Rainy Day Reads

Challenges: Around the Year in 52 Books: A book with at least two perspectives (multiple points of view) In this book we follow August and Kate. They live on opposite sides of the Seam, a wall that divides their city in two. Kate is human and wants nothing more than to impress her mafia-crime-boss-like father, while August is a monster created from an act of violence. However he wants nothing more than to be human.  The two halves of the city have lived in more or less peace since a truce, but this truce is starting to fall apart, when monsters get sick of being treated like servants. Kate and August soon find themselves on the run while trying to figure out what is happening and who is behind the attacks that threaten the truce.  When I heard people talking about this book one of the main points was that there was no romance. This is true. August and Kate seem set up for the classic hate-to-love relationship in YA, but they just never quite make it there. Sure,

To be completely honest I gave up on this pretty quickly. I just wasn’t in the mood for fantasy, but at the same time it just felt like this particular book wasn’t for me.  I got about 60 pages in, and already there were a number of characters, battles and timejumps. This made it pretty hard for me to keep up, and keep not only the characters but the timeline in order. So I decided to give it up rather than power through and perhaps waste a lot of time on this massive book, when I have so many other (hopefully) good books to read. If it was meant to be, this book will find its way back to me. But somehow I doubt it.   That’s really all I can say about the book. I am well aware that I probably didn’t give it a proper chance, but…I don’t really care. The next book out of my jar is “Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948” by Madeleine Albright. 

Challenges:   Bingo: Read something by Jeanette Winterson Around the Year in 52 Books: A book with a long title (5+ words, excluding subtitle) I have been hearing great things about Jeanette Winterson from some of my favorite Booktubers, so I was really looking forwards to this. However, I could only find the Danish edition, instead of the original English one, and I try to read books in English if they are originally written in English, just because I feel like that is the author’s unadulterated voice, if that makes sense. If I’m struggling with a translation I don’t know whether to blame the author or the translator, so I prefer to read the original language, but that’s not always possible.  This book is an autobiographical novel about a young girl named Jeanette. Jeanette is an orphan who is taken in by a couple where the woman is very dominant. She is also very religious and she raises Jeanette in her faith. We hear about the church and its pretty intense work,

Challenges:   Around the Year in 52 Books: A book that is a continuation of a book you’ve already read Diversity Bingo: A book with a person of color on the cover This is the second book in the “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” trilogy and it follows Lara as she and Peter start up a real relationship. It turns out to not be so easy when real feelings are at stake and a scandal at school does nothing to make it easier. At the same time they must deal with ex-girlfriends and old crushes and soon things start to unravel.  I liked this book. It was fun, but that was about it. Lara stepped a bit out of her goody-two-shoes character and started asserting herself, which I liked. But then she was all over the place with the boys, but I guess that is believable when you take teenage hormones into account. I had a little trouble with Lara and Peter’s relationship, because it mostly felt a little jarring, like they couldn’t find a common beat, and never really had any deep

Challenges:   Around the Year in 52 Books: A book with a dual timeline I’ve read a few books of Marchetta’s by now and all the rest of them got 3 stars out of 5. Books get 3 stars when I don’t actively hate them, so all of her books have been “fine” so far. But this one blew it out of the water! We follow Taylor, a young girl who lives at a boarding school mainly for young people who don’t have anywhere else to go. She tries to stay out of life and just get on with her existence, but when she is elected the leader of the entire underground network of the school she is forced to care. The students at the school have a war going on during the months when cadets come to stay for their outdoor training camp. Kids from the town join in and the 3 factions conduct a war strictly guided by the rulebook that has been passed down over the years. To be honest I was surprised at how vicious this war was and how it could take place without any of the adults knowing about it. But

This is a non-fiction book about the Americas before Columbus came along. There are a number of new insights in this book, at least new to me, and I found it all very fascinating. A few of the things I had heard about before, like the fact that even before the first European settlers arrived in North America disease had swept the continent and fundamentally changed Indian society. So the “original” way of life in North America that the settlers experienced was actually an adaptation to new circumstances.   Aside from this, the book covers a number of topics more or less thoroughly, including maize, disease, the Mayan calendar and the Five Nations. There are accounts of both North, South and Mesoamerica before and after contact with Europeans in here and that was my only complaint, and a minor one at that. The book did jump around a little in time and place and that made it feel a little disjointed. But with such a massive scope it is hardly possible to do otherwise.  E

This book is written by Elizabeth Gaskell who also wrote “North and South” which I love. I have to admit I watched the mini series with Richard Armitage before I read the book and that is probably part of the reason why I love that book so much. As with “Sylvia’s Lovers” it is very much a slow burn and I don’t usually go for that, but the ending always picks up for me in her books.   Anyway, “Sylvia’s Lovers” is about a young girl named Sylvia. She lives with her parents on a seaside farm in England in the late 18th century. Her cousin Philip falls in love with her, but Sylvia wants nothing to do with him and finds him annoying and almost repugnant. Then one day a sailor comes into town. He is brave and handsome and Sylvia falls head over heels in love with him. He returns the favor and they are to be married. But certain events stand in their way and we follow these characters as they struggle to overcome these obstacles.  The dialogue is written in dialect, which made i

So in order to get cracking on my newfound reading resolutions I went to the library today and picked up a bunch of books. To be completely honest I had some of these books lying around from my last trip to the library, but I figured I would just make one big haul.   I’ve divided the books into 3 groups; Diversity Bingo, Around the Year in 52 books and others.  Let’s start with the books I’ve managed to get for Diversity Bingo:  First up we have “NIght” by Elie Wiesel. This will go towards the challenge of a book with a Jewish Main Character. It’s part of an autobiographical novel trilogy about the author’s experiences during WWII. I have high expectations for this one, since some of my favorite books are set during wartime and I have heard good things about this book.  Then we have “P.S. I Still Love You” by Jenny Han. This will be my book with a person of color on the cover. This is the second book in the “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” trilogy and I real

We are at the midpoint of the year and I’m starting to see all these reading goals assessment videos popping up on Booktube. People talk through the goals that they set at the beginning of the year and tell us how far they have come and how well they are doing.   This has inspired me to do a little assessment of my own. My only reading goals for this year have been reading 85 books and completing my bingo board challenge. I am 1 book behind schedule as far as reading the 85 books goes, but I have confidence that I will catch that up soon. However, there is no saying that I won’t lag behind again, as work is crazy busy, but I will do my best to keep it up.  As far as my bingo board is concerned I am doing horrendously. I’ve read 3 books out of 20, so that’s pretty dire. I’m hoping this fresh burst on inspiration will help me tick a few more off my list.  You might think that since I am struggling with the two challenges I’ve set myself I shouldn’t start any new ones. But