The Underachiever's Guide to Love and Saving the World

 Fiction by Sloane Brooks

https://www.amazon.com

At the beginning of this story, Courtney is a high-achieving but miserable girl who is busy earning money, pleasing her family , and generally being what other people want her to be. Then she loses her job and decides to embrace her inner underachiever and just try to be happy. 

And then she goes through a portal into another universe.

This was a strange and quirky book. I liked some of it, but in general it was too long. The characters were good but the story was too slow.

You Killed Me First

 Fiction by John Marrs

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

This was an exciting thriller but it definitely stretched the limits of believability almost to breaking, and was populated with believable but unlikeable characters. 

It begins with a woman literally trapped under the village bonfire on Guy Fawkes Day with a voice in her ear saying, "You killed me first..."

I also read recently by this author: The Family Experiment

All the Other Mothers Hate Me

 Fiction by Sarah Harmon

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Florence is a single mother who doesn't really fit in with the other moms at her son Dylan's fancy private school. She used to be in a girl band, but now she just does odd jobs and lives on child support from her ex-husband. But when another boy in Dylan's class is kidnapped on a field trip, Florence is determined to find out what happened, mostly because she is worried that Dylan may get blamed.

This was a really fun story with a surprise ending.

How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House

 Fiction by Cherie Jones

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Lala's grandmother Wilma tried to raise her right and keep her out of trouble. Still, sometimes young girls go looking for trouble, and Lala found it at not-quite-eighteen when she got pregnant and married bad-boy Adan. So Wilma washed her hands of the girl, and never acknowledged that some of the things she should have protected Lala from were in her own house. Things don't get better for Lala or her baby, either...

This book is set in Barbados, and I loved how truthful the depiction of that island seemed. I also liked most of the characters, but I didn't like how none of the nice ones could seem to catch a break. It was a really bleak story.

How Not to Die Alone

 Fiction by Richard Roper

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Andrew works at British government office that arranges burials for people who die alone. (Is this a real profession in England? I don't know.) But the job is really starting to get to him, since he is himself a single man who wishes he had a wife and children of his own.

This was a quirky little story with good characters and a pretty good plot.

P.S.  I thought this was a fun and unusual title, and it is. I figured it would be a cute fiction story about someone who doesn't die alone at the end, and it is. Much like a similarly-titled book I read recently How to Walk Away, I did not expect this book to actually tell me how to DO anything, and it didn't. 

But it turns out there is another book by the same title that's an ACTUAL self-help book. How Not to Die Alone by Logan Ury is a nonfiction book that is supposed to help you find lasting love. 

So... if reading Andrew's story makes YOU worried about dying alone, there's another book for that problem!

Will Save the Galaxy for Food

 Audible Original Fiction by Yahtzee Croshaw

https://www.amazon.com

After Earth conquers space travel with hero star pilots boldly going where no man has gone before, they figure out how to do it more efficiently with quantum tunneling. This innovation brings a million opportunities but consequently a lot of star pilots are out of work. 

In this crazy future world we meet our hero, a star pilot scratching out a living taking bored tourists on spaceship rides to relive How Outer Space Used To Be. Then an opportunity comes his way that results in a great caper story. 

This was a fun little story with both excitement and laughs.

I also read by this author, and from Audible Originals: Differently Morphous

How the Penguins Saved Veronica

 Fiction by Hazel Prior

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

I chose this book for its title. Obviously.

It was a fun little story about a crotchety old lady in Scotland called Veronica who became slightly obsessed with fate of penguins in Antarctica.

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

 Fiction by Olga Tokarczuk

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

I'll admit I chose this book simply for the title. It's a great title.

Unfortunately I didn't like anything else about it. 

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

Fiction by Taylor Jenkins Reid

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

This was a fun story about a fictional version of Old Hollywood.

Evelyn Hugo is a Liz-Taylor-esque star famous not only for her beauty, but also for her many affairs and her refusal to dish about them. In this book, she finally agrees, at age 79, to speak to one specific reporter, Monique Grant, a little-known woman recently hired at a fashion magazine after a long spate of freelance and weblog writing.

Will Evelyn really tell everything? And why has she chosen Monique to talk to? This story was fascinating and surprising.

I also read recently by this author: Daisy Jones and the Six

A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World

Fiction by C.A. Fletcher

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

I chose this book solely for the title. I just liked the sound of it.

Fortunately it was a really good story. It's about exactly what the title says: In the dystopian future, there are very few humans left in the world, but there is Griz, and his dog. And when someone steals Griz's dog, what can he do but chase down the thief and get that dog back?

A Thousand Naked Strangers

Subtitled: A Paramedic's Wild Ride to the Edge and Back
Nonfiction by Kevin Hazzard

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/

Obviously I picked this book just for the clever title.

I've done this before, and sometimes the book isn't quite as clever as the title; however, this book definitely was.

This book was full of funny stories about crazy things, and also managed to show the reader a little of the author's journey through life and what he learned. I recommend this one!

Why Didn't They Ask Evans?

Fiction by Agatha Christie.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

This story has also been published under the title The Boomerang Clue.

Bobby Jones and his companion find a body while playing golf. The man is not quite dead, however, and Bobby is the only witness to his last words, which are the question above. What could it possibly mean?

This is a really good mystery story!

I also read recently by this author: Lord Edgeware Dies

Mama Might Be Better Off Dead

Subtitled: The Failure of Health Care in Urban America
Nonfiction by Laurie Kaye Abraham.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Published in 1994, this story of the "failure of health care in urban America" is a bit out of date. Still, I doubt the health care system of 2018 is any better, to be honest.

