A Far-Flung Life by M.L. Stedman (audiobook)

genre: historical fiction

Life on a station in western Australia is mostly a very solitary existence. At a time when sheep are your livelihood and school is conducted over the wave radio, Warren, Rosie and Matt have each other for company. As they grow, there is boarding school and of course there are the helping hands around the property but mostly there is home, Meredith Downs station. When tragedy strikes their family like lightening, everything that matters collapses into the most essential and even that feels broken. Inside this black hole, choices are both made and not made and the consequences could be the final breath to make everything fall down permanently.

OH THIS BOOK. It was so hard to listen to sometimes I almost had to stop. It was that painful and uncomfortable. But I am so genuinely glad I stuck with it because there is also so much humanity. There is a reality here that I couldn’t look away from and the journey from beginning to end left me exhausted but also fulfilled. People are horrible and people are so beautiful. Humans commit horrible wrongs and humans survive horrible wrongs that they’ve done or had done to them and humans sometimes don’t know how to survive well and humans sometimes make things right in the best ways they can.

It will make you sick and make you cry and stitch you back up. This book is not for everyone. But I’m glad I pushed through my discomfort because although I’d wondered if the author could salvage any good from all the sadness, she absolutely did.

This Story Might Save Your Life by Tiffany Crum (audiobook)

 genre: contemporary mystery

Joy and Benny have got a good thing going with their podcast This Story Might Save Your Life.  It's a huge hit and their following has gotten huge, so much so that it's gotten a little overwhelming for Joy, who lives with severe narcolepsy.  When Joy and her husband Xander aren't home one morning when Benny comes over to record, it feels like it must just be a miscommunication until it is clear that they are truly missing. Benny is soon desperate to find out what happened to his best friend and her husband.

This one snagged me from the first chapter. There are a few little tropes in here but for the most part I just had no clue what was going to happen next, in the best way.  I am SO glad I did the audio, the podcast episodes were a fun narrative device.  The writing never dragged and it felt just tight enough.  I appreciated reading about a character with narcolepsy and thinking about how that would impact one's life on a moment to moment basis.  This never felt like a thriller but it was a solid mystery for me and kept me invested from beginning to end.

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (audiobook)

 genre: science fiction

When Earth needs to save itself from the aliens that have already nearly destroyed it, it looks to the children to find a new commander.  The child they think can complete the task?  Ender Wiggins.  Precious Ender who is capable of so much and whose training will run the razor's edge of breaking him.

I read this book LONG ago, as a teen and LOVED it.  So many good twists and you get SO invested in Ender and what is being required of him.  This time, on a long road trip, I listened to a full cast audio version with my two 13 year old sons.  I had hoped they'd like it as much as I did and they LOVED it as well.  They were surprised by the good twists and reveals, they cared about Ender and his friends, and I loved that at the heart of this story is the decisions we make: who do we want to be?  How do we want to show up in the world and how do we want to handle what is asked of us?  Motivation and Intent plus Behavior - all of these things make up our character and it's so clear what Ender is made of, despite what he has to DO.

Excellent production.  I love that I get to give it five stars again 30 years later.

The Astral Library by Kate Quinn

 genre: magical realism

Alix Watson has learned over many years and many foster homes that there is one thing she can truly count on: books.  So when she is at her lowest and a door to an actual magical library appears, it feels like the realization of all her childhood dreams.  And at first, it is.  The Astral Library is a safe haven just for people like Alix who are finding the real world to be unsafe in a myriad of ways.  Very quickly, though, it is clear something is wrong and Alix gets caught up in the thick of whatever "it" is.

One part of my book-loving heart was completely captivated by this story.  I could suspend my disbelief because I wanted to, with secret librarians and finding safety in books.  Another part of me found it fairly predictable and borderline cheesy, but not in a way that made me frustrated or want to stop reading.  I just let myself acknowledge that I was finding it this way and that I still cared about Alix and wanted to finish it.  Yes, it is a little "agenda-y" but because I agree with this agenda, I think I liked that too.

An Infamous Army by Georgette Heyer (audiobook)

 genre: historical fiction

This is the 11th book I have read by Georgette Heyer. I have often ADORED her main characters and found myself laughing out loud at the delightful circumstances they find themselves in.

This was not one of those books.

The "heroine" never really comes off with main character energy. It took me chapters to figure out who she was and still by the end she was surprisingly flat. But there is a main "family" that we get to know and what this book did do for me is make alive the vibe of ex-pat Brussels as it is on the brink of the Battle of Waterloo. Since I recently read an actual history book about this period, I know how accurate this book actually is and how many real-life people are within its pages. When we are just dealing with the social situations and the interplay between people, this book is just as good as any Heyer but THE BATTLE.

Oh it was so long.

I cannot express how elaborate the description of the battle is.

I don't know what Heyer was thinking.

Because I cannot imagine that anyone who is reading this type of book wants PAGES AND PAGES AND MORE PAGES OF INTRICATELY DETAILED BATTLE MANEUVERS.

So.   

I hate giving 2 stars to a Georgette Heyer, because she has made me laugh until I actually cried before.

