Rainy Day Reads

September was way better than August, but there is definitely room for improvement still. I finished five books and currently reading 8…! That’s a lot for me to have going all at once and I do admit that a few of them aren’t really being read right now.   I had to delete one book, so now my TBR is at 270.  Books finished Invictus by Ryan Graudin American Panda by Gloria Chao Undead Girl Gang by Lily Anderson (TBR book) Easy by Tammara Webber (reread) The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (TBR book) Books added to my TBR King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo Books currently reading The Joy of Tax by Richard Murphy (TBR book) Headstrong: 52 Women Who Changed Science and the World by Rachel Swaby All the Crooked Saints by Maggie Stiefvater Three Dark Crowns by Kendare Blake (TBR book) Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng (TBR book) Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell (TBR book) Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë  ...

August was ROUGH! I had an exam to resit and then a 3 week course on the other side of the country for my trainee position. Having school and classes all day and being away from my home comforts my brain was not wired for reading too much when the evening rolled around, so I only managed to get a couple of books off my TBR by reading them. I had to delete 4….but I’m pretty happy about the situation now and just hope September will be better. So now my TBR stands at 275 books.   Books finished La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman Tyler Johnson Was Here by Jay Coles (TBR book) Emergency Contact by Mary H.K. Choi (TBR book) Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood The Serpent King by Jeff Zentner  The Rules of Persuasion by Amity Hope Books DNF’ed None…But I will admit that some of them are lingering a bit on my Currently Reading list… Books added to my TBR None! Wooo go me! Books currently reading The Joy of Tax by Richard Murphy (TBR book) He...

Books finished The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid - 5 stars (TBR book) I absolutely loved this book, even though I was a bit apprehensive because of the hype. But then again not a lot of people seem to have read it but those that have absolutely rave about it. And now I’m raving too. The book takes place in two different timelines; modern day and from the 1950s onward. It deals with what constitutes a family, LGBTQIA-themes, forgiveness and family history all shrouded in the glitz and glamour of old Hollywood.  Who Cooked the Last Supper? The Women’s History of the World - 5 stars (TBR book) This is a non-fiction about women’s role in the history of the world. Not the newest resource, as it was published in 1988, but still really well written and informative.  Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli - 3 stars (TBR book) I finally got my hands on a copy of this book which has been all the rage since the movie came out. And I ...

Well, July is here. Am I the only one who is taken aback? I for sure thought I had a least a couple more days…But nope! Here we are! And surprise, surprise I did not manage to get my TBR down by 5. Well, actually I did but then I added more books, so now my TBR stands at 287. Meaning I have to delete 2 books off of it.   First lets go through all the books I read in June: They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera - 4 stars (TBR book) The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic - and How It Changed Science, Cities and the Modern World by Steven Johnson - 4 stars (TBR book) One of Us Is Lying by Karen McManus - 4 stars (TBR book) Genuine Fraud by E. Lockhart - 3 stars Far From the Tree by Robin Benway - 5 stars My Lady Jane by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton and Jodi Meadows - 3 stars and by the skin of my teeth I managed to finish I Believe in a Thing Called Love by Maurene Goo last night and I gave it 2 stars.  Aside from ...

I am a bit of a Youtube junkie when it comes to TBR challenges. I love watching other people get their TBR under control and The Closet Unhaul series on BooksandLala's channel was some of my favorite content last year. Basically she had an entire closet full of books she had bought when she first started doing Youtube and hadn't gotten around to reading yet. So she would watch her hauls from the same month 2 years earlier and any books she hadn't read she would have to read or get rid of. Sadly she isn't really doing that anymore but I have found another creator who does something similar - Drinking By My Shelf does Balancing the Books and is all about balancing the books she brings onto her TBR and the books she removes from it (by reading or unhauling). Anyway...I love watching that type of video (if you have any recommendations please let me know) and I thought I would try something similar myself. I'm starting out slow because I'm super lazy and don't...

