Oh boy, I finished quite a few good books since I last posted in one of these threads.
I read Me Before You. Unfortunately, since it’s such a popular book, I knew the ending going into the book, which lessened its emotional impact. I still enjoyed the book, though.
I read Dealing with Dragons. My choice to read this book comes with a backstory that I’ll spoiler.
My best friend and I were talking about our different tastes in books. She commented that she had trouble recommending books to me, because she wasn’t sure what I enjoyed. I told her that my favorite author was Kimberley Freeman, so she added Freeman’s most popular book, Wildflower Hill, to her to read list. Then she said that if she could recommend one book to me to read, as representative of her tastes, she’d choose Dealing with Dragons. Well, I felt a little like I had been duped into taking a recommendation when I hadn’t asked for one, but when I looked up a sample of the book on Amazon it actually looked pretty light-hearted and enjoyable – exactly what I was in the mood for at the moment. So I downloaded it that weekend. And since it’s a middle reader book, it’s pretty short with simple sentences, so I finished it in just a few days. I thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend it.
I read The Wiregrass, which is the sort of book that you really ought to read in the summertime. The premise is that a group of cousins in their early teens stay at their aunt’s house down south for the summer, and it follows them around on their hijinks. While it starts out fairly light-hearted, it eventually gets into some dark subject matter. It was a good book, but there were a few minor flaws. For instance, I think there were too many cousins, and the storyline would have been easier to follow if there were fewer main characters. I also didn’t like the author’s habit of putting the narrator’s thoughts in italics in the middle of an action scene. It was usually unnecessary, because you could figure out what the narrator was likely to be thinking, between the events and what you know of her personality. But this was the author’s first novel, and the flaws were fairly minor, so I’m looking forward to seeing her improve.
I read Nick Vujicic’s Limitless: Devotions for a Ridiculously Good Life. Nick Vujicic is a Christian motivational speaker, and his manner of speaking really works for me. He comes across as incredibly humble and gracious, while also lively with a good sense of humor. At least based on his public persona, he is very much the person I strive to be, so his advice on how to live well carries a lot of weight coming from him. His first book, Life Without Limits, changed my outlook on life. His more recent offering was worth reading, but considerably weaker than his first book. Vujicic has become pretty famous and successful, and some of his more recent books seem like they were put together rather fast to capitalize on his current success. So while I enjoyed Limitless, I certainly wouldn’t consider it life-changing, the way his first book was.
Lastly, I finished Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, and this is definitely in my list of top books that I’ve read all year. It’s about a socially awkward girl who lives a life full of routine but absent of meaningful social interaction. She starts to engage more with the world, but doing so opens up some psychological wounds from her past. The beginning of the book is part humorous and part creepy; her social awkwardness is amusing, but her way of life is depressing. 2/3 of the way into the book the tone of the book changes and becomes much less upbeat, but by that point I was incredibly intrigued to hear her life story so the change in tone was almost a relief, because I could tell I was close to finally learning her secrets. This was one of those books where when I got to the last quarter of the book I pretty much abandoned everything else I needed to do and hungrily turned the pages until I was finished.
