I am very, very late on this, but finals were rough this semester, and the job search is still ongoing. I’m so late on this, in fact, that I actually contemplated just doing a combined November and December post, but at the rate I’m going, that would be really long. So here we are with the books I read in November. Better late than never, right?
I read fourteen books in November. I was really close to reading fifteen but I fell asleep and finished the book I was reading on the morning of December 1. So fourteen it is. I have officially passed my revised goal of reading 150 books in 2018. As of the end of November, I’ve read 155 books. In November, I made progress with a lot of series I was reading and actually finished two of the series. I started a couple new series as well. I know, I know, I said I wanted to finish the series I was reading by the end of December and I’m still planning to do that but I just couldn’t help it.
On the whole, this was a good reading month. I didn’t love all the books I read, but there were definitely lots of really fun ones. Let’s dive in.
Over the summer I finally read the Percy Jackson books, and I really loved them. At the end of October, I discovered that there is a second Percy Jackson series, the Heroes of Olympus books by Rick Riordan. I read the first three books in November: The Lost Hero, The Son of Neptune, and The Mark of Athena. I was almost finished with the fourth book, The House of Hades, on November 30, but I didn’t finish it until December 1 so that will be for next time. I had so much fun speeding through these books. I admit they aren’t as good as the first series. The books are told from multiple points of view, and it’s kind of done a little sloppily, in my opinion. The first and second books of the series have very similar plot and structure, and there’s a good reason for that, but the second book is so good it only serves to highlight that the first book is kind of a mess. Generally the plot is that the giants and the Earth mother are rising and planning to destroy the world, and seven demigods have to team up and stop them. Minor spoiler, the demigods have to come from the Greek and Roman camps and they have to work together. Amnesia is involved to make this happen. It does mean that Percy spends most of the second book with no memories of who he is and where he came from, but it works. The real thing I like about the books so far is the characters and the teamwork. It’s just a lot of fun, and I really hope it doesn’t go splat in the last book.
One of my roommates in Maryland recommended I check out the Expanse books, the ones the Amazon show is based on. I was on the waiting list at the library for a really long time, but this month I finally read the first book, Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey. This follows the crew of a space ship that hauls ice from Saturn’s rings back to the inner planets. They get a distress call, so the main character and his crew go to help out, leaving the ship behind, and while they’re gone, someone nukes the ice hauler. So they set off to figure out who blew up their ship. I really loved the world-building in this book. It felt really realistic, and it was really complex. I didn’t really like the main character. His motivations and decisions just didn’t make a lot of sense to me. Like at one point he’s on an asteroid, and there’s an apparent nuclear emergency so everyone’s going into shelters, and it’s obvious something else is going on, but instead of just getting the heck out of there they go and open one of the shelters to see what’s going on. This goes just about as well as you would expect. Also it was just a really long book for the amount of character development that happened. Like the main character was idealistic to the point of idiocy and didn’t change, and some of the plot felt like drama for drama’s sake. So it wasn’t a perfect book, but I did enjoy it, and I’m looking forward to the sequel if I ever get off the waiting list at the library.
Next, I read The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer. This is a World War II book set mostly in Hungary. It’s about three brothers spread across Europe for school and then forced back to Hungary when the war starts. The middle brother, our main character, falls in love with a French ballet teacher with a complicated past. That’s pretty much the plot. Oh and they’re Jewish so there’s also the Holocaust. The writing was pretty good, but there wasn’t much plot for the first half of the book, until the war started, and then it was predictable, overly sentimental, and melodramatic. On the whole I was not a huge fan.
Next, I finally read Under the Light by Laura Whitcomb, the sequel to A Certain Slant of Light, which I read back in February. As I was writing this, I was honestly struggling to remember this book, which says a lot. When I looked it up again on Goodreads, I realized the reason I was struggling to remember this book is that it was almost entirely a rehash of the first book. Like almost nothing new. Okay it was kind of cool to see the kids back in their bodies retracing the steps the ghosts took when they were possessing them and trying to figure out what they did, but since we already knew as the reader, it didn’t work that well. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either.
Next I read the second book in the Flame in the Mist duology, Smoke in the Sun by Renee Ahdieh. I really enjoyed this book. I thought it was a good sequel to the first book. There was a lot of political intrigue and some really great characters. But the pacing was wacky—like nothing happened for two thirds of the book and then suddenly everything happened and then suddenly it was all over. And it had too many point of view characters for my liking. But it wrapped up the series nicely.
