Best of April & May TBR
I finished a total of 17 books in April, but unfortunately, only managed 3 of the 6 books that I’d placed on my TBR List. I’m not sure what’s wrong with me, but it seems as though once I place a book on that little ‘ol list, I suddenly loose all interest in actually, you know, reading it.
MY FAVOURITE BOOK
The Diviners by Libba Bray.
WHAT THEY SAID
Evie O’Neill has been exiled from her boring old hometown and shipped off to the bustling streets of New York City–and she is pos-i-toot-ly thrilled. New York is the city of speakeasies, shopping, and movie palaces! Soon enough, Evie is running with glamorous Ziegfield girls and rakish pickpockets. The only catch is Evie has to live with her Uncle Will, curator of The Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult–also known as “The Museum of the Creepy Crawlies.”
When a rash of occult-based murders comes to light, Evie and her uncle are right in the thick of the investigation. And through it all, Evie has a secret: a mysterious power that could help catch the killer–if he doesn’t catch her first.
WHAT I THOUGHT
To be honest, I’m not sure if this was really my favourite book of the month or just the most surprising. This is the third Libba Bray book that I’ve attempted – the first being A Great and Terrible Beauty, which was just okay, and the second, Beauty Queens, which was so terrible I wasn’t able to finish it.
But The Diviners was good. Really good. To sum it up as concisely as possible, I’d say it was a bit like Stephen King’s, The Stand. Only for teens. A The Stand lite, if you will.
MY RATING
4.5 out of 5. I knocked off .5 because the “Jazz speak” got pos-i-toot-ly annoying.
SECOND RUNNER UP
Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
Bono met his wife in high school, Park says.
So did Jerry Lee Lewis, Eleanor answers.
I’m not kidding, he says.
You should be, she says, we’re 16.
What about Romeo and Juliet?
Shallow, confused, then dead.
I love you, Park says.
Wherefore art thou, Eleanor answers.
I’m not kidding, he says.
You should be.
Set over the course of one school year in 1986, this is the story of two star-crossed misfits—smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try. When Eleanor meets Park, you’ll remember your own first love—and just how hard it pulled you under.
HONOURABLE MENTION
Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she’s a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she’s a disgrace; to design mavens, she’s a revolutionary architect, and to 15-year-old Bee, she is a best friend and, simply, Mom.
Then Bernadette disappears. It began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette’s intensifying allergy to Seattle—and people in general—has made her so agoraphobic that a virtual assistant in India now runs her most basic errands. A trip to the end of the earth is problematic.
To find her mother, Bee compiles email messages, official documents, secret correspondence—creating a compulsively readable and touching novel about misplaced genius and a mother and daughter’s role in an absurd world.
MAY TO BE READ
The Pulitzer Prize award winners were recently announced and I’ve decided to try and read three past winners this May. They are . . .
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
Tinkers by Paul Harding
Cleopatra : A Life by Stacy Schiff
What did you read in April? Have you got anything exciting on deck for May?
