Yippee! We have another round of voting completed and we have another batch of great books to read together. After some ties between books, we were able to narrow the list down to four top books from the voting round. I moved the newest two books to the last two months, so it'll give us all a little more time to get them from our libraries hopefully. I'm really excited about all of these choices! The book for April is The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles. Feel free to read our book club books in any order that you choose and when you've finished reading, come back here and tell us what you think. Please label spoilers. We have a new trick for hiding spoilers. Type whatever you want and then highlight the spoiler portion and click the + button above and select Spoiler. If that doesn't work (seems to be funky on Macs) just highlight your text and change the color to white >>>This is a super secret spoiler alert!<<< like I did right there. Spoiler This book has a LOT of people on the waiting list at my library already. Eek! Just a note, anyone is welcome to join in with our book club reading at any time and join in the discussion! The more the merrier! Happy reading!
I just finished this in preparation for my IRL book group in May.. The few people that had already read it raved about how they just wanted someone to talk through it with, because there's so much to unpack, etc etc... I just wasn't that into, though. I listened to the audiobook (because I couldn't even get through the first chapter of A Gentleman in Moscow, by the same author, and thought listening would be better) and I think that helped. A little. I feel like there was definitely too much rambling, but really this style of "young boys on a mission and this is the story of their escapades" has never really appealed to me - Huck Finn, This Tender Land, and the like. I enjoyed the characters, though most of them felt very two-dimensional and more like stereotypes or caricatures of the people these stories are usually about. It was all a bit predictable until Spoiler: what Wooley did at the lodge Woolly OD'd . Which is when I was finally like - ooooh.. interesting, I wonder what's going to happen, and why he chose that, and how will it affect everyone else? Then 10 minutes later the book was over, lol. So.. not a fan, but going through the Goodreads reviews, I'm clearly in the minority. Can anyone help a girl out, what am I missing?
I liked this one-although like Amber said- it was a slower go to get going... Spoiler I just wish there was more about an actual road trip to find their mom- the entire book is the 10 days before they really leave...
I tried and tried to force myself to finish the Gentleman in Moscow and I just couldn't do it either. I haven't started The Lincoln Highway yet because I'm still waiting for my turn in line at the library.
Oops! I forgot to post my thoughts here! I'll start saying that I like a good road trip book. This was such a great trip! Emmett and Billy are on the road to San Francisco, but things keep happening. My main frustration with A Gentleman in Moscow was that nothing happened. The writing was fantastic, the Count was great, but the story didn't pull me along. This road trip had the plot to keep me interested, the side stories and ramblings for fun, and the characters that I loved spending time with. Strong The Tender Land/Odyssey vibes here with this one. Sally is a girl after my own heart.
Coincidentally, I just read this one! I enjoyed this one but not as much as A Gentleman in Moscow which I loved.
