I have often extolled the joys of being part of a bookclub in my L&L reviews. The biggest plus for me is that bookclubs force me to read some very good books that I would never have read otherwise. Sometimes, bookclubs force me to read an author I have heard of but haven’t yet read. Colleen Hoover is a good example.
I would like to believe that I have some solid insight when it comes to selecting the books I read. I have read some of Malcolm Gladwell’s books in the past and remember him (and them) as entertaining. I realize that anyone with any serious knowledge of statistics finds him less-than-academic. But, he also can write things that are just plain interesting to read.
Six years ago when we started L&L, we had the idea to review one book a month that we didn’t really like. But we wanted to be clear that these were not bad books, just ones we didn’t care for. And so, “not my cup of tea” was born. And this month I’m going against the millions of people who love Untamed, not to say it is a bad book, but to say it really isn’t for me.
At 880 pages, The Deluge is a huge time commitment – one that, ultimately, I would not recommend that you indulge in. And, my choice of the word ‘indulge’ is deliberate. I decided to read The Deluge because it was recommended with sentiments like, “If you only read one book this year, The Deluge should be it.”
First of all, I love the Hogarth Shakespeare collection, both the idea, and all of the books I’ve read so far. If you want a suggestion of one of the great ones, click to read Liz’s review of Hag-Seed. Sadly, Vinegar Girl, based on The Taming of the Shrew, was not my cup of tea.
I really enjoyed the two previous books I read by Richard Powers: The Overstory (read review here) and Bewilderment (read review here). So, recently when I read Margaret Atwood’s book of essays, Burning Questions, and she raved about The Echo Maker, I knew I had to read it. Only this time, I found Powers’ writing to be grueling.
he Visible Man is in no way a bad book, though it is certainly no classic. I just found myself towards the end wondering why this book had even been written. The premise is fairly interesting: A therapist gains a new client who claims he can, through science, make himself invisible and that he uses this power to spy on people in their homes in the name of scientific research.
I had to laugh as I started writing this review to see that in the March, 2022 issue of L & L, I wrote a Not My Cup of Tea about Facing the Mountain, also by Daniel James Brown (read review here). I guess I keep hoping I’ll find another book of Brown’s I will enjoy as much as The Boys in the Boat. Unfortunately, The Indifferent Stars Above is not that book.
I sometimes wonder with books like The Midnight Library, which are on so many bestseller lists and have been recommended by so many people, if my disappointment when I read them comes from unrealistic expectations. Haig has a great premise for the book.
Disappear Doppleganger starts out as a clever undertaking by its narrator, Matt Kim, to identify the phenomenon causing him to feel like he is disappearing. Reeling from his wife and daughter leaving him and his cat dying, he finds people increasingly ignoring him at work and bumping into him in public places. Just as he manages to convince his girlfriend, Yumi, that this is truly happening, she encounters someone who looks exactly like her.
I feel silly saying that Kazuo Ishiguro’s newest book was not my cup of tea. I mean, who am I to critique an author whose last book won the Pulitzer Prize in Literature? Part of me feels ridiculous even daring to share such an opinion. Klara and the Sun appears on many 2021 Best Books lists.
I am generally a Kristin Hannah fan: I loved The Nightingale and The Great Alone. But she missed the mark with The Four Winds. In the book, Hannah tells the story of Elsa Wolcott, an unloved, unattractive, aging young woman forced to marry a man she hardly knows to legitimize the baby they’d unwittingly conceived.
John Irving is an incredible writer—I don’t think many readers would debate that fact. However, I found In One Person failed to hold my attention like his other novels. As in many of Irving’s books, In One Person paints an intimate portrait of a man—this time a young man exploring his bisexual “crushes” at an all-male boarding school in Vermont in the early 60s.
I never know when I feel disappointed after reading a book like The Other Black Girl if that comes from having heard so much about the book before reading it. There had been so much hype. I really wanted to read it. Did I have unrealistic expectations? To be clear: there were many aspects of the novel that I admired.
A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara’s breakout novel published in 2015, was a masterpiece – one of the best novels I’ve read in the last few years. For that reason, I suggested that my husband and I read The People in The Trees, Yanagihara’s earlier book, as our read-aloud selection. At 467 pages, it was an undertaking, one which turned out to take grit and determination to finish.
I wasn’t sure if The Illuminations was going to be my Not My Cup Of Tea this month because I didn’t actively dislike it. It was fine. But honestly, if we are going to spend our energy telling you what you should read, then I figured I could take a paragraph and tell you that this is one to skip!
One of the joys of reading a good book by an author new to me, is going back and reading previous books by that author. Not long ago I read The River by Peter Heller (reviewed in January 21, 2021 L&L) and loved everything about the book: the poetic writing style, the vivid descriptions of nature, the relationship between the book’s main characters.
Here I Am is set in present day D.C. and mainly follows the disintegration of a marriage over the course of several months. In the process, old wounds resurface and bad decisions are re-lived. The couple’s three sons deal with the rift in their own ways, but with no one addressing the real issues, the fractures go deeper and deeper.
