Tag: good reads

“Dark Matter” book response and November selection!

Virtual Book Club
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I’m one day off but it’s time for my monthly book review! Last year we picked The Graveyard Book (review, buy) for our spooky October read, and this year we read Dark Matter by Blake Crouch which explores how our past shapes our future—through a science fiction lens.

Interestingly, the majority of the books our club has read feature strong women as the protagonist. Only 5 books out of, what, 16(?) have been man-centered, and 3 of those were chosen when we stretched out of our normal zone to pick something “exciting” or “scary.” I’m sure there is much more to say on this topic regarding gender and books, but I’ll just stop here. If you can recommend a paranormal, adventure, sci-fi book starring a woman, please leave it in the comments!

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The premise I can reveal to you since it’s featured in the promotional matter: Our main character, Jason, is a family man and teaches introductory physics at an average college. He loves his wife and son: even if he occasionally thinks his life could have turned out differently, he is satisfied with the way things are.

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One night, after celebrating with his colleague who won a very prestigious research award, Jason is abducted and knocked out. He wakes up in a world that is similar to his, but different. His wife and son are gone and he is the one who had been awarded the prestigious research honor.

If this premise is interesting to you, go ahead and buy the book or check it out from the library. It reads like watching a thriller movie and you’ll probably be able to get through it in a week if not a weekend.

The rest of my response features spoilers after this point. Scroll down past the next photo to resume. 

So, the book hinges on the concept of the multiverse, of which I had never given any thought until I was forced to, while reading. In the multiverse, every action you take spins off another version of you who did the opposite thing. And there are an infinite number of alternative universes. This basic concept is where ya lose me. Every action? What about typing this post right now? What about if I had Swiss cheese on my sandwich instead of American? I understand backtracking to major decisions like what college I went to or who I dated, and imagining different lives springing from there. But I don’t believe the idea that a world in which those decisions were made differently can exist.

Sidebar: There are big-time scientists who actually theorize that the multiverse is real. I don’t buy it. I kind of feel like I might end up on the same side of history as those who couldn’t believe that we revolve around the sun or couldn’t fathom that the earth is round, but here we are. I just can’t wrap my head around it and I’m depositing it in the sector of my brain that holds sci-fi concepts. 

Anyway, I had a lot of fun trying and failing to stay ahead of the twists in Dark Matter. I  jotted down virtual notes and color coded them (love that feature on the Kindle Fire). Then at the end of the book, I reviewed them all to see how wrong I was. “Ryan is the kidnapper.” Nope! “Amanda is his lover in the other universe.” Nope! I kind of love how clever I thought I was, and how wrong in reality.

Our hero Jason figures out that “other Jason” or Jason 2 is responsible for kidnapping him and stealing his life. The biggest twist comes in the final third of the book. When Jason 1 finds his way back home, the book isn’t even on the home stretch yet. I found what happened next the most mind-blowing of all, but I don’t feel like I should share that here, even with that spoiler alert above.

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Reading this reminded me how much I like thrillers like the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo series (although that isn’t really sci-fi). Anyway I will definitely need to keep my eye out for new, exciting books to buy or to check out from the library. Especially as we “fall back” this weekend, my evenings are going to be dark pretty much from the time I get out of work. If I’m not careful I will spend so much time watching TV this winter. Definitely going to try to dedicate some time to reading instead.

As always, leave your comments below or link me to your review if you’ve already posted it on Goodreads or Amazon! I would love to read your take! 

We moved our discussion group (on Facebook) from Tuesday to Monday night this month to account for Halloween. Libby knocked it out of the park with thought provoking questions and cool multiverse-themed photos, one of which I borrowed for this post. We are always looking to grow our virtual book club. If you’d like to join us over there, message me on Facebook to be added.

For November, the group is going to read A Fierce and Subtle Poison by Samantha Mabry. As usual, I just stared a long, addicting Outlander novel (how does this always happen?) so I need to hurry up and finish that before jumping in on my book club read. Please join along with me, Libby, and the rest of our group as we continue reading interesting books and debating ideas in a friendly space.

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“Amanda Wakes Up” book response and September selection!

Virtual Book Club
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It’s the last Wednesday Thursday of the month and you know what that means… my monthly book review! We read a new release called Amanda Wakes Up, Alysin Camerota’s newly released debut novel.

Plenty of people hate on e-readers like the Amazon kindle, but personally I like the convenience of tossing the durable device in my purse each day and not worrying about the page corners getting all messed up (I take book condition very seriously). Anyway, I do miss seeing and feeling the cover of a book, reading the blurbs on the back and reading the “about the author” on the flap of the dust jacket. For this book in particular I was feeling very resentful toward the protagonist and the subject matter. I was venting to Libby and she sent back a photo of the “about the author.”

Everything clicked into place.

