Then I celebrated my other possessions, the modular-design furniture and sleek electronica and the mid-1950s Corbusier-inspired dresser stuffed with mementos of past relationships, some pretty racy and scented with nether regions, others doused in the kind of sadness that I should really learn to let go.

17. Wild Thing, Josh Bazell

 Peter Brown, now known as Dr. Lionel Azimuth is now working as a Physician for a cruise ship. That is until Professor Marmoset contacted him to meet Rec Bill(Reclusive Billionaire), 14th richest man in the world, for a job he thinks is perfect for him. Rec Bill wants him to join a tour of a lake in Minnesota rumored to have a lake monster inhabiting its waters. He is joined by Violet Hurst a paleontologist under the employment of Rec Bill. Together they go to Minnesota and discover if the monster is just plain Hoax or if there is any truth to it all.

Not as engrossing as Beat the Reaper, and the footnotes are still there. The book ends with a cliffhanger and I hope the next novel will bring back the adrenaline from the first book that Wild Thing did not sustain.

3/5

16. Swamplandia!, Karen Russel

 The Bigtrees are a family of alligator wrestlers. Ava is 13 and the youngest, her brother Kiwi is 17 and her sister Osceola(nicknamed Oss/Ossie ) just turned 16. They live in Ten Thousand Islands, Florida where they run a park called Swamplandia! with their father chief, grandpa sawtooth, and mother, Hilola Bigtree.

After Hilola dies from cancer, swampladia! slowly runs out of tourists and they are in trouble of foreclosure due to debts. the Bigtree kids have little exposure to the mainland and are mostly home schooled. they usually get books from an abandoned library boat. Grandpa sawtooth who now suffers from dementia, now lives in a floating retirement community.
Kiwi is academically gifted having read all sorts of books from the library boat. Ossie started to become fascinated with one book called the spiritist’s telegraph and started doing seances going on dates with ghosts. Ava discovered a unique red alligator in one of the new hatchlings and decided to keep it a secret from everyone else, taking care of it until it’s safe from predation from the other gators.
Kiwi decides to leave Swamplandia! for the mainland, to find work and help out with their debts. He has dreams of attending Harvard and earning an MA and Phd someday. But found it difficult to adjust with his new surroundings. Especially with kids his age who finds him weird. The chief also left for mainland, leaving Ossie and Ava behind, telling them that he is going out on a business trip.
Ossie met a ghost from an old abandoned dredge they found floating nearby, named Louis Thanksgiving and soon she was missing. Leaving a letter to Ava saying she has eloped with Louis and they are going to the underworld where they will get married. A stranger called the Birdman arrives in swamplandia! asking for payment for his services getting rid of pesky birds. Ava told him what happened to Ossie and asked for help to find her promising to pay him once Chief returns. Ava and the birdman travel through the swamps searching for Ossie.

What an adventure this book was for me. The difficulties that the Bigtree kids had to go through because they were not raised the conventional way. My heart breaks for Ava and you’ll know why when you read this novel.

5/5

Hope is a horrible thing, you know. I don’t know who decided to package hope as a virtue because it’s not. It’s a plague. Hope is like walking around with a fishhook in your mouth and somebody just keeps pulling it and pulling it.

recant, v.

Norwegian Wood