What I read in August

It was a slow reading month.  I've been delightfully distracted by real life and many things have fallen to the side while I enjoy it.  #notsorry

I am refusing to start any more books until I finish the ones I've had in progress for more than a month... which means all of the ones I currently have listed as in progress.  It's motivating me because I have a stack of books to be read in the headboard and I RRREAAAALLLLYYY want to read them!

Rating scale:

1/5 - Hated it, didn't finish.
2/5 - Tolerated it on principle to finish, didn't like it.
3/5 - Eh, didn't love it, didn't hate it.  Had some good parts/kept me interested/finished it on principle.
4/5 - I liked it.
5/5 - I LURVED it and I'd read it again.

Skimmers, stick with the bold text (TL;DR* parts).


Redeployment by Phil Klay  4/5
As a non-combat vet, this book really resonated with me because I felt like I had heard some of these stories before from my combat experienced friends. I didn't realize that each chapter was going to be a different narrator, so I was initially confused by that. I had to take breaks from this book because some parts were very intense.  I struggled with some of the chapters because I felt like they were given more attention than others.  I would have been pleased if this story had continued from the perspective of the character from the first story.

TL;DR: Stories from people who have experienced combat/war-zones.  Can be very intense, vulgar, and depressing.  Worth a read if you want to know why war-time PTSD is such a big deal.


Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari  5/5
I LURVED THIS BOOK!!!  It was everything Spinster wasn't for me.  There was research presented in an entertaining yet informative way by Ansari.  I would have loved to do research like this in school.  It's a comm-major's wet dream, or at least this comm major.  This book is especially relevant to someone that has ever used online dating.  You get a look back at how people chose their significant other before the rise of the screen era and it is used as a comparison tool for today's society.

Essentially Ansari says what we should all be thinking.. don't rely on your screen to get to know someone.

TL;DR: A good book for those who have used online dating or for the lone single person with a group of married friends.  HAS SCIENCE AND RESEARCH and some Ansari one-liner humor, but mostly SCIENCE AND RESEARCH.
 See how I warned you there to NOT expect the comedy from the comedian??



How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti  -10/5
**Warning: If I could have given a book 0 stars on Goodreads, this wouldn't have been a low enough review for this book.  Rage-rant beginning now.**

The hours of life I lost reading this shit-nugget of a novel are hours I can never get back and I'm angry over it.  The only reason I even finished it is because I already was all, "Nope, fuck that." to the 100 Year Old Man book.  I couldn't quit TWO books.  I just couldn't.  I mean it couldn't be that bad.  Yeah, I need to stop lying to myself.  I need to embrace the quitter in me and loose less life to shitty books.

This book.  OMG this book was.. I don't even know the point of this fucking book.  I assumed from the title that we might explore PEOPLE and personalities and things that make people who they are.. and I guess there was some of that, if you take 50 steps back and scrutinize the book in a grasping for straws kind of way, aka trying to rationalize the life that you wasted enduring this fucking train wreck.

You have Sheila (the author/main character), ok cool.  She lives in Canada (eh!) and she has a group of artist friends.  Sheila has been commissioned to write a play for some group, whatever.  She's always talking about how she should be writing it, but doesn't really ever do so.  Great.  Real winner, Sheila.  Did I mention that Sheila is a fucking creeper?  She records all the conversations with her BFF so she can relisten to them and eventually uses them as part of her shitty play, kindaish.  Oh you're bored already?  Insert random fucked up sex scene with this dude who probably idolizes Christian Grey (I've never read 50SOG, so I'm just assuming).

So her painter friends decide to have this competition of who can make the ugliest painting and it apparently taints her friends' ability to create art.  These people seem overly sensitive to me, but no one asked me.  Then in the middle of the book for reasons that I've still yet to figure out but something related to recording her BFF and then basing her play on their conversations, Sheila is like fuck Canada, I'm going to free-load off an acquaintance in NYC, because that's where real artists are.  Oh none of this makes any sense?  Insert another fucked up sex scene where Mr-I-Idolize-Christian-Grey tells her to go sit in a restaurant with no underwear and flash her junk at old dudes, then write a letter to the dude while she's doing it telling him how hit makes her feel, then take the old man home and sex him.  She ends up flashing some kid and gets embarrassed (because ya know child sexual harassment is a thing) and never writes the letter (because she has a split second where she functions as an adult).

Then she feels guilty for deserting her BFF and decides to return to Canada, eh.  She stops in some shops and talks to some random old dude, or maybe that was still in NYC?  Idk, it had zero relevance to the story, which is ironic since none of anything I was reading seemed applicable to the "story," which I've yet to figure out what it actually was.  Eventually, she reconnects with her BFF and apologizes for using their conversations and BFF is like, fuck you but I love you don't leave me again.  Then they actually have the ugly painting competition and there is no decided "winner" so they decide to play squash to decide who the winner is and even then no one keeps score so no winner is ever determined.

TL;DR: DON'T READ THIS PIECE OF SHIT BOOK.  YOU WILL WASTE YOUR LIFE AND I WOULD NOT WANT THAT TO HAPPEN TO YOU.  I took one for the team this time.  If you do read it and like it, please, PLEEEAAASSSEEE tell me how/why.

In Progress:

• Guantanamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi  */5
• New Stories from the South 2001 by various (Shannon Ravenel)  */5
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson  */5
• My Nest Isn't Empty, It Just Has More Closet Space: The Amazing Adventures of an Ordinary Woman by Lisa Scottoline  */5

On Deck:

• What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty
• The Storied Life of AJ Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin
• Still Alice by Lisa Genova
• You by Caroline Kepnes

*TL;DR = too long, don't read