Ti | Book Chatter

Pool Side Gossip — Slim Aarons’ iconic Poolside Gossip as seen on the Glam Pad blog.

We haven’t had much of a winter here in Southern California but it doesn’t quite feel like spring either. It’s a little too cool in the mornings for it to feel like spring, but according to my calendar spring break is right around the corner and that means…

Reading. Movies. Eating.

See that photo above? I love the name of it, Poolside Gossip. I want to be one of those ladies and pretty soon, I’ll have my chance because Palm Desert is one of our destinations. I don’t think it’s very warm there and last week they had one heck of a wind storm but it’s nice to get away.

Part of the fun is choosing which books will go with me. I have a lot of good ones to choose from:

Spring Break Collage

The Martian by Andy Weir
The Painter by Peter Heller
A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami
The Vacationers by Emma Straub
Under a Summer Sky by Nan Rossiter
Up at Butternut Lake by Mary McNear
The Fever by Megan Abbott
Driftwood by Elizabeth Dutton

Never in my wildest dreams will all of these be read but I hope to get to at least two of them. I think two, is a realistic expectation and if I get to more, then that will be the the icing on the cake. That’s how I see it. I never know what mood I will be in while away so I have back-ups to choose from. Plus, I seem to like books about vacations, whenever I am ON vacation. Funny, huh?

Do you have any special reading plans coming up? If you need some reading motivation, Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon is just around the corner. I haven’t been able to participate properly in a couple of years but it’s always a lot of fun and a good way to go through your shelves and get those books read.

Anyway, off to begin my Friday. Friday at work, but hey… it’s Friday.

Life After Life
By Kate Atkinson
(Reagan Arthur Books, Hardcover, 9780316176484, April 2013, 544pp.)

The Short of It:

Interesting premise and at times, fluid, beautifully written passages but overall, one of the most frustrating reads I’ve read in years.

The Rest of It:

The story begins in 1930. Ursula Todd assassinates Hitler while he is sitting in a cafe in Munich and she dies in the process. Next, the story takes us back to 1910, the night of Ursula’s birth. Due to bad weather, the doctor is unable to attend her birth and the poor girl dies with the umbilical cord wrapped tightly around her neck. As Atkinson takes us back and forth through time, we see Ursula in various stages of life. Sometimes, she’s a child and ends up drowning in the ocean, other times…she’s older and as readers, we get to spend a little time with her family before tragedy strikes.

But tragedy does strike and over and over again, at that.

I really had a hard time with this one. The writing itself wasn’t bad. In fact, much of it is beautifully written but I didn’t care for Ursula all that much so seeing her die and come back so many times was a bit much for me. Oh, and it was long, which of course felt even longer with all of the back and forth going on.

The one thing that kept me reading is the idea that one small change can affect your life. That aspect of it was interesting to explore but it was ultimately lost within the structure of the novel itself.

My book club is discussing this book later this week. I’m interested in how the discussion will go because I feel as if I’ve spent so much time with it, that I don’t want to spend more time discussing it.

Have you read this one? What did you think of it?

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

Chatting with friends about books and life…