It’s Monday, What Are You Reading? 12-19-22

Bookshelf with text across the top reading "Speaking of Books..."

Currently Reading

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

Small Things Like These (Grove, 2021) by Claire Keegan

“Keegan’s precisely considered details about character, setting, memory, and dramatic moment create a story you will want to read again and again. Her deceptively simple language is pitch-perfect.”—Boston Globe

Recently Read

Any Better Than This by Eric Sean Rawson

Any Better Than This (Black Rose Writing, 2022) by Eric Sean Rawson

Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll—and the Arpanet? It’s June 1967.
On the way to his wedding in Berkeley, a strait-laced computer engineer working on a Defense Department contract picks up a free-spirited hitchhiker. Join Elliot Ames and Morning Star McGovern on a trip down the rabbit-hole that was the Summer of Love.

I won Any Better Than This: A Summer of Love Story through a LibraryThing Early Reviewers giveaway. The novel is a crazy ride that isn’t exactly my cup of tea. A noir farce? A satirical love story? Dark humor, wacky characters, but I might be too straight-laced to laugh at some of the scenes. The characters seem meant to be types that we laugh at, but real harm gets done by the bad guys.

Edited to add: Now that I’m finished, the book grew on me by the last quarter! I would have liked more of the present-day story which was of the “author” and his teenaged daughter trapped together during the pandemic while he was writing this narrative of his parents’ imagined past, from the time before his parents got married and had him.

Currently Listening To

Christmas Cookie Murder by Leslie Meier

Christmas Cookie Murder (Dreamscape, 2020) by Leslie Meier, narrated by Karen White

A Lucy Stone holiday mystery never disappoints!

Recently Listened To

Continue reading “It’s Monday, What Are You Reading? 12-19-22”