It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Happy Monday! Here in the Northeast, we are preparing to be snowed in.  I’m looking out the window right now to a steady current of light snow that has been falling and accumulating for several hours now.  Later today, we are expecting Nor’easter conditions that will dump about 8 inches of snow on Philadelphia, leaving me pretty immobilized in my apartment.

 

In terms of reading, last week was rough. Four of five days were late nights at work and I was getting sick, so I broke down after just three weeks on my no-buy for 2015 and picked up St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell and Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink even though I was in the midst of reading other things.  Karen Russell is on my list of authors to discover for 2015 and I have wanted to read Five Days at Memorial since I listened toLiterary Disco’s podcast on it last year so I didn't even feel guilty purchasing these books.

For the past two weeks or so, I've been slowly making progress on Burial Rites by Hannah Kent on my Kindle Paperwhite.  Right now I’m at 30% complete and I would really love to finish this one in January so I can start February with a clean slate. I also started St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves on Sunday afternoon in between my illness-induced naps which was perfect – each story I've read so far is about 20 pages long, which is just enough to catch my attention and keep me interested so I can finish a story and feel that sense of accomplishment without getting bogged down in a story line.  

    

I was listening to Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach on the Audible app for my commute to and from work but I had to move that to my abandoned pile at about halfway through due to some author choices that I didn't agree with. I updated my review on Goodreads to reflect my opinion on this book and you can read that here.

In my queue after these two books are finished is The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters which I have on hold through my library’s e-book system and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling.  Harry will be a re-read that I am really excited for; I am hoping to get through all seven books this year.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is a weekly meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.  You can visit her blog here.

The Little Stranger | Mini Review

I finished reading The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters a few days ago.  It is an incredibly hyped up book right now and I couldn't stop hearing about it on BookTube.  For everyone who hasn't heard of this book yet, you can check out the Goodreads page for a plot summary.  I am always afraid that I will reveal spoiler-y information in a plot summary I write myself.

Unfortunately I was disappointed in this book. I had many, many high hopes for it after reading and watching so many rave reviews.  The writing was phenomenal, and after the first 100 pages or so, I fell into the English countryside and was devouring the book in large chunks.  That is where my positive experience ends.  I was expecting a creepy book with a Gothic setting, plot twists and turns that would keep me awake at night and a thrilling conclusion.  Instead I received a plot that moved slowly, with characters that I didn't like and an unsatisfying ending. After thinking over this novel for a few days, I still cannot determine the motives of the doctor (whose name I even can’t remember) which I believe was a larger portion of the book than what has otherwise been suggested.  Overall I wouldn't recommend this book to others but I am going to keep reading other Sarah Waters books.