Chased By My Imagination: April Wrap-Up Post.

Wednesday, 30 April 2014

April Wrap-Up Post.

Once again, I leave another month a bit disappointed in myself! I think that Uni is having to take up quite a lot of my time at the moment, and once that is over, I will have much more time to get on with things! You'll see in tomorrow's 'Planned Reads' post that most of them will consist of urgent Netgalley reads, books I need to review and challenge entries. Of course if I can do more, that would be great! But let's get on to what I managed! I'll start with the books that are going into the 'Real Books Challenge' category (button above), and then I'll get onto my Kindle Reads as I actually have a couple this month! I suppose I didn't do terribly. I read my crossover book, 5/6 of the ones I really wanted to get through, 1/6 of the ones I wanted to try to read and even an unanticipated author request! Let's not mention the extra challenge I set myself...

'Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale'; Holly Black: This was the book that I actually started reading in March, but finished in April and so comes under this category. I really enjoyed this book, I'd been eyeing it up for a very long time and I'm certainly a fan of Holly Black now! I can't wait to read the second in the series, 'Valiant'. 4/5 stars.
'Demolition Queen - Champagne, Murder & Chaos'; Betsy Cook Speer: Now this was my very first author request and I got majorly excited when it happened so I accepted. I wouldn't normally pick this one up off the shelf and I thought it was a bit of a slow starter, but by the end I liked it more! If you're a fan of thrillers, this might be better suited to you! 2/5 stars.
'The Fault In Our Stars'; John Green: My sister Bev pestered and pestered for me to rearrange my entire reading list and bump this one up! I listened and am so glad I did. Such a heart-breakingly beautiful book that made me cry, like, a lot. Very sad but I have no regrets. Everybody needs to read this book, it delivers a pretty important message and I did a lot of reflecting afterwards. 5/5 stars.
'A Certain Slant Of Light'; Laura Whitcomb: I was blessed with reading some really good books this month! Another one that has been on the pile for a while, and I've finally put my foot down and read it. I've never read anything like it, there was such originality in the concept and it was done pretty well. There's a sequel which I would be interested to read to see where Whitcomb takes the story from this point. 4.5/5 stars.
'The Hunger Games'; Suzanne Collins: Well it was pretty obvious that having loved the films so much, I needed to read the book. I'm really glad I did, I worried my opinion would be tainted by my prior knowledge but I found that the book did a lot of things that I now see the film could not. 4/5 stars.
'Days Of Blood & Starlight'; Laini Taylor: I literally finished this one a few hours ago, and wow! I gave the first in the series four stars but this next installment I found even better than the first one! Characterisation was top notch and Taylor's imagination never fails to amaze me! 5/5 stars.

Kindle Reads

'The Invention Of Wings'; Sue Monk Kidd: I won this in a giveaway and I adored this book. Definitely one of my favourite reads of the month, it's a powerful novel that at times can shock with the injustices it contains. I loved the differing perspectives within the book and will not ever stop recommending it to people. 5/5 stars.
'The Poison Eaters'; Holly Black: A wonderful little selection of short stories written again by Holly Black. As I'd read Tithe, I really wanted to get to the short story set in it's universe. I loved it but I'm glad I got the chance to read all the other gems she had written too! I would love to see full-length novels made out of a couple of them, some really original concepts. 4/5 stars.

So I've broken out of the 6 books a month habit! I read 8 this time, yay! I don't feel quite so terrible now and I've read some really good ones. Here is a quick update on my current Bookish Bingo score! Every single one of my reads this month fit into a category!