Books I Read and Other Assorted Oddities

 This was a book club book for my teacher book club. I was initially kind of excited to read it because the title is intriguing and it's science fiction. Death of the Author  follows the story of wheelchair-bound Zelu. At the start of the book, Zelu is an unsuccessful author and university professor. She loses her creative writing teaching position due to her arrogance and insensitive comments toward some of her students. In her frustration and desperation, she sits down and pounds out a novel like nothing she's ever tried to write before: Rusted Robots, a sci-fi novel about robots after humanity. The book is wildly successful and propels her into fame. I really don't know where to start with this book. For one, I found the main character, Zelu, to be utterly intolerable. Nothing was ever her fault, and everything was always someone else's fault. Everyone was always judging her, and she was overly concerned about what everyone might have been thinking of her. I felt tha...

 I rolled this one as the young readers category. I'm doing away with that category and won't be rerolling for it now that I'm finished. I didn't read the previous books, so I can't attest to the whole series. I looked for the other books but they are out of print now and really hard to find. The Fledgling follows the story of a young girl, Georgie who thinks she can fly. She can't replicate it though, and finds it really frustrating. She then meets a great big Canada goose, who she calls the Goose King. She flies on the back of the Goose King and learns to fly. This book was a little annoying. I didn't like the whole transcendentalist part of it, especially in an upper elementary book. I felt like it made it overly complex for the interested age range. I also didn't particularly care for the whole storyline at all. It was boring, not much happens. The characters were all shallow too. I rated this book ⭐⭐

 This was one of the book club choices for my neighborhood book club. We called it historical fiction, but I didn't really feel like it was actually historical fiction, but I did enjoy it. The Names follows the storyline of a woman Cora and her abusive husband. Cora is in a terrible marriage. The story starts with Cora on her way to the registrars office to fill out the birth certificate for her newest child. Her oldest child, Maia, thinks the boy's name should be Bear. Cora wants to name him Julian. Her husband, Gordon, wants to name him after himself as it's a family name. The story follows all the way through what would happen depending on which name the baby is given. The concept of this book was really fascinating. I highly enjoyed the way this book was written and told, though it was a little confusing at the start. I also had a hard time with the time jumps that happen in between each chapter. Really though, I loved the characters in the book. Bear, Julian, and Gordo...

 OK, I'm back through my rotation completely again, and have started several new books. Here's where things stand currently: Fantasy:  The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue  by V. E. Schwab (41%) Sci-Fi:  Legend  by Marie Lu (7%) Realistic Fiction:  Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe  by Benjamin Alire Saenz (1%) Young Readers:  The Fledgling  by Jane Langton (19%) Brandon Sanderson:  The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England  (100%) Nonfiction:  The Anxious Generation  by Jonathan Haidt (67%) Classic:  Les Misérables  by Victor Hugo (6%) Mystery/Thriller:  The Brothers Hawthorne  by Jennifer Lynn Barnes (50%) Historical Fiction:  Apeirogon  by Colum McCann (4%) Audio:  The Women  by Kristin Hanna (3%) English Department Book Club:  Death of the Author  by Nnedi Okorafor (51%) Neighborhood Book Club: The Names  by Florence Knapp (5%)...

 OK, as stated before, audiobooks will be rolled out of sequence of everything else. I just finished The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy , so now I need to roll again for audiobooks. I used a D6 for the tens place, and a 10 sided for the ones place. I rolled 29 which corresponds on my sheet to The Women  by Kristin Hannah. That will be what I start for audio.

 I've read this book before when I was in junior high, and while I remember most of it, I read it before I started this blog. So, here I am, rereading it. Arthur Dent is a regular guy with an unremarkable life. He finds himself one morning, with bulldozers on his front lawn to knock his house down in order to construct a byway. As he's protesting this action by laying down in the mud in front of the truck, his friend Ford, shows up to take him to the pub. Ford tells Arthur that Earth is about to be destroyed and that he should drink as much alcohol as he can. They then hitchhike onto a Vogon destructor ship, and away their galactic adventure goes. This book is utterly absurd. I hadn't really picked up on that when I was in junior high - I always thought it was funny, but the absurdity was lost on my developing brain. I still very much enjoyed this book, and laughed at the ridiculous side notes from Adams as the narrator and the Hitchhiker's Guide .  The characters in th...

