Monday, April 30, 2018

April Final Wrap-up

April is over! It was a good reading month, although not as good as March. But let's be honest, I didn't expect it to be. I ended up finishing 13 books this month, which is still amazing. I'm back with the wrap-up for the second half of the month and now realize that I haven't finished a single physical book in the past two weeks. I started a few books that I'm in the middle of but still have to finish. Audiobooks, on the other hand, have been a lifesaver. I had a lot of stuff to do around the house and I also had to travel, so I managed to finish quite a few of those. So here are the books I read in the second part of April.


Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen


Pride and Prejudice--Austen's own 'darling child'--tells the story of fiercely independent Elizabeth Bennett, one of five sisters who must marry rich, as she confounds the arrogant, wealthy Mr. Darcy. What ensues is one of the most delightful and engrossingly readable courtships known to literature, written by a precocious Austen when she was just twenty-one years old.*

I decided to continue my Jane Austen series this month and picked up her second book, which is also her most famous one. This time I wasn't as disappointed and quite enjoyed the book. It seems this was my second time reading it because I marked it as read in my Goodreads but I didn't remember anything from my first time reading it, which was probably ages ago and also in Romanian. The story in this book is still overly dramatic, but the characters aren't as annoying or boring as the ones in Sense and Sensibility. I quite enjoyed the characters of Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy. I also felt a lot more irony from the author in this book compared to the other one. I listened to it as an audiobook and gave it 4 stars.


Written for J.R.R. Tolkien’s own children, The Hobbit met with instant critical acclaim when it was first published in 1937. Now recognized as a timeless classic, this introduction to the hobbit Bilbo Baggins, the wizard Gandalf, Gollum, and the spectacular world of Middle-earth recounts of the adventures of a reluctant hero, a powerful and dangerous ring, and the cruel dragon Smaug the Magnificent. *

Boy, was this a struggle! I have watched all the movies and was familiar with the story before picking up the book. I was always intrigued by the fact that they made 3 movies out of such a small book, but I didn't imagine that the book would be so much more boring. The movies were dragging at times but I quite enjoyed them. The book, on the other hand, has such a slow pace that I just couldn't follow. I listened to it as an audiobook and it was the first time I found myself thinking about something else all the time. I felt like rewarding myself when I managed to finish it. I was planning to read the Lord of the Rings series next but after going through this one I'm not sure that I'm gonna do that. It's a nice story and the writing is beautiful but I couldn't give it more than 2 stars.



February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln’s beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. “My poor boy, he was too good for this earth,” the president says at the time. “God has called him home.” Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returned to the crypt several times alone to hold his boy’s body.*

This is last year's Man Booker Prize winner and one of the Goodreads Choice Awards top nominees in historical fiction. I'm a big fan of historical fiction so I had to give it a try. However, this is not a typical book in that genre. Yes, the subject is historical but this is more like literary fiction. It's also written in a very original form, most of it reads like a play and the plot isn't very elaborate. There's also the supernatural element that is central to the story. So all in all, this is a very different book. I enjoyed parts of it but was sometimes lost, so I wouldn't say this was my kind of book. I also didn't appreciate the random graphic sex scenes that were scattered around the book. They really didn't bring anything to the story so I felt they were there just to shock. I read it as an ebook and ended up giving it 3 stars.



Sixteen-year-old and not-so-openly gay Simon Spier prefers to save his drama for the school musical. But when an email falls into the wrong hands, his secret is at risk of being thrust into the spotlight. Now Simon is actually being blackmailed: if he doesn’t play wingman for class clown Martin, his sexual identity will become everyone’s business. Worse, the privacy of Blue, the pen name of the boy he’s been emailing, will be compromised.*

Finally a YA contemporary that I enjoyed! This was such a nice, fluffy and endearing read. None of it felt forced like other YA books do. It had some of the YA tropes, but nothing that bad. Most of it was in email form, which was new to me and I quite enjoyed the cyber-romance. Given that I rarely am a fan of romance in books because it feels so unnatural and cliche, it's impressive that I enjoyed this. It's a quick, feel-good read. I listened to the audiobook and gave this 4 stars.


