Book Talk: February Wrap Up

It's safe to say I started off the month slow. Two books in two weeks? And one of them was for class?! Pick up the pace, Yvette! Thankfully, as the month progressed, I was able to fit more reading in (even though the end of the month was absolutely packed for me). I almost matched January's book count! To see what I read at the start of the year, click here. Looking back, I'm amazed that I found any time at all to read. I had papers due every week on top of midterms and #hairoftheweek and the multitude of other life things.

Even though I read fewer books in February, I did end up with a higher page count than in January. I'd call that a success. Although I still am not yet caught up to my staggering Thirteen Book January of 2014, I would consider myself to be in a good place. I checked two books off my Popsugar Reading Challenge, which I have a post about here, and contributed five books to my Goodreads reading challenge.

Stats:

• Books Read: 5
• Class: 2
• Pleasure: 3
• Genre:
• Sci-fi/Dystopian: 3
• Non-fiction: 2
• Page Count: 1,909

Books:

This Shattered World by Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner

Whoa. This book. This Shattered World has been one of my most anticipated books since I read the first, These Broken Stars, in January of 2014. These books are part of the Starbound trilogy. The Starbound trilogy isn't a true trilogy in that they follow a different set of characters in the same universe. Companion novels would be a more fitting term. I can easily say that this is one of the best series I have ever read. As you can probably gather from the titles and covers, it's a sci-fi series. I would classify them as sci-fi/survival. These Broken Stars was marketed as "Titanic in space" and while it wasn't wrong, there was a lot more to the story. If we have ever talked books before, you would have heard me singing this trilogy's praises. I could rave about these books forever and I would be more than happy to personally convince you to pick up this series. Each book follows a couple and their misadventures on various planets in the galaxy. Currently, we are working our way to the third book where all the storylines will entwine and that is a moment I am eagerly waiting for. So far, we've gotten Lilac and Tarver's story about how they crash-landed on a planet housing Lilac's father's secrets and Jubilee and Flynn's story further complicating the man in question. I have already written so much but there's so much more to say. These books definitely get me a little too excited about reading (is that even possible?) and if you haven't given these books a shot, I'd highly suggest you do so (preferably ASAP). Their Fractured Light comes out at the end of December 2015 and it is definitely one of my most highly anticipated new releases of the year.

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

Persepolis is graphic novel. If you recall from my previous Wrap Up, all my required readings for that class are graphic texts. Persepolis is set in Iran during the Iran-Iraq War that occurred in the 1980s. We begin the story with a young Marji and we watch her grow up as the war progresses. This book is unique because the real life events of war are told from the perspective of a child. The version I had was actually a combination of both Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return. While Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood followed Marji as a child in Iran at the start of the war, Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return shows Marji's experiences as a teenager and young adult in Austria and finally back in Iran. The story gives you an idea of the effect of war on a child. There is a lot of historical context in this graphic novel and it's quite interesting to learn of the war from a child's point of view. As with any human, there was no way Marji could have gotten the whole picture and seeing her personal experiences with the impact the war had on civilians was very eye-opening. At the end of Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, Marji's parents send her to Austria for her own safety and her life pretty much falls to pieces while she's there and it really doesn't help that she's disconnected from almost everybody she knows. This story is heartwrenching and honest. I am not ashamed to say I cried three times over the course of this book. The art style is simple to keep the focus on the words and everything is in black and white not only to symbolize the bleak times but also to keep the reader from becoming distracted by flashy topics. War is no joke and Satrapi makes you aware of that through her own eyes as she grew into adulthood.

In The Afterlight by Alexandra Bracken

This series started out so strong. The Darkest Minds trilogy is set in an America affected by a disease called IAAN. The catch is that the only demographic that seems to be developing this disease are children. Oh yeah, and it gives them brain powers. Depending on how the child was affected by the disease, he or she could produce fire, read minds, create and control electricity, utilize telekinesis, or be a tech whiz. The government is terrified of these children and put them in rehabilitation camps that aren't too different from concentration camps. The story follows Ruby as she breaks out of her camp and meets up with other free Psi children. Their journey to justice is stretched out across the three books. The first installment, The Darkest Minds, was incredible. It had me hooked and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys dystopian. The second book, Never Fade, was still good, but sequels are rarely better than the original. The final book, In The Afterlight, however, was tough to get through. I actually started reading this book when it came out last year but I hardly made it a quarter of the way through before having to return it to the library. At the time, I blamed it on a reading slump but now that I've finished the book, I can say with certainty that it was hard to get through because I simply no longer cared about the characters. This series may lend itself better to marathoning because by the time I picked up In The Afterlight, I had no attachment left to Ruby or Liam or any other character that wasn't Zu or Chubs. In hindsight, I realized that I lost interest somewhere in Never Fade. When a certain character died in that book I really didn't care at all and usually the thing that gets me is how the survivors handle their grief because I tend to mirror it. Nothing. However, if you read The Darkest Minds and Never Fade and still feel for Ruby, by all means, continue on. In The Afterlight is an exciting book with plenty of inner monologue (which is one of the reasons why I skimmed a lot of it. Who cares about what the protagonist is thinking if you don't care about the protagonist herself?) and there are parts that are sure to get your heart racing. I wouldn't take this trilogy off the table. If you've been thinking about starting this series, I'd say go for it. In The Afterlight had a really satisfying ending that would have left me with a warm and fuzzy feeling in my chest.

