This Week In Books (August 10th 2016)

This Week In Books is a weekly update on what you’ve been reading hosted by Lipsyy Lost & Found . A similar meme is hosted by Sam @ Taking on a World of Words.

This summer is all fun. After the forced break, here I am, counting the hours spent on the laptop or reading. An eye condition forbids me to spend more than 3 hours a day looking at a screen or focusing on a page, which means once I’m done with my studying, there isn’t much time left to blog or dive into a book. I’ve started writing reviews on paper, and boy is this hard! My hand is so lazy I need a decoding expert to understand what I’ve jotted down…

∧ Then ∧ Lawyers Gone Bad, Vincent L. Scarsella

“Lawyers Gone Bad,” is the story of beleaguered attorney disciplinary counsel, Dean Alessi, and his trusty investigator, Stu Foley, in their fight against lawyers gone bad – that is, lawyers who commit ethical and criminal wrongs. In this case they’re investigation the local District Attorney who may have committed the ultimate ethical wrong – murder.

Novelist Vincent Scarsella draws on his over 18 years of real life experience as head of the Eighth Judicial District Grievance Committee in Buffalo, New York to craft a gripping, suspenseful novel about lawyers gone bad.

But the story is more than a crime novel. It concerns friendship, loss, unrequited love, and ultimately, justice. It seeks to answer the question, does what goes around, come around?

I need to stop choosing books with an obvious connection to lawyers. I am disappointed every time. I’m sure publishers are aware of the fascination some of us have for the law and its officers, and they’re using it against us.

≈ Now ≈ Furiously Happy, Jenny Lawson

In her new book, FURIOUSLY HAPPY, Jenny explores her lifelong battle with mental illness. A hysterical, ridiculous book about crippling depression and anxiety? That sounds like a terrible idea. And terrible ideas are what Jenny does best.

According to Jenny: “Some people might think that being ‘furiously happy’ is just an excuse to be stupid and irresponsible and invite a herd of kangaroos over to your house without telling your husband first because you suspect he would say no since he’s never particularly liked kangaroos. And that would be ridiculous because no one would invite a herd of kangaroos into their house. Two is the limit. I speak from personal experience. My husband says that none is the new limit. I say he should have been clearer about that before I rented all those kangaroos.”

“Most of my favorite people are dangerously fucked-up but you’d never guess because we’ve learned to bare it so honestly that it becomes the new normal. Like John Hughes wrote in The Breakfast Club, ‘We’re all pretty bizarre. Some of us are just better at hiding it.’ Except go back and cross out the word ‘hiding.’”

Jenny’s first book, LET’S PRETEND THIS NEVER HAPPENED, was ostensibly about family, but deep down it was about celebrating your own weirdness. FURIOUSLY HAPPY is a book about mental illness, but under the surface it’s about embracing joy in fantastic and outrageous ways-and who doesn’t need a bit more of that?

I love this book so much that I don’t want it to end, hence I’m taking my time to savor it (this and I can’t read a lot during the day). It is refreshing to see mental illness discussed by someone who genuinely lives and struggles with it. Jenny has such a strong sense of humor and she wears it like an armor against the always-returning bad days. And I’m in love with Rory the dead raccoon.

∨ Next ∨ If You Were Here, Alafair Burke

Magazine journalist McKenna Wright is chasing the latest urban folktale-the story of an unidentified woman who heroically pulled a teenaged boy from the subway tracks, seconds before an oncoming train. When McKenna locates a short video snippet that purportedly captures part of the incident, she thinks she has an edge on the competition scrambling to identify the mystery heroine.

She is shocked to discover that the woman in the video bears a strong resemblance to Susan Hauptmann, a close friend who disappeared without a trace a decade earlier. Investigating her disappearance, the NYPD concluded that the nomadic Susan-forced by her father into an early military life, floundering as an adult for a fixed identity-simply left town to start over again somewhere else.

But McKenna has always believed the truth went deeper than the police investigation ever reached, and sees Susan’s resurfacing as a sign that she wants to be found. Yet when she shares the image with her husband, Patrick, who was Susan’s classmate at West Point, he isn’t convinced.

What would have been a short-lived metro story sends McKenna on a dangerous search for the missing woman, a twisting journey through New York City that will force her to unearth long-buried truths much closer to home-to her own husband, who seems to know much more about Susan than McKenna could have ever imagined…

This will be my second book by Alafair Burke. I really enjoyed The Ex, so I’m hoping this one will be just as good.

Have you read any of these books? What is on your list this week?
Do share in the comments
Happy reading!