Book Talk: March Wrap Up

Before I get into the books, I want to wish a very, very happy birthday to my best friend and soul mate, Mikaela! She is incredibly old now (only one more year until twenty!!!!) and deserves a million birthday wishes so leave them in the comments below!

As far as reading goes, I was definitely expecting to get through a lot more than I did this month. With spring break and coming off February on a high note, I was hoping to use my free time more wisely. I will cut myself some slack, though, because, while I had plenty of leisure time over break, I was spending it with my brother. Sibling bonding time is more important than a reading challenge. I have really fallen behind on my 2015 Reading Challenge but I'm just going to count on summer to catch up because Spring Quarter is nonstop. There are a couple books sitting on my bedside table that I'm excited to get to and hopefully those will pick me up out of my reading slump. Click the read more to get into the books!

Stats:

• Books Read: 4
• Genre: 
• Dystopian: 1
• Fantasy: 1
• Mystery: 1
• Non-fiction: 1
• Page Count: 1,523

Books:

Captive by Aimee Carter

Captive is the second book in a dystopian trilogy, Pawn being the first, called The Blackcoat Rebellion. In this future America, there is a class ranking system with the VIIs at the very top, only the Prime Minister and his family get this rank, and VIs are ministers, so on and so forth. On your sixteenth birthday, you take an exam to place into a rank (up to a VI, obviously). This trilogy follows Kitty Doe, an Extra, who's had it rough. Kitty has plans to spend the rest of her life with her childhood sweetheart Ben, but that dream went out the window when she became a III. Kitty is then kidnapped by the Prime Minister himself and has no choice but to be Masked as his niece, Lila Hart, and stop the rebellion that she's been organizing. This dystopian novel shows a lot of the politics behind the scenes. The most interesting character by far is Knox, Lila's fiance. His motives aren't really clear to the reader but he seems to be a major player. By the end of Captive, Knox has been set on a path to play a bigger and bigger role in the development of this story. While I'm not as excited for Queen (expected November 24th, 2015) as I was for Captive, I am still looking forward to the final installment in the trilogy. At this point, I am too invested to go without closure.

Modern East Asia: an Integrated History by Jonathan Lipman, Barbara Molony, & Michael Robinson

This is a traditional textbook. Nothing too fancy. I started reading this in January at the beginning of Winter Quarter for a class called Modern East Asia. While there were times when this textbook was dry, it was considerably more engaging than some of the other textbooks I've read. That could just be because this actually was new information for me. I'm used to learning history from the American, or sometimes just simply Western, perspective and while you could tell the authors were American, they did a pretty solid job of keeping their biases under wraps. This course gave me a new perspective on the last ~200 years in world history. So much was happening alongside the history we learn about in our American history classes that we never hear about because they aren't really relevant to America's interests. What I really liked about this textbook is at the beginning of every chapter, they would have a section titled "World Context" where they would include all of the other major events going on outside of East Asia in that time period. At the end of the chapters, connections between the events in the three main East Asian countries were made. The diaspora had their own section as well. These three sections emphasized how East Asian history fit in with the rest of the world and that's really what I'm looking for in a history course. I love history because there are so many things that impacted each other and one event can literally change the timeline. Overall, textbook was chill and the class was cool.

Siege and Storm by Leigh Bardugo

I was kind of iffy on this one. While I remember reading the first book, Shadow and Bone, and really enjoying it, I could not for the life of me remember a single detail. When I started reading Siege and Storm, I realized I had no idea what events had led up to that point in time and I spent too much of my reading time trying to piece together what had happened in the first book based off others' book reviews. Despite having to go out of my way to refresh my memory, I still enjoyed this book. I think this world has a lot of great potential but the author isn't really maximizing it. I can't really pinpoint what my problem with it is but as I'm reading, I just feel like it can be more. I'm still intrigued by what this series has to offer so I'm definitely going to pick up the final book in the trilogy but now I know not to go in expecting to remember any of it.

All Fall Down by Ally Carter

I had so much fun with this book. I love the world Carter's stories take place in. Grace grew up surrounded by international politics. Her grandfather is the US Ambassador to the small Mediterranean country of Adria and her father is in the military. A couple years ago, her mother died and Grace is sure that she was actually murdered by the Scarred Man. Too bad nobody believes her. In her efforts to collect evidence proving the Scarred Man is guilty, we tag along in Grace's adventure, unveiling unsavory secrets. From that description, it sounds like this is a very grim book. It is, in a sense, but the setting and the secondary characters keep this book light and a fun read. I cannot wait for more and I really hope that this is set in the same world as the Gallagher Girls and the Heist Society. We've already seen a crossover between those two, I'd love to see Embassy Row added to the mix. The thing I adore the most about this setting is that there is a great diversity on this one street where everybody speaks multiple languages and they all grow up surrounded by all these other mini nations. Doesn't that sound fantastic?


Overall, my reading month was meh. I have this horrible feeling that it's only going to go downhill from here. I think last year I hit a reading slump at around this time, too. The difference was I was a lot further along on my reading challenge and I was in high school, aka I actually had time to read. If you have any tips on kicking a reading slump, definitely let me know.


Talk to you soon!

xo, Yvette