The Martian by Andy Weir


Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he’s sure he’ll be the first person to die there. After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive—and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive. *

I've watched the movie of this years ago, when it first came out, but I've heard that the book is even funnier and the audiobook is nice, so we listened to it on out 8 hour long drive to a friend's wedding. It was quite enjoyable, although I couldn't pick up all the technical details while listening to it and also paying attention to the road. It was quite funny though and my boyfriend also liked it a lot. It was his first ever audiobook and I'm glad I chose one that he enjoyed. One thing though, if you aren't a fan of science don't pick this up! I feel like that is implied with the science fiction genre but with this one it's an absolute must. I gave it 4 stars.


The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell


Shaun Bythell owns The Bookshop, Wigtown - Scotland's largest second-hand bookshop. It contains 100,000 books, spread over a mile of shelving, with twisting corridors and roaring fires, and all set in a beautiful, rural town by the edge of the sea. A book-lover's paradise? Well, almost ... In these wry and hilarious diaries, Shaun provides an inside look at the trials and tribulations of life in the book trade, from struggles with eccentric customers to wrangles with his own staff, who include the ski-suit-wearing, bin-foraging Nicky. He takes us with him on buying trips to old estates and auction houses, recommends books (both lost classics and new discoveries), introduces us to the thrill of the unexpected find, and evokes the rhythms and charms of small-town life, always with a sharp and sympathetic eye.*

I'm really not good with reading non-fiction, in fact I have some non-fiction books that I'm in the middle of and can't seem to get through, so when I do pick them up I usually go for memoirs because they are closer to fiction and easier to get through. This one was on my tbr because I love books about books and when it as in the 2 for 1 credit deal on Audible I just had to get it. I really enjoyed listening to it. It gave me an insight into the bookselling world and showed some aspects that I wasn't familiar with. It was also funny in a really sarcastic way, which  I'm a big fan of. The author is really cynical when talking about his customers so if you aren't a fan of that style you will not enjoy this. It also felt a bit repetitive at times, but other than that it was a solid 4 star read for me.

So yeah, quite a bunch of audiobooks. Hopefully next month I will have more physical books finished. Cheers for May! 

*Source: Goodreads

Sunday, April 15, 2018

April Mid-month Wrap-up

Hello! It's the middle of April and I already read 7 books! Well, two of them are graphic novels but I still counted them as books. So again, I decided to split this month's wrap up in two to make shorter posts. Here are the books I read so far in April:





The Professor is Charlotte Brontës first novel, in which she audaciously inhabits the voice and consciousness of a man, William Crimsworth. Like Jane Eyre he is parentless; like Lucy Snowe in Villette he leaves the certainties of England to forge a life in Brussels. But as a man, William has freedom of action, and as a writer Brontë is correspondingly liberated, exploring the relationship between power and sexual desire.*

In February, I read Shirley and totally loved it, so I couldn't wait to pick up another book by Charlotte Brontë. This was the only one of her 4 novels that I hadn't read. It was published posthumously but was actually written before the other ones, so the writing is not as great as in her other works. Nevertheless, I still enjoyed this a lot. It was interesting to see her write from the perspective of a man. Some of the thoughts of the main character make him not very likable and the romance doesn't feel that real, so I only gave it 3.5 stars. I rounded it up to 4 stars on Goodreads because it's one of my favorite authors after all. I listened to this one as an audiobook, even though I have the physical copy as well.


Lina is just like any other fifteen-year-old Lithuanian girl in 1941. She paints, she draws, she gets crushes on boys. Until one night when Soviet officers barge into her home, tearing her family from the comfortable life they've known. Separated from her father, forced onto a crowded and dirty train car, Lina, her mother, and her young brother slowly make their way north, crossing the Arctic Circle, to a work camp in the coldest reaches of Siberia. Here they are forced, under Stalin's orders, to dig for beets and fight for their lives under the cruelest of conditions.*

This is a highly rated book that I didn't love as other people did. This is a heartbreaking story written very realistically, even brutally I would say. It's a very important book because it teaches people about the Soviet deportations following Western territory annexations during WWII. The fact that it is written as a YA novel is even more important, because it reaches people that would otherwise never find out about these events. I have read many reviews from people that mentioned that it was the first time they heard about what is described in this book. However, I didn't like the writing at all. I realize that YA novels are written in a simpler way but I have read many YA books that are beautifully written. This was just too simple and too distant, which prevented me from attaching to the characters. Even though the events described were extremely painful, I didn't feel too depressed or sad while reading. This could have been a tearjerker but ended up being a 3 star read for me.

