August 2019 Wrap Up

I'm doing really well so far in remembering to write things down and get them posted! Now to continue this theme! (Hopefully I remember to put up my biweekly currently reading post as well....) 

In August I read 4 books~

#1: Eona by Alison Goodman

Once she was Eon, a girl disguised as a boy, risking her life for the chance to become a Dragoneye apprentice. Now she is Eona, the Mirror Dragoneye, her country's savior - but she has an even more dangerous secret. She cannot control her power. Each time she tries, it twists into a killing force. And more destruction is on her trail - High Lord Sethon's army. She and her companions must find Kygo, the young Pearl Emperor, who needs Eona's power if he is to wrest back his throne. But to help him, she must drive a dark bargain with an old enemy, which could obliterate them all. Eona, with its pulse-pounding drama, unforgettable fight scenes, sizzling tension - and many surprises - brings to a close an epic story. 

I gave this one a 3/5 because it was decent, but not really what I was expecting from a book that was supposed to be fantasy. Did I miss something in the end of the last novel? I don't remember half of the supposed plot taking place. I may have also just taken too much time between Eon and Eona for my brain to actually remember all of the details. You could tell who the two love interests were right away when she described them in her head. It was so obvious it almost hurt. Eona kept doing things to get herself or her companions hurt/killed/captured. It also seemed like a cop out at the end with Kygo. The Mirror should not have really known who any of them were. I don't know if I'm going to read any more of Alison Goodman's fantasy novels (if she even wrote any more...).

#2: Three Dark Crowns by Kendare Blake

In every generation on the island of Fennbirn, a set of triplets is born: three queens, all equal heirs to the crown and each possessor of a coveted magic. Mirabella is a fierce elemental, able to spark hungry flames or vicious storms at the snap of her fingers. Katharine is a poisoner, one who can ingest the deadliest poisons without so much as a stomachache. Arsinoe, a naturalist, is said to have the ability to bloom the reddest rose and control the fiercest of lions. But becoming the Queen Crowned isn’t solely a matter of royal birth. Each sister has to fight for it. And it’s not just a game of win or lose…it’s life or death. The night the sisters turn sixteen, the battle begins. The last queen standing gets the crown.

I liked it in the end, but not in the beginning. It started slow with just descriptions of the girls in their various training. I am not one for political stories, and being a fight for the crown and right to rule Fennbirn, that's what this book is. A political novel with a bit of murder thrown in. The further I got into the story and more I learned about each queen, the more I liked it. I have a feeling that all is not as it seems here and that there are not three queens, but four, and their mother (Camille?) couldn't bear to destroy her offspring, even though that's an edict from the temple. She secreted the fourth daughter away somewhere to grow up not knowing of her royal heritage. I am interested in picking up the next volume to see where this goes. To see what gift the one queen actually possesses, I'm  guessing war, because she is a gifted strategist when it comes to fighting. There will certainly be no White Handed Queen this Ascension Year.


#3: Animal Farm by George Orwell

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” A farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality. Thus the stage is set for one of the most telling satiric fables ever penned—a razor-edged fairy tale for grown-ups that records the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible.

I have heard that this book is allegory for the Soviet Union. I can see it more as just capitalism. The animals, under Major's “instruction”, rebel against the humans that ran the farm, eventually driving them off. Slowly the animals worked up their farm to an almost prosperous nature. However, slowly, as they realized that they could not sustain it alone, they actually started doing exactly what the humans had been doing beforehand. I don't understand how the other animals on the farm, not even old Benjamin himself, noticed what was happening. They had shirked the yoke of the humans and slowly but surely put themselves under a new one. The yoke of the pigs. By the end of the book, the humans and the pigs were indistinguishable from one another. The animals had worse working conditions, more/longer hours and less food, than the animals on any of the outlying farms. Yet they seemed to think that they were better off than they had been under the thumb of a human farm-owner. It hurt my soul in the end when Napoleon renamed the farm to it's old name. He is simple now just Napoleon Jones. He has taken over the role of the previous farm master and uses it to his advantage. I can only hope that in the event of Napoleon dying, a human once again takes the reigns of Manor Farm. Perhaps sense and order can be put back into it.

