Recent Reads: An Attempt at Review

Considering how much I claim to love books, I figure I should maybe share more of what I read and what I think about what I read.

The sad thing is that I don’t read near as much as I’d like, or at least, I don’t read as many books as I’d like because I’m often distracted by all the internet things! All the blogs and news articles and social media updates! Too much reading material is vying for my attention!

Anyway, if you’re ever interested, you can always check out my Goodreads page to see what’s going on in that part of my world. If you have a Goodreads account, we should be friends!

Since the start of the year, I have finished reading five books. Ugh, I am ashamed by that low number. Whatever.

I read the acclaimed The Book Thief. It’s a book about a girl who loves books. I love those kind of books! But really, it’s a very neat read. It’s set in the WWII time period, right in the middle of it all, in Germany. Your narrator is none other than Death himself, a very prominent figure during WWII, so that totally works. I would definitely recommend it.

I read The Fault in Our Stars by beloved YA author and semi-famous YouTube star John Green. This is most definitely my favorite of his novels, though I’ve thoroughly enjoyed everything else I’ve read of his. Well, mostly. I only partially enjoyed one book, but that’s not important. This book is fantastic. It is sad and inspiring and the title is a Shakespeare reference.

I read Wintergirls, brought to you by the same woman who gave us Speak. If you haven’t read Speak… like, just go read it. I don’t know what else to tell you. It’s a prime example of how books that are often challenged/banned contain the material that needs to be read the most. Wintergirls isn’t quite up to par, but it’s still really good. As someone who used to be a teenage girl, I can tell you than Anderson is spot on with portraying how a girl that age thinks. Be warned though – both of these books have caused concern for somewhat good reason – Speak deals with rape and Wintergirls with eating disorders. If either of those things are triggers for you, I would not urge you quite as hard to read these, but I will say that I think you would find a friend in these novels, in these characters.

I read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire. These books… they’re so very dense. and Larsson goes into so much detail that you could swear isn’t important and you really, really, really want to skip a lot it, but pretty much all of it IS important and relevant, which is somewhat aggravating, but it’s also kind of cool how he packs it all in there. Good narratives. I’m currently making my way through the last one, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. I will also share that Lisbeth Salander is very much applauded as a character, as woman, as a badass. All well deserved praise, but I feel the need to point out that as much as we may all like her as a character, if she were a real person, very few of us would love her the way we claim to love her fictional self. I think that’s part of the point. She’s odd. She’s different. In a way that’s uncomfortable for a lot of people. She’s not exactly sociable or friendly or even nice. She’s barely polite. Most of us would dismiss her as she is indeed dismissed by many in the novels. But she certainly makes for an interesting story!

I’ve been “currently reading” a biography of Charles Schultz for quite awhile. That is to say, I started it, I read about 20-30 pages, and it’s still lying around, and I WANT to finish it eventually. But it’s SUPER dense, and it’s the first legitimate biography I’ve read for pleasure, and it is a thick book, you guys. But being the Peanuts buff that I am, I am determined to finish reading that little bastard!

And then just recently I started reading Under the Tuscan Sun, to give myself a break from The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. Mayes is an incredibly gifted writer. Within just a few pages, she has made Italy seem so (pardon me) FUCKING MAGICAL and I want to go so badly now! Maybe some day. But yeah, I think I’m really going to enjoy this one.

Once upon a time, I dreamed of being a book critic or reviewer. But I really don’t think I could do it. I much prefer sharing quick snippets of opinion like you see here rather than tearing everything I read to pieces, looking at it with a microscope, and using all sorts of pretentious language.