The Best Books I’ve Read Since April

I’ve been absent for a while, and as I’ve mentioned, I was editing my book and working with my agent.

The last time I posted a “best books” list was for March, and while I haven’t been posting, I have definitely been reading. I had a run of not so great books, then luckily I had a run of really enjoyable ones. Here are the ones I recommend.

The Boy And Girl Who Broke The World, by Amy Reed (speculative YA): I honestly cannot say enough good things about this book. It’s so many things. Beautiful, ugly, honest, strange, haunting. When I started it, I thought it was going to be a pretty standard YA book full of the usual tropes. Two chapters in, I realized I was wrong, and I was completely hooked. If you only read one YA book this year, this is the one I recommend.

 

The Help, by Kathryn Stockett (historical fiction): I realize I’m late to the party and everyone else has already read this book or watched the movie, but I never claimed to be a trendsetter. This book was amazing! This book is set in Jackson, Mississippi in 1962 and centers around two black maids and a white socialite who wants to tell their story. If history had been taught through historical fiction like this, I guarantee I would have paid attention.

 

Recursion, by Blake Crouch (science fiction): I had no idea what was going on for a long time, but the book hooked me early and kept me reading. It was a twisty science fiction thriller with great characters. I loved every minute of the ride and will end up reading it again just so I can better enjoy all the things that happened at the beginning that I didn’t understand.

 

The Reckless Oath We Made, by Bryn Greenwood (contemporary romance): Full disclosure: I will read and adore anything Bryn Greenwood writes. That being said, this book was wonderful. The main female character is kind of prickly. Her love interest is autistic and is a sword-carrying knight. It’s a strange romance, but beautiful to see two very different people overcoming obstacles. And just in case you think this is just a boy-meets-girl plot, it all begins when Zee’s sister is kidnapped during a prison breakout. This book is a wild ride.

The Astonishing Color of After, by Emily X.R. Pan (YA magical realism): After her mother’s suicide, Leigh becomes convinced her mother is a bird, and that her mother wants Leigh to visit her estranged grandparents in Taiwan. It’s a book about grief that’s real and raw, and the device of the bird as her mother is lovely.

 

We Are the Ants, by Shaun David Hutchinson (YA science fiction): Henry is periodically abducted by aliens. During one abduction, they tell him that the world will end in 144 days, and if he wants to stop it, he has to push a big red button. Henry isn’t sure the world is worth saving, and the book is his exploration of all the terrible and maybe not so terrible things in his life. I would have pushed the button right away, but this book did a great job of showing me why Henry didn’t.

 

Have you read anything great lately?

Book Challenges- Week 12

This was another slow reading week for me. I was in Arizona, visiting family, and that makes it difficult for me to get anything read. Plus, I drive the 14 hours back and forth, which means the only reading I get done during the two days’ drive is on audiobook.

Popsugar Challenge

(11/50) No progress this week

While I Was Reading Challenge

(4/12) No progress this week

The Unread Shelf

Running Total: 3 No progress this week

5 Classic Books

(0/5) No progress

Miscellaneous Reading

How to Build a Girl, by Caitlin Moran (YA contemporary): I both liked this book and didn’t. It’s sort of like a rock and roll memoir from a teenage writer’s perspective. There’s a lot of sex and drugs in it, which wasn’t really my thing. I love that it’s sex-positive. I loved the awkwardness of the main character. And I loved that she reinvents herself throughout the book, trying one thing, then another when that doesn’t work. The message is ultimately a great one and one that teenage girls need to hear. Even if I didn’t love all the details of the book, I liked it enough overall that I’d recommend it to some people, though it’s definitely not for everyone. (Though really, what book is?)

