Motherland | 
pickI enjoyed this: set in 2023, a global virus has taken over (sound familiar?) with a particularly lethal effect on men. In a reverse of The Handmaid's Tale, men are a precious commodity that the government wants to control, and the main character is a woman on the run through the US keeping her pre-teen son safe and desperately seeking to get home to #SouthAfrica (author's home). I'm including it for #ReadingAfrica2022
#Booked2022 #nonpatriarchal
Planning to finish the tagged today, only about 75 pages left and then if I can I‘ll start Near the Bone which is on loan from the library. I have a big stack of unread books I own but was pretty excited for that one, so top of the pile!
#WeekendReading @Andrew65
Started this last year but sort of lost steam partway through. Just can back to me and I‘m hoping to finish it this week. This has been such a good start to the year, reading wise, as always I really hope I can maintain momentum. 😆 love Lauren Beukes, though not sure anything will live up to The Shining Girls but time will tell!
1. The tagged also The Antagonist by Lynn Coady and Consent by Donna Freitas. Also started Once Upon a Time in Hollywood by Quentin Tarantino and Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellman
2. I‘m a knitter, I also really like to build puzzles and I love horror movies!
3. No Exit by Taylor Adams! Loved it!
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@rachelsbrittain #WeekendReads
Reading pandemic horror again 😳 I‘m ashamed to have not read this yet. But I have been taken back! In another life I smoked, and I‘ll be honest, I loved it. So so much. I quit and that‘s that BUT Gauloises were my favourite cigarettes. The best. You can‘t get them in 🇨🇦 so I would have to have travelling friends bring them home for me. As far as cigarettes go, they were top notch. It‘s been a second since I thought about them!
This is the passage I mentioned in my review. Five minutes on the internet and a confirmation email with my dad (who was a Marine before college, a Naval aviator after college, and has been working with the Air Force since the 90s) revealed at least 6 errors in this passage. This would have been so cool if the character had been trying to con someone or trying to make them look foolish, but I saw no evidence of that although I really wanted to.
panWow. I cannot recommend this book. It's tedious and gory. About halfway through there was a paragraph so full of inaccuracies, I kept reading because I thought it had to be a sign that a character had given a false identity or something but no, just wildly inaccurate. And seriously, if 3+ billion people died within three years, society would be way less functional than it is in this book.
Is "zig-agging" a thing or a typo?
Hmm... seems like a great time to read about a devastating flu-like illness that hits during 2020. Pictured with part of our mask stash.
pickThis was on the lowest of the lowest rungs of what a pick is. A pandemic has hit and men have become endangered. Johannesburg born Miles (Mila in disguise) and his mom, Cole are stuck in the U.S. trying to make their way back to Africa. The beginning was thrilling but then there‘s kind of no stakes. It seemed like no matter where they went there was always someone ready to help them or take them in. I did like the writing and the bad woman 👇🏼
I‘ve never read a book by her but I tell everyone I love her books?!
pickIt took me a while to get into this book, sometimes the narration didn‘t line up with my own thoughts and it was tough to follow. But once I figured out the style I finished - and enjoyed - the book in three days. It was also pretty surreal to be reading about a pandemic (granted a very different type) while being in the middle of one IRL. The characters and the choices they make are flawlessly written and will easily pull in any reader.
pickIt was hard to get into a book about a pandemic during a pandemic, but I‘ve always loved Beukes storytelling and once I got into it I flew through. It‘s fascinating and exhausting and worth checking out, but maybe when this all passes.
I‘ve been very excited to read this, but now that I‘ve started I am feeling a little overwhelmed with the subject matter. Is reading about a hypothetical pandemic also hard for many of you right now?
panIt probably wasn‘t the best idea to read about a pandemic while IN a pandemic. What I didn‘t like about this story had nothing to do with its apocalyptic premise. In fact, I don‘t think it focused on this aspect enough. Set in the near future, a flu like virus (cringe) manages to kill off most of the world‘s male population. The mysterious ones who do survive become pet projects, carefully monitored to ensure a reproductive future. Disappointing.
#MOvember This book is set in a #Future America, where males are an extinct species and harboring one is a grave criminal offense. So a young mother must do what she can to keep her son alive and hidden. This book is available April 2020.
