Julie Reads in 2020

Hi, all.

I'm Julie, from the Greater Boston area of Massachusetts. I'm new to this group, but I'm enjoying myself a lot so far, and I thought I'd give making my own thread a try. My reading covers a pretty broad range - fiction, nonfiction, and memoir, and within fiction, various types of speculative fiction, science fiction, and fantasy as well as cozy mystery, police procedural, and even the occasional literary or contemporary book, and I'm constantly branching out.

I haven't set any goals for this year. I'm just trying to get through it, one day and one page at a time.

That said, I'll be tracking my reading here, and trying to remember to add reviews, and I'd love to discuss anything I've read with anyone who has something to say, so please comment if you have thoughts. I look forward to getting to know you all, and sharing my reading with you.

Books Read in 2020:

1. Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo: 4 stars
2. Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love by Dani Shapiro: 4 stars
3. If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir by Ilana Kurshan: 5 stars
4. The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland by Jim Defede: 3 stars
5. Blood of Elves by Andrzej Sapkowski: 5 stars
6. The Sword of Destiny by Andrzej Sapkowski: 4 stars
7. Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right by Anne Nelson: 5 stars
8. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell: 4 stars
9. Tastes of Faith: Jewish Eating in America edited by Leah Hochman
10. A Book of One's Own: People and Their Diaries by Thomas Mallon: 3 stars
11. A Murder of Magpies by Judith Flanders: 4 stars
12. A Bed of Scorpions by Judith Flanders: 4 stars
13. A Cast of Vultures by Judith Flanders: 4 stars
14. When Books Went to War: The Stories That Helped Us Win World War II by Molly Guptill Manning: 4 stars
15. Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror and Speculative Fiction by Lisa Kröger and Melanie R. Anderson: 4 stars
16. Which Lilith: Feminist Writers Re-Create the World's First Woman edited by Enid Dame, Lily Rivlin, and Henny Wenkart: 4 stars
17. Julie and Julia : my year of cooking dangerously by Julie Powell: 3 stars
18. The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell: 3.5 stars
19. The Poacher's Son by Paul Doiron: 3 stars

Welcome to the group! Looking forward to getting to know your reading!

>3 japaul22: Thanks!

Welcome! This is a really friendly reading community - I hope you like it.

So I've finally finished Julie & Julia. It took me a little over a month, from August 11 to September 17. It was an interesting book, and I'm glad that I read it, but I really disliked Julie herself.

I feel bad saying that, because this book is a memoir and Julie Powell is a real woman, and publishing a memoir, putting yourself and your life and your innermost self out there for public consumption and comment, is an incredibly brave act.

But throughout reading Julie & Julia, I found Julie pretty consistently awful. Her preoccupation with and constant discussing of sex was off-putting and uncomfortable for me. The way she talks about mental illness and the mentally ill was disturbing and offensive. Her flippant comparisons of her everyday life to historical genocides and wars was jarring and also unendearing. Her approach to kitchen sanitation made me gag a lot while reading. And from the way she herself describes her relationships with her friends and husband, I cannot for the life of me figure out why they put up with her. Especially before she became a source of delicious French food.

All of that said, this book was a really interesting look back at early internet and blog culture, and the general atmosphere and culture of the early 2000s. The parts about watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer were delightful. The writing was good. And the story itself is interesting and engaging enough to make it worth a read despite my dislike of the narrator-author, which is quite a trick for a memoir.

Now that I've finally finished with Julie & Julia, I'm on to Lisa Jewell's The Family Upstairs. Hopefully, I'll get through this next book quicker.

L'shana Tovah everyone!

Welcome, Julie! Hope you enjoy yourself here; hopefully you can get around to visit others' threads. It's a great way to get good recommendations, or just to see what others are reading. It's amazingly broad.

Welcome. Appreciating that your first review is a play on your name twice. Not a foodie, but I like memoirs. Very interesting about the author.

I finished Lisa Jewell's novel The Family Upstairs last night. As predicted, I finished it much faster than I did Julie and Julia, since I didn't have any weird hangups that kept me from picking it up for weeks at a time the way I did with that book.

My first impression of this book, from the very first chapter, was of how gorgeous the writing is. Lisa Jewell has a way with description that I absolutely love.

One of the things that has put me off certain types of mystery novel lately, especially the police procedurals of Michael Connelly and the like, which I used to love, is clunky, inelegant prose. It distracts me to the point that I can't immerse myself in the story. The last time I tried to read a Harry Bosch novel, I put it down a chapter or two in. I just couldn't do it.

I had no such trouble with The Family Upstairs. I was able to sink into the story easily, and appreciate the prose on its own merits, as well.

The characters in The Family Upstairs are well-drawn and distinctive, and the narrative voices of the alternating chapter POVs are expertly done.

