The Mutual Friend: A Novel by Carter Bays

Kindle edition

This is another Real Simple magazine recommendation but I didn't keep the blurb...

I started reading this on June 27 and finished it on July 5.

Some context - Carter Bays is the co-creator of the show How I Met Your Mother. I loved this show and watched it through twice - once live when it was on and once in the last few years with The Husband because he never watched it when it was on. It was really funny the 2nd time too. I didn't know this when I read the book - The Husband told me after he looked up the book.

So, in all honesty, when I started this book, I didn't like it. I thought it was boring, disconnected, and it didn't make any sense. But I kept reading it. I read an article once that advised that if a book doesn't grab you immediately, you shouldn't keep reading it - don't waste your time. I partially agree with this. Why agonize over reading a book you don't like. I've done that a few times. But what if, like with one of my favorite books of all time (Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus by Orson Scott Card), after the first 150-ish pages, it turns out to be your favorite book and you understand then why those first pages need to be the way they are? So, I guess I'm a glutton for punishment for needing to continue with books I initially don't like to "see what happens" and "find out if I like it or not."

At first, I wanted to nudge all of the characters in the book and yell at them to get off of their phones. This phase reminded me of a ballet performed by the San Francisco Ballet a number of years ago about people obsessed with their phones and not paying attention to anything around them. Christopher Wheeldon choreographed "Bound To" and it was amazing! "In this ballet, Wheeldon comments on what happens to us when we’re tucked behind our screens. “It’s a false sense of safety because you’re not actually with someone; the screen is like a shield,” he says. When we let the world rush by unnoticed, “we’re not seeing the beauty in life.” On the flip side, he’s addressing what we can achieve when we’re together—when we see, acknowledge, and interact without any screens to shield us," as written on the SF Ballet website. So yeah, people, set down your phones and take a look around you!

I really wanted to know what was up with the narrator, how things would "click" and make sense and come together to make the book coherent. I wasn't sure that would happen. But it did. I really ended up loving this book (after hating it a little in the beginning). It is a book about people and their lives and things impacting their lives, their wants, desires, careers, social media, phones, attention. So many things. 

The whole time reading the book, there was this narrator that seemed really familiar. It dawned on me as I was very close to finishing the book that the narrator in the book reminded me of the narrator in the movie Stranger that Fiction from 2006 - Will Ferrell, Dustin Hoffman, Emma Thompson, Queen Latifah, and Maggie Gyllenhaal. Highly recommend this movie.

By the end of this book, I liked it! I really liked it! All of these random vignettes, these random people, these random events, eventually loose their randomness and end up making perfect sense. And ending in a satisfying way.

Post written on July 6, 2023. Publication date reflects date I finished the book.

This Close to Okay: A Novel by Leesa Cross-Smith

Kindle edition

This is another recommendation from Real Simple magazine. Here's what the magazine had to say:

"[the book] opens with divorced therapist Tallie Clark driving home from work. She notices a man standing on the edge of a bridge, coaxes him back, then persuades him to have a cup of coffee with her. What happens next makes for a poignant page-turner about perseverance and two broken people who, like all of us at one time or another, just need someone to tell them everything's going to be all right."

Well, this book was close to ok. It wasn't more than ok. It was ok-ok. It felt a little meander-y, a little aimless at times, a little contrived at times, and a little boring at times. I started reading this book on June 16 and finished it on June 26.

I wish the book seemed a little more real, a little more deep, a little more more. I'm not entirely sure why I feel this book is only ok. The Amazon review says "uplifting, cathartic story about chance encounters, hope found in unlikely moments, and the subtle magic of human connection." I definitely didn't feel this was a cathartic, uplifting story. It was a story I was waiting to get that way, but for me it didn't happen. Maybe it will be for you? Only you will know.

 Post written on July 6, 2023. Publication date reflects date I finished the book.

Queen Charlotte: Before Bridgerton Came an Epic Love Story by Julia Quinn and Shonda Rhimes

Kindle edition

I'm a huge fan of Bridgerton and have read all of the Bridgerton books (the main ones that the Netflix series is based on). I'm eagerly awaiting the next edition. Truly can't wait.

I was very excited to watch the Queen Charlotte edition - in fact, I binged it over 2 days. So good! Really loved the flash backs and flash forwards and the richness of the characters.

I got the book version of the show and started reading this on June 16 and finished it on June 26. Love my local library and the fact that I can check out Kindle books! Love it

So, the book pretty much matched the series 100%. I wonder if the book was written at the same time as the script or if the script or book came first. I don't often say that the show/movie edition truly matches the book edition. But this one really did. Having watched the series first, it made the book version all the more colorful and "see-able" since I already visually saw it on my TV. While watching the show I kept thinking about this movie I saw a million years ago (not literally, but it feels like it) in San Francisco at the Bridge Theater on Geary. The movie is called The Madness of King George. It was in 1994 - so not completely a million years ago.

