The Reading Frenzy discussion

Yay, you've made it to the discussion feed! We can't wait to talk books together with you all so let us know down below all the juicy details!

What are you reading?
What challenge does it complete?
What did you think of the book?
Would you recommend it?
What will you be picking up next?
Any book recommendations for the challenges that you want to share?

So far this month, I've finished:
Mary: The Adventures of Mary Shelley's Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Granddaughter for the Women Rule prompt for the travel-a-thon, as well as for an ARC review. I really enjoyed it, and hope that it's the start of a series, because I can definitely see it being the start of a larger series.
The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden for the Pokemon Challenge. This book took a while to get in to, but it was very funny and was an overall enjoyable read.
I'm currently reading:
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption, not for any prompt, but they finally got the audiobook at my library, and my dad has been recommending this book to me for years. It's very interesting, and considering how many WWII fiction books I've read this year, it's fitting that I am now reading a nonfiction book about WWII.
The Year Shakespeare Ruined My Life for the Pokemon Challenge and for and ARC review. I am enjoying this one, but not as much as I was hoping to. There are just so many minor things that are bothering me with it, and I guess I'll have to wait until the end to say how I really feel, but there are a couple things I don't like, but I lot of things I really like about this one.
Next up, I'm planning to read some books for the Pokemon Challenge, and then a few books that I have for both the Pokemon and Travel-a-thon Challenges. I'm hoping that September continues to be a good reading month for me.

I finished Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard which goes to the Kremlin and Camomile prompts for the travel a thin Russia! It was a good book with a magical world I enjoyed escaping to :) and I can’t wait to read the rest of the series!

Madeline wrote: "I finished Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard which goes to the Kremlin and Camomile prompts for the travel a thin Russia! It was a good book with a magical world I enjoyed escaping to :) and I can’t wa..."

I'm so glad you liked Red Queen! I listened to the first book on audio and didn't care for it.. but whenever that happens I always put the book on the back burner to reread physically just in case it was the audio that made me not like it (this happens A LOT. Ill only read books im only semi-interested in on audio for this reason).

I've finished 6 books this month.. and what a relief after not being well enough to read for a couple of months! Oh, how I missed my books. my main goal this month is to clean up my currently reading shelf. When I stopped reading I left like 8 things half done and this was making me crazy!

The first book I finished was Kingdom of Ash. I was about 350 pages into it when I stopped but I finished the last 650 pages in a flash.. it was so good!

After that I started and finished Pet Sematary with a group I read with occasionally on Discord. I really enjoyed it, like I thought I would, but it was completely different than what I expected it to be. gave that one 4 stars.

Next up was The Night Swim which I had an ARC of and planned to fully review on my blog.. but again wasnt able to finish it. Unfortunately, I think my enjoyment of this one was altered because I read the first and second halves so far apart. I remembered everything but when I went back I just didn't like it as much as I had been originally. I gave it 3 stars but no longer felt it was fair to give it an official review. I will say this seemed to be well liked by the masses so don't let my opinion sway you either way!

Then I started and finished two graphic novels I've been wanting to get to for a while, The Tea Dragon Festival & Mooncakes. I was really surprised how they both had non-binary characters and a character who was deaf/ hard of hearing. this happened completely by accident! I really enjoyed and recommend both.. I gave both 4 stars.

Lastly I finally read I'm Thinking of Ending Things. I had heard so many things about how unique and amazing this book was... and it wasn't. At least not for me. I think the hype made my expectations very high, but even so I just didn't care for the ending all that much. I gave it 3 stars. I keep thinking I should have given it 2. 🤷🏼‍♀️. update: I've since changed my rating to 2 stars

Now I'm back to making headway with my leftover currently reading list and I'm slowing making my way through Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy. Im really enjoying it, like I do all the books in the shadowhunter universe. I found a list online of Cassie Clare's recommended reading order so I decided to do a reread and then just continue on to the new stuff I haven't read yet. This being the first book of the new stuff (new to me) so im anxious to finish this and finally get to Lady Midnight.

