Welcome to the July book review! At the end of each month, I review the books I’ve read. Enjoy!
Don’t forget that earlier this month, I did an extra book review post for my July Book Binge. If you didn’t check out that post, take a look before you continue here!
The Book: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
The Category: Futuristic Sci-Fi
In Three Words: Win or die!
Biggest Takeaway: I can just imagine the pitch for this book: “It’s a geeky kid playing a video game for virtually the entire novel, allying with people he doesn’t know in real life, trying to win a high-stakes game invented by another computer nerd obsessed with 1980s culture.” I don’t know how Cline got past the pitch session, but I am so thankful he did. I don’t love video games, sci-fi, or 80’s culture, but this book was still a total page-turner for me. Folks, it’s worth it to look outside your genre every once in awhile.
The Book: Persuaded by Rachel Schurig
The Category: Modern Romance, adapted from Jane Austen’s Persuasion
In Three Words: Pitch-perfect adaptation.
Biggest Takeaway: It’s so hard to do a modern retelling of Austen and not have it come out cheesy, contrived or disrespectful. But Schurig hit a home run on this one. I now feel inspired to write an Austen adaptation myself someday. (Maybe Sense & Sensibility?)
The Book: Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
The Category: YA
In Three Words: Love fights abuse.
Biggest Takeaway: I expected to find this book, like The Fault in Our Stars, to be overhyped and without much substance. For the most part, I still think it falls short of the high expectations the media and book groups have set for it. However, I was won over at points, particularly by passages such as this:
“Or maybe, he thought now, he just didn’t recognize all those other girls. The way a computer drive will spit out a disk if it doesn’t recognize the formatting.
When he touched Eleanor’s hand, he recognized her. He knew.”
The Book: Paddle Your Own Canoe: One Man’s Fundamentals for Delicious Living by Nick Offerman
The Category: Memoir
In Three Words: It’s Ron Swanson. (Those words should be sufficient for any Parks & Rec fan.)
Biggest Takeaway: This is a great example of a book I wouldn’t have read, but enjoyed via audio. I love Nick Offerman’s voice and would listen to pretty much anything he read aloud. I found the parts about theater school a little boring, but he spiced things up with plenty of drugs, liberal rants, and salacious stories about his relationships with super-religious girls. Favorite quote, for obvious reasons: “I have been lucky enough to see and do a great deal in my forty-three years of life, but I have not discovered a greater treasure than a good teacher.”
The Book: How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer
The Category: Nonfiction
In Three Words: Emotional/rational brain
Biggest Takeaway: As I’ve grown older, I’ve found it more and more difficult to be “in touch” with my own emotions. I tend to favor my rational, logical brain over my careening, instinctual heart. According to Lehrer, we should not be making a distinction between the two. The emotional brain has just as much impact on our decision-making abilities, both positively and negatively, as our more logical gray matter. So I guess I’d better work on keeping my emotions in the mix.
Did you read any of these books, or plan to do so in the future? If so, please share your thoughts here!