A July Throwback


Another month has passed and it is, once again, time for my monthly throwback/wrap up thingy. Reading wise, this has been a pretty decent month – there were a couple of days where I couldn't get any reading done but I still managed to read quite a few books and further reduce my physical TBR-pile to a satisfying degree without having to neglect any other activities I like to pursue (mainly climbing/watching climbing worldcups but hanging out with friends is also quite nice).

Books

Do you want to guess how many books I managed to read this month, because I'm quite proud of myself and want to rub it in everybody's face? 17 books! Yeah! It almost feels like that one time when I was a kid of about 10/11 and managed to read two books in one day (*gasp*) or that other time when I was a teenager of about 14 and read about 800/900 pages in one day (*gasp some more*) – I'm definitely not bragging and I definitely never, ever, ever bragged about it at the time. (Okay, honestly, it wasn't that bad, just a little.)

These 17 books are of quite varied lengths and they sport a collective of 6296 pages (if my math is correct, which it should be) or about 203 pages, on average, a day, which meets my goal of reading 200 pages a day in July. I reiterate: Yeah!

Without further ado, I present to you the 17 books I've read this month:

  1. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (4 stars)
  2. All the Ugly and Wonderful Things by Bryn Greenwood (4 stars)
  3. The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion (4 stars)
  4. Dark Matter by Blake Crouch (3 stars)
  5. The Vegetarian by Han Kang (3.5 stars)
  6. The War of the Flowers (or Der Blumenkrieg) by Tad Williams (1 star)
  7. The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid (3 stars)
  8. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (4 stars)
  9. Drop Dead Demons (Divinicus Nex Chronicles #2) by A & E Kirk (5 stars)
  10. Die Buchspringer (or The Book Jumper) by Mechthild Gläser (2 stars)
  11. The Archived (The Archived #1) by Victoria Schwab (4 stars)
  12. I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You (or Spoine küsst man nicht) (Gallagher Girls #1) by Ally Carter (2.5 stars)
  13. The Subtle Knife (His Dark Materials #2) by Philip Pullman (3 stars)
  14. All We Shall Know by Donal Ryan (no stars because I couldn't decide on a rating)

    15. Which I didn't write a review for on here because I was bored out of my mind while reading and just didn't have much of interest to say about. I wrote a quick review on Goodreads, though: "At first, I thought the writing was so beautiful that I couldn't but love this book. But then the pages dragged on and I realized: there isn't any story I could be interested in. Consequently, the initial beautiful writing became tedious and about 60% through this novel I started skim-reading because nothing held my interest at all. Well, at least it was short."

  15. King Richard III by Shakespeare (3.5 stars)

    16. Again, I haven't written a review for this one on here (because I don't really like writing reviews on plays – no, I don't know why). It was quite the average Shakespeare, nothing terribly exciting but also not bad at all.

  16. The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett (4 stars)
  17. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock Holmes #4) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (2.5 stars)

    18. Additionally, I also finished (but have been reading in connection to book club over the span of a couple of months so I'm not counting it)


  18. Extension du domaine de la lutte (or Ausweitung der Kampfzone – or Whatever if you're English speaking) by Michel Houellebecq (1.5 stars)

As for my favorites this month: 
  • Drop Dead Demons, definitely. It's just soo much fun to read these books even though I know how "bad" they are. 
  • But I was also very pleasantly surprised by The Archived, which I did not expect to like as much as I did because it was a reread and I suspected I'd be more annoyed by some of the elements which had already irked me the first time reading.
  • I'm also quite fond of Pride and Prejudice, especially because it was my fourth (?) time trying to read this and the first time I didn't hate (but really enjoy) it.

The biggest disappointments of the month are probably (maybe?) quite obvious: 
  • The War of the Flowers which is boring to no end (but I'm happy I finally read it – it's been lying around in my room for almost 10 years). 
  • The Book Jumper, which severely lacked character and logic. 
  • All We Shall Know, although I can understand why some people would love it; it's just not my cup of tea.
  • The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, however, the low rating is mainly due to the comparison to Doyle's previous works which made for a rather disappointing read, not an actually bad one.
  • And Whatever, which is a book I personally couldn't enjoy at all – even though I realized what the author wanted to accomplish and I tried to appreciate at least that (frankly, I didn't succeed).

So, yeah I've had quite a good reading month, although I hope to read more books I can be super excited about and will want to shove into everybody's faces next month. I have been feeling like I haven't really had a lot of books to be properly excited about in a while. Albeit I'm aware that I did read a couple of very good books, I haven't been able to connect on that weird, fundamental level with any of the books as I have with so many before. Well, maybe Drop Dead Demons was such a book but I can do better than having just one "aaaahhhh, this is so good I loooove it!" book a month.

Usually, I'd tell you about the audiobooks I've been listening to in the past month at this point but I haven't finished any so I'll just have to bid you farewell already. I hope you've had a good (reading) month and I hope August is going to be just as good, if not better, than July. Happy reading!

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