There are so many factors involved in health care legislation that I wonder if it's even possible to "fix" it at this point. The health insurance system alone (both public and private) is a money and power giant that I don't see caving anytime soon to being streamlined or regulated.

So in a way, reading this book was kind of a waste of my time, if we are talking about finding a way to actually solve this huge problem that's been growing for oh-these-many-years. In general, this is why I dislike "political" books: they spend pages and pages on The Problem without ever offering a viable solution.

But what interested me in picking up this book in the first place was the story of a family. The author followed a specific "poor" family in Chicago with chronic health problems (the husband had kidney failure, the old grandmother had uncontrolled diabetes, the father was also disabled, and the poor woman who had to take care of all of them was raising three kids) and reported on how they personally navigated the convoluted setup of public health care. So I was interested in learning about these people and their lives.

The thing that struck me while reading this was, although the Health Care System is a problem I can't by any means solve, or even really understand, it was individual people who really made a difference in this family's lives. There was mentioned one doctor, one social worker, and one intern in the sea of health care workers that this family had to deal with who genuinely tried to connect and care as best they could. And interestingly, these were described as religious people, including an Orthodox Jew and Catholic nun.

So I'm taking that as inspiration when face with The Unsolvable: just to do what I can to care and connect with people.

I'm pretty sure that's not the point the author intended, but...

They Both Die at the End

Fiction by Adam Silvera.


https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Okay, so this book is set in a world where there's a company called Death Cast who knows what day you're going to die and tells you about it. As, like, a service or something. They call you just after midnight on your day and inform you of your imminent demise, so I guess you can miss out on a good night's sleep as well as dying. Hooray. Oh, and they're never wrong. Whatever you might do to avoid death will be futile; by day's end you will definitely be toast.

This concept is a little far-fetched and creepy, but I was willing to roll with it at first. But it got really difficult.

First of all, the story is set in the present, not the future, so whatever strange forecasting abilities Death Cast had acquired around ten years ago has to be based on current technology. And the company seemed to have no profit motive for all the time and energy they were expending finding out who was dying and then dutifully calling all these folks every day.

Secondly, instead of the old or terminally ill people you might expect them to spend their time calling, Death Cast seemed to predict the deaths of an awful lot of young people. Like, in the city the story is set in, large numbers of unrelated people eighteen to thirty years old are dying on any given day. This seems implausible to me.

And finally, of course.... HOW COULD THEY POSSIBLY KNOW THIS?!?!?!

I kept reading, hoping that these mysteries would be explained. I though that if the story could somehow tie all this together by the end, maybe in some grand conspiracy with an at least halfway-plausible interpretation, then the book would be worth it. I just needed some kind of explanation for this book to have any redeeming qualities I could give at least a partial thumbs-up for.

Well, I'm not telling you the end... but here's a hint:

Rabbit Cake

Fiction by Annie Hartnett.


https://www.barnesandnoble.com


Here's another book I chose because I liked the title, AND the cover. I'm so shallow sometimes!

It's an interesting character story about a girl coping with her mother's unexpected death. It was set in Alabama but managed not to be all super-Southern about it, which I liked.

The People We Hate at the Wedding

Fiction by Grant Grinder.


https://www.barnesandnoble.com

I'll admit it: This is one of those books I chose just because of the title. Isn't that title fabulous? (To see other books I chose for this ridiculously shallow reason, click here.)

It's about an American brother and sister who travel to England to attend their fabulously wealthy half-sister's wedding. (Obviously the half they share with her is the non-wealthy one.) It was a good premise and I initially liked the repartee between the gay brother and the clever sister.

Unfortunately, I grew to hate the characters more and more as it went on. They stopped being witty and started being petty. I don't know. It just wasn't any fun to read.

The Wangs vs. the World

Fiction by Jade Chang.


https://www.barnesandnoble.com

I just could not get into this book. I'm not sure why; I think it was that I didn't like the characters. And it's a library book, and I'm just going to give up and take it back....

Simon Vs the Homo Sapien's Agenda

Fiction by Becky Albertalli


https://www.barnesandnoble.com

So...this was a young adult novel about a teenage boy who is afraid to tell his parents he is gay, and he is also trying to find true love.

The voice felt really authentic and the story was interesting. I am a little troubled by novels for teens with sex in them though, straight or gay....

Killing Monica

Fiction by Candace Bushnell.


https://www.barnesandnoble.com

I've read several novels by Candace Bushnell (her most famous is Sex and the City, which was a great book), and they are usually fun reads, but this one was a little disjointed. It's about a chick-lit author who is tired of writing about her glam-girl character and wants to kill her off. Hmmm... et tu, Candace?

It gets a single thumbs-up for holding my attention and having a killer title though.

BTW my seventeen-year-old daughter saw this book and thought it might be about murdering that character from Friends. It's not.

Love and Other Near-Death Experiences

Fiction by Mil Millington.


http://www.barnesandnoble.com

This was a funny novel about a radio presenter with serious mental-health issues. He has a "near-death experience" that leaves him terrified to make even the smallest decision in his life.

Yeah, I know that doesn't sound funny on the surface, so maybe you need a kind of warped sense of humor (which I have) to enjoy it (which I did). Also you need the ability to not be offended by British cussing.


I also read by this author: A Certain Chemistry