Tag: book recs

The Street Review

Cover of The Street by Ann PetryLast week, I read The Street by Ann Petry. It was this month’s law school book club selection, and it may have been the most positively rated book of any we’ve read in the last three years. We had such a great discussion this weekend, and I’ve been dying to talk about it with you. Before it was picked for book club, I’d never heard of this book. Now that I’ve read it, I feel like this should be required reading for everyone.

Lutie Johnson, an African American woman, is a single mother during World War II. At the start of the novel, she’s living with her father and his latest girlfriend, because she and her husband are separated after she took a job as a live-in maid to support the family and he had an affair. Lutie is worried about the influence her alcoholic father and his girlfriend are having on her eight-year-old son, so she sets out to find an apartment of her own. She rents a place on the fifth floor of a building in Harlem, on 116th street, between 7th and 8th to be exact. The super is extremely creepy and is obviously attracted to her in a really creepy way, one of her neighbors is running a quasi-brothel, and the white man who owns the building is also attempting to entice Lutie to sleep with him. Actually everyone is trying to entice Lutie to sleep with them, and Lutie is trying to raise her son as best she can and keep her dignity and take the next small step in the American dream.

We follow Lutie as she struggles to find a way to save more money so they can move to a better apartment where she and her son will feel safer, but we also follow the super’s point of view, the super’s girlfriend’s point of view, the downstairs neighbor’s point of view, and more. Lutie is definitely the main character of the book, but it’s told in an omniscient style. We even get some of the point of view of the street they live on. The street is as much a character as everyone else.

This book was so good! Like I said, it should be required reading for everybody.

First of all, the writing is fabulous, the story is solid, and it is a fast, easy read. The setting was described so well too, and it was so easy to get immersed in the world. I found myself trying to tell Lutie out loud “no, don’t do that! Don’t do it! It’s a bad decision!” But the world and the situation are depicted so well that it is entirely believable that she makes those decisions, because there are no other decisions she can make.

Second, I believe this is the first book by a woman of color that sold more than a million copies. You should read it just for that.

Third, this book takes place during World War II, but honestly it could take place today. It was such a timeless book, and while it’s depressing that we haven’t come all that far since the 1940s when it comes to race and poverty and gender, it also makes this book all the more relevant and important to read.

I would not recommend listening to the audiobook for this one, because it has bad sound effects. The other thing I will say about this book is that it is pretty heavy-handed with the theme. You don’t have to work to figure it out. It hammers it home, sometimes a little too much.

But all in all, I loved this book. It was so poignant and heartbreaking. It had this relentless, driving momentum that made everything seem inevitable and awful in its inevitability, even as I personally couldn’t predict what would happen next. All along, there really are no good decisions. There is only one decision.

For you, that one decision is to read this book.

I one hundred percent recommend you read The Street, whoever you are, whatever you normally like to read. Go read it. Go read it now.

And if you’ve already read it, tell me your thoughts. Do you agree with my assessment? Disagree? Have anything to add?

Jameyanne Rereads Harry Potter, 2019 Edition: Prisoner of Azkaban, Goblet of Fire, and Order of the Phoenix

Last week, I talked about my thoughts as I reread the first two Harry Potter books. This week, I’m going to share my thoughts on the next three books in the series, Prisoner of Azkaban, Goblet of Fire, and Order of the Phoenix, which I reread in January and February.

Quick reminder, there will be spoilers in these posts, and if you don’t want to be spoiled for whatever reason, you shouldn’t read this.

I love all the different ways you can group the Harry Potter books. For example, my initial plan for these posts was to talk about the first three books in one post, then books four and five, then books six and seven. This would group the three shorter books, which are commonly thought of as middle grade books together. Things get darker in books four and five, but in some sense they’re sort of transition books as Voldemort gains strength and returns to power but stays hidden in the shadows. And then I would talk about the sixth and seventh book as the climax and wrap-up of the series with the wizarding world’s second war. I changed this plan because my post for the first three books would have been really long. But once I rethought where I split the books, this also seemed a natural split. The first two books introduce us to the wizarding world, the characters, the villain, the plot (including details that will definitely come back in the later books). In the third book, we really dive into the circumstances around Harry’s parents’ murder and the fall of Voldemort, and of course Wormtail escaping at the end paves the way for the fourth book. In the fourth book, Harry is kind of a puppet in Voldemort’s plan, which succeeds. And in the fifth book, Harry is fighting to get people to believe what happened. These three books also follow Harry’s relationship with Sirius, and Prisoner of Azkaban is the first book in which Harry’s victory is not absolute (and it only goes downhill from there). There are certainly other ways you could group the books: 1 and 2, 3 and 4, and then 5 6 and 7; or 1 2 3 4 and then 5 6 7; or 1 2 3 and then 4 5 6 7; or anything else you can think of. You could even group 2 and 6 together, or 1 and 5. There’s so much in these books I’m sure you could find all manner of reasons to group them any way you want. I chose my organization scheme because it fit well with three mid-length posts.

So let’s dive in.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

I’ll say from the get-go that this may be one of my favorite books in the series. It goes back and forth between this book and the fourth book. I love this one so much! It’s so tightly plotted (everything is important to the plot here). It deals with the larger plot of the series with all the Voldemort stuff and yet it’s still really fun and innocent (compared to what comes next). And there are just so many feelings everywhere. This book really feels like the time when Harry is starting to grow up more, and I love it. If people were to ask me what’s the sort of book you would want to write, I would say Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

Also fair warning, last time I read this I was taking notes to write a paper on multiparty negotiations in this book for my multiparty negotiations course. The thesis boils down to Lupin is awesome. But don’t be surprised if some of that theory pops up in these comments.

Re: my comment last week about a whole bunch of characters missing big chunks of the school year in Chamber of Secrets, I think it’s possible the professors give them summer  homework to catch everybody up. I’m almost positive the only other time homework is mentioned over the summer is in Chamber of Secrets, when Hermione tells Ron and Harry she’s been busy with schoolwork, and Ron is horrified because it’s the summer.

As Harry opens his first ever birthday cards and presents from his friends at the start of this book, I do wonder about everybody else’s birthdays. I know we can’t be celebrating birthdays constantly, and Ron’s comes up in the sixth book when he’s poisoned, and Hermione buys Crookshanks as an early birthday present for herself, but it would be nice to see Ron’s and Hermione’s birthdays recognized for fun, or to see how birthdays are handled at Hogwarts.

Aunt Marge is an awful person and she totally deserved to get blown up.

Interesting thing that I knew subliminally but just put into words as I’m reading today: Lupin knows that dementors make you relive your worst memories, so when Harry says that he heard someone screaming on the train, Lupin probably has a good idea of what’s going on. I love Lupin.

Trelawney may be a fraud, but almost everything that is predicted in the first divination class comes true, even the things that Harry and Ron predict about each other. Also, why doesn’t Trelawney repair Neville’s broken teacup with magic?

Hermione is a really good liar. Like when Ron is questioning her about her wacky schedule, she is totally cool about it. I could not do this.

I don’t  quite get why Malfoy is able to get away with faking his injury for so long. We all know Madam Pomfrey can mend cuts really easily, so I don’t see how he could get away with it for so long. Like okay the ministry could still have gone after Buckbeak even without Malfoy having his arm in a sling for months, but why do the Hogwarts teachers put up with it?

Something else I have always wondered, when Sirius Black is sighted not far from Hogwars, I really want to know why he let himself be seen. Like why be a human at all? It’s not a big deal but I’m curious.

I really like the reading of the scene where Harry asks McGonagall for permission to go into Hogsmeade that McGonagall would have let him go if not for Sirius Black. She did some spying on the Dursleys back in Sorcerer’s Stone and probably has a decent sense of what Harry’s up against with them.

I just want to pause to note that Harry is just having a really bad year. Maybe that’s why I like this book so much: the tension keeps building and things go from bad to worse for everything that Harry cares about and he has so many feelings I just love it. Also Lupin is the best.

Is it me or is Harry’s schedule really inconsistent in this book? Unless I was wrong in my earlier comment that September 1 is always a Sunday because classes always start on a Monday. Right now, I’m pretty sure at first Harry was going to divination, transfiguration, and care of magical creatures on Mondays, but in November he also has defense against the dark arts on Mondays. I recognize that now I’m just being really nitpicky.

Okay, I feel stupid. It took me two and a half years of law school to realize that when Harry, Ron, and Hermione are helping Hagrid build a defense for Buckbeak, they’re doing legal research. They’re looking up precedent and building arguments around that precedent. I am once again impressed by Hermione’s brains—I doubt it was Harry and Ron’s idea. I definitely did not know how to do this at thirteen. Sometimes I doubt I know how to do it now (just kidding).

I’ve always wished that Harry took arithmancy, because I really want to know what it is and how it works and what it does in the real world. Like we never actually find out in any of the books.

Every time I read this I always tear up when Harry and the team finally win the Quidditch Cup. There’s just something so great about that whole sequence in the books.

