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What are you reading 2021
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Christine
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Jun 01, 2021 04:42PM
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I'm reading
for a challenge and I'm struggling. On one hand the idea itself is kind of interesting. Basically you have a traditional sailing ship that has been made into a floating school for young children from around the world to attend to learn how to be sailors. It kind of reminds me of something like Magic School Bus for some reason. That part is cool. The story telling itself isn't exactly engaging though and requires some massive suspension of disbelief. The characters are either background/not there, adults, pure angels, or pure bullies. My biggest issue is the bullies. I'm not opposed to the trope of a bad guy who is bad for the sake of being bad. Sometimes you just need a character that deserves a punch in the face. These bullies are bullies because the story needs bullies but these bullies are next level dumb. They do the exact opposite of everything they are told simply because they are the bad kids even though it makes no sense at all. They are sailing across the Atlantic ocean and are told to wear life vests because a storm is coming up. Of course one of the bullies is to cool for school and refuses to wear one resulting in him getting swept overboard and the crew having to save him. Now the kids are in Australia and the captain is giving them a warning about the local wildlife including saltwater crocodiles. You've got all three of the idiot crew saying that they aren't scared of no stupid lizard and they can beat it with their bare hands. I'm just sitting here thinking "oh please try, please, please, please try so I don't have to read about you any more". Consider the hazard these idiots present to themselves, their classmates, and the crew I have no idea how these idiots are allowed on this ship outside of story convenience. Sorry, rant is over, for now.
I finished
and I really enjoyed it. Love books that centre women and their friendships especially historical ones. Moving onto
as my next audio so I'll update my thoughts on that in the Buddy Read thread that we have for it.
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Jo glad you enjoyed Rose Code! You need to read the rest of her books! I can't wait to get to that one.
Brittany wrote: "Gord that does sound like an interesting premise too bad it isn't done better.Jo glad you enjoyed Rose Code! You need to read the rest of her books! I can't wait to get to that one."
I'm definitely interested in checking out more of her books now. I think I'm going to do The Alice Network next because you said it was good and it has the same narrator as The Rose Code. I loved Saskia Maarleveld's narration, she was brilliant!
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Brittany wrote: "Alice Network is the best place to go next in her books. Awesome to know about the narrator!"Good to know!
I've finished several books recently )
- I wanted to read this one for a while and enjoyed so much! It's just this magical story with a little bit of darkness :) Somehow reminded me of Neil Gaiman.
- this series is like a roller-coaster. Some books were fine but this one... I struggled reading it.
- oh yeah! I finally finished this one! I've been struggling through it too but for a different reason. It was so emotionally overwhelming for me! And I love the new formed couples there.I'm currently reading:
- after reading some books with the same idea (Fangirl - lack of everything, all the Geekarella series - some books were good but very simple with pathetic writing style) I was a bit sceptical. But the book surprised me in a great way! It's good and the writing style is amazing! I'm also happy that there are much more books with links to the body shame and body image issue. I used to be fat when I was a teen and was ashamed of how I looked. And I also was a ballroom dancer. The environment is quite toxic, trainers are pretty harsh and tell you things like you are fat and have to loose weight. And for some people it's almost impossible. I've already been doing lots of sports and diets never worked for me. And if I had more books like this one maybe I didn't have to go through those hard times.
Mod
Spoiler alert sounds cute. I agree it is good to have more books out there with body image and such. Sorry that you went through those hard times
Time for that weekly update of what things I read this week
-3 starsThis wasn't a bad novella. It was something I've seen before though. Secret school for students who are descendants of the Greek gods. It was very middle of the road for me. I didn't hate it but it didn't feel like it brought anything to the table that I hadn't seen before. I might check out the series at some point in the future but this just made me want to read Mythos Academy again.
-3 StarsThis was something outside of the usual realm of things I read but challenges. This was about a young girl, 12 years old, who is forced to go to Vietnam with her grandmother for the summer. Her grandmother had raised seven children by herself after her husband had gone missing in the Vietnam war. She never had closure on that chapter in her life until a private detective found some info for her about what happened to him. This story had essentially two different story lines. There was the coming of age and learning about their heritage of the twelve year old girl and then there was grandma's story. I'll be honest I wanted to slap the little girl in the beginning of the book for just her ability to be utterly annoying but I also understand that was the point of the story. Similar to Jungle of Bones that I read recently you start with a super annoying main character and have them grow into a decent human being as a way to show character growth. I think this book did that story line better than Jungle of Bones but I hate how we have to start with an utterly annoying character. I liked grandma's story line about finding closure and I liked the glimpse in a culture I know little about.
