Good morning, fellow book lovers! I'm posting again on this weekly update meme hosted by Sheila at BookJourney. I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving and a pleasant long weekend with plenty of time for reading a good book.
Here's the book I'm reading right now . . .
Fourth of July Creek, the debut novel from Smith Henderson, is absorbing and beautifully written. The plot concerns a social worker living in rural Montana in the early 1980s. He becomes involved in the lives of a family of survivalists, while his own personal life starts to come apart. This is one of those "glowingly reviewed" literary fiction releases from 2014 that I wanted to read, but somehow overlooked or simply did not yet get a chance to tackle. I have been trying to read a few of those books in these last weeks of 2014.
As part of that effort, here are three other stand-out fiction titles from 2014 that I have read in the past week and a half:
All three of these were very good reads, but I was especially taken with Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See--now that is a wonderful novel! I will post some more detailed thoughts on these soon, and some of them may make it onto my Best of 2014 list.
I didn't post a lot on my blog last week, given the busy hustle and bustle of Thanksgiving in my household. But you can find these new posts from me:
My November 2014 Reading Wrap-Up
My review of The Clever Mill Horse by Jodi Lew-Smith
What's on your reading agenda for this week?
Oh, I like the look of quite a few of the books you've been reading!
ReplyDeleteI hadn't heard of Fourth of July Creek though!
It's a really compelling book! Definitely deserves a read if you like literary fiction.
DeleteIf you've got Everything up there with Light and Florence, then I'm off to add it to my wish list...I loved both of those.
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Well, I'm scurrying to read all those novels that bloggers championed throughout the year . . .a very pleasant task, because they are all quite good! All the Light is going to be one of my favorites, definitely.
DeleteI have to admit that the cover of All the Light We Cannot See really stands out to me! Will have to look into it! Thanks for sharing and hope you have a great reading week! :)
ReplyDeleteHere’s my Monday!
All the Light is really a great novel, and likely to wind up as one of my favorites for the year! Highly recommend it.
DeleteYou have four of my favorites on you post today - glad to hear you enjoyed them! Really looking forward to hearing more of your thoughts on All the Light We Cannot See, too...I know some people thought it was slow, but I could hardly put it down.
ReplyDeleteOh gosh, I loved All the Light!. I didn't think it was slow at all. That's interesting some people had that reaction; I must've only read the positive reviews. Ok, I have been Ms. Procrastination on reviews, but I need to post a review of it!
DeleteLove the idea of trying to get a few more standouts read before the end of the year! I'm expecting a slow reading month, but would like to try to read All the Light We Cannot See before January.
ReplyDeleteIt's a good one! At least, I thought so--definitely going to be one of my top ten for the year! I'm trying to decide if there are any more "must-read" titles out there for me before the year ends. But then, at some point, decorating/wrapping/baking/socializing is going to take up my reading time!
DeleteHaha - you and I are in the middle of the same project and are reading many of the same books!! I just finished An Untamed State and just restarted Florence Gordon last night. All the Light We Cannot See is up next (I was trying to fly through some shorter ones first, but looks like I'll have time for this one after all).
ReplyDeleteI"m trying to figure out if there are any more "must read" novels for me! I know I'm soon going to get distracted by holiday stuff, so I'm just trying to cram them all in!
DeleteI loved All the Light We Cannot See and Florence Gordon is one of those 2014 releases I haven't had the chance to read yet!
ReplyDeleteHave a great week and I hope you love Fourth of July Creek!
I am really having a hard time putting it down! Very gripping.
DeleteThese are all new to me. I seldom read literary fiction. I'm glad that you enjoyed them. Come see my week. Happy reading!
ReplyDeleteOh, my favorite genre is always literary fiction. I do try other things, but I always come back to it. :)
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