February Reads

Liked/Loved

You Should Have Known by Jean Hanff Korelitz  – With the show Undoing based on this book, I decided to read it after watching the first episode.  It's about a phycologist that is writing a book about how (mostly) women should have known that their partners were going to let them down.  While in the midst of releasing this book, she finds out some interesting things about her husband.  While I found parts of this book repetitive (a lot of the details almost copy and pasted in a few places..), I did enjoy the book.

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig - This book was about a girl who ends up in a midnight library in between life and death.  Each book brings her to a different story line that her life could have taken.  Eventually she ends up getting saved in her baseline life and realizes things aren't as bad as she thought.  

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett - This book was great, it was about mixed twins that run away from home as teenagers.  Due to their incredibly light skin, one of them goes on to live her life as "white" and the other lives her life as "colored".  The story telling was really great.

Born a Crime by Trevor Noah - I really loved this book, I learned so much about the history of apartheid in South Africa through this but also enjoyed stories of Trevor growing up.  Definitely a good read.

Meh

The Queen's Gambit by Walter Travis – The Netflix series was way better, so I might be a little clouded in my judgement of this book.  There wasn't quite enough character development and a lot of chess in the book (duh..) but just wasn't as entertaining to read as watch.

The Other Einsten by Marie Benedict – This book followed the life of the Albert Einstein's wife.  It was one of those books that makes you angry how women were treated during that time period.  Once she fell pregnant, her physics career was over, even though she helped Albert with his work (this was a work of fiction and the author took liberties to fill in a lot of things we don't know about how much she contributed to his work, but it definitely is very possible)

Nope

Nothing to see here by Kevin Wilson – I saw this recommended on a book club Facebook I follow. It was about a woman that takes care of some kids that spontaneously burst into flames. It was definitely not something I would normally read. It was a little slow and just seemed like nothing really happen