Amy > Recent Status Updates

I rarely give up on a book - I’m giving up on this one. I can’t focus on the stream-of-consciousness writing style. I just cannot get into it. I’m 1/3 into it and still have no idea what it’s about.

I just finished The Girl on the Train: A Novel and gave it 5 stars.

I just finished The Solitude of Prime Numbers: A Novel

I just finished Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe and gave it 4 stars.

I just finished Gutenberg's Apprentice: A Novel.

I just finished The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August and gave it 4 stars.

I just finished All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel and gave it 5 stars.

I just finished Where Angels Fear to Tread.

I just finished The City of Falling Angels and gave it 4 stars.

So far, I'm sorry to report that Dan Brown seems to have phoned in this story, leaving Robert Langdon perfectly comfortable in his standard strangely-hot-nerd-teams-up-with-young-cute-girl-to-save-the-world formula. I'm working through it regardless, but even the art history aspect seems teachy and dull. Sigh. I really wanted to like this!

So far, this book has had a slow start, and it has relied heavily on long, quoted passages from other literary sources, which seem to be more useful as pretentious page filler rather than serve any purpose of moving the story along. I am hanging with it, however, based on the promise of other reviewers that the story picks up the pace about halfway through. We shall see ...