May Wrap-Up

Hello Interwebs!

Here it is the end of another month and another monthly wrap-up. I had a pretty good reading month in May, I read a total of 7 books: 1 audio book and 6 eBooks on my Kindle/phone. 3 of the books were 5 stars, 5 were 4 stars, and one was a 2 star book. One nonfiction, two adult contemporary, two young adult contemporary, one young adult sci fi/fantasy, and one adult sci fi/fantasy.

First, I had a couple goals I had set for May.

1. Continue reading audio books, this one didn't go so well. I listened to one  audio book and it was the one I'd started at the end of April. I couldn't decide on a book to listen to afterwards so I just didn't listen to another. 
2. Read more actual books, not just audio books: this one went better. I read 6 actual books in May and only listened to one audio book. 
3. Buy less books. This was an epic fail. May a lot of new releases I wanted to get and I hit Book Bub really hard. 
4. Weekly blog posts. This one also didn't go so well but at the same time I did make seven total blog posts so definitely much better. I also haven't finished reviewing all my May reads but I'll be working on those shortly. 

So on to the books I read in the month of May. The first I finished was Valentine by Elizabeth Wetmore. 

 This was a really good book and the April pick for the Read with Jenna book club. It follows the lives of several women in Odessa, Texas following the sexual assault of a teenage girl on the oil fields on Valentine's Day night. It was a serious book that had an important message. I've already posted a full review of this book. I enjoyed it and gave it a 4/5 stars on GoodReads.

Second I finished The Book of Gutsy Women by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chelsea Clinton.

I listened to this as an audio book read by the authors. It's a collection of short stories about women in history with guts who made a difference for everyone. It was a good read and the authors did a good job reading the audio book. I've already written a full review of this book as well. I gave it a 4/5 stars on GoodReads.

Third, I finished Thunderhead by Neal Shusterman.

This is the second book in the Arc of a Scythe trilogy and I borrowed the audio book from the local library using Libby. I loved this book. To me, this was better than the first book of the series and I'm looking forward to the last one in the series. There's a full spoilery review of this book on the blog already.

The fourth book I finished was Year One by Nora Roberts.

This is the first book in her Chronicles of the One series. A friend of my mom's loaned me the second book, saying that I'd probably like them, so I borrowed the first book from the library on Libby. I did not like it. I've read some of Nora Roberts's other books: a couple of her romance novels, as well as the futuristic detective novels she writes as J.D. Robb. This is a dystopian novel that takes place after a huge percentage of the world's population succumbs to a plague while a percentage of those who are immune end up with super powers. I'll put a full review up. I thought it was underdeveloped as a dystopian and had WAY too much religious savior/messiah illusions. I probably won't read any of the other books. I didn't hate the book but I didn't like it either so I gave it a 2/5 stars on GoodReads.

The fifth book I finished in May was All Adults Here by Emma Straub.

This was May's Read with Jenna pick and I liked it. This was a family story, both comedic and dramatic at times. After the main character Astrid Strick witnesses someone she's known for years get hit by a school bus she reevaluates her life and her family. I really liked the way that everyone was interconnected in the town and not just the family itself and the way it addressed adult family relationships so realistically. I gave it a nice 4/5 stars.

The next book I finished in May was With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo.

I read her first book a couple years ago and I loved her writing style and the life she gives to minority voices. This book was about a high school senior named Emoni who lives with her grandmother and is balancing her senior year of high school with her love of cooking and raising her two year old daughter. She gets the opportunity to take a professional cooking class through her high school which includes a trip to Spain and her life starts changing. I loved this book just as much as her first one and gave it a 5/5 stars on GoodReads.

Finally, the last book I read in May was Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo.

This was Elizabeth Acevedo's newest book and like her first book this was written in verse. This was about two girls: Camino who lives in the Dominican Republic and Yahaira from New York City who find out about each other and their mutual father's secrets when he is  killed in a plane crash. I really enjoyed this book as well and I'm glad I got it as soon as it came out. This was also a solid 5/5 stars on GoodReads.

So that's all the books I read in May. My favorite was definitely Thunderhead but the two Elizabeth Acevedo books were close seconds. My least favorite was hands down Year One.


Now here's the really long list, the list of books I purchased in May. I definitely failed with my "buy less books" goal but most of these were from Book Bub and less than $3 each.

1. Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo (2020)
2. With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo (2019)
3. All Adults Here by Emma Straub (2020)
4. Star Wars: Queen's Shadow by E.K. Johnston (2019)
5. The Girl Who Came Home by Hazel Gaynor (2014)
6. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman (2017)
7. Unorthodox by Deborah Feldman (2012)
8. The German Midwife by Mandy Robotham (2018)
9. Seed by Ania Ahlborn (2011)
10. In the Shadow of Vesuvius by Tasha Alexander (2020)
11. The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer (2010)
12. The Alice Network by Kate Quinn (2017)
13. Daughter of the Reich by Louise Fein (2020)
14. When Women Ruled the World by Kara Cooney (2018)
15. Aurora Rising by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff (2019)
16. The Lost Daughter by Gill Paul (2019)
17. Sold on a Monday by Kristina McMorris (2018)
18. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins (2020)
19. Real Men Knit by Kwana Jackson (2020)
20. The Life and (Medieval) Times of Kit Sweetly by Jamie Pacton (2020)
21. Scythe by Neal Shusterman (2016)
22. Thunderhead by Neal Shusterman (2018)
23. The Toll by Neal Shusterman (2019)
24. Black Widow: Forever Red by Margaret Stohl (2015)
25. After the Fog by Kathleen Shoop (2012)
26. The Strongman and the Mermaid by Kathleen Shoop (2019)
27. My Lady Jane by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows (2016)
28. Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson (2019)
29. The First Time I Said Goodbye by Claire Allan (2013)
30. The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna by Juliet Grames (2019)
31. The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner (2020) 

So yeah, that's 31 books I bought in May. Over half of them were from Book Bub and less than $3 and most of the others were new releases. 

And that's my May wrap-up. I really don't want to talk about the absurd amount of books I obtained this month and the fact that my TBR is probably somewhere outside of my life expectancy. 

Happy Reading!

Richelle & Emma

Thunderhead Review

Hello Interwebs!

Here I am with another book review! This one is for the third book I finished in May: Thunderhead by Neal Shusterman, the third book in his Arc of a Scythe trilogy. I read the first one back in March and really enjoyed it so I had put a hold on the digital copy of the second one with Libby and it finally came in. And I LOVED IT. This is maybe my favorite book I've read so far this year, and definitely in my top 5 favorite series of all time. In fact, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be buying this trilogy either for my Kindle or in hard copy to own and reread. As always beware of SPOILERS

I didn't do a real review for the first book back in March so these books take place in a future where death has been completely conquered. Things that would have killed people in the past now just render them "deadish" until they are taken to a revival center to be healed and revived and go along their business in general. The world is run in a sense by this overarching computer system known as the Thunderhead that provides any information you could ever want and watches over humanity making sure their lives are as simple and easy and carefree as possible. Of course immortality has its drawbacks, chief among them being the always present worry of over population. In response to this the Scythedom came into effect. A totally deliberately separate entity from the Thunderhead, the Scythes are trained and tasked with gleaning a set number of the population each year to keep humanity's numbers curbed. The first book follows two teenagers, Rowan and Citra, who are apprenticed to a scythe to become one themselves. As having two apprentices is completely unheard of the leadership of the Scythedom decides that the successful apprentice's first act as a Scythe will be to glean the loser. Through the book you learn about the different factions in the scythedom: the old guard who do things honorably and without judgement but don't do what they do for the enjoyment, and the new guard who do enjoy what they're doing and want there to be no limits to it. After their original mentor apparently self-gleans (suicide being the only way for a Scythe to stop being a Scythe) Citra is taken in by one of the Old Guard, Scythe Curie who is known as the Grand Dame of Death and is famous for being the one to glean the last US President and his cabinet. Rowan is taken on by Scythe Goddard who leads the New Guard and specializes in mass gleanings: you see him over the course of the book glean an entire airplane of people, a shopping mall food court, and a religious sect. Through the first book you feel Citra take on her heavy responsibility of what she's training to do while Rowan is becoming disillusioned with the Scythedom and the corruption within it. After being blamed for their first mentor's death, Citra goes on the run with the help of Scythe Curie while Rowan turns on Scythe Goddard while he and his under Scythes are gleaning an entire monastery of anti-scythe religious cultists. Rowan decapitates Goddard, takes his Scythe ring, and sets the place on fire saving the cultists he can and escaping. After her name is cleared, Citra is determined to be the one who becomes the full Scythe but instead of killing Rowan she punches him instead so that his lips touch her ring (a kiss of the ring being the way a Scythe grants someone immunity for a year). He escapes and Citra takes the name Scythe Anastasia after the famous lost Russian Grand Duchess.

Thunderhead takes up where Scythe left off. Citra, now Scythe Anastasia has found her rhythm as a full Scythe working underneath her mentor, Scythe Curie. They work in a way that is admirable and serious. At the same time, the escaped Rowan is using the Scythe ring he took off of Goddard and wearing a black Scythe's robes has dubbed himself Scythe Lucifer and is gleaning corrupt Scythes. Then someone makes multiple attempts on Anastasia and Curie's lives, everything revolving around a young man named Greyson who the Thunderhead is using to subvert the attempts and prevent the upcoming strife even when it can't affect the Scythedom itself. In the Independent Republic of Texas, Rowan is caught and abducted by Scythe Rand who escaped the fire that Rowan had used to try and destroy Goddard and his other Scythes and has possession of Goddard's head which she transplants onto Rowan's old friend Tyger's body to revive the corrupt Scythe. At the conclave where the Scythes gather four times a year the old leader is stepping down with Curie nominated to take his place, just before the vote Goddard appears and her competitor steps down so Goddard can run against her. But Citra foils the plans when after the vote is taken but before it is read she challenges the proceedings and demands a hearing before the Scythes who run the Scythedom globally. While this is happening, their previous mentor Scythe Faraday who had only faked his self-gleaning is looking for information on the early days of the Scythedom to fight against the New Order. But when they're on the island that houses the world council of the Scythes, Goddard attacks, sinks the island leaving the Scythes left on the island to glean the humans who can't get off and then themselves, the council dead, and Rowan and Citra in stasis at the bottom of the Ocean....to be continued in book three.

