Killing my TBR this month
April Reads 2020
Let me take a proud moment for completing my April TBR, feels good. It was full of ups and downs, had my favorites and not so favorite ones. I’ve tried to explain the books as much as I can and tried to give a honest review on each one of them. Let’s dive in.
Stephen King — The Outsider
To be honest, it’s Stephen King. The story started up as a crime novel with a brutal murder of a little kid and ended up somewhere completely different, which explains why it didn’t met my expectations. I was dying to find the killer, and so excited for the big plot twist. In the first part of the book there is only one guy that everyone is sure that he committed the crime due to the fingerprints, matching DNA’s and eyewitnesses but there is also huge evidence and an alibi that points he was somewhere else when the crime occured which made me more excited for the plot because I was hundred percent sure that I was going to be in shock, I was so ready to see provided solutions to this puzzle and I will tell myself “How I didn’t see that coming?” Well, guess what, I never ask myself that question. I should have predict that something fantastic or paranormal will come up and kill my vibe. I don’t know why but investing to this book and then finding out the supernatural plot leaves me unsatisfied. I felt like it could have been one of the most amazing thriller where he adds another layer in every chapter to make the mysterious puzzle unsolvable. I guess at the end it became such a hard puzzle that even he couldn’t solve it, so he threw there a little bit of supernatural stuff, and there you go puzzle is solved ladies & gentlemen. You will still finish it in one sitting by the way, it’s Stephen King.
Celeste Ng — Little Fires Everywhere
Goodreads Choice Awards 2017 Winner, this book was turned into a Hulu series, I wanted to watch it so bad but stopped myself to finish the book first so I would enjoy the series and relate it to the book and obsess about it. It didn’t go as planned. Shaker Heights is a suburb of Cleveland, where everything is extremely planned, our main character Elena Richardson adores this place, she is also obsessed with planning everything and every second of her and her families life. It was a fun read, dialogues were funny and that was all, there is no in depth explanation because there wasn’t anything hidden in the story, everything that is exiting and different was in our face without any metaphors. The characters were not exciting, it was hard to understand who was narrating the story, because it was changing in every paragraph. We see lots of Elena but still dont feel like I know her enough, the narrator was so biased towards Mia (the new neighbour in town), that it almost feels like they were favoring her and trying so hard for reader to love her, which ended up, me not liking her, if it wasn’t that pushed, maybe I would like her. The only strong and interesting character was May Ling, her plot was really exceptional and made me question the motherhood in a not so black and white perspective, but rather than focusing on this amazing part, I dont think they did justice for my favorite plot. Even though I was not that satisfied after I’ve finished the book, I was still excited to see the series just to look at the characters and the Shaker Heights in real life. I couldn’t even finish the first episode. I guess overall we didn’t click well with this story.
Delia Owens — Where The Crawdads Sing
This book spended more than 40 weeks on the New York Times Best Sellers List, it is also the winner of The Edgar Award for the Best First Novel (also won the Best Historical Fiction Award on Goodreads Choice in 2018), what can I say, well deserved. That was everything I wanted in a book. It’s a story of this little outsider girl becoming a woman, the “Marsh Girl” (Kya Clark) who lives at some isolated island on her own due to her family abandoning her, who is rejected by the town, where the society gas each other up with myth-like gossips about this young little girl. Kya’s story and her development was so touching on it’s own, but it is not just that, the book is filled with symbolic critiscm towards parents, friends, siblings, society, school system, and guess what a murder. This romance/murder mystery was such a joyful read, from the start to the end, but the ending was the part made me love it even more, I have never read such a smooth plot twist, shaped with deep characters ends up as a cozy-murder story (I don’t think such a term exists, sue me) I know that after years and years I will still memorize the story and memorize the characters.