Funny aside... While watching this movie, in a packed theater, my friend and I had the pleasure?? of sitting in front of an alternately housed individual who was also an extremely intoxicated individual. We could smell the alcohol on him. Every 5 seconds he kept laughing out loud (at not-funny parts in the movie), and when we shooshed him, he would shoosh us back and then start laughing again. Pretty hard to concentrate on a movie when you can't hear it. I went out to complain to the manager and then the manager came in and sat next to this individual and every time (and it was a lot of times) that the individual started talking or laughing, the manager would shoosh him and then the individual would shoosh back and start laughing again. So, I don't completely remember this movie because it wasn't the ideal watching scenario. When the movie ended and my friend and I went outside we saw the drunk individual leaned up against a tree on the sidewalk. Peeing. The individual was peeing, not the tree. True story and surprisingly (or not) not the grossest thing I witnessed living in San Francisco.

Ok, so back to the Bridgerton version. So, I thought this story sounded familiar, and, indeed, this Bridgerton King George is the same King George as in the movie The Madness of King George. A brief read of Google results, and my memory was jogged a bit in that the true King George did have some kind of illness, though there is not 100% agreement on what it was that plagued him.

Ok, so really back to the Bridgerton BOOK version. It was really good. Loved the writing, loved the characters. Loved pretty much all of it. It's a fast read (and a fast watch) and won't disappoint.

Post written on July 6, 2023. Publication date reflects date I finished the book.

The Exiles: A Novel by Christina Baker Kline

Kindle edition

Another historical fiction here and another Real Simple recommendation.

Real Simple magazine had this to say:

"In the 18th and 19th centuries, British convicts were shipped to Australia, and 25,000 of them were women. Christina Baker Kline's The Exiles imagines the stories of two of them, along with that of an orphaned Aboriginal girl. Celebrating the bonds between women, the novel explores how loves that seem destined for pain might persevere." 

I started this on June 1 and finished it on June 5.

So, generally I really love historical fiction. I have a BA and MA in American History so already love historical stuff (a really technical term, right?). I love the stories of people, learning about experiences people had, seeing all kinds of influences and impacts and results of things. It's fascinating to me. I started college as an art major but couldn't get any art classes my first semester at San Francisco State University as a transfer student from a Community College in Southern California. There were a set of 3 classes I had to take at SF State so I got those out of the way in my first semester there - Geology of California (science), California Cultures (humanities), and History of California (history, duh) with a fabulous professor - Gordon Seely. I'm a native Californian and I learned and discovered so much about our history that I had no idea about. I was hooked. Changed my major and never looked back. So yeah, I like history. I like good history books. History books that are accessible and understandable by everyone. I detest history books that aren't accessible. That you need a translator to help you understand. Ones that are written for those elitist people who want to keep the everyperson out of their genre. Sadly, the book by Ron Chernow "Hamilton" is one of those books. I've been trying to read it for so many years and I just can't. No. Sentences that take a whole page - no. Sentences full of words that no one knows - no. Just write it, just say it, you don't need to make it fancy and unintelligible.

Ok, I'll get off my high horse. I really like historical fiction.

This book started a little slow and then it sucked me in. Many times as I was reading I was shaking my head in disbelief at how human beings were treated. How women were treated. I remember thinking, "where is the humanity?" The conditions seemed deplorable for the incarcerated women. Granted, this is fiction. But it is based in history.

We meet one woman who comes to be jailed for something she literally didn't do. No one would believe her. No one would question the man who gave her the thing that she was accused of stealing. He gave her something else too... Something that would take 9 months to come to fruition. Off to jail she went. Then shipped off to Australia she was. The crossing was also deplorable and the women were subjected to violence from the crew of the ship. Friendships between the female prisoners were forged on the voyage as well, and those are the basis for the rest of the story. There were pockets of humanity in the people that came in and out of the female prisoners lives. 

This book gave the characters depth, believability, and humanity. You could feel their struggle, their pain, their fights for survival. And you could see their successes, their trials and tribulations, their growth, and their value as humans.

I really liked this book. It's different. But I liked it.

Post written on June 30, 2023. Publication date reflects date I finished the book.

Oath of Loyalty (A Mitch Rapp Novel Book 21) by Vince Flynn and Kyle Mills

Kindle edition

I tore through another Mitch Rapp book - I started this on May 28 and finished it on June 1.

Seriously, these books are so good. They are uncomfortably and concerningly based around things that seem probable enough to happen. I find myself sometimes wondering if these books give "bad guys" too many ideas on how to bad and nefarious things. Just like sometimes I think that news stories that give all of the details on how a bad thing happened may provide too much of a recipe that other bad people can easily pick up and replicate. Hmmmmm...

This Mitch Rapp installment picks up right after Enemy At The Gates leaves off. The new President comes to believe that Rapp is after him and wishes to kill him. This is far from the truth, at least at the beginning. But due to a loyal new director of the CIA, the President's beliefs are twisted and manipulated in believing that truly Rapp is after him. The First Lady and the former CIA director negotiate a truce for the President and Rapp to abide by. Only, the President doesn't. Uh oh.