I always have a lot of fun with the climax of this book. It is so great in so many ways, but it’s also one of those sequences that has so many moving parts that it’s really fun to imagine how it would all change if one part changed. For example, what if they stayed at Hagrid’s to argue for Buckbeak? What if Dumbledore came with them to the Shrieking Shack? Or what if Harry, Ron, and Hermione made it back to the castle with Scabbers before Sirius caught up with them, but they met Lupin instead? How would it have played out if, instead of Lupin transforming and Pettigrew escaping, the whole group made it back to the castle to talk to Dumbledore? None of these scenarios, on their face, are as climactic as the scene in the Shrieking Shack, that fight with the dementors, and the  sequence with the Time Turner, so obviously that all wins, but it’s a lot of fun to imagine how those scenes would go and how, as a writer, I might craft those alternate climaxes for maximum effect.

Why didn’t Lupin see the second Harry and Hermione on the map? Okay, I can see if he’s paying attention to Harry, Ron, and Hermione as they go down to Hagrid’s he might not notice any of the other hundred or so dots moving around, but Harry and Hermione from the future are retracing past Harry, Ron, and Hermione’s steps, so I feel like he would notice them. Of course, two Harry Potters could just break the map’s brain.

I know that there are all sorts of rules about not being seen when you go back in time with the Time Turner, but Hermione knows that she has a Time Turner, so I can imagine that she wouldn’t necessarily freak out and think there was dark magic afoot, which would allow Hermione to team up with her future self to do cool things. Or anyone with a Time Turner really. It kind of makes my head hurt to think about the logistics, but it seems like it would be a cool way to double your manpower.

Ugh the ending of this book gives me so many feelings and I love it. It’s the sort of book I’m sad to close, because I don’t want it to end, which is one of the highest compliments I can give a book.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

This is a close second to Prisoner of Azkaban for my favorite. They’re so close that sometimes this one edges out Prisoner of Azkaban. Sometimes.

The thing that I really like about all the Harry Potter books, but Prisoner of Azkaban and Goblet of Fire in particular, is how you can use them as examples for so many different aspects of writing a story. For example, I’m a big fan of how Goblet of Fire is put together—how much is going on and how it is orchestrated. Specifically, right now I’m looking at the first chapter. It’s practically a prologue, along the same lines as the first chapters of Sorcerer’s Stone and Deathly Hallows and the first two chapters of Half-Blood Prince. The first chapter of Goblet of Fire is masterful at this. It’s specific enough to tell a story, but it’s vague enough to leave you guessing for the rest of the book. At the same time, the vagueness feels natural. Voldemort and Wormtail’s conversation doesn’t feel like they’re deliberately skating the issue so the reader won’t know what’s coming. It feels like they’re having a normal conversation—or at least as normal a conversation as you can have with Lord Voldemort.

Another thing that I like about Goblet of Fire is that you dive right into the plot with that first chapter and then with Harry’s scar hurting and the Death Eater activity at the quidditch world cup. It takes a long time for them to get back to Hogwarts and for Harry’s name to come out of the goblet—about half the book actually—but it’s not wasted time.

Look, if you’re going to eat grapefruit as a means of dieting, you should just eat the whole grapefruit. Eating a quarter of a grapefruit is an awful lot of work for like twenty calories. That is not a sufficient breakfast, whatever kind of diet you’re trying. Note that I love grapefruit and carrot sticks and everything Uncle Vernon calls rabit food, and as much as I had fun reading The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook last year, I was pretty horrified by the way the characters regularly ate. But I am getting very sidetracked. My point is grapefruit is good; you should eat all of it.

Okay so the scene with the Weaselys and the Dursleys continues to be laugh-out-loud funny. But also a little horrifying, because if Mr. Weasley hadn’t held Harry back to get the Dursleys to say goodbye to him, they might have all been gone before Dudley ate the toffee.

I wonder what Charlie, who works with dragons, thinks about Bill wearing dragon-skin boots.

I’ve always wondered about Ron’s frog. Does it have a name? What happened to it?

Amos Digory mentions the Lovegoods going to the world cup, and I have a really hard time imagining Luna and her father at the world cup. Not that they don’t like Quidditch or anything, but it seems so normal, and they’re… the Lovegoods.

Okay, I lied earlier when I said September first is always a sunday. September 1 is a Monday in Goblet of Fire. But it’s definitely a Sunday in Order of the Phoenix, so the point still stands. And when they get to Hogwarts in Goblet of Fire they start classes on a Monday, even though two days ago it was Sunday. This is obviously not an important thing but it bugs me so much guys.

Did Dumbledore also mention that they don’t use charms, potions, or herbology as a punishment? It seems oddly specific that he would just tell Moody they don’t use transfiguration as a punishment. “Draco Malfoy the incredible bouncing ferret” is such a great scene, and I just like to imagine the conversation between Moody and Dumbledore when Dumbledore tells him specifically that they can’t use transfiguration as a punishment. Maybe Moody has a history of this sort of thing.

The tension leading up to the announcement of the champions is fantastic. I don’t know how many times I’ve read this book, but the scene in the great hall with the goblet spitting out the names gets me every time. It’s so powerful that every time I think maybe this time it will go differently. Of course it doesn’t.

The one thing about this book that I really don’t like is that it’s never really explained why Harry has to compete in the tournament once his name comes out of the goblet. What does a binding magical contract mean? What are the consequences if you break it? Is it like the unbreakable vow and you die? Or do you go to wizarding contracts court and argue that it isn’t a contract because there was no offer, acceptance, and consideration between the goblet and Harry, and anyway it would be unconscionable to force Harry to compete? (Huh, I guess I did learn something in contracts after all.) The point is, everybody keeps saying he has to compete, hee has to compete, they can’t get him out of it even though no one wants him to compete, and this would feel more realistic and more tense if the consequences of him just saying “no way” were clear.

Basically everything from Harry’s name coming out of the goblet up through the first task is so great. I love how the tension is so thick you can taste it. I always get super worked up about what’s going on. And then we get a well-timed break before things get crazy again with preparation for the second task onward. Not that the stuff that happens between the first and second tasks isn’t important, it’s just much less stressful.

I really love the casual way Neville just turns into a canary after the first task. It’s great.

DOBBY!!!

I always wonder how much information sharing is going on between Sirius and Dumbledore at this point in the book. Does Sirius tell Dumbledore that Harry saw Crouch on the map? It would explain how Dumbledore figured out Moody was actually Barty Crouch Jr. (I’ll come back to my forever confusion on that point later on), but I don’t think Sirius told Dumbledore about the map, because when Barty Jr. mentions the map later on, Dumbledore doesn’t know about it. Also, we learn later on (from Snape’s memories that we see in Deathly Hallows), that Dumbledore knows about the Dark Marks on the Death Eaters’ forearms and they’re getting stronger, but when Harry tells Sirius about Karkaroff showing Snape something on his arm, Sirius has no idea what that’s about. I’m not sure if the characters could have put everything together before all the bad stuff goes down if they’d sat down and had a good info sharing and brainstorming session, but they might have gotten closer.

So Dumbledore figures out that Moody isn’t Moody. Okay, I’m with him so far. But before Moody transforms into Barty Crouch Jr., Dumbledore has Snape go down to the kitchens to get Winky. It’s possible that he just thought whoever Moody was would tell them what happened to Mr. Crouch, but it’s almost like he knows who fake Moody really is before the Polyjuice potion wears off. He certainly doesn’t show surprise at fake Moody’s identity or even that Barty Jr. is still alive. But I just don’t get how he figured it out.

And then I just took a day to finish the whole book and had all the feelings. Oh god this book makes me cry. Every. Single. Time.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

This, like Chamber of Secrets, is one of those books that I appreciate a lot more now than I did when I first read it. Harry is so angsty this book, and it’s annoying. But when you read it right after Goblet of Fire, instead of waiting the years we did for it to come out when we were kids, it’s a lot more understandable. It’s only been a month since Voldemort killed Cedric in front of Harry and tried to kill him. In that month, he’s pretty much been totally isolated from the wizarding world—even his friends haven’t been telling him much—and when he comes back to the wizarding world, he’s still being kept in the dark and he’s facing most people not believing him. Not only not believing him, but actively attacking him. And he has serious PTSD, which was illustrated really well by the fact that when he’s attacked by the Dementors, he doesn’t hear his parents’ deaths anymore. He hears Voldemort taunting him in the graveyard. What happened at the end of Goblet of Fire is now Harry’s worst memory.

I have always wondered what a Budgerigar is, but it’s not important to the story, so I usually just keep reading. This time around, I finally googled it. It’s an Australian parakeet. Huh. Now I know why it’s news that a budgerigar learned to water-ski. That’s very important news indeed. Moving on.

Why do some people apparate with a pop and some people apparate with a loud crack? I’m pretty sure this is never explained.

I love how Mrs. Figg uses all the wizard idioms in the one conversation we have with her. It’s great.

This is the first book we don’t get a full summary of how Harry’s parents died and why he’s famous and that he’s a wizard and everything. We get information about the past books, but it’s woven into the action much more seamlessly. I think it makes sense. Up to book 4, you probably could pick up any of the books in the series and follow along reasonably well without having read the other books. But past the point when Voldemort returns, if you don’t already know the story you’re kind of lost anyway.