But this was too much, even for me.

My Husband's Wife by Alice Feeney

genre: thriller

Eden Fox and her husband Harrison have just purchased a beautiful new cottage on the coast of Cornwall, the perfect place for a new start.  But when Eden gets home from a run one evening, the door is locked and when Harrison arrives at the door - he doesn't know her.  Scrambling for a way to figure out what's happening, Eden turns to the police but no one in town seems to know who she is.  It's a nightmare scenario with no easy solution.  But Eden's not the only point of view we read this story from and soon this story has more narrators and more reveals to uncover.  And that's before the body even ends up on the scene.

Well, turns out I can be really critical when it comes to mysteries and thrillers.  My brain could NOT handle the plot holes and dangling threads.  The story was so whiplashy and with so many bait-and-switches that I actually had a hard time keeping them straight.  And then the last few chapters just blew it ALL out of the water and I wasn't left feeling satisfied, unfortunately.  Also, I'm sorry, but the writing is just not good.  Super repetitive and clunky.  It felt slapdash, honestly.  However, despite all that, I did want to finish reading it so, two stars for that.

Every Day I Read: 53 Ways to Get Closer to Books by Hwang Bo-Reum , Shanna Tan (Translator) (audiobook)

 genre: non-fiction

This book is exactly what it professes to be in the title.  It's a cozy love letter to books and reading, 53 short vignettes about a way that books can be a part of your life.  As a fellow avid reader, I can't say I learned anything here that I haven't already done/am doing/have thought of, but it genuinely is just a nice way to think about my favorite hobby for a while.  I also loved that she speaks a different native language than me and so has grown up with a whole different canon of literature - along with many titles I am familiar with.  Most of all, this just reminded me with how happy I am that books are where my heart landed when I was a little girl myself and that they still give me as much pleasure now as they did then.

Vigil by George Saunders

genre: fiction

Jill Blaine arrives at the bedside of K.J. Boone as he is nearing death.  As a sort of an angel, Jill knows that her role is to provide comfort as K.J. moves from this world to the next.  But, it turns out, K.J.'s life, while full of prestige and wealth and power, was actually a fairly destructive one.  And there are those on the other side who would like him to make it right before he passes over.  

I don't know how to categorize this Christmas Carol kind of story.  I enjoyed being in this in between space between life and death with Jill, as she remembers who she was as she tries to remember what her new purpose is.  K.J. is beyond caricatured, which got a bit annoying, but I honestly could imagine that there really are people in this world like that - people who do not care for the planet or for the people and animals trying to live on it.  I do really think that there are people who only care about the bottom line and that's a deeply upsetting thought.  I'm not sure I completely understand the author's point at the end.  I DO think personal responsibility matters, but I also can admit that no one is raised in a vacuum and that nature AND nature will make us who we are.  It wasn't fast moving but it was engaging.  Kinda wish I'd done the audio because I'm sure I would've gotten through it a lot faster.

Eradication: A Fable by Jonathan Miles (audiobook)

genre: fiction

This short novel is subtitled "a fable." Now that I am finished reading it, I've dug a little bit into the actual definition of a fable and I am intrigued by this label. There are no anthropomorphized animals in this book but there is definitely a moral and it's one I am still pondering.

We first meet our main character, Adi, while he's on a boat heading out to a remote island. He's been charged with a specific task: save the island's wildlife by eradicating it of the creature that's destroying it. Adi finds that this is a task much easier considered than actually performed. The goats that he's meant to disappear off the island are *also* wildlife and unfortunately, Adi can't just turn off his brain to do the thing. What we end up reading is the circular thoughts of a man who has experienced great tragedy and yet somehow can't stop wanting to live and let live. What deserves to die or go extinct and what deserves to be saved? And are humans even the right creatures to make that choice? It's a gritty and sometimes upsetting story (most especially if you are a serious animal lover) but I don't think it's going to leave me any time soon.

A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls: Margaret C. Anderson, Book Bans, and the Fight to Modernize Literature by Adam Morgan

genre: biography

Margaret Anderson's decision to leave Indiana and go to Chicago to find a way to be a writer would pivot her life in ways she could've never imagined.  From editing a pioneering art and literature magazine to being arrested on obscenity charges for serially publishing the new work Ulysses by James Joyce, Margaret lived a big life.  She wanted to be surrounded by new and beautiful things and ideas - and, most especially, perhaps, to live her life openly as the lesbian she knew she was.  The circles she found herself in and the relationships she made show a portrait of a women full of contradictions who wanted to create something that could spark discussion and expose a core of creativity and modernism.

I'm not sorry I read this because I'd never heard of Margaret Anderson before.  I sure have heard of a LOT of her friends and contemporaries though!  There is so much name dropping in this book that even with the cast of characters in the front, it got a little exhausting.  I appreciated, so much, what she was trying to do while living during a time when women were really only expected to show up in particular ways and when freedom of speech depended solely on one slim perspective of what was acceptable.  As she got older and it was just lots of moving around and being with different partners before more moving around some more with other different partners.  I learned a lot but I was also kinda bored.