The Book of August 2017

Daily Ramble #13: The Books of August

August saw me read through 5 books again and I am hoping 5 becomes my minimum monthly standard. I think 5 titles is pretty good and I’ve managed to read through 5 books in March, April, May, July, and now August.

Here are the 5:

• Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer
• The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware
• Red Rising by Pierce Brown
• Take Me Home: An Autobiography by John Denver
• Homeland: The Legend of Drizzt Book 1 by R. A. Salvatore

I think it’s a pretty diverse set of books with some mystery, some fantasy, some re-reads, and some non-fiction.

Red Rising

Of the 5, my favorite was Red Rising which was a bit surprising for me. I went into this Young Adult novel expecting it to be filled with standard YA tropes and memes, but while it did have its share of those, the story was compelling and the world building really captured me. This is the first YA book that I can remember saying I want to get to the next volume – and the next one’s definitely on my short list of upcoming books.

Homeland: The Legend of Drizzt Book 1

My second favorite of the month was actually a re-read. Homeland was something I read probably 20+ years ago when I was way into dungeons and dragons. I’ve always enjoyed the tales of the dark elf and felt like it was time to revisit his story. I’ve actually read most of the books – at least a dozen – that he was in through the late 1990’s but I wanted to try and go through all of them since I’ve heard that for the time being Salvatore has stopped making new books featuring the Drow Elf. In any case, the book was as enjoyable as it was the first time I read it and I really feel like the series is going on my list of books that I have to read in the long term.

Take Me Home: An Autobiography

I was totally not planning on reading this one. However, I was listening to the Mike Rowe podcast and he had an episode that covered John Denver. What’s interesting is I listen to John Denver practically every day. I have a meditation app on my iPad and as part of the audio portion of the meditation I assign songs from my iTunes library and John Denver happens to be one that works really well to help with my focus. When Mike Rowe’s podcast covered him I realized I had to find out more about who John Denver was. The autobiography was interesting and enjoyable and I feel like I know John Denver a lot better now – he wasn’t just a hippy singing folksy music. Will it help me in my meditation? I doubt it, but I enjoyed reading it.

The Others

To Like the Lightning was a fun read but it just didn’t go all the way there for me. In the end it really seemed like part one of a multipart book and I really didn’t feel that it lived up to all the promises that were made at the beginning of the story. The world building was interesting but I suppose I’ll have to read the second book in order to fully get an appreciation of the story. And I don’t usually like HAVING to read another book, I prefer it when I WANT to read another book.

The Woman in Cabin 10 was an interesting mystery read that worked out pretty well but the main character was a bit too much of a victim for me to really get into. It was part of a book club I belong too so I read through it, but it would not have been something that I would’ve chosen on my own. It wasn’t a bad book and it was a decent read but it wasn’t one of my favorites.

The 2017 List

So where do things land on my list – if anything makes it that high?

Actually, I’m gonna say Red Rising makes my list and knocks Sleeping Giants off. I actually will put the YA novel right behind Dune in my 2017 reading favorites – it was that enjoyable.

Here’s my new list:

1. Elantris – Brandon Sanderson (2007)
2. Gateway – Frederick Pohl (1977)
3. The Three-Body Problem – Cixin Liu (2014)
4. I, Robot – Isaac Asimov (1950)
5. Mistborn: The Final Empire – Brandon Sanderson (2009)
6. Dune – Frank Herbert (1965)
7. Red Rising – Pierce Brown (2014)
8. Beyond the Blue Event Horizon – Frederick Pohl (1980)
9. Lock In – John Scalzi (2014)
10. Heechee Rendezvous – Frederick Pohl (1985)

Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel (2016) fell off but is still a great read and I’m planning on getting to the second book of that series soon.