It always astounds me that characters like Tonks and Luna, who become so important to the series, are only introduced in book 5. I always think they must have come up sooner, but nope. They join the plot in Order of the Phoenix.

So if they can’t take down the screaming picture of Sirius’s mother, have they tried ways to keep the curtains permanently shut so she won’t scream at them constantly? Just my random thought.

Also, I would love to see the scene where Mrs. Weasley finds out that Harry, Ron, and Hermione have been communicating with Sirius in secret for a year. She handled it pretty well when he appeared at the end of Goblet of Fire, as in she stopped screaming when Ron said it was okay, but I imagine that was not the end of that discussion.

It struck me in this book that Dean Thomas is the only one of the students we meet who was raised by muggles but who also holds on to some of his muggle identity. Every year he puts up muggle soccer posters around his bed and in this book it mentions he has pajamas in his soccer team’s colors. Harry, Hermione, and Colin Creevey all pretty much abandon their muggle identities—understandable for Harry, at least, but interesting to think about for the other characters. And it makes me really curious about Dean.

Umbridge is such a great villain. I often rate her higher than Voldemort on my favorite villains list (yes, I have one of those), because while Voldemort is scary, he’s kind of generically scary. Umbridge is the kind of villain you just love to hate. I still remember how viscerally I reacted to her making Harry cut open his own hand and write “I must not tell lies” in his own blood the first time I read the book, and I still have that reaction. It’s smaller, but somehow more sadistic, than Voldemort’s torture.

I think everything with Dumbledore’s Army might just be my favorite part of this book.

Umbridge says the ministry would want Snape to remove the strengthening solution from the potions syllabus. What in the world does that potion strengthen?

I really appreciate how thoughtful and emotionally intelligent Hermione is in this book. It really shows as they’re planning Dumbledore’s Army and talking about Sirius and Harry and Cho. I’m not saying she wasn’t those things in the previous books, but I think it comes out a lot more in this book and shows how she’s matured as a character, especially since the fourth book.

Taking notes like this as I read, I’m noticing just how much changes in the fifth book. I already mentioned we don’t get the “previously on Harry Potter…” bit at the beginning. This is also the first book where nothing happens on Halloween, and we lose Quidditch as an important part of the plot as well (more on that in a second). And these changes persist into the later books. You can definitely tell things are getting darker.

DOBBY!!!

The thing with Harry beating up Malfoy and getting banned from playing quidditch always really bugged me. I wish there had been more internal build-up with Harry’s thoughts and feelings in the moments leading up to him snapping like that. Intellectually, I know it’s probably all the things boiling over at this moment, but we don’t see it, and in the past Malfoy has definitely said worse and Harry’s just brushed it off. I think this is the moment, during this reread of the book, when I lose a lot of sympathy for Harry’s feelings. It’s definitely a good plot point, and Umbridge continues to be the worst—really, the worst—but also, come on Harry, show a little restraint, please. No? No? Okay fine no more Quidditch for you.

I really want to know how Hagrid and Madame Maxime carried a branch of everlasting fire across two countries to bring it to the giants. I know, the answer is probably “magic,” but I want to know how.

So J. K. Rowling does this great thing where she brings something up early in the book and then it comes back in a way that has nothing to do with how it first came up. I particularly love it when she does it for a chapter title. A small amount of explanation before I clarify what I’m talking about. I’m the sort of person who likes to read the table of contents before I jump into a book, because I like chapter titles. I remember, when my older brother got Goblet of Fire the day it came out, and I had to wait a few weeks to get it in Braille, I got him to read me the table of contents out loud. That was what I asked for. Another importans fact is that the Braille editions of Harry Potter are broken into volumes, because Braille is so much bigger than print. The fifth book is thirteen volumes (I have a whole wall of Harry Potter in my bedroom). So at the start of each volume is the table of contents for that volume, so I usually read that before I start on that volume. So earlier in the fifth book, Malfoy brings up St. Mungo’s and the closed ward. And so the chapter titles “St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries” and “Christmas on the Closed Ward” always made me think that Harry was going to be sent to St. Mungo’s. Obviously, that’s not what happened, but I loved the effect Malfoy’s reference to St. Mungo’s and then reading the chapter titles again when I got to them two or three volumes later had on me. This is probably entirely a Jameyanne phenomenon, but it happens a couple other times in the books (can’t think of them right now), so I wanted to share.

Oh wow Harry’s date with Cho is so awkward. So awkward. He isn’t as emotionally stupid as Ron, but he really makes a mess of things. Cho is pretty awful though as well, to be fair. I mean, it’s so obvious that Harry doesn’t like what’s going on and she’s pulling all this on him. It definitely feels realistic to me, but it’s still a painful scene to read.

I will forever love the whole sequence in the Department of Mysteries. It is epic!

I will also forever be mad about the two-way mirror. I know it’s important later, and I guess it makes sense why Harry didn’t open it before, but this is definitely one of those times when a character does something totally stupid and that’s what caused everything to go horribly wrong. And I kind of hate it when authors do that. In this case, it’s not even an important stupid thing. He just never opened it and forgot about it.

All in all, this is a book I appreciate more and more as I get older. It’s not one of my favorites of the series, but it is a good book, and so much great stuff happens.

And that’s it for these three books. I haven’t finished rereading Deathly Hallows yet, but I’ll be back soon with my thoughts on Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows.

The Way of Kings Review

Cover of The Way of Kings by Brandon SandersonHello all. I’m back with a full review of The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. I read this book last month, I really enjoyed it, and I’m excited to talk about it with you.

The Way of Kings is epic fantasy of the most epic kind. I’ve never read anything quite so expansive. The closest thing I’ve ever read in scope is Lord of the Rings, and even that focused on the same group of characters. This book is a thousand pages long. I listened to the audiobook, which was forty-five and ahalf hours. So this was also the longest book I’ve ever read (or the longest I can remember reading).

The book is set in a world that is regularly ravaged by deadly storms called high storms. Because of the storms, all plant life, down to grass, has the ability to retreat into rock shells. There are also giant crab things that the humans use to pull wagons and such, and all structures are built to withstand the high storms, because if you’re caught outside in a high storm, you’re dead. Despite their danger, the magic of the world also comes from the high storms. Gemstones left out during a storm will become infused with stormlight. These gemstones are used as currency or as light in the richer houses. Gemstones can also be used to transform one form of matter into another, like stone into smoke. And the backstory of the book is that the world is recovering from the desolations, where monsters called voidbringers attacked humanity and were fought off by the heralds and the knights radiant. The almighty, the heralds, and the knights radiant now form the backbone of the major religion of the book. The knights radiant used magical swords and armor, called shardblades and shardplate, which they left behind when they vanished. Because the knights radiant had a glowing aura and glowing eyes, class in this world is based on eye color. Those with light eyes make up the royalty and nobility, while those with dark eyes form the working class. Finally, there are magical creatures called spren that appear around humans a lot, such as pain spren, creation spren, glory spren, and so on. They’re generally just colored lights, but we do get one sentient wind spren and she is awesome.

The book begins with the assassination of the king of one of the most powerful nations in the world, Alethkar. The Parshendi nation take credit for the assassination, so the Alethi wage war on the Parshendi to avenge their fallen king. The book follows four main storylines, with several other smaller vignets scattered throughout.

First, and my personal favorite, we have Kaladin. Kaladin is a darkeyes soldier who was enslaved and sold to the army of one of the eigh princsome of Alethkar. He winds up as part of a bridge crew in High Prince Sadeas’s army on the shattered plains—a bunch of plateaus divided by deep chasms. Its the bridge crews’ job to carry the bridges for the army to cross the chasms to get to battles with the Parshendi, but Kaladin quickly learns it is also the bridge crews’ job to serve as bait and draw the Parshendi fire away from the army. Determined not to die and not to let any of his crew die, Kaladin becomes the leader of his crew and fights first to win their trust and respect and then to train them to survive. He is accompanied by Syl, an extraordinarily sentient wind spren. When their tactics start to work, and the Parshendi start shooting at the soldiers on the approach instead of the bridge crews, Kaladin is given a severe punishment he is not meant to survive. But he does survive, and he realizes he might have some power of his own, and there’s more to his relationship with the spren Syl than he first thought. So he turns that power to planning his bridge crew’s escape from the war camp.

Next, we have Lady Shallan Davar, a young lighteyes noblewoman whose family is in danger after her father’s death. Shallan hatches a daring plan to become apprenticed to the king’s sister, gain her trust, and then steal her soulcaster, the glove encrusted with gemstones that allows the princess to transform one thing into another. But Shallan is soon sucked into the princess’s studies of the origins of the voidbringers and their connection to the old king’s assassination. And soon (relatively speaking), she realizes that she and the princess are hiding the same secret.

Next, we have High Prince Dalinar, uncle to the current king and brother of the old king who was assassinated. Before he was assassinated, the old king pointed Dalinar to a book called The Way of Kings and told him to follow the codes in the book, which lay out strict protocol for war time. The old king also wanted Dalinar to unite the often fractious high princes of Alethkar. While following the codes and striving to form alliances among the high princes, Dalinar also begins having visions of the desolations of the past and the knights radiant during the high storms. He falls under a lot of scrutiny and his own sons begin questioning his sanity, until Dalinar is left trying to choose between following his own instincts or admitting that he is going mad and abdicating his position.