I had high expectations of this one, because “All Quiet on the Western Front” by Erich Maria Remarque is my all time favorite book (along with “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen) and this one promised something similar.   Once I got around to it though, it turned out to be a meticulous diary of trench life, but instead of the intense emotions and philosophical ponderings on life of Remarque this was a rundown of the technical workings of the trench. It was one long list of “then this person got shot in the head, then we built another shelter, then these two people got blown up, then we laid out some barbed wire, then this one was shot in nose and bled out, then it rained and stuff got muddy.” I wasn’t very far into it when I gave up, because even 50 pages of that was just too much. It was weirdly cold and unemotional and he listed deaths with the same punctuality as improvements on their shelters. I flipped through the rest of it and it seemed pretty much the same so I decid...

My last pick from the jar was “A Bloodsmoor Romance” by Joyce Carol Oates. Already when I first picked it I had some reservations. It is about 5 sisters in a Victorian style setting, and apparently these sisters are very sexual and impulsive to the great embarrassment of their surroundings. I felt like this could go either way for me, and when I got it home from the library it turned out to be MASSIVE! So it lingered on my shelves until it was time to return it, and I decided to just give it up and pick a new book.   So I picked out “Goodnight Nobody” by Jennifer Weiner, a murder-mystery set in surbubia, starring Kate, a mother who is not quite settling in with the other moms at the playground. I read the first chapter or so of this, and it did absolutely nothing for me. I’ve enjoyed Weiner’s books before, although I have to admit I find them of the enjoyable-but-forgettable variety, but I just wasn’t in the mood for this one. So I DNF’ed it and promptly returned it to the l...

I want to do my bit to try and change the world for the better. But I am lazy and cheap, so getting off my ass to do something actively or paying more for organic isn’t always a priority, I must admit. I do try to do what I can, but sometimes I falls short. I figured this book could help me out with some easy, fun ideas to make a small dent in the workload.   It is set out as a diary or calendar with one idea for each day of the year. Special occasion days like Earth Day or NO Tobacco Day are marked and the ideas for those days are usually associated with that theme. I guess this book is meant for dipping in and out of and doing what is “scheduled” for that day in particular. However, a number of the things suggested does take so preparation so not all of the ideas are achievable in 5 minutes or so. I did also read longer passages each time I sat down with this book and I got the feeling that some of the ideas were a bit repetitive. But if you read them spaced out over the yea...

I expected this to be fiction based on true events, but actually it is a non-fiction book detailing the life and love of James Kirkpatrick in India. It is marketed as a great love story between an English man and an Indian woman, destined to be kept apart by race, religion and social standards but overcoming the odds to be together anyway.   The book is very detailed and built mainly on letters, many of which survive in estates and the East India Company’s files. This makes for an accurate, but sometimes slightly dry retelling of actual events. There is so much detail about people and politics that the love story drowns in it. I would say this book is mainly about James Kirkpatrick and his life. His lover Khair features very little in it.  It takes a while for the book to get to James, as it first sets up the entire backdrop of the British in India and the principle figures, both political and familial. This just doesn’t really interest me and for this part of t...

I was a little bit wary going into this book, as I thought I had heard mixed reviews about it, but at the same time I have really enjoyed Tiernan’s writing in the past, especially her Sweep series, which I was quite obsessed with for a while. This is also a series, but I haven’t really heard too much about it. This book is about Nastasya, an immortal, dissipated woman who is living her life hunting for her next thrill. One night she witnesses something that makes her question her life choices and she goes in the pursuit of a more meaningful life, almost in spite of herself. She ends up in a sort of commune where the work to turn her life around means confronting old memories and feelings she has had hidden away for hundreds of years. Slowly she starts learning things about herself and her power that she was unaware of and what the consequences of these discoveries might be.  As a character I really enjoyed Nastasya. She was sarcastic and resentful, but deep down ...

This was the latest pick from out of my TBR Jar, and while I did mostly enjoy it, it is another one of those books that ended up on my TBR list, without a “proper” reason. For a while I had one of those “read this next” books that list a number of books for different topics and I added a whole lot of those books to my TBR, even though they maybe weren’t what I would normally go for. But I am all for reading out of my comfort zone, so for most of the books I want to give them a try, even though they might not be my first choice. This was definitely one of those books.   This book takes place in ancient Athens at the time of Socrates. The main protagonist is a young man named Alexias, who is part of the wealthier population of the city. We hear about him training to become an athlete and the troubles he has with his family. He meets Lysis, a young man who takes him under his wings and they become lovers. The Peloponnesian war is still going strong and Alexias is called t...

