Current Read: Anna and the Swallow Man by Gavriel Savit
Current Listen: The Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell
Hey there, Internet! It's been a minute. A lot of minutes. My bad.
The short explanation of my absence is that it's Oscar season. My life becomes trying to not become SO behind with work that people notice while seeing two to three movies every weekend and maybe finding one (or two or three) that's on demand to watch during the week. It's basically impossible to see EVERY Oscar nominated film when you live in Indiana, but by Sunday I will have seen all but three foreign films and three short documentaries. (Side note: The fact that HBO has purchased the distribution rights for those three short documentaries and has not released them is driving me UP THE WALL. It's fine.) I'm just as passionate about books, but the Oscar fever is only for about three months of the year and helps combat that winter blues.
ANYWAY.
I have been reading. Many things. I decided I would just give you short run downs of what's been happening in my reading life, and then I'll start writing longer reviews shortly.
1. The Selection series by Kiera Cass. I pretty much devoured these at the very beginning of this year. After the Thomas Hardy I needed something a little lighter. These are basically dystopian YA meets The Bachelor. Which sounded very silly to me. But I had heard a bunch of people talking about them (they're pretty highly rated on Goodreads), and they were all sitting there on the shelf at HPB for like three bucks a piece. It happened. They were not deep or super well written, but the main character, America Singer, is quite strong willed and not a doormat, which I liked. And the love interest is dishy. I enjoyed them a lot and will probably read the new series she's written that takes place in the same universe. These would be great for a summer read or just when you need a reading brain break.
2. Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow. I FINISHED IT! It took about a month and a half of listening, but I did it! There are still sections that I don't understand (a lot of the setting up of the national bank and consolidating state debt was beyond me), but I thought it was a great listen overall. Alexander Hamilton was a really cool dude who "doesn't get enough credit for all the credit he gave us." The fact that someone who was born into such crappy circumstances was one of our most influential founding fathers is astounding, and it was fun to fit his role into everything I already knew about that period in history. DEFINITELY recommend if you're into the musical Hamilton, since there are many direct quotes from Hamilton's writings that appear in Lin-Manuel Miranda's lyrics. (Best of wives and best of women...) Recommended for musical theater nerds and history nerds.
3. The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey. WHOA NELLY. This one knocked my socks off. I was not expecting such a gripping book. It's more than a typical alien invasion book. The reader gets a lot of varied perspectives from different sorts of biased narrators, so it was really fun to piece together what was ACTUALLY happening through combining their narratives. Twists and turns and action and adventure and feels all over the place. Pretty much a perfect modern adventure novel. I will read the next book, but probably not for a while. The to-read list keeps getting longer and longer...
4. Stars Above by Marissa Meyer. Lunar Chronicles fans everywhere, rejoice! This is a short story collection set in the Lunar Chronicles universe. The stories are not long (the longest is about 50 pages, and they're all quick reads), but you get some fun accounts of things that were only alluded to in the book. Most of it takes place before the events of Cinder, but she makes sure to include everyone's favorite characters in some way. The last story, though, takes place after the events of Winter, and it made my life. No spoilers. Read it if you've read the others.
I'm going to stop there for now. I have two other blog posts that will be written (SOON, I PROMISE), about the other things that I have been reading that fit together more thematically. Also just don't want to overwhelm you. Thanks for reading! Please let me know if you want to hear anything about anything! A tag you think I'd like, or even more info on my movie nerdiness. That's all she read!
