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Friday, July 27, 2018

Book Update

Time my next reading update. They seem to happen about once a year.
I've been listening to a ton of books on tape as I go to and from work. But I keep reading normal books as well. Most of my reading is done during the minutes I have off during work (before I start, and during lunch break, ex).
Anyway, here are some of the more interesting books I've gotten though in the past year.

I read Sabriel a while ago and liked it. I have since read Lirael and Abhorsen. They were interesting, but I liked the Sabriel book best.

American Gods
I think I was extremely lucky that my first Neil Gamian book was "Neverwhere," because I really haven't gotten into any of his other stuff. It's usually too much for me. And there were parts of this book that just left me going... why? Though the theme was fascinating - the old gods versus the "new gods."

I read The Book Thief too. A bit of an odd writing style, but it was a good book. A good movie as well.


Stardust: I mostly read this (listened to it on tape) because I saw the movie and know people that like it. It was okay. But I just told you how I feel about Neil Gaiman books. Not that he's not a good writer, but it's not my thing.


Let it Snow: It was fun to see how the different stories linked together. I always find these kind of interweaving tales fascinating.

Cress
Winter
I finished the Lunar Chronicles. The first book, Cinder, is my favorite. I loved how they paralleled parts of the original tale with the futuristic setting. At the end of book 3 (I think) we were introduced to Winter. Her introduction was fascinating (I think more so than Winter's actual book XD ).

Scythe
I have a signed copy of this book~
Definitely a fascinating concept. It's one of those books that makes you question the value of life and living forever and such. I recently found there's a sequel. I'll have to check that out.

Wish You Were Here
I've run onto these books before. At one point, I started the series, but didn't understand what was going on (turns out I hadn't started on the first book).
But it was fun! It's like a mystery where the cat and dog help to solve it. I think I'll read a bit further.

Turtles all the way Down
A good book. Though I read it when I was pretty stressed out, so it didn't help me much XP. As usual, his writing has fascinating ideas. It makes you think.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
Whoa, I thought this would be something completely different!
I'll probably check out the later books in the series.

Whispers: Yggdrasil Children
I know the guy who wrote this. It's an e-book on Amazon.
It was a good book, but it could have cut out a lot of excess words. I hope the next book in the series goes well~

Earth Heroes: Champions of Wild Animals
This was a cool little book with brief biographies of some people who helped us understand or protect animals.

Twelve Kingdoms: The Aspired Wings
It took me far too long to find a translation of this one. Turns out I was just doing a very bad job of searching XP
We met this character briefly during Shoukei's journey. Now we get to see how such a young girl became queen. And I think with this, I've read all of the Twelve Kingdoms books. I liked this one~ These books always make you think about what it means to be a leader.


Origin
The newest of the Robert Langdon (Da Vinci Code) books. I liked this one. It took me a while, but I did figure out who the bad guy was a little before the official reveal XD There was a moment where I went, "Oh my god, it kinda looks like the motives match up @_@. MAybe this is the bad guy."
He's good at keeping the twist hidden though. That's not easy to do. He always tries to throw in several false twists.

Farside
A sci-fi book about a facility on the far side of the moon. This is the second book I read from this author. The first one was about a science facility on Jupiter. I liked that one more, but I'll have to check out more of his books. They've been interesting so far.

Coco: A Story about Music, Shoes, and Family
Books based off of movies are often bland. And in this case it's unfair to compare a book to the movie Coco, considering how vibrant every panel of this movie is. I also think the book must have been based off of the script, not the movie. Especially considering that it was released pretty near when the movie came out. So that makes it harder to fit the book to some parts of the film.
There was one main thing that bugged me about this book. And that was the scene where they go to see Chicharron. Because in the book. Hector doesn't seem concerned when he sees that his friend is disappearing. If that had happened in the movie, my love of Hector would have been half what it is @_@
But I loved that they looked more into Coco's life. And they spent more time on the rest of the Rivera family too.


Chestnut Street
Okay, seriously. How many people on one street can have affairs or unwanted babies?

From Russia with Love
I'm used to the James Bond movies being a bit silly at times. The books are way more intense and violent @_@


American Indian Myths and Legends
A great collection! The funniest is one of the human creation myths. The creator was baking humans, and Coyote was distracting him. So the first humans were left in the oven too long and became too dark. The second batch was taken out too soon, and their skin was too pale. And finally the third batch was left in just long enough, so their skin was the right brown color XD
I guess that makes me under-cooked.

Tru and Nelle
I got a signed copy of this book at an event. It's based off of a true story of the childhood friendship between two people who became famous writers (Nelle wrote "To Kill a Mockingbird").

Wings of Fire
Someone told me this was like Katani's story. But it really wasn't? Is it because there are different dragon species? That's been a thing since the Pern novels, which started decades ago.
I had trouble getting into this one. Half of it was them locked up in a colosseum thing. And the character.army motives confused the hell out of me.
I do like the concept of a prophecy which has been partly pre-empted. I wonder what they're going to do with it, though I probably won't read any further.
(I do love the cover art though)


Tara Road
After Chestnut Street, I kind of knew what to expect from this author. The only audio book I could find of this was abridged, which I always avoid. But in this case, I didn't care that much (I really only wanted to check it out because it has my name in the title). I don't think I needed more than the abridged version. The writing was fine, but I don't care about this type of story. I mostly just found it stressful.

The Search
One of Tom Brown Jr's books. I love his books, though I've only read three of them. I want to read all of them. They're fantastic and leave me feeling amazing.
You should check his stuff out.

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