Pride Themed TBR!

I had made a list of books that I wanted to read in June based on what I had out from the library and what's on my top-priority shelf of books I own, and I realized that I had unintentionally created a great Pride themed TBR for June, which was so perfect, I just had to pop-in and tell you about it. I'm hoping to write a few reviews for books I've read while I've been gone, but I'm not sure if I will or not. The second half of the year will (hopefully) be extremely busy for me as I am hoping to start my first year of teaching, so I don't know if I will be back to posting or not, but for the meantime, here's what I'm hoping to read this month.

To see what I've been reading lately and a few quick thoughts, you can check out my Goodreads.

Ace Representation

Let's Talk About Love by Claire Kann

I've heard lots of great things about this YA contemporary, and I'm really interested to read it as the main character identifies as Ace, which is not often represented in novels. I'm not sure if this is own voices or not, but I'll be checking into that after I read it. 

Bisexual Representation

Hunger by Roxane Gay

I'm currently listening to this one on audiobook and loving it. This is my first Gay, though she is an author I have been wanting to read for a very long time. So far this memoir is so honest and well written that I am captivated and just want to hear everything that Gay has to say. Gay identifies as bisexual.

Lesbian Representation 

Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters

I read and loved Water's Fingersmith last year, and I have been wanting to read another of her books. I'm in the mood for romance novels this month (summer does that to me) but I tend to get tired of the typical YA contemporary romance if I read more than one or two in a month, so I thought a Water's historical romance would be great to throw in this month. 

Gay Representation 

Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin

I'm also currently reading this one. I have been wanting to read this one for a very long time and have almost picked it up many times over the past two-or-so years and I finally decided now is the time! I'm really in the mood for a consuming and intense romance story, and I think this one will deliver. Baldwin himself was either gay or bisexual, and one of the only black authors to be open about it during the Harlem Renaissance, and I'm really eager to read his works.  

Have you read any of these? What are you reading this month? Any intense and slightly tragic romances to recommend to me? 

2017 End of the Year Survey!

Reading Stats

Number Of Books You Read: 48
Number of Re-Reads: 5 

Survey by The Perpetual Page Turner

Best in Books

1. Best Book You Read In 2017?- My Top Three: 

Review 

This was such a wild ride. I was gripped by this book and couldn't stop reading 

or look away. This is a must read.

Review

This was so whimsical and dark. In the same vein as Alice and Wonderland and Peter Pan.

Loved how the complex idea of the transition from childhood to adulthood was portrayed. 

Review

This is an amazing YA contemporary. Loved the characters and the themes; this 

is one I will be revisiting in the future. 

2. Book You Were Excited About & Thought You Were Going To Love More But Didn’t?

Meh. 

 3. Most surprising (in a good way or bad way) book you read?  

This one had me on the edge of my seat, and caught me off guard many times.

 4. Book You “Pushed” The Most People To Read (And They Did)?

I recommend Sarah Waters a lot this year. Even though I have only read one of her works (Fingersmith, above) I am confident that all of her works are worth recommending. 

 5. Best series you started in 2017? Best Sequel of 2017? Best Series Ender of 2017?

I didn't actually start any new series this year! I really concentrated on stand-alones as I always felt too busy to get sucked into a series. 

 6. Favorite new author you discovered in 2017?

Shirley Jackson!  I can't wait to read more from her in the near future.

7. Best book from a genre you don’t typically read/was out of your comfort zone?

Science based nonfiction is way out of my comfort zone, but I loved this!

The audiobook was a great experience. 

 8. Most action-packed/thrilling/unputdownable book of the year?

So addicting! 

 9. Book You Read In 2017 That You Are Most Likely To Re-Read Next Year?

10. Favorite cover of a book you read in 2017?

11. Most memorable character of 2017?

Alex from The Female of the Species. She's so complex and different from usual YA characters.  

