September Mid-Month Update
How the hell is it halfway through September? That's bananas. Since it is the midpoint of the month, I'll wrap up the books I've read so far this month.
Sunrise Nights by Jeff Zentner and Brittany Cavallero - I finished this bad boy in 2 days. It's 400 pages, but a bunch of them are poems. It was an interesting way to tell the story. The story is told by the two main characters. Jude is a photographer who is at this fancy arts camp, but he hasn't really made any friends. Florence is at the camp for ballet, but she has nystigma which means she is losing her sight and her balance. She won't be dancing for much longer. The story is set over 3 summers at this camp. The first summer they meet and get close, but Jude has a girlfriend. They agree to not speak or communicate at all for the next year. The second summer, Florence has a boyfriend. Then there is an incident where they almost kiss, but then Florence has to call her boyfriend. Jude thinks she is running away from him, so he disappears. Sunrise Nights refers to the last night of the camp when the campers get to go into town unsupervised or do whatever all night. They just have to check in at the camp at certain times. They meet the first time at the first Sunrise Night and spend the whole night hanging out. I enjoyed the characters a lot. The writing was interesting. I love Jeff Zentner already. The plot was... something. Like, who turns a boatload of teenagers loose all night with no adults. Sounds like a terrible idea.
A Business Proposal by Narak - Somebody on BookTube talked about this, so I nabbed it from the library. Hari is an office worker in a large Korean corporation. The office is looking forward to the arrival of the new CEO. Her wealthy best friend is the daughter of the CEO of a different business. Her father sets her up on a blind date with the CEO of Hari's corp, but she's sick of these blind dates. She pays Hari to dress up and pretend to be her for the blind date and act like a complete freak on the date, so he'll run screaming. Unbeknownst to them, the CEO's grandfather is doing the same thing to him, so he says, "I'm going to marry this girl, whoever she is." Sure enough, he asks Hari to marry him, thinking she's her friend. There is this whole mistaken identity thing. At the end of this volume, the CEO knows it wasn't the woman he thought at the blind date, but he doesn't care. He wants to marry the girl he went out with. He DOESN'T know it's the same mousy girl he runs into on the elevator all the time. It was cute. We'll see if I read any more in the series. I'm kind of indifferent.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte - This took me a hot minute to read. It's told by Gilbert, who is writing a letter to a friend to tell this story. When he was younger, a young widow with a small boy moved to the nearly ruined house in the area. The owner had been fixing it up a little and rented it to her. She keeps to herself and soon the rumors start to fly that she isn't a widow after all, or she killed her husband, or she's having an affair with her landlord. Gilbert staunchly defends her against everyone (he's in love, obviously), but when he sees her in her garden with the landlord and he puts his arm around her waist, he accuses her himself. She hands him a book and tells him to shove off. It's her diary. So now we are reading her diary of her marriage. It was 200 pages of diary. Oof. Shortly after he reads her diary, she moves away from the area and he doesn't know where she's gone. It's very gothic and Victorian. I liked it okay, but it wasn't as dramatic as Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights. I like Jane Eyre. I don't like WH.
Chronicles of My Alien Invasion Life by Jes McCutchen - This is the author I'm having come visit next month and I felt like I should be familiar with her work before she comes. In this one, five kids are hanging out at a quarry when one of them jumps through a portal and disappears. One of them saw it, but no one else believes them. Finally, one of them figures out that it was aliens and rigs a way to contact the friend. Eventually three of the four kids go through portals and end up in outer space with aliens. They are trying to stop the evil aliens who want to blow up Earth. It's a pretty good time. Way better than the space aliens sci-fi I picked up after it.
Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid - This has been sitting on my shelves for a coon's age. Finally, a friend said it's the only book she's ever annotated, so I decided to use it for the "read a friend's favorite book" challenge. I started it and read 100 pages in a sitting. I finished the other 2/3 of it in one day. It is about a fictional band from the 70s who put together one smash album and then broke up. It's told like an interview for like a magazine from decades later. Each person shares their perspective on the situation. It was fascinating. It is loosely based on Fleetwood Mac. There was a movie made of the book, or a TV show. I can't remember. Anyway, there was also a CD made of all the "songs" from the album, for the movie. Such a weird phenomenon.
5 books in 2 weeks isn't too shabby. Now watch. I'll probably not finish another book all month. Sigh.