I never saw the plot twists coming, especially the one at the end. But I am very much looking forward to the third one. Citra and Rowan are such interesting characters. I love the idea of Rowan using Goddard's ring to right the wrongs in the Scythedom as an Angel of Death, trying to restore balance. I also love Citra and her unique brand of gleaning and her rising star among the Scythedom. Working form the inside and the outside it looks like the two of them will be the ones to restore balance and honor to the Scythedom. I like the symbolism with the names they chose to work under: Citra as Anastasia whose name means resurrection, and Rowan the fallen angel.

I gave this book a 5/5 stars with absolutely no reservation and am very impatiently waiting for the third book to become available on Libby, although I might buy the eBooks and read it sooner than that.

Happy Reading!

The Book of Gutsy Women Review

Hello Interwebs!

So here's a review for The Book of Gutsy Women by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chelsea Clinton. I listened to this as an audio book that I rented from the library using the Libby App. For me this book really worked great as audio, read by both of the authors. It's a collection of stories about real women grouped into sections such as education and environment. I gave it a solid 4/5 stars.

I really really enjoyed this book. It was great with the way I listen to audio books, short bursts in the car to and from work, during my half hour lunch, or when I'm relaxing at home doing other things. I could listen to one or two of the stories at each setting and didn't feel like I was leaving off in the middle of something.

There were stories of women I recognized: Maria VonTrapp, the real life inspiration for The Sound of Music; Helen Keller, the deaf, blind woman and her teacher Annie Sullivan who taught her to communicate; Malala Yousafzai, a young girl who was shot in the head for speaking out against the Taliban and advocating for education for girls. There were also plenty I didn't know about like Rigoberta Menchu Tum, a Guatemalan activist and politician who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 for her work promoting Guatemalan Indigenous people's rights; Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, a nun in 17th century Mexico who advocated for education for girls; Elizabeth Peratrovich, who advocated for Alaskan natives around the time of WWII; and Wilma Mankiller, the first woman elected Principle Chief of the Cherokee nation.

This book was so good. It had stories about everyday women who were thrust into extraordinary roles either by happenstance such as Margaret Chase Smith who took over her late husband's House of Representatives seat before running for her own positions in her own right, or design such as  Maria Tallchief, America's first prima ballerinas who aspired to greatness in dance for her entire life.

The book is divided into eleven sections each with the stories of about ten women in them. The categories are Early Inspirations, people who inspired Hillary Rodham Clinton and/or Chelsea Clinton when they were girls; Educational Pioneers; Earth Defenders; Explorers and Inventors; Healers; Athletes; Advocates and Activists; Storytellers; Elected Leaders; Groundbreakers; and Women's Rights Champions. It tells the stories of women you know and women you don't and they're all important stories that need to be remembered.

In short it was a wonderful book with fascinating stories and I highly recommend listening or reading it to anyone.

Happy Reading!

Emma's Bark Box Unboxing

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Coming at you from a Saturday with an unboxing! But not a book unboxing like in the past, this is Emma's first BarkBox unboxing! Full disclosure we used to get BarkBox a couple years ago but I didn't have room to store toys and treats and such so I discontinued it until now when I realized exactly how much she demolishes her toys. Plus with the pandemic closing everything its nice to be able to have some treats in the house for her and not have to go shopping. Anyway onto the BarkBox.

BarkBox is a subscription box for your dog! For about $25 a month you get 2 toys, 2 treats, and a chew. Each month has a super cute theme for the toys and Emma loves it. The first box ships immediately and then you get them monthly after that. I had a coupon code from Facebook when I first ordered this so I got twice the product in my first box, plus I'll be getting the May box soon as well so she'll have tons of toys and treats for this month.

Her first box was April's New York themed box. So here's the unboxing.

Obviously Emma was ready for the unboxing to commence before I even opened up the box.

Something sure smells good in there...and look at all those toys! Inside the box itself we had four toys.

This is Gideon the Pigeon. He's pretty good sized, almost too big for little Emma but she likes him all the same. He's soft and plushy with a more honking style squeaker, almost like a pig grunt noise. She's not so sure about the sound but loves chewing on the extensions on him, like hte wings, beak and feet. Gideon definitely gets a solid 7/10 from Emma.

Second was the Lady Liberty Ball. It's a solid rubber sqeaky ball covered in a felt Statue of Liberty decoration. Emma's not really a ball-loving dog but she does like to chew on the crown's points so maybe a 2/10 from Emma on this one.

