Tag Archives: book review

52 Book Challenge 2023

Last year, I stumbled across the 52 book challenge 2023. I thought it sounded like a fun idea, and decided to give it a try. I’m a busy mom, and a full-time employee, so I wasn’t sure if I was up to the challenge. I wasn’t going to put too much pressure on myself. However, I did want to discuss what I got out of the challenge, where I ended up. And my favorite books of 2023.

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52 Book Challenge 2023

What I got out of it

There are several things that I got out of the challenge. The first one was to actually keep track of how many books I was reading. I have a tendency to read whatever I feel like, and possibly put a book down if I’m not feeling it anymore. This is mainly because, since I did major in English, I like to read for pleasure. The pure joy of the thing. But, with the challenge, I pushed myself to continue reading. This was a good thing, because a lot of books have those ‘saggy’ middles. But are completely worth the read in the end.

Another thing that I got out of the challenge was reading some books that I would have never picked up otherwise. Long gone are the days when I browse shelves reading the backs of books, or the inner covers, just looking for something that catches my eye. But, with this challenge, I was constantly on the lookout for a new book to read. Because of that, I was either in different forums searching for books, authors, even titles that caught my eye, or even looking through the Libby app for a book that just sounded good to me. This reminded me of being a kid in the library, just wandering around and discovering new books.

pile of assorted novel books
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I am a big reader of series, I have different authors who I follow and cannot wait for their next book to come out. I think anyone who is a lifelong reader has their favorites. But, because of the challenge I was able to discover new authors who I can now read their catalog, and also enjoy their newest works once they come out.

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52 Book Challenge 2023

Where I ended up

I did not read 52 books. As I mentioned, I didn’t want to put too much pressure on myself. I ended up reading 35 books for the year 2023. I did not count any audiobooks. I don’t know how many audiobooks I listened to. That works out to be 2.91 books a month. Which is not bad. I noticed when I was in the middle of the challenge that during the summer when I was busy in my garden and with my kiddos when they were out of school, I did not read as much. This challenge is something that was done for fun, and to keep track of the books that I was reading.

52 Book Challenge 2023

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My favorite reads

I read a lot of books that I enjoyed immensely in 2023. Some of my absolute favorites were: Station Eleven, The Sea of Tranquility and The Lola Quartet by Emily St. John Mandel, Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, Mister Magic by Kiersten White, The Running Graves by Robert Galbraith, Holly by Stephen King and pretty much all of Sarah J Maas’s work.

My favorite new author that I found in 2023 was Emily St. John Mandel. Not only did I read Station Eleven for the first time last year, but I also watched the series on HBO for the first time last year. I cannot stop telling people about how amazing the book and the show are. I am a fan of Emily’s. Her prose is spare and sophisticated, and she has a lovely way of thinking about the future and the past and life that just speaks to me.

I will be writing about each book later on. Did anyone else do the 52 book challenge in 2023, and did you read anything you didn’t expect to like but loved?

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Station Eleven Book Review

I have been challenging myself this year to read a book a week. Since beginning this challenge, and exposing myself to many genres or literary novels. I have found some real gems that I would like to share what we can learn from their genius works. The first one I would like to discuss is Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. Without further ado, here is my Station Eleven book review.

This book falls into the dystopian genre, if you wanted to put it in a genre. However, it is more literary in the way that it was written. It begins with the end, if you will. The way that it is written, is what I would call non-linear. It is something that would take most readers by surprise. I think that most people have an expectation of a linear storyline, they want A, B, and C to happen in order, and then X, Y and Z wrap the story up at the end. That is how a normal story will advance, and what a reader expects. This story doesn’t work that way, but it does work.

Station Eleven Book Review

Categories

The story doesn’t choose to focus on a single character. It works by running through several categories. Each category starts off a section. The section will have characters, these characters may or may not know each other. They may or may not have been introduced in other sections. Each category brings up some important part of the world that we are learning about. We learn important tidbits quickly, like how the gasoline went bad. How people have to travel by foot.

