Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Showin' My Books - Revenge of the JOTAN

** JOTAN = Jumping of Time and Narration. I've never seen this acronym, so I'm claiming it as my own.



I often have two books going at a time: one audiobook to listen to in the car or at the gym, and one that I'm actively reading, either by e-reader or "real" book. It can sometimes get a little confusing, and this month it got super confusing.

While reading The Good Girl by Mary Kubica, I was listening to The Widow by Fiona Barton for my real life book club. I've made a handy dandy chart to show you why shit got crazy between these two:

The victim in The Widow is a toddler named Bella while in The Good Girl she's named Mia and is in her 20s. (Side note, I originally typed those in backwards -- I'm telling you, this all messed with my mind and made me realize I need to be more careful about the style of books I read simultaneously.)

I liked both books. The Widow left me with a lot of questions. My book club is actually scheduled to discuss it tonight and I may end up getting a copy from the library just to clarify some things I may have missed in the audio.

In The Good Girl, the time jumps between before Mia comes back home and after (this is not a spoiler - you know by chapter 3-ish that she comes home). As it got closer to the time of her return, I could picture it as a movie bouncing between the cops closing in on her kidnapper and Mia revisiting the site of her captivity. I was NOT expecting the ending.



Now on to two books that I absolutely loved.

The Light of the Fireflies by Paul Pen - I didn't know until after I read this that Paul Pen is Spanish and the book was translated. It's his second novel, but the first hasn't yet been translated to English. This is another book in which none of the characters have names, which normally drives me crazy but didn't bother me here. It reminded me of The Compound by S.A. Bodeen, which I read several years ago and also highly recommend.


Please Don't Come Back From the Moon by Dean Bakopolous - This got moved up on my list because of The Armchair Librarians' podcast and Jana's deep love of all things Bakopolous. I read this in two days. It's not flashy, it's not suspenseful, it's just a beautifully written, poignant story. I borrowed it from the library but I will likely buy it.


What are you reading?


Linking up with Steph and Jana



Life According to Steph



9 comments:

  1. i'm glad you loved please don't come back from the moon, it is on my list because of jana as well. and i am always listening/reading to multiple books and they have to be super different because otherwise i get confused haha so i totally know where you're coming from there.

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  2. I am intrigued by The Compound now. I added that to my list. ha

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  3. hahahaha...I read The Good Girl and I know EXACTLY what you're talking about. In fact, I haven't felt the need to read any of Kubica's other books.

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  4. I would have had a hard time separating the two books too. Both of those books are already on my TBR, and I will remember not to read them simultaneously. :) I'm adding Please Don't Come Back from The Moon to my TBR. Jana raves about Dean Bakopolous all the time and I need to read something by him.

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  5. I can never juggle two books at the same time. You are just proving to me why.
    Moon is exactly as you described.
    Fireflies has been selected by a few book challengers. I'm intrigued.

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  6. I would have definitely been pretty confused by those first two at the same time, haha.

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  7. I read Don't You Cry by Mary Kubica and really enjoyed it. I would like to read The Good Girl, but not at the same time as another missing girl mystery haha.

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  8. It sounds like I need to read Bakopolous since I've seen it floating around and have never heard of him. I would most certainly gotten confused between those two books. I've had it happen to me before and they weren't as close as yours.

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