 I picked this one up with a bunch of others after the Secret Projects campaign, and it's been on my TBR forever. I read this as part of my Sanderson rotation spot. John finds himself in the middle of a forest, at night, with no knowledge of how he got there, who he is, or why he's there. He quickly finds himself over his head, fighting well-armed men with all kinds of physical augments that he doesn't have access to for some reason. The twist? John is in an alternate dimension of Medieval England. He's from the future, but somehow has to blend in with these people of the past. Can he stop the people from his own timeline who are trying to exploit it? I will say... This was not my favorite Sanderson. I didn't not like this book, but it wasn't my favorite. I love the witty title, and the main character was fine. The writing was pretty good as well. But unlike a lot of Brandon's other books, this book was too slow for me. First: the amnesia problem. I don'...

 OK, so since I finished Three Dark Crowns , I need to roll for another audiobook to listen to. I'm going to roll these out of sequence from my physical books because I treat audiobooks differently. I don't listen to audiobooks in sequence with the physical books. I usually listen to audio while driving or while cleaning, so I like to have one at least downloaded and started.  I rolled: I'm calling this 1 (nothing in the tens place and 1 in the ones place). That happened to be The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. So, once I'm finished with it, I'll change that book on my sci-fi list to be book 2. I have actually read this book before, but it was a long, long time ago. I'm excited for another chance to visit it and write some reviews!

 This one was really popular in YA several years ago. I know... I'm always reading older books. But I was fascinated by the dark cover and spooky vibes. I picked this up as an audiobook and started it a couple of months ago. Lately, I've been really good and listening to books on my way home from work and while cleaning. Three sisters, divided as children. Each with a different power. Kat is a poisoner, capable of mixing power potions designed to bring death upon any enemy. Arsinoe is a naturalist, who can make plants bloom and summon an animal familiar. Mirabella is an elemental with the power to control the weather and fire. Two of the sisters are incredibly weak, and one very strong. After Beltane, comes the Year of Ascension, where two sisters must die, and one will become queen. Who will prove strong enough to survive? I had no expectations going into this book. I had no idea what it was about, or anything. I just knew that it was popular. I was hooked pretty much from the...

 I managed to finish off a couple of books during this past cycle through the line-up. Here's where I'm at: Fantasy:  The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue  by V. E. Schwab (9%) Sci-Fi:  A Wrinkle in Time  by Madeleine L'Engle (100%) Realistic Fiction:  Love and Gelato  by Jenna Evans Welch (100%) Young Readers:  Old Yeller  by Fred Gipson (100%) Brandon Sanderson:  The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England  (73%) Nonfiction:  The Anxious Generation  by Jonathan Haidt (53%) Classic:  Les Misérables  by Victor Hugo (5%) Mystery/Thriller:  The Brothers Hawthorne  by Jennifer Lynn Barnes (18%) Historical Fiction:  The Nightingale  by Kristin Hannah (100%) Audio:  Three Dark Crowns  by Kendare Blake (66%) English Department Book Club: Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor (35%) I decided in the course of this rotation that I was going to just add my book club books into the...

 This book was the result of dice rolls. I originally got this book when my mother in law was downsizing her collection from her elementary school teaching days. I've never read it. I feel like in second grade, you read Old Yeller , or you read Where the Red Fern Grows , and I read Red Fern ... Old Yeller  is a coming of age story that follows Travis and his family during a summer. Travis's father leaves with the other men and older boys of their settlement in Texas to take cattle to Kansas to the market. Travis is tasked with being "the man of the house" and helping his mother out with all of the household things, the farm, and watching over his brother Arliss. Everything is going well until an old dog shows up in the chickens, stealing the eggs. Travis hates the dog to start with, but grows to like him as he realizes how smart he is and what a spectacular help the dog is. I knew going into this book that Yeller was going to die. You don't pick up a book like thi...