Then there was the Pretzel Rope plush. It's a rope toy that crinkles and shaped like a pretzel. So far Emma hasn't been very interested in this one, which is a little surprising since she has rope toys she's loved in the past so I'll keep it out for her to give it a go later.

The last toy in Emma's box is definitely my favorite.

It's a plush, crinkly Chinese take out container with  these adorable plush squeaky dumplings inside. It's called Andi's Favorite Plush Dumplings. The dumplings each have a unique face on them and Emma absolutely goes nuts over them. She didn't really get the velcro takeout box but she loves the dumplings.

Finally it came with four treats.

First we have the Quantum of Turkey treats. They're smallish turkey and cranberry chewy treats.

The BarkBox Simple Salmon cuts. These are longer jerky type chews made of Salmon.

The BarkBox Simple Lamb cuts. The same thing as the salmon ones only made of lamb.

And finally the Quack Dat Chickies. Chewy treats made of chicken and duck. These are the one's Emma has tried and they were a big hit. She doesn't get a lot of treats so we're just opening one at a time for now.

Finally we had the two chews in the box.

The Bark Simple Sweet Potato Chew and the Hard & Chewy Peanut Butter and Carob chew. Emma's not real big on chews like this so we're saving it for an occasion such as a driving trip or something to give her something to have in her kennel.

And that was everything in Emma's introductory BarkBox. She and her Dad were playing with the pigeon.

But she really does love all her toys. The pigeon is already missing part of its beak and one of the dumplings is starting to lose stuffing. So they will be well loved and we might be putting some toys up for when she destroys one in the future.

Happy Reading! (And Barking!)
Richelle

Valentine Review

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So the first book I finished this month was Valentine by Elizabeth Wetmore. This book was April's Read with Jenna pick from Jenna Bush Hager on The Today Show. I discovered the Read with Jenna book club when I picked my February Book of the Month, which was one of her picks and found out that she partners with Book of the Month so each month her selection is either one of the main selections or available as an add-on, although I haven't actually picked one of her books from Book of the Month since I accidentally selected the February one. From this point on there might and probably will be SPOILERS for the book.

This book takes place in Odessa, Texas in 1976 and its about the women of Odessa after a teenage girl is raped on Valentine's night. It follows multiple women's perspectives including the victim, Gloria Ramirez; the woman whose porch she ends up on, Mary Rose Whitehead, and various other women around town as the rape case is tried in the town before it ever hits the courtroom. I really enjoyed the book, even though it does have a heavy subject matter. I liked the various perspectives it gives surrounding the same events and I liked how real it felt. This was Elizabeth Wetmore's debut novel and I gave it a really solid 5/5 stars.

The book starts on Valentine's night when 14 year old, Gloria Ramirez (who renames herself Glory after the attack) is attacked by a man who picks her up at a drive-in restaurant, rapes her, and leaves her for dead out on the oil fields around Odessa. Glory makes her way to a nearby farmhouse and is found on the doorstep by Mary Rose Whitehead and pregnant mother of a young daughter. After an ambulance has been called, the man shows up on the porch and demands Mary Rose send her out to him. The police show up before he can do more than threaten her and arrest him and take Glory to the hospital. As the story unfolds from the attack on Valentine's Day to the culmination of the trial in late August you follow not only Glory and Mary Rose, but other women and girls in town whose lives are also touched by the case in some way. The other narrators include Corrine, an older widow who became an alcoholic after her terminally ill husband had a "hunting accident" and died. Debra Ann (DA) a young girl whose mother disappeared and who has befriended a local vagrant. Ginny, DA's mother who took off to try and lay the foundations of a new life away from Texas, intending to return for her daughter. Suzanne, a local woman with the perfect life who has big opinions on the trial. And finally Karla who lives and works in the town after the events and has an encounter with the man of her own in an almost epilogue fashion.

At first the book seems to be a little bit of a slice of life format, just the stories of these girls and women and how they are interconnected with each other and the trial but comes to a fever pitch just after the trial concludes when Mary Rose snaps and goes after an innocent man, seeing danger around every corner. The relationships are tenuous sometimes but they all interconnect. Glory, the victim, goes to Mary Rose's farmhouse looking for help after the attack. After the attack, Mary Rose no longer feels safe by the oil fields and moves into town where she lives in the same neighborhood as Debra Ann, Corinne, and Suzanne. Mary Rose's daughter, DA, and Suzanne's daughter are all friends. Corrine lives across from Mary Rose in town and is a sort of reluctant surrogate parent/grandparent to DA. You learn the motives each woman has and their struggles and where they all stand on the attack and trial. Mary Rose has a naive idealism as she prepares to testify on Glory's behalf in the trial despite her husband's vehement objections. She has a high degree of fear and paranoia that takes root after being threatened by the perpetrator at the ranch and continues after she enters town with constant threatening calls from the men in town regarding the trial. Corrine is older and is still grieving for her husband and has turned to alcohol. She reluctantly lets DA into her life, as the little girl was very attached to her late husband. She also provides a measure of support for Mary Rose, even though she realizes that the trial isn't going to go the way she is so vehemently certain it will. Suzanne believes that being the perfect housewife and mother, and being above reproach will keep anything bad from happening to her own daughter, even as she judges Glory for both her race adn for being "loose". DA is lonely and on her own with her father working the oil fields after her mother disappeared. She befriends a young man who lost his truck and his way to get home after he came to Texas to make quick money in the oil fields. The connections and relationships between the women is fascinating against the backdrop of the crime committed against Glory.

