Thursday, 18 February 2016

January Reading Wrap Up

The first month of 2016 drew to a close a while ago, and as always, I feel the need to reflect on how much I have read compared to intended, and whether or not I am sticking to schedule, etc, etc.!
So I guess we should probably get started with it then!

I managed to read a total of 10 books in January. I know... Sound like a lot right? Wrong. It seems that I read a lot of short books this month and really struggled to keep up with my monthly page goals. Due to the short length of a lot of these books, I ended up having to read a lot more than usual, but I also had run out of days to read the longer books and had to read a couple of short stories at the end of the month to ensure I would be at my target!

Here are my January 2016 books...

These 10 books came to a total of 3101 pages, which was only one more page than my minimum target for this month, leading to an average of almost exactly 100 pages per day! This is still my target so it's not exactly a bad result, but I would definitely like to do better in the months to come, since I know I have read a lot more than this in previous months!!

If you haven't already seen, I was lucky enough to participate in the blog tour for A North Shore Story earlier this month. You can see my part of the blog tour, including my review, by clicking here, and to see my Q&A with the authors of the book, you can click here!

Anyway, let's talk about some books..!


I would like to begin by saying that, as a rule, I do not read non-fiction books. Honestly, I don't see the point in reading them for fun; they're facts, not stories! However, I made an exception for a book called Blame My Brain, by Nicola Morgan, mainly because I received it as a gift!
This was one of the books that almost made me regret avoiding non-fiction! I was really surprised to find myself completely immersed in this book, and even though it didn't have a story, it was honestly more capturing than a lot of fiction books I have read!!
I will admit that Blame My Brain didn't make incredible bed-time reading (which is my favourite kind of reading!), but it was entertaining and surprisingly funny and captivating! I didn't expect to find this at all!
If you aren't familiar with Blame My Brain, it is a collection of research centred around what really goes off inside the brain between the time of childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. It also shows how much control you actually have over your actions and responses, and how to deal with this.
I found this book to be informative and really quite useful. It was very relatable, and I feel that it is suitable for a wider audience than just teenagers (to whom the book is aimed) since it contains feelings, emotions and stimulus that everybody eventually deals with. I really enjoyed it and would recommend it mainly to teenagers, but also to their parents!

*****

Okay... Onto the topic of Uglies, by Scott Westerfeld...
I'm honestly not too sure on what I should say about these books. I had been so excited to read them, as I remembered how friends had raved about them and recommended them to me a few years ago. I was expecting great things!
Maybe I had anticipated too much of them in my years of making time to read them?
Maybe I was just too old to enjoy them?
I don't really know what did it, but I was really not a fan of these. I could very well be in the minority about Uglies, but had I not already purchased the rest of the series, including the additional book, I probably would have stopped reading this series, which is really rare for me!
I battled the way through the whole of this series, in the hope that it would eventually pick up and really captivate me as a reader, but unfortunately this did not happen. It makes me really sad to have not enjoyed a book or a series, particularly when I have devoted so much time and attention to it.
What I have said so far gives a really negative impression on this series overall, which I guess is how I currently view it, however, looking back at my notes from this book, I did enjoy it. I thought that the story took a while to get going, but when I got into it properly I enjoyed it. I actually ended up giving the first book 4 stars, however, my ratings seemed to drop by one star for each book in the series.
One of the biggest problems I had with Uglies and its sequels was that I personally didn't find it enjoyable to read. The plot didn't grip me and I wasn't interested in reading it, so it took way too long for me to finish it! The writing wasn't really anything special, and I didn't feel connected to any of the characters the way I usually am. Also, was Scott Westerfeld in a competition to see how many times he could fit the word 'bubbley' into one book??! That annoyed me so much! And how irritating were the nicknames too??!
So, to conclude on this, I didn't really enjoy this series, which was a shame because I really wanted t
o. I honestly think that if I had read this book at the age of 12 or 13, I would have really enjoyed it, as the writing style seemed to be aimed more towards that age group.
However, if you're in this age group or enjoy books aimed at this group, then I would recommend it! I just hope that other people got some enjoyment out of the series!


*****


At the end of the month, I was a few pages short of my target, so I took the cheater's way out, and read a book that would make up pretty much exactly how many pages I needed! I received a version of Carwell's Guide to Being Lucky for free when I signed up for Marissa Meyer's newsletter (which I would definitely recommend signing up for!). It seemed so long since the release of Winter, so I felt that I needed some more Thorne in my life before Stars Above, so what a better way to get that than with this novella?!
Ahhh! I just loved this so much! I can't really go into too much detail about what this novella consisted of, because I don't want to spoil it, but this book actually made my day! I love Thorne so much, and the child version of him was just hilarious! It was interesting to see how he grew up, since we've only been used to the adult version of him. I was so glad I read this though. I would definitely recommend it to fans of the Lunar Chronicles, and if you haven't even read those, then you're really behind on this bandwagon!!



Right, well that's all I have for this post! Apologies for going so long without publishing, but I hope to be able to post some more reviews soon!

I'll see you then!!

Charlotte xxx




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