This post was supposed to go out last night, but then stuff happened.  That stuff, specifically, was Doc Martin.  I had stopped to watch an episode during a free moment and Pat happened to see it and, well, then we were binging it until midnight.  Now that Pat is hooked, I’m sure that will happen again tonight.  After all, we are in season 2 of 9 seasons…

Anyway, Memorial Day weekend.  So far, it has been exactly what you would think.  We’ve done nothing exciting–the news of closed bathrooms did turn Pat off of Silver Creek Falls.  So, my weekend so far has been laundry.  I’m almost done with the kids’ laundry.  I’ve also been dealing with an anxiety flare up.  I’m not sure what is causing it, but I suspect that it is the impending end of the school year.  May is never a great month for me–I’m usually a mess the entire time, but this year is different in so many ways.  It’s probably a good thing that we are doing next to nothing this weekend, other than watching a grumpy village doctor in Cornwall.

I don’t’ know if anything will happen today that is worth reporting, so I may or may not post later today.  But I wanted to get something out now because I don’t want 2 days to go without a post (because good habits are easy to break…), but also because I did want to update my reading for the week.  So…

As usual, I’m linking up with Kathryn at Book Date and her It’s Monday…What Are You Reading? blog hop.

What I Finished Last Week:

The Queen of the Night by Alexander Chee

2.5 stars

I had an entire review of this ready to go on Goodreads and then the Internet ate it, so I am just going to shoot of some quick thoughts here.

I wanted to love this book, I thought I would love this book–but I didn’t.  There are some great things about it, but it suffers from two mortal sins:

First of all, it is overly long.  I don’t have a problem with big books, but I feel like they need to be big for a reason.  In other words, I don’t mind long books, but I don’t want them to feel long.  And this book felt very, very long.  There were numerous scenes and passages that didn’t do anything to move the story forward and could have (and should have) been removed.

Secondly, I could not believe this book.  Now, a lot of book plots are (when you think about it) completely unbelievable.  There is no way what happens in the book could ever happen.  Successful books with these plots either belong to genres where the rules are different or the author is able to write the book so that the plot seems believable, no matter how unbelievable it is.  This book isn’t a genre book that excuses its unbelievableness and, unfortunately, Chee was never able to see it.  What should be intriguing plot twists end up just being more eye rolls.

What I started this week:

The Austen Playbook by Lucy Parker

I broke one of my new reading goals of not reading too many books with this one. The Queen of the Night was pretty dense, so I needed something lighter to read at night before bed.  So, I went to my kindle and pulled up this one.  It’s the 4th in a series set in London’s West End and it’s fun, which is all I really want right now. The other book I’m currently reading (see below) is pretty emotionally draining, so it is nice to have this little bit of warm and fuzziness waiting for me each night.  Plus, since I’m reading it on my kindle, I don’t have to go searching for my reading glasses, which are never where they are when I need them.

 

There There by Tommy Orange

I’ve been wanting to read this one for a while (I really enjoy Native American literature) but then my book club chose it for this year, so I opted to wait so that I could finish it right before our meeting (which is this Thursday, by Zoom of course!).  I’m really enjoying it, but it is emotionally draining.  So, I’ve been reading it during Chris’s reading times during the day and then retreating back to my fun read at night.  I should finish it right before our meeting, so it should be fresh in my mind for book club.