September Reading Wrap Up | Giving up on TBRs

I read 17 books this month, which is half of what I read in June. I read 36 books in June, but I think this month, I had better quality in the books this month. My average rating this month was a 3.6! My highest rated book of the month was How to Walk Away by Katherine Center. All of the hype around this author is so worth it. The lowest rated book of the month for me was The Arrangement by Robyn Harding. There will be reviews posted on these later in the month.

If you look at the books that I say I am going to read on a monthly basis and what I actually read, they are not the same books. I’m a mood reader and so are thousands of readers. So why do I make a TBR and take a picture of the stack? It’s because the stacks are pretty, but let’s be honest, I do this all of the time. I’ll go to a library and I stay for too long then I will try to find a book that I heard about on Instagram. I will read the book, but you better believe it wasn’t on the long list that I made at the beginning of the month.

One of the things that I’m going to actively try to do is limit my visits to the library! I know! It’s basically a second home, but I have over 400 unread books in my possession and they are not going to read themselves. Last month I saw the #unreadshelfchallenge. And even though I miss writing in my books that I own (and reading them), I kept borrowing books. I mean, I have 15 library books on my table as I type this.

So the best thing to do is stop making a TBR! I obviously have a master list of everything that I would like to read before I die, but this monthly TBR list is not going to happen for me anymore. However, I’m going to be posting a “monthly interested” list. 

Is that the same thing? Kind of. But I don’t feel so much like a failure this way. 

Reading Challenge Updates: 

I’m almost done with the POPSUGAR Challenge! Two prompts left out of 50. 

ATY (Around the Year) Challenge – Three prompts out of 52. 

Are you participating in any reading challenges this year? Let me know in the comments!

1001 Books to Read Before You Die | Rave Review | The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

This book is about a detective on the streets of LA who takes a job from an old disabled military vet with two young daughters. The general is being blackmailed and this private detective is hired to figure out what is going on and make this all go away. Seems simple enough, right?

I picked up this book because it was on the list of 1001 books to read before you die. (I will save the trouble of going around looking for an accurate list. Click the link.) This was from the core list which hasn’t changed and the list itself has been changing about every four years. Does this book belong on the list? Absolutely.

First I want to talk about the ratings that it has been getting for the woman beating and misogyny in the text. There have been some bad ratings based on that and the fact that it’s really not as good as the ones that have followed in the noir genre. Lots of art and media has not really aged well. Lolita by Valdmir Nabokov is a great example of that. There are so many books that are a reflection of the reality of the times, especially because the book was written by an ex oil executive (older rich white dude). 

But the fact of the matter is…It is written really well. The way that that the scenes are described are incredibly visual. I could imagine, every bit of rain that feel and the glistening glare of guns. The one thing I couldn’t visualize was the main character and I think that is intentional. I rarely like the waxing and waning of certain characters in other books. I read one book where the protagonist did a page and a half of thinking and didn’t do anything. In my mind, I was imagining her standing frozen in place for several minutes…at which point someone should act like that’s weird, not like the world froze Saved by the bell style. 

This book did to crime fiction what Jane Austen did to romance, when you look back on the tropes that litter today’s romance (enemies to lovers, friends to lovers, matchmatching, etc.), we see them now as played out because people have done them before.

As for the plot, it is very convoluted and confusing but that is probably because I listened to it and didn’t read it from the page. There are so many other complicated twists that made it hard to follow the narrative. The one thing I did love was the reveals. And there were so many of them. I had no idea what was going to happen next. The indication of a good thriller to me is the twist. 

Our main detective is anything but a nice guy but he doesn’t try to be. The relatable factor goes up when you realize that there is nothing about him that you are supposed to like. He drinks too much, he hits women and he just generally sucks but he sticks by his word and gets the job done. Since this there have been thousands of iterations of the hardened detective trope (Luther, Broadchurch, Columbo, etc), even the show House takes that and moves it into the medical sphere.

So what are the takeaways from reading something this old and iconic? Take it for what it is. It was written in a different time of society and at the end of the day, it paved the road for a lot of the media that we (I) enjoy today.

Have you read anything from the 1001 books to read before you die list? 

Ranty Rave Review | The Real Lolita by Sarah Weinman

The Real Lolita is the true crime non fiction book about the true origin of Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. I have tried on three separate occasions to read that book. I own it, but I’ve never finished it, in either it’s novel or movie form.

Sarah Weinman does a deep dive into the 1948 case of Sally Horner (Real name : Florence Horner) which she says is the basis for the Lolita narrative. Sally Horner was aged 11 when she was put on a bus to Atlantic CIty by her mother Ella by the behest of Frank LaSalle. Ella had never met the man, just speaking briefly on the phone with him, as he told her that he was taking a vacation with his wife and children and had room for Little Sally to come along. Upon dropping Sally off at the train station, she didn’t see any family around the middle aged man, nor did he come out to greet her. Ella would not see Sally until 21 months later.

The link between the work and the case has been talked about previously in a number of news articles and magazines, however this book seems to be the only real account of the life of Sally Horner told by documents and accounts told by friends and relatives. 

The chapters hop back and forth between the account of Sally’s abduction and abuse and the writing and subsequent publication of Lolita, as well as the adamant refusal to give credence to the claims of his pilfering of the true story for his novel.

