Rainy Day Reads

Challenges:   Around the Year in 52 Books: A magical realism novel Read the World: Europe (hosted over at habitica.com )  I just saw a video on Youtube about books you shouldn’t have read ( here ) and I feel like this was me and this book. I have followed Carrie   on Youtube for a while now and I really enjoy her videos and her personality, so when she came out with this book in 2016 I figured I would like it too.  It’s the story about a young woman who manages to negotiate her way out of her mother’s iron grip and try to create a life for herself doing what she really wants to do. We only meet this woman, Evie, after she is dead, though. She can’t get in to her personal heaven, because the secrets she has kept throughout her life are weighing her down. She must travel back and find a way to share her secrets with her loved ones in order to be able to pass through the door to heaven.  We follow her a s she journeys back to the world...

Challenges: Around the Year in 52 Books: A mystery This books centers on the disappearance of Bernadette. Through documents and chapters written by her daughter Bee, we follow the lead-up to the disappearance and slowly start to figure out why she would leave her family.  Once upon a time Bernadette was a famous architect, but due to certain events it seems she has gone a little mad. Not enough for serious concerns perhaps, but just enough to be labelled the kind of quirky the neighborhood could do without. In my opinion Bernadette seems to think herself above the people in her social circle, and practically considers herself at war with the other mothers at the school. When Bee claims her prize for getting top grades all year she announces that she wants a trip to Antartica with her parents. They reluctantly agree and we follow the preparations for this trip. Bernadette has over the years developed some form of social anxiety and has essentially outsourced her l...

Challenges:   Around the Year in 52 Books: Epistolary fiction This book is perhaps not epistolary fiction strictly speaking, but it is definitely written in a different format. We have chat logs, reports from different officials, statistics and all sorts of other things. It’s a very visual book, and I think the format works well for the story.  In this book we follow Kady Grant. Her planet has recently been attacked and she has been saved and taken on board a space ship. However, the attackers are in hot pursuit and soon it becomes difficult to tell friend from enemy when a zombie-like virus and a willfull AI main computer throw some wrenches in the machinery. Being a skilled hacker Kady decides to figure out just exactly what is going on and what she discovers runs far deeper than she expected.  This story was action from start to finish, but peppered with great friendships, relationships, philosophical and moral musings and twisting plots. I loved...

Challenges:   Around the Year in 52 books: A book that is a continuation of a book you’ve already read This book is the third and final installment of the “To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before” series and I was really torn about it. I liked the first book enough to give it 4 stars out of 5, while the second only got 3 stars. This last book was really seesawing between the stars for me, because while I adore the setting and ambience, I started to have a real problem with Lara Jean as a person.  First let me say that I really enjoy Jenny Han’s writing and the whole setup of this series. This book made me super nostalgic for high school and I didn’t even go to an American high school, but all the traditions, the winding down of the school year, saying goodbye and people setting off on different paths in their lives…ugh! So nostalgic!  As for Lara Jean she started to really bug me. Beware of slight spoilers below! She is dating Peter throughout this ...

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 inte...

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 ...

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. ...

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”...

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 ...

Seeing as I felt like my reading was a bit unfocused and all over the place I decided to not only do Diversity Bingo but also try my hand at this challenge. I will only be aiming to read about 20 books off this list, and I have cheated a little and put on some books I’ve already read this year that fit the categories. Otherwise I think I would feel a bit overwhelmed.   Below is the list of books and the books I have read or plan on reading. I haven’t picked a book for every single challenge, because I don’t plan on finishing all challenges anyway. The books in cursive are the ones I have read (reviews will be linked) and the ones in cursive AND bold are the ones I plan to read.  Here is the link for the Goodreads page of the group if you want to check it out and maybe join yourself :) https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/174195-around-the-year-in-52-books   The 2017 List 1. A book from the Goodreads Choice Awards 2016 ( link ) 2. A book with at least 2 p...