How exciting! This post is going to be about the books I’ve read in October as I’ve mentioned on my previous blog post about poetry. For some of these books, I’ll get the full reviews ready later on to give me time to gather my thoughts about them. So, without further ado, let’s get started!
I’ve started the month reading “Sword of Destiny” which is a book from a series named “The Witcher”. If you’re a gamer, you must’ve probably seen that name before somewhere. If not, well, I’ll make a full blog post on it as soon as I finish the series which I love (up until now, at least). I haven’t heard so much about it in the Booktube community or the Book Blogosphere but it is actually a great fantasy series if you’re into this genre. “Sword of Destiny” is only the second book so I still have five books to read and I’m looking forward to getting them ASAP. Next, “The Strange Library” which is probably the only book that was a huge deception for me this month. I really can’t say much about it because while reading it I was mainly thinking “Why am I still reading this? WHY?”. I’ve picked up right after it: “It’s Kind Of A Funny Story”, “The Wicked + The Divine Vol. 04” and “Unlimited Power”. 4/5, 3/5 and 2/5 respectively. You can tell that I don’t really like Non Fiction… “It’s Kind Of A Funny Story”, on the other hand, was very funny while in the mean time talking about a very sensitive topic : Depression. It felt good that for when I was reading it, I felt kind of familiar with the characters and the story. I felt that they understood me. “The Wicked + The Divine” is actually a graphic novel that I enjoy a lot. I just didn’t really really like this fourth volume which explains the rating. I hope the next volume is going to be better.
After watching the movie (that doesn’t happen very often, usually it’s book, then movie), I realized that it was based on a book! So I went ahead and picked up “The Diary Of A Teenage Girl” and I’m so glad I did. Watching the movie before reading the book didn’t really ruin it for me and I got to appreciate it even more. The book is pretty intense, I can tell. It’s a raw account of what it is to be a 15 year old teenage girl. Of course, not everyone will relate to every detail of this story but the teenage psyche described is pretty spot-on. Next, we have “Marbles : Mania, Depression, Michelangelo and Me”. This one is a graphic novel that I’ve picked up because I just wanted an easy read on mental health because, if you know me, you know that mental health is very important to me and I’m doing my best to learn as much as I can about it. Marbles is abouthow the author managed to find the right treatment for her bipolar disorder and how she feared that, as an artist, it would kill her creativity. I didn’t know much about bipolar disorder and I wouldn’t say that this is like an extensive research paper on it but it still gives you the headlines and what it’s like to be bipolar in an entertaining way. As I started to learn about poetry, I picked up “A Thousand Mornings” and you can check my mini-review on it in the post that I’ve linked earlier. It’s an interesting read! Ah, and Ali Smith! I’ve heard so much about the author so I couldn’t just ignore everything that was being said. I’ve picked up this collection of short stories “The First Person And Other Stories” just to get a taste of Smith’s writing and I fell in love with it. It took me some time to get used to the absence of quotation marks but I managed. Her stories for some are very fun and for others are dark. There are many adjectives that could describe each and every story of this book but over all, it is a great book and it is easy to connect with it. As for “20th Century Boys”, I really enjoyed it. It is a very mysterious and dark story that just leaves you wanting more and more details so that you could know who’s behind that mask “Friend”, the bad guy, is wearing. I’ve started the next volumes and believe me, every detail matters.
After “A Thousand Mornings”, I’ve picked up “Love & Misadvanture” and “Lullabies” by Lang Leav. Both were very captivating reads, full of love and emotions described in such a great way that you couldn’t not put the book down before finishing it. As I was looking for more ways to read even more books, I started to listen to audio books and this is how I’ve “read” Bryan Cranston’s book : “A Life in Parts”. It was a very great experience as Cranston is a wonderful narrator and I just happen to love his voice. I am a huge fan of “Breaking Bad”. I was rambling about it for a pretty much long time, even after it stopped airing. I am not a big fan of Memoirs normally but lately I’ve been trying to read more books in every genre to maybe give them a second chance and “A Life in Parts” and “Marbles” (which can also be considered as a memoir) both proved to me that maybe I could like this genre more. It was so much fun learning how Bryan Cranston got to where he is now. He’s got many many interesting, sad, happy, inspiring stories! I couldn’t have guessed that Cranston had such a great way with words but he does. He really does. Last but not least, my first french book read this year by a Moroccan author (like me… minus the author). The title “Chanson Douce” translates into “Soft song” so you can tell that everything in the title suggests that it’s going to be… well, a “soft” book? Not at all. First page into the book : Bloody mess! I was very shocked frankly and I was not expecting it at all! That horrible image that was given in the first pages made me want to dive in and know what the f* happened? The tension keeps rising throughout the book and I really loved it. It won The Prix Goncourt which is a prize given to the author of “the best and most imaginative prose work of the year” in French.
So basically, this is how my reading looked like during October. Maybe this would seem like nothing to you since these are fairly short reads but I consider this to be a pretty successful reading month as I was working and studying full-time (if that makes any sense). Maybe it has something to do with how bookworms strive during Autumn? Maybe!
Here are the ratings I’ve given to all the books mentionned above :
- Sword of Destiny by Andrzej Sapkowski
- The Strange Library by Haruki Murakami
- It’s Kind Of A Funny Story by Ned Vizzini
- The Wicked + The Divine Vol. 04: Rising Action by Kieron Gillen
- Unlimited Power: The New Science of Personal Achievement by Anthony Robbins
- The Diary of A Teenage Girl: An Account in Words and Pictures by Phoebe Gloeckner
- Marbles : Mania, Depression, Michelangelo and Me by Ellen Forney
- A Thousand Mornings by Mary Oliver
- The First Person and Other Stories by Ali Smith
- 20th Century Boys: Band 1 by Naoki Urasawa
- Love & Misadvanture by Lang Leav
- A Life in Parts by Bryan Cranston
- Lullabies by Lang Leav
- Chanson Douce by Leïla Slimani
So that’s about it, hope you enjoyed the content of this post. Catch you around, babye!
BOOKSACCINO. 