#4: QUEER by Kathy Belge and Marke Bieschke

Teen life is hard enough, but for teens who are LGBTQ, it can be even harder. When do you decide to come out? Will your friends accept you? And how do you meet people to date? Queer is a humorous, engaging, and honest guide that helps LGBTQ teens come out to friends and family, navigate their social life, figure out if a crush is also queer, and challenge bigotry and homophobia. Personal stories from the authors and sidebars on queer history provide relatable context. This completely revised and updated edition is a must-read for any teen who thinks they might be queer or knows someone who is.

This book is definitely an interesting one. Though, I am not the audience they intended. I'll grant that. I did like this book and I think that this should be available widely to teenagers. I rated it a 4/5 stars because it was good, but it wasn't perfect. There were a few times that I definitely didn't agree with what they were saying. The first one that stuck out to me was their definition of transgender. I have many transgender friends. None of them also identify as bigender/genderfluid/nonbinary. Transgenderism is going from one gender to another. Then bigender is feeling like you are both genders at the same time. You are not male or female. You are male and female. Genderfluid is shifting back and forth between multiple genders on what you happen to feel that day. Genderfluid people could feel male/masculine on Tuesday, and female/feminine on Wednesday. Nonbinary people do not feel like they are any gender (they are also the gender set most commonly using the they/them and ze/zer pronouns and other gender-neutral ones that I have forgotten at the moment.). Other than that, the book itself was pretty good. There will be a full review here.

Review: QUEER by Kathy Belge and Marke Bieschke

Teen life is hard enough, but for teens who are LGBTQ, it can be even harder. When do you decide to come out? Will your friends accept you? And how do you meet people to date? Queer is a humorous, engaging, and honest guide that helps LGBTQ teens come out to friends and family, navigate their social life, figure out if a crush is also queer, and challenge bigotry and homophobia. Personal stories from the authors and sidebars on queer history provide relatable context. This completely revised and updated edition is a must-read for any teen who thinks they might be queer or knows someone who is.

I would like to first thank NetGalley, Zest Books, and Lerner Publishing Group for giving me the opportunity to read this book. I received this in return for an honest review. This book is coming out on Tuesday, October 1, 2019. 

This book is definitely an interesting one. Though, I am not the audience they intended. I'll grant that. I did like this book and I think that this should be available widely to teenagers. I rated it a 4/5 stars because it was good, but it wasn't perfect. There were a few times that I definitely didn't agree with what they were saying. The first one that stuck out to me was their definition of transgender. I have many transgender friends. None of them also identify as bigender/genderfluid/nonbinary. Transgenderism is going from one gender to another. Then bigender is feeling like you are both genders at the same time. You are not male or female. You are male and female. Genderfluid is shifting back and forth between multiple genders on what you happen to feel that day. Genderfluid people could feel male/masculine on Tuesday, and female/feminine on Wednesday. Nonbinary people do not feel like they are any gender (they are also the gender set most commonly using the they/them and ze/zer pronouns and other gender-neutral ones that I have forgotten at the moment.).

Now then, onto my proper review:

Being queer as an adult is a challenge, being queer as a teen is just about impossible in certain communities. This book is a guide for teenagers who are at the minimum questioning their own sexual or gender identities and want to just read up on the spectrum of those identities that is out there. Some teens don't know really what gender they are or what gender they are interested in. This book is a guide to help teens figure that out and learn something about themselves along the way.

While a lot of information in this book is sound, and I definitely agree with a good number of the helpful hints, there are a few places where things could have been different. Sections could have been expanded upon and turned into their own chapters. Example: the internet section. There is so much more to it than just what they put. People these days, even teenagers, try to coerce one another into sending nudes, looking for hook-ups, sexually explicit role plays (I participate in a few of these myself, but I'm a legal adult and I only participate with other legal adults of at least 21 years old not just 18 to protect myself).

