This year I've embarked on a journey trying to better my reading habits, with my main goal being to read one book each month at least. I'm slightly behind on my goal, but I think with summer rolling around and me having more free time I'll definitely catch up and then some! Here's the books I've read so far this year, with some spoilers perhaps:
First I started with 'The Shining' by Stephen King. I bought the pocket book of this along with another book of his (more on that later). And let me tell you, after reading The Shining I was very worried I had wasted money on two books I wasn't necessarily gonna like. Don't get me wrong, The Shining is fine and has its moments, but the whole book just feels way too padded out. It was good to see the slow descent into madness of the characters in the hotel, but at the same time I didn't feel like I cared that much about the three protagonists because most of the book is just padded out narrative and while you get a sense of how they are, it feels pretty superficial. I found myself almost forcing me to read it, and gave it 3 out of 5 stars.
The next book I read was 'O Vendedor De Passados' by José Eduardo Agualusa. Some portuguese reading goodness, alright. This was a book I had no idea existed until I reposted something on my Insta stories about books by Afro-Portuguese authors and a friend of mine was like "This post has a severe lack of this book! I'll borrow it to you!" Now this book was a real trip, it's very fun and a rather short read, with the characters being very weirdly fledged out and a ending that comes seemingly out of nowhere and feels straight out of a mexican telenovela. It's a very cool book, I gave 3 out of 5 stars to it too but I like it a lot more then The SHining. Like in reality this would be a 3.5 maybe, with The Shining a real 3 or even a 2.5. But yeah the plot twist was CRAZY and the story was told in very unique ways, I just wish we would focus more on the past selling then on the gecko's dreams (oh yeah, the narrator of this story is a gecko). So yeah, i recommend this one.
Then I read Call Me By Your Name and even tho I gave it a solid 4 out of 5 stars, I have a lot of thoughts. If you can overlook some weird ass age difference and some really awkward scenes with wild sexual connotations (example, one character placing their hand on the other stomach while they take a dump to feel their insides (how did the author think this was romantic?)), this is very well written and you'll enjoy it. The thing is, can you overlook it? For me I could cuz the ending kinda redeemed it for me. In the whole book Elio seemed like a obsessed kid while Oliver seemed like he was just accepting the advances of a teenager, which was wrong, plus it felt like he led him on a lot of the time, felt like he was using Elio. But the ending showed that Oliver truly cared for Elio, and that Elio felt things really intensely but it wasn't just mere obsession: he actually really liked Oliver, and always will. This paired with the beautiful writing style of André Aciman led this weird romance to a 4 star rating from me.
Finally the last book I completed was 'Hunger Games: Catching Fire' by Suzanne Collins. Everyone knows Hunger Games so all I'm gonna say is it was a fun book where I felt the characters that went into the arena were a tad too under developed (unless their name was Finnick Odair). Johanna and Enobaria, for example, they're big presences in the third book yet here they don't get much. It was a 4 star book for me as well.
And currently I am reading the OTHER Stephen King novel I bought, 'Mysery'. And let me tell you this one is SO MUCH better. I'm having a real good time with it, and the characters feel a lot more fledged out then in The Shining. Annie is such a psycho and it's really scary cuz the psychological games she plays with Paul are so hardcore. This book was the first time I was visibly repulsed during a bit of this book, I was reading it on the train and I was just visibly disgusted by it. I don't know where this is going but I am really loving this and may give it a 5 star review if I keep going like this!
Now if you're wondering what other books I'd like to read: I have a few books I bought or got gifted or just have lying around that I wanna read, like Dark Places by Gillian Flynn, The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde, One Day by David Nicholls, two poetry books I got gifted. I have also joined a discord server with a book club kinda thing, and I am pondering buying the July book they picked as an E-Book to try that out: Even If We Break by Marieke Nijkamp. Then there's also the Red Rising series, which I really wanna read but can't find anywhere here.