The case goes predictably with the men of the court siding with the young white man and his "potential" over the victim, Glory, and her demonstrable injuries. He is convicted of a misdemeanor assault but not the rape and only has to pay a fine to Glory and her family. During the case Glory's undocumented mother was deported back to Mexico and she had decided against testifying in court given how the town treated her. When they get paid from the perpetrator against her, Glory and her Uncle leave Odessa for Mexico to reunite with her mother there. When the young man is let off with a slap on the wrist, Mary Rose loses it. She can't reconcile with how they treated her during her own testimony and how they would just dismiss Glory's injuries with just a slap on the wrist for her attacker. During a dust storm when Corrine discovers DA has taken her late husband's truck with her friend to get his truck, she charges off across the desert convinced that this man is either the one who got away with his attack on Glory or one just like him. Corrine goes after her and after a confrontation in the desert where Corrine manages to talk Mary Rose down, they retrieve the young man's truck and send him home. Slowly life goes back to whatever semblance of normalcy it ever had. One of the last chapters is one from closer to present day, a girl named Karla works in a diner in Odessa while raising her baby who she had as a teenager. The women working in the diner are wary of the men from the oil fields and take precautions to never be alone with them. The perpetrator of this violence against Glory is one who is particularly warned about among the women. He says something to Karla who slaps him and narrowly avoids being hit by him in return and he is ejected from the diner. A few days later he's in critical condition in the hospital after being hit multiple times with a car, he'll survive but has no memory of the accident. The women ignore the telltale mud and denting on Karla's car, indicating she is the one who hit him. Finally the women help Karla get out of Odessa and to University in the city.

The book doesn't pull any punches in regards to racism and sexism and violence against women but ends with a kind of hopeful note with Glory escaping her past pain to reunite with her mother and Karla almost taking retribution for what was done. The man, DA befriends goes home and has his sister write to DA and read her letters to him, showing that not every man who came for the oil boom is the same.

In short, I loved the book. I loved it a lot. I am definitely going to keep reading books suggested in The Today Show's Read with Janna book club.

Happy Reading!
Richelle

Reading Challenges

Hello Interwebs!

I've been promising this blog post for a while so here it is...my 2020 reading challenge breakdown! So I casually work on some online reading challenges just to push myself to read things that may be a little bit outside of my comfort zone or to give myself ideas of new things to read when I hit a slump.

First of course is just my GoodReads Challenge. This year I wanted to read at least 40 books, any books, any genres, any format. I know a lot of people don't count things like audio books or whatever but to my challenge anything goes, especially since I'm trying to branch out and listen to some more audio books.

Second is the 20 in 20 Challenge from A Bookworm's Musing. It gives a variety of prompts and the goal is to read 20 Fiction books and 20 Nonfiction books that fit the given prompts. The prompts are:

1. Crime Fiction/True Crime
2. A book set in the country where you are currently residing
3. A book with a (mostly) white cover
4. A book with day/night in the title
5. LGBTQ related book
6. Book originally published in the 1990s
7. Book about mental health/dealing with mental illness
8. A humor book
9. A book from an author you chose for another category
10. Book with 11 letters/characters in the title
11. An epistolary book
12. A book with a calendar month in the title
13. A book you read in your childhood days
14. Book translated into English from another language
15. A book with more than 500 pages
16. A book that has something to do with sports
17. An illustrated book
18. A wartime book
19. A book that has won the Sahitya Akademi Award for English
20. A book earlier reviewed by A Bookworm's Musing

So far this is going well enough. I have plans for most of the prompts and I've finished some. The two most challenging I've found is #10 and #19, but I recently started Thunderhead by Neal Shusterman which has 11 letters in the title so that one's taken care of. I'll go through and post what I've finished and what I have left to accomplish later. 

As I mentioned in my May post I'm also doing the Monthly Motif Reading Challenge from GirlXOXO. Each month has a theme or motif and you choose a book that fits into that theme. So far this one's going the best as most of the motifs are pretty broad and open to interpretation. 

Finally I'm kind of doing the 52 Books in 52 Weeks challenge from Mommy Mannegren. It's just a set of 52 prompts and the goal is to read one book a week in 2020. I'm currently right on track to hit the 52 weeks goal and most of the books on my TBR I can fit into multiple categories so it's fun to see how many books I can fit into the prompts on this without really trying. 

So far I'm doing pretty good on the challenges. To be honest I'm not going too far out of my way to force myself to stay in these confines but more just slotting books I've decided to read anyway into prompts that fit. Whenever the summer reading challenges are posted I'll probably find one of the bingo-style ones to work on this summer. 

