It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? 3-18-19 #IMWAYR

Dear Mrs. Bird & Up Lit

I mentioned in last week’s post that Dear Mrs. Bird by AJ Pearce, which I had just started reading for book club, had seemed a charming if predictable WWII story, with a plucky young heroine and her best friend discovering their hidden resources of bravery and independence during the years of the London Blitz, but I was only right about the charming part.

In the course of research for book club, I discovered from this Guardian article that English publishers have given the name “up lit” to the feel-good novels whose light tone and quirky main characters going from broken to whole have become so popular over the last few years (e.g. Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine,  A Man Called Ove, etc.) Dear Mrs. Bird falls into this category of book that has enough themes and layers for a multifaceted book club discussion but doesn’t tax the reader’s brain too much. If it weren’t for Fredrick Backman and Graham Simsion, however, Eleanor Oliphant, Dear Mrs. Bird, might still been labeled chick lit. (“Up lit” seems to be a step up from chick lit, which at its best, never got the respect it deserved, and became a label that was slapped onto practically every novel with a female narrator.)

Anyway,  I found out that the trend I’ve noticed at the library is a real thing: “Up lit” is taking the place of “grip lit” (which I didn’t know was the British term for the female-narrated psychological suspense novels that readers have been gobbling up since Gone Girl.)

Audiobooks

Finished

I finished Finish. Woo hoo! Recommended for anyone who starts projects or sets goals and tends to not get much farther than that.

Career of Evil

Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith (aka JK Rowling) is the third in the Cormoran Strike series. The second was grislier than the first, and this one may be even grislier yet; but they have all been dark, along the lines of Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch books. Books should be read in order as later ones have spoilers for the earlier ones.

Currently Reading

I’m planning to devote a lot of time to reading this week:

I don’t think any reviewer would dare call The Burning Girl by Claire Messud chick lit.

I’ve also been reading Lipstick in Afghanistan by Roberta Gately for our library’s community read. Roberta Gately has written another novel and a memoir based on her experiences as a nurse and humanitarian aid worker and she will be speaking at the public library in Braintree, MA this Saturday.

What are you reading this week?

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? (#IMWAYR) is hosted by Kathryn at Book Date. It’s a place to meet up and share what you have been, are, and about to be reading over the week. It’s a great post to organize yourself. It’s an opportunity to visit and comment, and er… add to that ever-growing TBR pile! This meme started with J Kaye’s Blog and then was taken up by Sheila from Book Journey. Sheila then passed it on to Kathryn at Book Date.

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