Currently Reading

There are so many great books I've read since we last chatted and I can't wait to share them with you.  What are you reading this summer?  Honestly, I haven't been reading as much as I'd like, but I can't complain about a much shorter commute.  Still on my to-do list?  Get a Boston library card.  Also?  Buy a bookcase so we can finally unpack all our books!  

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Hot Milk by Deborah Levy - Sofia and her mother Rose travel to Spain for the summer.  Rose is sick and there is a clinic that Sofia hopes can help her.  Rose's sickness is unexplainable, but Sofia hopes that the illustrious Dr. Gomez can shed some light on what is truly wrong with her.  While Rose spends her days sitting in their rented house or at the clinic, Sofia explores the small, seaside town.  She's stung by jellyfish, lets loose neighborhood dogs, and befriends a beautiful, blonde German.  This is the type of novel where not much "happens", yet you feel changed by the end of the story.  Levy's writing is beautiful, and I love how she captures those small, still moments.

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson - You know that feeling when you're in the complete wrong headspace for a book?  That was me with Gilead.  I couldn't get into it.  At all.  I kept trying, picking it up, carrying on with the story, but it never connected for me.  I'll eventually give it another try, because the writing was remarkable.  The narrator is John Ames, a minister.  He is dying, and writing down a diary of sorts to hopefully leave to his young son after he has gone.  His life was a quiet one, and his diary shares that.  It wasn't boring per se, it simply never came together.  This will be a good one to revisit when I'm feeling introspective.

Night Film by Marisha Pessl - Stanislas Cordova is the horror director.  His movies have terrified, terrorized, and baffled viewers.  And his personal life has been even more closely read than his films.  When his twenty-something daughter Ashley is found dead, reporter Scott McGrath, who previously lost his job and his wife after digging into Cordova, needs to find out what happened to her.  He is joined by two misfits, each with their own connection to Ashley, on his journey into discovering the truth about Cordova, his films, and Ashley's death.  I loved every page of this book and didn't want it to end.  Like, obsessively so.  The descriptions of Cordova's movies made me want to watch them, even knowing that they are fictional.  This book combines so many of my favorite things - horror, a relentless journalist, a haunted house, mysterious deaths, cults, corruption.  I can't say enough about it.

The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware - Lo is a struggling travel journalist who finds herself with a huge opportunity.  She's one of just a handful of people invited aboard a luxury cruise ship for its inaugural trip.  But when a mysterious women shows herself only to Lo and then just as suddenly disappears, Lo's trip goes from working vacation to detective game.  Feeling insane, Lo cannot get a grasp on what happened to the woman in cabin 10.  And by the time she does, it may be too late.  Ruth Ware writes these mystery novels that sell very well, but I just don't love them.  They think they're much more clever than they are, they drag on too long, could definitely use an editor, and the twists are never as surprising as I hope they'll be.  This was an entertaining and quick beach read, but I was a bit disappointed with it overall.