book ends

brief book reviews for the non-instagramer✒️

Hey guys, I really need to try to write more about books. I’ve got longer pieces on some meatier books I would really like to talk about, but the time to write them is eluding me, especially whilst I have many, many trays of plants to get in the ground. So I thought I’d just give some summations of what I’ve been reading lately because some of you good people eschew instagram and I applaud you for that!

The Sweet Spot by Amy Poeppel

This book starts out as a breezy story of three women in New York City brought together through a series of humorous, yet career ruining events. I liked the three different characters, all at different stages of life, coming with interesting houses and dysfunctional families. Is the secret to good chick lit a good house? I think so. But in the second half of the book where I was invested in seeing how one of the character’s dealt with her divorce, how another would try to resuscitate her career while helping with the kids of the third character, just got flushed down the drain with weird competing points of view that I did not care about. Sad—because a decent, light, chick lit read is so hard to come by.

Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn

I read this on vacation and this is definitely a vacation read. Think the movie Red with Helen Mirren and Bruce Willis but with more women. I enjoyed reading about women in their 60s who are retired assassins with varying specialty skills who have been friends for 40 years and have to come back together to save themselves from being eliminated by the organization they served for so long. It’s not the most original of spy plot lines, but it was entertaining and would be a great quick read for a flight or sitting by a pool.

The Diary of a Country Priest by Georges Bernanos

Confession: I’ve put off reading this book for years because it just sounded boring and daunting. A French book about the spiritual life of a priest in the nineteenth century? That could only spell tears of boredom. Or so I thought! This book is actually one of the most compelling novels about the spiritual life I’ve ever read. Both the life of a priest and the experience of a dark night of the soul are powerfully rendered in this novel. I loved the writing and am so glad I finally read it.

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest Gaines

A novel written as the memoir of a woman who grew up in slavery, witnessed Union soldiers riding through her plantation, survived in a post-war world, and how her life came to mean so much to her community and the civil rights movement in Louisiana. Ernest Gaines writing is so, so good. The insight that he brings in such a natural way through his characters is just expertly done. I loved how this story of a simple woman who impacts those around her brought up so many good questions about the nature of activism, change, and personal integrity. I really need to read everything Gaines wrote.

And those are some quick takes of what I’ve been reading lately. I read all of these in April and feel like my memory has gotten hazy. May brain cannot remember what happened in April. Let me know if you’ve read any of these and what you thought of them.