Day 30: Favorite coffee table book

I have too many books to choose from for this, lately I have accumulated a great amount of special edition books. Though I think my favorites right now might be the design of the Plated Prisoner series by Raven Kennedy, it is just something about the white and gold mixing together that makes the books so pretty to look at, plus the spine design match.

Day 29: Book you’re currently reading

Right now I am reading two books, and I’m trying to finish them before the end of the month as I have a challenge to do in October.

Witch King by Martha Wells, is one of the books I am reading. But I don’t think I will make enough headway to finish it before 1st of October, so I might have to pause it until November.

The other book I’m reading is “The Midnight Library” by Matt Haig, This book has already made me cry once, and I’m only halfway through. I hope to finish this by the end of the month because I am not sure I would be able to shelf it while I do the reading challenge.

Day 28: Last book you read

September has been a slow reading month for me, I needed a bit of a breather after reading a lot of books in August and preparing to read 13 books for a challenge in October.

The last book I read I finished a few days ago, and the book is Powerless by Lauren Roberts. What was nice about this book is that I found it very enjoyable, since September has been a bit of a reading slump for me. Most of the books I have read this month has been mediocre or below. Powerless was surprisingly entertaining even if there were certain points where I did cringe at how obviously inspired by The Hunger Games it is. One of the characters in this book is essentially Effie Trinket and her lines could have been cut and pasted directly from The Hunger Games. The ending was a little unsatisfactory and a very clear “book two” set-up. Other than that I found the book very enjoyable.

The Elites have possessed powers for decades, gifted to them by the Plague, while those born Ordinary are just that, banished from the kingdom of Ilya and shunned from society.
No one knows this better than Paedyn Gray, an Ordinary posing as a Psychic to blend in with the Elites. When she unsuspectingly saves one of Ilya’s princes, Kai Azer, she’s thrown into the Purging Trials, a brutal competition showcasing the Elites’ powers.
If the Trials and the opponents within them don’t kill her, the prince she’s fighting feelings for will if he discovers what Paedyn is . . . completely Ordinary.

Day 27: Favorite fiction book

This prompt seem a little bit too wide, I wonder if the person who initially made this intended for this for be a literary fiction prompt? So I decided to limit the prompt to that and went on to Storygraph to see what books I have read that are tagged as literary fiction. To my surprise I don’t read a lot of books with that tag, which is odd because I thought I’d read quite a few. Maybe my definition of what is literary fiction is too loose, because I consider most of the books I’ve read from Matt Haig to be literary fiction.

To me literary fiction is all about diving deep into the messiness of life. It prioritizes deep, nuanced storytelling, often focusing on the human condition, complex characters, and thought-provoking themes. And Matt Haig’s books do all of these things. The Humans, The Radleys, How to Stop Time and The Possession of Mr. Cave are all about the characters and the conditions that are imposed on them in their humanity or lack-there-of. So I was surprised to see that none of his books had the literary genre tag. Even most of the the classics I’ve read didn’t have this genre tagged.

Either way checking my read-list and sorting it by genre left me with a list of books that I didn’t really like much, found average or read a very long time ago. For the ones that I did like; I’ve already mentioned them in a previous blog-post for this challenge and I said no duplicates.

So the book I chose to mention here is The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide. This is one of those books I bought purely because it was about a cat, and I ended up bawling my eyes out. It is a very short book, a quick read but be prepared to be hit in the feels.

A couple in their thirties live in a small rented cottage in a quiet part of Tokyo. They work at home as freelance writers. They no longer have very much to say to one another.

One day a cat invites itself into their small kitchen. She is a beautiful creature. She leaves, but the next day comes again, and then again and again. New, small joys accompany the cat; the days have more light and colour. Life suddenly seems to have more promise for the husband and wife; they go walking together, talk and share stories of the cat and its little ways, play in the nearby Garden. But then something happens that will change everything again.

Day 26: Favorite nonfiction book

I’ve read quite a few non-fiction books this year, but it is kind of hard to pick a favorite. It is hard because I read nonfiction books differently, I read them to learn something rather than for “enjoyment.” But I think if I have to pick one I’ll pick “The Comfort book” by Matt Haig.

The Comfort Book really is a comforting book pondering the meaning of life in a very approachable way. It is very short and is written in short essay form almost. The chapters are short and applicable to different situations. Matt Haig has a talent for writing very repeatably about depression and melancholy topics, and I greatly enjoy this kind of writing.

“It is a strange paradox, that many of the clearest, most comforting life lessons are learnt while we are at our lowest. But then we never think about food more than when we are hungry and we never think about life rafts more than when we are thrown overboard.”

The Comfort Book is Haig’s life raft: it’s a collection of notes, lists, and stories written over a span of several years that originally served as gentle reminders to Haig’s future self that things are not always as dark as they may seem. Incorporating a diverse array of sources from across the world, history, science, and his own experiences, Haig offers warmth and reassurance, reminding us to slow down and appreciate the beauty and unpredictability of existence.

Day 25: Favorite book you read in school

(I’m sorry I thought I scheduled this, but I didn’t.)

The favorite book I had to red in school is a difficult question because it has been a while since I have been in school and I don’t remember a lot of the books we read.

I do remember a book (technically a play but we read it from a book) that I had a great time reading and playing around with was “Waiting for Godot” by Samuel Beckett. The play is good, but I think the enjoyment from it was more from reading it in an over-dramatized manner with a friend at the school I was attending at the time.

Subtitled ‘A tragicomedy in two Acts’, and famously described by the Irish critic Vivien Mercier as a play in which ‘nothing happens, twice’, En attendant Godot was first performed at the Théâtre de Babylone in Paris in 1953. It was translated into English by Samuel Beckett, and Waiting for Godot opened at the Arts Theatre in London in 1955.

