One week and two read-a-thons later, I am quite proud of the reading progress I have been able to make. All the reading happened, and although I hit some speed bumps mid-thon, the weekend more than made up for it.
Category: reading
Well, I made it. Almost.
I didn’t intend to take such a long break since my last post, but given the nature of the topic, I think it’s understandable. This is finals week at my university and so I’m nearly there!
I have two great pieces of news – the first is that I successfully defended my MA thesis earlier this week. I have revisions to complete, which, while expected, also makes me want to cry a bit. But that’s one more step closer to really being done. And I have a month and a half to make those revisions. I can handle that.
January reading recap
Time to look back on everything I read in January! I’ve already talked about most of these books in previous posts, but total I read 20 books. My count will go way down now that the semester is back in full swing, but I plan on keeping up a decent pace. Here are the ones I haven’t discussed yet:
Vacation reading is the best
Winter break is almost over and I have been such a good little reader. I’ve never had this schedule before, being salaried and having to work only while classes are actually in session*, so I have been going days without stepping outside. It’s kinda weird and while it’s very conducive to reading a lot, I have also forgotten what it’s like to be around people other than my husband and my cat.
I wrote an end-of-the-year TBR and I’ve done pretty well on it so far. I’ve read 7 of 17 books on that list, plus 14 others, and I’ll probably read one or two more before Tuesday. You’d think they were going to take all my books away from me or something.
I decided to write little blurbs about the books that stand out to me rather than separate reviews, with the exception of Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys. I have written a review of that and it will publish in the next week or two, I don’t remember when. So here goes:
Top 10 most anticipated books in 2016
This time last year I had no idea what books were coming out in 2015. I was so entrenched in my idea that books were an investment of my time, an investment that I didn’t want to waste, and so I felt that if a book wasn’t a classic or hadn’t won the Booker/National Book Award/Orange Prize/some other prestigious award, it probably wouldn’t be worth the risk of wasting my time. It was kinda weird and ultimately made me a huge book snob and miss out on a lot of really fun reading.
Well, times change, my friend, and I’m happy to say that I have expanded my horizons and now I am reading more than ever because I have stopped being such a dang book snob.
All this means that I actually do know some of the books coming out in the near-ish future and that some of them I am very very excited to see! The original Top Ten Tuesday category was for top ten books coming out in the first half of 2016 but I’m going to list any book I am excited for because as time goes I will inevitably discover more soon-to-be-published books that I can list in June.
Top ten books I want for Christmas
Weeeee, another Top Ten Tuesday! TBH, part of the reason I had stopped doing these was because the topics weren’t grabbing me. But I feel like it’s back on track now! I also promise to start doing more non-meme posts in the very near future.
I own most of the books on my TBR because I have very little self-control when it comes to buying books, but there are quite a few that I have added recently that I haven’t had a chance to buy, and that I have literally asked for for Christmas. Here goes! In no particular order:
- Crooked Heart – Lissa Evans
- The Iremonger trilogy – Edward Carey
- The Search for WondLa – Tony DiTerlizzi
- Girl Waits With Gun – Amy Stewart
- Animals – Emma Jane Unsworth
- The Fox and the Star – Coralie Pickford-Smith. Have you guys seen this cover? So gorgeous.
- The Game of Love and Death – Martha Brockenbrough
- H is for Hawk – Helen MacDonald
- The Darkest Part of the Forest – Holly Black
- Trouble is a Friend of Mine – Stephanie Tromly
- Men Explain Things to Me – Rebecca Solnit
- Any book that would complete a series I partially own. This includes Allegiant, Monsters of Men, Daughter of Smoke and Bone and Days of Blood and Starlight (what can I say, I bought the final book in a trilogy I haven’t read because it was $4 for the hardback), or Ruin and Rising.
Yeah, technically that was 16 books. *shrug*
And really, since I’ve gone completely off-track anyway, here are a few more I wouldn’t mind seeing.
- Radiance: A Novel – Catherynne Valente
- The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August – Claire North
- Wolf by Wolf – Ryan Graudin
- Gold Fame Citrus – Claire Vaye Watkins
It’s really amazing how creative people are, there are no end to stories to tell and that makes us readers very lucky people.
November wrap-up
Well clearly since it is December 4th and I am just now writing this I have been a bit busy lately. I read four books in November, another banner month considering my responsibilities and commitments.
In November I finished up the All Souls Trilogy, read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone for the first time ever, and read The Queen of the Tearling.
5 classics you should never read
Hey guys, I’m going to do you a favor today and instead of telling you which classics or which authors or which whatever you should read, I’m going to tell you which ones to avoid, in my humble opinion. I have read quite a few classics, and I generally enjoy them and understand why they are classics; heck, I even love some of them. But they can be scary and there are so many that I thought I’d help take a few off your list. I also provided what I feel are good substitutes based on the genre or plot of the book that sucks is not worth your time.
Hausfrau – Jill Alexander Essbaum & Dark Places – Gillian Flynn
This weekend I’ve read two books – Dark Places by Gillian Flynn and Hausfrau by Jill Alexander Essbaum. The combined effect of these two books really has me needing some light summery silly fiction right now. I’ll begin with Hausfrau.
My favorite reads as a child
This past weekend I went to three bookstores (I used the holiday as an excuse, because everything should be allowed when you have an extra day off… right?), and I bought a lot of books. One of the ones I’m most excited about is a copy of a Nancy Drew book, The Hidden Staircase. I haven’t read any Nancy Drew since I was probably 10, so I am very curious to see what my feeling will be about it all these years later. I had a thought, that if I were to look at the Nancy Drew books in the library of my hometown, I would be able to see the stamps from when I had checked them all out all those years ago. That thought made me really nostalgic, and I guess I never realized it but that’s one of the things that has now disappeared with everything being barcoded, scanned, and digitized.
Books, in other words 