August Reading Wrap Up

In August I had two readathons: the Mary Shelley AThon and the MiddleEarthAThon. Both were amazing and both inspired me to pick up books I wouldn’t have (at least this month) otherwise. It also meant that I read more than I would’ve so no complaints here!!

If you’d like to see how well I balanced my books out this month, then check out the video here!

The first book I finished in August was Fire by Kristin Cashore which is the second book in the Graceling series. This is an older YA series that has gotten a bit of a revival lately and it’s so much fun! Fire is our main character and I loved seeing her development throughout the book, as well as how the court changed around her. So excited to dive into Bitterblue next! This was my tbr jar pick and I’m glad this was forced into my hands!

Next up was Mathilda by Mary Shelley which I picked up for the Mary Shelley A Thon prompt of something written by Shelley. This is a super short read, around 100 pages, and a really interesting one. It’s essentially an unedited short story about a young woman who just wants a family and considering it’s unedited… wow is it written well. I just wish Shelley had been able to edit this one up into a fully fledged work!

The Final Strife by Saara El-Arifi was my next read, the Goldsboro GSFF book for last month, and WOW did I adore this book. Five stars, one of my favourites ever. This book is just amazing. I need the sequel like yesterday. This high fantasy is incredibly detailed, beautifully well developed, and I adored seeing the characters learn more about the world and each other. I love this book so much that I struggle to talk about it. That’s when you know I loved a read!

Then another great read was The River and the Book by Alison Croggon, my first reads from this author since The Pellinor Series (you know, that one that’s in my handle). This is not an own-voices book, but that is literally the only downside. It’s a beautifully written book that tackles white saviourism and it’s a real short read too. One I’d definitely recommend picking up!

Then I read the behemoth that is The Collected Poems of Robert Burns which clocks in at 600 pages. This was for a Mary Shelley A Thon prompt to read a poem/collection of poetry and this was the best choice because it was gifted to me by the readathon host Caitlyn! (from Mad Cheshire Rabbit) This is definitely not one I’d recommend generally to everyone, because there are some duds in this collection, but there are also some fantastic works and I think you should look Burns up and read a few.

The Drowned Woods by Emily Lloyd-Jones was the Illumicrate read for August and it was… fine? There wasn’t anything particularly wrong with this YA fantasy, but it also wasn’t a standout. Not one I’ll recommend or remember, but it’s fine. Read my full review linked above for more details.

Then I finished my non-fiction for the month, Timefulness by Marcia Bjornerud. This one was fantastic, having super interesting and unique discussions on geology, the physical makeup of our planet, and how we can learn to think more about timeframes past our existence. But. There’s ableism right at the end and I just can’t recommend a book after that. Check out my full review of this one coming in a few days (or available on my blog now if you’re reading this in mid September 22 onwards).

For my first MiddleEarthAThon read, a shiny book, I went for Demon Road by Derek Landy which is the first book in a YA Urban Fantasy trilogy. This is the same author of the Skulduggery Pleasant series and unfortunately it doesn’t quite live up to that high bar. It was enjoyable enough though and I’m curious, so I’ll be carrying on with the series.

All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr works for both readathons. For MiddleEarthAThon it’s (one of) the oldest book on my tbr, and for Mary Shelley A Thon it counts for both a book outside of your comfort zone and a tbr vet. This. This book was fantastic, amazing, and a 5* read! I had the smallest of issues with how travel was portrayed but other than that – perfection! Another favourite of the year.

And my final read was most of The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This entire collection was 1122 pages so I didn’t manage to read it all before the month was up, but I did manage it in the one week of the MiddleEarthAThon, and in August I read a fair few of the short stories. I’ll mention this one more in my September wrap up but this was a 4* read and just as fun as I remember Sherlock stories being.

And that’s everything I managed to read last month! It totalled 3944 pages, and so much of that was during the MiddleEarthAThon!!

Did you get any five star reads last month? The Final Strife and All The Light We Cannot See are both amazing and I’m so glad that I picked them up!!

Mathilda by Mary Shelley, a review

Mathilda by Mary Shelley is a short work that was suppressed from publication by her father and was only first published a century after her death.

Considering the content of this book, that certainly sheds a different light upon the possibly autobiographical nature of the book. However, the darkest aspects of this book are conjecture only (with William Godwin supressing the novella to avoid rumours), with the writing about the father’s grief at losing his wife and inability to care for his daughter being that which mimicked life.

I read this for the Mary-Shelley-A-Thon for the prompt of reading a book/poem by Shelley herself, and I’m glad that motivated me to pick up this interesting little read. I went into the book completely blind and was very surprised by the content (I recommend checking the trigger warnings for this one if you need to, they’ll be highlightable down below).

This book is very dark, following a young woman’s life without love and with much pain. She blames herself for the actions of her father and cannot reconcile to forgive herself, despite not being to blame whatsoever. Mathilda is in complete isolation for the majority of this book, left to be introspective alone.

Shelley depicts Mathilda’s mental deterioration with skill. You can see the character’s slow mental decline whilst attempting to tackle her thoughts and demons. Being isolated certainly causes these to develop much further than they would’ve in company and leads her down a very dark path.

On CAWPILE I rated this: Characters: 8, Atmosphere: 7, Writing: 8, Plot: 8, Intrigue: 8, Logic: 7, and Enjoyment: 7 giving a score of 7.57 and a 4* rating.

Highlight here for trigger warnings: death of parent, incest, suicidal thoughts, suicide, grief, adult/minor relationship, mental illness, terminal illness, paedophilia.