This was extremely well written. Weinman told Sally’s story with reverence and tact. The issues with publication detailed in the book could have been left out. The reason being that it had nothing to do with the content of the book. 

Here is where I disagree and am confused by Weinman’s line of logic. By her own research and admission, Nabokov started writing about inappropriate relationships before he emigrated to America. In fact, he started writing Lolita before Sally Horner was even taken in 1948. It’s interesting to me that the question posed and the answers given both err on the side of conspiracy.

Is the point of the book to give Sally a voice because her life was cut so short after such a brutal and harrowing experience? Well, no because there isn’t much to garner from the media from that time and most of the people with first hand accounts are dead. 

Or is the point to demonize Nabokov for writing a book like Lolita? 

In the last few chapters, Weinman makes the point that without a book like Lolita, there wouldn’t have been the popular culture perversion of grown women dressing up in baby doll clothing. I would pose the question: without lolita, would we be as aware of sexual predators in our society? By talking about this, Nabokov gave a voice to something sick and perverse but also told the world that there are people like that in our world.

Is it Nabokov’s fault that pop culture took the book at face value and ascribed sexuality to children instead of seeing the issues with it?

I have heard that I should read Rust and Stardust for a more fleshed out account of Sally Horner’s life, fictitious as it is. 

What do you think about true crime books? What are some of your favorites? 

Rant Review | The Layover by David Bell

⭐⭐⭐

The Layover by David Bell is about a corporate monkey on the hamster wheel, who meets a woman and immediately is taken in by the mystery of her. They kiss in an airport bar and he is so struck by the experience, he decides to follow her. (Creepy stalker, I know…)

I saw this book a lot on bookstagram and literally picked it up because of that. I picked up Somebody’s Daughter a couple of months ago and I couldn’t get into it. (I tried the audio and the physical version.) When I finished The Layover, I was sitting in my home office, just baffled at the lunacy of the ending and what it meant for the whole book. I’m not going to spoil anything but it leaves much to be desired.

Because we are treated to Kimberly Givens, the female detective and Joshua’s perspective, this reads very much like a police procedural. One thing that makes this book unique from other procedurals is that we are given a sneak peek of Joshua’s fate from the first page (prologue) and then thrusted back into his mundane existence. It does its job of reeling you in.

The reason I don’t like this book is the overarching manic pixie dream girl trope. Morgan is a mysterious beautiful woman who sweeps Joshua off of his feet and he is taken aback by her. He mistakes her aloof nature for uniqueness and chases her around the country. This book as much as Bell tries to convince us is about Morgan is really about Joshua. We are given bits and pieces of her from other people’s conversations and thoughts. There is no question that this experience changes him, but would he even be on that adventure if he had anything else better to do? No.

The writing was very fast paced, however at times, it felt repetitive. There were multiple instances where we are inside Joshua’s head while he grapples with a decision and then does the opposite of what he should do (what a reasonable person would do). Kimberly’s sections didn’t sound much different than Joshua. The only difference I detected was when she has internal discussions about what she would say but doesn’t or reflects on what she has said and how it will be perceived by the people around her.

The plot is predicated on bad decisions and coincidences. The questions that I was left with once I finished the book were never answered. The twist that was supposed to come as a big reveal, wasn’t that big of a reveal. There were more interesting ways that this could have gone down. 

Joshua is the stupidest, self entitled jerk on the planet. I don’t say this lightly. If a woman goes out of her way to avoid you and tell you to leave her alone, leave her alone. Every decision that he makes is against Morgan’s wishes. He is trying to save her from herself, WITHOUT KNOWING HER AT ALL. He repeats his father’s mantra to “play things close to the vest” but doesn’t actually do that. He is having an existential crisis because he’s afraid of flying and got a job straight out of college and his father paid for his education. “He doesn’t know what to do with his life”.

Dude, get a hobby.

This character was not relatable. The amount of times he mentions that he has plenty of money and frequent flyer miles is just ridiculous. I didn’t understand his motivations, I didn’t like the way he just pushed his way into someone else’s business. He reminds me of Joe from YOU.

Kimberly Givens is the divorced single parent who actually gets along with her ex-husband. She has a good relationship with her daughter and that’s all the character development that we get for her. She is looking at a promotion to chief for more stable hours. I appreciate that she was written the way a male detective would have been written, except for the fact, again, she is a shallow character.

My favorite character was actually the janitor from the hotel that Joshua stays at. He is the most relatable person. He’s honest, helpful and is built into the kind of sidekick that you want to have. I would have been happy if he went along for the ride.

The book was set in a small town in Kentucky. It was very interesting to read about the abandoned amusement park in the town and the loss of service on a country road. It is not very often when I read about that. 

In the end, I think the author was trying to comment on family and work relations. There is a father and son who work together but don’t take the time to really talk to each other. There is a mother who loves her job but is torn in two because of her responsibilities to her child. There is a mother daughter relationship where the mother would do anything for her child and that child’s work. The brothers who fall out because one excludes the other from their business. The intermingling of work and family is something we all come across in daily life but it isn’t something explored in books very often. 

Because of the book’s fast paced nature and the fantastical nature of the plot, this would be a good read on a day off or if you enjoy being frustrated, because I was…A LOT. 

3 stars.