 This book is really nostalgic for me, and probably why I love it so much. My mom read this to my brother and I when we were kids, and it's one that has stuck with me surprisingly well. I remember several parts of the story really vividly (and was actually really impressed with what I remembered of the story). This one got the Disney treatment, but the movie is terrible in comparison. Meg's father is gone. They don't know where he is, when he will return, or if he's even all right. People in town are starting to talk, and kids make fun of Meg (and they're met with her fists). All of that changes when Charles Wallace, Meg's younger brother introduces them to three exceptionally odd ladies: Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Which, and Mrs. Who. The ladies set the children (who are joined by Calvin, their neighbor) on a journey to rescue Meg's father from a galaxy-consuming darkness. Like I said, I can't help but find this book really fascinating. I remembered portions of...

 This book is highly recommended online and from some of my book club friends. It's taken me months to get through this, but I ended up enjoying it. The Nightingale  follows the story of two sisters, Vianne and Isabelle. Vianne is the older sister, married with a daughter, Sophie. Isabelle is a beauty, but a wild spirit. Never one to follow the rules, Isabelle frequently shows up where she's not supposed to be. As the war breaks out, Isabelle finds herself disobeying everyone's expectations again, and throwing herself into the resistance. With her husband gone, Vianne is forced to billet a German officer. This only gets more complicated as Isabelle's resistance life clashes with Vianne's attempts to protect her family. I loved this book, but I also hated it. I struggle a bit with violence against children, and while it is historically accurate, I really had a hard time with that aspect of the novel. The characters were interesting, though I was a bit annoyed by both...

 This was a book club choice for this month, and I've never read it before. I will say, going into this review, (as I do frequently) that romance is not my genre... Lina thought she knew her mother. It had always been the two of them, and her mother was a force of nature. Then came the diagnosis, and the details of the man that her mother said was Lina's father. After her mother's passing, Lina agreed to go and stay with her father in Italy, where he lived. Upon arriving, she finds that he lived in a WWII memorial graveyard, and she met Ren, the most gorgeous boy she'd ever seen. Then comes the journal. It's from her mother, and the first words say, "I made the wrong choice." Can Lina uncover the truth about her mother's time in Italy and her own self? Overall, this book was cute, but predictable. I had most of it figured out before I was very far into the book, and it felt almost like a formulaic YA romance (the first boy is always the  boy, no matter...

 I lucked out and got to go to the bookstore twice recently. Here's what I got this time: I got Love and Gelato  for book club. I loved Project Hail Mary  so much I had to buy a copy. I only have a fancy copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy , so I bought this one so I don't have to use my fancy one. Then I've seen Assassin's Apprentice  by Robin Hobb be recommended so much, that I decided to pick it up and add it to my TBR.

 I've once again read through my entire rotation. Here are my categories as they stand now: Fantasy:  The Courting of Bristol Keats  by Mary E. Pearson (100%) Sci-Fi:  A Wrinkle in Time  by Madeleine L'Engle (62%) Realistic Fiction:  Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine  by Gail Honeyman (100%) Young Readers:  Old Yeller  by Fred Gipson (21%) Brandon Sanderson:  The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England  (61%) Nonfiction:  The Anxious Generation  by Jonathan Haidt (48%) Classic:  Les Misérables  by Victor Hugo (4%) Mystery/Thriller:  The Brothers Hawthorne  by Jennifer Lynn Barnes (12%) Historical Fiction:  The Nightingale  by Kristin Hannah (70%) Audio:  Three Dark Crowns  by Kendare Blake (37%) I need to roll for fantasy and realistic fiction. For realistic fiction, I'm going to be reading Love and Gelato by Jenna Evans Welch for book club. It happened to slot righ...

