It’s Monday, What Are You Reading? 08-29-22

With only one week to go (!) in the Big Book Summer Challenge, I should be reading something 400+ pages long, but since I had preordered Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, I’ve already been waiting a month to read it and I couldn’t keep putting it off till “tomorrow.”

Also, this past week, my husband and I were both isolating at home due to a second bout of COVID – almost a year to date from our first one! –and I was in need of comfort reading.

Currently Reading

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

So far Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is living up to my memories of The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry (which I loved) and also reminding me of The Chalk Artist by Allegra Goodman – which I also loved (and everyone should read!)

Recently Read

The Furrows by Namwali Serpell

“A genuine tour de force . . . What seems at first a meditation on family trauma unfolds through the urgency of an amnesiac puzzle-thriller, then a violently compelling love story.”—Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn

ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2022—Vulture, Lit Hub, Electric Lit, BookPage

The Furrows by Namwali Serpell is a violently unsettling novel, where events, timelines, perspectives, and even the characters themselves – are constantly shifting, so that the reader is trying to distinguish the reality or truth of what happened (both in the past and now) from a murk of unreliable memories, disturbing hallucinations (maybe?), self-protective denial, and outright lies.

Subtitled “an Elegy” instead of “a Novel,” The Furrows is pretty much the exact opposite of a comfort read, but it’s also the kind of book you immediately want to talk to other people about on finishing, so it would be a good choice for an adventurous book club or a group read.

Disclaimer: I received a free e-ARC of this book from the publisher through NetGalley. The book will be published September 27.

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

At just over 1000 pages, The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett was on my Big Book Summer challenge list, and I finished it! I read the last third of it while traveling in Ireland, where I visited a couple of cathedrals, so I plan to write a separate review post. (We’ve heard THAT before, I know!)

Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney

More Ireland reading! At 368 pages, Beautiful World, Where Are You comes in just shy of the Big Book Summer criterion for number of pages, but I wanted to read a book by an Irish author and set in Ireland while on vacation in Ireland, so I read it anyway.

I’m not much good at completing challenges! 😉

Currently Listening To

The Lioness by Chris Bohjalian

Recently Listened To

Voyage of Mercy by Stephen Puleo

More Ireland reading! I didn’t finish listening to Voyage of Mercy: The USS Jamestown, the Irish Famine, and the Remarkable Story of America’s First Humanitarian Mission by Stephen Puleo until after getting home, though.

I learned a lot from the book about Irish history, the Great Famine, and the visionary, American idea to provide direct humanitarian aid to people in need in a foreign country. Some of the book was a bit repetitive, but the audio narration by Sean Patrick Hopkins is excellent and carried the book for me.

Flying Solo by Linda Holmes

I love Julia Whelan as an audiobook narrator, so here’s another one where I finished a book on audio that I might not have finished in print.

I didn’t find the main character in Flying Solo as engaging as the author’s first book, Evvie Drake Starts Over, and thought the story itself too predictable.

Please let me know what you’re reading in the comments, or whether you think I’m being uncharitable about Flying Solo!

This post is linked to “It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?” hosted by Kathryn at The Book Date. Check out the link-up party there for updates from other bloggers.