Hey guys! So I am playing quite the catch-up game right now with my 2019 monthly reads. I apologize, and hope to do better in 2020 (though at the moment it is March, and I haven't even touched any 2020 monthly reads). But, I'm here to rectify that now, and that's all that matters, right?
So, in April of 2019 I read a total of 9 books, a total surprise as this was a busy month school-wise, due to the near end of the semester. Once again, this is a steady increase from the number of books I read in March of 2019, which I'm pretty proud of. I was also able to read a total of 2,630 pages, again satisfying my unofficial goal (which, should now be considered an official goal, right, since I've mentioned it sooooo much?) or reading 2,500 pages each month in order to have read a total of 30,000 pages this year.
In April I continued to heavily rely on my library, as 6 of the 9 came from there. Out of the 3 books I did own, one of them was a reread for me. As for the genders of the books' authors, it was split exactly 50-50, as one of the 9 books was a co-authored pairing between a male and female; I'm pretty happy with that. The reading levels of these books were almost nicely split between adult (5 books) and young adult (4 books), and while I might prefer to have more diversity, I'm not mad about this. I'm not, however, happy with the fact that the 0 books I read were published after the 1950s; I really need to start reading older books. I did, though, have a nice split of genres this month: 3 fantasies, 3 science-fictions, 1 contemporary, 1 thriller, and 1 magical realism.
Finally, my ratings this month were primarily 'meh', as I read 6 three star books, and only 2 five stars and 1 four star.
With those stats out of the way, let's get into the books.
21. The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner
The Thief was one of the many books I had borrowed from the library to satisfy my self-proclaimed 'challenge' to read Greek-related books for March; while I didn't get to it in time for that month, I still decided to continue on. So, I had originally heard of this on Youtube where it was hyped up a bit by a few booktubers, and when I found out it was in some way connected to ancient Greek culture, I was excited to find an excuse to pick it up.
Boy, was I underwhelmed by this book.
This is a book set in a world somewhat influenced by ancient Greek myth and society, but was twisted/adapted in a way that I found to be very annoying: these influences would be slightly changed in a way that did not serve or was crucial to the story. For example, there was a character within the story (I'm pretty sure it was a legendary or religious figure, not one of the characters we are actually following) who was clearly named after an Olympian god, but Turner had changed the name by one letter. I don't know about you, but silly little changes like that seem to force a connection to the Greek mythology and legacy in order to make the book seem elevated. I just don't understand why it was necessary, if you're going to be influenced by something, either embrace it wholeheartedly, or take inspiration and make it your own; don't half-ass it. And unfortunately, I felt that Turner half-assed it.
As for the plot, we follow a young man?/boy?/adult? who had stolen from the king of this land, was therefore imprisoned, but then was asked to help the king steal something else. I don't know if you can tell, but, uh, I had a lot of problems with this story. First off, the main character, and really all the others, were not described at all; you have absolutely no idea how old these characters are, what motivated them, how they felt about everything, and so on. Secondly, that plot does not sound very challenging at all, but rather very simple, and that's because it was sooooo simple. This simplicity, which in this sense is negative, was just further simplified by the writing style: it felt like an extremely low middle grade writing level even though it is advertised as young adult. And, despite its simplicity and the fact that this is a very short book, I found myself spending soo much time getting through it, and I very much blame it on the fact that the plot was mundane, the characters were monotonous and underdeveloped, and the writing was not good. Essentially, there was nothing to keep me hooked or wanting to pick it up.
For these reasons, I gave this book a C, and I really don't understand the hype. Obviously, I don't plan on continuing with this series.
22. Rage by Richard Bachman (aka Stephen King)
If you guys don't already know, I am attempting to read all of Stephen King's works in publication order, so I picked this one up as it was the next in line. This short story written under his pseudonym Richard Bachman was pretty hard to find because Stephen King decided to stop its printing. While I'm not 100% sure (I really should do the research), I've heard that he no longer wants this to be easily accessible by the public because of the rise of mass shootings in the US during the 90s. I have mixed feelings on this reasoning, which I'll get into in a bit.