I went to an author event hosted in my town where Pearson was promoting this book. I bought it and started reading it, and it's take me quite a while to get through it. Bristol Keats has grown up on the run. Running from what? Her parents have never said, and yet they move frequently, live roughly, and drift from one small town to another. Until Bowskeep. And then, after her mother disappears, and her father dies, Bristol and her sisters are alone, poor, and unsure what to do next. Until Bristol is approached by someone who says they can make a deal with her. She meets the Fae king, Tyghan, and is whisked off on an adventure to save her father and find the truth. In all, this book had some issues... It wasn't terrible, the romance was OK, but some of the tropes were difficult to stomach. In all, though, I did finish it, which is more than I can say for some other novels that fit this genre. Let's start with characters. Bristol was likeable enough. She was fiercely independe...

 I joined a new book club of ladies in my neighborhood, and I'm super excited to read more and get to talk about it with people I don't know as well. I'm excited to have a place where I feel like I fit in. This month, we read Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine  by Gail Honeyman. Eleanor is completely fine. She has a job (working in accounts), she has a flat (furnished with odd, mismatched pieces), she has her weekly phone calls with mummy, and vodka to numb. Some weekends, she doesn't use her voice from the time she leaves work on Friday until she goes back to work on Monday. Eleanor doesn't really have any friends, but she does have a timetabled life, the same schedule, and the same stores. That is, until she sees the singer. Eleanor just knows from this one glance that a relationship with this man is right around the corner. She does everything she can to find out everything about him, going so far as to find out where he lives and follow him on social media. Eve...

 One of my favorite parts of Christmas is getting books, and I've gotten several lately. Someone in my neighborhood hosts a book exchange for the ladies in the neighborhood. It's one of my favorite parts of the year, and I always buy my books well in advance. This year, I took The Midnight Library  by Matt Haig. I ended up with The Last Bookshop in Prague  by Helen Parusel which is a historical fiction. My coworkers also host a book exchange, and it is legitimately one of the highlights of my year. We do this so we don't have to worry about getting each other gifts, and it is so much fun. We all look forward to it, and again, I buy my books well in advance. This year, I took Everything is Tuberculosis  by John Green and Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. I got back: Fractal Noise  by Christopher Paolini, and The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones I'm super excited to add both of these to my TBR lists. We also had a really big health scare for me around Thank...

 Since I finished both A Monster Calls  and Speak  pretty much back to back, I had those two categories to roll for. I rolled first for young readers: For this one, I took a percentile die and a D10. The roll was 18, which turned out to be Old Yeller  by Fred Gipson. I have actually never read this one - I read Where the Red Fern Grows  instead. So that'll go into my rotation. Next, I rolled for realistic fiction: I rolled a 5 for this one, and that was.... GO TO THE BOOKSTORE!!! 🎊 So we went to the bookstore, and I bought Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine  by Gail Honeyman for a book club I'm excited to be joining for this year. So, there we go, two new books added into the rotation!

 I set out this year with the goal to read 15 books. I ended with 19, which was exciting. This year, I read:  Mistborn: Secret History  by Brandon Sanderson ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Return of the King  by J.R.R. Tolkien ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Hobbit  by J.R.R. Tolkien ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Chodenko ⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Hawthorne Legacy  by Jennifer Lynn Barnes ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A Woman of No Importance  by Sonia Purnell ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The House of My Mother  by Shari Franke ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Midnight Library  by Matt Haig ⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Doomsday Mother  by John Glatt ⭐⭐⭐ Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Project Hail Mary  by Andy Weir ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Beyond the Wand  by Tom Felton ⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Golden Orchard by Flora Ahn ⭐⭐⭐ Ready Player One  by Ernest Cline ⭐⭐⭐ Tress of the Emerald Sea  by Brandon Sanderson ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Final Gambit  by Jennifer Lynn Barnes ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A Monster Calls  by Patrick Ness ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Speak ...