Finally, and perhaps I should have started with this character, we have Szeth-son-son-Vallano, also known as the assassin in white. You guessed it: he killed the old king of Alethkar. Szeth is truthless, which means (I think) that he must obey anyone who carries his oath stone. Like he’s magically forced to. He also carries a shardblade and has the ability to bind objects to each other for short periods of time, which allows him to do some cool things like reverse gravity and run along the ceiling, and otherwise makes him a really good assassin. As the book progresses, Szeth is drawn into a conspiracy that involves a lot of death, and he carries it out, weeping as he kills noble after noble.

Like I said, this was a really long, complex book, and I am only just beginning to scratch the surface with this description. I do hope this gives you enough to decide if this sounds like something you’d be interested in reading. To help with that decision, let’s dive into what I thought of the book.

I think my favorite part of this book was the characters and the world. The characters were all so different, and the world was so alien but so vivid and intricate, and I really loved all that. It was just so easy to get immersed in this story.

On the other hand, it was long. I won’t say it was a slog, but it was a slow, deliberate march. There was a fair amount of exposition, and the plot was sprawling, as you can see from above. There ar some connections that I didn’t make until I looked up the wikipedia summary to get the spellings of characters’ names right (hint: keep an eye on Wit). As much as I liked the book, I had a hard time getting through it because it was so long and so sprawling. I remember being about six hours from the ending and positive that there was no way all of this was going to come together.

But yes, it did come together, and it was pretty spectacular. It was one of those great moments where I actually let out a horrified “Aha! Oh god!” in the middle of the kitchen.

I do wish, after all that, that the ending had been more of a conclusion. I understand that the book is the first in a series, and I also understand that I have been conditioned by a lot of other books to expect the first book in a series to be a complete story that you can continue if you wish. I’m okay with first books not standing on their own. I really am. But this book was just so long that the fact that it wasn’t a complete story bugged me.

On the other hand, oh my god that ending!

One last thing that drove me nuts was that there were two narrators for the audiobook, and they pronounced a couple characters’ names differently. Like come on, people. Communicate on this stuff.

My overall thoughts are that I really, really liked this book. I don’t think I loved it as much as the first Mistborn book,but it was still really good. I’m not convinced it needed to be as long as it was, and while I liked the ending, I wish it had wrapped up more. I loved the world and the characters, and the ending had me dying for the next book. I’m on the waiting list to get the sequel from the library right now, and I’m hoping to get it soon. I have a feeling it is going to be awesome!

In the meantime, have you read The Way of Kings? What did you think?

The Bane Chronicles Review

Cover for The Bane Chronicles by Cassandra Clare, Sarah Rees Brennan, and Maureen JohnsonLast week, I finished The Bane Chronicles by Cassandra Clare, Sarah Rees Brennan, and maureen Johnson. This is a collection of short stories about events in the life of Magnus Bane, one of the major characters in Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments, Infernal Devices, and Dark Artifices series (possibly others but these are all I’ve read). I did my best in this post to talk about this book without spoilers, but it was difficult given how closely tied to Clare’s other work this is.

I really liked this book. It’s a lot of fun, but at the same time, it’s not entirely fluffy adventures. There is definitely some dark stuff in these books. What I particularly like is the ability to see several big events in history (centuries apart) from the same point of view character. Over the course of these stories, we see Magnus’s adventures in Peru (which may or may not have led him to be banned from Peru), his attempt to save Marie Antoinette and the royal family during the French Revolution, his stint running a speakeasy in the late 1920s, his discovery of a ring of vampires getting high on humans addicted to drugs in the 1980s, and more. I liked how cohesive this book was, and I had fun putting together what I learned about Magnus in each story.

There was, as I’ve mentioned, some overlap with the existing books in Clare’s shadowhunter universe. In one story, we meet Will Herondale’s father, Edmund, and in another story Magnus encounters James Herondale, Will and Tessa’s son. Later on, we see Magnus’s first interaction with Valentine’s Circle, the story of how he first meets Jocelyn and Clary from Magnus’s point of view, his first date with Alec, and another story about Magnus trying to figure out what to get Alec for his birthday. The final story is all the messages on Magnus’s voicemail after what happened at the end of City of Fallen Angels. While all these stories were interesting, I thought they were on the whole weaker than the stories that were just about Magnus and his adventures, with the exception of the first date with Alec because that is a great story. These stories were burdened by the fact that they were connected so heavily to the plot of the other books. For them to be complete short stories, there had to be a fair amount of exposition that wasn’t necessary in the other stories. At the same time, as I worked my way through these stories, I was definitely looking forward to seeing Magnus’s perspective on the crucial events in the main books of the series. I think I would have been disappointed if there was no overlap at all. And I definitely did enjoy these stories. So while these stories weren’t as strong on their own in my opinion, connected to the broader universe they are great.

If you haven’t read any of Cassandra Clare’s books before, I’m not sure I would recommend this as a starting point. I don’t think it would make a lot of sense. But if you’ve read any of her books, this collection is great fun and I definitely recommend.

March Reading Roundup

It’s still hard to believe, but it’s April now. It’s been a pretty crazy month, what with my regular homework and not-so-regular class projects, starting to apply for the bar, going down to D.C. for spring break, and then flying to Florida this week for an interview. I redesigned my website too, and I upgraded things so there shouldn’t be ads anymore. I’ve also been going home a lot, because I have five day weekends now and home is so close. It’s great, but it’s been a lot. It’s also hard to believe that I only have four weeks of classes left before finals, and then I’m done with my 3L year.

Before we dive into the books I read in March, I have a couple quick announcements. This is not an April Fools Day joke, either. Since I’m trying to post more regularly on this blog, I’m going to start doing individual reviews of books, instead of a big post every month with all the books I’ve read that month. Since I’m in the middle of a few series, I will take some time in April and May to write full reviews for books in the series I have already started this year. All the reviews will still be spoiler free, and I think I’ll still do a monthly recap post to sum up the month, but it will be shorter than these have been. This is an experiment for all of us, so feedback will definitely be appreciated.

I’ve also updated my book recs page. Books are now organized by category and then alphabetically by author’s last name. As I start writing individual reviews, I’ll link to them from that page as well.

Finally, please feel free to recommend books to me in the comments of any of my book-related posts or else use my contact form here. You should have a good sense of what I like and don’t like at this point, but I’m always happy to try new things. I will put all books recommended to me on this blog into a jar and pick at least one to read each month.

Now, let’s take a look at what I read this month.

A collage of the covers of the nine books I read in March: The Final Empire, The Burning Maze, Wren Journeymage, Beartown, The Way of Kings, The Silver Chair, The Last Battle, Found, and Home.
Covers from Goodreads

I read nine more books in March, bringing my grand total for 2019 up to 28. I would have read more, but one of these books was massive and took me two weeks to read. Also like I said it was a crazy month. Eight of the books I read were fantasy, and one was a contemporary. On the whole, this was a great reading month. I absolutely loved so many of the books I read, and everything I read was fun and thought provoking. Let’s dive in.

My first March book was The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson. This is the first book in the Mistborn series, and the first book I’ve ever read by Brandon Sanderson. I’m going to talk about this one in much more detail this week, so I’ll keep these thoughts brief, but oh my god, I was completely blown away by this book! I totally understand the hype, it is definitely well deserved, and I’ve already purchased the next two books in the series.

Next, I read the third Trials of Apollo book, The Burning Maze by Rick Riordan. I’m also going to talk about this in more detail later on. This was definitely a fun read. Apollo is trying to free the third trapped oracle and stop a certain Roman emperor from taking over California. We learn a lot more about Meg’s backstory in this book, and of course we have Rick Riordan’s classic fun adventure feel. This was a great ride.

After that, I read the final book in the Wren series, Wren Journeymage by Sherwood Smith. Wren and her friends have finally brought peace to the kingdom, or so Wren thinks, when her old enemy, Hawk, rides into town with intentions of courting Tess. Worse, Tess knew he was coming, and she didn’t tell Wren. Angry with her friend for not trusting her advice, Wren leaves Tyron to try to persuade her to see sense and sets off to find Connor and some more adventure. There are smugglers, pirates, sea battles, cool magic, spies, and even more old enemies. This book was so much fun, and it really pulled the whole series together. While the second and third books felt a bit scattered to me, this felt a lot more unified, and it was a nice conckusion to the series. I did end up having to buy the audiobook because it wasn’t available in Braille, but no, I did not hate the narrator.

Next, I read Beartown by Fredrik Backman. Fredrik Backman also wrote And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer, which I read last December and adored, and I found I loved this book just as much. And it’s about hockey. I never thought I would love a book that’s centered on a sport so much, but I did. There’s a sequel, which I’m waiting to get from the library, so like the other books I’m going to talk about this in a lot more detail later this month. I’ll give you a quick synopsis though. The book is told from the point of view of a failing town whose last hope of survival is that their junior hockey team wins the national championship. They’re so, so close, and this is the only thing that matters to anyone in town. And then a fifteen-year-old girl accuses the star hockey player of raping her, and everything explodes. This book is so powerful and utterly incredible. I was literally up all night reading it, and I have a ton more to say, so stay tuned.