Day 24: Book that contains your favorite scene

For this one I think I will go with Mockinjay (Hunger Games 3), and needless to say this will be a major spoiler.

My favorite scene from this book is at the end when Katniss realises that Coin will be no better than Snow, that she might be just as bad as Snow. And then she shoots her. The book slow walks the reader to this conclusion, for me it was a “soft” twist because I saw the signs of it coming and then it happened and it was just right. It was just such a great ending for me and it felt so right, because Coin was a horrible person too and would have gone on to do just as terrible things.

Day 23: Book you tell people you’ve read, but haven’t (or haven’t actually finished)

It is not really a book I tell people I have read, but it is a book I really wish I could finish. Over the years I have tried to read this book multiple time, because all it’s themes and elements suggests that I should absolutely love this book. It is considered a classic and I know a lot of people love it. The books touches closely on mental health which is another topic very close to my heart.

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath.

By any parameters this book should click very well with me and it should be a joy for me to read. I am also a big fan of Plath’s poetry, so loving this book should be a nobrainer. Unfortunately I have started this book 6 times, and never gotten past the 3rd chapter, and I don’t really understand why. I just find it so hard to become engrossed in this book and keep reading. Every few years I pick it up from by TBR and try again, but I just cant get through it. Although I will keep living in the hope that one day I will pick it up and manage to finish it.

I even have this stunning hardback copy of the book to try to entice me to complete reading it:

Day 22: Book you plan to read next

I have quite a few books on my TBR list, by now the list is never-ending. Since I am a mood reader most of my “read next” plans end up being scrapped. Right now I hope to start reading The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon next because I have heard great things about it.

In 2059, Scion has taken over most of the world’s cities, promising safety for all the citizens it deems worthy and wiping out clairvoyants wherever it can find them. 

Paige Mahoney, though, is a clairvoyant–and a criminal just for existing. Paige is determined to fight Scion’s power, and as part of the Seven Seals, Paige has found a use for her powers: she scouts for information by breaking into others’ minds as they dream. 

But when Paige is captured and arrested, she encounters a power more sinister even than Scion. The voyant prison is a separate city, controlled by a powerful, otherworldly race. These creatures, the Rephaim, value the voyants highly–as soldiers in their army. 

Paige is assigned to a Rephaite keeper, Warden, who will be in charge of her care and training. He is her master. Her natural enemy. But if she wants to regain her freedom, Paige will have to learn something of his mind and his own mysterious motives. 

I have never read anything by Samantha Shannon, so I look forward to exploring her world. It also helps that I have the special edition of this book from The Broken Binding which makes it a beautiful reading experience.

I rarely read only one book at a time. I tend to read one physical book, a digital book and an audiobook. There are some times when bringing a book along is impractical, like at the gym where I prefer audiobooks or on the bus or out and about where it is very easy to open my phone to do a little reading. When reading multiple books at once I find it very helpful to read different genres so it is easier for me to separate the books from each other.

The Bone Witch by Rin Chupeco is the next audiobook I plan to read. Since I loved The Girl in the Well so much I would like to explore more works by this author. This book is also part of a Reading Challenge I will be doing in October for Halloween (Reading 13 spooky books in October to fulfil different prompt)

Tea can raise the dead, but resurrection comes at a price.
When Tea accidentally resurrects her brother from the dead, she learns she is different from the other witches in her family. Her gift for necromancy means that she’s a bone witch, a title that makes her feared and ostracized by her community. But Tea finds solace and guidance with an older, wiser bone witch, who takes Tea and her brother to another land for training.
In her new home, Tea puts all her energy into becoming an asha-one who can wield elemental magic. But dark forces are approaching quickly, and in the face of danger, Tea will have to overcome her obstacles and make a powerful choice.

The Crimson Moth by Kristen Ciccarelli is the next digital book I plan to read. This book will also fit in for my reading challenge under one of the prompts. I did start reading it now, but realised it would fit one of the prompts and decided to stop reading so I can read it in October instead. It is a book about witches who do magic with blood, which I found interesting.

On the night Rune’s life changed forever, blood ran in the streets. Now, in the aftermath of a devastating revolution, witches have been diminished from powerful rulers to outcasts ruthlessly hunted due to their waning magic, and Rune must hide what she is.

Spending her days pretending to be nothing more than a vapid young socialite, Rune spends her nights as the Crimson Moth, a witch vigilante who rescues her kind from being purged. When a rescue goes wrong, she decides to throw the witch hunters off her scent and gain the intel she desperately needs by courting the handsome Gideon Sharpe – a notorious and unforgiving witch hunter loyal to the revolution – who she can’t help but find herself falling for.

Gideon loathes the decadence and superficiality Rune represents, but when he learns the Crimson Moth has been using Rune’s merchant ships to smuggle renegade witches out of the republic, he inserts himself into her social circles by pretending to court her right back. He soon realizes that beneath her beauty and shallow façade, is someone fiercely intelligent and tender who feels like his perfect match. Except, what if she’s the very villain he’s been hunting?

Day 21: Favorite picture book from childhood

Again, I don’t really remember any picture books. But a book I really liked when I was a child is Ronja Røverdatter (Ronia, The Robber’s daughter) by Astrid Lindgren. It follows Ronia, a girl, growing up among a clan of robbers living in a castle in the woodlands of early-Medieval Scandinavia. It probably started my spiral into loving fantasy because it has a lot of fantastical creatures in it.

Quick note: I was actually surprised to learn that they have made a new live action series for this book on Netflix this year.