Sandy’s Comments (group member since Feb 24, 2018)

Sandy’s comments from the What's Next? group.

This is on my physical shelf so happy to see the good reviews! Thank you

Thanks for the recommendation. I have always been curious about this one, will add to my TBR.

This is on my TBR from last year but I will move it up based on this review. I loved Migrations.

My reading took a nosedive this year (I’m at 32-33 books down from 52 on avg the last few years), but I hope to get back on track next year.

In chronological order, these were my most notable reads:
The Farm, Joanne Ramos
Good Material, Dolly Alderton
Funny Story, Emily Henry
Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Taylor Jenkins Reid
The Wedding People, Alison Espach

All of the above were 5-star reads except Good Material, which I should have rated 5 instead of 4. Not on the list is The Women, Kristin Hannah, which I did rate 5stars at first but in retrospect, I disliked the author’s turning a serious story into a soap opera romance (I felt manipulated). The Four Winds was much better.

Though I didn’t meet my reading goal, I cleared some long-standing backlist books, so at least there was th. Happy reading in 225!

I’ve also read about 10 of the top 100 but 27 additional books have been on my backlist for years. I was happy to see two of my favorite books - A Visit from the Goon Squad and Tomorrow x 3 - on the list. Very surprised that Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life (2015’s viral misery porn book which left me stunned for weeks) was not on the list. The list reinforces that I should finally read Elena Ferrante and Jesmyn Ward who both had 3 books on the list. I couldn’t get through Lincoln in the Bardo, so will give George Saunders a miss although he was the only other author with 3 books to his name.

This was just selected as a GMA book club pick and I had also preordered it so I’m happy you have it 4 stars. Looking forward to reading it.

So glad to read this. My book club chose another book instead of this one this month, and I was disappointed but am going to read it anyway as I was intrigued by the Vietnam war tie in (we’ve had a lot of WWII historical fiction). Looking forward to reading it even more now.

Ringing endorsement! I am in Asia Dior a week’s holiday and planned to read this on the trip.

This sounds like something mg book club would love. Thanks for the suggestion!

Sorry in advance, this is a long one. I’m copy/pasting my first review of the year:

I had wanted to read Untamed, a book I knew nothing about but which other trusted readers/friends had said changed their life, last January 1, but it did not happen. Reading a self-help, motivational book is not usually my jam but after a slow start (queue lots of eye-rolling on my part hearing Doyle’s perky “You can do HARD things!” approach), I must confess I was moved by certain sections. Her vignettes (the sections are too short to constitute “chapters”) on racism and helicopter parenting (“cream cheese parent”) were surprisingly insightful, and daresay motivating. I was surprised to learn that she was an anti-racist crusader well before the May 2020 George Floyd/Black Lives Matter movement really took a toehold on the nation’s collective conscience. Doyle also reveals a humbling anecdote about how the “friendly fire”, or more accurately, scathing criticism from the left for her bumbling attempt to “teach” white women about racism, hit her much harder than the expected diatribes from evangelical Christians after she left her marriage and the life of a Christian Mommy-blogger to marry a woman and build a bonus family structure for the kids.

I found myself googling Doyle’s life and previous work, and she is certainly a fascinating individual. She has faced criticism of being an opportunist: appealing to the Christian parenting circles when she was still in a traditional (if deeply flawed) marriage, capitalizing on merch opportunities, then doing a 180 to breakout as a gay, motivational writer who also happens to suffer from Anxiety and Depression. The whipsaw I experienced reading about her life in tandem with this short book made my neck hurt.

Ultimately, for me it was a good choice for the start of a new year, when you’re open to self-reflection and in the mood for self-improvement. Her “cream cheese” parenting section could also have been titled, How not to be a Karen. And couldn’t we all use an essay on that topic in our lives?

I’m excited for this! Critically acclaimed read that is on my TBR. Happy to read along with the group this month.

If we each invite one new member to join, assuming they are semi-active on Goodreads, that could get some more discussion momentum going.

Other than that, maybe a monthlong group read for a book that’s on most of our TBRs? I would say The Wager but some members have already read it (and liked it).

Fyi if you plan to read War and Peace and are on Reddit, there is a subgroup, R/ayearofwarandpeace, where they group read basically a chapter every day. I tried it two years ago but it was not my jam. However, the group read and discussion aspect was interesting.

Adding that I couldn’t see the final text on my phone as I wrote the last post so apologies for the typos! I’m still shaping my 2024 priority reading list but I just bought How Not to Age by Michael Greger about diets, health, and the physiology of aging; and Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic (about helicopter parenting, mainly). I plan to read these, and The Wager, as part of my non-fiction list. I also forgot to mention I got to Killers of the Flower Moon before the movie came out, and took away quite a bit from that book too.

Happy New Year to all

Thank you both for keeping this group going. Though I don’t post as much anymore, I do try to check out all the updates and fondly recall participating in this group in the dark days of the pandemic. So queue my virtual applause here!

This year, I may fall 3 books short of my 52 (1/wk) book goal for the first time since 2020. I wanted to read 4-5 books a month, of which 1 was non-fiction and 1 was backlist to clear my gargantuan TBR. I also wanted to diversify away from women’s fiction (popular, book club type picks which I do love but inevitably become very repetitive) and read more male authors. I managed to read Spare, Too Big to Fail (5star read for me) and just finished Michael Lewis’s new crypto book and character profile of SBF. I enjoyed the latter since I didn’t follow the original events too closely, but agree with previous posters that the book felt rushed and surface-level.

My favorite books this year follow:
Maame
Romantic Comedy
Too Big to Fail
Pineapple Street
Black Cake

Honorable mentions for The Light Pirate, Everything’a Fine, Somone Else’s Schows

Biggest disappointments were Happt Place and Hello Stranger

Thanks for lining the pods, Belinda. I’m in the middle of this book and enjoying it so far but I’m used to
Lewis’s M.O. being more about the characters than about events and a linear plot. Still, I was surprised to see how little technical details were given about the inner workings of crypto, so the podcasts are a great resource.

Sounds like a great seasonal read. Thanks for suggesting!

The Firm was my first Grisham book too. He became quite prolific after that and I don’t think I’ve read any of his more recent books in two decades. After The Firm, I read some of his earlier works like The Pelican Brief and A Time to Kill. I loved the latter and thought it was the best of the three but the opening scene is brutal. I’ve head the more recent Camino books are very good.

Highly readable and engaging account of one insider’s experience in the trenches as a senior manager at Goldman Sachs. The book will likely appeal to ex-Wall Streeters or other banking practitioners and especially career women in finance. Having worked on Wall St and the City of London for almost the exact periods as the author, several anecdotes ring so loud and true, I could go deaf. Others seemed over-embellished (though the author has to sell the book she writes, after all). Perhaps if she hadn’t disclaimed the events and characters as anonymized, generalized composites - understandably necessary to avoid libel suits -I would have been less skeptical about the veracity of ALL the accounts, especially the most egregious tales of sexism, racism and abuse. I also could have done without her industry manifesto at the end, which felt extraneous and tacked on. Still, I gobbled up the book in a few days and if you can handle stories involving the worst of Walk Street’s excesses, you’ll likely find this entertaining too.

A timeless classic that reads better than most of the action-packed novels I’ve read in the past few years. A true page-turner and who can say that about a story involving central bankers, policy wonks, and stiff blue suits on wall st? I couldn’t put it down. A strong 5 stars from me.

Station Eleven is one of my top backlist reads for 2023 - and then I'll indulge in the TV adaptation.