orz, sorry I disappeared for like a week LOL... I was busy with stuff, but not too busy to read, apparently, since I finished a few books in that time!
I finished that weird
The Art of Racing in the Rain book. It was really, really good--the writing was absolutely
beautiful. It was like poetry sometimes. However, the subject matter was pretty depressing and the ending very bittersweet. I think I'd still recommend it, though. ESPECIALLY if you own pets.
Aaand then I quickly read through
The Adventure Zone: Here There Be Gerblins which is the graphic novelization of the first arc of the D&D podcast run by the McElroy brothers. I ADORED the podcast and preordered the book as soon as it was announced, although once it finally arrived it took me a couple weeks to finally sit down and read it because I just wasn't really in the mood for comics when it came. But it was really good and I highly recommend it. :D
Finally, I also read
Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries. I've been wanting to read it for over a year, but it's been on hold at my library for
ever. (Well, it did come off hold sometime last year but it came off hold AT THE SAME TIME AS LIKE 6 OTHER BOOKS because somehow that ALWAYS HAPPENS TO ME and I just did not have time to get to it before I had to return it--since I couldn't renew with tons of OTHER people on the waiting list.) Uh, anyway to get back to the point, it's a book about dictionaries, written by a lexicographer (someone who writes definitions). It was absolutely FASCINATING and I urge anyone who enjoys the English language, language in general, or even just books in general to give it a read. The author is really funny while still being super informative and you learn all kinds of little tidbits about language and words. It was also the first time I had to look up a LOT of words without feeling really frustrating, like I do whenever I have to look up tons of words in academic writing. Like, the author used plenty of words I'd never heard of before, but not in the condescending way of academia, ahaha. It was a really great read!
I'm not sure what my next book is gonna be. I think a few things are due to come off hold in a week or two, so maybe I'll hold off on starting anything new until I have a deadline looming, ahaha.
My favourite authors include John Green (Cliche, I know. He's simply marvelous though) and Becca Fitzpatrick. (if you couldn't already tell.) Anyways, if there's anything you guys would like to know about me, please, feel free to ask. I'm an open book, truly. (Ahaha I'm hilarious.)
Ooh, I'm also a big fan of John Green. :D I found the vlogbrothers on youtube about a decade ago and within a year had devoured all his books and have been a fan ever since.
Although... I... still haven't finished Turtles yet, orz. I've been struggling to get into it, I think because I preordered a signed hardcopy and I struggle to read physical books now that I use eReaders so much... I should get a kindle copy, lol. What's your favourite book by him? :3 Although it's definitely not his best, I really like
An Abundance of Katherines because I'm a math nerd at heart and loved all the equations and stuff in it, ahaha.
You're not crazy at all, hun. You're brilliant! 57 books? Now that's quite the accomplishment. I'm jealous, you inspire me to read more. I've read a solid 7 books this year, if that. As much as I adore reading, I am quite the scatterbrain at times and I often get distracted, never mind balancing school, work and a social life. I do need to take more time to just sit down, relax and dive into a good book.
Anyways, The Art of Racing in the Rain sounds rather peculiar, although, I have a tremendous love for dogs so I can already tell that I'd enjoy it.
I've never read so much in my life, I'm not sure how I've managed so far! Last year I read 50, but a lot of that was because I got into the final year of my English degree which, as one might expect, had a LOT of reading attached to it. But most of it was academic, whereas this year I've really just gotten into reading stuff that
I wanna read, rather than stuff assigned for class or as reference for essays. (And admittedly a fair few of them are manga/graphic novels, which are definitely not as intense as your typical novel or book, but... still!) I'm also very motivated by marking things as "done", so Goodreads goes a long way for me because the satisfaction of rating a book and adding it to my virtual shelf as completed is almost as satisfying as actually finishing the book. ^^;
Ohh, and from your description of the kinds of books you like, I think you'd DEFINITELY like Racing in the Rain. It's totally right up your alley, re: slowly getting to know characters and seeing personalities unravel and build up over time. It's also very realistic--well, aside from having a dog as the narrator, ahaha.
I can't remember if I read Sphere or not, but a few years back, I went on a Crichton binge. Timeline and Next were my favorites out of the ones that I read, but--like you--I wonder if I'll find the problems that you're worried about.
Sphere is the one about the alien creature at the bottom of the ocean. :O
But yeah,
Next in particular is one of the ones that makes me worry about going back and rereading. I really enjoyed it when I read it, but it put me DANGEROUSLY CLOSE to becoming a climate change denier when I was much younger and much more impressionable because that was Crichton's stance and it was abundantly clear in the novel that the "real science" intermingled with his classic pseudo-science was very, very conservative in nature and very, very skewed. @_@ And then when I read, uhh.. I think it might have been called
Micro...? One of the novels that was published posthumously and finished by a ghostwriter. The female characters in it were very... bad. Like really bad. It makes me worry if maybe back then I just glossed over how bad his
other female characters were because I liked his work so much.
Oh well. He'll forever be my guilty pleasure favourite, I think. I just really love how well he writes suspense and even if his formula is so obvious (he loooves his "countdown" chapter titles), it sucks me in every single time, lol. I'm just glad that now I'm old enough to be a more critical reader!
Also, I've recently purchased a plethora of novels and I can't quite decide on which one to read. They all differ immensely and I've gone back and forth trying to choose which one to conquer first. Does anyone have tips for choosing a novel? Thanks in advance.
Ohhh, that's a hard one. *looks forlornly at all the unread books she's amassed..............*
I usually solve it by reading library books that I've borrowed on a whim instead because those at least have
due dates and then my pile of owned books just gathers dust, so I suppose that's not much help. ????Eeny, meeny, miny, moe, perhaps?
