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Wednesday, January 31, 2018

January Reading Receipt

Welcome to 2018's first monthly reading receipt!  I'm pretty happy with my total of 4 books this month.  Here they are without further ado.

This is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel


This fictional account of a couple and their five children is absorbing.  The parents and the children grapple with some serious issues and become involved in keeping a secret for one family member.  It would be easy to say, "This is a book about (insert issue here)", but it's ultimately a book about the excruciating pressure of getting it all wrong as a parent.


Iced by Robert Grindy
Full disclosure, I actually know the author of this one.  His son was in my class for second and third grade, so that's part of the reason I read it.  I'm glad I picked it up.  I've been very disappointed with some local authors in the past, but there was no letdown here.  A community college professor, Henry Streator, is cynical when a slacker student tells him about his idea for a book in which a local billionaire is murdered in a somewhat bizarre fashion.  When the student turns up dead, Streator gets to thinking that maybe he could make a go at the student's idea himself.  He finds himself caring about something for the first time in a very long time as he launches into writing his first novel.  Things become a bit more complicated when the local billionaire actually winds up dead in exactly the same way the now deceased student described.  I really enjoyed how the amateur detective got almost everything wrong but still came across as someone I was rooting for.



Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney
85 year old Lillian sets out on a walk in her New York City neighborhood on New Year's Eve 1984.  We are treated to the story of her life during this walk.  I did not know that this was loosely based on a real person as I was reading it.


Artemis by Andy Weir
Sometimes I like science fiction, and sometimes I do not.  I can say that so far, I always like Andy Weir.  His new novel is set on the moon with a female protagonist.  I really enjoyed this one.

That's it for January!

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