 12. Most beautifully written book read in 2017?

13. Most Thought-Provoking/ Life-Changing Book of 2017?

I did A LOT of thinking about this reread this year. Teaching and reading this novel 

was a great experience this year. This book still holds up to the test of time. 

I spent A LOT of time thinking about this one and how I felt about it. I'm still
not all that sure. Read my review for more details. 

 14. Book you can’t believe you waited UNTIL 2017 to finally read? 

I owned this one for years (and moved it to an apartment and then back home) 

before finally picking it up this year. 

16.Shortest & Longest Book You Read In 2017?

Shortest- The novella version of Flowers for Algernon

Longest 

 17. Book That Shocked You The Most

18. OTP OF THE YEAR (you will go down with this ship!)

Loved the romances in both of these novels. 

19. Favorite Non-Romantic Relationship Of The Year

Loved the relationship between Sal and his dad. 

20. Favorite Book You Read in 2017 From An Author You’ve Read Previously

21. Best Book You Read In 2017 That You Read Based SOLELY On A Recommendation From Somebody Else/Peer Pressure:

There was SO much hype around this one this summer that I had to pick

it up. Glad I did!

22. Newest fictional crush from a book you read in 2017?

This year's reread has lead to discover that Atticus Finch is my dream man. 

23. Best 2017 debut you read?

24. Best Worldbuilding/Most Vivid Setting You Read This Year?

25. Book That Put A Smile On Your Face/Was The Most FUN To Read?

26. Book That Made You Cry Or Nearly Cry in 2017?

27. Hidden Gem Of The Year?

Review

28. Book That Crushed Your Soul?

My soul seems to have survived this year intact! I didn't read anything too emotional this year. 

29. Most Unique Book You Read In 2017?

30. Book That Made You The Most Mad (doesn’t necessarily mean you didn’t like it)?

I was so angry for many of the characters in this book. 

Blog and Bookish Life

1. New favorite book blog you discovered in 2017?

This was not a consistent year for me in regards to both blogging myself and reading other blogs. That being said, here are a few blogs that I made a conscious effort to keep up with this year. 

Jess @ Jessticulates

Emily @ Mixed Margins

2. Favorite review that you wrote in 2017?

Either my review of The Sun is Also a Star (and thoughts on fate) or The Female of the Species

3. Best discussion/non-review post you had on your blog?

Always love continuing my Poetry Spotlight and Literary Look posts. 

Edna St. Vincent Millay Poetry Spotlight

4. Post You Wished Got A Little More Love?

Literary Look: Modernism

5. Did you complete any reading challenges or goals that you had set for yourself at the beginning of this year?

This year I participated in the Diversity Bingo challenge with the goal to complete as many squares as possible. Here's my three update posts:  

Update 1

Update 2

Update 3

Looking Ahead

1. One Book You Didn’t Get To In 2017 But Will Be Your Number 1 Priority in 2018?

2. Book You Are Most Anticipating For 2018 (non-debut)?

Becky Albertaili's and Adam Silvera's joint project What If It's Us  looks like a lot of fun. 

3. 2018 Debut You Are Most Anticipating?

Lots of buzz about this one already.

 4. Series Ending/A Sequel You Are Most Anticipating in 2018?

Actually need more time to research this one. I'm out of the loop on 2017 series. I need to catch up. 

5. One Thing You Hope To Accomplish Or Do In Your Reading/Blogging Life In 2018?

Just manage to read while also getting hired for and then actually teaching my first year as a teacher! Wish me luck! 

See my 2014 survey answers 

See my 2015 survey answers

Leave me the link to your survey if you filled one out! 

Recently Read: The Upside of Unrequited

Author: Becky Albertalli
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary
Page Count: 336
Publication Date: 2017
Rating: 4/5

Add on Goodreads

Also by Becky Albertalli:
Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda 

Molly has had twenty-six crushes and zero boyfriends. Her twin sister has no problem talking to crushes and is determined to find Molly a boyfriend. When Molly's sister Cassie falls head-over-heels for a new girl named Mina, Mina's friend Will seems to be the perfect candidate for Molly's first boyfriend, except maybe he isn't, and her nerdy but sweet co-worker Reid is. 

