Jan. 2020 Wrap-Up: ALL the Manga!

Hey hi hello friends, and welcome back to my blog!

Heyyyyy, remember when I said once upon a time that this year I really wanted to focus on being more active on my blog and do at the least weekly updates?

Well.

Get your tequila ready...

Oops.

But I'm here now! And let me tell you, I had a fantastic reading month! Twenty-seven books. TWENTY-SEVEN! Y'all, I'm feeling great.

Okay, yes, most of those were manga, but manga counts and is valid so I don't care. However I'm not counting manga in my recent reads videos I'm going to be making this year or my spreadsheet of read books for the year, just because I read them so fast and blow through volume after volume, it's a lot easier to keep my recent reads to novels only. So while my goodreads challenge does say that I've read twenty-seven books already in 2020 (technically twenty-eight, as I have read a book for February already), I've only read eight novels so far. You'll have a recent reads video #1 soon enough! Which is why I won't go into any extraneous detail in my wrap-ups anymore, as you'll get all of my thoughts in those videos. 

Alright, enough yapping. Let's get into the books! (ps: I'll do the manga after all the novels so if you don't care about one or the other, you can skip around to your preference)

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Novels

1. The Last Magician by Lisa Maxwell (The Last Magician #1)

Star rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Page count: 500 pages

Read from: Jan. 1 to Jan. 16

Goodreads thoughts: Incredible fantastic *insert 1000 other expletives here*

2. Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys

Star rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Page count: 391 pages

Read from: Jan. 11 to Jan. 12

Goodreads thoughts: Well that just ripped out my heart and stomped on it.

I am so happy this was my first five star of the year, because holy hell does this book emulate five stars. I have always held a certain disdain for WWII historical fiction, because it was talked about so much in history classes and there are a billion and one movies about it. But I’m beginning to realize that there is so much more to WWII than just Pearl Harbor and Anne Frank, my history classes just decided not to teach us about—things like the Wilhelm Gustloff tragedy. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I had never heard of it until I picked up this book. I never learned anything about the Soviet invasion of Europe, and the atrocities committed at that time. Hell, I never even learned what happened to the Germans that weren’t Nazis. I’m actually really mad about that.

I digress.

Now I’ve discovered that I actually adore historical fiction, including WWII stories, if they’re done right, following a narrative instead of just spewing facts. Ruta Sepetys is a master of this writing style. I am looking forward to crying my eyes out at all of her other works.

This book is just absolutely beautiful and I am definitely going to look into more like it.

3. The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P. Djeli Clark (ONE DAY READ)

Star rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Page count: 144 pages

Read: Jan. 21

Goodreads thoughts: A fantastic commentary on women’s rights as well as traditional Armenian folklore. I’m going to have to read more from this author, that’s for sure.

4. Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips

Star rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Page count: 227 pages

Read from: Jan. 20 to Jan. 21

Goodreads thoughts: This was one of the best satirical fictions I have ever read. It was perfectly balanced between wit and hard hitting. It was ridiculous in all the best ways.

5. Teeth in the Mist by Dawn Kurtagich

Star rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

Page count: 352 pages

Read from: Jan. 22 to Jan. 23

Goodreads thoughts: It was okay. I liked the horror elements in it, and the relationship between Zoey and Len, though it was a little...odd, to say the least. But I predicted a fair amount of the plot twists and there was too much confusing elements, in my opinion. Overall, it was good, but a little lackluster in some things.

6. Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett (Founders #1)

Star rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Page count: 512 pages

Read from: Jan. 23 to Jan. 31

Goodreads thoughts: Good but info dumpy in some places.

7. Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei by Eliot Weinberger and Octavio Paz

No star rating

Page count: 64 pages

Read from: Jan. 27 to Jan. 31

Goodreads thoughts: Read for a literary theory class, it was interesting to see how each language interpreted the poem. I wish I could read and speak Mandarin so I actually new the true honest intention of the poet. Or go back in time to talk to him. That'd be pretty cool.

Manga

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba vol. 4-10 by Koyoharu Gotouge

No star rating

Total page count: 1,407 pages

Read: Jan. 25

Goodreads thoughts: I love the character development and the evolution that they go through! This is definitely climbing up to one of my favorite manga series of all time.

The Promised Neverland vol. 1-13 by Kaiu Shirai

No star rating

Total page count: 2,544 pages

Goodreads thoughts: The manga took a turn in how it was structured but I'm not mad at it. I actually kind of like all the plot twists we're thrown, but the last volume absolutely DESTROYED me.

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Total pages read: 6,151 pages (holy shit!!)

Favorite book of January: Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys

Least favorite book of January: Teeth in the Mist by Dawn Kurtagich

Unfinished books of January: Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

                                                              History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides 

No DNFs this month

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That's it for my January wrap-up! I'm pretty proud of this month, it feels like a good start to the year. I delved into some genres I don't typically read, and I also feel like I managed to grasp a good rating system. 

Hopefully I'll be a little more active this month. I've gotten into the swing of the semester so I think I have a good feel of when I can film/edit/blog. 

Until next time!