After that, I read the second Wren book, Wren’s Quest by Sherwood Smith. I loved this book just as much as I loved the first book, even though this book felt a bit more scattered. The plot and the stakes seemed like they were hovering just off the page, which was a little frustrating. But it was exciting, and the characters really carry this book. When Wren is attacked during her test to pass basics level at the magic school, she needs to get out of town fast. So she goes on a quest she’s been planning for a while: to find out who her family is. Connor has gotten himself into trouble at the palace, so he comes, which is helpful because a powerful magician is chasing them. Meanwhile, they’ve left Tyron and Tess to deal with the court intrigue, which is very intriguing indeed. This is the part that was a bit vague for me. Apparently someone was sewing disputes among the courtiers—like everybody was fighting with each other all the time. So Tyron and Tess are trying to figure out who it is and if they’re connected to the magician chasing Wren and/or the evil king from the first book. It all comes together really well. I enjoyed it lots and I’m looking forward to diving into the rest of the series.
After I finished Wren’s Quest, I read the third book in The Raven Cycle, Blue Lily, Lily Blue by Maggie Stiefvater. Blue is looking for her mother, who’s disappeared, and the crew is still looking for their sleeping king to wake him up, and they’re getting close. This book definitely felt like it was a transition into the finale, but I didn’t care. It was great. These are the sort of characters that I would read a book about them just chilling in the backyard together, the group dynamic is that well-done.
Next, I read Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor. This was described as a Nigerian Harry Potter, so I picked it up because I’m still looking for comp titles for the book I’m querying, and any friend of Harry Potter is a friend of mine. I’m not sure I would describe it as Nigerian Harry Potter, but I definitely enjoyed it. Basically Sunny discovers she has magic powers and starts learning to use them, and she and her friends are picked to stop a serial child murderer. Super light and fluffy, am I right? But this is actually a great book, and I recommend you check it out. I will say that I was a bit uncomfortable with the aspect of the magic that you’re a stronger magician if you have a disability. Sunny is an albino, and she’s teased about it because she’s so white. The disabilities in this book are sort of negated by magic, but it isn’t as drastic as I’ve seen in other books. Still, I’m still not a huge fan of the disability = magic trope.
Next, I read the fifth Chronicles of Narnia book, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis. Edmund and Lucy go back to Narnia, this time with their cousin Eustace, and go on a journey with Caspian to find some of Caspian’s father’s friends who Caspian’s uncle basically banished. This book had a lot of the same issues as the first four—mostly talking about the misogyny here—and it was also pretty episodic and Eustace was literally the worst until suddenly he wasn’t, but I really enjoyed the adventure of this book, the fact that we got back to Narnia so quickly and got to see some old friends again, and the fact that we got to explore so much more of the world.
After that, I read Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George. I know I read this when I was a kid, but I didn’t remember it at all, and also I discovered there were sequels. Who knew? Fourteen-year-old Miyax is lost on the Alaskan tundra after running away from an arranged marriage. She’s starving, and she knows soon it will be winter, and then she comes upon a wolf pack and manages to earn their trust so they basically adopt her. I really, really enjoyed this book. I found it to just be incredibly powerful but also a lot of fun to read. I’m looking forward to reading the next books in the series, because while this definitely stands alone, I do want to see where it goes next.
Next I read The Grimm Grotto by Lemony Snicket, the eleventh Series of Unfortunate Events book. This book was a wild ride. In a submarine. With some super poisonous mushrooms. We learn some things. We get more questions. The Baudelaires’ hearts are broken and then stamped on for good measure. Yes, these books are getting wackier and wackier, but they’re also really heating up.
Finally, I finished off November with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. Just like Matilda, I had this weird knowledge that I definitely read this as a kid, but do not remember it, and now it is kind of horrifying. A lot of fun, but kind of horrifying. Also, the Oompa Loompas are soooo problematic. But as a quick diversion from finals studying, I enjoyed it.
And that’s it for November, folks. If you’re in school, like me, I hope your finals and papers went well and your semester has wrapped up with as little stress as possible. I’ll be away over New Years, so it might take me a bit longer than usual to get my book recs page updated with my 2018 favorites, but I’ll be on top of it as soon as I can. In the meantime, I hope you have a merry Christmas and a happy New Year.