I would have liked to see more detailed information and less artwork in some of the sections. There were places where the art didn't even make sense to me. I wasn't sure what two men in tuxedos had to do with not giving out personal information on the internet.

Even though I disagree with some of the things in the book, they were mostly due to my own upbringing. This book is actually a really good guide for teens and maybe even some adults who are questioning their gender or orientation. I would recommend that it is read with an open mind. Also teens reading this should keep in mind that information changes constantly with the definition of some words in the LGBT+ community.

Currently Reading 11 August to 24 August 2019

Currently Reading

- QUEER by Kathy Belge & Marke Bieschke (66%)

- The Book Fix by Marydale Stewart (35%)

- The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon (08%)- IT by Stephen King (39%)- Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en (25%)- The Original Illustrated Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle (59%)

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Quite possibly doing a very silly thing. I have decided to participate (late) in the OWLS readathon and then the NEWTS readathon for the remainder of 2019. I have 3.5 months to read the chosen books. I will likely try to read all 12 of the OWLS books then decide what it is I want to go into for the NEWTS. I doubt I'll read all 36 books in the NEWTS lists in time, but a girl can dream right?

Let's see...the first one is the OWLs, with these prompts and books:

OWLS

• Ancient Runes – Retelling - Wicked Fox by Kat Cho
• Arithmancy – Written by more than one author - lluminae by Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff
• Astronomy – "Star" in the title/on the cover - The Star-Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi
• Care of Magical Creatures – Animal on the cover  Black Leopard Red Wolf by Marlon James
• Charms – Adult book - Enigma by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore
• Defense Against the Dark Arts – Begins with the letter R - Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
• Divination – Set in the future - Scythe by Neil Shusterman
• Herbology – Plant on the cover - Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
• History of Magic – Published 10+ years Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
• Muggle Studies – Contemporary - Every Day by David Levithan
• Potions – Sequel - Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
• Transfiguration – Sprayed edges/red cover - Escaping from Houdini by Kerri Maniscalco

I think this is a good list. I'll think of something for the NEWTs come time and post that as well. Here's hoping I can get through the OWLs I'll need to qualify to take the Librarian NEWTs!

I know it looks like I have DNF'd a lot of books. I haven't, I promise. I'm just saving them for OWLs next month, so I am not actively currently reading them. They'll get readded as I start them again for OWLs. I just don't think they should be on there if they aren't among the reading choices for the day. 

I hate that I enjoyed  Three Dark Crowns after complaining about it for so long. It started slow and sort of info-dumpy. But then a bit over a quarter of the way through it picked up. We were more concerned with what was happening and less with what had already happened and the history of a family that was only really rule by proxy by the grace of being on the council. I think they should institute a new edict where only two members of any given family can have council seats. Otherwise it stilts the council in the favor of the majority family. 

I am very excited to start my OWLs. I want to start them now, but I also don't want to rush JG and JC into start. I will try to read my other books that are not on my OWLs reading list. Starting with Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon. I'm just short of 350 pages into it. I think total it had 826? It was 827. I was off by a page. 

So, I've been thinking about bringing back the book hauls. If I do that, I may start doing monthly wrap ups again. I don't know....If I do pick it up again, it will be in September. I've already bought a large number of books for August. I also ought to be more selective in what I buy. I've so many books in my room that I'm beginning to have difficulty finding what I want or even getting to shelves. I'll see about asking my dad to put in floating shelves above my bed. So I can put the books up on the wall there as well and hopefully open up the floor again to be a floor instead of a substitute bookshelf!

Got approved for three of the five books I requested from NetGalley. So far (and I will read The Clouded Sky by Megan Crewe to review it eventually) I have an 85% review rate. Only because I didn't like/didn't finish The Clouded Sky. Anyhow, I got approved for two books that fall somewhere in the LGBT+ spectrum. I got an advance copy of QUEER by Kathy Belge & Marke Bieschke, She's My Dad by Jonathan S. Williams, and The Weight of a Soul by Elizabeth Tammi. They all looked really interesting and I can't wait to get to She's My Dad. Now I just have to wait and see if I get approved for Lion's Head Revisited by Jeffery Round and The Sound of Stars by Alechia Dow.

