Books I Unfinished:
What's it about: post apocalyptic America, humanlike-robots, restaurant business
Quit at: 29%
I thought this was about four robots running a noodle shop but it's mostly discussions of restaurant businesses, ownerships (of said business but also the robots), food, a lot of cursing (four-letter f words and the usual ones) and money (they are all broke). There are different perspectives and various back stories. It's a crappy world where humanity is no better than dirt (according to the robots anyway) and robots are pretty much in the same situations except they have less rights.
I didn't care about a single robot no matter that they have various genders (some of them are referred to as 'they'), various body types (some had many arms and legs), they just seem bland. At first, I thought they are going to stick with Staybehind (the story starts with him, a robot waking up) but then they switched perspective and suddenly, it's dull. Don't know what happened, I just couldn't muster interest and even at 163 pages, I couldn't finish it.
What's it about: a dog's life, car racing, a man's life (the dog owner)
Quit at: 24%
This is like some melodrama with a dog as the narrator and I don't like the narrator. Enzo sounds like an old human man inside a dog's body and he even had thoughts about wanting to be human. Mostly, I just find Enzo a bit annoyingly too human.
Also things got a bit weird. Do owners like having their dogs watch them while they are having sex with their significant other? So dogs are pretty nonchalant about sex (according to this dog anyway) and seeing his owner (Denny) mounting his wife, fully naked and out in the open was pretty normal to the dog. And then there was a scene where Enzo imagined one of the little girl's stuff animal sexually assaulting all her other animal toys - what the hell is that? This is written by a man so who knows what the hell he was thinking. Then there was the chapter about crows and dog poop - a bit disgusting but I guess if you're a dog owner, it's probably nothing.
After that, things got a bit depressing with one of the characters and you know exactly how the story will go. And lots of talk about car racing since Denny was a race car driver. Once I realized I didn't want to read anymore, I checked out the reviews with spoilers and I think I was right not to continue. This is really more about a human's life (Denny's) than about a dog's life.
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Books I Read:
What's it about: girlhood, San Francisco 1906, schooling, poverty, earthquake, racism, classism, sexism, friendship
The book starts with a scene with the earthquake which I'm guessing is to give readers a (unnecessary) preview. If you're here for the earthquake, it doesn't happen until the middle of the book.
This was like two books in one - the first half is the main character (Mercy) trying to further her education by attending an elite girl's school so that she could get out of poverty and the second is Mercy and her friends trying to survive an earthquake. I really did enjoy the first half and probably wouldn't have minded if there was no earthquake. The second half is the earthquake and the consequences which seemed to dominate everything so the first half of the book was mostly forgotten.
I like that Mercy is sassy and daring but she sounds like an old woman instead of a 15-year-old. She waxes wisdoms on a lot of things like she was talking to some young reader.
I did sort of enjoy this book but it was rather depressing toward the end but there were bits of humor. The scene where Mercy and one of her schoolmate, Francesca, stuffing stolen food into their clothes and hats was fun. I didn't much care for the romance between Mercy and Tom - it just seem not fitting. You barely got to know all of Mercy's schoolmates - we get a lot of facts/info about them.
The ending was bit speed up and doesn't really tell us if Mercy succeeded in anything she first set out to do, we are to assume she did. It would have been better if there is two books because it just seemed like neither story is quite complete.
What's it about: women police (sort of), murder, sordid crimes, drugs, London 1915, sexism
I like the idea of women becoming policemen but this isn't that story. Two women (and later more women) are asked to join a team with three policemen - sort of a task force to help with crimes that involved female criminals because all the men have gone to war but the ladies have no authority of any kind and they aren't part of the police force. They are upperclass women so they don't have to care about getting paid.
These are capable women - one is a doctor (Caroline) and other is a trained lawyer (Victoria) - the doctor did lots of doctoring and the lawyer not much but title of Lady something is useful. It seemed like they did a lot (talked to women, checked out a few places, followed suspects) but it's the men who did almost everything. The men are of their time - a bit prejudices against women and maybe a bit protective of them - not allowing them to do certain things, telling them how to do certain things.
With five main characters and a long list of side characters, you would think one of them would stand out but no, they all blend together. Although I find I do sort of like the doctor but she wasn't much involved in the case and she's like the hardest working doctor in that entire city. I wish there weren't these romantic entanglement backstories - the team leader was once engaged to the lawyer and the doctor had a thing for the leader who is oblivious though he knew her for so long and he is a detective. The mystery is rather sordid but quickly ended when we met the culprits.
I might have enjoyed this series but the writing irritated me. We are told how every single character (even minor ones that appears for a few second) is thinking and feeling. Everything's told/explained with no room for the reader to think. And it's full of writing cliches. I was amused by a particular sentence where a teacup is placed on the table but no one is doing it.
Book two (A Death in Chelsea) is about the same but they changed Tollman (one of the policeman). In the first book he was an easy going old, wise fellow who is always calm but in book two, he was sarcastic, angry and easily irritated - what is this sudden change and why he is no longer being called Mr. Tollman? In this one the women got to do more but I'm too irritated by the writing to care. I read this second book to see if I can adjust to the writing but nope so no continuing the series.
What's it about: an enclosed town, monsters, children, some sort of magic, friendship, an earthquake
I guess this could sort of border on horror but I'm a scaredy cat so you couldn't judge by me. I guess this is about a girl (Celia) trying to save the world, the enclosed town she's in anyway since they are cut off from the rest of the world. It started with an earthquake and it just became weird with children monsters smelling like sweets and if they touch other children, they turn into monsters and the monsters couldn't be seen by adults. And there's little monsters and big monsters who owns them. And they are all creepy. There is a scene where snakes are attacking a whole group of children inside a church that I sort of skimmed through as I really didn't want to read that. It's all really weird and the ending is sort of happy but not really, a bit of a downer actually - I mean Celia and Dimitri (the other main character) go through hell and they get that ending?
What's it about: murder, royalties, servants
I enjoyed this series and so far it's still good but this book 3 has too much of the royals, so many scenes and incidents involving them - so yes, they are part of the mystery but I really like to see more of Dr. Julia doctoring or having scenes with Inspector Tennant.
The mystery was good but I don't want to say much as I think it's better to not know much but involved royals and even Queen Elizabeth made an appearance. It did seem like this could be the conclusion to the series but if there are more books I wouldn't mind.
What's it about: small town, 1946, maybe murder, miniature doll houses
The main character (Maple) makes miniature dollhouses and of crime scenes which she called nutshells. This was inspired by a real person - Frances lee Glessnar - who created miniature crime scenes to help teach forensic science. Sadly, forensic science is not a major part of the book. Maple was a bit hard to like but in the end, I liked her. Both of these books kept me reading and they are pretty good although Maple seemed to have a lot of reveries that she needed to snap out of constantly. So far, there seems to be only two books but I liked them enough that if there are more books, I would read them.
What's it about: Agatha Christie's life
This is a pretty tame, mildly interesting account of Christie's life. It is clear she loved traveling and archaeology, both she talked extensively toward the end of the book. There were a lot of French words and phrases that I didn't get. She only talked a tiny bit about her writings and process - she gets an idea and starts writing with some reading/researching. With some of her books she did plan them. The edition I read is the 2010 edition (there seems to be many editions with various covers) and it's 576 pages which I thought was rather long.
Have you read any good books lately?
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