14 In Books & Writing

Two months of Books

Books books books – oh my gosh, my love story with books has totally been reborn in 2014 and as you may know I have been participating in the winter reading challenge. It hasn’t gone that well with the actual reading list I had given myself – but I have nevertheless been reading quite a lot! As my last post of January, today we are doing a recap/review of the books I have read in the past two months.

In December, I read my way through a few books and, FINALLY, the Brit and I finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I’m very proud of that fact! Together and across oceans, it took us about a year to read all 7 books and watch all 8 movies. It was pretty awesome to go through this journey with someone who had no idea what was going to happen!

december books 2

I also read my way through 5 short reads :

Is Everyone Hanging out without me? : I loved this book. I laughed the entire way through it. Certain topics were touching and a bit tricky, and yet Kaling kept me laughing. If you appreciate her humour and her characters, then you will probably be charmed by her book too.

Percy Jackson and the Sea Monsters: Kind of a children’s book, but I’m not impressed by the writing of this author, except perhaps the way they are retelling the tales of the Greek gods and making them more current. But nothing interesting to see here.

december books 1

Frostbite & Shadow kiss : Volume 2-3 of the Vampire Academy Series. I really liked the first book and so dived into Frostbite, which I also found cute. But I was really put off by the third book, Shadow Kiss. I’ve now abandoned the series. The first two books were interesting concepts and quick and fun reads, but that’s as far as I can recommend.

The Giver : I finally read this one! It’s apparently a high school read for many native English speakers, but I never really knew about it until someone recommended it a few years back. I really liked the concept of discovering things that we take for granted through the eyes of someone who don’t know them, whether they are emotions or colours, etc. A definite read!

Finally, throughout the entire month, I tried to read my way through Eat, Pray, Love – but had to give up after the Italy part. Not my kind of book, I found it heavy and not inspirational as lots of people say. Perhaps I should have made it to the end to find that part, but I found it too whiny and moralistic to have the motivation to keep going. And there are certainly too many good books to read in this world to waste time on books that don’t feel right to me!

For 2015, I gave myself the goal of reading 3 books a month and I succeeded on my first month. What a great beginning to my reading year!

january books

The Rabbit Back Literary Society : This was a weird one. I picked it up from Waterstones because I love bookish books, and the girl at the counter told me it was a weird one. So I guess I was warned! Reading it, I was intrigued and yet disgusted, and when it ended, I was still unsure how I felt about it. I mean I couldn’t put it down, it says something about a book – but even so, I’m unsure if I would recommend it…

Breakfast at Tiffany’s : I really enjoyed this read – and Holly is so quotable! I’m sure we all want a business card that says ‘travelling’! However, and people might hate me for saying this, I don’t love the writing style of the 40s-60s, I find it too lax in punctuation personally. But except from that, I really loved this story, the narrator and Holly and even the way it ended. I daresay I enjoyed it more than the movie!

– I finished LotR The Two Towers : To be fair, I had started this one earlier in 2014, but read most of it in January 2015, so I think it still counts. I’m loving this series even more now that I am reading it and hearing all the extra details not included in the movies. I also always love seeing the choices the director made to present different facets of characters, etc. and try to think of why they did it. The LotR is definitely a great one for that! Now onto the final book!

– And, finally, earlier this week, I have picked up The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which I am really enjoying! I’ve read through a few cases (some of which I realised I had already read) and I like that they are somewhat self-contained. Also, Conan Doyle is a fantastic writer, I absolutely love his prose!

I think all in all it was a good haul! I mean there were some crappy chick lit in there, some non-fiction and some classics that I’m glad I finally took the time to read!

What did you read this month? Any good suggestions?xx

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