And now for the book that took me two weeks to read, The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. This is another start to a series, so I’ll be doing a full review next week. Good thing too, because there is no way I can describe this in one paragraph. It is epic fantasy at its most epic, roughly a thousand pages of epic. I found it to be very daunting to even pick up, but after The Final Empire I had total faith in Sanderson’s ability to make every one of those thousand pages count, and for the most part he did. My very brief thoughts are that I’m not entirely convinced it had to be as long as it was, but the plotting and the world building were superb, and the way it all came together in the end was fabulous! More soon on this one.

In the last few days of March, I powered through the last two books of the Chronicles of Narnia series by C. S. Lewis, The Silver Chair and The Last Battle, and then the last two books in the Magic Thief series by Sarah Prineas, Found and Home. I really liked The Silver Chair. Eustace is brought back into Narnia along with his classmate Jill, and Aslan sends them on a mission to find Caspian’s son, who was kidnapped by The White Witch (the witch of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe). Accompanied by the marshwiggle Puddleglum, they journey north, facing man-eating giants, solving puzzles, and descending below the Earth to confront the witch in her underground layer guarded by enchanted gnomes. Overall, it was a good read. On the other hand, I found The Last Battle to be disappointing. The religious overtones were too much, and there was so much racism and sexism, and also just the plot didn’t make any sense. Like the monkey convinces the donkey to dress up as Aslan for a joke, and then somehow the monkey allies himself with the Calormen, and this ends the world? Okay that’s an oversimplification but you get the idea. On the whole, it was a disappointing end to the series.

But the last two books in the Magic Thief series were fabulous. As you might recall, I read the first two books toward the end of last year, and while I liked them, there was something missing, and I struggled to really be drawn in. The third and fourth book had that something, and I was sucked right in. These two books made the whole series awesome for me. In Found, the dark magic is threatening the city, but Conn needs to find a new locus stone so he can fight against it. So he goes on a journey and finds… dragons. And the adventure goes from there. The fourth book, Home, finds Conn dealing with new conflicts and old enemies and trying to figure out just who he is and what he’s meant to do in the world. This was another one that did a great job tying the whole series together. I liked it lots.

And that’s it for March. Have you read any of these books? Do you agree with my opinions?

February Reading Roundup

Happy March! It is still not spring. In fact it’s more winter than ever. The groundhog lied to me. How dare he?!

Though it may not be spring yet, spring break is approaching. In a couple weeks, I’m heading down to D.C. to do some preliminary exploring and orientation and mobility in case a hypothetical job I’ve applied for comes through. I’m probably jinxing it just by planning to go down there, but it’s also probably warmer there than it is here. I’m finally over my various start-of-the-semester illnesses, and I’m starting to get all the emails about ordering regalia and making sure my name is right on my diploma and doing exit counseling for my financial aid. I’ve finished my Intro to Finance Concepts course, so I have five-day weekends for the rest of the semester. Yes, that means I finally updated my book recs page to include my 2018 favorites. And yes, that means you should be getting more posts from me, and not just about the books I’m reading either.

Collage of the covers of the nine books I read in February
Covers came from Goodreads

But speaking of the books I’m reading, I read nine in February. My grand total for 2019 is 19, which is kind of cool, right?

This was an interesting reading month for me. I definitely went way out of my reading comfort zone with some of these books. I really liked a bunch of them, and some of them were a bit disappointing. These books were mostly fantasy, with a couple historical fiction, one that I can’t categorize, and one contemporary chick lit/women’s fiction (if the categorization on Goodreads is to be believed). As always, these thoughts are as spoiler-free as I can feasibly make them. Let’s dive in.

First, I finished Cassandra Clare’s Dark Artifices series. I read the first two books, Lady Midnight and Lord of Shadows, last year, but the third book, Queen of Air and Darkness, just came out last November and I just now got it out of the library. And oh! The feelings! It’s really hard to talk about this without spoiling things from the second book, because so much of what happens in the third book hinges on the ending of the second book (which definitely broke me, btw, what an ending!). Basically, in this book the characters split up and are each trying to deal with the consequences of what happened in different ways. We still have the racist Shadowhunters trying to take over the Clave, and the faeries are still stirring up trouble. There were so many things that I loved about this book, and so many things that drove me up the wall. I think it was too long, the pacing was wacky, and there were too many point of view characters. At this point, I was also kind of over Julian and Emma’s forbidden romance thing. On the other hand, the alternate world they stumble into in the middle of the book is really awesome. And I loved, loved, loved Ty and Kit’s arc, and I am so glad there’s going to be a trilogy about them because I am all over that! On the whole, this book, and this whole trilogy, were not as good as I wanted them to be after The Mortal Instruments, but I still loved the world and the characters, and I’m looking forward to more in the future.

Next, I read the third Wren book, Wren’s War by Sherwood Smith. I read the first two books in this series last year. This is another one where it’s hard to explain the plot without spoilers, because a really big thing happens at the beginning of this book and it’s important but knowing it’s coming will wreck the impact for you. And already I might have said too much. Basically though, the evil king who’s been menacing Wren, Tess, Connor, and Tyron (and the whole kingdom) is back, and he has an army. And the foursome have to raise an army of their own and defeat him. And also deal with some messy domestic politics and family squabbles while they’re at it. So much cool stuff happens in this book, and I love these four friends to pieces, especially Wren. My one complaint is that since the four are scattered around doing different things, the book kept jumping around and it was hard to give any of them the time I thought they deserved. But this is a minor complaint, and I still really liked this book. I was ready to dive right into book four after I finished this one, but I’ve been reading these books in Braille, and the fourth book isn’t available. There is an audiobook, but I hate changing formats mid-series. What if I don’t like the narrator? This definitely threw a wrench in my momentum, but I have an Audible credit, so I’m definitely going to pick up the fourth book soon.

Meanwhile, I was also reading Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. This was the first time I read this book, and I’m kind of surprised by that, given all the World War II books I’ve read and all the research I did on WWII Italy in particular a few years ago. I really loved this book. I think it’s the first book I’ve read in 2019 that’s going on my book recs page. This book tells the story of a group of U.S. Airforce officers headquartered on a fictional Italian island. It reminded me a lot of Slaughterhouse Five, which I read in college and again last year, because it definitely was a darkly humorous take on the war. But while Slaughterhouse Five is humorous in a somewhat subtle way, Catch-22 was almost a slapstick comedy. It was a wild ride, and it definitely took me a bit to get into the style of this book. At times it was bizarre and ridiculous, but it gets dark, and the craziness only serves to make the dark more profound and horrific. In short, this was a great book, and if you haven’t read it, I highly recommend.

Next up was The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan. I’m going to be honest, I almost put this book down. I did put it down for a bit. And then I picked it back up again because I have guilt and can’t not finish a book. This is another WWII book, this one about a group of POWs working for the Japanese on the Burmese railroad. The book bounces around in time and place, so it also shows the lives of the prisoners after they’ve been released and are trying to live their lives. Basically everything not in the POW camp didn’t work for me. It was just written in this very pretentious style that made me grind my teeth and want to roll my eyes. The parts of the book set in the POW camp, however, were amazing. The writing was stronger. The details were crisp and vivid. I felt like I was there. There’s this one scene where the main character, who’s a doctor, is performing a tricky surgery and it was such a gruesome scene but it was also handled so incredibly. The author’s grandfather was a POW working on the Burmese railroad in World War II, and it’s obvious that the author really wanted to tell that story. It’s an important story, and it’s one that I definitely think needs to be told. I just wish Richard Flanagan had stuck to that and left the other stuff out. This book evoked a lot of strong emotions in me, in case you can’t tell. My feelings were not lukewarm on any of it, but on the other hand, it definitely stuck with me and unsettled me. I think whether you’ll enjoy this book depends a lot on your taste in what you like to read.

Next, I read The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton. This was a quick book, which I liked because it was a bit of a breather after some of the longer and heavier books I read earlier in the month (not that this book was particularly light). This is also an older book—a lot of you might have read it before—but it was totally new to me. The Outsiders tells the story of Ponyboy Curtis and his brothers, who live in a poor part of town and are part of a gang of what’s called greasers. The greasers are constantly going head to head with the socs, who are like the rich kids. Ponyboy is proud to be a greaser, to be part of the gang, and to get into fights with the socs. But one night, his friend kills a soc to save Ponyboy’s life, and Ponyboy and his friend have to go on the run. I think the age of this book and the age of the author—she was a teenager when she wrote it—definitely show today. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It just is a thing. I also wish I had more of a sense of the setting in this book. There were parts of the book where I had a great feel for where and when we were, and there were parts that could have been any time. But this is still a really good book, and I enjoyed it a lot. The pacing was really strong, so even though it was short, it didn’t feel like it was moving too quickly or like there wasn’t enough plot. I was gripped from start to finish, and I thought the voice was particularly strong. If you haven’t read this yet, it’s definitely one to try.