-3 StarsI liked the main premise of this story. This is about a group of school children who attend a unique school to learn how to be sailors. That school is of course a giant sailing ship. Interesting idea. There isn't a lot more that I can say that I like about this book though. For a book that was written in 2018 this kind of had an old time feel to it. The good kids are just good they are pinnacles of purity who suffer crippling guilt if they tell a simple lie. The bad kids are of course bad kids because you need bad kids but this is where I really started having problems with the book. I'm not opposed to characters who are bad because we need someone bad or someone to be punched in the face. When that being bad though comes across as utterly stupid and flies in the face of common sense it just irks me. The three bullies in this book are not only a danger to themselves but to their fellow classmates and the entire crew of this ship. There is no way that these kids should have been allowed to step even one foot on that ship after some of the stunts that are pulled in this book. Then the author tried to redeem some of the bullies by trying to show that not all bad kids are really all that bad. It just left a sour taste in my mouth and turned me off of the book. As for the story itself it was alright. Good kids had an adventure sailing around Australia in the Tall Ships Race while stupid bullies tried to kill everyone around them with sheer stupidity.
-4 StarsAfter the above book I needed something to purge the sour taste from my mouth. There is not a lot more that I can really say about this series at this point. I love the characters, I love the story, it's just pure wholesome fun for me.
-3 StarsAfter seeing the anime I was curious about reading the source material and it just so happened that this worked for a challenge. I'm not going to judge this series by it's first book but this first book was a bit of a drag. It didn't feel like much of a story but it did feel like a giant info dump explaining the world. There were just pages and pages and pages explain how the world worked, who was who in this world, how those people interacted with others, it was borderline textbook at times. I'm kind of hoping that we all this info dump out of the way we can get into some actual story telling in future books.
-3 StarsThe things I'll read to cross of a task for a challenge. Again this is something I would not normally read and I'm not sure how to classify this book. It was written by a principal to teach students about what it was like being a Jew during the time of Hitler in Germany. Some of the book is non-fiction as it's based on the her families history as her father and grandparents lived through it. It was also a fictional book as she created a fictional friend for her father to show a young German boys perspective of Germany at that time but all of his experiences were based on actual historical records. It's this weird blurry line between fiction and non-fiction. Also because it was written for younger students it felt, I don't want to say safe but dialed back. It was a curious little book and I'm not sure how much impact it had on me overall.
-3 StarsBook 30 in my read through of this series. It's like the Rogue Angel series honestly as by this point you know what you can expect from the book. They appear at material transfer gate, figure out where they are, you see the horrors of the apocalypse, people are killed in numerous and horrible ways, they transfer out with the book ending on a mini cliff hanger. Like the Rogue Angel series these are just fun books that I can turn my brain off and enjoy.
I've only got a couple books planned for the next week. Those are
and
I finally finished
. So glad to see the back of it, honestly did not really enjoy it and it took me FOREVER to get through. I usually love Victoria Schwab's books, but this was definitely her weakest one for me, it is an older one though and she has improved massively as a writer since. Moving onto reading
, I was lent it by a friend back in November of last year, so I really need to get around to reading it and getting it back to her!
I know I normally wait to the end of the week to discuss what I read but I really want to talk about the book I just finished.
