January book log

Here it is! The first month of my book logs for the year!!

I'm so excited about this. I was so inspired by Sarah's monthly book updates that I now have a long list of "to reads" and a year long goal to read 60 books (if not more!) by December 31.

This month I read three books, which is not a lot, but the fourth book I've been reading I'm on page 500 out of 900+ pages. It has sucked up a lot of my reading this month.

I started the year reading Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs. I've been eyeballing this book for a while (totally based on the cover, which is creepy cool). It is a young adult novel and a pretty quick read, but I found the story so interesting. We meet Jacob, a bored 16 year old, whose grandfather, whom he adores, is slowly slipping into dementia. When Jacob's grandfather mysteriously dies, leaving Jacob with last words that make no sense, Jacob must search for things in his grandfather's past that Jacob had always thought to be tall tales. This book is smart, well written, and engaging. I'm encouraging Elisabeth to read it, but she's kind of freaked out by the cover. :)

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
I bought this book because I thought it looked interesting and I kept seeing it everywhere. The book is told in short stories, all of which involve Olive Kitteridge in some way--some told from Olive's perspective, others told from her husband Henry, and more from those in her small Maine town. The book was hit or miss. Olive's point of view and her husband's were the strongest and most captivating. The other characters I felt rushed to "meet" and it just felt done ineffectively. I did like trying to figure out how Olive would become intertwined in the others' stories, but overall, this book was very meh. Not a keeper.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
I have been wanting to read this book for a while. I saw the preview for the movie a couple years ago, but I just can't seem to make myself watch anything 9/11 related yet. In the beginning, I thought the book would be only about Oskar, a 9 year old boy whose father died in the 9/11 terrorist attack on the Twin Towers, but the book ended up intertwining Oskar's story with that of his paternal grandmother and grandfather who lived through the bombing of their hometown of Dresdan, Germany during WWII. This book was so unique in its fabulous writing style, visuals that blend in with what you're reading, and characters that were instantly familiar, but still slowly unfolded in front of you. Definitely a book I'd recommend and earned a spot on my permanent bookshelf.


What's the fourth book I'm in the middle of, you ask? A Feast of Crows, book 4 of the A Song Of Ice and Fire series (aka: Game of Thrones books).  I am completely captivated by this world George R.R. Martin has created. But, I'll talk more about that next month.