Bookish Chatter | Taking My Time

I seem to be taking my time with a lot of things lately! This post, for example, is a day “late” and I’ve been savoring every word of every book I’ve been reading these last few weeks. My reading has been so rewarding on a personal level but that means that I don’t have a ton to share with you! But I did finish two books in the last week that we can chat bout.

Finished This Week:

The River We Remember is the newest stand alone novel from William Kent Krueger and I simultaneously couldn’t stop reading and didn’t want it to end. Set in the late 50s in rural Minnesota, Sheriff Brody Dern is investigating the suspicious death of the wealthiest man in town, Jimmy Quinn. Everyone assumes he’s been murdered and that the murderer is Noah Bluestone, a Sioux who’s family lived on Quinn’s land generations before the Bluestones were forced to leave. But Dern is slow to make those same assumptions and does his best to look at the whole picture.

This book is about the shameful secrets that we hold close and what happens when we start to let them go. It alternates between different viewpoints of townspeople and illustrates how broken-hearted we all are, despite doing our best to act otherwise. I also loved how this novel highlighted the people who saw things differently in this small town and were willing to put their neck on the line to do what was right. As a person who was always the odd kid out in her own small town, this brought up a lot of anxiety for me but it was wonderful to see watch this situation unfurl.

It was so good and so beautiful and I’m eagerly waiting for Krueger’s next effort.

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Bronwyn and I finished reading Ivy & Bean and the Ghost That Had to Go this week. It was so funny! To distract the other girls from the fact that she couldn’t do cartwheels, Ivy told them that the girl’s bathroom was haunted. Eventually they tried to get rid of the ghost by flushing gifts for it down the toilet – which ended exactly the way you think it would. What a mess! But we laughed out loud so many times and had so much fun with this book!

Booker Shortlist will be announced today!

I am loving everyone’s predictions for the shortlist! I don’t have any predictions but am eagerly waiting to hear from the judges.

I’m currently reading two books from the longlist:

The Bee Sting: which is a phenomenal family drama set in Ireland. I’m about 2/3 of the way through it and don’t actually want it to end. So far it’s been told from four different perspectives, two children and two parents, and it’s fascinating to see how their individual lives are being lived so separately, despite all living in the same home together. I’m curious to see where all of this ends up!

In Ascension: I think this is considered sci-fi? And that’s not my genre at all but I’m absolutely enthralled by it. Leigh is a scientist who researches ancient algae, which is the origin of all life on Earth. She gets an opportunity to deep dive to observe an ancient vent deep in the ocean (think the 80s movie The Abyss) and experiences something that seems to never let her go. I’m not even halfway through this so I really can’t give you a better summary but it’s fascinating. Like Leigh, I find the origin of life to be one of the most overlooked and misunderstood events in our universe and I’m loving the science that McInnes weaves into this narrative, despite not fully understanding it all.

(fun coincidence: Martin McInnes won the Somerset Maugham Award in 2017. Somerset Maugham is a character in another Booker longlisted novel: The House of Doors. The world is small, friends!)

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I’m not sure if I’ll be able to manage two blog posts in a row this week? I might not be back tomorrow for a post. Either way – take good care!