In August this year (you can see this was written at the same time as July’s because I am a slacker and re-use phrases and also my current overuse of parentheses which, trust me, is annoying even ME) I did some stuff. I got a real job! A 40 hour a week, office job! Blergh. But no it’s okay. So far. And it brings me up to six jobs. SIX JOBS. I need to dump some of these. Which should be easy since several of them are not real jobs anyway. Like making bags for Etsy? Considering I never finished setting up the shop that one’s pretty easy to dump. Except now I have these two finished bags and all this material and nothing to do with it all. Good thing I made and sold that Star Wars bag to Ellie. Well, “sold”. I mean I gave it to her so she would feed my cats and water my plants while I went on ANOTHER vacation last month. This one was 11 days in Oregon (pictures here =) Where not only did I spend a lot of time at a house on a lake with my family, but I also went to Powells and made beaucoup bucks selling books AND I attended a book club WHERE THEY READ MY BOOK. It was freaky and weird and awesome and I am so, SO proud of my social anxiety ridden self for going and answering questions and surviving. Those ladies made it FUN too. They were an awesome, hilarious, strong, gorgeous feminine power delight. And even though none of them really read romance novels or like the genre much they still read my book and were happy to discuss it. What else did I do last month? Meh, not much. That was all the super exciting stuff. So, on to books!
Books Read: 15
Books Partially Read: 4
Books Re-read: 8
Books Bought: 9
Money Spent: $98 (damn you, Powell’s)
Money Made: $100 (yey Powell’s!)
Books Borrowed: 6
Books Given: 0
Books on To-Be-Read Shelf: No idea. (I kind of didn’t take note when it was August and now it’s too late)
Favorite Books This Month: For Darkness Shows the Stars by Diana Peterfreund, Seraphina by Rachel Hartman, Pawn of Prophecy by David Eddings, The Far West by Patricia C. Wrede, Chime by Franny Billingsly, and Wings by Shinsuke Tanaka.
For Darkness Shows the Stars, let me set the scene for you here. Imagine dystopic YA crossed with Jane Austen’s Persuasian. Got it? It was awesome. It could maybe have been a little more awesome even but it was still really good. Also it made me want to re-read Persuasion.
Seraphina is about dragons and music and romance and species-ism. It’s the first book by Hartman and for once reviews didn’t let me down (see least liked books for this to make more sense in context this month). Anyway, I liked this one. Good world-building; interesting, flawed characters; fleshed out details…I look forward to reading more set in this world.
Pawn of Prophecy is a re-read. David Eddings’ Belgariad series were a staple of my youth; I read them for the first time in 6th grade. They’re the first fantasy books I ever purposefully bought myself (at Crown Books back in the day when that existed here) and I DEVOURED THEM ALL that Christmas on the drive to Oregon, in Oregon, and the drive home. Then I went and bought more of his books. I am re-reading some of them now though I’ve gotten hopelessly bogged down in the Mallorean this month. Belgariad is all good. Mallorean….I’m struggling. I kind of just want to jump ship and go read the Sparhawk series. Sigh. I’m persevering. Anyway this is the first one and they’re epic fantasy about a boy discovering his birthright and questing and magic and religion and so on.
The Far West is the third in Wrede’s 13th Child series which is a magical Old West kind of thing which is really good. This one was all about an expedition into uncharted territories west of the Mississippi where more is revealed and more magic happens. I wanted EVEN MORE to happen. And I’m not sure if this was a trilogy and so it’s over or if there will be more. I hope there’s more. I want her to do more amazing things. (Review of the first one here.)
Chime is one I’ve already read before and I raved about it to an unparallelled degree making comparisons to one of my all time favorite books–The Changeover by Margaret Mahy. Second reading totally held up, it is a fabulous book completely captivating a reader with the wonders of language and play.
Wings is a graphic novel about a dog with wings and the family who takes him in. I love love loved the art (I bought it in Bandon, OR at the bookstore completely because I flipped thru and thought it was so pretty). And then I read it and it is super bittersweet but lovely still. I must remember to see if the library has other stuff by him.
Least Favorite Books: Fifty Shades Darker by E.L. James. I KNOW ALL RIGHT. I didn’t finish it. Sheesh. And The Unnaturalists by Tiffany Trent which I had high hopes for but then it was just boring and no good. Sad. You just can’t trust Amazon reviews sometimes–or, more accurately, America. YOU CANNOT TRUST AMERICA TO VOTE ON THINGS PROPERLY. (Mostly this shouty-capital reaction is due to my terror of America’s voting on the TV show So You Think You Can Dance but it’s also a shade of trepidation for the elections in November. Because I’m multi-faceted like that. I can care equally about America’s Favorite Dancer and the next President of the United States, all right? Fuck, I’m not that shallow. I care a lot less about SYTYCD, don’t worry.)