Tag: book club

Book Review: Lily and the Octopus

Lauren1 Comment

A warning about this book if you are A) a person who loves dogs B) a person who doesn’t necessarily love dogs, but likes them or C) a person with a beating heart.  In other words, if this book doesn’t destroy you, you’re a monster!  I haven’t cried this hard over a book since I read Little Women last year.  Also, please know that I was quietly losing it and when I looked over, Joey was scrolling Twitter while eating chips and salsa shirtless in our bed.  We may as well have been on different planets!

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Please note how much that drawing on the cover looks like Huni!

Basically, this is the story of a single man named Ted and the love of his life, a 12-year-old dachshund named Lily, who develops a tumor, aka “the octopus.”  The rest of the book delves into Ted’s past — the ups and downs he and Lily have had, the ups and downs of his now-ended long term relationship — as well as he and Lily’s current situation and all the way he’s avoiding the truth about Lily and her octopus.

I’m not going to lie, there is a fair amount of immaturity and cheese you have to deal with to make it through this book — the lengths Ted goes to put off the reality that his dog is dying are childish and at many points, had me questioning his sanity (“is he actually the one with the tumor?!”) but his characterization of Lily was just so sweet and lovable and amidst all Ted’s crazy actions, you could find moments of relatable grief and sadness.

Just don’t read the end of this one in public, okay?

Book Review: Dark Matter

LaurenLeave a comment

Remember when I read/reviewed The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August way back in 2015?  Or remember when I read that one Dan Brown book (The Lost Symbol) way way back in 2008??  Okay, you probably don’t remember that second one because it was before I started putting my life on the internet, but the point is, Dark Matter reminded me of those two books (both of which I really enjoyed!) and I liked this one a lot too.  Allow me to explain.

A Brief Synopsis: Jason Dessen is a college psychics professor who put his research ambitions aside to have time for his wife (Daniella) and son (Charlie) but as he’s walking home alone one night, he’s abducted and wakes up in another universe where he is a celebrated physicist, but he’s also a complete bachelor.  He’s switched lives with the version of himself who decided not to have a family or put aside his career and it’s that other version that’s now living HIS life, with HIS wife and HIS son.  The rest of the book involves a black box that gives Jason access to the “multiverse” and enter all kinds of different universes where different versions of Jason made all types of different life choices and ended up in worlds that are different than HIS world, the only one he’s desperate to get back to.

In conclusion: SCIENCE.  It reminded me of The Lost Symbol in that it involved an abduction and sensory deprivation stuff (though in this book, it involved a drug that altered your mind… or something) and it reminded me of The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August in that I didn’t fully understand the quantum physics of the whole plot but had to be okay with that in order to just enjoy the novel.  Sometimes you just have to understand it enough to not be totally lost, sort of like when you read Shakespeare.  Hey, I guess I did learn something useful in college!

Anyway, I really did find this book fascinating and creative in a way that made it a real page-turner.  I also think it tapped into a question we all ask ourselves at some point: What if?  Life is nothing but a series of decisions, some big, some small, and it’s impossible not to imagine what your life would be like if you made any number of different decisions.  If this book taught me anything, it’s that the decisions you didn’t make sucked and all the ones you did make were for the best.  Okay, not really but it does put everything into perspective.  It also makes for a mind-bending, entertainingly bizarre read that really sucked me in.

What are you reading?