It’s Monday! What are you reading? (1/25/2016)

My eyes have still been bothering me, so I’m still limiting screens, which means I haven’t been able to comment on as many blogs as I want to. Or be on the internet as much as I want to. Or watch as much TV as I want to. In short, it still sucks. But I have read a bunch again, so that’s good.

This past week, I finished:

Shadows of Sherwood by Kekla Magoon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Well, that was delightful. Great characters, excellent premise, delightful set up for the rest of the series. More gender and race swapped retellings, please and thank you.

Read Harder 2016: middle grade, first book in a series written by a person of color

 
Alex + Ada, Vol. 1 by Jonathan Luna
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Beautiful artwork and it was actually kind of sweet. Aw.

Alex’s grandmother is the best, naturally.

 

 

Giant Days, Vol. 1 by John Allison
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I liked this. It’s kind of random even as each section does have a through line. Very vignette-y, which is a thing I dig in stories because that’s how life goes sometimes.

Plus also, female friendship is at the very core.

I do find the cover a bit misleading, though.

 

The Life We Bury by Allen Eskens
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Soooo, this was basically like reading two different books. The first half or so of this novel is about a college kid interviewing a convicted murderer and learning something about the man and himself. The second half is a suspense/thriller.

I much preferred the first half.

Mostly, too, the shift in the second half took the focus off of (view spoiler)[the dead girl and her trauma, the Vietnam vet and his trauma, the main character and his struggle with his mom and brother, and Lila and her trauma and instead made it all about how inexplicably resourceful (and dumb!) the main character is as well as how crazy the actual bad guy was. (hide spoiler)] SO DISAPPOINTING. Alas.

 

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Note: if you’re doing Read Harder, Giant Days and Alex & Ada both qualify for the graphic novel category.

 

Also, I know it’s not a book, but I finally jumped on the Hamilton train this week. I have many thoughts about it, but the one I’ve been thinking the most is that this is why you should write the story you want the way you want. Or why I should. Talk about permission to write a story. Man.

As of today, I’m reading:

 

 

So, I’m still listening to Crazy Rich Asians, and I don’t think I’m going to make it to the end before the audio is due back to Overdrive, so I may have to switch to the print version.

A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to Yes, Chef, but I found that it wasn’t working for me, so switched to the print version. I am enjoying it much more in print and will probably finish it soon.

I also started Jessica Jones: Alias, Vol. 1 by Brian Michael Bendis and illustrated by Michael Gaydos. I like the storyline so far, but I am not loving the art. I know they were going for dark and gritty, but this particular style doesn’t work for me.

I hope everyone else is having and/or anticipating a good reading week.