-5 StarsThis was a book from my TBR and I picked it up finally because I needed a book set in South Carolina and I didn't want to read some historical romance with proper southern ladies. Heading into things I wasn't sure what to expect and I had little to no expectations. The first thing that caught my eye though was the cover. I love how it's made to look like an old VHS tape. Right down to the weathering around the outside of the case and the "please be kind and rewind" sticker. It really helped set that 80's vibe early. The book doesn't stop there either. There is also a Spotify playlist full of all the songs in the book so you can jam out to the songs that the characters are listening to. The book is full of pictures of things from the 80's that the characters reference to such as a Mickey Mouse phone, there are pamphlets raising awareness for parents about whether their children are into satanism/drugs/sex etc, there are question pages from those teenage girly magazines. It all just helps set the feeling for the book and this book does a great job feeling like it was from the 80's while never making the reader feel like they have to have a encyclopedic knowledge of the time to understand what is happening. I'll get into spoilers here in a bit but it wasn't just all the fancy add on things that sold this book. Once I got reading the book I had a very hard time stopping and would have devoured this in a single sitting if left to my own devices. It wasn't just a horror book, it wasn't just a teenage drama piece, it was a period piece. It was all those things wrapped around a core of friendship. That kind of friend that is there for you no matter what happens.
I'm going to get into specific things from here on out so don't click the spoiler button if you don't want to be spoiled. I'll end this by saying that if you are curious about this book then I'd say give it a chance.
(view spoiler)
Mod
maybe a year or two ago and I really enjoyed it. It was a lot of fun! I actually just got an ARC of
and I'm very excited to read it! I will probably start it after I finish my current read.
Horrorstor I think is the next one I want to check out. I keep seeing it pop up on my recommended list and else where.
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good end to Annie's story. Looking forward to reading Sarah's. Taking a little break from the series first though.Its been a slow start to the month reading wise for me. I'll be back around more for the end of the month though.
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ending the Demonized books of this world. Very satisfying ending.And I read
which was a good romance.
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This series was a lot of fun! The only thing I didn't like about it was the damn love triangle. And it almost really wasn't a love triangle? But it was close enough and I didn't like it. Lol.I also read
which was meh, and
was another fun read! I really liked the concept of it!Right now I'm halfway through
and so far I'm enjoying it!
Time for that weekly update. I've already gushed about My Best Friend's Exorcism so we won't go into that again. 
-3 StarsMore of what I have come to expect from this series. It's a nice popcorn read to pick up once in a while.
-3 StarsSee the above comments about popcorn reads and apply here.
-3 StarsSee the above comments about popcorn reads and apply here.
-3 StarsI'm going to lump both these books together as my comments are pretty similar. So both of these books are my first dive into the modern Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys world and I have mixed feelings about them. There were some changes that were interesting and some changes that I wasn't that big of a fan of. They have tried to make Nancy/Joe/Frank less the perfect role models that they were in the original series and give them flaws/quirks and it's... interesting. The writing quality is not the greatest but this franchise has never been known for it's higher literature so ehhh. Now for the more book specific stuff.
Secret of the Red Arrow
The writing in this book is all over the place and just feels sloppy. This is the first book in the franchise and I found the setup to be interesting. The boys had been amateur detectives for a while but were facing growing legal problems related to the criminals they had busted. To avoid these legal problems the boys signed an agreement with the State DA, the chief of police, and their father called "The Deal". Basically the boys would give up their investigating and become normal students or they would essentially end up in juvie. It's an interesting premise but I hope they drop it quickly. If they are skating around this every book it would get pretty old. I also like the idea of and overarching villain. When they first started looking into the Red Arrow it kind of gave me some hardcore horror vibes but my minds wired a little weird.
Club Dread
There are a couple of things I liked about this. First I've been a fan of the idea of the Hardy Boys being more like secret agents then detectives. You see that in the 80's Casefile series and you see that here. It's an interesting take on the original series. The other big thing I like is the modern take on George and Bess, the friends of Nancy. Now I've never really read anything for the Nancy Drew series outside of the original series. George is still a bit of a "tom boy" but has also become proficient in computers. The biggest change I like though is to Bess. In the original series Bess was basically the "fat" friend who was the girly girl with the fainting and what not. There really wasn't a lot to her character. In this one she is into fashion and what not keeping that aspect of her character but she is also a master mechanic essentially. It's silly but I like this change to her character.
-4 StarsThis was me trying to fill the dreaded tag of "Classic" for a challenge. I don't have the best track record with "classics" so I was looking for something super short to read. Now I've never read any of The Boxcar Children before but I've been very aware of them. As someone who reads a lot of the older "teenage mystery" series like Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys etc this series has always floated around on the perimeter of things I know about. I'll be short and sweet about this. This book is a product of it's time but it's an incredibly sweet and simple story. Something about the story just feels classic. It's simple and it works really well. I'll probably read some more of these in the future at some point.