Anyway that's the reading challenges I'm casually participating in. Expect to see a couple reviews this week and maybe an unboxing or two. 

Happy Reading!

Richelle

May!

Hello Interwebs!

We're already about ten days into May but better late than never so here's my May goals and TBR and plans, plus a list of new releases that I NEED (okay so I don't need them but I really, really want them).

First up, let's talk May Goals. As if today I'm done with my CNA exam, for good or ill, it's over now. Pass or fail, let's move on with out lives. Also, if anyone wants a million CNA related flash cards I have them. So here's the goals moving on with May.

• Continue chugging along with audio books, they're better to listen to than the radio and I really need to listen to the ones I already have on my defunct Audible account. 
• Read more actual books, not just audio books. Especially since I'm pretty sure I have 100 books squirreled away in hard copy at my apartment plus the however many books I have on my Kindle. 
• Buy less books than April, this is already not looking likely but it's a good goal to have.
• Weekly blog post at least, plus a blog post for each book finished in May. And I'm already a book behind in that but it'll happen eventually. 

So those are the goals for May, who knows how it's going to go. Hopefully, we'll figure it out. 

Second, my TBR list for May. Since it's the 10th of May, I've already finished one of these but I'm still putting it on here. 

• Valentine by Elizabeth Wetmore, this was also on my April TBR and although I almost finished it I didn't quite make it. This is already finished as of May 2nd. Longer review to follow. 
  
• The Book of Gutsy Women by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chelsea Clinton: this is my current audio book as of May 1st. This is a collection of stories of "gutsy" women throughout history that were personally inspirational to either Hillary Rodham Clinton or her daughter, Chelsea Clinton, or both. It's so good as an audio book to listen to in chunks since its essentially a collection of short stories. 
  
• Thunderhead  by Neal Shusterman. This is the second book in the Arc of a Scythe trilogy, a young adult sci fi/fantasy series in a future world where death has been eradicated and so scythes are appointed to glean a percentage of the population to keep things under control. I loved the first book and my hold on the eBook finally came in so this is top priority. 
  
• Year One by Nora Roberts. This is the first book in Nora Roberts' Chronicles of the One series. This is an adult dystopian series by Nora Roberts. I've read some of her romance novels and quite a few of her futuristic detective novels. I don't know much about this book in particular but I liked her others so I thought I'd give it a try. This also has come in as a hold from the library on eBook so I'll have to get to it as soon as I'm done with Thunderhead. 
  
• All Adults Here by Emma Straub. This is May's Read with Jenna selection. It's about a woman who witnesses a bus accident and remembers things from her own younger days as a parent. It's a family based contemporary novel that looks pretty good. I don't know much about it but I like keeping up with the Read With Jenna books so I've already got this on my Kindle ready to go.
  

• With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo. This is last years release from one of my favorite YA authors. It's about a girl named Emoni who is a teen mom trying to take care of both her daughter and her grandmother to take care of during her senior year of high school while wanting to break into the culinary scene and go on the class trip to Spain. I LOVED The Poet X by this author and I kept meaning to get to this too. I had some credits on Amazon I redeemed for this and hope to read it as well as her new book that releases this month. 
  
• Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo. This is her newest release on May 5th and I've already purchased the eBook copy. This is about 2 girls: one from the Dominican Republic and one from New York City who shared the same father, unknowingly, and find out about each other and their father's secrets after he dies in a plane crash. I have been looking forward to this since I heard about it because of my love for Elizabeth Acevedo and the fact that this is written in verse like her first book, The Poet X. 
  
• A Woman is No Man by Etaf Rum. This is a book about conservative Arab women living in America. It's told in 2 timelines, the story of a mother and her daughter and their lack of choices in getting married. This was a previous Read with Jenna pick and I received this book in one of my mystery boxes from Third Street Books so I'd love to get to this one this month. 
  

For the record I do realize that this is 8 books, counting the one I've already finished and the audio book I'm currently listening to but I have high hopes for myself after my test is over. We'll see what happens. In addition to all of this I have a number of audio books on audible I hope to get to after I finish up the one I'm listening to.

• Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow. This is the biography that inspired Lin Manuel Miranda to write the musical Hamilton. This book is insanely long, 36 hours on audio, so this might be a multi-month endeavor. 
• My Own Words by Ruth Bader Ginsburg. This is the autobiography by the Supreme Court Justice, RBG. 
• Becoming  by Michelle Obama. This is former First Lady Michelle Obama's memoir that has been sitting in my TBR forever and she narrates it herself so this is high on the list. 
• Circe by Madeline Miller. This is a historical fiction/fantasy novel about the goddess Circe from Homer's Odyssey. I read The Song of Achilles a couple years ago and loved it so I'm looking forward to this. 
• When Women Ruled the World by Kara Cooney. This is about six queens of Egypt and their lives. I love ancient Egypt and everything about it so this is another audio one I'm looking forward to. 

Finally, May new releases. It's a thing in the bookish community that says that most new releases come out in the late spring/summer and I've got a list of books I want that are released in May. So here's a list of books I want to get in May. 

