Currently Reading

I can read quite a few books at once and not get confused or frustrated. I tend to designate books to different activities or reading locations. For example I often have a book that I only read on the train as I'm commuting. Currently I'm reading most of my books on my kindle and in my house. So while I'm not mixing them up, I does seem to take awhile to get into the head space of each given book.

Anyway, I am currently reading six books, according to my goodreads. Four on my kindle and two regular old paperbacks.

-Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Good god I've been reading this forever. I found it at a secondhand store and was so pumped. It feels so lucky and meant to be when I find reasonably priced english books here in Germany. Plus some author I really like named the book as her desert island book or something, so it's been on my list for awhile. I was super into it for the first half I'd say. It was all the made up history and the many stupidly long footnotes that ran me off I think. I will finish it and I'll probably rate it pretty high, I just have to muster up some new interest.

-Sometime in the 21st Century by James Banks
I won this off goodreads. It was available to win in Germany and nothing is ever available here, so I just went for it and won. It came surprisingly quickly. (The other book I won didn't come at all) I love the feel of the cover, it's so smooth, plain and nice. I don't think I got very far with this one. It's like someone's weird diary. I'll pick it up again. Probably. I want to give it a chance.

-All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
This was a big deal last year I think. Tons of people read it and it got mostly positive reviews. I'm enjoying it. I love books that alternate chapters between the main characters, as long as there aren't too many characters. This one has only two, which is perfecto. It's set during the years leading up to WWII and so far, the last days of the war. I'll finish this soon.
 

-Cambodian Noir by Nicholas Seeley
I haven't even started this one. I received it from netgalley and it becomes unavailable very soon, so I don't know if I'm going to get the chance to read and review it at all. We'll see. Sounds interesting. Comes out March 15th.

-Dark Debts by Karen Hall
I entered to win this one off goodreads last month and didn't win so when I saw it on netgalley I jumped right on it. The description says it's a gothic love story or something along those lines. It was first released in the 90s but the author decided the story needed a different ending, so they're re-releasing it March 15th. I'm about half way through so far, part II I think. The first chunk is a little like Gillian Flynn before Gillian Flynn. The main character isn't nearly as fucked up as a Flynn character but maybe it's better that way. 

-Dave Hill Doesn't Live Here Anymore by Dave Hill
I have a crush on Dave Hill. Or at least I did when I listened to podcasts and bought his first book Tasteful Nudes. I haven't thought about him in awhile but the first third of this new one inspired me to follow him on instagram (he has a dog). This is a netgalley one too. Great stuff over there. Comes out May 10th.

I'll do bigger, better reviews on most of these later.

- Evann

*all book cover art from goodreads.com

New to NetGalley

I recently joined NetGalley. Which is a site that allows one to read books, often before they are released, in exchange for feedback. One must make a request to read a book and then the publisher will either approve or deny the request. I didn't really understand how it worked at first and I requested every interesting book I saw. Which means I've received maybe 40 rejection emails from publishers but I also have 20 or so books to read. I feel responsible for reading them now. I feel like the publishers were very kind to let me read their books and I need to read them as soon as possible and give a little feedback.

So far I've read and reviewed two NetGalley books:

- Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera, which I loved
 my goodreads review




























 - The Rejected Writers Book Club by Suzanne Kelman, which was just so so
my goodreads review













I am not at all confident in my reviewing ability. I don't find summaries necessary and my thoughts are just a mess. I've been sticking to Goodreads, for now, but I'm going to try blogging a bit and see how it goes.

So far I find NetGalley amazing. Most of the big name publishers aren't approving me to read their books because I don't have a blog and don't have any followers, which I totally understand. But also that makes the publishers that do approve me so very cool. I went on NetGalley because I wanted to read Juliet Takes a Breath and The Vegetarian by Han Kang. Juliet was obviously approved, thanks to Riverdale Avenue Books but The Vegetarian was not. That just means I'll have to wait a bit and get it elsewhere. I'll probably purchase Juliet at some point as well. I truly enjoyed it so much. 

(both book covers from goodreads.com)