What I Read This Month | August 2019

I know it’s basically October already, but here’s what I read in August. Also, this may or may not be a regular series I’ll be posting from now on 🙂

Bird Box by Josh Malerman

THIS BOOK. I read this on the way to Tasmania, and I couldn’t put it down! So I know there’s also a movie out based on this book, but it doesn’t look very appealing to me, personally. I think that it’s a perfect example of how Hollywood can distort the original context of a book. I was quite curious about the underlying meaning of this book and what the author was thinking when he wrote it, and I found an interview with him online where he talks about where he found his inspiration for this book. Turns out that when he was younger, his teacher had told him that infinity is unimaginable and if you try to imagine it then you’ll go crazy. As a kid, we all tend to take things a bit more seriously than it should. So, to make a long story short, he was quite traumatized about this thought when he was younger and he used it as the basis of this book. Pretty interesting, actually. And you can really see how the author used that theme throughout the book. 

The Spy Game by Georgina Harding

I mentioned this book find in my recent Tasmania post.. I think the idea for this book was interesting, but wasn’t presented to its full potential. I still enjoyed it to an extent, but I still enjoyed it to an extent. I think maybe there just wasn’t enough action for me to keep me interested. I went in expecting an intense mystery instead of for the historical fiction that it is. Maybe if my expectations weren’t so high then I would’ve enjoyed it a little more.

Room by Emma Donoghue

This book is so moving and so so sad but not in a ball-my-eyes-out kind of way. But I think that’s the reason why it took me a bit longer to finish this book. I got to a point where I couldn’t get past the quarter way through. I kept picking up different books to read until I finally found the courage to finish reading it. I think the intensity of the emotional and physical struggle made me a bit anxious. But after wrapping my mind around the fact that I’m not actually living in the book and that the events are affecting me personally I was able to finish the book and end up completely loving it. I even got to the point where I couldn’t put it down! If you want to hear more about my thoughts on it, check out my book review 🙂

The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell

After reading Room, this book was actually kind of a breath of fresh air. It’s funny, entertaining, inspiring, and non-fiction (if “non-fiction” can be used as an adjective). I ended up finishing this book really fast because of how easy was to read through, especially after reading an emotional rollercoaster of a book. The author’s newest book was just released too! And it’s going to be made into a TV show, so I really need to get my hands on it already! But if you want to hear more about my thoughts on this book, check out my book review 🙂

The Vanishing Stair (Truly Devious, #2) by Maureen Johnson

So I read the first book of this series last year, which I listened to as an audiobook. And personally I think this book is even better than the first! If you love mystery crime novels then definitely read this series! It’s a young adult series so it’s easy to read. I actually felt like a kid reading this book because I downloaded it as an ebook from my local library so I would only read it at night under the covers after my husband was already asleep. It was like a modern take on reading under the covers with a flashlight in hand. Anyway, the last book in the series doesn’t come out until January 2020 so I actually hope the rest of this year goes by fast!

Between the Acts by Virginia Woolf

I had never read any of Woolf’s works until I read this short novel. It was actually the last of her novels that she ever wrote, so my judgements on her works may not be accurate being that this is the only book I’ve read by her and I actually didn’t really enjoy it all that much. I think her use of words is very pleasant and dreamy but I found the plot in this book kind of boring. I liked the idea of it being, in a way, a play within play. And I think that if I had to do an unnecessary amount of research and “reading between the lines” then I’d actually appreciate it more, but as leisurely fiction, I didn’t really enjoy it. I’ll probably read some more of her earlier works sometime down the road, though.

Let me know what you’ve been reading recently!

xx