Engaging Reads: My Recent Book Reviews

Currently Reading:

Typhoid Mary – Anthony Bourdain (This is a very concise, dense read (only 144 pages), but finding myself 99 pages into the book, I cannot put it down. It’s just fantastic. Bourdain really paints Mary in an emphatic light. I will wait to comment more once I have finished this book.

Agnes Grey – Anne Brontë – Just started yesterday. We will see how it goes. This alternative cover is phenomenal. What emotions come to mind when you look at this picture?

Finished:

The God of the Woods – Liz Moore 5/5 ***** Couldn’t put it down. Fantastic character development. Outstanding regional and historical detail. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes historical fiction.

The Most – Jessica Anthony 4/5 **** Great premise. Unfortunately, I found relating to the main characters very difficult. The parts I liked, I really liked, the parts I didn’t, I vehemently disliked. A cast of selfish players. I found it tough to want the best for any of them. I kept thinking they all needed to grow up.

Enter the Aardvark – Jessica Anthony 4/5 **** Another love/hate book. Some parts I really loved (the dogs being named after the Brontë sisters kept making me laugh, as well as Wilson’s total lack of the reality around him) but the other parts really hit me the wrong way. I am an old fashioned person who feels the need to root for someone in a book. If I have no protagonist to root for I feel unmoored. I found the only person I could cheer for in this book, wasn’t Alexandre Paine Wilson, nor Titus Downing, and it isn’t because they were homosexual. Love who you want to love. It is because they were both full of themselves. I did find myself sympathizing with Rebecca Ostlet (who became married under false pretenses – even though it was her idea) and the aardvark herself. That poor aardvark, as loved and admired as she was to some, she got thrown around and used more than anything or anyone else in this book. Even in death she could not rest.

Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom – A Story – Sylvia Plath. ***** For only being 40 pages long, Plath does not disappoint. The story goes, Plath wrote this while attending Smith College. She submitted it to Mademoiselle magazine, but it was rejected. This being after she was accepted to be a guest editor in 1953. This early work of Plath’s shows a gothic/dark side to her work. A great stab at reimagining Dane’s hell. It was well worth the half hour it took to read this slim story.