Ive also broken my promise to myself to try and read one or two things at a time...instead of 10.. and I started The Babysitters Coven. I'm only 1 chapter in and already like it.. this in itself isn't too many books but I can tell you I know ill be starting Catherine House long before I finish these two books lol. Im reading that one with the literally dead book club. really its just an excuse to read it. Ive had it on my tar cart since it released.

Whats next? these are the books I plan to pick up next: My Best Friend's Exorcism and The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires, Hex Life: Wicked New Tales of Witchery, Neverwhere, The Voodoo Killings, and Serpent & Dove. These are just the ones ive got lined up and it can (and probably will, knowing me) change!
hope everyones having a stellar reading month! And just a hint: Next month is gonna be a blast and you won't want to miss it so I hope you can squeeze the reading frenzy into your October plans! 😉👻🧟‍♂️

I’ve just finished The Lady in the Tower by Alison Weir for the Women Rule prompt! Kind of a triple threat, being a) by a woman; b) about a woman who, c) was Anne Boleyn, once Queen of England!

Ema wrote: "I’ve just finished The Lady in the Tower by Alison Weir for the Women Rule prompt! Kind of a triple threat, being a) by a woman; b) about a woman who, c) was Anne Boleyn, once Queen of England!"

Nice! 💪🏼

Since I last commented, I've read:
The Year Shakespeare Ruined My Life for the Pokemon challenge and an ARC review, it was cute, but it wasn't really what I expected and a lot of the plot twists were really obvious and the main character made me cringe so bad at times.
Blue Ridge: The Complete Collection, it's 4 books and I finished them for one of the Pokemon challenge prompts. It was ok, had a good idea, but just needed an editor or beta reader before it was published.
Right now, I'm reading:
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption (still) I'm enjoying this, but I mostly "read" it in my car, and some days I just want to listen to music on my ride.
Water for Elephants I tried to read this for the Circus Travel-a-thon, but I had to return it before I was finished and actually just got back from the library today.
Why She Left, not my normal type of book, it's kind of a memoir, and I am actually really liking it so far.
Next up:
I'm hoping to read Dear Leader: Poet, Spy, Escapee - A Look Inside North Korea for the Kremlin travel-a-thon prompt and the Pokemon Challenge with The Scorpion Rules for the Pokemon Challenge. I'm trying the 1000 page Read-a-thon on tumblr, so hopefully I can finish all these books this week.

Hello again, thought I'd update my update 🙃.

Since my last comment I finished a couple more books. I finished The Babysitters Coven. I gave it 3 stars due to some really annoying elements. If you're interested in my thoughts on that you can see those here.

Next, I got caught up in starting to many things again because of the Buzzword read-a-thon hosted by Kayla from Booksandlala. I ended up starting and finished Midnight Angel. This was a completely random book I found on Kindle Unlimited when I was looking for books with 'night' in the title. Which is absurd as I have a gazillion books on my shelves with night in the title that have been on my TBR for an age. sigh. It was alright, I also gave that book 3 stars.

I started The Night Tiger for the same read-a-thon mentioned above. Im liking it so far but I hope it picks up soon as it's a bit flat right now.

Im did end up starting Catherine House and im about 100 pages in. It's interesting so far but I hope something big happens soon. While the atmosphere is pretty great not. whole lot of stuff is actually happening yet.

I'm still working on Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy, I'm a little more than half way through it at this point. I do like it but it's hard to find time to pick it up and start on a short story when ive got a million other books happening.

So that's my update, I'll come back once I've finished more books!

Since I last commented, I read:
Why She Left, not the book for me, but was really good. Read it for the Pokemon Challenge and the Kremlin prompt for the travel-a-thon.
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption, although I normally don't read nonfiction, I loved this. My dad read it shortly after it was published 10 years ago and has been telling me I need to read it ever since. I'm glad he told me to read it, because I loved it.
Currently Reading:
The Scorpion Rules for the Pokemon challenge, so far the premise is pretty interesting, although I am not fully invested yet.
Water for Elephants I finally got this back from the library and since I finished Unbroken, I am trying to finish this audio book before it's due.
Rain City Lights I recieved this as an ARC from BookSirens, it's really good so far.
I'll hopefully have a few more books I've finished before the end of September (I'm not including the children's books I've read, because I'm tutoring some 2nd graders and we're reading about 5 books a week together but they're all pretty quick reads).

well, its the last day of the month and I doubt I'll finish anything else tonight. I finished a few more things since my last update.

