August 2015 Wrap Up

Jen

I feel like this was a slow reading month for me compared to the previous months. The 2015 Netball World Cup took place in this month so that was a major distraction and then I had a period where I just didn’t feel like reading anything. My reading did pick up towards the end of the month but a lot were audiobooks.

Falling Kingdoms by Morgan Rhodes → 5/5 
The Annotated Brothers Grimm edited by Maria Tatar → 4/5  
A Thousand Nights by E.K. Johnston → 3/5  
The Devil You Know by Trish Doller → 3.5/5  
Ten Tiny Breaths by K.A. Tucker → 5/5  
In Her Wake by K.A. Tucker → 5/5  
A Feast For Crows by George R.R. Martin →  4/5  
Risk by Fleur Ferris → 5/5  
Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult → 5/5  
The Tomorrow series by John Marsden (all on audiobook)  
- Tomorrow, When the War Began → 5/5  
- The Dead of the Night → 5/5  
- The Third Day, The Frost → 5/5 
- Darkness, Be My Friend → 5/5  
- Burning For Revenge → 5/5  
- The Night is For Hunting → 4.5/5 
- The Other Side of Dawn → 5/5 

Mel
I've been busy with essays and readings for uni, so I didn't get as many books read as I'd like, and a majority of the readings for uni didn't actually get finished. I was lucky though, because one of my assignments was a close reading, which means I only had to analyse a passage from one of the books, so finishing the book wasn't really necessary.

Books Finished
Angelfall by Susan Ee → 5/5
The Duff by Kody Keplinger → 5/5
The Black Cat by Edgar Allen Poe → 3/5
The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe → 4/5
The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allen Poe → 4/5
Risk by Fleur Ferris → 5/5
Falling Kingdoms by Morgan Rhodes → 5/5

Books Not Finished (and why I didn't finish them)
The Monk by Matthew Lewis: This book is really tedious and long winded. I think I reached about a third of the way and virtually nothing had really happened. I didn't like the story, I didn't like the characters and it just really got on my nerves. I was bored reading the portion that I actually read. I'm not going to finish this one.
The Italian by Ann Radcliffe: Really, I didn't even start this one, since I had so much going on, like the presentation due the fortnight after, but just what I heard about it in discussion with the rest of the class, I'm just glad that I never picked it up. I didn't focus my assignment on this book, so it's all good.
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: I have almost finished the first part of this book and what I did get through, I have really enjoyed! I have never actually read Frankenstein before or watched anything adapted to film based on the book, so I'm still intrigued by it and I will finish it eventually. As for now, I don't need to do an assignment on it, so it can stay on the back burner for now.
The Rings of Saturn by WG Sebald: In general, the texts that I have to read for my Narrative Analysis class are not texts that I would normally read, and typically for me I haven't enjoyed many of them. I read 18 pages of this book.
The Invention of Solitude by Paul Auster: This book was a little better than The Rings of Saturn, and I managed to make it a third of the way through, but still, not something I'd usually read, so it didn't really hold my interest.