April Summary

May 24, 2018Leave a comment

Okay, I know, I know! It’s way too late to be posting my April Summary, it’s almost June for heaven’s sake! But please forgive me, I was on vacation for half of May and I never got around to posting it, but I read a lot of books in April that I want to talk about!

As a side note though, I decided not to do a monthly challenge for May. I was fully intending to, but then a whole bunch of new releases came out that I had to read and I only read 2 books the whole 3 weeks I was on vacation, so I ran out of time to do any kind of challenge. But I already have a challenge planned for June that I’m really excited about, so I’ll be back at it soon! Here’s my April Summary:

Books read: 9
Pages read: 3,081
Main genres: Young Adult
Favourite book: The Nowhere Girls

Love Hate & Other Filters by Samira Ahmed

The Queen of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner

April was the month of YA and audiobooks. I discovered in March that I was digging a lot of the YA audiobooks, so I kept the trend going in April and listened to 3 books, but sadly only one was a winner. The Nowhere Girls was the first book I read in April and ended up being my favourite book of the month. I loved everything about this book. The content, the characters, the audiobook narrator, the book narrative, the writing – it was all fantastic!

The other two audiobooks I listened to were Love, Hate, & Other Filters and A Girl Like That. Both of these books tackled some fairly complex topics and had great diversity, but sadly I didn’t love either. I thought Love, Hate & Other Filters was juvenile and poorly written, though I thought the plot held so much promise. I blame my dislike of A Girl Like That on the audiobook though. I didn’t love the narrator and I found this extremely hard to follow in audiobook form, but I loved that it was set in Saudi Arabia, which is a setting I’ve never read about it a book before.

The Poet X was probably my next favourite read after The Nowhere Girls. It’s a brand new release that’s written in prose (reads like slam poetry), which I also thought was fantastic. The writing was definitely my favourite part of this book, but the main character had a lot of depth, which I really liked.

Last month I read Megan Whalen Turner’s The Thief, so I followed that up with a read of The Queen of Attolia. I had mixed feelings about this one because I’d heard such good things about it and I think my expectations were a little too high and I didn’t like it quite as much as I thought I would, but still a good book and I will definitely be continuing on with the series.

My book club selection for the month was a letdown though. We read The Humans, which had mixed reviews between our members. Some people loved it, but I was really not a fan. It’s a science fiction novel that raises some interesting questions, but that I personally thought had too many plot holes to be engaging.

My last 3 reads were my monthly challenge reads for April. I challenged myself to read 3 award winning books and I loved 2 of 3 of them. I really liked both Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe and Brown Girl Dreaming. They were both really diverse books that had some great themes and I loved that Brown Girl Dreaming was written in prose. But I felt super bad about not liking The Underground Railroad. It won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, but I just could not get into either the writing or the story. I wanted to love it, but it wasn’t engaging for me. It’s obviously beloved by a lot of other people and I appreciate what the author tried to do with the story – it just wasn’t for me and I can’t pretend that I enjoyed it.

I don’t think May is going to be as successful a reading month, but I’m doing my best to squeeze in a few more books!

A Girl Like That

May 18, 20183 Comments

Rating: ⭐⭐.5
Author: Tanaz Bhathena
Genres: Young Adult
Pub Date: Feb. 2018 (read Apr. 2018 as Audiobook)

I listened to A Girl Like That as an audiobook and I’m really not sure what to make of it. I wonder what it would be like to read as an actual book because I found it extremely hard to follow as an audiobook, which makes it hard to review.

The story was super interesting in that it takes place in Saudi Arabia. I haven’t read any books about Saudi before, but I know they are not a very advanced nation when it comes to women’s rights. Most notorious I think is that women aren’t allowed to drive. This is really just the tip of the iceberg though and this book made me furious on behalf of women living in Saudi Arabia and the injustice of how they are treated by men, the government, and the religious police. The depth to which sexism and rape culture is ingrained into society in this book was truly frightening, but sadly not unbelievable.

This book tells the story of teenager Zarin Wadia, who ends up dead in a car crash with a boy named Porus (not a spoiler, happens in the first chapter). Rumours had been speculating about what kind of girl Zarin was and that her loose morals led her to this grizzly end, but as the story flashbacks we learn more about her character and what kind of girl she actually was. The pressures and strains placed on her by her family and classmates, and the injustice of what it means to be powerless and a woman in Saudi Arabia.

Its told from several different points of view and I think this is what confused me because it’s not always evident in the audiobook what character is narrating. Both Porus and Zarin narrate, along with a number of their classmates. I really wanted to like this and I definitely appreciate the author for telling this story, but sadly it just wasn’t an enjoyable reading experience for me. I might have enjoyed this better as a book rather than in audio form because I also didn’t like the narrators, but 2.5 stars for this experience.

Brown Girl Dreaming

May 15, 2018May 24, 20182 Comments

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Jacqueline Woodson
Genres: Poetry, Young Adult, Childrens
Pub Date: Jan. 2014 (Read April 2018)

Thanks for sticking around everyone! I’ve been travelling around Vietnam for the past 3 weeks, so my book reading has been a little slow, but I have several books to update you on now!

