It's Monday! What are you reading?

 

It's Monday! What are you reading? is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey. For this meme, bloggers post what they finished last week, what they're currently reading, and what they plan to start this week.

My comments are not meant to be recaps of the story lines as I include a link to Goodreads for their synopsis of the book. I am merely stating how I felt about the book without giving any spoilers.

I am abandoning more books that usual. Not sure if I am too distracted these days or just simply not patient.

Goodreads had an excellent post on why we abandon books and provided this interesting chart.

My main reason is a slow or boring start and will abandon after 10-20 pages.

I never even tried to read Fifty Shades of Grey, of no interest to me.

I didn't mind Eat, Pray Love but she was a bit of a pain in the ass.

LOVED The Girl/Tattoo!!

Wicked - loved the play, saw it twice but no interest in reading the book.

Casual Vacancy - is sitting on my shelf to read. Recently read The Cuckoo's Calling which was an ok read.

82 COMPLETED READS TO DATE!

ABANDONED - title?

Thirty Girls

Evening

The Orphan Master's Son

FINISHED:

The set-up of Mark Haddon's brilliant new novel is simple: Richard, a wealthy doctor, invites his estranged sister Angela and her family to join his for a week at a vacation home in the English countryside. Richard has just re-married and inherited a willful stepdaughter in the process; Angela has a feckless husband and three children who sometimes seem alien to her. The stage is set for seven days of resentment and guilt, a staple of family gatherings the world over.

But because of Haddon's extraordinary narrative technique, the stories of these eight people are anything but simple. Told through the alternating viewpoints of each character, The Red House becomes a symphony of long-held grudges, fading dreams and rising hopes, tightly-guarded secrets and illicit desires, all adding up to a portrait of contemporary family life that is bittersweet, comic, and deeply felt. As we come to know each character they become profoundly real to us. We understand them, even as we come to realize they will never fully understand each other, which is the tragicomedy of every family. 

The Red House is a literary tour-de-force that illuminates the puzzle of family in a profoundly empathetic manner -- a novel sure to entrance the millions of readers of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

It's a good read that you can easily skim over parts that don't interest you like this paragraph. It has nothing to do with any of the characters that I can determine. 

Marja, Helmand. The sniper far back enough from the window to stop sun flaring on the rifle sight. Crack and kickback. A marine stumbles under the weight of his red buttonhole. Dawn light on wile horses in the Kentii Mountains. Huddershfield, brown sugar bubbling in a tarnished spoon. Turtles drown in oil. The purr of binary, a trillion ones and zeroes. The swill of bonds and futures. Reckitt Benckiser, Smith and Nephew. Rifts and magma chambers. Eyjafjallajokull smoking like a witch's cauldron.

Sometimes it is hard to determine who's thoughts you are reading.

Does anything get resolved, not really but then that is the messiness of life.

STARTED:

The police urgently need Harry Hole . . . A killer is stalking Oslo's streets. Police officers are being slain at the scenes of crimes they once investigated but failed to solve. The murders are brutal, the media reaction hysterical.  

But this time, Harry can't help . . . For years, detective Harry Hole has been at the center of every major criminal investigation in Oslo. His dedication to his job and his brilliant insights have saved the lives of countless people. But now, with those he loves most facing terrible danger, Harry is not in a position to protect anyone.