The February selection for my law school book club was Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado, so I picked that up next. This could not have been more different than last month’s book, Girl Made of Stars. This may in fact be the most graphic thing I have read ever, and I mean graphic in every sense of the word. Wow! This is a collection of short stories, many with a speculative or horror twist. There were a few stories that I loved: the first story, which is a retelling of that green ribbon story we all heard as kids; the story about the woman in the writing residency, which may have my favorite line in the whole book; the story about the virus with all the lists; and the story about the women fading. Sorry I can’t remember any titles. A couple of the stories I just did not get at all, like the one with the baby and the SVU one, but the author is just such a good writer that I was willing to go with it. While the subject of a lot of these stories and the graphic quality did not make this book my ideal cup of tea, the writing was just fabulous, and I did in fact enjoy it. And what, you ask, is my favorite line of the book? “Do you ever worry … that you’re the madwoman in the attic?” (I guess I was an English major after all.)

After that, I reread Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J. K. Rowling. I promise my posts on this year’s HP reread are coming. I’m waiting to finish the series so there isn’t a long gap between posts.

Next, I read Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah. I picked this book up because I formed/joined a second book club, this one with the Cambridge chapter of the National Federation of the Blind, and this was the book that was chosen for our inaugural meeting. I wanted so much to love this book, because I just love Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale. But this was not The Nightingale. Firefly Lane follows Tully and Kate through thirty years of friendship, from the time when they’re fourteen. This book started out really strong. I got pulled right in, and I loved the girls and their different home situations and their friendship. But I found the pacing to be weird, and the plot points to be predictable. In almost every instance, I knew what was going to happen before it did. I also felt like we were supposed to be able to sympathize with both of the main characters, and I’m sorry,I didn’t. One of them was clearly wrong all the time. Kristin Hannah is a great writer, and that’s definitely present in this book. And despite everything, I was definitely balling my eyes out at the end, so it packed an emotional punch. I just wanted it to be as good as The Nightingale, and I don’t think it was. Also I really, really want to talk to people about this, and I don’t know if I can make it to the book club meeting where we’re discussing this, so if you’ve read it, hit me up. I have feelings. Also there’s a sequel. Should I read it?

And finally, I read The Ocean At the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman. This is the first book I’ve read by Neil Gaiman by himself (I read Good Omens back in the summer of 2012 but he co-wrote that). In this book, a man returns to his hometown for a funeral and remembers an incident in his childhood when an opal miner staying with his family committed suicide and brought monsters into the neighborhood, and the boy and his really awesome magical neighbors have to fight off the monsters. That’s the best way I can describe it, and I am in no way doing it justice. This book was yet another one that was definitely outside my reading comfort zone, because it was dark fantasy, bordering on horror, and I don’t normally like that sort of stuff. I’m more into happy adventure time, if you haven’t gathered that yet. This was a deeply odd and deeply creepy book, and it may give me nightmares, but I also loved it. The writing was stellar. The creepiness was just the right level of creepy. It didn’t make sense and it did make sense and the feelings were so vivid and I just loved it. It’s also a pretty short book, so it was easy to take the leap and try something new. I realize I’m not making a ton of sense with my thoughts on this one, but it’s just really hard to describe. But it’s great and you should give it a read. Promise.

And that’s it for February. I’ll have more coming your way soon, so stay tuned, and in the meantime, let me know if you’ve read any of these books and what you thought of them.

Favorite Books of 2018

I read 176 books in 2018, a number that still floors me. Here are my favorites. Since I’ve already talked about why I liked these books in my reading roundup posts each month, I’m just giving you a list here, sometimes with a quick note. This list does not include books I reread that are already on my book recs page.

My book recs page will be updated soon to include my 2018 favorites.

Favorite books of 2018, in no particular order:

  • The Children of the Red King books 6-8 by Jenny Nimmo (I read the first 5 in 2017, and while the series could have ended there, these rounded things off nicely)
  • The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
  • The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars by Dava Sobel
  • Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love by Dava Sobel
  • Shanghai Girls and Dreams of Joy by Lisa See (Shanghai Girls is better , but you need to read them together)
  • Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy by Cathy O’Neil
  • See You in the Cosmos by Jack Cheng
  • The True Meaning of Smekday and Smek for President by Adam Rex
  • War of Necessity, War of Choice: A Memoir of Two Iraq Wars by Richard N. Haass
  • Rilla of Ingleside by L. M. Montgomery (this is the last book in the Anne of Green Gables series, and in my opinion the only one worth bothering with after the third one. Just skip the ones in the middle.)
  • The Sisters Grimm books 2-9 by Michael Buckley (I read the first book in 2017, and this whole series is just such fun)
  • Liesl & Po by Lauren Oliver
  • Delirium series by Lauren Oliver
  • Slaughterhouse Five or the Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death by Kurt Vonnegut
  • A Wrinkle in Time series by Madeleine L’Engle
  • The Giver series by Lois Lowry (The Giver is the best but the others are good too)
  • Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
  • Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan
  • Echo by Pam Muñoz Ryan (if you like audiobooks, this is one to listen to, because it includes the music in the story and is really well-done)
  • The Breadwinner series by Deborah Ellis
  • Lily’s Crossing by Patricia Reilly Giff
  • Gingersnap by Patricia Reilly Giff
  • Pictures of Hollis Woods by Patricia Reilly Giff
  • Life After Life and A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson
  • The Underland Chronicles series by Suzanne Collins
  • Saints and Misfits by S. K. Ali
  • Turtles All the Way Down by John Green (the plot is weird and just shouldn’t be there but I loved being in Aza’s head so much that it made my favorites)
  • Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan
  • The Heroes of Olympus series by Rick Riordan (not as good as the first series but still a fun read)
  • Inkheart by Cornelia Funke (don’t bother with the rest of the trilogy they aren’t as good)
  • The Charmed Children of Rookskill Castle by Janet Fox
  • Castle Hangnail by Ursula Vernon
  • Matilda by Roald Dahl
  • Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl (I’d skip the sequel. It’s weird.)
  • Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
  • Maximum Ride books 1-3 by James Patterson (stop after book 3. I really mean it.)
  • Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
  • The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater
  • Rose series by Holly Webb (the last book isn’t what I wanted it to be but it’s still a delightful series)
  • And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer by Fredrik Backman
  • Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson
  • Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George (the sequels are fine but nowhere near as good as the first book)
  • Wren series books 1 and 2 by Sherwood Smith (I haven’t finished this series but loved the first two so much I had to include them here anyway)
  • The Chronicles of Narnia series by C. S. Lewis (these certainly have problems but nostalgia won the day.)
  • Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor (Another one where I haven’t finished the series but really liked the first one so here it is.)
  • Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
  • Smoke in the Sun by Renee Ahdieh (not as good as the first one, the pacing is weird, but it completes the series nicely)
  • The Essential New York Times Cookbook: Classic Recipes for a New Century by Amanda Hesser (lots of fun food history in here, and the recipes I’ve tried so far have been really good)
  • The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook: From Cauldron Cakes to Nickerbocker Glory—More Than 150 Magical Recipes for Muggles and Wizards by Dinah Busholz (I can’t vouch for any of the recipes yet but it’s great for an HP nerd).
  • Tempests and Slaughter by Tamora Pierce

And here are a few books that I read and enjoyed but that I’m waiting to finish the series before I decide whether they’re favorites:

  • Lady Midnight and Lord of Shadows by Cassandra Clare (The Dark Artifices series)
  • The Magic Thief and Lost by Sarah Prineas (the Magic Thief series)
  • Caraval by Stephanie Garber (the Caraval series)
  • Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey (The Expanse series)

Stay tuned for how I feel about these books once I finish the series and/or once the rest of the books come out.

All in all, it was a pretty good reading year. I read so many books that I really, really loved. I’ve set a goal to read 100 books in 2019, and I hope I discover another abundance of good books. What are you planning to read in 2019?

December Reading Roundup

Happy 2019 everybody!

I spent the last week in Florida with my family. We went kayaking with dolphins and hiking and biking and museuming. I got a bit crispified, and I’m not sure Neutron was a fan of all the heat, but we had a great adventure. And now we’re back in the cold and rain and snow.

I am all fired up about my 2019 goals. I’ve written every day of 2019 so far, and I’m trying to keep that momentum going. I’m starting my J-term patents class on Monday, and while I’m not totally ready to go back to school, I’m well-rested and my stress is much lower, at least at the moment. I got one of those wake-up lights to get me up and moving in the morning, and I feel like I’m ready to get into the swing of things. And I just finished my reading for Monday, and I actually understood most of it. Could I have finally reached some kind of law school enlightenment?

Before I totally dive into the new year, I have one more reading roundup post for 2018 for you. I read 21 books in December, which is a record for me for the year. Many of them were short books, and I got through a lot while studying for finals. I did not finish all the series I was in the middle of by the end of the year, as I’d hoped, but I finished a bunch.

