I’m running behind a little bit. Maybe it’s my advancing age, or maybe I’m just noticing it more today than usual on the eve of another birthday. In order to do some catch up I’m doing a double book note.
I just finished book 29 of the year and the pace is a little faster than it has been in previous years. I don’t post about every book for a variety of reasons, including that there I some where I don’t have anything to say about them and some where I’m not sure what I want to say.
The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell. Mystery over time. It had lots of characters but did not take a lot of brain power to follow along and it was entertaining. This book was a 7 and I’m pretty sure this was popular a year or two back. If I use a finer scale this would have been a 6+ or a 7- partly because my reads this year have been pretty strong. Mainly though, it’s because the first Lisa Jewell book I read (in 2022) Then She Was Gone was a really strong book. Solid 8, but not a happy read. The Family Upstairs is a recommend. Then She Was Gone is a recommend if you are looking for a dark story, but if you are a person that reads trigger warnings I suggest you follow the advice given on the first line of the masterpiece book House of Leaves: “This is not for you”.
House of Leaves by Zampano / Mark Z. Danielewski was a great book. I finished this in 2020 and gave it a 7. This is a strange one because I think of this book now as a 9+. What I didn’t realize at the time I read it is that this book has a rare mental stickiness. It’s been 3 years and I still thing about it. House of Leaves is frustrating and intimidating to read and would be impossible to read on an ebook but the whole thing works. I’m unsure how to describe what this book is about and I have no blanket recommendation on if you should read it or not.
Anyway on to the 2nd of my (intended) book notes, All The Dangerous Things by Stacy Willingham. I rated it a 7, with good writing and good characters and a story where I did not guess the ending. This could have been an 8. This book was a mystery with some psychological uncertainty and I enjoyed it. The pace was very good. So why not an 8? Because This Thing Between Us which I read earlier this year, set a very high bar for ‘uneasy’ books and All The Dangerous Things was leans into unease. I recommend this book and thank the random internet person who brought this one to my attention.
Maybe it’s birthday reflection, but one of the things I notice with age is connections become clearer and these book notes are a good example. I can no longer successfully measure a book on its own merit; I’ve read enough and thought enough that everything gets measured in comparison to its peers. ‘This’ book is similar to ‘that’ book, so the merit of ‘this’ book can only be assessed in comparison to ‘that’ book, or ‘those’ books. It happens with more than just books. It happens enough that I’m unsure if the ‘things’, the books in this case, or the connections hold the real value.