Tag: reading

A Book Review: Hemingway’s Girl

Lauren8 Comments

Before my massage last Saturday, my mom showed me a list of books she wants to read.  Sidenote: It was handwritten on three sheets of lined paper because my mom is cute like that.  It was mostly classics.  You know, stuff you probably (or should’ve) read in school, like Fahrenheit 451, To Kill a Mockingbird and Animal Farm.  A lot of it was stuff I haven’t read but want to!  Classics are classics for a reason.  They’re the backbone of our literary history!

The book I just finished was so not on that list.

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You know, I should probably stop assuming anything by or about Hemingway means I’m going to love it.  That assumption might work nine times out of ten, but that tenth one might turn out to be horribly boring and hard to get through because you’re thinking “Is anything interesting going to happen?!” the entire time you’re reading it.  Case in point: Hemingway’s Girl by Erika Robuck.

This one is about a girl named Mariella who works for and is also attracted to Hemingway, who happens to be married at the time.  Turns out he’s attracted to her too but there’s that whole being married part and that other part where Mariella meets and falls in love with another guy.  The whole thing takes place in Key West and can I just say I like European Hemingway way better than Key West Hemingway.

Overall, the entire book was just so… vanilla.  The story wasn’t interesting, the characters weren’t captivating, the writing wasn’t fine-tuned.  Plus there was that part where Robuck decided to have Mariella and Hemingway refer to each other as “Papa” and “Daughter” and it got majorly weird.  Oddly enough, the last few pages of the book were told in letter-format and I actually kind of liked that.  I’m a sucker for a good letter-style book.

In other words, if you come across this one, skip it.

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What was the last really good book you read?

What was the last really bad book you read?

Do you have a favorite “classic”?

In other news, my mom and I just decided to create a two-person book club to take down those classics!

A Book Review: The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

Lauren2 Comments

It’s book club day!  Which means I liked my first meeting enough to go a second time.  Would you look at me just voluntarily going to social gatherings by myself without knowing a single person.  Who am I?  And is this what they call “personal growth”?

This month’s book was The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North (<– the author’s pen name!) and though the synopsis on the back cover had me prepared to read a more serious book version of Groundhog Day, it turned out to be much more thought-provoking, substantial and complex than Bill Murray waking up on Groundhog Day over and over and over again.

IMG_7745Quick Plot Overview: Harry August is a member of the Cronus Club, a group of unique human beings that are reborn to the same place and time every time they die.  The eventual crux of the story is his mission to find the other Kalachakra (that’s the technical term for his species) that is responsible for speeding up the evolution of technology and causing the end of the world sometime in the future.

Wait, WUUUUUT?

Yeah, I know, it’s kind of confusing and kind of hard to wrap your head around at first, but that’s kind of what makes it such a cool and interesting book!  Also, I think I used up my KIND OF quota in that last sentence…  The book is on the longer side of things, but I found it surprisingly easy to whip through because it’s such an imaginative concept and North has a total handle on the boundaries of that concept.  And though the climax of the book doesn’t seem to come until later on, just hearing about Harry’s different lives is plenty attention-holding.

My one complaint is that for being a longer book and really taking its time with the set up, the ending seemed a little rushed.  Otherwise, I really really enjoyed this one!  Anything science-related is pretty over my head but I didn’t feel like that really made a difference in my overall understanding of the plot.  One last word of caution: if you actually think about the concept of re-starting life in the same place every time after you die, your brain will explode.