Other categories take us back in time, tell us how the world ended. Some of them talk about before the end.

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Character Development

All the important characters, have lives that weave in and out of each others. The beginning of the book starts with a death, it’s this person’s death that is the glue that all the rest of the character’s lives spin off of. This is a moment that affects not only the world of the novel, but all the character’s lives.

Writer’s takeaways

The way that this book is written is very unconventional. As I said earlier, it’s not linear, it’s in categories. Each category is important to the world of the book. In addition to the categories, the book centers around characters that have rich backstories that the book discusses in detail. The book is interested in the ways in which each character handled the end of things, which varied, depending on the age of the character. The book also uses the end of the world to study the ways in which people will continue to gather, the ways in which smaller societies will develop as larger infrastructure crumble.

I think it is worth studying this type of work, looking at non-linear storytelling and how well it can work when it’s done right. And then looking at how important it is to care about the characters, even in a story with high stakes. A person’s life may be on the line, but, you need to care about them in order for it to matter.

Thank you for reading my book review of Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. Please let me know what you thought of the book, and if you think it was amazing as I did, Thanks!

Book Review: Two for One

I’m enough of a dork to be a frequent visitor on Reddit. One of the sub-Reddits that I like to visit is called “horrorlit.” In this space, horror fans will ask for and receive book recommendations. I recently came across a post where the OP was requesting books with an unreliable narrator. I thought this was interesting. So, I took a look myself, and grabbed some of the titles to read. I ran through two such books fairly quickly. Because I read them back-to-back, I am reviewing them together, in this double book review post. Enjoy!

Book Review #1

I’m Thinking of Ending Things

I will start by reviewing Iain Reid’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things. It’s worth noting that there is a Netflix series made from this book. I’ve not seen the series. So, I won’t make any comparisons there. The plot of the book is simple, on the surface. It’s a journey/travel novel. A lot of the action takes place in a car, or at places that are unknown to the protagonist.

Book Review Cover

Once you reach the end, it’s hard to say whether the narrator is unreliable or not. Are they really that unreliable? Or are they simply playing out a fantasy? Do they believe the fantasy? Or do they understand everything that happened? You have to decide. The ending is not ambiguous, but the reliability or unreliability of the narrator, in my opinion, is up for debate.

The prose is incredibly precise, and the book is a work of art unto itself. Yes, I picked it out of a horror literature forum, and that’s probably where it’s shelved in a bookstore. However, based off of the character-driven plot and the beauty of the prose, this book is very likely considered literary.

If you are reading this book as a writer, and you are looking precisely at how to write unreliable narrators, this is a great book to read.

Book Review #2

A Head Full of Ghosts

So the next review, Paul Tremblay’s A Head Full of Ghosts, is a very different tale from the first. This one is the story of a crumbling family. There is a mentally ill sister, a suddenly religious father, a stressed mother, and a little sister who is witness. In addition to this, there is a camera crew who is there to record the family’s undoing.

Book Review Cover

This story is one that wants you to ask questions from the start. It invites you to try and figure out what’s going on. The argument for the unreliability of the narrator is made because she’s young.

But the narrator presents herself as reliable, and the readers never find any reason not to trust her. Even at the end, where the audience learns that things happened differently than everyone would have believed in the world of the book, she still doesn’t appear, to me, at least; to be an untrustworthy narrator.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, if you are looking to write something with an unreliable narrator. It is important to present evidence for the readers that shows the differences between the world the character sees, and the way things actually are.

In, I’m Thinking of Ending Things, the title itself has two meanings. By the end of the book, the tragedy of the whole thing crashes down on the reader. How much do I misunderstand? How much of a life can pass a person by? In A Head Full of Ghosts, much of the misunderstandings can be explained either by the youngness of the narrator, or by the fact that she wouldn’t have been told certain things, etc.

Both books are excellent examples of their genre. Both are stories worth reading, but only one has a truly unreliable narrator, even though they are both first person, which does mean that the narrators will be unreliable–to a degree.

