Quick Lit: Early 2017

I've been on a blogging break since the beginning of January, so I haven't written my monthly Quick Lit posts. Goodreads says I've read 19 books since my last recap. I'll try to keep these short! :)

February 10, 2017:  40weeks5days pregnant, hanging out at
Barnes & Noble after walking the mall trying to induce labor.

Fiction/Historical Fiction

The Fellowship of the Ring by JRR Tolkien - In December I was inspired to re-read these classics. Maybe it's because the movies came out in December each year and so it seemed like a cozy read. I flew through the first one, and now (June 1) am finally almost finished with Two Towers... I'm reading it on my Kindle, and enjoying it when I do read it, but other books have pulled me away.

The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper by Phaedra Patrick - This was one of those modern-day fiction books that I don't often read, but sounded intriguing and it was available on OverDrive for my Kindle. A little bit mysterious, a little bit love story, overall a satisfying read.

Moloka'i by Alan Brennert - This was February's pick for The Deliberate Reader online book club. Some of it was hard to read (hello leprosy), but wanting to find out what happened to the characters pushed me through. Now I really want to visit Hawaii.

Waves of Mercy by Lynn Austin - Lynn Austin is one of my all-time favorite authors. She does a beautiful job of creating historical fiction without the typical cheesy romance thrown in (a genre I used to read all the time and now makes me just roll my eyes). This one is about the founding of the city of Holland Michigan, about an hour and a half from me. I'm also part Dutch, so this one hits close to home for me.


Memoir

Wild by Cheryl Strayed - I never would have picked this one up on my own but it arrived as part of a traveling book club I'm part of (six of us each picked a book and we mail them out in a circle over the course of the year). Memoir is a genre soooo many people love, but hasn't typically been for me. I'll admit I skimmed some of the last third of this one, but overall it was a neat story of a woman setting out to hike the Pacific Crest Trail and learning a lot about herself on the way.

Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver - This was the January pick for the Deliberate Reader book club, and actually a re-read for me. January was a GREAT time to read it, as we're all looking for ways to improve our lives in the new year, right? However the concept of only eating locally-produced food was really difficult in Michigan in the middle of winter. Still, it's one I'll pick up over and over again.

At Home in the World by Tsh Oxenreider - The highlight of my spring reading!! I've followed Tsh's blog for years and listened to her podcast since almost the beginning. I even broke my never-spend-full-price-on-books rule (I'm a hard-core library reader and thrift shopper) and bought this one the week after it came out. "9 Months, 5 Backpacks, 4 Continents, 3 Kids, 1 Husband." The subtitle is Reflections on Belonging While Wandering the Globe, and as I've been working through my own sense of "place" and "home" it was refreshing to read about Tsh's thoughts.


Young Adult

The Great Library #1-3 (Ink and Bone, Paper and Fire, Ash and Quill) by Rachel Caine - I picked up the first book in this series from a display in my library labeled "books about books". It's a really interesting concept about what the world could be like if Gutenberg's printing press never happened, and any attempts to create one were suppressed by the control-hungry worldwide Great Library. The stories follow a handful of teenagers who end up going rogue and trying to find middle ground between the tyrannical Library and the mutinous Burners. Book 3 comes out in July, I received an advance copy from NetGalley. While I think the overall plot is slow moving and could have been completed in a trilogy (it sounds like it will be a five-book series), I will likely keep reading as they come out to find out how they save the world.

The Reckoners #1-3 (Steelheart, Firefight, Calamity) by Brandon Sanderson - This series reminds me a bit of Divergent with superheroes - and the superheroes are the bad guys. Typical dystopian, the rebels try to figure out how to defeat those in charge who are ruining everyone's lives. Very unique though, because of the superhero-ish stuff, and I blazed through these. They're the first I've read by Sanderson too, and I've heard lots of good stuff about him so I'll be looking into his other books.

The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon - This is the type of YA I usually avoid (modern, boy-meets-girl, etc), but so many people raved about it that I'd put it on hold in OverDrive a long time ago. When it finally became available I thought I'd give it a try after all. I loved the short chapters, told from both alternating viewpoints. It's still not my style, but I enjoyed it and now know what's going on when people talk about it. :)

Walk on Earth a Stranger by Rae Carson - For years and years I've had a thing for books set in the mid-to-late 1800s, especially in the gold rush and Oregon Trail era. This book also included just enough magic to be different yet believable. I'm really excited to continue this trilogy, I need to interlibrary loan book two, and book three comes out in October.

The Ranger's Apprentice #1-4 (The Ruins of Gorlan, The Burning Bridge, The Icebound Land, The Battle for Skandia) by John Flanagan - I started this series when I was in a reading rut last month and was searching for something YA that was available in OverDrive. I'm surprisingly hooked! Rather than being futuristic like so many YA books, it seems to be set more in "Robin Hood times", with castles, longbows, knights, etc. The world that Flanagan has created gets expanded with each book, and has undertones of recognizable places like England and Scandinavia. There are 12 books plus some companions, I'm not sure yet how far I'll go before taking a break.

Have you read anything good in the last few months? 

Linking up with Anne Bogel's Quick Lit on June 15.

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