What Am I Reading – Chapter Nine

Hi Everybody!

I recently finished two of the books that I have been reading for a long time – Blowback by Brad Thor and What Was Your Name Downriver by Anthony Lowe!

Spring is around the corner, so it’s time to start anew with two new books!

One of them is this:

Carry the One by Carol Anshaw is about three siblings and their friends who experience a devastating moment following a wedding. It takes place over 25 years as they deal with this trauma in their owns ways through friendships and love affairs, marriage and divorce, parenthood, holidays, and the modest calamities and triumphs of ordinary days.

Much as I liked the premise, I had a feeling that not much would happen. Now that I’m over halfway through, I can say that it’s more a character study, but with a goal of trying move on. It’s not a bad thing. The Four Sworn: Spring Equinox by Leonore Sagaskie was like an origin story for the main characters. It explained how they got their powers as well as how they met and later formed a group to defeat a powerful villain. Both have thin plots, but the characters are compelling enough that I can look pass that flaw. In Carry the One, each of the siblings – Carmen, Alice, and Nick – deal with the tragedy in different ways. One puts herself into her work, her son, and her family with her second husband; another goes through women while trying to get over her true love; and the other one does drugs. Anyway, I’m hoping they’ll be fine in the end.

I’m listening to the audiobook, and it’s narrated by Renee Raudman. Raudman is best known for voicing Ms. Butterbean in The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy. At first, I was worried that I might hear that character throughout the novel and not be able to take it seriously. Luckily, that was not the case, for none of the main female characters had that voice. Raudman has a range with voicing Carmen as a woman who acts like she has it together, but in reality doesn’t, while she portrays Alice as more free-spirited, but frustrated with her love life. The men kind of sound the same, but as I have mentioned on this website, voicing audiobooks is hard.

Now, let’s move onto the second and final book of this latest installment…

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell (yes, that’s her real name) is about two high school outcasts who fall in love with each other throughout one school year. One is the new girl in town with unruly red hair, mismatched clothes, and a chaotic family life. The other is the boy at the back of the bus who wears black t-shirts, listens to his headphones, and reads his comics.

This got me hooked from the very beginning. Both Eleanor and Park are very realistic characters who initially don’t like each other for some reason (teenagers, am I right?). Afterwards, their relationship slowly blossoms like those in Korean dramas. I hope their love for each other gets stronger, yet I sense that things will not end well. The opening bit of dialogue is reminiscent of the prologue in Romeo and Juliet.

We now have come to the end of the ninth chapter of “What Am I Reading?”

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