• All Adults Here by Emma Straub, May 4th. This is the May Read with Jenna pick and I talked about it on my TBR above. 
  
• Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo, May 5th. Also in my TBR above.
  
• The Paris Hours by Alex George, May 5th. I got this early as one of my Book of the Month picks in April. A 1920s Parisian themed historical fiction novel taking place over a one year period of time. 
  
• The Life and (Medieval) Times of Kit Sweetly by Jamie Pacton, May 5th. This is a YA rom-com about a girl named Kit who works as a wench at Medieval Times restaurant/show but wants to be a knight and gets involved with one of the actors playing a knight in the show. It sounds super cute and I love Medieval Times restaurant/show.
  
• By the Book by Amanda Sellet, May 12th. This is another YA rom-com about a girl who is obsessed with classic literature and when watching girls interact with boys at her high school she writes a guide to scoundrels for the other girls. It's a bookish rom-com and tics every box for things I love. 
  
• Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre by Max Brooks, May 12th. Max Brooks is the author of World War Z, which is a fictionalized account of the zombie apocalypse. This is a fictionalized account of a massacre by Sasquatch around Mt. Rainier  in Washington. 
  
• The Library of Legends by Janie Chang, May 12th. This is a Chinese based historical fiction/fantasy based around Nanking during WWII. High School students are entrusted with smuggling the Library of Legends out of Nanking during the Japanese attack during WWII and meet mythological figures from the stories they're protecting. I got this early via Book of the Month in April as well and it sounds lovely. 
  
• Real Men Knit by Kwana Jackson, May 19th. This is an adult romance centered around a family trying to save their family yarn/knitting shop. This combines my favorite things: knitting and reading so that's all I need to know. 
  
• Beach Read by Emily Henry, May 19th. This is also a book I already have due to Book of the Month's April picks. This is an adult romance about 2 authors: a woman who writes romance books and a man who writes literary fiction who are both experiencing writing slumps while in beach houses right next to each other. The two authors decide to switch genres to overcome their writing slumps and get together. 
  
• The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins, May 19th. This is the new book in the Hunger Games series. It's a prequel novel about President Snow before he was the president. I don't care, I'm trash for anything Hunger Games. 
  
• The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner, May 26th. This is a historical fiction novel about a society formed during WWII to protect Jane Austen's legacy. This book is being blurbed all over Booktube right now so I'll read it too, especially since Jane Austen is the best. 
  

So that's all I have planned for May. I've already got a handful of this month's releases and some others are pre-ordered. Most of the ones that haven't been pre-ordered and I don't own I'll probably buy online from Third Street Books, which I consider to be my local bookstore despite living 4 hours away now. 

Happy Reading!

April Wrap-Up

Hello Interwebs,
It's now May, more than a week into May actually. Since my CNA exam is on Sunday, everything else has kind of fallen by the wayside in favor of studying. Pass or fail I'm ready for the test to be over so I can pretend to have a life that isn't studying. Anyway, on to the update.

So in April I finished a grand total of 5 books for a grand total of 1,974 pages. I read one hard copy book, 3 audio books, and a eBook. I listen to a lot of audio books since I don't really listen to the radio while on my way to and from work and I can listen to books while playing video games with the boy and studying. Most of my library books, since the library is obviously closed at the moment, I get eBooks and audio books through the Libby  app which is part of the Overdrive system. You use your library card and can rent any of the available audio and Ebooks for a set period of time, I think 2 weeks for audio books and 3 weeks for eBooks. I like it a lot so check that out.

So the first book I finished in April was Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.

This was a reread due to the recent movie and I loved it just as much as I remembered. This was the audio book version of the book that I rented from the library. I had started it at the end of March and finished about a week into April. It's a long book but well worth the listen. For those of you who live under a rock and haven't heard of this story and don't know what it's about, it's the story of four sisters: Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy and their lives and adventures growing up in post-Civil War US. Full disclosure, as much as I love Jo, who is definitely supposed to be the ultimate heroine of the story, my favorite is actually Amy and I think that Florence Pugh's portrayal of Amy alongside Timothee Chalamet as Laurie was absolutely amazing. Also the movie has Meryl Streep in it and who doesn't adore Meryl Streep? I gave this book a solid 4/5 stars on GoodReads and I will never not love this story.

Second book finished this month was Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland, the sequel to Dread Nation that I reread in February/March.

The Dread Nation books are following an African-American girl named Jane McKeene in post-Civil War America, but an alternate history in which the Civil War ended after the dead started rising and walking the earth after the battle of Gettysburg. In this reality African-American and Native children are sent to training schools to learn to fight the undead and the main character Jane and her friend Katherine attend Miss. Prescott's School which teaches young African-American girls how to be attendants to white women, protecting them against threats from both the living and the dead. In the first book, things happen and both girls get sent from their home in Baltimore to Kansas where they find a particularly nasty community where white-passing Katherine poses as a white lady while Jane works security and they work to take down the corrupt government run by the local sheriff and his preacher father. This book takes up after the fall of Summerland, the town from the first book, and follows the two of them first to a neighboring community with its own secrets and then West to California as they look for Jane's mother and hunt down the man responsible for a lot of their troubles. These were both good books and I actually hope it remains a duology due to the fact that it had, what I think was, a perfect ending. I read this book in hard copy and I own it as a hardcover, although I did rent the eBook from Libby in order to more easily read on it while at work (I do work nights and it gets quiet sometimes). I gave this a well deserved 5/5 stars.

