Tag: fiction

On a Roll with My 2024 Reading!

Published on by Christine GabriélleLeave a comment

I’ve finished more books in the first two months of this year than all of last year!

To be fair, I’ve incorporated some audiobooks, which are consumed much more quickly, and have mostly been used as my method to finish the books I’ve struggled to get through the past couple of years.

Still, when I think about the fact that I only finished 5 books last year, it makes me reflect on how stressed my brain must’ve been.

You see, reading is relaxing to me. Reading is indulgent and soothing, and it takes me setting aside time to sit still and clear my mind in order to enjoy a book. A lack of reading, for me, indicates an overactive, stressed, and unfocused mind. Either I’m busy or I’m anxious, and I know last year wasn’t a terribly busy year.

Having read and listened to so many books in the short period of time since the year started, means my mind has been experiencing more peace and I love that for me! Also, I think my small group’s little book chat has been a positive influence.

I’ve got 7 more books on my TBR shelf in my office (as of writing this), 5 of which I want to read this year. There are also additional books on my TBR list in my phone—mostly more Michael Crichton titles.

I feel really good about how my reading is going so far this year, and I hope it continues in this fashion. We’ll see how the year shapes up!

How are your reading goals going? Have you read more or less than you thought you would thus far? If less, what’s hindering you? If more, what’s fueling you? I’d love to know!

Until next time… Happy Reading!

🖤

Maria Romasco-Moore – Some Kind of Animal

Published on by Christine GabriélleLeave a comment

When I read the blurb for this book while standing in the empty aisle of a Dollar Tree, I thought it would have a sci-fi quality to it.

Mentions of a mother being “wild,” a sister who “lives in the woods” and eats rabbits raw, meeting with the sister at night to “run, fearlessly,” the sister who “attacks a boy from town,” and you can see why I thought this was a story about werewolves.

Spoiler alert: it wasn’t.

Was I disappointed that there was no shapeshifting under the full moon? Absolutely. Was I still nervously anticipating how the story would end? Absolutely!

While this wasn’t a story about wolf-human hybrids, it was a story about secrets, misunderstandings, family dynamics, and a feral twin sister that no one believed the main character had.

Jo, the main character (named after her mother, Jolene), was delivered to her grandmother’s front door the moment she was born. Her mother was dead. Killed, the locals suspected, by her now-imprisoned boyfriend (and suspected impregnator) who’d always had a bit of a temper and his brother who was subsequently run out of town.

When Jo was five, a girl appeared outside her bedroom window. A girl that looked just like her. She told her grandmother, and her grandmother told her she was lying. Everyone, from that moment until she was a teenager, told her she was lying about having a twin.

Jo would frequently go outside to meet her sister in the woods, where she lived. Now, who’d allow a single-digit child to wander through the woods alone at night is beyond me, but that’s how the story goes. Jo would bring her sister, who she called “Lee” (from the other half of “Jolene”), clothes and snacks and then spend hours running with her through the woods. But Lee never wanted to come inside, never wanted to meet Jo’s family or friends, never wanted to not be a wild child.

One night, as teenage Jo was kissing her crush on a bridge, Lee attacked. Maybe she thought he was hurting her sister, maybe she was jealous because Jo’d told her she couldn’t spend as much time with her at night anymore, but she took a chunk out of the kid with a bad heart and left Jo with a festering bite on her arm for trying to defend him.

There’s a pastor secretly sleeping with Jo’s aunt, who Jo lives with above the bar her aunt runs. There’s Jo’s best friend, Savannah, who is deliberately falling into the arms of the older brother of Jo’s crush who her sister attacked. There’s forced church attendance, a lady with an obsession with birds, a mother with a drug habit, a grandmother with an anger habit, running away, being stalked in a Walmart, camping out in the woods, actual murder, and a loving reunion to wrap it with a bow.

This wasn’t a book I couldn’t put down, but I enjoyed this one. Really. Couldn’t for the life of me predict how it was going to end (which is a good thing), but it held my attention, and I looked forward to reading whenever I picked it up.

It was a decent Dollar Tree read, though, and I hope it will find a good home after I donate it to my local thrift store.

Read anything good lately? How’s your 2024 reading list coming along? Let me know!

🖤

Listen to What You Don’t Want to Read (How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents)

Published on by Christine GabriélleLeave a comment

By now, you know that I’ve recently gotten into audiobooks. Turns out, it inspired a new motto:

Listen to what you don’t want to read.

I had the most difficult time getting through How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. I’ve enjoyed some of Julia Alvarez’s other work, but this one was tough. From the character switching (four sisters, mami, papi, Chucha etc.) to the timeline switching (past, present, past-past, just before present) to the (seemingly) random stories being told throughout each chapter, it just wasn’t cohesive enough for my brain.

I still don’t know what the book was about other than the girls and their parents moved to the U.S. because the Dominican police were after their father. There were stories in between that I don’t remember being resolved (what happened with the doctor’s wife who kissed their dad at the restaurant?).

In the past year or two, I’d only gotten halfway through this book. It wasn’t relaxing or indulgent and I was reading it just because I’d started it and wanted to finish it. But I realized after my recent discovery of the joy of audiobooks that I didn’t have to read the rest of it; I could listen to it!

I immediately borrowed the audiobook from my local library and found I only had 2.5 hours left of the book (since I was already halfway through). That 2.5 hours still took me four days to listen to, and that’s how I knew for sure that this just wasn’t my kind of book. Even listening to it was difficult.

But I did get through it! I got to the end, still with no comprehension of the events or the purpose, but I finished the book.

Now I know to listen to books I don’t want to read but still want to finish. Even books I haven’t yet started. If it sounds like something I don’t necessarily think I’ll enjoy, but want to get through the content or story, I can just listen to it.

Yay for delayed revelations!

(I totally believe things come to you when you need them.)

The Source of Self-Regard is next on the list. I am actually reading this one. It’s a collection of essays, speeches, and such by Toni Morrison. I’m reading for interest and education, not for excitement and escapism, so I don’t feel a need to rush through it.

I’ve also got a bunch more Michael Crichton titles I’d like to read, but I want to get through my primary TBR list first. I’m getting there!

How far into your 2024 TBR list have you gotten? Have you enjoyed one book more than others you’ve read? Are you reading them or listening to them? Give me the good stuff!

Happy Reading!

🖤