uncreative asra

Hi!

I expected to read a little more than I did in July (though I still managed to read quite a lot!) This month was another weird one where it feels like the things I read/did in the first couple of weeks of the month feel like forever ago. I don’t know what this feeling is but I don’t like it.

The books I read this month got me very far through my reading goal (I’m at 45/50 now!) I feel like I can reach 50 and go beyond that easily this year which is great, this is my first year properly tracking what I read (because I’ve actually been reading this year) and its been fun! I have no clue if I could ever keep this up for other years but I really want to try.

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Beloved by Toni Morrison

I was really excited when I found this at my bookstore because I’ve wanted to read it for a while! I don’t think I’ve properly read magical realism books before this (I really want to read more, if you have any favourites please recommend them!) and I loved the magic realism aspects, this was just beautifully written. At some points I did struggle with where I was, there are many flashbacks and it did get confusing at times but I still loved that it had this kind of structure. I’m glad I got to read this and I do want to read more Toni Morrison books in the future.

Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics by bell hooks

This is a very short introduction to feminism by bell hooks which briefly covers lots of different areas. This was good but I didn’t like how there were no references to other papers or books (there were many references to her other books though, I don’t know if they were necessary) because sometimes she said things which I wasn’t sure were correct or I would have liked to read more on because I was confused (for example, she said repeated abortions were bad for health, I have no idea if thats true but I don’t think it is? She also claimed that some heterosexual women ‘chose lesbianism’ because of terrible past relationships with men which I want to read more on, that is a bit confusing to me.) I did like this overall though, and I want to read her other works since they’re highly recommended and she is a very popular theorist. Since this is an intro to feminism for people who don’t know much about feminism and are new, it is annoying that there aren’t any footnotes, I’d probably only recommend this to people who are familiar with feminism and the left and not completely new feminists.

My Sister the Vampire by Sienna Mercer (books 1-9)

I did what I said I would do in my recent post “books I read in primary school”, and reread My Sister the Vampire books. It was fun at first, but by the last three I started to skim them a bit, and I kind of got headaches so I left it there, but it was still fun. The first 5-6 books are strong but then it just starts to drag a bit, I get that the author wanted to explore the mother’s side of the family more but it just lost me (but I’m also not the target audience, I think I would have liked this if I continued the series when I was 9-ish) I got ahead on my reading goal super easily because of this reread, and I got the full story which I didn’t get when I read it the first time.

House of Glass Hearts by Leila Siddiqui

I read my first ever ARC, and it was pretty cool! I have a review on my blog coming next week-ish and here’s the goodreads review I wrote, so I’m not going to say too much here. There are so many fantasy and magical and mythical aspects of the novel I loved, and it has two timelines of present day, where we follow Maera, and before/during the partition in colonial India following her grandfather. I had a great time reading this and would recommend!

Assata: An Autobiography by Assata Shakur

It was Assata Shakur’s birthday on the 16th of July so I saw her name pop up a lot in the days around that and lots of people recommended her autobiography so I read it. The chapters alternate between telling us about her growing up and her time in court and prison, and there are really good poems at the end of the chapters which I really enjoyed. I don’t know how to review autobiographies but I think this was great, I loved seeing how she changed her way in thinking about the world, and looking past all the lies she’d been fed in school, and growing as an activist, there is a lot we can learn from this. Her insights on racism, slavery, the education and justice systems are very useful and I learned a lot, and I personally love how all revolutionaries in their biographies and speeches and essays take a minute to talk about liberals and how useless and right-wing they are, I appreciate that a lot.

Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie

I was a bit confused about this book.

I enjoyed reading it, I love the writing (some people have said its too lyrical and I’d avoid this if you cant stand flowery/lyrical writing but that just makes me love it more) I liked the characters and the concept and the structure and the plot, I think it was great. This is inspired by Antigone, I had no clue what that was, and honestly Wikipedia summaries bore me so I didn’t finish reading it, but some day I will find out what it is.

After reading it, I went on goodreads to check out the reviews, I like reading both high and low reviews, and some of the 1-2 star ratings were from Muslims criticising the Muslim rep. The main families this book revolves around are Pakistani and half Pakistani families, one family is Muslim and the other isn’t really Muslim, but one of the hijabi Muslim protagonists does take off her hijab ‘for a guy’, they do have a father and brother who are terrorists, so I completely get the criticism. The author however is Pakistani and Muslim so I didn’t really think about it like that, and there are more things I could get out of this book other than this, I do want to think more about this book and write a review/discussion on my blog and expand on my thoughts because I think its interesting. Besides, this is kind of already in the summary, you know that their father and brother are terrorists and that is what the story is about (and its about many other things) so if you don’t like the sound of that, avoid it. But other than that I’d recommend this.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

A couple of years ago, I got a few classics because they were cheap and I really wanted to get into reading them but then, I didn’t, and they’ve just been sitting on my shelf for those two years. I thought I’d just go through them now, the summer before uni, because why not.

Fitzgerald is a good writer; there were so many times where I stopped to highlight something because it just sounded so good?? (the first description of Gatsby’s smile was perfection) It was short and easy to read, I hate Tom, I hate a lot of other people in this book, but it was still a fun read and a good book.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte

I actually started Wildfell Hall at the beginning of this year in January and I was enjoying it, but then got very bored in the middle and left it. For six months. Picked it up again in July though, and I had no problem continuing it, I knew exactly where I was which was a relief because I did not want to reread it. I liked the second half, though I started to get bored again at the last 50-ish pages (though a lot of stuff was happening in those 50 pages, I’m not sure why I got bored) anyway, I feel like I could have gotten a lot more out of this than I did and maybe I’ll revisit it if I ever feel like it, but yeah!

I think after Wildfell Hall I got a bit tired of classics, I also wanted to finish Jane Eyre and The Picture of Dorian Gray because I have those sitting on my shelf collecting dust, bookmarks are sticking out of them still, but I DNFed for now. I’ll probably try reading them again at a different time but I’m not sure. I don’t think I want to read many of these older classics for a while though, I need some really good fantasy series in August because its been a while since I’ve read it and I miss it a lot.

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that’s my July wrap-up, how was your reading month? Let me know if you’ve read any of these, and some books you’ve read in July and what you plan to read next!