The third book I finished in April was another audio book, also rented from Libby, and that is The Greatest Love Story Ever Told by Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman.

This is a comedic memoir written by real-life #CoupleGoals Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman about their relationship from its start, meeting during a community theater production, through their marriage and to present day where Nick Offerman of course stars on Parks & Recreation as Ron Swanson and Megan Mullally makes guest appearances as his toxically funny ex-wife Tammy 2. I love Parks & Rec and Ron Swanson and after listening to this I especially love them as a couple. Also I highly recommend listening to this rather than reading it due to the hilarity that ensures listening to the two of them read the book at each other. I gave this book a 4.5/5 stars.

The third book I finished this month was The Hunger by Alma Katsu.

I read this as an eBook I rented from the library. It's a historical fiction thriller/horror story that revolves around the Donner Party expedition during the Oregon trail days. Obviously the Donner Party was a real expedition that got caught in the Sierra Nevada mountain range during the winter while trying to cross. The expedition spent the winter in the mountains, during which a large portion of the group died and was cannibalized by the others trying to survive. The story is gruesome on its own but Alma Katsu takes that story framework and gives it a supernatural spin. During the whole expedition that is fraught with bad luck from beginning to end, something is out in the wilderness stalking them and hunting them. It takes a very werewolf like creature with the "disease" passing from person to person via contact and mixes it with the Native American concepts of skin walkers and the real life disease, Porphyria. I enjoyed it well enough, it was a good twist on a real life story and I do love books that leave you questioning whether the "murderer" was supernatural or just humans. I gave it a 3.5/5 on GoodReads.

Finally, the last book I finished in April was Yes Please by Amy Poehler.

This is a memoir of Amy Poehler's life, which I listened to after finishing The Greatest Love Story Ever Told, because I love Parks & Rec and I especially love Leslie Knope. It follows Amy Poehler's life from grade school plays to improv companies to SNL and finally to the lovable Parks & Rec deputy director I adore so much. Her humor was infused throughout and she had her friends make appearances in the audio book to read pieces they wrote or interact with her including Seth Meyers, Patrick Stewart, Carol Burnett, and others. It was a lot of fun and as a new mom of a son myself, the parts about her sons really resonated with me. Also, any comedian's memoir needs to be listened to rather than read. This book also got a 4.5/5 on GoodReads.

So those are the 5 books I read in April, they were all good with no real missteps this month. On to my Goals summary. So I'm still plugging away at my 40 book goal for the year. I'm halfway through that total and it's only a third of the way through the year. I listened to more audio books, am still blogging, read 2 nonfiction books, and a Kindle book. The place where I fell down was in my book buying. I did a previous blog post with a lot of my April acquisitions so I'm just going to list the books I bought in April along with the format.

• The Paris Hours by Alex George, hardcover from Book of the Month
• Beach Read by Emily Henry, hardcover from Book of the Month
• The Library of Legends  by Janie Chang, hardcover from Book of the Month
• Valentine by Elizabeth Wetmore, eBook from Amazon
• Serpent & Dove by Shelby Mahurin, eBook from Amazon
• I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara, eBook from Amazon
• The Perfect Family by Jacquie Underdown, eBook from Amazon
• Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover and Me by Adrienne Brodeur, eBook from Amazon
• An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green, eBook from Amazon
• Dumplin' by Julie Murphy, eBook from Amazon
• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, eBook from Amazon
• The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth, eBook from Amazon
• The Last Mrs. Parrish by Liv Constantine, eBook from Amazon
• A Woman is No Man  by Etaf Rum, paperback from Third Street Books. 
• Euphoria by Lily King, paperback from Third Street Books
• The Paris Orphan  by Natasha Lester, paperback from Third Street Books
• City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert, paperback from Third Street Books
• The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchison, eBook from Amazon

So yeah, lots of books were purchased, most on sale from Amazon but still not the most successful and, spoiler alert...May's not looking much better so far. 

So as far as my reading challenges go, they're progressing. The definite one I do each month is Monthly Motifs Reading Challenge from GirlXOXO. Each month has a theme or "motif" that you have to read a book from. So April's was called Classics or Currents which was a book published prior to the year you were born (Classics) or between April 2019 and April 2020 (Current). I read Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland which was published in February of 2020, so a Current. Although Little Women would've also worked as it was published in the 1800s and is definitely a Classic. 

Anyway that's the wrap up of everything I read and bought in the month of April. I recommend all of the books I read this month in either Audio or hard copy. 

Happy Reading!