Book reviews, news, and a healthy obsession with the written word.
Jeff James
To stick with the theme from March and April, my reading didn’t pick up much in May, but I did manage to finish two books that I’d been working on for a few months. That made me feel a little more accomplished.
April was another very slow month for reading. I spent way too much time doom-scrolling and feeling horrible about the state of the world. The best decision I made all month was re-reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. That book is a classic, and was exactly what I needed to improve my mood.
March is the month when the Coronavirus pandemic became real for the United States. Even before California locked down on March 19th, I was finishing books at a slower rate, and I didn’t finish anything in the latter half of the month.
In February, I listened to two audiobooks that ended up being very timely and appropriate: Wanderers by Chuck Wendig, which is a sprawling epic about a pandemic, and The Shining by Stephen King, which is about going crazy while locked inside for months. I loved them both, even if I was oftentimes unsettled by the news out of China while I listened to Wanderers…
I’ve had a version of this post sitting in my drafts for months as I write this intro in August. Originally I was just being lazy, but come March, we all know what happened. After the LA stay-at-home order on March 13th, my reading slowed to a crawl for a number of reasons. I couldn’t focus on books, I wasn’t listening to audiobooks during my commute, and I was spending way too much time doom-scrolling on Twitter.
In the first week of December, we went to Hawaii for a week.
I was so tired on the plane that I mostly watched movies and TV shows, but I had plenty of downtime during the week to sit outside on a balcony and read.
I also finished a Laini Taylor novella collection while visiting my family for Christmas.
I didn’t read anything too heavy this month, and it was a nice way to wrap up the year.
We moved to a new apartment at the start of November, and that meant a longer commute for me and of course a whole lot more time for listening to audiobooks while I drive. Almost all of my reading in November was done via audiobook.
My October reading was bookended with a few really great horror stories, which is as it should be. I also read the newest standalone novel by Kate Atkinson and finally finished a disappointing sci-fi novel by Amber Royer.
In September, I read three more InCryptid books by Seanan McGuire, and finished out the series so far. Other than that, I read a few graphic novels and listened to a short sci-fi novella.
Seanan McGuire’s Incryptid series dominated my audiobook listening in the month of August. Every time I finished one book in the series, I bought the next! I also read more Karen Russell, a few comics, and a disappointing young adult novel about witchy babysitters.
After a slow June, I got back in the swing of things for July. I finished several audiobooks and a few graphic novels along with the final book in the His Dark Materials trilogy.
I’ve never read any of the classic Nancy comics, but her look is iconic. I feel like I could identify a Nancy comic from across the room by the shape of Nancy’s head alone. The fact that those comics were ubiquitous enough to become iconic but passé enough that I’d never read any of them is a fascinating contradiction.
I wanted to like The Babysitters Coven. It has a fantastic, eye-catching cover with an illustration of a badass girl facing down some presumably nefarious multicolored clouds. I am always a sucker for a good cover design, so it breaks my heart when the book doesn’t live up to the cover.
Cryptofauna is an entertaining book that runs on pure momentum. The sheer volume of absurdity paired with the author’s constant digressions and convoluted wordplay keeps things humming along while the mysterious nature of the game at the center of the book keeps you hooked until the end.