A May Throwback

Welcome to my monthly reflection on my reading life. I'm still in the testing-phase of these throwbacks so I'm trying out lots of different ways how I could present them. Bare with me and I hope you'll enjoy.

Books:

This month I've read 11 books – though I officially finished 12 (one book I gradually read during the last year for uni). Not counting the latter, that makes about 4181 pages I've read in May or, alternatively, almost 135 pages a day. 

The books I read in May are (in no particular order):

• A Little Wanting Song or Lieder eines Sommers by Cath Crowley

• The Illustrated Man or Der illustrierte Mann by Ray Bradbury 

• Heir of Fire or Erbin des Feuers (Throne of Glass #3) by Sarah J. Maas

• Turbulent Mirror: An Illustrated Guide to Chaos Theory and the Science of Wholeness or Die Entdeckung des Chaos. Eine Reise Durch Die Chaos Theorie by John P. Briggs and F. David Peat 

I didn't write a review for this one because I simply don't have much to say about it, which is entirely my fault. If you're interested in Physics, Maths, and Biology (I am) and don't know much about Chaos yet (unfortunately, I already did know enough that the beginning was just a lot of repetition – and then I forgot to turn my brain back on in time) or it's application (that I didn't know a lot about, hence, the biology part was very interesting to me!) I'd totally recommend it.

• The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians #1) by Rick Riordan

• The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson and the Olympians #2) by Rick Riordan

• Immortality or Die Unsterblichkeit by Milan Kundera

• Demons at Deadnight (Divinicus Nex Chronicles #1) by A. & E. Kirk

• Tell Me Where It Hurts: A Day of Humor, Healing, and Hope in My Life as an Animal Surgeon by Dr. Nick Trout

• Rebel Belle by Rachel Hawkins

• Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys

Of which my favorite is Demons at Deadnight (it's really not for everyone because it's quite stupid and superficial and reeeeaaallly teenage-y but I, personally, thoroughly enjoyed it), however, I also strongly recommend:
A Little Wanting Song if you're into great portrayals of family and friendship and generally like summery reads.
The Illustrated Man if you like SciFi and/or interesting short stories with unique concepts and/or books like Fables for Robots (Robotermärchen) by Stanislaw Lem.
The Percy Jackson and the Olympians series if you're interested in mythology (yes, it is quite goofy but, as a kind of mythology nerd, I'm okay with that), sarcasm and fast-paced, action-packed (children's) books.

The biggest disappointment this month probably was Heir of Fire because I expected so much and received nothing but a whiny, sad, pale imitation of the previous books.

Audiobooks

I listened to two audiobooks this month and, funny enough, they had pretty much opposite effects on me:

• Everything Everything by Nicola Yoon

I've heard sooo many great things about this but also some not-so-great things but then again soooo many great things that I thought I'd just give it a shot and be very optimistic about it. Big. Mistake. It was terrible. I mean, sure, nice diversity but that doesn't save a crappy book.

• The Fate of The Tearling (The Queen of the Tearling #3) by Erika Johansen

I wrote this kind of long post about all the reasons the first two books annoyed me as much as they did but the third and final book (which I didn't even really want to listen to I just wanted to complete the trilogy) really took me, pleasantly, by surprise! At least about the first 75% of the book were surprisingly great. It doesn't even matter that the last 25% made all the morals and compensated stupidity from the beginning seem meaningless – I'll remember this one relatively fondly. (Still, I wouldn't recommend reading the series. Just for the record.)

And that's it! Those are all the books I've somehow consumed this month. I guess, there are going to be a lot more books on June's throwback (seeing as I've already read 4 books and am 130 pages into my fifth) but for now my work here is done. Have a great day and happy reading!