Not 100% on the logistics, but I accidentally bought a book the other day. I was putting my Kindle away and I guess I brushed against the purchase icon on the screen and then confirm. I don't know how I did it, but I did. I ended up accidentally acquiring The Fire Blossom by Sarah Lark, which from what I gather (from the original title: Feuerblüten) was originally published in German. 


Started painting the edges again of my books. I think I will do Shanghai Girls and Dreams of Joy in a matching petal pink? Just waiting for Shanghai Girls to dry. Then I'll probably move the fan or something and use the bar stool with a board on it. Make use of the tools I have! I forgot how much fun it is to do this and to pick the colors for the books. I wonder what color I would want to do The Priory of the Orange Tree? Probably orange or dark yellow to match the theme. 

July 2019 Wrap Up

To continue the theme I am on where I am actually remembering to do things (thanks to my planner I bought and actively use to remind myself of stuff I have to do...) let's do up our monthly wrap up. I didn't like the quarterly style much better than the monthly, so we're going back to monthly wrap ups. Let's get on with the books! I read 4 books in this month. 

#1: Captive Hearts in Oz #1 by Ryo Maruya

I love this. I found it while browsing the new arrivals section of BookOutlet. I am a big fan of L. Frank Baum's Oz series, and when I saw this book, I had to have it and read it. I was not sure what I was expecting. Not what I got. I thought it was just going to be The Wizard of Oz again. It's umpteenth iteration, only in manga form. No. That's not even close to what I ended up with. It's a whole new story. Dorothy does go to the land of Oz in a similar way, but it diverts from there into a slightly different story. It is told as if they are reenacting a book and the lion, scarecrow, and tin man are actual people with human faces. It was strange. Hayworth, the scarecrow, reminded me of Finnian from Black Butler with his looks, hat and ridiculous boundless strength. If they deviate at all from the original story (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz), bad things will happen. Like really bad. So bad that they can cause irrevocable damage to the world. Dorothy and someone I think is meant to be the Good Witch of the North, Glinda is the Good Witch of the South, mess up horrifically and go “off plot” and cause the big bad thing to happen. It stops right when Dorothy is rescued by a new character who calls himself Zero. We don't know who Zero is. I was impressed by it and can't wait to get to the next volume to see what happens and if they get any further on their journey.


#2: Captive Hearts in Oz #2 by Ryo Maruya

Clearly I have issues. They make it to the Emerald City in this one where we learn a lot more things have gone off script than we first thought. The Wicked Witch of the East (a dude, go figure!) has not died under the house from Kansas. In fact, he was saved by some of his flying "monkeys" that turn out to be just people. Every single character is some form of people. This reads almost like it's a D&D/Pathfinder campaign based on the Wizard of Oz that went awry and Mr. Maruya just ran with it. We learn who Zero really is and it is a shock to me. I won't spoil it by telling you who he is. Then we learn what the big bad something that is going down is. Now, instead of just playing out Dorothy in Oz, they have to go about saving the Land. Oz himself sometimes even has to step in and help. I did like how in this one he is actually magical and that they got the shoes right. The Wicked Witch of the East did not have ruby red shoes. They were covered in bright white diamonds in the original, she was a princess after all. It gave the shoes a silver shimmer to them. This Dorothy gets silver shoes from the Good Witch of the North, who's name I cannot think of at the moment. I usually forget it. I loved this book and still can't help thinking of Finnian. I want to find volumes 3 & 4 and see if they actually do the thing and save Oz and the land.

#3: The Epic Crush of Genie Lo by F.C. Yee

Genie Lo is one among droves of Ivy-hopeful overachievers in her sleepy Bay Area suburb. When she’s not crushing it at volleyball, Genie is typically working on how to crack the elusive Harvard entry code. But when her hometown comes under siege from hellspawn straight out of Chinese folklore, her priorities are dramatically rearranged. Enter Quentin Sun, a mysterious new kid who becomes Genie’s guide to battling demons. While Genie knows Quentin only as an attractive transfer student, in another reality he is Sun Wukong, the mythological Monkey King incarnate. Suddenly, acing the SATs is the least of Genie’s worries.

