I've recently discovered book blogging. It's awesome. Booktube (book videos on youtube) takes up chunks of my time now, as I watch people, young and old, male and female, talk about books they want to read, books they like to read, books they're not too crazy about, and anything book-related you could imagine. I've found my people. Now, I tried the booktube thing. I made two videos but only posted one because I realized 1. I'm not a great speaker, hence why I've never wanted a career where I do a lot of presenting or talking. It's not awful, but it's not fun enough to warrant the stress of talking for ten minutes. 2. It's much easier for me to write things out because I can take my time with what I want to say.
So I'd like to use this space as my personal book blog in a sense. Posts will mostly be about books right now and we'll see where it goes from there.
Onto my May Wrap-Up!
This month I read three books. Two of them were over 500 pages so they took me lots of time to get through.
1. The first book I actually started in April but read most of in May. It was
The Steady Running of the Hour by Justin Go. It is an historical fiction based in present day and World War I and takes the reader all over Europe. Mountain climbing is a prominent part of the story with Mt. Everest at the center. We follow the main character as he traces his possible ancestors' pasts to find enough evidence to prove a large fortune is his. But as we read, we get the sense that he's searching not so much for the money, but to find out what truly happened in these two people's lives.
This book looked so, so good. And I feel like I should have thoroughly enjoyed it because the idea is right up my alley. But I really didn't enjoy it. It was slow, a lot of lines were in French with no subtitles of any kind, I didn't feel connected to the characters at all, IT WAS SLOW, and the end was not what I had pushed through the book to get to. It was disappointing to say the least. I gave it a 2 out of 5 on
Goodreads.
2. The second book I read was
All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. This was another historical fiction, this time based in World War II with chapters at the end moving ahead to 1974 and 2014. It took place in both France and Germany, and specifically in Saint-Malo, a French city off the coast of Brittany. We follow the two main characters as they alternate their point of view every other chapter or so. Marie-Laure is blind and lives with her father in France who works at the National Museum of History in Paris, where a valuable, legendary stone supposedly is held called The Sea of Flames. They have to flee Paris when Germany invades and go to Saint-Malo where her great-uncle lives. Werner is an orphan who lives in Germany with his sister Jutta and is gifted in the sciences, specifically physics. He easily repairs radios and finds them magical. He is sent to a Hitler youth school and is eventually a part of the army, using his radio transmission knowledge to find illegal uses of radios. He ends up in Saint-Malo when Marie-Laure is there and in 1944, the city is bombed my American bombers and most of the buildings are destroyed.
This was a wonderful, wonderful book. The chapters had subchapters that were a page or two which I loved and the writing was beautiful. There was a lot of detail but it wasn't slow or boring or dragged on. I loved the characters, including the minor characters who were just as integral to the story as Marie-Laure and Werner. It showed both perspectives of the war and I thought Werner's perspective was absolutely necessary to show how much things were not black and white and not what people assumed. Marie-Laure was an inspiring female character. Her disability didn't make me pity her, and her attitude was incredible to experience. I gave this book a 5 out of 5 on
Goodreads and I recommend it to historical fiction lovers, war story enthusiasts, and character development fiends.
3. The third and final book I read in May was
Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. This is the true story of Chris McCandless, a young man who had just graduated college, gave all of his savings to charity and gave away most of his possessions, and set off on travels throughout the country, ending in the wilderness north of Mt. Mckinley in Alaska. SPOILER After changing his name and not speaking to his family for two years, he tried leaving Alaska and perhaps starting over, but ran into two main instances of horrible luck, which lead to his death by starvation in August of 1992. This was made into a movie which I recently just saw for the first time.
This was a very interesting book. I knew what happened going into it because of the movie so there wasn't a driving force to find out what happened for me, but I think that helped me appreciate the details of the book. The descriptions of Chris' environments were very cool and although there were a lot of terms I wasn't familiar with, I could still get the idea of what things looked like and what Chris encountered. I also enjoyed Krakauer's personal account of climbing in Alaska as well as the stories of people who were very similar to Chris in their beliefs and their travels. I felt like I understood Chris more after reading this book. He had a lot of lofty ideas that, I think, were at the heart of them good, but he portrayed them sometimes in very negative ways. I can understand his frustrations with the world and how people can be, so I really connected to him at times throughout this story. Krakauer definitely portrayed him in a more positive way then negative but I think that was the best thing to do. A lot of the time, his portrayal of Chris came from Chris' own journal entries or memories people had of him. My biggest fascination was the effect he had on people. One person in the whole book seemed to have a negative take on him, but even that is a bit far-reaching. Everyone who he met on the road seemed to really like him, found a connection with him, and just overall enjoyed his company. He had a charm that I don't think was intentional, but very real and natural. Even his father, who had a troubled relationship with his son, said he thoroughly enjoyed being in his company. The story is tragic, there is no other way to put it. But the book really makes it accessible to readers and I think brings up some controversial but important topics. I gave this book a 3 out of 5 on
Goodreads. It's a little low because while I did enjoy it, it's not my normal type of book and so I felt comfortable only saying I liked it, rather than I
really liked it or it was amazing.
That was my May! Hopefully more will be read in June.
