July Wrap-Up & August TBR

Hi! I'm writing this at the tail end of July and I think I finally have a somewhat decent reading month? Decent for me, at least.

It probably helped that I went overseas and had a lot of ebooks on hand for when I had absolutely nothing to do on the airplane, and during my whole-trip quarantine as well. 

I've started using the CAWPILE system to organize my reading, since the spreadsheet by G does a really lovely job with helping me decide on a star ranking and also it makes it very easy to see my reading stats for the year. 

Books Mentioned

• The Dragon Republic by R.F. Kuang
• The Burning God by R.F. Kuang
• Tokyo Ever After by Emiko Jean
• Jade City by Fonda Lee
• Mister Impossible by Maggie Stiefvater

Everything I Read in the First Half of 2021 -- Wrap-Up

Oh wow it has been a while :")

For fall quarter I did quite a lot of reading for school only, and I didn't have much time to read for myself, so I didn't make wrap-ups for those months. The following quarter was also a bust. I tried to read as much as I could and mostly stuck to short fanfictions since I spent most of my time reading articles and papers for class, so here is a first half of the year wrap-up. I'm also including the one book series I read at the very end of the month of December.

Books Mentioned

•  默读/Mo Du/Silent Reading by priest
• A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
• The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
• These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong
• 七爷/Qi Ye/Lord Seventh by priest
• Circe by Madeline Miller
• The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang
• 小蘑菇/Little Mushroom by 一十四洲

默读/Mo Du/Silent Reading by priest [SERIES REVIEW]

 

Synopsis

-from novelupdates

Childhood, upbringing, family background, social relations, traumatic experiences...

We keep reviewing and seeking out the motives of criminals, exploring the subtlest emotions driving them. It's not to put ourselves in their shoes and sympathize, or even to forgive them; it's not to find some reasons to exculpate their crimes; it's not to kneel down before the "so-called complexity of human nature"; nor to introspect social conflicts, much less to alienate ourselves into monsters.

We just want to have a fair trial—for ourselves and for those who still have hope for the world.

Ratings

• Book 1: ★★★★+(.5) (4.5/5)
• Book 2: ★★★★★ (5/5)
• Book 3: ★★★★+(.75) (4.75/5)
• Book 4: ★★★★★ (5/5)
• Book 5: ★★★★+(.75) (4.75/5)

Overall Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ (4.8/5)

Trigger/Content Warnings: violence, drugs, suicide, self harm, bullying, psychological abuse, domestic abuse, child abuse, human trafficking, child prostitution, pedophilia, mentions of rape, loss of loved ones, death, murder, violent accident, torture, animal abuse

September Wrap-Up

Um yeah this is super late and I read a total of one (1) book...

I have a lot of fanfics to rec tho at the end? :D

Sorry I have nothing to say here except I had finals this month which took up a lot of my energy... and then I spent the rest of the month doing absolutely nothing in preparation for more school. 

But yeah I did read some fics during my downtimes! Fics are absolute serotonin boosts and they're fun and easy to get through so I default to them when I'm tired :")

Books Mentioned

• Vicious by VE Schwab

August Wrap-Up

T'was a wild month...

I'm gonna be honest and admit I didn't read many books and I read a lot of one-shot fanfics. In my defense they're not that long and easy to get through and I've been really overwhelmed with summer school. And if you saw me posting art this month, no you didn't 💖 LOL just kidding I art when I'm especially stressed so that's why I was putting out a lot more content than usual. They're all stress draws; I just wanted to draw people (read: tsukikage) falling in love to make up for the void in me :")

Anyways, I'm including fanfic recs at the end because I want to write about something, I just have nothing else to write about :(

Books Mentioned

• Crush by Richard Siken
• This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
• The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

nostalgiathon, but it's all fanfiction

What else screams ✨nostalgia✨ better than the copious amount of fanfiction I read throughout my high school days :")

I rarely feel very nostalgic over things... like Harry Potter & Percy Jackson? Good memories but I have never felt much nostalgic fondness. Haikyuu!! fanfics that I read during the most boring summer breaks, however, make me feel all the feels. Also, it's just in time for HQ!! DAY (8/19) in August!

When the school system failed me and made me hate reading books, fanfiction was always there to keep me from giving up reading entirely. And after getting back into published books and reading fanfiction alongside published books, I'm still really amazed at how fanfic authors do this for free. They write this stuff and put it out for the public to enjoy for free. So, love and respect fanfic authors!! 

I chose a good mix of stories I remember quite fondly, and stories I don't remember much at all (except for the fact that I remember I loved them). I'm really excited to spend my August reading old fanfiction I adored back in grade school. I start school this month though, so sadly I wasn't able to get through as many as I wanted to. I mostly only had time for reading short fics & one-shots, especially since Come Morning Light was a good 3x longer than most books and long fics.

For the longer fics, I'm updating as I read, then editing after I finish. So if some of the sections sound vaguely like twitter reading threads, well now you know.

Also, for all of these, please heed warnings! They're all different AO3 ratings (most are T, some are M, there's the occasional E)

Out of 5💖's to measure how much I loved them post-reread.

💗 → 1/2 💖

July Wrap-Up

How is 2020 going by so fast...

What's up with July and cults? I read a couple books with cults in them this month and no one warned me there would be cults in these books?

I completely failed my TBR. I posted it thinking I'd read at the same speed and consistency as the very beginning of the month, but July was not a fun time for me and I ended up having very little energy to read and I just watched anime and re-read old comfort reads the entire month.

And then there was the additional distraction of Haikyuu!! ending, and threw myself into fanfiction in the midst of mourning... Also, I was feeling nostalgic so I picked up "Come Morning Light" by SharkbaitSekki and that fanfic is 300k+ words, which is even longer than A Little Life's 800 pages, so yeah I've been busy. I've been reading through it really slowly though because I've been reading 3 books at the same time + this fanfic. Lots of words to read. 

Also I've fallen into this barren pit called oikage and I've been scrambling for crumbs...it's been a terrible time it's pretty much 99% angst here

This month, I've been using the app libby a lot for audiobooks! I wanted to try audiobooks for once since many people seem to enjoy reading with audiobooks, and they also allow me to do other things while reading. However, since it's my first experience with audiobooks (aside from Sadie but that was an extraordinary full-cast audiobook), I'm not sure how I feel about them...I think I'm just not used to them. But I highly recommend libby since it's an easy way to get audiobooks and ebooks from your library in these trying times.

I've also made an attempt to make my reviews shorter, so if anyone's wondering why they look half-sized it's because I realized I've been writing so much in these mini-reviews, I end up having nothing to say in my actual reviews :")

👪 buddy read

🎧 audiobook

Books Mentioned

• The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
• What Happened To Goodbye by Sarah Dessen
• The Cruel Prince by Holly Black
• Beartown by Fredrik Backman
• The Wicked King by Holly Black
• The Queen of Nothing by Holly Black
• Haikyuu!! (Vol. 38-end) by Haruichi Furudate
• Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
• We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
• Beach Read by Emily Henry

**summaries taken from the book but might be slightly altered

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