Tag: Books

Books

Books on my TBR I’m Avoiding

by Mel4 Comments on Books on my TBR I’m Avoiding

I don’t know about you, but I’ve discovered recently that there’s normal TBR avoidance, and then there’s quarantine TBR avoidance. Namely: I don’t want anything too involved or sad or intellectual…or long, or upsetting, or too emotional either. I know, I’m really outing my pandemic self as an insufferably lazy bum 🤣 In all seriousness, I’ve been SO restless lately and can’t seem to sit through anything that requires too much dedication, which is the opposite of what reading is all about. Here are a few books that have been on my list forever but am strenuously avoiding because of any of the reasons above.

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Books

Would You Rather // Book Tag

by Mel3 Comments on Would You Rather // Book Tag

HAPPY MAY!!

Rose over at Novels & Teacups recently posted this book tag and it seems so fun! I liked reading her answers, and now here are mine below…

Would you rather read an amazing book with a disappointing ending, or a book that is lackluster but gets really good at the end?

I have to go with the amazing book with a disappointing ending. At least the majority of the book still holds up! Who wants to suffer through a majority-bad book just to get to the good stuff? Ain’t nobody got time for that.

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Books

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone – Lori Gottlieb

by Mel2 Comments on Maybe You Should Talk to Someone – Lori Gottlieb
One day, Lori Gottlieb is a therapist who helps patients in her Los Angeles practice. The next, a crisis causes her world to come crashing down. Enter Wendell, the quirky but seasoned therapist in whose office she suddenly lands. With his balding head, cardigan, and khakis, he seems to have come straight from Therapist Central Casting. Yet he will turn out to be anything but.

As Gottlieb explores the inner chambers of her patients’ lives — a self-absorbed Hollywood producer, a young newlywed diagnosed with a terminal illness, a senior citizen threatening to end her life on her birthday if nothing gets better, and a twenty-something who can’t stop hooking up with the wrong guys — she finds that the questions they are struggling with are the very ones she is now bringing to Wendell.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

What a great read! Lori Gottlieb is a columnist for the New York Times and The Atlantic (she’s the therapist in their Ask a Therapist series); I’ve been loosely following her writings there for a while and have always really appreciated her intelligence and empathy, so when she came out with a full-length book about being a therapist and going to therapy herself, I knew it had to be interesting.

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Books

Books I Enjoyed but Rarely Talk About

by Mel2 Comments on Books I Enjoyed but Rarely Talk About

I love book social media. Blogs, bookstagram, Twitter, the book subreddit…you name it, I’m on it and I love interacting with the different communities and seeing what everyone’s reading. Inevitably, though, each community tends to flock around the same handful of books – bookstagram’s always looking for the next trendy read and has It Books of the moment like Circe or Three Women, while /r/books tends to be more scifi/fantasy focused and has favorites like The Hitchhiker’s Guide and Master and the Margarita.

Sometimes they become a bit like echo chambers as people repeatedly recommend the same books, so I appreciate this prompt for reminding us to highlight great books that don’t get discussed as much. So below, three books I read or reread in the past year and enjoyed immensely.

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Books

The Starless Sea – Erin Morgenstern

by MelLeave a Comment on The Starless Sea – Erin Morgenstern
The Starless Sea is a love letter to books and readers, a masterpiece of stories within a story where fables of pirates and princesses converge with the saga of Zachary Ezra Rawlins, the son of a fortune teller.

Rating: 2 out of 5.

Unpopular opinion: I didn’t like this book much at all.

When I read The Night Circus, I was absolutely entranced by the world Morgenstern had created – I love fantasy and read plenty of it, and yet I don’t think I’d encountered anything like her writing before. Were there were some imperfections? Of course. You could call out her characters for being a little flat and the plot not quite satisfying at the end, but those paled in comparison to the imagination of her traveling circus.

Sadly, even her world building couldn’t make up for the flaws in The Starless Sea.

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