-5 StarsWith the authors recent passing I decided to reread the series yet again and I was pleased to see that my library has the deluxe edition versions. This is not a series that I'll recommend to everyone as this book fully earns the genre tag of Dark Fantasy. It's violent, it's dark, it's depressing, the main character is not your typical protagonist, and I love every panel of this beast. The deluxe edition is all 8"x11" which is an upgrade from the usual manga volume size of 5.8"x8.3" and it looks gorgeous. I'm so glad to be reading this again.
-DNFI knew my streak of non-fiction books had to come crashing down sooner or later and here it is. This is a shining example of what I don't like about non-fiction. The book had subject matter I like, the author injected a good amount of humor, but after five or chapters I was done. Simply put this book feels like a textbook because it's just name and date, date and name, name and date. This person did this on this day, this album came out on that day, this person met so and so on this day. When the book is just a constant flow of names and dates I just can't connect to the book. I might as well read a textbook or open Wikipedia and try reading that.
Up next I've got
and
. I also need to find a short book set in Australia or written by an Australian author.
Mod
Started reading
. Brittany, Elena and I are buddy reading it if anyone wants to join, link is here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
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It's been a bit of a slower week as I kind of got a bit burnt out on books for a couple of days. That being said here is what I read.
-3 StarsThis is why I was burnt out on books. They are great popcorn books and great for filling challenges but not so great for binge reading. I read four of these in under a week and I was kind of done with reading random stuff for a bit. As for the books themselves there isn't a lot to say. There is some sort of terrorist like threat, Mack gets called in, things and people get shot up, Mack saves the day, rinse and repeat. There is a reason why there is nearly 500 of them in this series alone.
-5 StarsThis was my immediate go to book to reset myself and it was what I needed. I don't have a lot to say that I haven't before about this series. I love the characters, I enjoy the mystery, I enjoy the chemistry. A prefect comfort book.
-4 StarsThe one random, non challenge related, purely for me read this week and it was cute. This is a yuri (lesbian) romance manga and instead of focusing on all the stuff before the dating starts, like so many romance manga do, this focused on how to make a relationship work after the dating started. It's interesting to see how the girls approach the relationship and work through issues that come up. For instance one girl has never really dated before and is worried about what a relationship means, when to do things, what things mean, etc. The other girl is more experienced and has different expectations for a relationship. Also that dating experience wasn't all sunshine and rainbows so she has some "baggage" that she does her best to hide. Just an enjoyable read and something I plan to continue at some point.
-Currently ReadingThis is my one buddy read I have to get done this month and I'm kind of conflicted on it. On one hand after the burn out I was going through this kind of book is a bit like a breath of fresh air. It's completely different from what I was reading before and is a great break. Then there is a part of me that is hyper focused on the challenge I'm working on that is freaking out a bit. I'm used to reading 150-250 page books and just cranking them out. This book is longer (450 pages) and moves at a glacial pace. No joke, I'm about 200 pages into this and there hasn't even been a whiff of a plot, of tension, of a bad guy, of any sort of conflict. This has been pure slice of life set in a fantasy world. Our two story lines haven't even met up yet. Outside of that it has been what I've come to expect from Lackey honestly. Great world building, great characters, story is very slow and this is probably going to be another prime example of middlebookitis that is typical for Lackey.
After I finish Owlsight it will be back to the challenge grind. Not sure what I'm reading next as I haven't found it yet.
Mod
I'm honestly thing about talking the rest of the year off from things like bingo games and what not. I have something like 6 or 7 on the go and for the first time in years I didn't complete any of them. Don't get me wrong I made a healthy dent in them as expected but it just got to be a bit much. They start out easily enough but then you always get those one or two left that you need to hunt down. With the amount I have on the go that suddenly turns into a lot of things to hunt down.
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mostly a good book, a little more unnecessary feeling drama near the end than I prefer but an adorable way to tell a love story.Starting
for a buddy read here now as my audio
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this weekend and I really enjoyed it! It was very intriguing and I just loved all the horror movie references!Up next I'm going to be starting
cause I'm still in the mood for sci-fi.
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YA Addicted Book Club
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