I did accomplish my April Reading Challenge, which was to read 3 award winning books. Brown Girl Dreaming was the last book I read right before I went on holiday, but I didn’t get a chance to write a review before I left, so please forgive me for already starting to forget a bit about this book, but I’ll do my best to review!

I really enjoyed reading this book. I thought this was a fictional book about growing up in the south (written in prose), but I was excited to discover its actually a non-fictional account of the authors childhood! I’m sure some is partially fabricated and written through other people’s memories (the author is very young for some of the experiences). But it is indeed written in prose and it was a joy to read.

Jacqueline Woodson was born in Ohio, spent several years living with her mom and grandparents in South Carolina, before her mother moved her and her siblings to New York. Brown Girl Dreaming tells of her childhood and her relationships with her mother, grandparents, and siblings. Her older sister was a voracious reader who did very well in school, while Jacqueline struggled in school but discovered a deep love of writing and storytelling. As a child she is frustrated by the injustices she sees around her and develops a hunger to see and create change.

It’s not really the story I was expecting, but I really liked the way it was told. I’ve been reading more prose and poetry lately and I thought this was a fantastic medium through which to tell her story. It’s a quick read, but wonderful!

Aristotle and Dante Discovers the Secrets of the Universe

May 6, 2018May 24, 20182 Comments

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Benjamin Alire Sàenz
Genres: Young Adult
Pub date: Feb. 2012 (read Apr. 2018)

Yay! I loved this!

I’ve been having a lot of success with YA lately. For awhile I thought I’d maybe finally outgrown the genre, but there’s still some really great contemporaries out there! This was the second book in my monthly challenge to read 3 award winning books. This was one of the soft spoken books that isn’t very plot driven, but develops some really beautiful characters.

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe is set in 1987 in El Paso, Texas. It’s summer and Ari, who has never been very good at making friends, is trying to pass away the time on his own when he meets Dante at the local pool. Dante seems to get a long with everyone and is well liked, but he’s never really been great at having friends either and the two boys strike up a friendship. Ari struggles to connect with people and is frustrated by his parents refusal to talk about his older brother who has been in prison for most of his life. Dante has a close relationship with his parents, but he struggles with his identity – who he is, what he loves, and what it means to be Mexican.

Like I said, it’s not a plot driven novel, although it does have some shocking plot elements that push the story forward. But ultimately it’s a coming of age story about friends, family, and identity. I love YA books that have a strong family element, especially one that built around understanding and love, rather than conflict and rebellion, which I’d say is probably more popular in YA. I love Ari and Dante’s parents in this book and the relationships that they all built with one another, how they developed and grew over the course of the book. In some ways it felt like a slow-build kind of book, but at the same time I found it hard to put down.

I don’t want to give any of the story away, I think it’s a good book to go into blind. I did and I really enjoyed the experience.

Love, Hate & Other Filters

April 18, 20186 Comments

Rating: ⭐⭐
Author: Samira Ahmed
Genres: Young Adult
Pub Date: Jan. 2018 (read Apr. 2018)

This was disappointing. I picked this from my library’s limited selection of audiobooks because I’ve been having a lot of success with Young Adult audiobook’s lately and I’ve been seeing some buzz about it.

To be honest, I didn’t even look at the synopsis, I just new it was about an Indian teenager who was into film. I didn’t like the Maya’s voice from the beginning and I found her such a whiny narrator to listen to. When I hit the 20% mark and this book was still just a surface level romance novel, I debated DNFing and went back to look at the synopsis. When I realized the main premise of this book was actually supposed to be about a terrorist attack and the struggles many Muslim people suffer to be accepted after any terrorist attack, I decided to stick it out.

I appreciate what Samira Ahmed was trying to do with this book. She addressed several different themes: the struggle of Indian daughters to breakaway from their parents expectations, the struggle of any teenager to pursue a career in something as unstable as the film industry, and the xenophobia and hate against Muslims and those who are “othered” in the United States. These are all great themes and I was interested in exploring the different ways people react in the aftermath of a tragedy and how some people let their hate overcome them, while others fight for those who are marginalized. But I thought the execution in this book was terrible.

Honestly, this was a romance novel with a brief look at some of the themes I’ve discussed above. It didn’t explore any of these themes in any great depth and I thought all of the characters emotions were very surface level. This book had more unyielding parents (I’ve read a lot of books of this nature lately), but the drama felt really forced and not authentic. In theory I understood that Maya’s parents were trying to protect their daughter in a world that is not very kind, but no one used any reason in this book (Maya included), except for her Aunt, and everyone felt extremely 1-dimensional. The main story was ultimately a romance and it wasn’t a very well written one. It was so cliche and I just couldn’t help rolling my eyes through the entire thing. This book just had so much more potential, but it got bogged down with a heavy romance and the author barely explored any of the complex themes she introduced into the story.

Even though this tacked something I haven’t seen addressed much in literature, I would not recommend this book. It was too poorly written and executed. Pick up I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, The Nowhere Girls, or The Poet X instead.