Books I Read and Other Assorted Oddities

 I've heard a lot of good things about this book, so I picked it up on Audible before I'd finished The Nightingale . This is what I rolled last time for an audiobook. I finished it really pretty quick for as long of a book as it is. The Women  follows the story of Frankie McGrath as she fights for her parents' approval. It starts with her father's "heroes wall" in his office: a wall of pictures depicting men in service of their country, and women getting married. When Frankie's brother leaves for war, his friend tells her "women can be heroes too." This sparks something in Frankie, and she joins the army as a nurse. She ships out to Vietnam shortly after learning of her brother's death. There, she serves in two evac hospitals, treating wounded soldiers as a surgical nurse. Frankie serves two tours in Vietnam, then returns home to find a country unwilling to recognize the service of any Vietnam vets, and especially the women. First of all, I d...

 This was a book club book for my teacher book club. I was initially kind of excited to read it because the title is intriguing and it's science fiction. Death of the Author  follows the story of wheelchair-bound Zelu. At the start of the book, Zelu is an unsuccessful author and university professor. She loses her creative writing teaching position due to her arrogance and insensitive comments toward some of her students. In her frustration and desperation, she sits down and pounds out a novel like nothing she's ever tried to write before: Rusted Robots, a sci-fi novel about robots after humanity. The book is wildly successful and propels her into fame. I really don't know where to start with this book. For one, I found the main character, Zelu, to be utterly intolerable. Nothing was ever her fault, and everything was always someone else's fault. Everyone was always judging her, and she was overly concerned about what everyone might have been thinking of her. I felt tha...

 I rolled this one as the young readers category. I'm doing away with that category and won't be rerolling for it now that I'm finished. I didn't read the previous books, so I can't attest to the whole series. I looked for the other books but they are out of print now and really hard to find. The Fledgling follows the story of a young girl, Georgie who thinks she can fly. She can't replicate it though, and finds it really frustrating. She then meets a great big Canada goose, who she calls the Goose King. She flies on the back of the Goose King and learns to fly. This book was a little annoying. I didn't like the whole transcendentalist part of it, especially in an upper elementary book. I felt like it made it overly complex for the interested age range. I also didn't particularly care for the whole storyline at all. It was boring, not much happens. The characters were all shallow too. I rated this book ⭐⭐

 This was one of the book club choices for my neighborhood book club. We called it historical fiction, but I didn't really feel like it was actually historical fiction, but I did enjoy it. The Names follows the storyline of a woman Cora and her abusive husband. Cora is in a terrible marriage. The story starts with Cora on her way to the registrars office to fill out the birth certificate for her newest child. Her oldest child, Maia, thinks the boy's name should be Bear. Cora wants to name him Julian. Her husband, Gordon, wants to name him after himself as it's a family name. The story follows all the way through what would happen depending on which name the baby is given. The concept of this book was really fascinating. I highly enjoyed the way this book was written and told, though it was a little confusing at the start. I also had a hard time with the time jumps that happen in between each chapter. Really though, I loved the characters in the book. Bear, Julian, and Gordo...

 OK, I'm back through my rotation completely again, and have started several new books. Here's where things stand currently: Fantasy:  The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue  by V. E. Schwab (41%) Sci-Fi:  Legend  by Marie Lu (7%) Realistic Fiction:  Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe  by Benjamin Alire Saenz (1%) Young Readers:  The Fledgling  by Jane Langton (19%) Brandon Sanderson:  The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England  (100%) Nonfiction:  The Anxious Generation  by Jonathan Haidt (67%) Classic:  Les Misérables  by Victor Hugo (6%) Mystery/Thriller:  The Brothers Hawthorne  by Jennifer Lynn Barnes (50%) Historical Fiction:  Apeirogon  by Colum McCann (4%) Audio:  The Women  by Kristin Hanna (3%) English Department Book Club:  Death of the Author  by Nnedi Okorafor (51%) Neighborhood Book Club: The Names  by Florence Knapp (5%)...