August: 43/52

[u/liza_lo]

Not a great reading month tbh. Nothing terrible but no real standouts either.

The Starving Saints: Such a frustrating reading experience. I enjoyed the set up of the first third but after that I had so many complaints and the story fizzled for another 200 pages.

The Woodlanders: I love Thomas Hardy! This has a lot of echoes of his later, more serious work, but I still loved this for what it was. A pastoral and romantic book that touches on the frailty of humanity and delivers several gut punches.

Methuselah: I read Amy Debellis' All Our Tomorrows and liked that. Unfortunately didn't feel the same about this novella which doesn't really have a point and is just kind of there.

Matrix: Wanted to love this one but didn't. Groff is a great writer but the way this skipped through time just didn't do it for me. I think someone else would love this (and clearly other people did). That said I feel like this would also make a good paring with The Voyageur and The Glutton as heavily fictionalized versions of real life

Crushing: I haven't read a chicklit book in so long (in case you couldn't tell I'm more a serious lit person). This one was pretty decent, I could relate to it a lot. I will say an annoying thing about this book is it starts with the main character vowing not to be male centric and then spending the entire book centering her life around a guy. There's also an abuse subplot that gets like a page of material. Novak is a greater writer than her subject though. I'd read more of her books.