I love the way that Jewell gives you bits of the puzzle from each of the main point of view characters, allowing you not only to put together the full picture but to get to compare the pieces and evaluate the reliability of each narrator. The moment when it hit me that Henry was an unreliable narrator was like magic. It changed the entire book, including everything that I had already read.

On top of all of that, the mystery is interesting, the protagonist, Libby, sympathetic and likeable and easy to root for, and the truth, when it is finally, entirely, revealed, satisfying. All in all, a good book. I wanted to give it four stars.

But one aspect of the book stopped me. And that's the conclusion of the plot (as opposed to the resolution of the mystery). Although I did walk away from the last page with the sense of disquiet that Jewell seems to have been successfully aiming at, I was also left with more questions than answers, and not the philosophical and moral questions a good novel can leave you with, but actual plot mechanic questions, which, in my opinion, a well-constructed novel shouldn't leave you with. The ending also felt a bit rushed, and a little too pat.

It all ends a little too neatly for me, even with the final reveal on the last page. My problem is not that all of the plot lines are resolved - I actually prefer that to books that leave loose plot threads - but rather that there aren't any negative consequences for anybody. Everything works out so perfectly. Miller pairs off with Libby, or as good as; Lucy and the children are living well in England, happily ever after; and Libby gets her fairytale ending and doesn't even seem to have any qualms about the sort of people her family have turned out to be. Neither Miller nor Libby, the two relatively well-adjusted, "normal" characters, even consider going to the police or telling anyone the truth, which is hard for me to swallow. Michael's murder is conveniently blamed on unnamed unsavory associates. Phin turns out to have taken on the job he dreamed of as a teenager, as if his aspirations never changed after the escape - as if he never actually grew up at all. Like a fairy tale. It's all happily ever after, but twisted and refracted through a funhouse mirror.

And then the reveal at the very end. It's creepy, sure, and the Henry developed through the course of the novel is definitely capable of it, morally and logistically. But how did he know that Libby would team up with Miller at all? That he would stick around? What would he have done if neither of those things had happened? And if his chapters are not, as I thought I had figured out that they were, the dialogue of his final explanation to Libby after all, then what are they? His internal monologue? His diary? And what, specifically, did he tell Libby, if not what's in his chapters?

Given all of that, I couldn't give The Family Upstairs a full four stars. But other than the ending, it was very, very good. And even a part of the ending did work. So I couldn't give the book three stars, which to my mind says 'average; neither good nor bad.' Hence, three and a half stars. Above average, but just that fraction short of truly good.

All in all I enjoyed The Family Upstairs, I'm glad I read it, and it was well worth the time investment, even if the ending left me more conflicted and unsatisfied than I thought it would while reading the rest of the book.

I haven't decided yet what I'm going to read next. I'm now officially done with all the library books I had, which means I'm free to start any of the unread books I own, now that there's nothing with a due date pending. I'll check in once I've made a decision.

Bye for now, and though I imagine I'll check in again before Sunday, you never know with me, so to everyone else observing Yom Kippur Sunday night, Have an easy fast.

I've decided on what I'm going to read next: The Poacher's Son by Paul Doiron.

I bought my dad one of the later books in the series for his birthday back in January and he liked it so much he ended up buying and reading the entire series (or rather, having me buy them for him with his card. Th man runs a business, he orders things off the internet for himself plenty, he's not computer illiterate by any stretch of the imagination, but he makes me order his books for him. He also relies on me to find new authors, series, and books for him to read, but that's actually pretty flattering, and also fun. But I digress.)

The books made the rounds of his two sisters, and once he had them all back, he passed them all on to me. (I had expressed an idle interest in trying them, and in his head, this somehow translated to "make Julie keep all 11 books in the series at her one-bedroom condo where she doesn't even have shelves for all of her own books yet instead of shelving them all on the huge, nearly empty bookcase in her old bedroom here at my two-story, five bedroom house" for reasons passing understanding. I live a thirteen-minute drive down essentially a single road. We see each other all of the time. He could have kept them at the house. Instead they're piled up in the hollow space in my side-table. But, once again, I digress.)

I love a good mystery, and these books got good reviews from not only my dad and both of my aunts, but also the panel of the Edgar Awards, so I'm going into it anticipating good things. But we'll see. I plan to start sometime today, probably over lunch. But I also plan on attending a virtual conference on Folk Horror and baking a birthday cake for my aunt and buying anything I forgot to get for the blintzes for Monday today, too, so...we'll see how that goes.

Your story about your father made me laugh. My Dad also thinks that my role in life is to make sure he always has something good to read.

>11 RidgewayGirl: It's a difficult job, but someone's got to do it...: )

I've started The Poacher's Son. I've read the first 54 pages, chapters one through six, so far, and I'm enjoying it. It's not the best prose I've ever read, but it's good and not awkward or distracting enough to keep me out of the story, and the story so far has been interesting.

I'll post more once I'm further in or finished.

>9 Julie_in_the_Library: I'm intrigued enough by this to add it to my wishlist, despite your misgivings about the ending.

