The TBR Book Tag

I was tagged by Krista over on The Bookish Hedgemom to do this tag. So, let's dig into my seemingly endless TBR pile.

HOW DO YOU KEEP TRACK OF YOUR TBR?

I have a spreadsheet which shows all the books I've bought, ARCs I've received and books I own but haven't read. Whenever a new book is purchased, it's added to the list. When a book is read, I move it to a separate column. I also use Goodreads, but I'm not as diligent about keeping the to-read shelf up to date, because it feels overwhelming.

IS YOUR TBR MOSTLY PRINT OR EBOOK?

Honestly, it's about 75/25. Most of my TBR are physical books, but I have quite a few eBooks on the list as well. 

HOW DO YOU DECIDE WHAT TO READ NEXT?

Every few weeks, I break out my calendar and plan for the next month. Obviously, adjustments are made if I'm not in the right mood to read a certain book, but for the most part, that's how I decided what's next.

A BOOK THAT'S BEEN ON YOUR TBR THE LONGEST?

The Witcher series. I have most of the books, and I've had them since before the Netflix series, but I just haven't gotten around to reading them yet.

A BOOK THAT YOU RECENTLY ADDED TO YOUR TBR

And I Darken by Kiersten White. In fact, it's so recent that I don't even have the book itself yet.

A BOOK THAT'S ON YOUR TBR BECAUSE OF THE BEAUTIFUL COVER

The Hollowed Gods by A.J. Vrana. The cover just looks so gorgeous to me.

A BOOK ON YOUR TBR THAT YOU NEVER ACTUALLY PLAN ON READING

While I want to say that I plan to read everything on my TBR, I'm pretty sure that I probably won't ever actually end up reading The Once and Future King

AN UNPUBLISHED BOOK ON YOUR TBR THAT YOU'RE EXCITED FOR



The Orphanage of Gods by Helena Coggan. This cover is gorgeous and the description makes me wish it was already June.

A BOOK ON YOUR TBR THAT EVERYONE HAD READ EXCEPT YOU

Blood Heir by Amelie Wen Zhao. I keep seeing it in everyone's tweets and bookstagram posts

A BOOK ON YOUR TBR THAT EVERYONE RECOMMENDS TO YOU.

This is a tie between Red, White and Royal Blue and the Six of Crows duology.

A BOOK ON YOUR TBR THAT YOU ARE DYING TO READ

Children of Virtue and Vengeance by Tomi Adeyemi. I loved Children of Blood and Bone and I can't wait to see where the story goes from there.

THE NUMBER OF BOOKS ON YOUR GOODREADS SHELF

16, but as I said on the first question, most of my TBR list isn't on Goodreads, because seeing too many things on the TBR shelf stresses me out. The actual number is around 40.


And that's the tag. I'm not good at tagging people in these things, because I never know who has/hasn't done the tag before. If this looks interesting to you, consider yourself tagged!

WWW Wednesday

Hello everyone! Today is Wednesday, which means it's time to do the three Ws. For those who don't know, the three Ws are:What did you recently finish reading? What are you currently reading? What are you reading next?

What I Recently Finished:

I recently finished Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. While I didn't hate it, it wasn't exactly my cup of tea. My review can be found here.

I also finished Wonder Woman: Year One by Greg Rucka, Nicola Scott and Romulo Fajado Jr. Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but I count comics and graphic novels as reading.

What I'm Currently Reading:
      

I'm currently reading Ubiety by Grzegorz Kunoski. I'm about 90% through it as I write this. My next read will be Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman, which I'll be starting either today or tomorrow.

What I'm reading next:

My next read will be After Alice by Gregory Maguire which is a retelling of Alice in Wonderland that I picked up because I enjoyed Maguire's more well-known novel, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West.

What are you guys reading right now? What are you planning on reading next? Let me know in the comments!

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Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine is a 2019 literary fiction novel by Gail Honeyman. It was published by Penguin Randomhouse in 2019 and became a New York Times bestseller. Reese Witherspoon selected it as one of her book club picks and it’s going to become a motion picture in the near future.

The novel follows the titular character Eleanor Oliphant, an accounting clerk in her late twenties living a very lonely and strictly scheduled life. Everything changes when she meets her new coworker Raymond who is determined to find a way to bring Eleanor out of her shell. Along the way, his big heart helps her repair her own heavily damaged one.

