Okay so now we're onto books... what?
21-25
All five on audio from my library.
Who would've thought?
So, the 21st book that I read in 2016 was Lady Knight by Tamora Pierce.
Lady Knight, as I've been talking about, is the fourth and final book in the Protector of the Small Quartet.
It's a fantasy series within the Tortall universe.
I think I gave it 3 and a half out of five stars.
My favorite out of the four was the third one, which was Squire.
Lady Knight focused a little bit too much on battle tactics and war.
I wasn't as interested in that.
(sigh) And the ending?
It wasn't a cliffhanger. But I just felt a little bit ambiguous about the ending.
And I just wanted more.
And I'm really sad that was where things left off.
But overall I really liked it.
This series was really good.
There are more Tortall books but I'm taking a break from Tortall and I'm moving into the Circle universe.
And so I'm gonna read those books--still by Tamora Pierce--and then go back to Tortall.
The next book that I read was The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison.
It is about this half goblin half elf named Maia
whose estranged father is the elven emperor
and one day he unexpectedly dies in a plane crash with all of his next of kin.
And so it turns out that the next heir of the throne is Maia.
And so he's suddenly whisked into this world that he never expected
and he has to assume all of these duties.
There are like 100 characters and they all have really similar sounding names
and I just could not keep track of them.
[laughing] And I didn't know who any of the characters were.
But I just kind of decided that I wasn't even gonna stress about it
and I just kept reading the book.
And honestly there was just something about this book that I found really enjoyable.
I thought that the writing was so good.
The world building was really exquisite.
And the sentences were really well-constructed.
Everything was really detailed
and really specific
and it was really well-executed.
Even though it was super long, I was consistently fascinated
and interested throughout the entire thing.
I just found it to be really calming and enjoyable for me to listen to.
So I gave this like three and a half out of five stars
and I'm not sure how to rate it
I wasn't really personally connected to this book at all.
So it was a little bit in the middle.
If you like books that are really about court politics and political drama and stuff like that
then definitely check this out because it is really well done.
So the next like, "book" that I read is not really a book,
it's called The Neil Gaiman Audio Collection.
This is like 2 or 3 short children's stories
narrated by Neil Gaiman himself, who wrote them.
It was maybe like an hour long, I think.
It was just cute little kids books
and I love Neil Gaiman's voice.
And then at the end, he had a little interview between him and his own kid.
He talked about writing children's books
and he talked about how he likes it when authors narrate their own books.
And so it was just really nice and really adorable.
I mostly liked the interview but the stories themselves were really cute and fun.
It was a cute little audio collection.
I gave it like... 3 out of 5 stars.
And then the 4th and 5th books that I'm gonna talk about are
books 2 and 3 in the Wayside School series by Louis Sachar.
This is a middle grade series about a very bizarre classroom
at a school called Wayside School.
I read the first one sometime last year
There are childhood favorites of mine.
I absolutely love this series; I completely love Louis Sachar.
I just think he is such a good writer!
He is so good at crafting stories.
He has such a way with words and I just love him.
And now I wanna go back and re-read everything he's written.
because I loved this so much.
The second book in the series is Wayside School is Falling Down.
This one is my least favorite out of the three.
I just feel like there's not as much going on and it's not as funny
and it's not as interesting to me.
But... I mean... it's still really good.
The first one I gave 4 when I re-read it last year
And then the second one like 3 and a half, I just didn't like it quite as much.
But the third one...
homygod.
The third one is Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger
and this is by far my favorite in the series.
I just love everything about this book
because it really showcases everything that I love about Louis Sachar.
The way that he writes I think is so layered.
There's so much going on
but you can't really tell
because it seems really simple
but then you pick all these details out
and everything is connected as a huge arc.
He's so good at writing a story that is really funny but at the same time you're really uncomfortable
and you're really creeped out.
He's able to make you laugh and still feel scared at the same time.
And it was so cool.
I just think that the characters are so funny.
Some chapters are really just about wordplay.
And there are parts of this book that are so heartwarming and really emotionally deep.
And it's just so good!
And I love everything about it.
So I had to give that five stars
because honestly that book is, like, perfect
it has no flaws
every piece of it brings something to the table
and there's nothing that I don't want to be there.
It's just so good.
If you were to read this to your kid,
they would think it's funny just for the absurdist aspect of it
and they would think that it's really silly
and it totally is
but as an adult you can read it and pick out so many things that really make you think.
So my page count as of 25 books is 7,285.
I'm really on a middle grade kick right now
so I'm not really upping my page count that much
but (shrug) it's what I feel like reading.
I'll probably be back with another one of these soon.
Let's hope.
Goodbye!
