How did I finish all of these books?! | June 2022 Wrap Up

I think this is a really well-done, really fascinating memoir. I definitely recommend it.

Election is a satire of the New Jersey suburbs, and in it we see teachers and students somewhat, but mainly teachers, behaving atrociously during a campaign for student body president, and I didn't love it, but I thought it effectively sent a message, which is why I was very confused when I began reading Tracy Flick Can't Win, which shows the former high school student all grown up working as the vice principal at a different high school looking to take on the main principal job, finally.

I read the new release from Linda Holmes, who is the author of Evvie Drake Starts Over, which was one of my favorite fiction books last year. I feel like the pace in Evvie Drake was slow, but in a way where it felt relaxing.

Now, I understand that was meant to give context, which I do think is necessary to a degree, but I think it actually overwhelmed the story of this plastic surgeon and his patients, which is what I came into this book hoping to read about. So it was a little bit disappointing. It had its good moments when I actually got to read about the plastic surgeon and the men who received the surgeries.

Just like with Evvie Drake Starts Over, I really liked the writing in this book. I thought it was really fun to read. So, this was fun while I was reading it, but it's not all that memorable.

I thought parts of it were really interesting, but unfortunately, those were the parts that Meg Wolitzer decided to speed right past, and instead she lingered on the most uninteresting parts in this book. I thought this book was just one giant missed opportunity.

And this is essentially a feminist manifesto in which the author makes the case that we need to be hearing the voices of rural women, of women who live and work in the countryside. I thought it was really powerful, though I did notice one pretty big thing was missing from this book.

I also didn't care much for Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O'Neill, which was very surprising because Heather O'Neill's latest book is one of my favorite books of the year so far, but I think I just am not the biggest fan of child narrators, and because this book is very character focused and it is hyper-focused on that child narrator, I just couldn't connect with this one. I just didn't enjoy this.

Some of these pieces I was totally hooked by. I never wanted them to end. And others I found to be rather boring, actually.

This is my all-time favorite book. I reread it every single June, and just in case you don't know what this is about, it's about our main character Katey Content. I read a lot of books, as you can see on this channel, and yet none of them even come close to the way this book affects me.

But during I would say maybe the first third of this book, I wasn't even sure I liked it. So overall, I thought this was really informative, definitely well-written. He's a master storyteller, but I preferred Empire of Pain.

This was such a wonderful surprise. I had no idea how I was going to feel about this one, and I really, really enjoyed it.

I was confused by Tracy Flick Can't Win because not only is the character of Tracy Flick completely unrecognizable in this sequel, but it also seems like he wrote it for the sole purpose of apologizing for Election, which was a satire. I thought it was horrible for several different reasons, just completely unnecessary.