To start off, I’d like to point out that this book is not a romance. I know the blurb written above, which I paraphrased from the back of the book, makes it sound like one, but its not. The novel isn’t the story of a man and a woman meeting unexpectedly and falling in love. Instead, it’s a story about an unlikely friendship and said friendship being that catalyst in Eleanor realizing some difficult truths about herself and her past.

This book was recommended to me by a coworker. She’d begun reading it and thought it was an amusing story, which it is at first. At the beginning, Eleanor’s inner monologue is funny. She doesn’t have great social skills, she doesn’t know how to relate to people and doesn’t have a filter. She’s, for lack of a better term, a weirdo and spends a lot of time judging people for perfectly normal behavior that she finds strange. At first, Eleanor’s eccentricities were funny. I was reading about a story about an incredibly strange woman who was wondering why everyone else seemed so strange to her. Before long, however, it stopped being funny. Because Eleanor’s whole life, a boring job, no real connections to anyone, adhering to a strict schedule, is the result of a very troubled upbringing. She strives to be normal, but her childhood makes any idea of “normal” completely impossible. There are small moments of humor, but mostly the book is rather sad.

I don’t want to make it seem like I didn’t enjoy this book, because I did. It was a thorough deep-dive into self-discovery and self-improvement. It also delves into discussion trauma and how it can affect people. The author went out of her way to show Eleanor going through a major change in her life without it changing her personality completely. Eleanor still has her quirks at the end of the book, and she wouldn’t be described as “normal” but she’s in a healthier place. She’s stopped ignoring her problems and confronted some of the issues she’s been burying for so long.

Eleanor is an interesting character, although a tad bit annoying at times. Scenes where she’s being overly judgmental towards people for doing things like not knowing how to respond to something she said, or trying to have a conversation with her are hard to read. Her inability to relate to people makes sense in the context of the story, but until it becomes clear that there’s more to her than just that, she’s difficult to like. Raymond is one of the first people Eleanor really lets in because he seems to accept her exactly as she is. Sure, sometimes if she says something that’s inappropriate he’ll tell her, but he’s not trying to change her. He realizes that she’s not doing well, and wants to help her, but not in a way that’s self-serving. She’s his friend and he wants his friend to get better. Even in moments when Eleanor doesn’t want his help, but needs it. Another character that changes Eleanor’s life is an elderly man Sammy. Shortly after Eleanor and Raymond meet, they save Sammy when he falls and injures himself. Raymond continues to check in on Sammy after he’s taken to the hospital and talks Eleanor into joining him. During these visits, Eleanor starts to open up a bit more to both men and for the first time in a long time, develops a real connection with other people. The last character I want to discuss, and the one who had the biggest impact on Eleanor by far, is Mummy, her mother. Eleanor doesn’t see Mummy but at the beginning of the novel, they talk over the phone every Wednesday night. Mummy is a piece of work to say the least. Several of their calls are depicted in the story, but you only need one to understand their relationship dynamic. Mummy is a terrible mother, abusive in more than one way, and yet everything Eleanor does is in an attempt to please her mother. Mummy is the antagonist of this story, and her connection to Eleanor’s trauma is what propels the story forward.

I liked Eleanor’s character journey. I like the realizations she came to along the way as she let more people in and realized that she wasn't “fine” regardless of how often she claimed to be. What I liked most, however, was that the ending didn’t wrap everything up neatly. Eleanor doesn’t end the book by being completely recovered from her trauma. There isn’t a happy ending, just a realistic one. She’s getting better, her life has improved, but she still has a long way to go.

I didn’t love this book. I also didn’t hate it. I wish that the blurb adhered a little closer to the actual story than it did. Still, it’s an entertaining slice-of-life story while also discussing heavier themes. I’m not eagerly awaiting the motion picture, unlike some other readers I've talked to, but it’s a good book overall.

Rating: 2.9 stars

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March Wrap-Up

For the last two months, I wrote a wrap-up post going over the books I read but didn't review in a given month. I've decided to stop doing that, since it ends up being more work for me and it was getting overly complicated. So, instead, I'm going to go over all of the books I read in March, because that's just easier for me. Now that I've explained all of that, let's go over the month of March

Books I Read and Reviewed

Until All Curses Are Lifted by Tim Frankovich - 3.9 Stars

Children of Dune by Frank Herbert- 3.9 Stars

Eve: The Awakening by Jenna Moreci- 2.3 Stars

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi - 4.8 Stars

Tying the Leaves by June Toher- 3.6 Stars

Books I Read, Only Reviewed on Goodreads

Alexandra Forever 2337 by D.W. Richards- 4.5 Stars (Goodreads review here)

