I have a copy of Hypnotist’s Love Story but have never read it. Maybe I need to move it up in my queue.
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I really liked “What Alice Forgot”. The first book of Liane’s that I read and one of my favorites.
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Well I just finished The Lincoln Highway and I feel it is a bit of a misfire. It’s worth reading, but it did not transport me the way Towles’ other books did.
Part of the problem is that I think the author wanted to write a Great American Road Trip novel but he ended up bringing it back to 1950s New York, because he knows the Northeast better than any other part of the US. I could not get over the unlikelihood of 3 New York wayward youths ending up at a juvenile work farm in Salina (pronounced Sah-LIE-nah) Kansas. The story of Woolly is very poignant (well-done because Towles apparently knows this world) but I do not think the author has a feel for the Midwest and does not know it. It’s certainly a “good” book and has a lot going for it. It’s just that I had such high hopes and they were not realized.
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I also read Tiffany McDaniels’ Betty. It is a very powerful book, extremely lyrical, sort of a hillbilly version of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, set in southern Ohio in a fictional town called Breathed. The novel is dedicated to the author’s mother, of whom it’s a thinly veiled biography. It describes a legacy of family abuse and violence, and I’m not sure that the tribute the author gives to her grandmother Alka in the afterword compensates for the graphic accounts of mental illness and abuse described in the book. It’s a little too much Grand Guignol and although I know that people in small-town rural America were not exactly broadminded, I balked at the descriptions of cruelty and abuse in the schools (descended from several small-town schoolteachers, I know they would never have been so cruel, regardless of local prejudices). Nonetheless her descriptions of her grandfather Landon Carpenter, and his attempts to teach his children dignity and self-sufficiency in the face of stark rural poverty, stay with you.
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I very much enjoyed The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. There was a long list at the local library, but I was able to get it in time for my book club. Although described as “fantasy”, it is not the kind with odd creatures. https://bookshop.org/books/the-midnight-library-9780655697077/9780525559474
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Know My Name: A Memoir by Chanel Miller is available as a Kindle deal of the day book for $1.99.
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Handing “Turn Up the Wick” - Frank Beamer to my son when he returns from college over the Christmas Holiday. I’m a big believer in Charlie Munger’s quote about reading. So, I am always trying to push my kids on the topic. My son rarely reads outside of required college courses, but I think he’ll absorb this easy reading sports book over the holidays. Lots of life lessons in the book.
One of the best books I’ve ever read: “Malibu Rising” by Taylor Jenkins Reid.
"Malibu: August 1983. It’s the day of Nina Riva’s annual end-of-summer party, and anticipation is at a fever pitch. Everyone wants to be around the famous Rivas: Nina, the talented surfer and supermodel; brothers Jay and Hud, one a championship surfer, the other a renowned photographer; and their adored baby sister, Kit. Together the siblings are a source of fascination in Malibu and the world over—especially as the offspring of the legendary singer Mick Riva.
The only person not looking forward to the party of the year is Nina herself, who never wanted to be the center of attention, and who has also just been very publicly abandoned by her pro tennis player husband. Oh, and maybe Hud—because it is long past time for him to confess something to the brother from whom he’s been inseparable since birth.
Jay, on the other hand, is counting the minutes until nightfall, when the girl he can’t stop thinking about promised she’ll be there.
And Kit has a couple secrets of her own—including a guest she invited without consulting anyone.
By midnight the party will be completely out of control. By morning, the Riva mansion will have gone up in flames. But before that first spark in the early hours before dawn, the alcohol will flow, the music will play, and the loves and secrets that shaped this family’s generations will all come rising to the surface.
Malibu Rising is a story about one unforgettable night in the life of a family: the night they each have to choose what they will keep from the people who made them . . . and what they will leave behind."
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I got hooked on Taylor Jenkins Reid’s books a couple of months ago and have now read all of her published novels I could find. As much as I loved Malibu Rising, it’s only my third favorite of hers! I’d rank Daisy Jones and the Six and especially The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo even higher.
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I read Daisy Jones but I liked Malibu better. LOL. I have to read the the seven husbands.
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I really like both Daisy Jones and the Seven Husbands - I did not care for Malibu
I am a library book reader. Often I don’t get the latest, but I enjoyed “My Year With Eleanor” a memoir by Noelle Hancock. My D22 read it after me and she enjoyed it also.
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Enjoyed the writing in The Matrix enough to look at other books by her (although it kept feeling like the story line was moving toward a place it never got to!) Thanks all for that rec.
Someone shared The Plot with me. If you need the winter equivalent of a beach read, this is it. Curl up up the sofa and turn the pages! Very plot driven “thriller” with much better than average writing for the genre.
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I just finished Lincoln Highway. It was engaging, some parts great, some a bit over the top. Mostly I liked it, though I didn’t love the ending. Overall I’d recommend as a good read.
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I finally finished Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian. I really liked it, but also thought it was way too long. OTOH the length was part of its charm - three generations of historians searching for the truth about the Dracula legend. A few too many coincidences and a few too many conclusions being drawn from the thinnest of threads and well I can’t really discuss the major question I’m left with at the end without major spoilery.
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Ditto to this about The Lincoln Highway. Wasn’t at all what I was expecting - I love a good road trip book or movie. But was good enough once I got into it.
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I am currently reading Crying In H Mart. A good book about a mother/daughter relationship and a bond of food. I am currently waiting for Lincoln Highway, Day After Night and Fifty Words For Rain (as I live in Seattle.) Anyone read either of the last two??
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@garland I was underwhelmed by The Lincoln Highway (just finished it a few days ago). I had to suspend disbelief too often unfortunately. There were parts with great writing, but at 500+ pages, I want to be engrossed. I wish there had been better character development, but I loved Billy. Though it was good enough that I pressed on and finished, it wasn’t a book I would go out of my way to recommend like A Gentleman in Moscow which I adored.
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Day After Night was really good.
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Years back (in the '90s), I was a huge Rosamunde Pilcher fan (The Shell Seekers, Coming Home, Winter Solstice, September, etc.). Her books were in the category of comfort food for me and I never thought I would have another, but a recently compiled short story book was published earlier this year, A Place Like Home. Just finished it and it was a gift. I doubt it would be considered great literature by any, but a delight for her fans. Just sharing in case there are other Pilcher fans out there since I only came across the book by coincidence,
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