Regardless of my pessimism, a new reading challenge means I need new books so obviously, I had to do another book haul. How much money should I bet that I won’t have finished all of these by July?
I’ll refrain from delving too deeply into each book as a few of them will be appearing in my Books of December post but first up we have Behind Closed Doors by B.A Paris. I purchased this book because it was nominated for a Goodreads award as opposed to it sounding like a genuinely good read. Behind Closed Doors is about a relationship that looks perfect from the outside but is actually awful “behind closed doors”. If you think you’ve read this book before, it’s probably because you have.
The Secret by Kathryn Hughes also made its way into this book haul. Unlike Behind Closed Doors, The Secret is about a group of people whose lives are changed dramatically by an accident after a day out. Usually, when I read a description like that I run as far away as possible but I was rather intrigued by The Secret hence why I went ahead and bought it. The cover may have also played a role in that decision but let’s pretend I’m not that shallow.
I figured I needed some sort of action book to balance everything out so I went for Killing Floor by Lee Childs. Killing Floor is about a man recently discharged from the army who just happens to end up in a sleepy town when a murder has just occurred. I can’t be the only one who reads a description like that and figures out exactly what’s going to happen without reading it right? Why did I buy this nonsense?
Roald Dahl’s Lust came next in the purchasing department. I absolutely loved Cruelty by Roald Dahl so I figured a nice collection of short stories about lust would be a good way to follow it up. Admittedly, I’m rather stuck reading this book as I don’t seem to be as into it as I was with Cruelty; with any luck, I’ll have finished it by the end of this month.
After thoroughly enjoying Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult, I wanted to read more of her work so I picked up The Storyteller. The friendship between a former SS soldier and a Jewish woman is explored in The Storyteller and apparently if you exclaim “oh this is about murder so I’ll buy it” when you pick this up in a bookshop, people will move away from you.
I ended up buying the The Beautiful Dead by Belinda Bauer which revolves around a TV crime reporter whose career is approaching the toilet and “recruits” a serial killer in desperation. Reading the description of this book kind of makes me think of the film Nightcrawler which I hated so I hope The Beautiful Dead is better.
Finally, we have The Whistler by John Grisham. I would be lying if I said I didn’t buy this book because I thought the cover was fabulous so I’ll be honest, the cover is awesome and I didn’t even bother to find out what the book was about before buying it. I’ve since discovered that The Whistler is about an investigator for complaints regarding judicial misconduct that is given a case involving corruption on a major scale. I’m not sure if this is going to be my kind of thing but I’m looking forward to it sitting on my bedside table so I can look at the cover (I’m going on so much about the cover but didn’t even photograph it for this post).
Now that I’ve written about all of these books I’m starting to wonder if this new reading challenge was a bad idea. I’ve really gotten back into reading over the last few months but I think I may have overwhelmed myself here especially since I seem to really care about covers. Can I just put the subtitles on a TV show and act like each episode is a different book?
*First lesson learned of 2017: Trying to write a post with Russell Howard on in the background is extremely difficult!
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