I finished Catherine House and gave it 4 stars. It's getting pretty mixed reviews and I've seen quite a few people who didn't care for it. I didn't love the book in the beginning but it did grow on me and I found there were more pros than cons. I definitely recommend it if you like gothic atmospheres, elite/secret societies, and boarding school settings. Also, the characters are between 19-22 which is a unique age group to read about. I find it's difficult and rare to stumble upon characters out of high school but not in their thirties or immortal (lol).

I then finished two more books that were on my currently reading shelf since before treatment. The first I completed was Notes on a Nervous Planet. This was an extremely easy book to give a 5-star rating. I thought it was smart, relevant, and it touched on a lot of topics that resonated with me. I also tabbed and annotated it and that was pretty fun. I recommend NoaNP to anyone and everyone. There isn't anyone out there that wouldn't benefit from reading this book.

Next I finally finished Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy. I really enjoyed this book. It ties up many lose ends from the original series really nicely and sets the reader up for the following series. I gave it 4 stars, which I got by averaging the individual ratings from each story. On impulse I would have given it 5 but I wanted it to be a fair rating.

I'm still reading The Night Tiger but I haven't made much progress. Based on its popularity I'm assuming it will get better but right now it's very slow. I do intend to finish it and I hopefully will very soon.

Another book that I had started before treatment but didn't finish is 20th Century Ghosts. I had only read one story when I put it down and I picked it back up tonight. It's the perfect time of year to finish a book of short ghost stories. I'll be working on this a little at time until I've finished it. That will leave only 2 more books on my currently reading shelf that are from before treatment so I'm definitely pleased with that progress considering that cleaning that shelf up was one of the main goals I had for this month.

I've also recently picked up In the House in the Dark of the Woods. It's a very short modern horror/fairytale. It's only 214 pages but the words are small so I think it'll take a little longer than I first thought. I do like it so far. It's a modern tale that's very reminiscent of a fairytale. Woman enters the forest, loses her shoes, falls asleep, meets strangers. That type of thing. I'm only about 20 pages in but I have a feeling I'm really going to like it.

I also picked up the second book in the Thorn Chronicles, Destroyer Angel on Kindle Unlimited. I'm continuing on with the series because there were some things I did like about the first book and also because I'm a completist. I started the series and now I feel compelled to finish it. So far I still find the writing amateur and the characters doing things that are unlikely to actually happen in real life but I'm looking past those things in order to get to the end of the series and find out what happens.

The only two books that I have left on my currently reading shelf other than what I have already talked about are Arcanum Unbounded and The Cult of Eden. Arcanum Unbounded are short stories from the Cosmere Universe by Brandon Sanderson. I joined in on the Cosmere-a-long earlier in the year and some of the short stories in the series are in this book. I think I heard that they stopped the read-a-long, I'm not really sure but I plan to continue on at my own pace since I really want to read Mistborn. So this book won't be finished for a while yet. The Cult of Eden is a book I bought by a new author that was signing at one of the local bookstores. The premise sounded interesting and I wanted to give the book a review since the author is still so new to the book community. I do want to pick this book back up at some point but I'm just not sure about it. The writing is good but the story is super weird. I guess we'll see what happens.

Some books I plan on picking up next are Lady Midnight, One by One, Mexican Gothic, and My Best Friend's Exorcism to name a few. See you all in October!

So, tonight I (finally) finished Water for Elephants, it was alright, not my favorite, but it was good.
Still reading:
Rain City Lights, really interesting so far, but I'm still very early into the book.
The Scorpion Rules, I like the world building, although the characters are all fairly meh so far.
Dear Leader: Poet, Spy, Escapee - A Look Inside North Korea, this book is wild and seriously gives off a dystopian vibe, and it honestly makes my skin crawl to know that the country this takes place is real and I was close enough to see it (if it had been a clear day, I was just outside of Seoul and it was hazy out, so we couldn't actually see it).
I'm not sure what I'm picking up yet, as I don't actually have an October TBR yet, which I should probably work on.