Thank you for reading! Let me know if you enjoyed this double book review and if you would like to see more of this, or if you’d like to see something different. Thank you!

Warbreaker Book Review

If you are a reader of contemporary fantasy, you’ve heard of the author Brandon Sanderson. Whether you’re a fan of his work, is a different story. I have recently finished one of his standalone novels, Warbreaker, and I would like to discuss it. Here is my Warbreaker book review.

Warbreaker Book Review

Worldbuilding

person holding world globe facing mountain
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The highlight of Sanderson’s work is always the worldbuilding. If you are a lover of fantasy, this is always a major component of the work. The audience of fantasy has certain expectations that they will step into a new world, alien from our own, and that want to be completely immersed in it. Sanderson does this better than almost any other author I’ve read. He always takes religion, commerce, trade, etc. and he weaves them into the story so that the reader understands the tapestry that the characters are build upon.

If we think of our story as if it’s a rug; then, Sanderson uses all of the browns and tans to weave the background into a rich landscape–with some greens and blues really making the entire thing a rich piece. And then, he takes the main characters and makes them bright colors (relevant due to the story I’m reviewing) that we want to see, but the whole picture is fascinating too. Essentially, what I am saying, is that Sanderson is successful at world building because he not only makes us care about the characters, he also makes us fascinated in the world.

Characters

Sanderson’s books are not character studies. They are books where there is action. Think Epic battles, in some of them there are literally world altering events and battles where everything changes. These are not books where you can figure out how to imitate the quiet psychological horror a woman feels when she realizes that she’s being stalked, or something. However, that is not to say that the characters are not interesting.

Having read several of his books, I do feel like he has some archetypes that he likes to go back to, for his characters. Which is totally fine, he is a really fast writer and the characters he likes to draw on more than one time, they tend to be background characters. Personally, I don’t feel like Sanderson is the author to emulate if you are a writer who is looking to write a book that takes place in one location and is mostly in a person’s head.

Plotting

multicolored illustration Warbreaker Book Review
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Sanderson has a lot of ideas about plot that are more complicated than I’ve discussed. Although I have discussed that basic plot structure, which doesn’t really vary all that much–I mean really, we begin, see our main character living their life, something happens, the hero doesn’t want to change, then they have to change, a bunch of trial and error happens, and then the big action scene happens where they finally are triumphant, and then the story ends. There are a bunch of different things that happen in the middle, depending on what kind of plot you are following.

Sanderson has a LOT of thoughts about plot. He has a tendency to notice a “heist” plot, and then want to mix it with a “romance” plot or an “overthrow the government” plot. I find it interesting that he labels everything like that. I suppose that they are all plots, but I think of the plot as the structure, and then the story itself is the meat. But, it can all be the plot.

Review

As far as the actual review of the story. Warbreaker is an interesting concept, and it is well-written. The plot of the story has more romance elements than other stories of his that I’ve read. This story is one about a girl who is unexpectedly ripped from her home, and has to adapt to a new culture. It’s also about sisters, and kind of about zombies, in a very small way.

For an aspiring writer, if you are looking to write in the fantasy space, all of Sanderson’s writing is important to study. Not as important as like Anne McCaffrey or J.R.R. Tolkien, maybe, but still important. Also, he is an author that engages with his fan-base, and he also puts a bunch of writing advice out. Sanderson, as a person, is admirable. He seems to be a genuine person who wants to give others a hand up. Also, Warbreaker is available for free on his website for download.

I also want to mention, that you can view differing versions of the book on his website, so like you can view his process and how it got to be the polished end product.

Earthlings Book Review

Earthlings Book Review Cover
Earthlings Book Review Cover

Ever since I finished this book, I’ve wondered what to say about it. What can I say that wouldn’t spoil some part of it for someone else? Also, what is there to say that the book doesn’t? How can I talk about what to take from the book as a writer? Even though I’m not really sure I can give this book the proper review, I will make an attempt. Earthlings Book Review.

