Y'all. It's almost May. Whew. I'm excited about this.
Anyway. You know the drill by now. Here are all the books I've read since last month's link-up. Feel free to comment and/or link-up yourself :)
It was a little odd in the beginning because it felt like it was going in two different directions- one part seemed to focus on the hen weekend and personal relationships, and the other part focused on the mystery. Then at some point there were two mysteries- the accident and then the Claire-Le/o/nora relationship. So it was fine, good for it's genre. Definitely worth reading if you like that style, although personally I may be a little over the unreliable narrator thing (and I didn't even read Gone Girl).
This book was really good. Each chapter is a person from a different generation of the same family. Some of the family splits and one part ends up staying in Africa while another part is taken to America as slaves. It was really intriguing but a little confusing. Not only with the generational skips (there was family tree in the beginning of the book that helped with that) but with the different tribes in Africa and how they kept coming back together, splitting, coming back together. I do love that it tackled race and sex in so many different ways- there were arranged marriages, marriages for love, cheaters, mixed raced children, someone who passed (meaning a light-skinned black person who "passes" themselves off as white), a gay man who couldn't come out...it was a good variety of the human condition. If I could have sat down and read it through instead of reading sporadically (which is how I have to do it now) it probably would have gotten the 5 stars everyone else gave it instead of 4.
You may have heard about the incident that sparked this book- Lenora Skenazy let her 9 year old ride the New York subway by himself and was dubbed "America's worst mom." Basically, "free-range" is the opposite of helicopter parenting. She argues that kids are actually safer today than generations ago, even though parents worry way more, and encourages fostering independence for the sake of both parents and children. I really enjoyed this book a LOT and will be writing a separate post for it soon.
Eh. I liked parts of this story, but it was kind of weird. It's just one of those books where there isn't a specific point- there are big events and small ones and it's basically just the story of a man's life. It's good...but I kind of wish I had known the rhythm going in.
I feel like I've been reading a lot more than normal...but two of these were audiobooks from the library. And I've been reading Bringing Up Bebe for weeks now (spot reading, remember?) which I enjoy a lot also. The review for that one will be doubled-up with the Free Range book since they share some similar points.
What are you reading? Link-up & let us know!