>13 rhian_of_oz: It's not a bad book, or anything. The downside of having done lots of creative writing courses and most of a fiction writing undergrad program is that I do this with everything I read now - analyze it and notice how it's constructed and how all of the moving parts of the narrative work together instead of just enjoying the story. Once you start seeing that stuff, you can't go back and undo it.

I did enjoy it, as evidenced by my devouring it in two days. I would recommend reading it from a library before spending money on it, though. Though that's actually my policy for most books, nowadays. Comes of being unemployed in a pandemic, I suppose...

I'm currently reading The Poacher's Son by Paul Doiron.

The book, the first of the Mike Bowditch series, take place in Maine, and it makes its Maine setting an integral and omnipresent part of the story. Doiron makes Maine, specifically the back woods of Maine so unfamiliar to those of us who've never lived there, nearly a character in itself, recreating the land, the people, and the culture on the page so vividly it's almost like I've been there myself.

I am enjoying the book, but so far - I've read through page 196, or the first 21 chapters - I have no particular attachment to any of the characters, including Bowditch himself, and no real investment in the solution to the murder mystery.

That wouldn't usually be enough to stall me out - in fact, it's typical of the murder mysteries that I give three stars - but it's also not enough to help me overcome the thing that has stalled me out: my unfortunate sympathetic embarrassment problem.

I really don't like it when characters in stories do stupid things or behave in stupid ways, especially if it can or will get them in trouble. I don't like watching or reading characters getting told off by bosses or parents. I don't like characters making fools of themselves.

Apparently, this is not uncommon among Autistics, so at least I'm in good company. And mostly, I've got solutions to deal with it - watching certain scenes on TV and in movies on silent, with just the closed captions, sometimes with my face turned away; fast forwarding through a scene entirely, if it's bad enough, or skimming or skipping a chapter or scene in a book, though with books I do prefer to avoid that - and I simply don't watch or read stories that have too much of the content that bothers me. This does mean that most comedy is out of bounds for me, especially the typical American sit-com, but on the whole that doesn't really bother me - I don't get the feeling I'm missing all that much.

But with The Poacher's Son, it's become an issue. Because I don't care enough about the characters or the mystery to motivate me to push through the scenes that bother me, and Mike Bowditch keeps doing stupid shit that makes me skip bits or put the book down. This is why I don't typically read books with 'main detective's close friend/relative is the main suspect' plots. But I want to read the rest of the series, and this is the first book.

Add that to my fun 'what is this self-motivation you speak of?' ADHD brain, the fact that I've been hyperfixating on prepping my NaNoWrimo project all month, and the ever-more active and infinitely distracting NaNoWrimo forum, and I've gotten completely stalled out.

With exactly a week to go until the start of NaNo, I'm not planning on starting anything new until at least December, though I will be reading bits of books on writing as part of the NaNo prep and writing process.

I'm also not giving up on The Poacher's Son, because it is interesting, especially the stuff about Maine, and also I already own the entire series to date, thanks to my father, who foisted them on me rather than find someplace to shelve them in his own home and lend them to me one at a time like a normal person, and I'm the kind of person who will have trouble moving on to the next one without at least trying to finish the first.

So I'll be reading it in small chunks when the mood strikes me until I finish it, and I'll update as I get through it, whenever that happens to be.

And in December, I'll probably also start something new, which I will hopefully get through much faster.

All of this to say, sorry for not updating, I haven't actually abandoned this, and expect sporadic updating for the foreseeable future.

So I'm back, and I've finally finished Paul Doiron's first Mike Bowditch novel, The Poacher's Son. I rated it three stars out of five.

As I noted above, the prose is fine, nothing special but also not noticeably bad or clunky. I never did develop any attachment to any of the characters, including the protagonist Mike Bowditch, nor did I ever develop a burning curiosity about the solution to the murder mystery.

My main takeaway: as a mystery, The Poacher's Son is fine. It's not bad, but it's not spectacular, either.

(I do think that my particular hang-ups with regard to certain elements of the plot - the sympathetic embarrassment issue, and my dislike of 'detective's relative or friend is the main suspect' plots - played a significant role in my reaction to this novel, so when it comes to the mystery plot, keep that in mind.)

What makes this book special, and worth reading, for me, is not the mystery plot, though. It's the setting.

Paul Doiron takes readers on a journey through the unfamiliar world of the backwoods of Maine and the people who call it home with amazing skill and success. It's that aspect of the novel that has me looking forward to continuing the series.

My three star rating, in this case even more than usual, reflects my personal taste and preferences more than the inherent quality of the book, and I would encourage any police procedural/murder mystery fans, and anyone interested in the backwoods of Maine, to try it out for themselves.

I will be reading the next book in the series, Trespasser, but not until after I read The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski, which is a library book and possibly already overdue.

I'm glad to be back, and I look forward to reviewing and discussing more books with you all.