What I've Been Reading

For my birthday this year, I got this Moleskine book journal as a present.
I’ve decided to use it to keep track of memorable reads, the ones that stay with me long after I’ve finished the book, ones that make me wish I’d thought to mark the passages that touched me, because I can’t find them again, ones that made me wish I’d been the one to write them. I’m not going to bother with the meh, the forgettable, or the awful. Well, maybe the ones bad enough to make me want to throw the book against a wall. Could be fun to rant about those, at least privately. We’ll see.

If a book is worthy of a spot in the Moleskine, I figure it’s worth sharing with you. I’ve had the journal for a month, and already it has two entries. Not bad at all, after a run of books I can’t even remember reading.

First up is The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriarty. Liane first grabbed my attention with her What Alice Forgot. I’ve not yet read any of her other titles, but I thoroughly enjoyed Alice, and when I saw this new one in the bookstore on my birthday, I treated myself to the hardcover. It took me a little longer to get into this one than I’d hoped, because there are a number of POV characters and it took me awhile to get them all sorted out. But it was worthwhile persevering. Moriarty is very good at creating seriously flawed characters and making me care about them. Her books don’t shy away from the sometimes ugly truth of the choices we make and the things we’ll do to protect our families, and her characters are all the more real for it.

The best book I’ve read in a long time came to me as a recommendation from Nephele Tempest. I took it out of the library, and as soon as I finished it, knew I’d have to go and buy it to have it on my keeper shelves. Letters from Skye, by Jessica Brockmole, left me in tears. It’s a lovely epistolary novel set in both world wars, by turns lyrical, touching, and very real. I wish I’d written it. It’s definitely my favourite epistolary novel since I read Helene Hanff’s 84 Charing Cross Road a couple of decades ago.

Happy Friday. Heading into the craziness that is SiWC next week. See you on the other side!