An Open Book – June Edition

Thanks to Carolyn Astfalk and CatholicMom.com for hosting!

Holy cow, I haven’t posted here since last month’s version of An Open Book! I had no idea how much I’d been slacking lately. Last month passed in a blur with exams, essays, and portfolios, and I’ve been pouring ever spare second since into finishing up revisions on This Dread Road and updating the covers for all of The Bennett Series books. (Don’t worry, I’ll post on that soon!)

I have been getting a lot of reading done, though. It might seem a bit odd to spend time reading when there’s so much writing to be done, but I consider it research. I’m constantly finding new ways to improve, and what better way than to study what others in my genre are doing?

 

 

As always, I have a couple of irons in the fire. From my Netgalley list (which is about as conquerable as a hydra right now, to be honest), I’m reading Dear Thing by Julie Cohen. Ben and Claire have struggled for years to conceive a baby. After yet another failed embryonic transfer, Claire decides she’s done with treatment, but Ben’s not ready to give up so easily. When his best friend Romily finds out, she makes what seems like a reasonable offer: she will carry their child for them. Well, Ben’s child. Claire’s not able to produce a viable egg. Romily’s convinced that being a surrogate will be easy enough–she’s a single mom already, and she doesn’t want any more children. But as the pregnancy progresses, things get a little . . . complicated.

I’m about halfway through this book as of this morning and I’m enjoying it. The writing is superb, the characters are well-developed, and it’s provoking a lot of internal dialogue and debate about medical ethics. I have a strong feeling this will receive a five-star rating from me.

 

On the audiobook front, I’m listening to Cinder by Marissa Meyer. I haven’t finished listening to Harry Potter yet, but I won’t have the credit to download Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows until next week, so here we are! I think The Lunar Chronicles will be my next audio project. I loved reading these books, and I love listening to them too. Rebecca Soler is a fantastic narrator.

 

Up Next

I’m going to spend this month (and the next, and probably the next) slowly whittling away at my entirely too long NetGalley queue, in addition to a few titles I own but haven’t gotten around to reading. What I hope to read in June:

Dreaming of Antigone by Robin Bridges
Undecided by Julianna Keyes
Lucky Me by Saba Kapur
Don’t Tell, Don’t Tell, Don’t Tell by Liane Shaw
A Fierce and Subtle Poison by Samantha Mabry
Practical Applications for Multiverse Theory by Noa Gavin and Nick Scott
A Thousand Salt Kisses by Josie Demuth
Anything You Want by Geoff Herbach
Whisper to Me by Nick Lake
The Star-Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi
Summer of Sloane by Erin L. Schneider
The Unexpected Everything by Morgan Matson
Lady Susan by Jane Austen
Seize the Flame by Lynda Cox
The Martian by Andy Weir

Fifteen books seems like a tall order, but I managed to read 8 last month without even really trying, so hopefully I’ll get through this bunch!

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Would you like to participate in An Open Book and share what are you reading? 

The rules are simple:

1. Include a link back to My Scribbler’s Heart and CatholicMom.com somewhere in your post.(http://carolynastfalk.com/category/my-scribblers-heart-blog/ and http://catholicmom.com/tag/open-book) Better yet, link to the week’s post.
2. Link up your post.
3. Use the hashtag #OpenBook on social media.
4. Visit some of the other bloggers’ sites and see what they are reading. Let’s build a community and expand our reading horizons.

An Open Book – May Edition

Thanks to Carolyn Astfalk for starting off the #OpenBook link up this month. (Visit her original post here.) Now, let’s get started!

 

 

 

Over the past week or so, I’ve been working on Lights Out in the Reptile House by Jim Shepard. I received a free electronic copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for a review. The description there said that it was released last year, but I realized after starting the book that the original edition was published in 1990.

Lights Out in the Reptile House is a literary fiction coming of age tale set in an unnamed dystopian country in an undisclosed location. While the police state government pervades the background of 15-year-old Karel Roeder’s life, the story focuses more on the birth of his political awareness.

To be honest, it’s looking like it will get a two or three-star review from me at this point (I’m about 90% finished). The writing is excellent on a technical level, but the characters are very wooden and I’ve had a hard time connecting with them. Conversations are mostly summarized instead of written out, and while that is a valid technique, I don’t care for it as a reader. I feel like I’m watching a movie in a foreign language with the simplest of subtitles.  I also dislike dystopian novels in which the government system is largely ignored and unexplained; that seems to defeat the purpose of writing a dystopian work. But we’ll see–maybe the end will turn everything around for me.

 

I am also revisiting the Harry Potter books via audio. I’m currently on Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which is one of my least favorites in the series. It’s a nigredo-stage book, which in literary alchemy means the protagonist is going through a stage of dissolution. Harry has several horrible things happen to him right as he hits a stage of natural teenage gloominess and moody despair. It’s incredibly frustrating and heartbreaking to listen to. I can’t wait until it’s time to move on to Half-Blood Prince.

This is only the second “reading” I’ve done with the series, as I wasn’t formally introduced to the wizarding world until 2014, and I’m loving the opportunity to explore the intricacy of J.K. Rowling’s planning. I was aware of it beforehand, obviously, as it’s been the source of many an academic paper and literary discussion, and I noticed a lot of the foreshadowing as I made my way through the books the first time, but it’s interesting to see how even the tiniest details all point toward the end. If you haven’t listened to the audiobooks, you’re missing out on a treat. Jim Dale’s narration voice is a treasure.

Up Next

I’m going to spend this month (and the next, and probably the next) slowly whittling away at my entirely too long NetGalley queue. What I hope to read in May:

Every Anxious Wave by Mo Daviau
13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl by Mona Awad
Carry On by Rainbow Rowell
Regrets Only by M.J. Pullen
A Stolen Kiss by Kelsey Keating
Dear Emma by Katie Heaney
The Syndicate by Sophie Davis
The Tried and True Tales of Phineas Ichabod Rate by McKenzie Ruth
Cold Calling by Russell Mardell
Fair Play by Tracy A. Ward
Dear Thing by Julie Cohen
Dreaming of Antigone by Robin Bridges
Undecided by Julianna Keyes
Lucky Me by Saba Kapur
Don’t Tell, Don’t Tell, Don’t Tell by Liane Shaw

Fifteen books in one month might seem a little ambitious, but since I’ll be dropping the responsibilities of school for a while starting tomorrow, I think I’ll be able to pull it off! Reading for class and finishing homework take up a lot of what used to be recreational reading time.

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What are you reading?

 

Would you like to participate in An Open Book and share what are you reading?

The rules are simple:

1. Include a link back to My Scribbler’s Heart and CatholicMom.com somewhere in your post. Better yet, link to the week’s post.
2. Link up your post.
3. Use the hashtag #OpenBook on social media.
4. Visit some of the other bloggers’ sites and see what they are reading. Let’s build a community and expand our reading horizons.

Add your link by clicking the #OpenBook image below.

#OpenBook is a monthly link-up each first Wednesday of the month. Check out the rules here.

You can sign up for an Open Book reminder email, which goes out one week before the link-up.