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck


First published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads, driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into haves and have-nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity.*

The first reread of the year! I'm a huge huge fan of Steinbeck's books and have read pretty much every novel he has written. It's been quite a few years since I've read this masterpiece, so it was time for a reread and this time in English since the first time I read it translated in Romanian. It was a little hard for me because the dialog is in dialect and there were words I've never heard before, but I looked them up so it wasn't too bad. This took me about a week to read because it is a big book, but also because it must be enjoyed in small sips. It is quite an atmospheric read. As Steinbeck said:  "I've done my damnedest to rip a reader's nerves to rags." And he surely did! 5 shiny stars from me!


Everyone in Shaker Heights was talking about it that summer: how Isabelle, the last of the Richardson children, had finally gone around the bend and burned the house down.*

Another book that everybody loved and I didn't. This was also the winner of last year's Goodreads awards in the fiction category so there must be something wrong with me because I don't understand why. There was nothing special about this book. It was easy to read, with a woven plot that seemed to perfectly adjust itself. Some of the coincidences in the book were almost ridiculous. I can't go too much into detail about the plot because it's sort of a mystery that unfolds itself as you read it. Some of the characters were ok, but I didn't see too much evolution in them. For me Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine  was so much better than this one. I plan on reading a few others from that category as well so we'll see what I think about those. I gave this one 3 stars.

Not in the picture:

Lady Mechanika, Vol.1: The Mystery of the Mechanical Corpse by Joe Benítez


The tabloids dubbed her "Lady Mechanika," the sole survivor of a mad scientist's horrific experiments which left her with mechanical limbs. Having no memory of her captivity or her former life, Lady Mechanika eventually built a new life for herself as an adventurer and private investigator, using her unique abilities to solve cases the proper authorities couldn't or wouldn't handle. But she never stopped searching for the answers to her own past. *

This is a very obscure graphic novel that I came across randomly on YouTube. The steampunk setting intrigued me and the graphics seemed gorgeous so I gave it a try. Since I'm new to graphic novels and comics in general, I don't have any experience with superhero ones but this one seems to be a very unusual one. It's really dark and mysterious, so I love it very much. I can't get enough of the amazing images in this comic! The plot is not bad either and I can't wait to read other stories because there are a bunch of volumes out at the moment and each one has a standalone plot. Did I mention this is steampunk with Victorian outfits and monsters? Definitely my cup of tea! I read it as an ebook and gave it 4 stars.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline


It’s the year 2044, and the real world is an ugly place. 
Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes his grim surroundings by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia that lets you be anything you want to be, a place where you can live and play and fall in love on any of ten thousand planets. 

And like most of humanity, Wade dreams of being the one to discover the ultimate lottery ticket that lies concealed within this virtual world. For somewhere inside this giant networked playground, OASIS creator James Halliday has hidden a series of fiendish puzzles that will yield massive fortune—and remarkable power—to whoever can unlock them. *

With the movie being out at the end of last month, I had to read the book first because that's what I do if I'm interested enough. Again, many people love this book but I did not. It was an entertaining read and I can definitely admire the innovative aspect of it, unfortunately I got bored about half way through and found the second half quite predictable (including the ending). The world building part was amazing, which made me fly through the beginning of the book. I definitely liked the book so I gave it 3 stars. This was an ebook read. After seeing the movie I began to appreciate the book a bit more. I even debated on changing my rating to 4 stars but decided to leave it that way. They changed many things in the movie to make it more action packed and less geeky, things I loved in the book, and while I understand the reasons behind it, I felt a bit disappointed.


For the dark Titan, Thanos, the Infinity Gauntlet was the Holy Grail, the ultimate prize to be coveted above all else. Now, on the edge of Armageddon and led by the mysterious Adam Warlock, Earth's super heroes join in a desperate attempt to thwart this nihilistic god's insane plunge into galactic self-destruction.*

The Infinity War movie is coming out at the end of this month, so I thought I would do something new, namely read the comic it was based on. I have seen many of the Marvel movies and I must say that the Avengers ones are my least favorite. The characters don't seem to be as complex and the back story isn't that interesting. That sort of happened with this comic as well. There are a ton of superheroes showing up here and it's really hard to keep track of all of them. My favorite part were the supreme beings that almost certainly won't show up in the movie. I enjoyed this but not quite as much as Lady Mechanika. It is an older comic though, so it's not as beautiful as the present day ones. This was an ebook and I gave it 3 (maybe 3.5) stars.

That's it for now. I'm not expecting the second half of April to be as prolific but I'm gonna do my best. Happy spring!

*Source: Goodreads