First Week Wrap Up

This week has been full of books. I started and completed 5 books this week.

First I started with Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire. This was a huge disappointment. While I enjoyed the first book, and adored the second, this was a sticky mess. Firstly, it dealt a lot with Nonsense which just was annoying. Secondly, the main character kept constantly talking about how she was fat. As a fat person myself, some of the thoughts resonated with me. Definitely at her age I would compared myself to others and push myself harder to make up for my body. However, I didn't constantly bring it up to people like she did. It felt unnatural how much she talked about it. The plot was disorganized. The only redeeming quality was seeing a few of the worlds and the lush descriptions that really helped me imagine them. I gave this book 2 stars.


Next I picked up Beartown by Fredik Bachman. This book really surprised me. At first glance, its all about hockey and how it consumes the lives of the small town people but it's really so much more than that. It is about people in positions of power taking advantage of the system. Of being able to quiet the people they've wronged. About how society elevates athletes to an undeserved position. It was a little hard to get into at first because while its in third person, the perspective switched between so many different characters. It was an ensemble cast. This was a powerful book and I gave it 4 stars.

Then I read George by Alex Gino. This was my diversity pick for my Middle Grade March Readathon. This is the story of a fourth grade transgender girl coming to grips with her identity and using her passion of acting in a school play as a means to come out to her friends and family. I enjoyed this quite a lot and felt these messages of acceptance were incredibly important. However, some of the lines seemed quite clunky and odd coming out of a ten year old's mouth. I wish it could've been a bit smoother. I gave it 3 stars.

I then read The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. This was my children's classic pick for my Middle Grade March Readathon. I can't believe I never read this book as a child. I remember watching the movie and loving it. I thought this was such a good read. I adored the transformation of Mistress Mary alongside the re-awakening of the garden. This was actually much deeper than most children's stories and held up really well for being over 100 years old. I gave it 4 stars.

Lastly, I picked up The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling. After finishing Harry Potter last month, I was still hungry for more of that world and this definitely satisfied that craving. This is a collection of short stories/fables from the wizarding world. The second story was my favorite. I gave this collection 4 stars. This is a middle grade read, but doesn't fulfill any specific challenge.

This was a really good reading week. I have so many more I'm excited to get to that I want to keep up this pace.