Review: Talking As Fast As I Can

I stumbled upon Gilmore Girls as a teenager and it became Our Show. The show my mom and I watched together, every day/week, through six seasons (my mom never quite made it through season 7). With the comeback of AYITL (:A Year in the Life) and my beloved Gilmore Guys podcast, I heard about Lauren Graham's memoir, read a couple pages while standing in Barnes & Noble, and had to have it.

My history of reading celebrity-penned memoirs is a bit hit-and-miss. They all seem entertaining enough, interesting enough to pass the time. Disappointing in proportion to how excited about the book I was, or how much I like the celebrity in question. I haven't read many, but the ones I have read are decent. And it's not that Lauren Graham's book was leaps and bounds ahead of the others but... parts of it was? Her collection of essays -- about acting, about her childhood, about her personal life, about writing -- are for the most part well-written (sometimes amazingly well-written). Some chapters were more interesting to me and some were less interesting.

It's hard to review this book. Lauren Graham is a good writer and an interesting person, and while I found her notes on the filming of Gilmore Girls mostly real boring, the parts about her boyfriend, about her pre-acting and beginning acting years, about her writing, ranged from oh, this is good to this is incredible!!!!

Wishlist

I recently took a fun Barnes & Noble trip, and since I'm currently/always super broke, not to mention the massive stack of to-be-read books I already have, I instead made a list of the books I want.

Abandoned Books: Bubble World

I'd been excited to read Carol Snow's Bubble World for quite a while (maybe since it came out). It sounded like the perfect-for-me mix of superficial and sciencey. Unfortunately, it was a lot more A LOT MORE superficial than science and I just couldn't put up with it past page 60. I did flip ahead and read some spoiler-y reviews to find out what happens, but nothing made me want to continue it.

Question to readers: Have you read this book? Have you finished this book? What did you think of it?

YA Things That Bother Me: A List

• The "best friends" who are so obviously in love with each other but, like, everyone knows but them. Ha. Hahaha. Please.
• Insta-love. Dear universe, this is as annoying in books as it is in real life. Probably if you're one of the people it's less annoying, but for every single onlooker it's the worst.
• The best friends who've known each other THEIR WHOLE ENTIRE LIVES. They took baths together! Their mothers are best friends! (Please, let me know if you've known your BFF your entire life. Is this a real thing? That really happens?)
• The best friends where one is an introverted bookworm and the other is the party girl who's prettier and more popular. 

Friends, what am I missing?

Review: Galgorithm / You Me Us

I have a fair amount of thoughts on this book, Galgorithm. Starting with An Abundance of Katherines I'm kind of a sucker for books where people discover (or try to discover) the formula for love, so the premise of this one - a high school boy who uses his advanced, mathematical understanding of How Girls Work to help his lovelorn compadres capture the girl of their dreams - was perfect for me. Very Hitch-esque.

The cover here is kind of goofy, as is the title, so I wasn't honestly expecting too much from this book. But it was funny! And it was sweet! And it had a few quotable lines! ("I'm feeling a lot of feelings right now, and it's weird.") It was a bit predictable and I never fully felt the core romance between Shane and his female BFF, Jak, but I went with it. Shane was a relatable, slightly-quirky main character, his friendship with Jak was always pretty great (I bought their friendship, it was just the requisite more-than-friends feelings that I had some trouble with), and the various romantic entanglements of his clients were entertaining. I won't lie; this book had me hooked. It's not one I'll return to again and again, but I had a hard time putting it down. And considering the luck I've had with books this year, that's a win.

Note that this book is published as an ebook under the (much better) title You Me Us, and I'm wondering if it might come out in paperback with that title also?

Not Quite A Review: Murder is Bad Manners

This year, for me, reading- and other-wise, has not been great. Is it time for us to light 2016 on fire and wave goodbye just yet? No? Okay. A few more weeks.

Well. In the midst of this year where I read a whole ten books, oh my god, try to hold back your applause for that ASTOUNDING NUMBER (yeah, sorry, the sarcasm is heavy tonight) -- anyway. In the midst of this year, I did discover a little beauty. A gem in the middle of all this madness.

Murder is Bad Manners, the first in a middle grade cosy mystery series by Robin Stevens. On a whim I found and bought this and the second book in the series earlier this year. Now, as with so many wonderful books, these seem to be originally published overseas, which means I don't know if I can actually find the remaining however-many in the series here in the United States. (If anyone knows, LET ME KNOW, although I'm sure finding out online shouldn't be too goshdarn difficult.)

Anyway, back to the book. It's cute. It's charming. It's slightly-creepy. It's murderous. It's lovable. Set in a British boarding school, I wish I could leap RIGHT INTO this book. Yes, even with that nasty business about the murder happening. The second in the series (Poison is Not Polite) is sitting on my shelf right now, just waiting for the perfect moment to be read. I'm thinking later in the winter, during a snowstorm hopefully.

missing you.

I miss blogging. It's been nearly a year and blogging takes time that honestly I don't really have. But I miss it. And as the end of the year draws nearer, I'm thinking about what I've read this year (not much, honestly) and wanting to make some lists for next year. Books I'm looking forward to. Books I didn't get to this year. Etc.