Bookish Weekly Wrap-Up: 1/15 – 1/22/18

Happy Monday bookworms!

I typically post my wrap-ups on Sundays, but life got in the way this weekend.  I hope everyone had a great weekend and that your Monday is not too hateful.

Let’s talk books…

*Bookish Weekly Wrap-Up is a weekly post where I feature what posts were published on the blog for the past week, any bookish/blog happenings, what I recently finished reading, what I am currently reading, what I will be reading next, noteworthy posts around the bookish blogosphere, and any interesting bookish articles I came across.

Tuesday 1/16

Book Event: The Language of Thorns by Leigh Bardugo Book Tour

Thursday 1/18

Book Review: The Last Girl (The Dominion Trilogy #1) by Joe Hart

 

*Book titles link to Goodreads

Recently finished reading:

» May the Road Rise Up to Meet You by Peter Troy

Feelings in a few thoughts:

• This book is about 4 hours too long – because of the length & slower moving plot, this book took me a month to read.
• The convergence of the 2 love stories didn’t really work for me.  There wasn’t a significant enough connection between Ethan/Marcella and Micah/Mary.  They all just kind of met up at the end, which felt a little forced.
• This book needed to be separated into two books: Ethan & Marcella’s story, and Micah & Mary’s story.  I enjoyed both stories, but it was too much all together.
• This wasn’t a bad book by any means, just feel that the author was a little too ambitious.

» The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Feelings in a few thoughts:

• The Handmaid’s Tale is timeless.  I cannot believe this book was written in the early 80’s.
• With the current situation in the U.S., this book felt very relevant.  It is also what makes it so terrifying, the fact that it isn’t so unbelievable as you would hope.
• This wasn’t exactly an enjoyable read.  It made me angry, which was Atwood’s intent.
• Loved the open-endness of this book and felt it was really fitting of the story for us to leave some things up to the reader’s imagination.
• The way THT is written took a little bit to get used to – switches from present to past frequently without clear indication.
• This book isn’t action packed, but it still packs a punch.

» Nora & Kettle by Lauren Nicolle Taylor

Feelings in a few thoughts:

• Content/Trigger Warning: child abuse.  This book ended up including a topic that I am very sensitive to: child abuse.  Generally I can handle books that do not go into graphic detail, but unfortunately this one did.  This was a hard book for me to get through.
• Going to leave this one unrated because it ended up include a topic I am sensitive to.  I don’t feel like it would be fair to rate this one because of this.
• This book would have been better as a single POV book.  I feel like it would have been better to tell this one through Kettle’s eyes alone.
• Loved that the characters in this story showed the aftermath of the interment of Japanese Americans during WWII, HOWEVER the author gave zero information about the actual event.   We only get small flashbacks of life in the camp through the characters’ eyes, but we don’t get any actual historical context.  If you are not familiar with this event in history, you would have to look it up to see what the author is talking about.
• Less a Peter Pan retelling, and more like the story was inspired by Peter Pan – this aspect was well done.

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Currently reading:

» The Queen of Blood (The Queens of Renthia #1) by Sarah Beth Durst

Status: 45%

Really enjoying the world in this one.  Also love that Daleina isn’t a cliché female fantasy character.  She isn’t naturally gifted, and she has to work twice as hard as others in everything.

» The Hatching (The Hatching #1) by Ezekiel Boone

Status: 40%

“Amanda, aren’t you terrified of spiders?!  Why would you request The Hatching?”  Because I’m stupid.  Who knows?  Maybe I went on a drunk NetGalley request spree… Regardless, I’ve been putting this book off for almost 2 years, so it’s time to get it over with.  Creepy shit is starting to go down.  Wish me luck.

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On deck:

» The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne

Cyril Avery is not a real Avery — or at least, that’s what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn’t a real Avery, then who is he?

Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamourous and dangerous Julian Woodbead. At the mercy of fortune and coincidence, he will spend a lifetime coming to know himself and where he came from and over his many years will struggle to discover an identity, a home, a country, and much more.

» Jackie @Death by Tsundoku talks about DNFing books → Solving for Tsundoku: Embrace the DNF

» Drew @The Tattooed Book Geek talks about Genre Burnout → Genre Burnout

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» 15 Classics That 8- to 12- Year-Olds Say Are Worth Reading Today 

*Warning: If you read Where the Red Fern Grows, have those tissues ready

» From Page to Screen in 2018: 12 Books-to-Film Adaptations Coming to a Theater Near You

*Super excited for A Wrinkle in Time, Ready Player One, and The Hate U Give

» Writers Recommend: What Adam Silvera, Victoria Schwab, and Abbi Jacobson Are Reading Now

» Must-Read YA Books of Winter 2018

» The 13 Best Books to Pick Up This January

» Best Audiobooks of 2017

» 2018 Preview: Most Anticipated Nonfiction

» 12 New Chapter Books for Growing Readers to Love in 2018

» 18 Picture Books That Help Keep Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Dream Alive

What are you currently reading?

What will you read next?

Have a wonderful week & happy reading