Baby kid gave me Were’d You Go, Bernadette, and I swallowed it in one big gulp on the flight to HI. The author poked fun at Seattle in the right places, especially the blackberries! 
She missed one part though - blackberries do not stabilize hillsides, so the mud slide could have happened even if they had not been removed. 
I hope there is a sequel.
Read Stephen King’s new book The Outsider the day it came out (5/22). Segued right into his The Revival and finished it today.
So I took @scout59 's advice and bought Sunburn for my Kindle. I also purchased White Houses at @alwaysamom 's suggestion. Will probably read in that order. Thanks for the suggestions.
You’ve probably talked about The Girl With All the Gifts already. Just finished — I generally hate “zombie” books, but this was one that didn’t fit the standard mold in a lot of ways. Interesting plot & characters. I was sorry to get to the end.
I loved loved LOVED “The Girl With All the Gifts” - the plot, the characters, the twist at the end. I thought the sequel was good but not as good.
Hope you like “Sunburn,” @Nrdsb4 - for me, it was one of those books whose characters seemed so real to me. By the end I was screaming at them all to shape up!
There is a SEQUEL?!?
Ha! Technically it’s a prequel, I think - it takes place just before and then just after “The Girl…”
I think it’s called “The Boy on the Bridge.”
I just finished Pachinko. Marvelous book. I highly recommend it. After that I tried to read Tangerine, which sounded fascinating. Absolutely could not tolerate it. Back to the library.
@scout59 Finished The Boy On The Bridge. I liked it even better. The two as a set are my favorite thing I’ve read so far this year.
I read and enjoyed The Girl With All The Gifts, so I’m pleased to hear about the prequel.
I have just finished “Why we sleep”, by Mathew Walker.
The author (a neuroscientist in sleep research at UCB) presents information about how important sleep (good quality and sufficient) is to our well-beings. It will be my goal to try to get at least 7-hr of sleep a night from now on. Not to be an alarmist, but lack of sleep is considered carcinogenic, one of possible causes of Alzheimer’s, obesity, and much more.
Many if not most of our kids are sleep deprived and sleep is especially important for their teenage brains.
Just ordered the hardcover for my family to read. Mr. Walker is able to pack tons of science and researches in a very absorbing way. Not dry at all. Highly recommended.
recently finished “Less”–Andrew Sean Greer’s recent Pulitzer prizewinner. Liked it very much. Beautiful writing, and big-hearted.
CC should get a cut from my Amazon purchases as a result of this thread.
Two books I’ve recently finished:
White Chrysanthemum by Mary Lynn Bracht. This is an historical novel about the Korean “comfort women” (a euphemism for the ages), girls and women who involuntarily serviced Japanese soldiers before and during WWII. (Chinese and Filipinas where also enslaved.) Be warned that this is an extremely difficult book to read, with lots of graphic sexual violence. Yet I’m glad I read it. I knew nothing about this heartbreaking history, and it feels all too relevant in 2018, yet another example of powerful men abusing women. Always and everywhere, it seems.
As a palate cleanser after that, I picked up Need to Know by Karen Cleveland. This is a terrific page-turning spy thriller about a CIA analyst who – well, I won’t say any more about the plot, since I don’t want you to miss out on the fun! I’ll just say that it’s intelligent and well-written and suspenseful from beginning to end. A refreshing twist is that the protagonist is a woman (as is the author, obviously). Highly recommend.
Thanks!
@LasMa, I have a copy of White Chrysanthemum from the library waiting to be read. I had planned to bring it with me to the beach this weekend, but think I’ll wait to read it when I get home. I think I’d rather a light read while I’m relaxing on the beach. Thanks for the warning!
I just finished The Black House by Peter May, a very well done mystery/coming of age novel set in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. I learned a bit about Gaelic culture and traditions. May skillfully describes the harsh weather and isolating area in which the story unfolds. I didn’t realize this was the first of a trilogy but it can easily be read as a stand alone book. It is one of the better mysteries I have read this year and has won several awards.
@LasMa I don’t know whether you would like to watch a very well-made and extremely sad movie (Made by South Korea I think) about the “comfort women” during the wwII for the Japanese army. It is called “spirits’ honecoming”.
Thank you, @makemesmart. I will check that out. I’m kind of obsessed with the subject now.
@4kids4us Definitely NOT a beach book!!
@4kids4us , I recently started reading Peter May. I started with the Enzo series, and was somewhat underwhelmed with the character, despite the many accolades. I then picked up the second in the Lewis series (The Lewis Man) and it was excellent. I hope to be able to get The Black House from the library one of these days.
@Consolation last year I read Coffin Road by May - it was a good mystery, but I liked The Black House much better (I thought the ending of Coffin Road was a bit overdone). Though I didn’t realize it, DS George Gunn from The Black House was also a character in Coffin Road, though Coffin Road is a stand alone mystery and not part of the trilogy. I have The Lewis Man waiting for me at the library but I’m down at the beach for a few days so hoping it will still be there when I get back. I have not read any of the Enzo series.
Dietland
Who else has read it? What did you think?