It's been a while since I participated in a Sunday Salon. I've missed it. But in other news, I'm really pleased with this month's reading totals.
1. Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn
2. The Bride's Farewell by Meg Rosoff
3. All Together Dead by Charlaine Harris
4. From Dead to Worse by Charlaine Harris
5. Dead and Gone by Charlaine Harris
6. The Enemy by Charlie Higson
7. Generation A by Douglas Coupland
8. The Road of the Dead by Kevin Brooks
9. Heaven Can Wait by Cally Taylor
10. The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood
11. Goodbye Tsugumi by Banana Yoshimoto
12. Evermore by Alyson Noel
13. Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton
14. The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera
15. A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin
I have reviews of those last few books coming shortly (I hope). I feel like it's been kind of a weird selection of books for this month. I don't know about you, but whenever I cross genres it feels like the month has been stretched in some way that makes it longer. Does that make sense? It barely does to me, so I'm not sure. But it feels like a great distance has been travelled between Ella Minnow Pea and A Wizard of Earthsea.
I finished the last three books in the Sookie Stackhouse series. I've enjoyed it. I wonder how much longer they will continue. I also started the Anita Blake series by Laurell K. Hamilton. I'm not as excited about the series, and doubt I will read all 17 books but at least I've given them a try and will probably at least read the next two (more of that in my review!).
The YA books I've read this month have all been quite different, from the violence of The Road of the Dead and The Enemy to the supernatural in Evermore to the subtlely of The Bride's Farewell. The Whale Rider broke my heart. Generation A and Ella Minnow Pea are both dystopic but not in anyway similar. The Penelopiad is a modern retelling with a twist, I found it very difficult to put my thoughts together about Goodbye Tsugumi and Heaven Can Wait was just a wonderfully fun read. A Wizard of Earthsea kind of crept onto the list at the end of the month but it was fantastic. A book that kept me up at night reading desperate to know what will happen.
With all the books being quite different from each other, I'm feeling a little confused about it all. It does confuse me when the sequence of books I read seem to have no correlation with each other. It makes me wonder how I jumped from book to book this month, what were the reasons behind each choice. I don't want to overthink it though, I'm just enjoying the random selection.
Ah, but what will December bring? Are you expecting lots of time to read or less time with the holidays approaching?
That looks like a good month to me! I like to have a lot of variety personally. I'm going to finish the Sookie Stackhouse series in December (I hope, anyway, if the library gets the last book in). I really enjoyed the Earthsea quartet, I hope you continue with the rest of it!
ReplyDeleteDefinitely looks like a good list to me also. I've read the first 8 Anita Blake books, and then the series got too weird and too weirdly erotic/pornographic. But I remember that quite a few of those first books in the series were very good, so I hope you'll continue with them at least for 4-6 books more :-)
ReplyDeleteThis looks like a good list to me and I do this too. I did the Sookie Stackhouse (which I love) as well. ChattyGirl
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