Anyway, as you would expect, Rage is about a mass shooting, specifically at a high school. In it, we follow and are in the head-space of that shooter, a high school boy named Charles who definitely has mental issues. Alongside this, we also are privy to the reactions of his fellow students that are being held hostage. The dynamic and psychologies presented by these two forces, Charles and the captive students, is extremely fascinating to read about. But, it is also quite disturbing to read, especially in the current climate where mass shootings, especially those occurring in schools, are so frequent. And for these reasons I can kind of understand why King decided to effectively 'ban' its reproduction. However, I feel like this story could be used as a point of discussion for this epidemic, whether it be the accessibility of guns for those who should not be able to get their hands on them, for mental health help in general, and for the treatment of kids in school by other kids and by the faculty.
Personally, I don't think any book should be made hard to access as I believe all books can be a teaching point. That being said, I can kind of understand why King has chosen to do this (though I must question why only this story, and not some of his others?). As for my feelings toward this story, I still, nearly a year later, am unsure about its standing. For this reason, I gave it a C rating, and I stand by it.
23. The Star-Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi
Here is another Greek Literature March leftover that I decided to still pick up, and kind of wish I didn't.
The Star-Touched Queen is considered to be a Hades and Persephone retelling, but after actually reading it, I disagree. Personally, I think the word 'retelling' is used too often, when instead it shares just a single trope with the original. But I digress. I also picked this book up because of Roshani Chokshi; I had read her middle grade novel that is part of the Rick Riordan Presents imprint, and was quite disappointed but wanted to give her another chance. I had figured that I just didn't like her middle grade stories, but would like her more mature (young adult) works.
Nope. That was not the case.
As with her middle grade, I found her writing to be stilted as it seemed to jump cut between scenes. This required me to reread paragraphs to make sure it wasn't just me being dumb and missing something. It wasn't me, Chokshi just writes in a very non-cohesive and disjointed way. I also found inconsistencies with her main character, namely that traits we were told that she possessed did not agree with the actions and motives we saw. The plot and the world were pretty 'meh', so there really wasn't anything positive going for this story in my opinion, so I rated it a C-.
24. The Philosopher Kings by Jo Walton
As this is the second book in Walton's Thessaly series, which started with The Just City, I won't go into much detail so as to avoid spoilers. But Oh. My. God. I SOOOO enjoyed this book. While The Philosopher Kings didn't have as many of the same elements that were present in the first book, it was still extremely interesting and thought-provoking and just as philosophical. With this second book out of the way and only one more book to go, I can confidently say that this will be a series that I will want to make a separate, non-spoiler series review. Until that happens, just know that I gave this book an A rating, and wholeheartedly recommend you pick up this series if you haven't already.
(This was another book picked up due to its connection to Greece; the first book, The Just City, is a philosophical experiment concerning Plato's Republic).
25. Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami & translated by Philip Gabriel
Surprise, surprise! Another book I picked up because of its connection to Greece. In this case, Murakami's Sputnik Sweetheart is partially set in a Greek island, and because I was previously interested in his writing anyway, I thought that this would be as good a place as any to start.
This was a strange book. I mean, I enjoyed it...I think. But it was just weird.
It started out as a normal contemporary literary fiction novel where a guy was in love with a girl who didn't love him back. This girl then goes missing after spending a lot of time with an older woman, whom she's infatuated with. That doesn't seem really weird at all, but damn when I was reading it, I was getting the heebie jeebies. The only way I can explain it, and mind you, it's not much of an explanation, is that it reminded me of one anime my brother showed to me that just made me uncomfortable, not because of anything outrightly disturbing on screen but because it just...made me uncomfortable? Like I said, that's not much of an explanation, but it's just how I felt.