All The Ugly and Wonderful Things, by Bryn Greenwood (narrated by Jorjeana Marie): Friends of mine who love audiobooks talk about what a different experience it is to listen to the book instead of reading it, so I decided to give it a go with this one. It’s no secret that this is one of my all-time favorite books. I had a long and boring drive, so I decided to give it a try. I loved it! Listening to it reminded me of all the reasons I love this book, but I also picked up on things I had missed in previous readings. The narrator was great, and this experience has inspired me to try rereading other favorites of mine on audio.

Abandoned

None this week.

2018 Running Total: 31

 

Have you made any progress on your TBR or book challenges?

Book Challenges 2018- Week 6

Popsugar Challenge

(7/50) over 10%!

A past Goodreads Choice Awards winner (2014)- The Opposite of Loneliness, by Marina Keegan A friend of mine gave me this book ages ago, and I’ve been wanting to read it, but… well, you know the story of my TBR by now.

It’s a series of essays and short stories written by a young woman who died five days after her graduation from Yale. She wanted to be a writer. After she died, her parents and teachers got together and put this book together.

Some of the stories and essays are fantastic. I particularly liked the title essay. Some of the stories are bleak, and I didn’t enjoy those as much. I’m so impressed that such a young woman wrote such lovely stories though.

Probably the thing that had the most impact on me wasn’t anything in her stories; it was in the Forward, where her professor talks about how Marina kept a list of “Interesting Things,” and that’s part of where she got the idea for her stories. I’m glad she told me that because I would have been wondering. Some of the stories are weird (in a good way) and I would have wondered about a college student thinking of those things.

Overall, it was absolutely worth reading.

While I Was Reading Challenge

(1/12)

A book you chose for the cover- Release, by Patrick Ness: I tackled this choice by going the the library, looking at the “New YA Fiction” shelf, and grabbing the first book that caught my eye. I like train tracks, and I loved that a boy seems to be dangling from them upside down. The cover has absolutely no relation to what the book is about, but that’s always the challenge, isn’t it?

This is two stories in one. There’s the contemporary story of Adam Thorn and one monumental day in his life, when pretty much everything that can change for him, does. It’s a story about love and loss and sex and family. It was a captivating story. Then there’s the secondary story, about a murdered girl who’s spirit latches on to a fairy queen. And if the spirit doesn’t learn how to let go, the world ends.

I understood all the symbolism and how the stories are meant to relate, but I found the fairy queen portion of the story boring. Generally I love fantastical elements, but this one felt thrown in, like the author didn’t want to leave a great contemporary story alone and added some fantasy just to have it. I read it all, just in case I actually ended up needing to know it for Adam’s story to make sense. I didn’t; I could have skipped it.

Overall I liked this book. I would have loved it if we stuck with Adam.

The Unread Shelf

Total: 1

5 Classic Books

(0/5) No progress

Miscellaneous Reading

None

2018 Running Total: 13

Have you made any progress on your TBR or book challenges?

N is for Narrator

Hello, and welcome to Blogging A to Z 2017! Thanks for stopping by. Fellow A to Z-ers, please make sure to leave a link to your blog in the comments.

My theme this month is 26 of the Best Characters in Fiction.

In Every Day, by David Levithan, the narrator is an unnamed person without an identity. The narrator has always inhabited different bodies from day to day, sometimes female, sometimes male, but always the age that the narrator would be.

The narrator knows they’re different, and does their best to fit into the life of the person who’s body they inhabit day to day. All that changes when the narrator falls in love with a girl. Suddenly, being in any body isn’t good enough. The narrator does everything they can to be close to this girl.

What makes the narrator interesting, other than the story, is that the narrator asks good questions about identity and the nature of love. The girl feels that she might be able to love him when he’s in an attractive male body, but when the narrator is in a female body, or an unattractive male body, the girl is not interested.

While this wasn’t the best YA book I’ve ever read as far as enjoyability, I loved the premise and thought the narrator was an amazing character. For creativity, it topped the charts.

I like books that ask questions, even if they don’t answer them. Obviously this one did its job since I’m still thinking about it.

Have you read this one? What do you think of the idea of a narrator without identity?