Vacation Reads: Pacific Northwest Edition
I spent a long weekend in the PNW visiting my friends Jen and Annie (and the town of Forks, yay Twilight, you are so good and terrible) and text banking and reading books on planes! Here are the books I finished while on the trip:
Fortune's Children by (Arthur Vanderbilt II)
After visiting The Breakers recently (one of the fancy mansions in Newport, Rhode Island) I wanted to read more about the Vanderbilts and the Gilded Age. (It doesn't hurt that Edith Wharton and Henry James, who lived in and wrote about that milieu, are two of my favorite writers.) This book is well-researched and full of rich, fascinating detail. Loved it.
The Sisters Brothers (by Patrick deWitt)
This was the final book for the 2018 Read Harder Challenge! It was most difficult because I'm not a Western fan. (I bailed out of Lonesome Dove after the first sentence, sorry.) But this is well written, vivid characters, lots of pathos and grimness and adventure. It went down easy. But the adventures of white men pillaging a country and displacing its people is never going to be my favorite genre, and I'm at peace with that.
Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda (by Becky Albertalli)
The movie producers were right: Love, Simon is a better name for it. Overall I was very charmed. by this. The central romance is so adorable. I want to see the movie, too! Jen pointed out that this is a middle-aged woman writing a queer narrative and this is somewhat icky. I can understand that but was won over by the cuteness in spite of myself.
Fame (by Justine Bateman)
I didn't tag this with "memoir "because as Bateman says, "this is not a fucking memoir, I hate memoirs." Instead, it's a meditation on the nature of fame and the experience of famousness. This made me so excited to see what she's been writing and directing because her voice is truly original: it's natural, authentic, grounded, and fearless. Worth a read, especially if you have ever had tangential connections to the fame machine.
Leah on the Offbeat (by Becky Albertalli)
Sequel to Simon, focusing on character Leah. She's fat and bisexual so of course I was excited about this, and it does have charm, but so much is left unresolved and she doesn't grow as a character. The treatment of Nick is weird. The romance isn't fully plausible. It felt rushed. I'm hoping if she revisits this group of characters, she'll tie up some of the millions of loose ends here.
Fortune's Children by (Arthur Vanderbilt II)
After visiting The Breakers recently (one of the fancy mansions in Newport, Rhode Island) I wanted to read more about the Vanderbilts and the Gilded Age. (It doesn't hurt that Edith Wharton and Henry James, who lived in and wrote about that milieu, are two of my favorite writers.) This book is well-researched and full of rich, fascinating detail. Loved it.
The Sisters Brothers (by Patrick deWitt)
This was the final book for the 2018 Read Harder Challenge! It was most difficult because I'm not a Western fan. (I bailed out of Lonesome Dove after the first sentence, sorry.) But this is well written, vivid characters, lots of pathos and grimness and adventure. It went down easy. But the adventures of white men pillaging a country and displacing its people is never going to be my favorite genre, and I'm at peace with that.
Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda (by Becky Albertalli)
The movie producers were right: Love, Simon is a better name for it. Overall I was very charmed. by this. The central romance is so adorable. I want to see the movie, too! Jen pointed out that this is a middle-aged woman writing a queer narrative and this is somewhat icky. I can understand that but was won over by the cuteness in spite of myself.
Fame (by Justine Bateman)
I didn't tag this with "memoir "because as Bateman says, "this is not a fucking memoir, I hate memoirs." Instead, it's a meditation on the nature of fame and the experience of famousness. This made me so excited to see what she's been writing and directing because her voice is truly original: it's natural, authentic, grounded, and fearless. Worth a read, especially if you have ever had tangential connections to the fame machine.
Leah on the Offbeat (by Becky Albertalli)
Sequel to Simon, focusing on character Leah. She's fat and bisexual so of course I was excited about this, and it does have charm, but so much is left unresolved and she doesn't grow as a character. The treatment of Nick is weird. The romance isn't fully plausible. It felt rushed. I'm hoping if she revisits this group of characters, she'll tie up some of the millions of loose ends here.
Labels: 2018 read harder challenge, kindle, library, nonfiction, young adult
posted by mo pie at 10:42 AM
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