January Wrap Up. 01/2017

Hellloooo! I'm back!! How have you all been! I kind of had an unintentional three-week break without telling anyone I was going, but hey! Surprises keep it interesting! And don't worry, the ridiculous amount of exclamation points will stop now.

I've missed blogging so much... you don't understand how hurt I was when I had to swap reading and blogging for studying and failing. But February is going to be different, I can feel it in my bones.

Plus, because of all the studying and the dying and the general unpleasantness, I'm already a book behind schedule on my Goodreads reading challenge. How I managed to mess it up already I have no idea. But I managed to read 5! That's not bad, right?

This month's conquered books include...

• A short story collection by Indrajit Garai.

I was sent this collection in exchange for an honest review and they weren't half bad! Yes, they needed some work, but I tried to pack my review with as much constructive criticism as I could. It was Garai's first work of fiction, and Englis may not have been his first language, so they were better than expected! You can find my full review here!

• Human Universe by Professor Bian Cox.

I don't normally read non-fiction books, but I've had this for a while and decided, why the hell not! I'm incredibly intrigued by the sciences, particularly chemistry and physics and this book broadened my knowledge in both. I'd recommend it to any fellow nerds out there! You can find my full review here!

• If I stay by Gayle Forman
I started 'If I Stay' on November the 11th of last year and I'll hold my hands up and say I lost it. Yep, it was in my bag when I got home from school, and when I set off the next day I wasn' there. I blame the goblins. But when I did finally find it, I'd read it in a matter of days. It's such a beautiful book, everyone's got to love it! You can find my full review here!

• The Sky Is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson

Talking of beautiful books, 'The Sky Is Everywhere' is definitely one of them! I'd started reading another of Jandy Nelson's work, 'I'll Give You the Sun' but I decided I wanted something shorter, so I naturally shifted to her other novel. This is an amazing book and it also features poetry, which makes it even better! I'd definitely recommend it. Stay tuned! This review will go out this Saturday!

• We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

Yet another great book! 'We Were Liars' by E. Lockhart is definitely one of the strangest books I've read in a long time. It's painfully dull, then hits you right in the feels when you least expect. I cried. For. Hours. I haven't typed this review up yet, but I can tell it's going to be incredibly long. Mark it in your calendars folks, the full review will be going up 18/02/17. Or you could follow my blog... then you can be reminded about all my posts! 

Book of the month

So, I may have only read 5 books this month, but I still have a favourite! Drum roll, please... My book of the month is  'The Sky Is Everywhere' by Jandy Nelson! I'll go into more detail as to why when I post my review on Saturday. But what I will say is that it's a truly heart-breaking book that got all the hype it deserved. I couldn't have asked for any more from it, it was simply unbeatable!

Favourite book merch stores
I don't order a lot of merch simply because a) It's expensive and b) I don't have a lot of money. But there was a huge sale on the home of all merch, Society 6, so I managed to grab a couple things. I bought the most beautiful tote bag from Bookwormboutique which reads 'Books are uniquely portable magic'.You can find it here if you're interested! I also bought a wonderful mug from Evie Seo which has a quote on it from ACOMAF. I haven't read this book yet, but it's an awesome quote anyway! You can find it here if you wanted!

Currently reading
The book that's carrying on into February with me is Caraval by Stephanie Garber! I'm a quarter of the way through and I am LOVING it so far. But then again, who isn't? This book was hyped like crazy, which is always some cause for concern, but so far, this book is yet to disappoint! Plus can we take a sec to talk about the cover? It's. Freaking.  AMAZING. I live in the UK so I got the whole split book thing (half black and half white) and it's maybe one of the best covers I've ever seen... PLUS when you sneak a peek under the dust jacket HEY PRESTO there's a pretty design in gold there! Yeah, you heard me, gold. I got the circus tent edition which is all I've ever wanted and maybe just a sprinkle more. Which one did you get? From having a gander on social media, the circus and the rose are probably the most popular, but did you get something different?

Pre-orders
I've decided to buckle down and get a little more serious with my blog. Some weeks went without reviews, Top 5 Tuesday disappeared into the abyss, and I was generally a bit of a failure. BUT NO MORE. I'm going to start putting a lot more time, effort and a little more money into this baby of mine. In order to make my amazing readers happy, I'm going to start preordering a couple of books each month to make sure my reviews a with the times. Because it's all well and good me getting a review out, but if it's a super mainstream book that was released a billion years ago, chances are you've already read it and reading a review won't be super helpful. So earlier last month I preordered Caraval, which is already here and I'm munching it up as fast as I can to get it to you, plus, 'History Is All You Left Me' by Adam Silvera which is arriving shortly. I could only buy two because that's all the budget allows, I hopefully made good choices. If there's ever any books you guys really want me to review, drop me an e-mail or use the blogger contact from and I'll see what I can do! I'm super duper open to ideas and I can't wait to hear what you suggest!

Book news
Book news! Book news is a new little segment weekly post thing that I'm going to start doing on my blog. The name is definitely open to suggestions as I realise how crap it is. If something major happens in the book community, like a ridiculously fantabulous cover drops, or new editions of books which are lit af arise, I'll be there!

Speaking of fantabulous cover drops a new lit af editions... ACOWAR AND HARRY POTTER!!! Yes, I haven't read ACOMAF yet, but you don't have to admire the beauty of the artwork. Being in the UK, I naturally prefer the US edition which is a tad unfortunate, but hey hum what can you do?

What do you guys think? Which is your favourite? Would you rather eat a finger than read an S. J. Maas book? LET'S DISCUSS.

