Wrap Up | November ’15

Hello, everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful week. I know I did! I got a week off from college because of Thanksgiving and stuff, so I got a much-needed break from all the stress I was under. I got tons of reading done during the break, which felt amazing since I haven’t been reading much recently.

November was a fairly good reading month for me, considering the last few months. I managed to read four books which isn’t a lot, yes, but most of them were big books, so I was satisfied! I’m almost halfway through my current read, but I won’t finish it in time for the end of the month, so I decided not to include it in my wrap-up

CURRENTLY READING

winter

Winter (The Lunar Chronicles #4) by Marissa Meyer

                                                              coming soon

So, like I said, I’m almost halfway through this. It’s a beast of a book (830 pages!) but I’m enjoying it so much so far! It’s very fast-paced and addictive; I think I read around 300 pages in one go, and that’s some feat for me. Hopefully, I’ll be able to be done with this before school gets crazy and before finals hit me full force in mid-December!

Breakdown by Rating:

★★☆☆☆ 

100 sideways miles

100 Sideways Miles by Andrew Smith

read review

I was a little disappointed with this one, because I loved Smith’s Winger so much. Even though the writing and characterization were good, the lackluster plot brought it down for me. The romance didn’t do anything for me, and I thought Smith could’ve done so much better.

 ★★☆☆ 

carry ondgam

Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

read review

This book was very meh for me. It felt too close to the Harry Potter series to be of comfort. For me, it felt a lot like a Harry Potter rehash, and I couldn’t help but compare the two. I liked the characterization, and the relationships were well done, and the writing was great too. But the plot, fantasy and world-building lacked a great deal. The romance, although enjoyable, was a bit too sudden for me.

Dreams of Gods & Monsters (Daughter of Smoke & Bone #3) by Laini Taylor

read review

This was my least favorite of the three books in the series, but I enjoyed it a lot nonetheless. I thought it was longer than necessary, and there was a lot of stuff going on that could’ve been cut out or dealt in a more condensed way. The end was wrapped up too neatly for my liking, but parts of it were left too open – if that makes any sense. However, the characterization was on point. The writing was whimsical and beautiful, as always, and Akiva is my boyfriend, kthxbye. Note: the actual rating is 3.5.

 ★★ 

soc

Six of Crows (The Dregs #1) by Leigh Bardugo

read review

 

If you couldn’t tell by my rating, I loved this book. It is one of my favorites of this entire year. The world-building was great, the plot was fast-paced and exciting, the writing was fantastic. But what makes this book soar above and beyond so many others are the characters. All complex, all flawed, all violent and morally ambiguous, but all trying to do the best with the shitty hand they’ve been dealt. It’s such a joy to see these characters interact with each other and other elements in their surroundings. I cannot wait for the next book in the series!


 Total Books Completed This Month: 4

Total Books Read This Year: 100 

Comments

  1. Four is respectable because those are some seriously beefy books. I know that there is nothing surprising about this, but I LOVED Six of Crows too. I can’t wait for the sequel! They are just such a wonderful group of people. I want to join the dregs!

    It’s a shame you didn’t enjoy 100 Sideways Miles. I read it a few months back. I enjoyed it, but agree that it’s not without it’s issues. Julia’s character really bothered me. She felt very undeveloped compared to Finn. Smith would drop these huge details about her, like her history with her boyfriend, that would then just sort of drop out of the narrative. I hate when writers do that to girls. So I can certainly see why you wouldn’t have enjoyed it.

    I’m glad that, apart from that one, your reading month has been mostly good. Here’s to lots of Christmas-ey reads in December!

  2. I’m so excited that you loved Six of Crows so much!! I’m currently reading it now and I’m really enjoying it 🙂 I have the same feelings about Carry On I liked it I just don’t think it’s Rainbows best work.
    Congrats on reaching 100 books! I’m almost there I hope to do it by the end of the year 🙂

  3. Congratulations on reaching your mark! 100 is a LOT of books XD Six of Crows was such an amazing ride, I have yet to meet anyone who said they didn’t enjoy it. 🙂

  4. I’m the same with you! This month has probably been my best reading month so far! I also read four books, and they were a great set of books.
    I seriously need to read Six Of Crows! All I’ve heard is fantastic things about it! Ah!
    Great wrap up, Aimal. 😊

  5. Congrats on making the 100 mark! Personally, I really enjoyed Carry On. It was supposed to read like the seventh book of a series or something (as in, you would have read the original series first) which is perhaps why the romance seemed to sudden for you. I felt like Fangirl had already given me an insight into the world and characters, so I was okay with it. I did a review on it, too, if you’re interested. https://rogantalullah.wordpress.com/2015/10/19/carry-on-by-rainbow-rowell-book-review/

    • I actually ship Simon and Baz very much. xD I think my problem with the romance lay in the fact that when the two kissed, I expected there to be some conflict in Simon’s feelings since he hadn’t realized he was gay. But that conflict wasn’t there. I thought their relationship progressed too quickly after the first initial step considering they were rivals and Simon didn’t even know he had those feelings. 🙂

      • Yes, I suppose that does make sense. I guess that I just saw something previous, or thought that it fit his personality (the world was changing a lot, so I guess it makes sense that his relationships would as well).

Trackbacks

Penny for your thoughts?

Latest from Instagram

Copyright © 2017 · Theme by 17th Avenue
https://www.bookshelvesandpaperbacks.com/wrap-up-november-15/
www.bookshelvesandpaperbacks.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2017-47
101904
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:TB6YOSZWPT5J5S3EDKQEVRYOIRAE75T3
<urn:uuid:344bdd2b-ebc3-45cc-81c8-86327ceb5140>
2017-11-23T09:11:26Z
70.40.220.102
text/html
sha1:NS2E3BZIMQZZR6IFYICRA33YJ55MRZQ3
<urn:uuid:ced25237-4ff3-4704-98f9-3879396fddf7>
https://www.bookshelvesandpaperbacks.com/wrap-up-november-15/
response
<urn:uuid:7633320f-82b4-42d4-a6f4-ab67cc9c7db6>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-185-64-146.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2017-47
operator: Common Crawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for November 2017
publisher: Common Crawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf