Me and Earl and The Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews [Little Shop of Stories]
Recommended by my daughter, I’m not really sure what to think about this one. The main character is a bit of an anti-hero. It’s not sappy, for sure. Perhaps it’s best described as an honest tale about being a kid when things get real.
Everything Scrabble by Edley, Joe, Williams, John, Gallery Books
At the beginning of the pandemic, I tried playing Scrabble online with folks. I got stomped. Just crushed.
I’m not a Scrabble officianado. I enjoy the game, but I haven’t played in decades, and I had no idea what a “bingo” was.
So I read up, started practicing, and now I can confidently say I am no better, but now I know what a “bingo” is.
The Glass Hotel By Emily St. John Mandel
By the author of Station 11, which was fantastic.
This was a fine read. It had a story, but felt more like a collection of character sketches. I don’t mean that in necessarily a bad way, I stayed engaged throughout. The ending got a bit supernatural for my taste, in what was otherwise a very grounded novel.
The plot involves a Madoff-like Ponzi scheme and an isolated hotel, and the characters that inhabit both.
Worth a read, but try Station 11 first.
I liked it well enough to try some of her other works.
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe: A Novel by Charles Yu
This is fine.
Definitely melancholic, and there’s interesting worldbuilding with a blur between time travel and inhabiting fictional universes, but father issues aren’t my topic of choice.