I kicked off my reading year with some odd circumstances – one night where I had insomnia and literally read three books, and then the rest of the month where I was too busy / stressed to read much. To hit my annual goal of reading 100 books, I should have read 8.5 books in January; I closed the month with 6. Honestly, with how much I’ve had going on, I’m happy with that!
5 stars:
Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber, by Mike Isaac: This was fascinating! I loved reading about the rise (and minor falls) of Uber, and feel like I gained a lot of insight to the Silicon Valley startup industry as a whole. Some good business lessons, and overall, a very interesting read.
We Were the Lucky Ones, by Georgia Hunter: Read this in one night and couldn’t put it down. I was horrified every step of the way and kind of afraid to keep reading, but it was a riveting story and one that needed to be told. The author’s postscript was amazing – can’t believe this is the real story of her family and that the outcomes of each character weren’t fictionalized.
4 stars:
The Two Lives of Lydia Bird, by Josie Silver: I was really excited about this book, but found that it was slower to start than One Day in December. However, by midway through, I was hooked, and had trouble putting it down. A beautiful romance about love lost!
Evvie Drake Starts Over, by Linda Holmes: As with The Two Lives of Lydia Bird, this started out a little slow. But as it picked up, I was really rooting for Evvie and the other characters. By the end, I was hooked!
2 stars:
A General Theory of Love, by Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, Richard Lannon : I had to read this for my office book club, and oh my gosh, what a slog. The first chapter was nearly unbearable – everything was so florid and verbose, it was like the authors tried to put as many analogies as possible in rather than just saying what they meant. The second chapter got more interesting, and I had high hopes it would get better, but then it was pretty dull the rest of the time. I was really disappointed by this book… very curious to hear what the rest of my book club thinks (and if anyone else bothered to finish).
The Modern “A” Frame Ski Technique, by Bill Hernon: Tiny little book that only took a few minutes to read. However, that unfortunately for me came at the expense of understanding what I was supposed to do. Although the writing was accompanied by photos, I wish the photos had been marked up to show exactly what I was supposed to be seeing – the text would tell me to see how something was pointed in a certain direction, but I couldn’t see that in the picture. Unfortunately, this didn’t help me understand the technique enough to apply it to my skiing.
Any book recommendations for me? Follow me here on Goodreads to keep up with what I’m reading in real time.