I really loved Simon so of course I was interested in checking out Albertalli's newest release. While I preferred Simon over this one, I still really enjoyed this one. Albertalli's humor is spot on, and she seamlessly incorporates diversity into her works.

I loved the natural diversity in this novel. While most of the characters were diverse, it never felt like any of the characters existed just to be diverse. Molly and Cassie have two moms and were born via invetro; one of their moms is African American; Cassie is gay; Molly is overweight; both are Jewish; and there is a pansexual character. All of these diverse elements are so natural to the story and handled perfectly. I particularly enjoyed the way that Molly's weight was handled as it is a part of who she is, but she never once mentions loosing weight or hating her weight. She is who she is, and she loves who she is. So refreshing! 

I found Molly's narration to be very natural. It really felt like a seventeen year old girl was narrating this story, which is both good and bad. It always takes me a minute to adjust to teenager thinking again when I read a YA book that is authentically teenager-ish, but once I adjusted, I really enjoyed it. Molly is funny and honest, and her views on love and romance are authentic. 

The characters are great. Reid was a sweetheart and a great YA male love interest. He was unique and authentically and apologetically himself. This novel dealt with a lot of themes central to YA, romantic love, sibling relationship, body image, and handling change. 

This is a YA novel that I'm really glad exists. Although it doesn't quite reflect my experience as a teenager, I know it reflects a teenage experience that is not uncommon, but that is not commonly represented in YA fiction. I will be picking up whatever Albertalli comes out with in the future; she has earned a seat on my list of favorite YA contemporary authors. 

Books I'm Dying To Reread

Rereading is a topic I spend a lot of time thinking about every year. I LOVE rereading and yet I hardly ever do it because I have so many books I want to read for the first time. I always feel a pull to read my unread books before rereading, and of course, my shelves will never be empty of unread books, so rereading never happens. But I do want to make an effort to allow myself to reread more and not feel guilty about it. I've been itching to reread something lately, and these books are at the top of my list.

P.S. You are about to be linked to some very old reviews, so let's just take a moment to be thankful of how far my reviews and posts have come since staring the blog in 2014.

Review

I LOVED this novel, but its emotional nature makes me hesitant to reread it. It was easy to convince myself to pick it up for the first time after reading and loving Code Name Verity when I knew it would be emotional, but was unsure of just how emotional it would be. Now that I know, I'm hesitant to do that to myself again even though I want to reread it in the worst way. I'll talk myself into one day. 

Review

I want to reread this one for a couple reasons, the first of which is that I don't remember anything from it and I want to continue on with the series; the second reason is that I think I would like it even more the second time around than I did the first time because of my developed love for creepy and supernatural stories. The main thing keeping me from reading it right now is the size. This book is huge! Maybe when the third book in the series comes out, I will marathon all three starting with this one.

Review

I will be rereading this one before the end of the year! I loved this novel so much and I've wanted to reread it ever since I finished it in 2015. This could easily be a book I reread every year. I'm a little nervous about not liking it as much the second time through, but I'm pretty confident that this book will hold up to the image of it I have in my mind. 

Review

This book was strange and wonderful. I have never read anything else like it in YA, and I really want to reread it as I have been thinking about it a lot since reading it three years ago. This is a short read, so it should be a quick reread I can squeeze in before the end of the year. 

Review 

This is another novel I keep coming back to in my mind on a pretty regular basis. The atmosphere of this novel is amazingly developed and I think it makes a lot of really interesting social commentary on quite a few issues. I would like to reread so I can further develop my thoughts on this one, and I would love to experience this novel again, as it is an experience.

