Future Princess and Past Techies

[alobear]

Yesterday, I finished listening to The Elite, the second in The Selection series by Kiera Cass. After really enjoying the first one, I was disappointed when the second one very quickly became tedious and repetitive. The love triangle aspect grew very wearing, with America swinging back and forth between Aspen and Maxon every few pages. I liked that some of her reservations were about the responsibilities of the princess role, rather than purely not being able to pick between the two guys. And some of the societal and back history stuff was still interesting. But it wasn't enough to mitigate how slowly it all moved (this story really doesn't need to be split into three volumes - it could easily have been completed in one, much more tightly plotted book), or how annoying America got. There was also more problematic behaviour from both love interests - I could understand their frustration with America, but that doesn't excuse manhandling her and pushing kisses on her to try and force her to choose.

I won't be moving on to the third in the series, because I don't think I can take another seven hours of this.


Yesterday, I also finished Microserfs by Douglas Coupland, which is the subject of our Christmas Family Book Club, as chosen by Dave. I have a fair few notes for the discussion, so I'm not going to go into detail here. But, overall, it was decidedly 'meh', though there were some bits I liked.

And, over the weekend, we went to see Jumanji: The Next Level, which we both loved, and which I'll be talking about on an upcoming podcast episode.