February's Challenge

[Anita]

Alright Suevians: Second month, Second book!

February's challenge is to read the second book in a series. What series will you be continuing? Is it new, or will you use this as motivation to pick up some long forgotten title? Come share with us!

[Meaghan]

Hmmm maybe I'll finally get around to reading Clockwork Prince. I also need to finally read The Iron Daughter. Most series I'm reading I'm already way passed the second book lol. Or I'd need to start a new series (or reread an old one) and burn through the first one to get to the second one. If I can find it I'd like to read The Dark Forest but I'm not going to count on getting to it this month.

[Ribbon]

Guess it's time to hunt down Serafina and the Twisted Staff, Out of the Wild, or The Whispering Trees. I enjoyed the first books last year but couldn't find library copies of the seconds at the time.

[Jess]

Oh my god, this is the perfect challenge to get my butt in gear. I started half a dozen series in 2016 I lost sight of, mostly M/M romance. I'm going to try for The Raven King, Tinsel Fish, A to Z--they're all pretty short, so it should be a breeze.

[Jessica]

I am reading The Masked City, the second book in The Invisible Library series. The author has s way of keeping me up too late reading.

[Anita]

I like these books. I drop a lot of serieseses because mostly I forget about them while I'm waiting for the next book to come out. Or I just have so many books I want to read that I never stop to go back to a series. So, for this month I chose Castle in the Air which is Howl's Moving Castle #2. But I also have Home and The Broken Kingdoms on my nightstand. lucky me! The funny thing is that I thought I would read The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, but we'll see. I might squeeze it in

[Chessa]

I'm planning on reading Binti: Home, the second in Nnedi Okorafor's Binti series. I loved the first book, so I'm really looking forward to this one!

[Anita]

^^That's one of mine too! Can't wait to read it myself and hear what you think as well

[Ribbon]

Now I remember why I dropped The Thickety series. It's extremely stressful! These poor kids can never catch a break and in book 2 it's worse because there's not even an illusion of a safety net left. Too much anxiety!

This month's challenge is reducing my to-read list in a slightly different way than standard.

[Anita]

Rachel wrote: "Now I remember why I dropped The Thickety series. It's extremely stressful! These poor kids can never catch a break and in book 2 it's worse because there's not even an illusion of a safety net lef..."

Is that the Lemony Snicket books? I was thinking of picking those up with my kids because of the Netflix show. Making gains in our to-read list is always (usually?) a plus! At least you can move on to newer and hopefully better reads :)

[Anita]

Chessa wrote: "I'm planning on reading Binti: Home, the second in Nnedi Okorafor's Binti series. I loved the first book, so I'm really looking forward to this one!"
I finished Home, how about you? I'd love to share thoughts. Very excited for the next one!

I also finished Castle in the Air. We read Howl's Moving Castle in this group and I remember it being a little hit or miss. This second book was pretty good though! It seemed to be a different story and it could definitely stand on it's own. It was quite whimsical and reminded me a bit of Aladdin. I really enjoyed the whole new world (ha) the author immersed us in.

How are you all doing on this sequel challenge? I hope you're making gains on your series and your to-read shelf!

[Ribbon]

The Thickety (starting with A Path Begins) isn't very similar to Lemony Snicket other than following the "kids can handle dark subjects" line of writing. It has more of a dark fairy tale vibe.

The Series of Unfortunate Events books are good - sometimes obnoxiously smug/clever and repeatative but I read them all as a young teen and felt very smug/clever for it.

[Ribbon]

Finished up Serafina and the Twisted Staff! So good. It's set in a real place in North Carolina and uses mythology of the Appalachians. The title character has the personality of a half-feral cat, which reminded me dearly of a cat I once had.