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A review by birdykinsreads
How to Read a Book by Monica Wood
lighthearted
slow-paced
2.0
This bookclub happened fiftygabillion years ago so bear with me as I try to remember…
We read How to Read a Book by Monica Wood which led to soooo many “wait were you illiterate this whole time, I knew it!” Jokes from my husband. 🙄
I was… NOT A FAN. I gave this book two stars in part because I was not in any type of mood to read a heartwarming story but also because it felt undercooked, overly convenient and filled with characters I just didn’t enjoy being around. Now, there were two holdouts—the Edmonton sector of our bookclub who always zoom in quite liked this book, one of them totally loved it—so I think there may be a quality of you need to read it at the right time for it to hit. But, I think the rest of us gave it around three stars or less.
How to Read a Book is about a retired teacher who offers a bookclub to inmates at a women’s prison and then the relationship she strikes up with one of the women after she gets out. We follow this woman, Violet, as she gets reacclimatized to the outside world, gets a job at a research lab taking care of parrots 🦜 (only redeeming feature of this book for me! More birds!), makes terrible relationship choices and strikes up a strange friendship with the man whose wife she accidentally killed. 😬
I dunno something about the way this book glossed over the realities of prison life didn’t sit right with me, and then the gross relationship between Violet and her boss 🤮 that felt like it was written to be titillating but DID NOT LAND THAT WAY (he stuffs a walnut in her mouth like she’s one of his birds at one point wtf) and the convenient way the victim of Violet’s crime is painted as a terrible bitch to make everyone ok with killing her? Just let me fetch my eyeballs that rolled so hard so many times they fell out of my head….
The birds were wonderful, though. Unfortunately it did feel like Monica Wood was looking for any excuse to write about them and just shoehorned them in here. They were wonderful but the rest of the book sort of just felt like it was there. For… reasons…
If you love heartwarming books this will probably still work for you—but I’m in my horror era, so no thanks.
We read How to Read a Book by Monica Wood which led to soooo many “wait were you illiterate this whole time, I knew it!” Jokes from my husband. 🙄
I was… NOT A FAN. I gave this book two stars in part because I was not in any type of mood to read a heartwarming story but also because it felt undercooked, overly convenient and filled with characters I just didn’t enjoy being around. Now, there were two holdouts—the Edmonton sector of our bookclub who always zoom in quite liked this book, one of them totally loved it—so I think there may be a quality of you need to read it at the right time for it to hit. But, I think the rest of us gave it around three stars or less.
How to Read a Book is about a retired teacher who offers a bookclub to inmates at a women’s prison and then the relationship she strikes up with one of the women after she gets out. We follow this woman, Violet, as she gets reacclimatized to the outside world, gets a job at a research lab taking care of parrots 🦜 (only redeeming feature of this book for me! More birds!), makes terrible relationship choices and strikes up a strange friendship with the man whose wife she accidentally killed. 😬
I dunno something about the way this book glossed over the realities of prison life didn’t sit right with me, and then the gross relationship between Violet and her boss 🤮 that felt like it was written to be titillating but DID NOT LAND THAT WAY (he stuffs a walnut in her mouth like she’s one of his birds at one point wtf) and the convenient way the victim of Violet’s crime is painted as a terrible bitch to make everyone ok with killing her? Just let me fetch my eyeballs that rolled so hard so many times they fell out of my head….
The birds were wonderful, though. Unfortunately it did feel like Monica Wood was looking for any excuse to write about them and just shoehorned them in here. They were wonderful but the rest of the book sort of just felt like it was there. For… reasons…
If you love heartwarming books this will probably still work for you—but I’m in my horror era, so no thanks.