What I'm Reading This Week (May 20, 2024)

Last week turned out to be a lot different than I had anticipated it would be. First the good news: it was one of those rare weeks during which I actually finished up four books: Remarkably Bright Creatures, Displaced Persons, The Coast Road, and Clete. Even better, I really enjoyed the latter three books...a lot. 

Now for the bad news: Houston endured one of the most powerful thunderstorms in its history on Thursday night. We all know here what to expect from a hurricane or one of those tropical storms that sit atop the city for two or three days, but the intensity of this thunderstorm surprised all of us. Overnight we experienced wind gusts of up to 117 mph and sustained winds of 60 mph over much of the county. Seven people were killed, most of them from being crushed by falling trees, and well over a million people lost power anywhere from a few hours to several days. As of this morning, some 300,000 people in the area still don't have electricity - and high temperatures are going to be in the nineties all week long so I pity them. Thankfully, repair crews from Oklahoma and Louisiana are here in large numbers to help out the local utility companies. Below is an example of what that kind of wind is capable of and what the repair crews are dealing with:

These are the massive transmission towers that you see in lots of the county right-of-ways around here.

So there was that. 

Although I begin this new week with three books in progress, I'm really not far enough into any of them yet to know if they will stick: Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler, Dad Camp by Evan S. Porter, and The Humans by Matt Haig. I am pretty certain that I'll be completing my re-read of the Tyler novel, and I like what I've read from The Humans so far, but Dad Camp is not really doing it for me. Only thirty pages in, and I already find myself avoiding it in favor of just about anything else I have on hand. Definitely not a good sign.

I also spent a little time slimming down my immediate TBR last week, resulting in the abandonment of two books and the decision not to begin another at all. I have two library holds to pick up this week that I'm really curious about, so I needed to make a little room for them anyway - an essay collection by Shannon Reed called Why We Read and a fantasy novel by Julia Alvarez called The Cemetery of Untold Stories. But since I'm also in the mood to pare down the number of books I have going at once, I think it was a good time to dump those three.

The only other Matt Haig novel I've read up to now is The Midnight Library, a fantasy novel I had mixed feelings about, and The Humans sounds every bit as strange as that one. It's a story about an alien from a planet much more advanced than Earth who is sent on a special mission to this planet by his leaders - a mission that Earthlings, for good reason, are not going to appreciate. The alien is at first disgusted by everything about humans, but he gradually changes his mind and learns to appreciate them. The main reason I want to try this one is because I recently enjoyed a season of a television series called Resident Alien that seems to share much the same premise. I don't know if the television shows were based on this novel - they don't appear to be - but the similarities are striking. 

Dad Camp is described this way by the Dutton people: "A heartwarming novel about a loving dad who drags his eleven-year-old daughter to 'father-daughter week' at a remote summer camp - their last chance to bond before he loses her to teenage girlhood entirely." I was in the mood for an old-fashioned feel-good novel when I chose this one, but through the first thirty pages or so, all the characters feel like such clichés that I'm struggling to get back to it. I hope it proves me wrong soon; otherwise it's going to end up in the DNF basket.

I'm curious to see if cutting back to two simultaneous reads slows me down or speeds me up. I hope that choosing the right two books will keep me invested enough that I don't stray during the week if something shinier catches my eye. It's not so much that reading six or seven books at a time hasn't worked well enough for me, because it has. It's more a desire to shake up the whole reading experience a little bit than anything else.

In the relatively immediate wings are these:

I have the feeling that I'm going to be DNFing books a lot quicker than in the recent past because it doesn't happen very often that continuing with a book I was already doubting at the 50-page mark has paid off. I'd say it happens positively for me maybe twice in every ten decisions to keep reading beyond my arbitrary page-limit. I've only abandoned seven books during 2024, but I can think of at least another half-dozen I wish I'd abandoned - and that's not a fun way to read for anyone. Thank you, Remarkably Bright Creatures.

Here's hoping that you all have great weeks, reading and otherwise. I'm looking forward to making my 220-mile roundtrip to have lunch with some old high school friends on Thursday, something I always enjoy. Happy Reading!