Review 

I'm not sure if I want to reread this one before watching the T.V. or after. I think I will go with after since I have heard that the show differs from the book quite a bit and I don't want to ruin the show by having the book too fresh in my mind. In addition to rereading this, I need to get reading some of Atwood's other works for the first time! See what I mean about prioritizing new reads over rereads?!

What books are you dying to reread? Any you reread on a regular basis?

Recently Read: The Female of the Species (Read This Book Please)

Author: Mindy McGinnis
Genre: Young Adult- Contemporary
Publication Date: 2016
Page Count: 352
Rating: 5/5

Add on Goodreads

Alex Craft knows how to kill someone. And she doesn’t feel bad about it. When her older sister, Anna, was murdered three years ago and the killer walked free, Alex uncaged the language she knows best. The language of violence.

While her crime goes unpunished, Alex knows she can’t be trusted among other people, even in her small hometown. She relegates herself to the shadows, a girl who goes unseen in plain sight, unremarkable in the high school hallways. Goodreads

This book will stick with me forever. I went into this book totally blind to the plot, (I knew it was a contemporary that dealt with sexual assault and that was it) and I was floored. This book is so dark and captivating. I couldn't stop reading, and I had no idea how it was going to end. This book is full of so much violence and rage and it's so hard to read but impossible to look away.

This book deals with so much in such a brutally honest way. The main issue this book examines is violence against women. The things that happen in this book are horrible and real and horrible because they are real. The idea of rape cultural and the dangers of ignoring the small contributors, like the 'one-off rape joke' a friend makes or the sexist graffiti in the school bathrooms, are laid out so honestly in this novel. This novel does not let you look away from the reality of the fear of living as a female and it left an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach for the entire novel.

This novel and its characters are so complex. I enjoyed that this novel was told from three different perspectives (two female, one male) but the other two perspectives were just meant as another way for us to get to know Alex and the way other people see her. Alex is one of the most complicated characters I have come across in a YA contemporary and maybe even YA in general. She is capable of such violence and yet is so human. The two other perspectives are Peekay, (PK for Preacher's kid) who befriends Alex, and Jack, your typical popular YA male, who develops a relationship with Alex. I enjoyed both of these characters and found them likeable and fully developed, but Alex is the real star of the show.

I have a pretty low tolerance for violence. I do not enjoy action movies, I can't stomach war movies at all, and I struggle to understand humanity's tendency for violence. So while I was uncomfortable and shocked by the violence Alex was capable of, I had to ask myself why. Why would I be shocked at violence coming from a seventeen year old girl when I know the violence she has seen and been subject to? Alex's sister was raped and murdered- brutally murdered-;she sees violence towards women in her life outside of school (spend two seconds reading the news or social media and you can find at least as many cases of violence against women) AND she has seen the same violence her sister faced threatened on her friends. It's a sad reality when violence against women is not shocking, but a retaliation of violence is. Obviously, Alex is more a symbol for revenge and justice for violence against women, and the reaction I have had to her character will keep me thinking for ages.

This book deals with something that women deal with everyday, and Alex's existence forces us to ask how we can seek justice for these wrongs. This question is huge, impossible, and heartbreaking to think about, but it's there. I would love to say that this novel contains the solution to this problem, but it doesn't, as no novel ever could. All I know, is that I am so glad that this novel exists and that I have read it.

While this long post has been more a reaction to the novel rather than a review of it, I'm here to tell you to read this novel. You will have a strong reaction to it and it will make you think. It is dark, well-written, and captivating.

All we can do is continue to work everyday to end gender based violence in any way that we can.

If you liked this book, please check out Only Ever Yours by Louise O'Neill

Diversity Bingo Update #2

In this post back in January I mentioned that the only real long-term reading goal I was setting for myself was to complete as many squares on the Diversity Bingo chart as possible. Here I am with my half-way through the year update, with some more squares to mark off and books to recommend to you.

You can read my first update post here. 

