Wednesday, April 19, 2023

The Midnight Library

Great premise, disappointing delivery sums up my opinion of The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. It should, however, get credit for holding my attention to completion whereas the following four books were abandoned by me during the winter of my discontent 22/23: Never Have I Ever by Joshilyn Jackson, A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy, and Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus.

I even started reading this book while still working and finished it during April vacation. I'm pretty pleased with myself for soldiering on even though midway through, I had lost interest in the whiny main character and suicide theme. The beginning and set-up of the plot (that she was sent to the midnight library to choose other life paths after trying to kill herself) was promising, but by the middle it took a turn (she was able to keep choosing and rejecting multitudes of lives) that I found cloying and simplistic. Then the heavy-handed conclusion (I won't give it away) kind of sealed the book's fate in my mind as ho-hum.


Tuesday, April 4, 2023

The Wild Robot

 


Holy MCAS practice, Batman! For the first time ever, one of the passages was actually fun to read and developmentally appropriate for my students. The excerpt from The Wild Robot by Peter Brown was so entertaining, I actually downloaded the whole book from CLAMS to see how things turn out for ROZZUM. I'm not sure I care that much about the robot to read the two sequels however ; ) The Wild Robot Escapes and The Wild Robot Protects.