💬 Friday Thread: How Do You Feel About Star Ratings? & What Have You Read Recently?

Plus my recent reads + Friday LINKS!

Hello! Happy Friday everyone📚 I realized yesterday that I haven’t shared about some of the books I’ve read recently (all my Oct reads will be coming in next week’s audio), nor have I shared links lately which is something I love to do, so let’s remedy that today. I also want to ask you about star ratings because this is something I’ve been thinking more about lately and also having conversations with other readers behind the scenes. Let’s get to it!

Recent Reads

• The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich Bookshop.org

A story of love, natural forces, spiritual yearnings, and the tragic impact of uncontrollable circumstances on ordinary people’s lives.

This book is somewhat hard to summarize because it’s about the above but it’s also about so much more than that. The characters are interesting, nuanced, and struggling with LIFE. I’ll be honest, what caught my eye about this book long before it was published was the mention of a love triangle. I can never resist this element, and I knew this story was also about books and the environment. And it is all of those things, although the love triangle aspect fizzled for me by the end. I learned a lot from this story - the long term impact of herbicides and pesticides on our food supply for example- which is something I didn’t expect when I started. Overall, this was a mixed bag for me. I liked many of the characters and the mother/daughter storyline, but I also felt bored quite a bit and lost interest along the way to the end. I listened to about half of it, Marin Ireland does a good job, but I don’t tend to love her narration so I did switch to print

• The Most by Jessica Anthony Bookshop.org

This is about a 1950s American housewife who goes for a swim in her apartment complex's swimming pool one morning...and won't come out.

What an interesting story! And another book I have conflicting feelings about. I absolutely loved reading about this time period, the setting details and vibes of the 1950s were atmospheric. I enjoy a complicated marriage story and that certainly describes the marriage in this story. Something that is often hit or miss for me is the shifting time perspectives and in this story, I didn’t really enjoy the present happenings being interrupted to go back in time and get backstory. I acknowledge the function of this and the fact that it allows readers to find out how Kathleen gets to the point of deciding to go in the pool and not come out- I just found it somewhat boring. Without giving anything away, I also expected much more out of the going in the pool and not coming out situation. On the plus side, the audio was good and this book is short. I do appreciate when a story manages to make me feel strong feelings about characters (I didn’t like anyone in this story) and even stronger feelings about an ending - in this case, I hated the ending.

• The Lottery by Shirley Jackson Bookshop.org

This lucid tale of a sleepy town’s annual lottery―and the monstrous desires it awakens―endures as an essential classic of American fiction.

This short story is my first foray into reading Shirley Jackson and it made for perfect spooky season reading. Actually, I listened to this and the audio was great. It’s amazing to me what some authors can do in such a short amount of pages. I went into this story knowing nothing other than this is a classic short story that’s stood the test of time and is one of Jackson’s most popular works. I found not knowing anything worked to my advantage because I was acutely aware from the start of the escalating sense of foreboding. The building of tension was perfection and Jackson’s use of other characters to build that tension increased my anxiety so much. I was on the edge of my seat with the whole lottery, wondering what exactly it meant and what it would lead to. Well…I’ll just say I was quite surprised and also sad - if you know you know. I loved this short story and will read more Shirley Jackson in the future- if you have a favorite of hers let me know in the comments

Links I Loved

• Have you purchased a weird, low-quality paperback book lately? This may be why. (LitHub)

• There’s no show more beautiful than this (Emergence Magazine)

• Horror movies and the books you should read with them (Book Riot)

• Is making friends as an adult really hard, or is it just me? (Vox)

• The best tea brands of 2024 (Good Housekeeping)

• The best psychological thrillers of October 2024 (Crimereads)

• A deep analysis of Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (Words on Words Substack)

• Why getting lost in a book is so good for you (NBC News)

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Question Time…..The questions I ask in weekly threads are meant to be fun and help us connect, so please know you don’t have to answer each question, if you only have the time/desire to answer one, great! Please put book titles IN ALL CAPS for easy reading:)

1. How do you feel about star ratings? (If you use them, why and what do you like about them? If you don’t use them or gave them up, why?)

2. What have you read recently?