Elif Shafak — 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World
Unpopular opinion is loading… Latest novel from Shafak, I love her. In 2006 she was accused of “insulting Turkishness” with “The Bastard of Istanbul”, which counted as a criminal act by the way, if they thought that was too much, I don’t know how the government will feel about this one. I adored this book so much that I’ve recommended and pressured all my friends to read it and I’m getting great feedbacks. This book was long-listed for The Booker Prize 2019, which made me so excited and then finding out that it was short-listed… I was head over heels. (2019 Booker’da tek Türk, asın bayrakları:) Let’s talk about the book! The ending of the book had a minor limitation for me, but the story itself, her writing quality, originality, the development of the characters gives such an overall enjoyment that I was blind to see the minor problems. A study showed that humans brain activity continues for 10 minutes and 38 seconds until they are pronounced as dead. Our main character Tequila Leila is a sex-worker in Istanbul, the book starts of with her death, in every minute that passes by Shafak takes us to a different chapter from Leila’s life from her childhood to her family to her dead body and while she does that she shapes it with each memory combining with recalling of her five best friends who had key moment in her life and had an huge impact on her. This book was something else. Also, for the past almost four years Elif Shafak was unable to return to the country in which she grew up for the fear of arrest.
Madeline Miller — Circe
(little bit of spoilers) They say “to find something you like, first you should find what you don’t like”, I guess I don’t like mythology, well I like mythology but not so much to read a fiction based on it. It was not that well written and it was way too repetitive for me. The story is about an inferior but immortal nymph Circe, daughter of two Titans. This book was the winner of Goodreads Choice Awards in 2018, which explaines why I don’t rely on Goodreads while choosing my TBR. So, here is my honest review, there is too many characters that it’s hard to follow due to their very little progression and depth. There is Prometheus, Scylla, Hermes, Athena, Odysses, Pasiphae, Poseidon, Minotaur, and lots of other kings, wives and children of them they just come and go. Circe is an boring person, she has such a bad voice that everyone keeps telling her to shut up because of it. Everyone ignores her, she is a witch now such a plot twist, Circe learns how to use magic, Circe uses her magic to turn someone into a monster, Circe is punished for that so they exile her to an island, Circe uses her magic to turns sailors into pigs, Circe leaves the island. Did I tell you that she really has a bad voice? The end.
Tara Westover — Educated
Universal coming-of-age story, a memoir from Tara Westover, shows what education really is as we see it from the perspective of Tara’s own survival from the Mormon/Fundamentalist beliefs, and her escape story from the conservative patriotic family that lives at the rural of Idaho. Tara and her six siblings (one of them is extremely violent) were working at their family junkyard, where if you got injured there is only herbal healing due to their families disbelief in doctors/hospitals and modern medicine. This self-taught girl who didn’t get proper education until she was 17, goes to Harvard, graduates from Cambridge University with a Gates Scholar. At the end we still see her battling with her belief system from her roots as well as her searching for home.
Gustave Flaubert — Madame Bovary
I’m so mad at myself for not reading this book earlier. Debut novel, the best seller of Gustave Flaubert and such an influence for literary realism. Emma, Emma, Emma. Throught the book we feel sorry for Emma, we become extremely happy for her, we get angry at her. She spends her life overthinking about how she could have been happy if this and that happened, but the problem is that she was never at her own center, she wasnt at the center of her happiness which pushed her to chase it among different clothes and different man trying to fill up the center. The marriage, the affairs, the addiction to buy nice things and most importantly her obsession with bourgeoisie, are the resources of her happiness and her sadness which creates a twisted story. I would kill to know French, to read this book in it’s original language.
Elif Shafak — Three Daughters of Eve
Two Shafak books in one month, I’m fangirling at this point. The ending definitely had cons for me and it was my desire to know more about the story, I feel like this story should be continued in another book. The story where Peri (our main character) from Istanbul goes to a party and memories from her past (memories of being a student in Oxford University mainly) comes to the surface where Shafak takes us to her earlier times, specially the ones about Peri’s friendship with her proffesor, friendship with two girls at the university, there is a similar root for this three girls but they turn out as completely different characters. This rich and moving story also leaves reader questioning and wondering about roots and purpose of the religion. When all of this keeps you busy, there is a terrorist attack at the party where Peri went, and we watch her story being unfold while the attack was coming closer.
That’s all for this month:) Feel free to discuss and leave me a suggestion about what should I read next. Stay safe and stay sane.
See my previous reads on here;
https://medium.com/@zeynepaydin1/march-reads-2020-abe7b0d640
