Reading Log - July 2013

Much like last month, I really felt like I was slacking in reading during July.  I only was able to finish three books, and of those three, two of them I read before.  That does not mean that reading them again made them any less enjoyable; it just means my "to-read" list grew impossibly longer.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

So completes my quest to re-read all the Harry Potter books in order.  Oh, Mrs. Rowling... What can I say to you other than this series is perfection?  And Deathly Hallows is by far the best of the seven.  The emotion, the relationships between the characters, the buildup to the final confrontation between Harry and Voldermort... you couldn't ask for a better ending to a phenomenal series.  Reading through all the books at once - from the time Harry receives his letter to the final battle of Hogwarts - is an experience that all Potterheads need to experience again, and I know that no matter how many times I read this series I will never grow tired of it.  I can't wait for the day when I get to read it to my own halflings.

Airborn by Kenneth Oppel

Airborn is the only book I read this month I have not read before.  It's a quick- easy read about a young cabin boy and an adventurous girl trying to break away from the shackles of high society set in a lightly-themed steampunk world filled with airships, pirates, mysterious creatures, as well as lots of action sequences and well-written dialogue and characterizations.  The best way I can describe this book is that it's like a Hayao Miyazaki movie, and anyone who's seen and enjoyed Castle in the Sky, Howl's Moving Castle or any of his other movies will absolutely devour this book.

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

I'm cheating a little bit with Ender's Game because I didn't actually finish it before the end of July, but I'm posting now because I already read it years before.  Although I read Fahrenheit 451 and Brave New World in high school, I still consider Ender's Game my real introduction to sci-fi.  I enjoyed the book when I was eighteen, and with the announcement of the movie I knew I had to read it again.  The second read-through was just as good as the first, if not better, since I know that I had little interest in science fiction and even less with politics when I was a teenager (I'm certain there were lots of parts I probably glossed over at the time).  It's a surprisingly fast read too, focusing more on the characters and human nature instead of being bogged down with a bunch of science and tech jargon that most people outside a physics classroom will probably never understand.  I don't read a lot of science fiction, but the first book of its genre I'd recommend to anyone who asked.

Reading Log - June 2013

It shouldn't come as a surprise that as an amature author, I read.  A lot.  When I'm not first-drafting or editing, I try to be reading.  And I try to not just read genres that I'm partial to when I'm writing; my general rule of thumb the last few years is that it doesn't matter what the content or the genre is: As long as it sounds interesting and is well-written, I'll read it.

Ever since I graduated college in 2009 I've been keeping a log of how many books I read in a year, from June to June.  So far my count has been 30 books a year, which I'm always trying to break.  I didn't get off to a very good start this year as I only finished two in the month of June, but I'm hoping to amend real quick.

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

East of Eden was one of my bucket list books - a book that needed to be read sometime in my lifetime.  My mom was the one who first suggested it to me, and considering that I enjoyed Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath (I'm probably the only one in my whole junior English class who did), I knew that Steinbeck and I got along pretty well and gave it a go.  The book might not have blown me away like I was expecting it to, but I did enjoy it; it's a great window into the past, and it takes place in an area of the country that I'm familiar with and can picture easily.  It was also very easy to read, so I felt like I moved through its 600+ page bulk at a pretty decent pace.  The characters were incredibly well-written, from world-wise Samuel Hamilton, to philosophical Lee (my favorite character), to the Devil-in-the-flesh Cathy/Kate.  It's a great introspect to the true nature of Good and Evil and the ending is both heartbreaking and uplifting.  This is one of those books that I wish I could have studied while in college; you could easily discuss this book with a group of fellow literary nerds for hours and never repeat the same idea twice.

This is Not a Test by Courtney Summers

It's like The Breakfast Club meets Night of the Living Dead, though I mean that in the best way possible.  Yes, this book is about the end of the world and the collapse or civilization and yes, it does have zombies, but that's not what the story is about.  It's really a story about human nature when confronted with the breakdown of order and society.  Sloan, the story's protagonist, is almost qualified to be an invisible narrator; her tragic situation at her home even before the zombie apocalypse starts gives the readers a raw, honest look at the other characters through her eyes without a "woe is me" veil to obscure it.  There were times where it was not an easy book to read, as it's very angsty and it was hard to like any of the characters for a long period of time, but I think that was the author was going for and in that case, it was very well executed.  It was also creepy as shit to boot.  I can watch a million zombie movies and not be phased, but after reading chunks (no pun intended) of this book at a time there would be some nights when I didn't want to go near the open windows, much less look outside them and see something sinister lurking across the street.