Newly Completed Categories:

Titles link to my reviews 

Displaced Main Character: The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon 

Black Main Character (Own Voices): The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

LGBTQA+ Main Character of Color: The Inexplicable Logic of my Life by Benjamin Alire Saenz (Gay, Mexican American)

Own Voices: Fingersmith by Sarah Waters (Lesbian Romance)

Contemporary World Arranged Marriage: When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon

Currently Reading:

Romance with a Trans Main Character: When the Moon was Ours by Anna-Marie McLemore

I really enjoyed all of these novels and highly recommend them! I'm really loving this challenge and how naturally it aligns with what I already had and have on my TBR. Leave me some recommendations for my unfulfilled categories if you have any!  

Recently Read: When Dimple Met Rishi

Author: Sandhya Menon
Genre:Young Adult- Contemporary
Page Count: 380
Publication Date: 2017
Rating: 4/5

Add on Goodreads 

Dimple is not interested in getting married. She's interested in college and computer programming, even though her mother would rather see her getting married to the most eligible Indian bachelor. Rishi is a romantic. He's ready to give up his passion for art for a stable engineering career and a family. When Dimple and Rishi's families arrange a meeting for the two in the hopes that it ends in marital bliss, Dimple and Rishi have very different reactions. 

This book was about the cutest thing I have ever read. It was a good ol' fashioned too-cute-to-handle YA contemporary and I loved it! I loved both Dimple and Rishi, and the fact they we get both of their p.o.v.s throughout the story. Rishi is so sweet and optimistic and I loved Dimple's skepticism and drive. Their relationship with one another developed naturally and realistically.

I really appreciated a lot of things about this book. I loved that Dimple and Rishi were so passionate about their interests: coding for Dimple and comic book art for Rishi. They are both unashamedly passionate about their interests and that's something that I love seeing in YA characters in contemporaries. I also loved that Dimple was honest about the challenges facing a woman of color interested in the tech world, and her skepticism to accept her family's and culture's expectations for a woman of her age. 

I also appreciated the way that this novel handled sex, as that is an element about YA contemporaries that usually gets under my skin. I won't give anything away, but I thought this novel displayed a healthy and empowering view of the topic and the decisions surrounding it. 

This book had me laughing out loud and swooning, It was the perfect quick summer romance read. I really felt for both characters by the end of the novel, and this book has definitely made its way to my favorite YA contemporaries list.   

Top Ten Tuesday: My 2017 Favorites So Far

So far this year I have read twenty-five books, which of course, isn't as many as I had hoped to read at the half-way point of the year, but I don't think I will ever read as many books as I would like to in a year. Here are my favorite books I've read in 2017 (so far.) 

Hosted by: The Broke and the Bookish

Click the book title to read my review

1. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz

I loved all of the characters in this book and couldn't put it down! This is a book I will be rereading in the future many times. 

2. The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon

I'm a sucker for any book that deals with the idea of fate, and this novel is so well crafted and heartfelt. The romance is adorable and heart wrenching. I laughed, I cried, and I thought about for days after finishing it. 

3. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

This book lived up to the hype for me. All of the characters were so well developed, even the smallest of side characters, and the message so important and well delivered. This book entertained and delivered a strong message and sense of hope. I'm hoping we will see more YA books getting political and touching on current social issues, as young people care about those things too, and have the power to make quite the impact on our society, sometimes they just need to be reminded that they have that power. 

4. The Inexplicable Logic of my Life by Benjamin Alire Saenz

I picked this one up on a whim as I didn't even know it existed and I'm so glad I did. I love Saenz's writing and the way he crafts characters. This was another book I had a hard time putting down. 

5. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

This book had me on the edge of my seat for the whole five hundred pages! I loved the twists and turns and the historical setting. 

6. When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon (Review coming tomorrow) 

This was about the cutest book I've ever read! I loved both Dimple and Rishi and their passions for computer tech and art respectively. 

Surprisingly, five out of the six of my favorite novels of the year are YA contemporaries, a genre I don't often read. Perhaps that means I should read it more often!