This book is only a first draft, as she sent this draft to her father and he never released it back to her. Despite that it is well crafted and really shows Shelley’s talent. I can only imagine what this novella could have become if Shelley had been able to spend time on revisions.

Have you read Shelley’s most famous novel? Frankenstein. Or any of her other works? If so let me know your thoughts on her writing! I think I might need to pick up more from her in the future.

2 Readathons, 2 Book Boxes – My August ’22 TBR!

It’s tbr time again! This month I’m going to be taking part in two readathons, as well as wanting to read my book box choices and starting up the tbr jar again! Let’s start with the books that aren’t for any prompts.

The Final Strife by Saara El-Arifi is the Goldsboro GSFF book. This is apparently the first book in a trilogy, a high fantasy with Lesbian rep and the praises of Samantha Shannon. Simply just being the Goldsboro book would’ve been enough for me to be excited but with all those other points? So excited to dive in!

The Illumicrate book for this month is The Drowned Woods by Emily Lloyd-Jones which is a Welsh based mythologically inspired read with faries and fae. I’m usually not a big fan of fae, but I actually really enjoy them when in a Celtic and native British setting so I’m hopeful for this one. It’s only 350 pages so I may as well give it a shot!

Then, my tbr jar book. Yup, I brought it back! And this time I pulled out Fire by Kristin Cashore, the second book in the Graceling series. I’m really excited to continue on with these books because Graceling was such a fun read. I’ve been told that this isn’t a direct sequel, but is within the same world, so I’m really curious!

Now onto the two readathons I’m taking part in this month! The first I’ll mention is one that’s covering the whole of August, and that is the Mary-Shelley-A-Thon hosted by Caitlyn from Mad Cheshire Rabbit. This is in celebration of Shelley’s birthday on the 31st of August, and so of course the prompts were all inspired by her! The second is taking place from the 28th August until the 2nd September, and this is the MiddleEarthAThon, this one celebrating the new Lord of the Rings series coming out on the 2nd. Neither of these require you to have read things in their respective areas before you join them, so please do consider joining us!

Mathilda by Mary Shelley is a short story, according to Goodreads it’s 79 pages. I picked this one for the prompt of reading something by Shelley, as I don’t own anything unread by her and thought that I may as well go for something short if I’m adding another book!

Then for the prompt of reading a poem or poetry collection, I’m using The Complete Poems of Robert Burns. I’m hoping I can read the whole thing this month. But if not as long as I read one it technically counts for the prompt so I’m all good!

This next book hits two Mary-Shelley-A-Thon prompts and one MiddleEarthAThon prompt. The book is All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, a historical fiction set in WWII France following a blind girl trying to survive Nazi occupation. For Shelley the prompts are a book outside of your comfort zone and a tbr veteran. I’ve had this book since 2016 and I really don’t get on as much with historical fiction anymore. For MiddleEarth it’s the oldest book on my tbr.

Then Demon Road by Derek Landy is my pick for the shiny book, the whole cover is so bright! This is by the same author as Skulduggery Pleasant and I’m nervous, because I’ve heard mixed reviews, but I’m excited to dive in myself.

The last book I’ve put on my tbr is the biggest, at 1100+ pages, and that’s The Complete Sherlock Holmes Collection by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This is for the short story collection prompt, and because this one is so big (and I only have a week to read both it and the other two books – which are both 500+ pages) I’ll count the prompt as complete as long as I read a minimum of 5 stories. But I’m going to try and read them all!

And that’s my tbr! Definitely a challenging one, specifically at the end of the month, but I’m excited to dive into all of these and enjoy some new worlds and stories! What’s one book on your tbr for this month?

Frankenstein – a review

The wonderful Caitlyn from Mad Cheshire Rabbit gifted me this book earlier on this year. Purely to force me to read it because she knew I wouldn’t until I had a physical copy in my hands! 😂 This book, as many know, follows a man named Frankenstein who aims to create life artificially and succeeds. In pop culture this is shown as a big, green, monster who he eventually manages to bring to life. And then who causes destruction. But how accurate is this?

Not at bloody all is the answer. When I heard this being described as gothic and with the pop culture references (although to be fair I’ve never seen an “adaptation”) I was expecting the crux of this to be the creation of the monster itself and the immediate struggle afterwards. I found a much different novel instead. The creation of the creature actually happens much earlier on in the book. It’s not the crux point at all.

This was a really big surprise for me, but we then got to discuss the concepts of life. Of exclusion and of treating fellow man the way we would wish to be treated. There are discussions of life and death, and so many unique and interesting topics! I wasn’t expecting philosophy!

But what I really had not been expecting? Was to love this book. I was reading this purely because it’s Caitlyn’s favourite. That was the only reason. But I adored this. It was such a lovely read. I adored all of the topics which Shelley brought up within the text as well as the main plot of the book itself. It’s a wonderful book and I can totally understand why it has lasted the decades (and centuries!) after its publication.

One point I would like to make is that I found the ending of the book very predictable, despite it feeling like it was supposed to be a twist. However, most likely this is because the book was published in EIGHTEEN EIGHTEEN and so at the time this probably was a twist!!

Highlight here for trigger warnings: attempted murder, child death, death, depression, islamophobia, murder, parental abandonment, xenophobia

For my CAWPILE ratings I gave:

Characters: 9

Atmosphere: 8

Writing: 6

Plot: 7

Intrigue: 8

Logic: 5

Enjoyment: 7

For an overall rating of 7.14 which comes out at a 4*! I’m so glad that Caitlyn gave me the push needed to pick this one up and I might have to read more from Shelley in the future!