Summer Reading

Unfortunately, my reading time has been drastically reduced this summer.  By spending my commuting time on the train reading, I was cranking through four to five books a month.  That train time is now gone.  I've tried reading while the girls are playing in the pool but it's such a choppy style of reading.  Read a paragraph, check on the kids, read a paragraph, talk to the kids.  Plus, I need to have one ear listening to them.  Anna is such a new swimmer, I don't feel comfortable not keeping a close eye on her.  She basically went from paddling around the pool with one floaty wing or a noodle to swimming unassisted and collecting diving toys from the bottom of the pool in a week.  Once my Season of Sewing comes to an end and the girls return to school, I need to get back to reading regularly.  I miss it and I have 30 books saved to my online library account's wish list.

The girls thankfully are still flying through books.  They are in the habit of reading before they fall asleep at night and quite often read during the day, especially if it's a book they are interested in.

So what have I read these past two months?

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

I borrowed this from the library because it was on a recommended reading list of post-apocalyptic type books.  A few pages in, I almost gave up, which I never, ever do.  I was completely confused until I went online and read a description of the book.  There are essentially six different stories which take place over successive time periods.  Each story is related to the next in somewhat clever, subtle ways.  At 530 pages, this was a long book to read and while I didn't love it, it was definitely different and didn't follow that formula that most books seem to have.

The Last Star by Rick Yancey

This was the third and final book of The 5th Wave series.  I wasn't a huge fan of the second book but felt I needed to read this third one.  Meh.  I felt completely disconnected from it.  It was so drawn out and I wasn't a fan of the ending.

Ashley Bell by Dean Koontz

I've read Koontz in the past (although, it's been awhile) so when this book popped up as available for download on my library's website, I didn't think twice about borrowing it.  This was another lengthy book, almost 600 pages long, and I like his writing but the ending to this one was so disappointing that had I been holding a real book, I would have tossed it across the room.  I actually went back and re-read the end because I thought perhaps I may have missed something.  Nope, just a terrible ending.

Have you read any of these books?  I'd been interested in hearing what others thought of them.