First, I finished Rick Riordan’s The Heroes of Olympus series. In December, I read the fourth book, The House of Hades, and the fifth book, The Blood of Olympus. The House of Hades is definitely one of my favorites in the series. It features my favorite characters—Percy, Annabeth, Leo, and Hazel—and they are having some cool adventures and doing awesome stuff. Percy and Annabeth are racing through the Underworld, trying to get to the Doors of Death before the monster army, while the rest of the crew of the Argo II are fighting their way across the Mediterranean to meet them on the mortal side of the doors. It was just a really fun read. After that, The Blood of Olympus was a bit of a let-down. It basically exemplified all the problems I had with the series—mainly that there were too many point of view characters and that we were with the wrong characters all the time. Also, there was no Percy point of view, and this really upset me. But the ending was great, and it did wrap up the series well. On the whole, this series definitely isn’t  as good as the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, but it was still a lot of fun.

Next, I read Echo by Pam Muñoz Ryan. This book actually follows a magic harmonica as it passes from child to child—from a German boy with epilepsy facing Hitler’s sterilization program, to a pair of orphans in Great Depression Pennsylvania, to the daughter of Mexican immigrants looking for Japanese spies while her brother is fighting in World War II. There is a lot of music in the book, and if you like audiobooks, this is definitely one to listen to, because it actually has the music, and it does a really good job of it. I really enjoyed listening to this book. The one thing that I will say is that it annoyed me that we left each point of view character right when everything in their stories was coming to a head. You find out what happened in the end, but it was a bit frustrating while I was reading it. Other than that, this was a great book.

I continued the WWII trend with City of Thieves by David Benioff. This book takes place in Leningrad, during the siege. The main character—I can’t even remember his name—is caught stealing alcohol from a downed German soldier. He thinks he’s going to be shot, but he and a deserter are instead sent by the commander of the secret police literally on a wild goose chase to find a dozen eggs for his daughter’s wedding cake. Leningrad is, of course, starving, so there are no eggs to be had. I did not like this book. I couldn’t tell if it was trying to be comedic or satiric or weirdly serious. Whatever it was, it was just plain wild, and it was not my cup of tea.

After that, I read Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator by Roald Dahl, the sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. This was another really weird book. They take the great glass elevator into space, face down some aliens who have taken over the space hotel, rescue an American space ship, and then there’s this whole craziness with turning all the grandmas and grandpas into babies to get them out of bed. It made no sense, and Charlie was just sort of along for the crazy ride. Suffice it to say that while I enjoyed Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and that will always be special to me, this was just a little too weird for my tastes.

I finished the Julie of the Wolves series with Julie and Julie’s Wolf Pack by Jean Craighead George. I liked Julie a lot. It dealt well with the fall-out from the first book. Julie’s Wolf Pack was fun too, but it basically continues the story from the point of view of the wolves, so it read more like a series of events. While I enjoyed these books, they weren’t nearly as powerful as I found the first book to be, and I’m not sure they’re necessary to wrap up the first book. To me, the first book stands well on its own.

I finally finished The Essential New York Times Cookbook: Classic Recipes for a New Century by Amanda Hesser, which I’ve been working my way through since the summer. This isn’t just a cookbook. Or at least, it wasn’t just a cookbook to me. It covered New York Times recipes from the 1870s to the present, and I really enjoyed seeing what people ate in all the different time periods, the variations in preparations, what has stood the test of time and what has disappeared. It was fascinating. I have not tried all the recipes in this book, but the ones I have tried so far have come out really well. Since it covers so much, it is a bit of a brick, and I’ve bookmarked a whole bunch of recipes I want to try. Looking forward to diving into those in 2019.

Next, I finished The Raven Cycle with The Raven King by Maggie  Stiefvater. Blue has her mother back now, and  the kids are closing in on their sleeping king, but there are a whole bunch of other crazy things going on. The strength of this book and the whole series is the characters and their dynamics together, which I’ve said before. I’m a big fan of large ensemble casts, and this series does such a wonderful job with it. Some of the reviews I read complain that Maggie Stiefvater didn’t pull everything together the way they wanted, but this book was pretty much a perfect end to the series for me.

Next I finished my reread of A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket with the twelfth and thirteenth books, The Penultimate Peril and The End. I really enjoyed The Penultimate Peril. It reminds me of the scene in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows where everyone is all together in the Room of Requirement. Yes, the adults are still useless, but it feels like we’re finally closing in on Count Olaf, until everything goes horribly wrong, of course. The End—which already loses points for not having an alliterative title—was a huge disappointment. We’ve been building everything up for the last three or four books, at least, and now we’re all just going to go hang out on a super peaceful island? Really? And not answer any questions? Sorry, minor spoilers, nothing is explained. The last book didn’t ruin the series for me, but it was definitely a disappointment. Now that I’ve finished rereading the books, I’m ready to watch the last season of the Netflix show, which I hope will pull things together in the end better than the last book did.

After that, I finally finished the Maximum Ride series by James Patterson, which I’ve literally been plugging away at all year. In December, I read Nevermore and Maximum Ride Forever. While the last book was, surprisingly, better than the last like five books put together, you’d be better off stopping after the third book, Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports, because the rest of the series isn’t worth the time it will take you to read them, even if that time is really short. Enough said about that.

The rest of the Rose series by Holly Webb carried me through finals week. I read Rose and the Magician’s Mask during breaks from studying for my corporations exam, and Rose and the Silver Ghost while studying for administrative law and writing my communications law paper. I adored Rose and the Magician’s Mask. They’re going after the villain of the second book, who is terrifying indeed. Rose is getting good at magic. She has all her friends back. I love Bill to pieces. Oh, and in this book they travel to Venice and do battle with magicians whose masks have fused with their faces to give them more power. I love Venice, and I love how delightfully creepy the whole thing is. Rose and the Silver Ghost was not as good as I’d hoped. First of all, I think it would have been better split into two books and both conflicts developed better. The first big chunk of the book is Rose trying to find her mother. This is pretty good, though I have to admit I was a bit disappointed with what the truth turned out to be. The world is set up in these books so that it’s only the rich families who have magical powers, because magic is so expensive. So Rose, a poor orphan with strong magical powers, is kind of rocking the boat a bit here. I didn’t want her family history to be resolved. Or, I wanted her parents to be poor fishermen. I wanted to rock the boat a bit more. I did not want Rose to be the long lost daughter of some crazy rich magical family. But so it goes. And the reveal and the climax around that is sufficiently intense that it was still really good, even if it wasn’t what I wanted it to be. Then, at the end, they cram in all this stuff about stopping the Talish invasion of Britain. I felt like this deserved a lot more attention than it was given. So while the last book wasn’t everything I was hoping for, I did really enjoy this series.

When I finished finals, I started my annual Harry Potter reread. Unfortunately I started too late to make much headway in the series before the end of the year, but I did read Sorcerer’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets. I’m working on a whole post about my annual reread, so I won’t go into all my thoughts here, but these books make me so happy and were the perfect post-finals treat.

While reading Harry Potter, I also sped through And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer by Fredrik Backman. It’s a novella about a grandfather struggling with the knowledge that he is losing his memories with his son and grandson. I love this little novella. It’s so sweet and tender and heartbreaking, and I found it to be really profound and powerful. So much so that I bought it for my mom for Christmas and both she and my dad read it while we were in Florida. My dad actually wants to read it again, and it’s a minor miracle if he finishes a book the first time, which says a lot about this book. It’s a sad book, definitely, but I highly recommend it.

Next I read Lost by Sarah Prineas, the second book in The Magic Thief series. This was a good sequel to the first book, but I did kind of hate all the characters for not communicating with each other. Also, there was just something so formal and stilted about all the characters’ interactions that kept me from getting into the book. At this point, how I feel about these books really depends on how the rest of the series goes.

In December, I also read The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook: From Cauldron Cakes to Nickerbocker Glory—More Than 150 Magical Recipes for Muggles and Wizards by Dinah Busholz. This was a lot of fun to read, because it goes through all the food in the Harry Potter books—and there’s a lot of food mentioned. It talks about the significance of the food in the books, as well as the food’s historical and cultural significance. And then we get the recipes. I haven’t gotten to try any of these yet, but some of them look really delicious. Some, like the steak and kidney pie, I think I’m going to pass on trying. I’m only so adventurous. Also I just have to say wow! I cannot believe that the characters actually ate like this every day. But this book gave me a new perspective on the Harry Potter books. As I’ve been rereading the books, I’ve noticed the food a lot more. Even if I don’t try any of the recipes—and I did bookmark a bunch to try—it’s definitely a lot of fun to read, especially if you’re an extreme Harry Potter nerd like me.

I finished off 2018 with Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson. I really enjoyed this book, but as I said before, I’m a nerd. The book goes through the big theories of astrophysics, from the big bang and the formation of our galaxy, solar system, and planet, to the size and shape of the universe and theories about its life cycle, to the search for life on other planets. It was a small book, but I found it to be thorough and clear. I did read some Goodreads reviews that complained that it would be hard to follow if you didn’t already know some of the science, and that’s probably true, especially if you’re reading quickly. But if you’re interested in astrophysics, this is one to read.