My favorite mythological Chinese figure is Sun Wukong. I have no idea why this is. I'm even playing a descendant of Sun Wukong in my current Pathfinder game who is a warrior monk looking for Wukong's mythical artifacts. I like to randomly just enter the Goodreads giveaways. What's the worst that's going to happen? I get a book I don't like and donate to my library for someone else to read. Anyway, I hadn't really looked at the synopsis for this before clicking those two fateful words on this site: ENTER GIVEAWAY. Yes, please. I got an email that I won and then read what it was about. I started this book the very minute it came to my door. I enjoyed every minute of it, though I thought Genie could have done with a little less complaining. I do have to agree though, with her first thoughts about why Quentin is obsessed with her. I thought it was the same thing she did. We were both wrong. I loved the way it was told and I cannot wait to get my paws on The Iron Will of Genie Lo so I can continue the series. 

#4: Inkheart by Cornelia Funke

One cruel night, Meggie's father reads aloud from a book called INKHEART-- and an evil ruler escapes the boundaries of fiction and lands in their living room. Suddenly, Meggie is smack in the middle of the kind of adventure she has only read about in books. Meggie must learn to harness the magic that has conjured this nightmare. For only she can change the course of the story that has changed her life forever.

I'm not sure how I actually feel about this one. It wasn't bad, and I read it fairly quickly. However, it was a reread for me. Something I don't often do any more. We follow a girl and her father as they try to outrun their own past. Something that no one really can do. No matter how far or how fast, they will always be found. I didn't care much for Mo's character. He would rather have run from his fears than faced them. I felt bad for Dustfinger. All the poor guy wanted was to just go home. I understand that. There have been times where the only thought on my mind was how much I wanted to be at home. I don't think my situation was any way like his though. Meggie was cute. I wanted to hit Eleanor or whatever. I do still wonder whatever became of the boy, Farid. I don't think I'll read this one a third time. The plot was sort of like, they would do things that would just push the plot further. Not things that smart humans would do. I didn't understand why Capricorn's men would do some things they did even though the original threat of doing the things (burning, looting, other illicit things) had already passed and there was no reason any more to do these things. Perhaps one day I will move on to the next book in the series and find out what happens from there. 

Currently Reading: 30 June to 10 August 2019

Currently Reading

-  The Anatomical Shape of a Heart by Jenn Bennett
- Bloodbound by F. Wesley Snyder
- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
- Isabella Moon by Lauren Benedict
- The Book Fix by Marydale Stewart
- Enigma: The Battle for the Code by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore (18%)

- Escaping From Houdini by Kerri Maniscalco (14%)
- Black Leopard Red Wolf by Marlon James (38%)

- The Sophists by W.K.C. Guthrie (08%)

- The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon (08%)

- IT by Stephen King (39%)

- Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en (25%)
- The Original Illustrated Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle (59%)

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Camp NaNo July is upon us! Starting on the first of the month I plan to write a minimum of 806 words per day. So far so good. I've gone under one day. The highest being 5,402. Lowest being 628. Not bad, but still not a lot.

Finished Camp NaNo July with 30,457/25,000. I think that was pretty good. Don't you? I'm proud of myself for managing it even if it meant I had to combine a few stories together to get there. There's no shame in working on multiple projects at once.

Counted my books again. As of this post, I have 2,447 total. 1,151 digital and 1,296 physical. I need help. There is no way I will read all of these in my lifetime.

Sort of fell off the reading wagon again. It's mostly my own fault, too. After the end of the Reading Rush, I was just like "no thank you" and didn't read for a while. Instead I found interest in writing my own stuff again and I've been working on "The Lost Star" again. I don't know what sparked my interest in the site or the story again after so long, but here we are. I ended up deleting the original first chapter and making the old second chapter the first. Because the first chapter actually had nothing to do with the story. If anyone wants to read it, it can be found here. I make no claims as to it's being good.