Animal Farm by George Orwell- 3.5 Stars

Mad Max Fury Road by George Miller, Illustrated by Mark Sexton- 4.0 Stars

A Day in the Garden by Su Kim- 5.0 Stars (Goodreads review here)

The Sea by Sophie Jupillat Posey- 2.5 Stars (Goodreads review here)

Genres Read

Comic Book/Graphic Novel: 2

Fantasy: 2

Science Fiction: 2

Literary Fiction: 3

Children's Book: 1

Figures

Number of DNFs: 1

Total Books Read: 10

Pages Read: 2,292

Average Rating: 3.8 Stars

What did you read in March? Any recommendations?

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Tying the Leaves

Tying the Leaves is a 2019 young adult novel by June Toher. It was published by Toher’s Tales in October of 2019. The novel is concerned with the subjects of climate change and environmentalism with elements of magical realism. I was provided with a free copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

Tying the Leaves follows a timid Virginia boy named Jamie and his three friends, Tony, Raj and Keisha. After they travel seventy years into the future, they are horrified to find the Earth devastated by climate change and dirty energy pollution. They return to the present, determined to make sure that the future they saw doesn’t come to pass. They launch an international online kids organization to save the planet, team up with a U.S. senator on a controversial environmental bill, and fight the fossil fuel industry. All the while, the same industries the kids are fighting are contributing to air pollution that threatens the life of Jamie’s little sister.

Overall, I liked the novel. I found Jamie and his friends to be very well-written. Jamie begins the book as a shy twelve-year-old who lacks self-esteem, is struggling with grief and is terrified about his asthmatic sister’s health. In the process of trying to get others to pay attention to climate change, and trying to get others to listen and care about what’s happening, he becomes a much more confident person. The other three kids, Keisha, Tony and Raj have their own character arcs which center around other coming-of-age issues such as parental acceptance. Additionally, this story has an antagonist that’s incredibly realistic, in the form of a lobbyist for the fossil fuel industry.

While I liked the characters, I enjoyed the plot more. The story is told in a very up close and personal way. The kids journey from learning about climate change in school, to traveling to the future and upon their return, founding CAPE, Children Against Polluting Earth. The story depicts the trials and tribulations of starting an organization like that and trying to affect change. The kids don’t go from one high point to the next high point, there’s struggle and conflict, which adds an element of realism to this novel that not all young adult novels have. The conclusion of the story doesn’t show every problem being fixed, but instead focuses on things being on track for a better, brighter future. The struggles they face, and the main ideas about climate change and environmentalism are very topical right now and I feel like those issues and the arguments surrounding them were dealt with rather well in this story.

Tying the Leaves is a book with a very clear message, and that is what sets this novel apart more than characters or plot. Toher clearly did an extensive amount of research about climate change, renewal energy and other environmental issues in the process of writing this novel. It shows in the writing how knowledgeable she became about these topics, given that she’s able to display how the issue of climate change will affect the world as a whole, as well as its impact on individuals, as seen with Katie’s asthma and other lung problems. The issue of climate change is something she feels passionately about, which is reflected in her writing. She did a wonderful job of giving vivid detail to both the future Earth, ravaged by climate change, and the present Earth, in order to contrast the two. I enjoyed the imagery and the atmosphere of this story.

While I liked the plot and the characters as a whole, there are a few things about Tying the Leaves that didn’t quite work for me. None of them are major problems, but in order for this to be a balanced and honest review, I do need to address them. There are some stereotypes that are used that I wasn’t the biggest fan of, but those stereotypes were mostly to make characters have dimension and personality, so they didn’t take away from the story, but I did feel a little weird about them. Sometimes, the dialogue was a bit clunky or didn’t seem realistic. This mostly happened in regards to slang people were using, but there were other situations where the dialogue drew me out of the story. Some elements of the plot, especially around the climax, felt a bit unrealistic for an otherwise very realistic story. The antagonist does a few things in an attempt to stop the kids that don’t make sense with the rest of the story.

Typing the Leaves is a novel with a very important message. June Toher delivered that message perfectly. While it’s not perfect, the novel is good. This is a book that I think most young adults should read, mostly because it provides information about climate change that might be inaccessible to younger readers. It explains aspects about environmentalism in an easy to digest way. To any reader who is interested in fictional stories about the environment, I’d say to give this book a shot.

Rating: 3.6 Stars

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