Hello readers! Time to chat about the books I tackled this month. Well, truth be told, I totally flopped on Summerween. I managed to finish just one book for the readathon, had to call it quits on the second, and ended up not quite wrapping up the last one before the readathon came to a close. Such a bummer!
I DID try to read Meddling Kids. I just don’t like what the author had to say and I thought it was too dark. I love the idea of these Scooby Doo revamps, but I also don’t like the direction most of them go.
Despite those things, I had an amazing reading month! I read a ton of books, almost all of which were released in 2023. It’s gonna be a good year for voting on Goodreads for sure.
I wrote a post this month called Reading the Book Communities Best of 2023 (so far). Click the title to see those book as I won’t be discussing them again here. In that post, I read the 5 most popular books that bloggers and other community members loved from the first half of 2023.
There are affiliate links in this post for Amazon and Books a Million (BAM).
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This book was the one I was most excited to get to. It’s a collection of essays where each writer, a part of the LGBT community, shares their thoughts on horror movies and how they impacted them. Some of the essays were really good, while others were just okay. Many of the stories drew comparisons between being in the closet and the monster or ghostly presence in the movies. For instance, in one of the first stories, the writer likened their experience of being in the closet within a heterosexual marriage to the haunting presence in the film Hereditary.
That’s not what I expected at all! I thought most stories would be calling out the anti-LGBT aspects. The opening did touch on the anti-trans nature of Sleepaway Camp, but unfortunately, the rest of the stories didn’t quite follow suit.
I gotta say, the stories that really grabbed me were the ones that focused on disabled or POC writers. I’m totally itching to get my hands on more books like these that put black voices or disabled voices front and center. One essay toward the end draws parallels between the anti-blackness in Mormonism and the movie Get Out.
If you’re into horror flicks, you might wanna check this one out. Even if you stumble upon an essay centered around a movie you haven’t watched, the writer does a good job of explaining it so you can still grasp the overall idea.
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What Happened to Rachel Riley follows a middle-schooler named Anna who attends a new school and finds a giant mystery. Everyone in the entire grade hates Rachel Riley, but no one will tell Anna why that is. She decides to investigate and interview many different classmates to find out the truth, even some truth that most of these peole don’t even know about it.
The entirety of this book revolves around the distressing subject of sexual harassment being normalized in school. Reading this book brought back a flood of memories. I vividly recall a time when boys thought it was perfectly acceptable to snap girls’ bra straps, despite none of the girls actually enjoying such actions. Regrettably, society seemed to embrace these boys for who they were, turning a blind eye to their actions. The fear of retaliation prevented victims from reporting such incidents to adults. It’s disheartening to recollect how countless children endured even greater bullying after mustering the courage to seek help. Undoubtedly, this book possesses immense potential to enlighten young girls, emphasizing the imperative need to denounce such behavior.
Let the young people in your life know that no one is allowed to touch them if they do not want to be touched. No is a full sentence and it always will be.
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Good Different follows a young autistic girl trying to navigate life when it doesn’t make any sense. This book really ruined me. I am stepping as far away from literary fiction as I can for the foreseeable future after consuming this text.
Being autistic is so hard in a world full of allistics. I don’t really think non-autistic people get it or ever really could get it. This character explains everything perfectly. It’s like going through life just memorizing all these rules put on you to appear like a ‘normal’ person, but you still don’t appear that way. It is a fact that allistic people experience a phenomenon called uncanny valley when they look at autistic people. You know the person is autistic without even knowing that you know and that makes you like them less.
Autistic individuals exert tremendous effort to garner acceptance. Consider the next occasion you engage in a social exchange; you must remain acutely mindful of every nuance. If you maintain insufficient eye contact, it can be construed as impolite; conversely, excessive eye contact may be perceived as unsettling. I am constantly aware of the positioning of my hands, the expressions on my face, and the intonation of my voice. It’s akin to assuming the role of an actor, having to fabricate facial expressions to avoid being labeled robotic. You are seen as the quiet one that might snap one day. The tonality of my voice warrants careful consideration to evade the conveyance of disinterest or sarcasm.
Kindness should be extended to all, irrespective of their identity. In truth, it is plausible that someone within your social circle may be autistic, yet they may feel hesitant about openly disclosing this fact to you based on how you act. Less than a handful of people in my personal life are aware of it.
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The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook For Surviving Medieval England is Sanderson’s Secret Project #2. A man wakes up in medieval England with no memory of who he is or why he is there. He must regain his memories, make allies, and trust in the locals to survive. With only fragments of the Frugal Wizard’s Handbook to help him, he must decipher the clues to his situation and stay alive.
This book really brings the entire Cosmere together and we get some answers about Hoid as well. I didn’t realize it until I was quite a bit through. I am currently reading secret project 1 right now and hoping to get to them all this year!
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The Risk is a dual POV romance of a female serial killer and an FBI agent. I asked some people on Booktok what popular books I should read and one of those books is this series. If you like dark romance like this, run, don’t walk to Booktok. Booktokers LOVE books like this.
I didn’t love or hate this book. I gave it a 3 because I’m right in the middle. I will be reading on, though.Please look up trigger warnings before reading! It is a very violent book. I’m intrigued enough to keep going!
Happy blogging and bookish adventures! 📚🦒✨
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