Even though I was thoroughly freaked out, I have no idea how I actually feel about this novel as a whole. I think I enjoyed it for the most part, but I'm also just kind of confused and, like I mentioned, a bit freaked out. Would I recommend it? I'm really not sure; the writing is beautiful, and the world and characters are well wounded, so it is good. But man, I can't get passed that weirdness. So, I gave it a C+ for now, and if I a ever finish processing my feelings towards it, I'll let you know, but I really don't think I'll ever understand what happened any more than I do now.
26. American Gods (10th Edition) by Neil Gaiman
This book pretty much the same as Roshani Chokshi's Star-Touched Queen: I picked it up 1) because I was told by the internet that it was Greek-related and 2) because I wanted to give Neil Gaiman another chance, as I did not enjoy the other book I've read by him. Also like Chokshi, I found this to not really be related to Greece in any way, nor did it redeem Gaiman in my eyes.
In American Gods, we follow a man named Shadow who was recently discharge from prison only to find out that his wife and best friend are dead. He then is presented with the opportunity to work for a stranger dubbed Mr. Wednesday, and unenthusiastically agrees. Basically, they go on a road trip throughout the US in order to recruit gods and creatures from various cultures to band together against the modern 'gods'. At face value, this sounds extremely interesting, especially as the modern gods are concepts like technology and media personified. However, Gaiman managed to make this quite boring. I don't know if this can just be attributed to his writing style, or if I need to take into account that this 10th edition is longer than the first publication, but either way I just wasn't a fan. I wish I could better pinpoint what about Gaiman's style I don't like, but I know it just doesn't work for me. So I gave this a C rating.
27. The Long Walk by Richard Bachman (aka Stephen King)
While this isn't technically the next Stephen King in terms of publication order, I decided to read it because it was included in the same bind up as King's Rage.
I had heard talk about The Long Walk as being dystopic in nature, so I was exited to pick it up. In this world, kids compete in a long-distance race to see who could walk the farthest; this can last for a number of days. The stipulation is that they can't stop a certain number of times within a specific time span; if they do, they're shot on the spot.
While I wouldn't classify this as a true dystopian, I really enjoyed the dystopic elements, especially its commentary on reality game shows. Yes, it was disgusting at times (I mean, the boys couldn't stop for ANYTHING, if you know what I mean), but it wasn't disgusting for its own sake; it felt as natural and realistic as this fictional competition could be. Overall, I enjoyed this, and gave it a B-.
28. Poet Anderson...of Nightmares by Tom DeLonge & Suzanne Young
I picked this up because I absolutely loved the other Tom DeLonge series I read (Sekret Machines), and was hoping I'd love this one too, even though the two series are nothing alike: this is a young adult novel with a different co-writer. Unfortunately, I was quite disappointed in this.
This follows Jonas, a high schooler who has the ability to dream walk, whose brother is currently on life support after they were both in an accident. Since this accident, he has been unable to remember his adventures while dream walking, which sucks for him because there is a war basically going on in that dream world, and he is crucial to the fight.
While the plot is interesting, I just did not get along well with the writing style; I found it to be kind of jumpy in the same way as The Star-Touched Queen, and it was juvenile in an annoying way. Even though I gave this a C+, I would be open to continuing this series, though probably not anytime soon.
29. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares
During my month of reading Greek-related literature, I decided to rewatch The Sisterhood of the Traveling pants movie because it's partially set in Greece, and watching it made me extremely eager to reread the book. This series is one of the only contemporaries that I frequently reread, so you know I truly love it. I was really afraid, though, that it wouldn't hold up today (I think the last time I read this book was when I was in high school, aka over 5 years ago), but PRAISE THE LORD it's still soo amazing and heartwarming. I absolutely love the friendship and the real hardships/challenges depicted. I can't lie, I also love the fact that I see myself depicted in all four of the girls.
Obviously, I loved this, and gave it an A+ rating.