Reading Update

I have been on a reading roll lately. For the first time in a long time, I’ve actually had time to dedicate to reading. (The sun setting at 4 pm probably has something to do with it.) The books that I read have been great too, and that certainly doesn’t hurt.

This is also the first time in my entire life where I’ve been able to juggle multiple books at a time. I never understood the people who could read two, even three, books at a time and now, somehow, that’s me. Now I always have one audiobook going in the car and one on my nightstand. I even have one on my phone in case I find myself without a book and with time to kill. For some reason, it’s easy for me to juggle the different books when I’m in different “settings” while reading.

Okay so the books:

Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult // You absolutely have to read this. I didn’t know too much about the plot when I started except that it dealt with racism. It was uncomfortable to read at times as a white woman, and that was, I think, Jodi Picoult’s ultimate goal. Now I know, Jodi Picoult is a white woman as well… That part made me skeptical, but I think she did a good job of presenting different characters, each with varying degrees (types?) of racism and what that means overall. It’s a particularly relevant read.

Jodi Picoult is one of my favorite authors, and this book tops my list of her best. Now, it’s different than her typical books and also similar (i.e. big theme with some issue with the law…). I could not put it down. I sat in bed for four hours one night so that I could finish it. It’s good.

Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll // When I was in Tampa, I only brought one book home (see above). And since I finished it unexpectedly fast, I needed to get a new book while I was there even though I had a shelf of to-reads at home. My mom recommended Luckiest Girl Alive, and it was a page-turner. It’s about a reinvented woman revisiting a dark period in her past. I wouldn’t consider it the most well-written book of the century, but the story was quite entertaining. It was at one point considered similar to Gone Girl, but I wouldn’t say that (at all really). It was hard to get into at the very beginning, but once I got the gist of the plot/characters I didn’t want to put it down. I read most of it on my flight back to Connecticut, opting to read over watching Bravo (my guilty pleasure on JetBlue flights).

The Good Girl by Mary Kubica // This was on my to-read list for a while, and I found the audiobook at the library, so I decided to give it a try. Again, not the best-written book, but still pretty entertaining. Even though the characters aren’t particularly likable (kind of annoying at times), I had time to get attached to each of them. This is more like Gone Girl than not– a girl is kidnapped, and her family tries to piece together where she is and why.

These three books would all be great “winter break” books. When you just want to hole up inside under a blanket for a few hours at a time with page-turners.