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

I do not know what to think of this book. This is another graphic narrative I was assigned to read for class. Like, Persepolis, Fun Home is a memoir following the childhood of a girl and the trauma she experiences as she makes discoveries about her family, specifically her father. While the timeline in Persepolis is linear, Fun Home jumps around from Bechdel's childhood, to her college years, to her parents' life before she was even born. This book focuses on the complicated relationship Bechdel had with her father. The main reason for their convoluted relationship is simply that her father is a complicated man. The illustrations are done in black and white and a blue-toned slate gray. Everything about this narrative is strange. The Bechdel family is not a typical one and it is very off-putting. Nobody seems to love each other. I don't understand. Even now that I've finished it, I cannot seem to process the events that occurred in this book. I do know that I went into this book expecting something completely different. You know how you sometimes "read" a word but you don't actually read it? You just make up something similar in your mind and call it good? This happens a lot to me when it comes to names in high fantasy. Well, when I picked this book up at the beginning of the quarter, I read this as "A Family Tragicomedy." How misleading is that. I am glad I didn't buy this one because I am definitely not going to read this again if I can help it. Nobody in the family cared about each other in a way I could comprehend and that was really unsettling for me to see.

Ignite Me by Tahereh Mafi

Yes, yes, YES! At last, a Juliette that isn't whiny. I'm not gonna lie, going into Ignite Me, I wasn't expecting much - I just wanted to finish the trilogy. I really enjoyed the first book in the Shatter Me trilogy, Shatter Me, because I could understand where Juliette was coming from with the whole sent-to-prison-for-murder-because-anybody-who-touches-my-skin-dies thing. She then is broken out by Warner, who works for the Reestablishment, the regime that imprisoned her, and falls in love with Adam, a soldier and the only person who can touch her without being critically wounded. Warner is fascinated by Juliette and her powers. He wants to use her as a weapon for the Reestablishment. Juliette can either comply, or rebel. We all know which she chooses (complacency would make for a snorefest of a novel).

I won't give you the plot to the second installment, Unravel Me, because spoilers exist but oh my goodness that book was hard to get through. The writing style in this trilogy is unique in that there is a lot of repetition and a good chunk of the book is crossed out. (This is more so the case in the first book because it's meant to be Juliette's diary but still present in the following books.) This wouldn't be a problem, as it wasn't in Shatter Me, but Unravel Me was almost entirely angsty internal monologue. It was all too much. Throughout the series, it didn't matter to me if Juliette ended up together with either Warner or Adam which translated to book two feeling really immature and pointless. The real, dire problems (of survival and other things of the sort) felt like they took a backseat to the love triangle.

Although I didn't really care who Juliette ended up with romantically but Kenji x Juliette is my brotp. I love love love Kenji and I'm glad he played a bigger part in the final installment. He's the best best friend and such great comic relief but he also has real emotions, which I appreciated. Another secondary character I loved was James, Adam's little brother. Everything about him is so innocent and adorable, I wanted to hold him forever. Another character I want to mention is Warner (but only mention because I could write an entire paper about him). He is a complex person, which makes him an interesting villain. I really felt for Warner. Oh, Warner. I didn't pick up Shatter Me until a few years after it was released and I could not understand why everybody was so hung up on Warner. Now that I've finished the series, I can safely say that the audience for the Shatter Me trilogy has sound judgment. This trilogy gives off some X-Men vibes and it's a dystopian so if that's what you're into, I would definitely give it a go. (If you're finding that you like it but you don't quite love it, push through to Ignite Me. It's the best one.)

While I'm satisfied with the number of books I read, the quality could have been better. The books I read for class were interesting in their own right but as memoirs, they didn't give me what I was looking for. After the slow start to the month as well as trouble getting though In The Afterlight, I was afraid I was caught in a reading slump but Ignite Me was fast-paced and the chapters were short, leaving me feeling like a reading speed demon. I'm definitely in the reading mood and more than ready to take on March. What have you been reading recently? Let me know! Maybe we can talk about books how exciting would that be?

Talk to you soon!

xo, Yvette