Plus let's talk about Harry Potter I love Harry Potter I haven't read all the Harry Potters yet which makes the fact that I love Harry Potter even better because I'm an early admirer and did you know Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone turns 20 this year I did you know why because new editions are being released and its super cool and they're the houses which are super cool and I have to say all this in one super long sentence because I don't have time for proper punctuation Harry Potter is too important do you think those magic quills that can write have perfect punctuation or do you think the older they get they start to slip or do you think there are some really illiterate quills about that make the user look really bad because they chose a quill that couldn't write I think I'd have a quill as a pet I'm rambling am I rambling I think I'm rambling.....THERE'S GOING TO BE A RAVENCLAW THEMED COVER!!!!! 

I'll have 10 please, plus a Slytherin one. I didn't realise but, apparently, I have quite a lot of Slytherin properties about me, which I never even thought about. Thanks BuzzFeed for helping me figure that one out!

Summary
This cold and rainy January has been pretty good in the world of books, as it turns out. Let's hope February continues in January's footsteps. Plus, a little bit about me, I didn't realise February had two 'r''s in it until year 9 (aged 13). Embarrassing or what?

How many books did you manage this month? Has your Goodreads challenge beaten you already? It's ok, who hasn't it beaten? What's your best book of the month? Which upcoming book are you most excited for? Which Harry Potter house do you belong to?Are you a frequent Society6 shopper? What's your favourite shop? I WANT TO GET TO KNOW YOU GUYS!!!

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The Sacrifice, Short Stories: Volume 1 by Indrajit Garai: Review

Author: Indrajit Garai

Genre: Adult, Fiction, Short Stories

Pages:218                                                                                

Published: August 25, 2016

Publisher: Self-Published

Price:   £6.85 (Paperback from Amazon)

            £4.59 (Kindle Edition)

Series: Standalone

Source: Given in exchange of an honest review

Triggers (in book, review is safe): Suicide, Self Harm, Gore (related to the self harm), talk of drug use, Death

About the book (Taken from the blurb):

In this collection, meet:

Guillaume, who gives up everything to protect his child; young Mathew, who stakes his life to save his home; and, François, who makes the biggest sacrifice to rescue his grandson.

My review:

I'm going to review this book a bit differently because it's a collection of stories, and I've never reviewed one of those before. So I'm going to review each story on its own, then go to an overall review at the end. That way, you only have to read the bits you are interested in. There's only three stories though, so I promise it won't take too long.

Short Story 1: The Move

I feel this collection started with the worst. If has a pretty niche market as I don't really understand, or care much about, the problems facing milk farmers in France. I'm sure some people do, and understand the complexities of it, but I'm definitely not one of those people.

The story was a little too neat. One thing happened, then another, then another, so there wasn't any room for down time, which made everything very forced and a little bit too convenient. It also made character development pretty limited. I forgot about each character almost as soon as I finished reading the story, which obviously isn't wonderful.

So, in short, I didn't really like this one. I couldn't relate to it in any way and most of Guillaume's problems went straight over my head.

                                                    

Short Story 2: The Listener

This short story is considerably better than the first. Much more relatable, much more developed, much more worth the reading time.

As I am a bit of a nature freak myself, I could completely understand Mathew's love for his tree. It was super cute! I also love the way Garai describes nature, particularly the woodland creatures in Mathew's tree. I could tell that Garai cares about preserving woods as much as I do, which is completely awesome.

However, some scenes in the story were a little out of place, like the whole bit with the child snatcher - was it really needed? After the scene nothing came of it, and it was never mentioned again. It was like it was there as a filler, but why? It's a short story, it can be as short as you want, and can definitely be shorter than 67 pages! Filler is definitely not necessary, and it broke the story up in a really weird place. 

But, other than that, it wasn't too bad!

  

                                                   

Short Story 3: The Sacrifice

They undoubtedly saved the best for last! The characters are more relatable and you genuinely feel bad for the characters when things go wrong.

And sheesh, a lot goes wrong.

The only annoying thing is that the ending is incredibly, and I mean incredibly, rushed. One minute things were going ok, and then I turned the page and things were very, very not ok, then the book ended. Just like that. I'd spent the last 65 pages getting to know the characters, and in the last 10 pages it didn't matter anyway, pretty much. I have so many questions about the end of the book, which could have been easily solved in an extra 10 pages. Then the ending could have been spread out a bit more, and it wouldn't have been so unnecessarily obscure. But, Garai confined himself to around 70 pages, which resulted in filler in the last story and extreme rushing in this one.

That's what annoyed me so much, the major problems with the storylines could be easily solved by writing a few extra, or fewer pages. Bleh.

                                                 

Overall:

After a very brief analysis of the stories, I want to talk about the book as a whole. Can you remember when your high school English teacher used to tell you to only use a few short sentences, so they don't lose effect? Maybe it was just me because I think short sentences are EVERYTHING! But I see what they mean now. There's 10 short sentences just on the first page, out of 16 sentences. They. Are. Everywhere. And hey, I love a short sentence, but it makes the text extremely limiting and very simplistic. But, in all fairness, I don't think English is this authors first language. Which makes the simplistic nature understandable.

The other thing is the authors often odd choice of words, especially when writing in a child's perspective. It's quite hard to explain, but some of the words are overly formal, or very unchildlike, or misused in the context. For example, a phone rings 'frantically', and using 'humane' to describe someone instead of pretty much any other word with the same meaning. The language used was incredibly stand-off-ish.

I just want to put this out there, I'm not trying to be mean, or put a new author down, or nit-pick, I'm trying to give some constructive criticism. This is Garai's first work of fiction, so I obviously want to help home improve! So this book should, by no means, be written off, I just feel it needs a bit of work! I definitely hope Garai continues to write in the future and thank you for letting me review your book!

                                              

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