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If I'm being honest, Summer is my least favorite season. It's hot, humid, and there are bugs everywhere. But summer vacation is a whole different story. There's time to read and bake, to go to the beach and go hiking (when it's not too hot to venture outside). I used to kill the summer reading program when I was a kid. I survived my first year of university and I am so ready to throw myself into reading (and working). So here are some books that I am incredibly excited to read!
I enjoyed this book. It has the perfect formula for a book that I would love: time travel, magic, secret societies, and a heist? Count me in! The Last Magician is well written, diverse, and has a vibrant setting. But I just couldn't shake the feeling that it could have been more than what it was. It could have pushed more boundaries, provided more insight, and built up a deeper world. While it was a special book, I don't think that it was especially fantastic.
As we all know, yesterday was Valentine's Day. I think I will always maintain that Valentine's Day is a fake holiday. Yes, I know that technically all holidays are "fake" in the sense that their creation and perpetuation are made up by the human mind, but in my opinion, Valentine's Day is one of the most fake of them all. Hallmark and candy companies conspired to sell heart-shaped chocolates and sappy cards. It's purely marketing. So, against the usual romantic tendencies that spring up around this time of year, I'm here to recommend some of my favorite books that are distinctly non-romantic.
According to almost all of history and most reviewers, Shirley Jackson's 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House is one of the scariest novels of all time. Since the recent release of Netflix's miniseries of the same title, this classic horror has been brought back into the limelight. As a horror fan, the book had sat on my to be read list for years. I finally got around to reading it after devouring and loving the show, and I was not disappointed.
Outside of my literature class this semester, I didn't manage to read as much as I would have liked this year. But then I remind myself that there are people who can't read any books at all in a year (the horror), and I feel a little better. 2018 was a big year for me. I graduated high school, moved out, and started college. However, I was able to sneak in some reading in between all of this (and all of the essays I wrote), and the books I read this year were almost entirely spectacular.
Every year that I can remember, my family has packed into our car for a 10-15 hour drive to New England to visit extended family. It's how I learned to love road trips and read in the car. Among other things, I learned how to play pool, challenged my boyfriend to endless rounds of badminton, and played mini golf as per tradition. But the cities, the beaches, and the bookstores were the highlights.
I have effectively fallen off of the face of the planet the past year or so. Or in other words, the online world. In recent years, my life has been consumed by high school and by my goal of acceptance into my first choice college. Now, I have graduated and been accepted, so I would like my life to take center stage.
