#57 of 156 - Writers & Lovers by Lily King
Chick lit exploring themes of identity and transition in young-to-mid adulthood, just about where that feeling that you should have gotten further than you have by now sets in, this was a light but engrossing story of changing course, finding success, and letting go of the past to build a strong foundation for the future. It was an enjoyable enough story, nothing outstanding but a good vacation read.
#58 - Hero's Haven by Rebecca Zanetti
Meh. A late-night supernatural romance download from one of my reader subscriptions, this one was a bit of a miss. The world was too elaborate to be very well developed, though perhaps reading through the whole series would paint a more coherent picture, and the characters were just a bit flat and predictable.
#59 - Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
An account of a deadly season on the slopes of Mount Everest, this book is part first-hand chronicle of the author's attempt to summit the historic mountain and part critique of the increasingly well-traveled path that got him there, on one of the countless commercial expeditions that go up the mountain every year. It was at varying times inspiring, harrowing and horrifying, and Krakauer didn't shy away from talking about the darker side of the expedition business, where conflicting motivations and inexperienced climbers can cause tragedy.
#60 - Welcome to the Pine Away Motel and Cabins by Katarina Bivald
Another chick lit vacation read I downloaded for one of our summer road trips, this was a bit unusual in that the main character was recently deceased. The story follows the interactions between her loved ones as they come together and mourn and eventually make their peace with the place she called home, a roadside motel in a rural town in eastern Washington. It was charming, in a way, but at times campy, and the judgmental, hostile culture of the town to the main living characters (one gay, one transgender) felt more like how city people would write small towns than what the small towns I've lived in have actually been like, and that took something away from the book's story of redemption.
#61 - The Room Where It Happened by John Bolton
God, what a slog! I'm a bit of a politics geek and the hype around this made it a must-read, but it was just not a very good book. Bolton has an overinflated sense of his own rightness that shines through on every page, and you walk away from a book containing scandalous and shocking defiance of norms of both international diplomacy and domestic governance with the sense that the only reason he bothered writing it at all was out of his own pique at working in an administration that didn't defer to his judgement often enough.
#62-63 - Insatiable and Legacy by Helen Hardt
The first was a count correction - I logged on to Goodreads to add the latest title to my challenge count and noticed that the January installment of the series was still showing as unread, though it was in my history on my reader. The second was the newest installment (book 14 overall) in a series that reads very much like a soap opera that I can't seem to quit - the newest trilogy, of which Legacy is the second, follows the father of the sibling group that starred in the first four trilogies, and by the end of the story I was left with the impression that the story will eventually go back another generation for the next arc.
#64 - Nature's Best Hope by Douglass Tallamy
An environmental treatise making the case for small-scale habitat restoration in our backyards, businesses and parks, this was a really well-written and inspiring read with good, concrete ideas for action. The entire focus was the impact ordinary people and local collaborative efforts could have in making our country more hospitable to the wildlife that lived her before us and in making our environment a little healthier without restricting human or economic activities, and unlike a lot of environmental non-fiction, it took a very positive tone about the possibilities that such actions could have a significant impact on the health of the world as a whole.
#65 - The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains by Nicholas Carr
A neurobiological, historic and sociological analysis of the ways in which our minds are shaped by our communication technologies, and what kind of changes the rapid pace of change in the internet era is causing. It was rather unsettling, really, because I could recognize in myself and my teens some of the patterns Carr points to in the research about attention, retention and reflection, and it has inspired me to do more to limit my own connectivity as well as that of my youngest in hopes of balancing out the overstimulation of digital communication with the slower, deeper thinking that accompanies activities that demand more sustained and single-minded attention.
#66 - 70 - The Mortal Instruments books 1 through 5 by Cassandra Clare
There's a meme that's been going around Facebook through the pandemic about the connection between anxiety and rewatching favorite television shows. I think I'm like that, but with books. After finishing my re-read of the Outlander series earlier this year, I decided to start in on another series that I enjoyed reading years ago. delving back into the teen drama of supernatural beings and the Shadowhunters that enforce the laws that keep peace between them and humankind. So far, I'm through the first five books and have started the sixth, and much to my delight, there are a lot of new books in spin-off series set in the same world that hadn't come out yet when I first read these along with my now-18yo daughter, probably 5 or 6 years ago.
#71 - On the Road With Saint Augustine by James K.A. Smith
Part theology, part philosophy, this was a very interesting take on the writings of St. Augustine, particularly his Confessions, written in a way that attempts to connect the ancient writings of a Roman-era saint to themes and difficulties of our modern world. Smith draws a line from Augustine to the existential philosophers that shaped 20th century Western thought, and draws parallels that had never occurred to me when reading Augustine in a religious/historical context.