This was the most recent pick out of my TBR jar and I was looking forward to reading something lighter. And I must say this was that, at least.  The story centers around a demon and an angel, who have struck up an unlikely friendship, since both of them are residing on Earth and they have both come to really like it there. Unfortunately Doomsday is just around the corner, and the Earth is set to be ruined in the ensuing war between good and evil. The forces of evil have planted the Antichrist with an unknowing human family and when the boy turns 11, the apocalypse is set to begin. Through some unexpected events, however, things don’t go according to plan, but our protagonists find that they don’t really mind.  There were a number of interesting characters in this book, and I thought it was generally quite well written and fun, but a bit too fun, almost. It was written in that comedic writing style, where the style is almost more important than the plot, and th...

I’ve always been a little intimidated by Ayn Rand, because I’ve always thought she wrote really high-brow literary fiction which isn’t really my thing. But at the same time I’ve always felt like you “ought” to read Ayn Rand. So I finally did, and I think I can safely say that while I had no reason to be intimidated, her writing probably isn't for me.  The book is about a group of young people living in Russia some years after the revolution. The communist party is really getting into gear and setting up for world domination, and we follow these young people as they try to live their lives in-between the rules and regulations of the leaders of the country.  We mainly follow Kira, a young woman who is branded bourgeois by the government, as her father owned a factory before the revolution and they were well-to-do. Being branded bourgeois makes life very much harder, and the fact that the family resists the new leadership doesn’t help.  Kira meets two youn...

This was the latest pick of my TBR Jar, and while it was definitely better than the last book from the jar, I definitely had mixed feelings about it.  It is about a young boy named Leonard Peacock, who is struggling to keep it together. On his 18th birthday he decides to kill a boy from school and then himself with his grandfather’s Nazi handgun. Before he shoots though, he wants to say goodbye to the few people who matter to him. We follow him throughout the school day, as he makes his goodbyes and slowly we figure out why he wants to kill that particular boy.  As mentioned above I have mixed feelings about this book. First of all I absolutely detest foot notes! I don’t understand how anyone can think they will enhance the reading experience. Especially when they sometimes stretch over two pages. What?? It completely disrupts my flow in reading, and just bugs me to no end. I found it a little hard to get into the story, maybe because of the foot notes, maybe be...

This is not normally the kind of book I would pick up, I think. I mostly connect Graham Greene with thrillers or detective books. To be perfectly honest I have nothing to base this assumption on, it’s just always been there at the back of my mind, and I have never wanted to pick up anything by him because of it.  I picked this one up because it was the latest draw from my TBR Jar. The reason it was in there in the first place is because I got it off one of those “You should read this next” lists. I’ve since abandoned that list, as I haven’t enjoyed too many books on it, but some are still lurking in the jar. And I guess it is nice to pick up something you normally wouldn’t every once in a while.  Anywho, this book is about a retired bachelor by the name of Henry Pulling. He lives a quiet life in England and always has. When his mother dies, he meets his aunt Augusta for the first time, and she involves him in her quite dramatic life. They travel together to I...

This was my last pick out of my TBR jar, and while I did enjoy it, it did take me a good while to finish. I originally put this book in the jar/on my TBR list because I enjoy lists of things and I love archaeology and history.   This book is a great resource for the beginner, or for one who is just casually interested in ancient history and the like. I did find that some of the topics were a bit large, considering they had to handled within 2-6 pages. “Houses” and “Cereal Agriculture” for example gave a very cursory introduction to the topic at hand, which is understandable as these are huge issues. The book also covers (or tries to) the entire world, so presenting houses in China, Egypt, The Middle East, Europe and the Americas only leaves a very small space for each area and/or time period.  I do think most of the entries managed quite well to give a short introduction and suggestions for further reading are given at the back of the book for each topic, so if ...