and that was around the time I read In A Sunburned Country and A Walk in the Woods, which I think may have been responsible for me wanting to be a travel writer in high school. Not surprisingly, those two are also I think his funniest books, and that’s where Bryson shines, for me.
This book, aside from maybe 3-4 audible “Ha!”s, was not funny. It was interesting, fitfully entertaining, and quite shallow overall, which isn’t exactly what I expected from a book subtitled “A Guide for Occupants”. As it is, I think many other authors have done it better and more comprehensively, including some I’ve read in the last couple of years.
Side note: James May went on a hilarious rant about how much he loathes Bryson and I can’t say I agree with him AT ALL but it still amused me.
“Well, I think that man is a danger, frankly. If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s beardy, sanctimonious, patronising Americans in tartan trousers coming to England and trying to persuade us to turn it into a museum.
He wants the East End full of cheeky cockney chaps pushing wheelbarrows full of eels and he wants Northerners to be industrialists with big braces and blokes dying of the consumption… “morning Bill… I’ve got the consumption… it’s traditional.alright”
Bill, if you’re watching, ok. You won’t be watching, obviously, because we’re not talking about steam engines or longboats or bear-baiting but if you happen to have tuned in by mistake, we’re not interested in the views of stupid Americans who come over with their big video cameras saying “gee I love your history it’s just so old”…. SOD OFF……All right.””
And Bryson, in an interview in 2016, said “If I had to nominate one earthling to sacrifice to appease alien invaders, I believe I might suggest James May.” Which, fair.
Final Review: 365 days in a year and words.
Book 29:
Slow Horses by Mick Herron
Rough Review:
4 stars again. Well that was really enjoyable!
In general, I tend to view the difference between “thrillers” and “mysteries” as mostly referring to scope. Thrillers usually take place on the world stage and involve information and players the reader will discover as they go along. The plot, in short, is more important than the people. Mysteries, at least, the ones I most enjoy, tend to be intimate, small-scale affairs during which information is revealed to readers at the same time (mostly) as it’s revealed to the characters, giving said reader a fair chance of playing the detective themselves. Of course the plot is important, but it’s the people that matter. I generally prefer mysteries because I enjoy the character studies, the psychological aspect, the guessing game. I’m a huge Agatha Christie fan, and I really enjoyed Knives Out, to illustrate.
Slow Horses probably mostly fits my definition of a thriller except Herron is still able to do well by his people, who aren’t necessarily particularly likeable but who are recognizable in their reactions to the circumstances they find themselves in and believable in how they got there. And he plays surprisingly fair with the mystery aspect, too. I was incredibly impressed by how properly registering one or two sentences near the beginning could have undone a twist that properly thrilled me.
The writing is also quite dryly amusing, if occasionally hard to follow (I’m not sure how much of my difficulty was because it was British slang I was unfamiliar with or spook/thriller slang, but I ended up Googling a lot of words, which meant falling into numerous Wiki black holes, which probably doubled how long it took me to read this), and Jackson Lamb is hugely entertaining. I haven’t watched the show yet, but I will say the Lamb described in the book looks absolutely nothing like Gary Oldman.
So it hasn’t blown my mind or changed my worldview or healed my soul, or anything, but it was a hell of a lot of fun and I’m definitely reading the next one, and probably adding another show to the To Watch list. Thanks for the recommendation, dad :p
Final Review: 357 words.
Book 30:
Dead Lions by Mick Herron
Rough Review:
3.75 stars. I didn’t like this quite as much as the first. The writing style was as acerbic and entertaining as ever, but I thought it hung on a few too many coincidences and found the ending a bit anti-climactic. I
Catherine remains great, Rodney remains awful, River and Louisa need more actual personalities to go with their reactions to events, SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER I want to know more about the archive lady, and I missed James Webb’s connection to the telescope in the last one and now I’m wondering why no one has brought it up, except…when were these books written? Ahah, the telescope went up in 2021 and the first book was written in 2010. Amazing.
I guess I should be thankful he’s only written 7 books in this series, because I had high hopes for variety this year and it seems as though I will be reading all of them.
Final Review: 171 words.