So, this is where the shit starts to hit the fan, in typical Mitch Rapp book fashion. A lot of shit goes down. And this time, it involves (sort of) someone other than Rapp. But, of course, Rapp is involved and uses many of his contacts (both legitimate and criminal) to help him figure out his way out of this mess. And, it truly is a mess.

This quote from Rapp in this book literally made me laugh out loud at the absurdity and straight-forwardness of it:

"Then can we just kill him?" Rapp asked. Coleman was quick to answer. "I'll handle it."

Another that seemed so apropos for Rapp:

"It was never too soon to learn that either life kicked the shit out of you, or you kicked the shit out of it."

Seems a pretty good summary of Mitch Rapp's entire life. This was another fast-paced, adrenaline-fueld read. Loved it!

There's one more current book - the 22nd Mitch Rapp book - that I'll move into the queue soon!

Enemy at the Gates (Mitch Rapp Book 20) by Vince Flynn and Kyle Mills

Kindle edition

Another amazing Mitch Rapp adventure, nightmare, thriller. Much like Lee Child (Jack Reacher), Michael Connelly (Harry Bosch), Julia Quinn (Bridgerton), and countless other authors, there is for sure a recipe for Mitch Rapp that is tried and true. It's definitely not broken and definitely doesn't need any fixing.

I started this book on May 26 and finished it on May 28. These Mitch Rapp books are next to impossible for me to put down. I spent a little extra time at the pedicure place "letting my toes dry" while I read more pages. When I got home, I read while I was eating lunch. And I spent some leisure time in the afternoon while The Husband went to Costco laying down reading. I just couldn't stop. Needed to find out what happened.

This is yet another book that could actually be based in reality. Hell, maybe it IS based in some semblance of reality. That is one of the things I like about this series. They don't seem too far fetched. It isn't too much of a stretch of the imagination that these events and interactions could be real. And with this long-running series, I've really gotten to know the characters. They seem real.

So, this book covers what happens between a new US president, the world's first trillionaire, a brilliant scientist, an African war-lord, "The Saudis", the head of the CIA, and Mitch Rapp, among others. The gist, without giving too much away, is that the trillionaire is funding pharmaceutical research being done by the brilliant scientist to create a cure/vaccine for every corona virus, SARS, and the common cold. This scientist is close. Then an African war-lord busts into the scene in Uganda and all hell breaks loose. The trillionaire wants help and asks the US president. By some twist of fate, Mitch Rapp gets involved, and according to the recipe, all hell breaks out. The shit hits the fan. Spy stuff, spy stuff, spy stuff. And poof, the book is over.

It was gripping, thrilling, intriguing. I like that Mitch is getting older - he's not the same 30-something from the earlier books. He's not stuck in a single point of time. These books follow him through his life. As he gets older, he gets more... crotchety (I'm not sure this is the right word). Rather than running toward everything, he's maybe learning to stay out of everything. But let's be real here. This is Mitch Rapp. Has he ever stayed away?

Another thrilling and exciting book! An enthusiastic two thumbs up from me.

The Marriage Portrait: A novel by Maggie O'Farrell

Kindle edition 

Another Real Simple magazine recommendation. Here's what Real Simple had to say:

"...brings to life Lucrezia de' Medici, a free-spirited young duchess in 1550s Florence. She's thrust into a marriage when the groom's intended bride, her older sister, dies suddenly. Her survival depends on whether she produces an heir. This is a riveting tale about one woman's fight for autonomy."

I started this book on my kindle on May 16 and finished it on May 26.

I had mixed feelings about this book. The thing that made me so-so on it was the tense. At times it was as if a narrator was telling the story. At other times it was Lucrezia telling the story. It was a little awkward for me switching between the two.

The overall story was interesting. It seemed to take a little too long to really get to the story. In hindsight, the context and history of Lucrezia was needed, but it could have maybe been hurried up a little. The writing is rich with details and layers. Lots of descriptions of things. I especially liked the scene with the tiger and Lucrezia. It was detailed and vague. It was textured and lovely. I wanted more of it. There were a lot of things that left me longing for more information. Maybe that wanting was the point. So much during this time happened behind closed doors. Information wasn't freely available to Lucrezia, or women in general. Maybe the author was creating that tension in how she wrote this story. It certainly was palpable.

While the ending was dramatic and traumatic (at times), it was mostly (not entirely) satisfying. I wanted more. I was curious about a few things with Lucrezia's sister in law, Elizabetta. What happened with her? What is Lucrezia's husband's past, and what happened with is future? I'd like to have learned more about Lucrezia too. I wonder if after what happened with Lucrezia if her mother had any regrets. Or any of her family.

And very interesting historical fiction book, with lots of positive reviews. While I liked this book, it isn't at the top of my list.

 Post written on May 28. Publication date reflects date I finished the book.