Another month has ended and so here we have another monthly reading wrap up and reading challenge progress report.
I’m not gonna lie, January had me feeling like, “Am I actually a person who loves reading?” because my total number of books I actually finished was quite low. In February it seemed like I could not stop reading, as I’d finish one and immediately start the next. Not necessarily something I would recommend in some cases, but I couldn’t stop myself.
The Books I Finished (and my thoughts on them):
If We Survive by Andrew Klavan
I’ve had this book sitting on my shelf for years and only just now got around to reading it. That’s how you know you have way too many books. This book was pretty good. I ended up reading it in about 2 days and I definitely enjoyed it. I enjoyed the characters quite a bit, some were a little two dimensional but a few were really captivating. Like Meredith. Early on in the story the narrator is telling little stories about each character to try to explain the essence of his perception of each of them, when he talks about Meredith I thought, “I want to be her,” and that feeling stayed with me throughout the entire story. I really love her character. There’s just something about her.
The experience the characters are thrust into was really interesting and I was constantly wondering what was going to happen next. But I will say some of it is a bit…convenient, at times. Not enough to make the story any less enjoyable though, just a little bit of that “Oh of course that would happen,” type of thing.
I really loved the way the story was written though, it had a really cool style.
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Fun thing about this book: Margaret Atwood starting writing it the year I was born.
And that’s the only thing that’s fun about it because this book is so…uncomfortable? Creepy? Haunting? Don’t get me wrong, this is a great book. It’s such an interesting world she’s built and the way she tells the story is so captivating, but it’s so hard to read because of how it makes you feel. I had a near constant sense of discomfort while reading it, but honestly I feel like that’s how it’s supposed to make you feel. She captures the sense of monotony and nothingness that fills the handmaid’s day so well, that in turn, I actually had the sensation that the story might never end and would just stretch out forever. I can’t quite explain it any better than that but it was extremely unsettling.
Oh, also, mild spoiler alert but there is a baby born in the book and it’s given the same name as me. So that was also creepy to me for some reason.
The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
It’s not that I don’t have words for this book, it’s more like I have too many words and I can’t figure out where to start. This book almost completely threw me off track because I struggled with the idea that if I finished it, it would be over. I had multiple moments where I had to just put the book down and absorb what I had just read. I wrote more about that problem on a previous blog post and I’ll probably at some point write even more about this book but for now just know that I loved it. A lot. And ever since I finished it, I miss it so much.
Evernearth by Brodie Ashton
Any book I read immediately after The Starless Sea was doomed to suffer for that fact, if only because nothing could compare to that story. It would essentially be somewhat of a palate cleanser, reading wise, as I worked to extract my mind from the world I had just been happily living in so I could move on to the next. So, for that purpose, this book was great. It was a quick easy read and the basics of the story are entertaining enough. The execution of said story however failed to impress me. I just didn’t really enjoy it. I felt like there was no consistency to the story, it’s not very descriptive and it just honestly didn’t really steal my heart. It basically felt like it was the outline of a potential story, which could have turned out great if it had been fleshed out a bit more and if the author had been a bit more descriptive. For example there’s a boy (this isn’t a spoiler, there’s always a boy) who is a prominent part of the story and we don’t learn until halfway through the book that he wears glasses, it just never gets mentioned in any of the earlier parts of the story that briefly mention his looks. At another point in the story 2 characters leave school to head to a coffee shop and pick up a 3rd character on the way, then the original 2 leave the coffee shop and head back to school and there is absolutely no explanation about what happened to the 3rd person. Did they leave him there? Drop him off at home on the way back? Forget he exists entirely? I have no idea.
Just not my favourite book.
A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
This was one of those books where I feel like I had it recommended to me so many times and I heard so many good things, but I just had never actually picked it up and tried to read it. I finally got around to it this month and I gotta say I understand the hype. For the most part I really enjoyed this book and I definitely can’t wait to pick up the other books in this series.
There were minor things that I had some issues with. There were a few things that were hinted at that didn’t seem to go anywhere yet…that might change in the other books though so I’m not counting it against this one at all at the moment. There was also a few times where I couldn’t really be sure what to think of the situation happening on the page because Feyre’s internal thoughts were saying one thing but how she was responding was completely different. And it didn’t seem to be a strategic thing on her part, it just…didn’t match. It kind of made me pause and go “Huh?” once in awhile. But overall, this was a great story and I really enjoyed it a lot.
Oh, and also, I love that they included a pronunciation guide for the names but I don’t understand why they put it at the BACK of the book after the story was already over. That would have been very useful information in the beginning.
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I thought I was going to have another book to add this list, as I started another really short book I assumed I’d finish in just about a day but that was about a week ago and I’m only about halfway through. Other hobbies just took more of my attention I guess.
Wrap Up
Total Books Read This Month: 5
Total Books Read Overall: 7
Total Height Read This Month: 6.5 inches
Total Height Read So Far: 9.5 inches
So this is definitely an improvement over last month. I do feel like at this rate I can probably reach my goal.
Leave me a comment and let me know what you’ve read so far this year, and if you’ve read any of these books.
