Lit Collective: An Online Reading Retreat discussion

Which book are you currently reading? Any initial thoughts?

have not started yet, plan to read actually only 1: The Light Between Oceans. will begin around mid February, have lots of books scheduled for tours before that

I finished The Gendarme (very good) and I'm starting The Perfect Summer and Doctor Zhivago. I've also ended up dipping into various new WWI history books, which have come out this year to mark the centennial. So it's a very timely subject, and I'm enjoying the retreat choices!

I need to finish up The Light Between Oceans.

Currently, I'm reading The Light Between Oceans. About 120 pages in so haven't formed an opinion yet.

I haven't started any yet, but want to begin The Perfect Summer soon.

I couldn't finish The Sandcastle Girls (disliked the characters so much that I couldn't go on ) or The Light Between Oceans (endless droning put me to sleep).

I give a book about 50 pages and I was generous with both. I'll try the others over the next couple of weeks, I hope.

I enjoyed Perfect Summer quite a bit. Started The Gendarme and didn't like it at all, so I skipped around and read the end. I loved Doctor Zhivago when I read it a year or so ago. That is a fantastic book.

The Light Between Oceans was excellent and, for me, a page-turner from the outset with its premise fraught with moral conflict. There were many ways this could have gone, and the author veered the story close to several of them before working it out in a very believable way. That Tom, the lightkeeper, was a decorated veteran of the Great War provided important backdrop for almost all the events, although wartime was not itself the primary subject of the story. Also unusual to read about the Australian participation, for example, the ANZAC landing in Gallipoli, and the aftermath in Australia. I recommend this one.

I started The Sandcastle Girls but probably won't read it because it is a second novel on the Armenian genocide. I was glad I finished The Gendarme because by the end I felt I understood much more about that tragedy.

Now I'm focusing on Doctor Zhivago, and perhaps returning to The Perfect Summer.