In total, I read 176 books in 2018. I’m a little bit in awe of this number, and kind of horrified with myself. Did I do nothing but read in 2018? Sometimes it feels like it. I’ve never read so much in one year. I’m definitely still processing how I feel about some of these books, so I’ll be back next week with my top picks for 2018. Until then, happy new year! And happy reading!

November Reading Roundup

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.

October Reading Roundup

Welcome to November. The clocks have turned back, the weather is… weird, and my Twitter feed is full of NaNoWriMo tweets, which are sort of just making me feel like I’m being unproductive which is the opposite of true. It feels like only a couple weeks ago I was telling you about my September books, which is true, because it took me until halfway through October to get that post done. I’m currently buried in legal ethics flashcards for the ethics test I’m taking tomorrow, but I wanted to get this post out there before it gets any later in the month.

So I read twelve books in October. Yes, I finished the last book Wednesday night, after midnight, which I guess technically puts it into November, but I say it’s October because I was still awake. Which is to say if I finish the book before I go to sleep on the last day of the month, even if it’s after midnight, I’m counting it for that month. I have now read a total of 141 books this year (actually 143 because I’ve read two more so far in November). I’m well past my original goal of reading 100 books, and almost to my revised goal of 150. I’ll almost certainly make it to 150 this month, but it’s possible I don’t, because November is going to be crazy. Drowning in flashcards, remember?

I read a good mix of books in October. Three historical fiction books set in World War II, for that project I’m sort of thinking about working on again after I take the bar; some more middle grade adventure books; a really great sci fi book for book club; and I finished a nonfiction book I’ve been working on since before law school started. As usual, I made progress on a couple series I’ve been working my way through, finished one series altogether, and started a couple new series. I’m hoping to not end the year in the middle of any series if I can help it, so it’s probably time to stop starting new series and wrap up the ones I’m in the middle of, but we’ll see how that actually goes.

So without further ado, here are the twelve books I read in October and what I thought of them. As usual, I’m trying to keep these thoughts as spoiler-free as possible.

First, I read the next Maximum Ride book in the series, Angel by James Patterson. I honestly don’t know why I’m still reading these, except I’m a completionist. But they’ve gotten weird, guys. And also dumb. Enough said.

Next, I read China Dolls by Lisa See. Way back at the beginning of the year, I read Shanghai Girls and Dreams of Joy by Lisa See, and I really enjoyed them, but unfortunately China Dolls didn’t live up to my expectations. In the late 1930s, three young Chinese women, Grace, Ruby, and Helen become dancers in a San Francisco nightclub, and soon they’re fast friends. But Ruby is actually Japanese, masquerading as Chinese, and when the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor and Japanese-Americans are sent to internment camps, one of Ruby’s friends betrays her to the authorities. This is all on the back cover so I’m spoiling nothing here, even though it takes a very long time for us to get to that point in the book. I found everything to be really stereotypical, and also pretty predictable and melodramatic. It was a fine book, but it wasn’t the fabulous book I expected.

After that, I read the second book in The Raven Cycle, The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater. I read the first book back in June, when I was in Maryland, and I loved it so much that I wasn’t sure I wanted to read a sequel if it might ruin the first book. But The Dream Thieves was just as good. There’s a lot of continuity in the series. We pick up where we left off and continue on with the story, with some new characters and new powers and new twists. Honestly, I didn’t like Ronan that much in the first book, but since he was sort of the main character of this book, we really got to know him, and I really like him now. Plus his power to take things from dreams is pretty sweet. And it ended on quite a cliff-hanger. I have the third book from the library now so will be reading that in a few weeks.

I finally finished The Dark Is Rising series by Susan Cooper when I read Silver on the Tree this month. As you might recall, my complaint about the last couple books in this series is that the stakes have been at best false and at worst nonexistent. The characters who have magic are so powerful that of course they’re going to win. And the characters that don’t have magic have no hope of accomplishing anything on their own, so they don’t do anything. This wasn’t as bad in the final book of the series. For much of the book, it felt like there was risk, and lots of cool things happen. I was totally ready to add the whole series to my favorites for the year, and then the ending happened. I don’t want to spoil anything, but there’s a thing that really made me mad. It was the sort of ending that invalidates the character development for the whole series. I haven’t decided if the first book of the series will end up on my 2018 favorites list. I really enjoyed the first book, but the rest of the series was a bit of a let-down, and I wouldn’t recommend the series as a whole.

Next, I finished Wren to the Rescue by Sherwood Smith, the first book in the Wren series. I absolutely loved this book. Wren is an orphan, and when she learns her best friend is actually a princess in hiding, she has a chance at a whole different kind of life. But when Tess is kidnapped by an evil magician king, Wren and her friends set out to rescue her. They have all kinds of adventures along the way, and Wren discovers she has magical powers of her own. There are so many things I loved about this book—the world building, the mystery, how realistic it felt—but what I really love about this book is how happy Wren is, even when facing the impossible odds of the kidnapper magician king and his armies. I’m in the middle  of reading the second book right now, and so far I definitely recommend these books.

Our October book for book club was Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. This is a book set in a post-apocolyptic America, following a whole bunch of characters all connected by their relationship to an actor who died onstage the night society collapsed. This probably is one of those books that I wouldn’t have picked up on my own, but I was absolutely blown away. If you haven’t read it, you definitely need to. I don’t care what kind of books you normally read. I don’t care if this doesn’t seem like something you’d like. You need to read this.

I pressed on with The Series of Unfortunate Events this month, reading The Slippery Slope by Lemony Snicket. We’ve reached the point in this reread where basically none of the characters are making decisions that make logical sense. I can’t think of any examples right now, but there were several times while reading this book when I would have been rolling my eyes if I could. Yes, there’s a fair amount of whimsy and ridiculousness in these books, but you lose me when characters who are supposed to be smart start making decisions based on obviously logically flawed information.

A little more than two years ago, before I started law school, I began listening to the Great Courses lecture The History of the Supreme Court by Peter Irons. I got the lectures on Audible, and I admit it’s debatable that it’s a book, but Goodreads counts it as a book so I’m going with that. It’s eighteen hours of lectures that start with the signing of the constitution and go all the way through Bush v. Gore, covering the lives and legal decisions of the Supreme Court justices as well as the broader trends in American history and judicial policy. It didn’t take me this long to finish because it was boring. Quite the contrary. I found it really fascinating. But once law school started, I didn’t really want to be reading about law in my free time, so I was listening to it one little bit at a time, mostly over the summers. On the whole, I really enjoyed this, and if you’re interested in the Supreme Court or legal history, I definitely recommend checking it out.

Next, I flew through When the Emperor was Divine by Julie Otsuka. I think I read this in about three hours. I really wanted this book to be good, but unfortunately it didn’t work for me. It’s the story of a single Japanese-American family interned during World War II. The writing was very beautiful, and the descriptions were vivid. The problem I had was that none of the characters have names, and because of that, we were kept at a distance from them. We didn’t feel what they felt. We were just witnesses. I can understand why you might make these choices when writing a book, but it didn’t work for me.

After that I read Caraval by Stephanie Garber. To escape from their abusive father, Scarlet is swept into this magical game where she has five nights to solve a bunch of clues and find her missing sister. I really loved the world building and the descriptions in this book. It was so beautiful. And I loved the magic of the game/carnival/performance, whatever it was. The first half was a bit slow, I admit, and I’m not as big a fan of books that are like, I’m the protagonist, I have this goal, except now I’ve met this guy and my other goals don’t really matter anymore. It’s more annoying when the protagonist’s actual goal is to save her sister, or anyone really. And I get that the whole point of the book is that no one knew what was real and what was not, but it felt like it went one or two steps too far for me. Still, I really enjoyed this book and will definitely be reading the sequel.

Next, I read Code Talker: A Novel About the Navajo Marines of World War II by Joseph Bruchac. The book follows a young Navajo man from childhood through his enlistment during World War II, his training in the Navajo code, and his role transmitting coded messages as the Marines island-hopped across the Pacific to Japan. I didn’t know anything about the Navajo code talkers and this aspect of WWII before I read this book, and I really enjoyed learning about it. However, I didn’t enjoy the book. Despite proclaiming to be a novel, it read like a history book. It was really dry, just a chronicle of this character’s life, and everything was just handed to the reader instead of letting the reader see and feel and experience it through the character. It was perfectly fine, if you want the history, but it was disappointing if you were looking for a story. Still, if you’re interested in WWII history, and a part of that history that isn’t talked about as much, I’d check this book out.

Finally, I read the second book in Holly Webb’s Rose series, Rose and the Lost Princess. This was another book that I just absolutely loved. The events of the first book have resulted in a huge backlash against magicians. Many of Rose’s new friends have turned against her. But when unknown magicians kidnap the young princess, Rose winds up in the thick of it. There’s so much adventure and humor in these books, even as they deal with serious topics, and I love how practical and level-headed Rose is. I’m definitely looking forward to what comes next for Rose and her friends.

And that’s it for October. I’m going back to my flashcards now, but I’ll be back next week with that long-promised post about my adventures in the kitchen. In the meantime, have you read any of these books? Do you agree with my thoughts? Do you think I’m totally wrong?