Earthlings is by Sayaka Murata. This book is hard to pin down. I found it suggested by a horror novel reading group. However, it doesn’t fit nicely into any category. It’s part coming-of-age novel, in a really strange way, in other ways it talks about subjects that aren’t really discussed, but in an interesting way, that not only makes some of the horror more acute, but also makes it feel as though the character is real.

Earthlings Book Review

Culture

Photo by Anni Roenkae

The main point this book was making, was a discussion about culture. And the topic of silence within that culture. How a simple action could brand someone forever, and could ruin their abilities to cope with life in a normal way. A simple action, done as a child, a frightened child; changes the entire course of several people’s lives.

Horror

The horror aspects, which it had to at least have some since I did it suggested in a group of horror enthustists, they weren’t an afterthought. But they also were not the main point of the text. This novel is talking more about the struggles that some people have fitting into society, and how, they can finally break from that struggle.

Narration

This book is a good example of an unreliable narrator. Unreliable narrators are best suited for a first-person point-of-view. This one was done in an amazing way. The audience can tell that there is something wrong with their narrator. But the narrator is likable in a way that makes the reader still want the narrator to come out on top.

This book is a great read for a writer who is looking for some insight about how to put horror aspects into a more literary book. Or for a writer who is looking to figure out how to write an unreliable narrator, or for a writer who is looking to write a piece that discusses a certain culture and the way that people interact. That is my Earthlings Book Review.

I didn’t want to spoil anything, so it is purposefully vague. Let me know if you would like to see some more detailed information than what I’ve put.

Survive The Night Book Review

I came across Danielle Vega as an author on social media. She was in a list of female horror authors, one of many. I wrote her down, and made a goal to check her writing out, along with the others on the list. I checked out Survive the Night from my local library on my Kindle. Not only that, but I went into the book “blind,” having not looked at any other reviews, or even what the book was about, I liked the name and the cover. Here is my Survive the Night book review.

Photo by Bruno Thethe

This book is YA. I didn’t expect it going in. I should have known that there is young adult horror, but for some reason, I just didn’t. The main features of this book are: the protagonist’s pain, her addiction (although, I would argue that she almost has that forced on her) and toxic friendship, and a big ol’ monster. Let’s look at these one-by-one:

Pain

The protagonist (Casey) and her pain is something that is ever-present in the story. It takes a backseat, but colors her worldview as she moves throughout the tale. She grits her teeth against it, she fights it, it almost gets her, it is the thing that nearly wins. Her pain is a shadow, a monkey-on-her-back. It’s another character.

Survive the Night Book Review

Survive the Night Cover

Addiction

The story of Casey’s addiction is told through memory. WSe know this story is about addiction from the beginning, but we only see her addiction through flashes. It makes us wonder, is she really addicted? Or did her parents overreact like she keeps on saying, it layers the story with that infamous unreliable narrator feeling. Is she addicted, or does she only think she is? How can someone so young be addicted to something besides their phone?

Toxic Friendship

The heart of this story lives in the friendship between Casey and Shana. It takes minutes to realize that Shana is not a good person. This part of the story, along with the strange romance between Casey and her ex-boyfriend, reminded me why I don’t read YA anymore. However, the toxic relationship, one that you would hope would only happen during those teen-years was heartbreaking, yet relatable. Shana and her larger-than-life antics, her “look at me” ways, reminds all of us of people we know or knew. Their relationship is the one that kept the pages turning.

The Monster

Why pick up a horror novel if there isn’t going to be something horrific? This book certainly delivers. Although the simple prose may not have been something that I was expecting (that’s what I get for not knowing anything about the book beforehand). The monster lurking in the water, something straight out of a Lovecraft story, was something beyond any kind of hopes I had for the novel. I was thinking of a knife-wielding killer, but to get an actual monster? It was so much more than I could have hoped for.

I would say that this is a book for you if you are an actual teenager. Better yet, if you are a female teen who likes scary novels, this book would be a wonderful read. Or, I guess, if you are a writer of teenaged scary novels, this book would be a good read for you. That concludes my Survive the Night book review. Here’s a link to buy it, if you’re interested: Survive the Night