This book has drawn lots of comparisons to The Devil Wears Prada. On the surface, I can see it: a semi-autobiographical account of working on the “inside” of big media. The books are pretty different, though. In Devil Wears Prada the author clearly has an ax to grind and writes with the intention of exposing her cold, cruel boss (Anna Wintour, editor of Vogue). The protagonist is extremely unlikable and does nothing but complain and victimize herself throughout (I am excluding the movie version which I love). Here in Amanda Wakes Up, we see actual character development as Amanda’s dream job puts her on a collision course from naive green journalist to the harsh reality of big dollar broadcast. She learns several lessons ranging from putting oneself in another’s shoes to standing up for what is right even if the risk is losing something important.

So, in the novel, Amanda gets her dream gig of morning anchor for a fictional cable news company called FAIR News. The company starts out as a noble attempt to be a station which covers each side of topics, but the producers quickly discover that repeatedly inviting a certain blowhard businessman-turned-politician onto their morning show brings outstanding viewership. Camerota is clearly indicting cable news, with FOX at the forefront, in giving a megaphone to certain people who really ought not to be running for office in the first place. That much is clear.

The lesson I learned was more about trying to get inside the minds of those who have different opinions than I do, even (especially?) if I believe those opinions to be wrong. Let me restate that: there are such things as wrong opinions, but telling someone they are wrong is not helpful unless we dig deeper. With the internet as our main news source followed by sensationalized 24-hour coverage on cable news, it’s kind of like a non-stop fire-hose of opinions curated to line up with our own. Sometimes opposing opinions are instilled and shaped by off-base nutjobs, but more often that not it stems from a real, heart-of-hearts concern or conviction. It’s important to find out why people believe what they do, especially if you want to change their mind.

As always, leave your comments below or link me to your review if you’ve already posted it on Goodreads or Amazon! I would love to read your take! 

Last night we held our monthly discussion group on Facebook. We actually got a lot more in depth but I’m having a difficult time organizing my thoughts into a post today. If you’d like to join us over there (normally the last Tuesday of the month), message me on Facebook to be added.

For September, nobody in our group floated any particularly grabbing titles, so we are each reading or own thing and we’ll still get together at the end of the month to check in. I will be reading The Girl Who Came Home so I can return it to my coworker who lent it to me in the Spring. Please join along with me, Libby, and the rest of our group as we continue turning off the TV (or internet) to spend more time reading.

“Three Wishes” book response and July selection!

Virtual Book Club
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It’s the last Wednesday of the month and you know what that means… my monthly book review! After heavy and lengthy books, the Virtual Book Club wanted something light and summery to read for June. I was grateful because although reading hard, important books, magazines, and the news is something we should all do for our own self-enrichment, sometimes an escape is necessary as well, and isn’t that what summer reads are for?

Not that Three Wishes by Liane Moriarty is all sunshine and roses. It’s actually kind of dark tempered with lots of light moments. There is a ton of slapstick humor running through the book; it lightens up the continually awful events happening to one or more characters at a time. The book contains overarching themes about sisterhood, secrets, hardships (relationships and childbearing), and what success really looks like.

The premise of the book centers around three triplet sisters in Sydney who are at different stages in their lives, despite being the same age. It takes place at Christmas, which can be a very stressful time of the year for those with complicated families. Twist: Christmas in Australia is in the middle of summer; this still qualified as our summer beach read!

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The Kettle family is complicated, but not in that way that families in books and movies always hate each other. The family was unique in that all three sisters, plus mother and father (divorced decades ago) and grandma all lived in the same city and generally all like one another. Unheard of in movies these days! The sisters are very close—a recurring theme in the book is that some characters think they are too close. When you’re a triplet, where do you draw the line between yourself and your family? Who comes first: sister or spouse/significant other?

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One of my favorite things in Three Wishes was that Moriarty included these little asides narrated by bystanders observing the Kettle family and then relaying the vignette to someone else. It reminded me of the asides interspersed throughout When Harry Met Sally. Although to us our families may seem screwed up, to others they seem sweet and normal. To me they served a dual purpose: One, don’t underestimate the struggles someone is going through just because they seem okay; and two, something that seems huge and all encompassing at the moment could blow over and isn’t really worth getting so worked up about. Perspective!

[Possible spoilers here but I’m being pretty vague] I feel that the book never really answered the “who is more important, sisters or husbands” question, but it did push each triplet sister to grow in their own way. The one with an apparently perfect life learned to ask others for help. The freespirit matured in a visible way (although, maybe she was secretly mature the whole time?) and the codependent one learned independence and self-discovery.

I wonder what I’ll learn next year? I am (gulp) creeping up on 30 this September, after all.

As always, leave your comments below or link me to your review if you’ve already posted it on Goodreads or Amazon! I would love to read your take! 

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Last night we held our monthly discussion group on Facebook. I ran it (!) and we had the BEST time posting celebrities who we’d like to cast in the movie version of this book. It’s great to hear other perspectives on themes and events in a book while it’s fresh in our minds. If you’d like to join us over there (normally the last Tuesday of the month), message me on Facebook to be added.

For July, our group voted on runner-up books from the past few months. We will be reading One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter by Scaachi Koul, who is a feature writer for Buzzfeed. Some reviews draw positive comparisons to Mindy Kaling (which we did as a group last September) so I am really looking forward to this collection of short stories. Please join along with me, Libby, and the rest of our group as we read together.