linneahbt's reviews
261 reviews

challenging emotional tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Harrowing and heart stopping and tense and so tender. Unspeakable trauma and the immeasurable love that carries you through it.

Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? by Lorrie Moore

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emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Nostalgic and bittersweet, this book feels like late September. Looking back at the warm and wild summer of youth from adulthood, so close you can almost taste it but at the same time you don't remember what it was like to ever be warm at all.

Arrangements in Blue: Notes on Loving and Living Alone by Amy Key

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Did not finish book. Stopped at 8%.

Beautiful but not for me right now.

Rocky Mountain Locust: Opus I, Trio by M.I. Lastman

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adventurous hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

Jim Easom wakes up, and everything is different. He is alone after a devastating pandemic. He sets out across Canada in an effort to build a new home. He finds Arch and Jenny and the unlikely trio learns how to survive immeasurable grief and find joy and reasons to keep moving, no matter what.

This is an environmental commentary on humanity's growing dependency on "stuff" and convenience at the cost of our precious planet. I'll admit at times it was a bit preachy but... not off the mark. Underneath that, though, is a sweet tale about found family.

This book was written and gifted to me by my kind friend and mentor who wrote himself into Jim Easom and left us before 2020. I wonder what he'd have to say now.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

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emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

There was something so eerie about this book, a love letter to a painfully beautiful earth and relationships and the ties that bind us. Five stories that were obviously connected but still so separate, weaving in and out of each other to build a world that was complete and still left questions. I really don't have sufficient words for how painful and lovely I found this.

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

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dark emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

A sweeping and heartbreaking and hopeful and grim look at poverty, addiction, failing and indifferent institutions and they way they shape a life. But also a look at the people who push through it and the impact of having someone, anyone, in your corner, and grit and survival.

Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez

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challenging informative reflective slow-paced

4.5

Super challenging and eye -opening. Having grown up and worked on the edges of this fascinating culture, I have observed and worried and assumed and misunderstood and understood all too clearly how evangelicalism turned from a faith tradition into something so different. Essential reading, I think.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

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dark mysterious reflective medium-paced