Kelly > Recent Status Updates

Best one so far

Audiobook: Timothy West

Look y’all I had a rough third trimester and now a baby so I didn’t post reviews from earlier this year and now I am getting either a few pages on sleep deprived nights or audio booking while I feed the baby so I’ve decided to just do one line baby feeding time reviews for the foreseeable future until I have two hands to type again.

After my free time thoughts being fit for nothing but mush this first half of my pregnancy, I feel the fog finally lifting- just in time for me to find a not-mindless-candy read to finish out this year. Last year I read Piranesi at this time and it was the perfect tale for these liminial, quiet days betwixt and between old and new. What’s the best book you read this year I should read this week?

So it’s July and I am still without a five star read for the year. What’s been your most recent hands-down no-reservations five star read?

I love a book where the narrator is a strong, vital character.

(Oh yeah still loving it.)

Marian is a badass. Creating a paper trail, getting men with credentials on your team, and documenting the shit out of everything. Girl figured out how you fight abusive assholes and win all on her own.

What’s the best biography you’ve ever read? I haven’t read a really great one since that Melbourne and Talleyrand one two punch I did a few years ago, and I want another.

So my book count is low this year so far but I feel compelled to point out a) pandemic & I teach four high school classes that are still very much in session but also b) a lot of it is because I got a New York Review of Books subscription and a Harper’s subscription as a present to myself for Christmas and I’ve been spending a lot of time with those. Which I regret not at all! Highly rec!

I have reached the stage of book reviewing, in my dozenth or so year of doing it, of finally just mom-ing the trolls. I started w/rage, progressed to trying to reason w/them, then went on to ignoring them, and have now arrived at mom-ing. Not sure if this is actually growth? *insert Elmo shrug gif here*

This is genuinely awful. Wtf with all these 5 star reviews? I am thisclose to dnf.

I dunno, y’all, I’ve been at this a dozen years and read thousands of reviews and it feels like for 80% of people their opinions abt books- and honestly, a lot else- comes down to aesthetics & a vague half understood feeling. There are some brilliant reviewers out there and I love you so much!!! But I keep getting sucked into bad books by overly positive reviews and I honestly think this is why.

It’s my 10th wedding anniversary! I’m inspired to try reading something new, so: What’s the most romantic book you’ve ever read?

Doesn’t even have to be romantic in the traditional sense. Just whatever comes to your mind first when you are asked that question.

I am reading this! Just in slow, fascinated, disgusted chunks. I can only take a few chapters at a time. Nearing the end of the Du Bois section- motivated to finish so I can start the last part on Angela Davis, who I do not know enough about.

I’m sorry guys. Officially hitting five months of quarantine has knocked the stuffing out of me. I’m just pretty unfocused right now. I know I haven’t reviewed my last few books I posted and that’s unlike me, but I will get my shit back together soon and do reviews. I hope. :(

When was the last time you read an exposition that you thought was actually good? I am so tired of picking up books and it taking 100 pages for everyone to settle down and act naturally- if they ever do. I can’t remember the last time I read a solid exposition section. What authors/books do you have for me, GR? Who is good at that?

There’s “5 perfect movies” thing going around on Twitter. Let’s do 5 perfect books here instead! Mine are:

1. Possession- Byatt
2. Strange & Norrell- Clarke
3. Arcadia- Stoppard
4. Story of A New Name-Ferrante
5. Faithful Place-French

What are yours? Let’s get a good thread going and find some awesome book recs while we’re at it!

Ladies how do you deal with men who comment on your best work/reviews in a way that seems like they are praising you but actually really reads as “well done my young Padawan, clearly I thought of this already, but you have said this well. Here is a book that you should read that I feel comfortably superior to you on-patpat”? My skin crawls every time and I do smile/nod but is there another way?

It has come to my attention in reviewing my stats that I haven't rated a book 5 stars since actual 2017. What books do you have to change that before the year is out, excellent GR people?! I'm gathering my pile to take with me over winter break in two weeks!

Dear No Doubt Very Nice HS and College Kids,

While it is nice you enjoyed my review of X classic novel, please do not ACTUALLY tell me you are using my ideas in your paper. I am a history and English teacher, and not only will your prof definitely find my review, I wish I could tell them myself, not only for the plagiarism, but for you being SUPER bad at it. :)

Sincerely,
Me

So I teach history and love all kinds of it. But I’ve been thinking about the relative gap in my reading that is military history. I know some of my students love it, and I want to be able to reliably, first hand recommend more amazing ones. I’ve done some, but not as much as others. Any good recs? Preferably ones that aren’t just endless marches of battles and names, but also have another hook?

Ok GR I need your recommendations big time. I’m in a short story book club at work and it’s my turn to pick the story. What are your favorite short stories?!? Tell me all!! The last two we read were Flaubert’s Simple Heart and Munro’s Love of a Good Woman, both of which everyone loved or loved to talk about, to give you a general idea of the kind of stuff we read. Thanks in advance!!!

I’ve had two pretty great reads this summer- All Among the Barley and The Leavers. The rest have been mediocre or not at all memorable. What was the last great book you read? I wanna read something that’ll knock me out before the season is done.

Lily Willowes was right. This article is about what she breaks my heart with. We shouldn’t have to tell ourselves we are witches, or evil spirits, in order to make sense of a desire for freedom. Read that book ASAP if you haven’t, y’all: https://amp.theguardian.com/commentis...

Every dude (and it has been 99% dudes) who has ever yelled at me on this website about not liking their favorite book plz take note k thanks bye: https://twitter.com/jacobtwop/status/...

You guys I am going on a sea and shore based reading binge (again), bc of reading this list today: https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...

Your top recs? I’ve done Patrick O’Brian/Hornblower and that’s not what I want rn really. I did The Outrun last year, freaking loved it. More like that plz. Done Woolf. What else you got, good book people?

This is exactly what I wanted.

So here’s what I’d like: a book with a reassuringly authoritative, in control narrator and a heart. I would take Vanity Fair, Wives & Daughters, Northanger Abbey, Orlando or Anna K over again. See? All very different, but all have exactly those two things.

Anybody got a book like that for me? I’m trying Trollope right now and it’s got the former and not the latter and it’s killing me.

Brief reminder: If I don’t like a book you loved, I am not calling you an inferior person in any way. So that’s one thing! Rock on with your loves! I support it! :) So! In return! Please assume I do not need you to explain the book to me or assume I misunderstood it when we disagree. Questions are good! Unsolicited lectures are not!

This has been a PSA. Carry on. :)

Reading truly brilliant writing is like breathing in that first pure, clean breath of pure fall air, and having to stop in your tracks to deal with it, and breathe it in one more time.

God I missed you, Tana French.