Summer Reading!

For reading, this certainly was a crazy summer. I made a list of books I wanted to read throughout last school year, and the entire summer was spent reading as many as I could. Because school just started back up again, (yay Junior year!), I figured it was time to share an overview of what I read! One note, a lot of the books I am going to be talking about are by Neil Gaiman. While I really like his writing, the allegations about him that recently came out are very disturbing to me. And as my English teacher put it, “Wherever there’s smoke, there tends to be fire”. I didn’t know about this before I read the books, but it created a big change in perspective in how I viewed them. That was my quick disclaimer, so let’s get started!

The Lost Hero

I already did a post about this book, so there is nothing much to say here. Loved it though!

The Son of Neptune

I remember this was my favorite of the bunch, after the House of Hades of course, and rereading it was nice! Unfortunately, it felt like I outgrew it a little.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: No Brainer

This is the newest of the classic books from my childhood. I loved the first couple of books, but this book made no sense to me. It seemed like a criticism of the education system, but all I could think of was when Greg will finally go to high school. I did watch the fan movie theorizing what would happen if that did happen, though. It was much better than this book!

The Garden of Forking Paths

This short story deserves a post of its own. It was probably my most fascinating read of the summer, and I can’t recommend it enough. It is a very strange story that can’t be summarized, but it involves spies in WW2, ancient Chinese literature, and multiverse-like concepts. This story must be read to be believed. I came to this story after a video game that was based on it, and I will talk more about this later.

The Iliad

This is also one of my favorite reads of the summer. I got this book from the free books section of my school, and it was a wild ride. It is the story of the Greek hero Akhilleus and the Trojan war, and the characters were absolutely fascinating to me! The ending was heartbreaking, but Akhilleus had it coming with all his pettiness. Patroklos didn’t deserve what happened to him, though.

The Mark of Athena

This book was fun, but again, it felt like I sort of outgrew this series. But that’s ok! It was good while it lasted.

Glamorama

Reading this was the most perplexed I was this entire summer. Again, I got this book from the free books section of my school, and I had no idea what it was about. All I knew was that it said ‘international bestseller’, so it had to be good, right? I don’t even know what to think about it though! It started off normalish, with the protagonist being a model and him living a really fake life around really fake people. Victor, the main character, is also not a very good person. But then halfway through, weird stuff starts happening and suddenly he gets recruited into a terrorist organization and witnesses a lot of bloody murder. It was all quite graphic, including the threesome that came out of nowhere. And in the end, he had his identity stolen or something. It was a wild ride, and I’m not sure if I liked it or not.

Sri Sai Satcharitra

I usually volunteer at a temple in my neighborhood dedicated to Sai Baba, and from what I knew, he was a figure who preached peace between religions and being righteous. I figured he was a pretty good guy! After one day of volunteering, I saw a book about him on the shelf of the temple. I was curious, and the manager came up to me and said I could take it for free. I was really happy, because I wanted to learn more about him! After reading the book though, I was really confused. I didn’t like the morals the book taught, and in one part, it said to not even bother reading the book if you were not ready to accept its contents without question. The author’s biases also showed heavily, because the author was Hindu and Hindu-washed (I made this word up) Sai Baba, who was famously a Muslim. Anyways, this book left me feeling very indoctrinated despite me approaching it with an open mind.

The Starless Sea

I reread one of the best books I have ever read in my life. This will hopefully get its own post in the future! It is quite literally a story about stories and I think of it daily.

The Pearl

A very scary short story my friend recommended to me. It was a good read!

Gideon the Ninth

Everyone on the internet seemed to be liking this book, so I decided to try it out. Unfortunately, I don’t think zombie necromancers are really in my area of interest.

American Gods

We are approaching all the Neil Gaiman books! Again, I read these before I learned of the allegations against him, but here were my thoughts at the time. It was beautifully written, chilling, and basically an adult version of Percy Jackson.

Stardust

This was my favorite Neil Gaiman book, because I found out I really like fantastical stories that leave behind reality completely. The imagery and the magical elements alone made this book worth reading, such as flowers that are made of glass, warm and cozy inns, and stars being people that fall from the sky.

Sandman Vol 1

I reread this graphic novel, and it was just as scary as I remembered. Again, the fantasy element of it was just the kind of story I wanted to read.

The Odyssey

I honestly didn’t like the odyssey as much as I liked the Iliad. The pacing was really weird, and the actual odyssey was only a very small part of the book. Most of it didn’t feel central to the plot and dragged on. The emotions were some of the best, though, like Odysseus losing faith in Athena, and his reaction when seeing his son all grown up. I also appreciated Odysseus’s interesting relationship with Circe, because I didn’t know a lot of the mythology surrounding her. But I definitely prefer the Iliad because it felt more like an epic.

American Gods Graphic Novel

It was cool seeing the characters come to life!

Good Omens

I actually loved this book so much. I actually really loved the series first, and I definitely have to make a post about that. It was so funny to read and insanely quotable. GREAT BIG BUGGERS. The angel and demon were such good characters and I wish the book had more of their adventures, but that is what the TV show is for!

Neverwhere

This book by Gaiman seemed to be the most hyped, but it didn’t really compare to Stardust for me. I thought the storytelling was really good, but the story itself was too grounded in reality for me. Like in the Starless Sea, elements of it existed outside of reality, literally outside the story, and that’s what I really loved about it. This book had one of the coolest villains though, the Angel Islington. They were actually a fascinating terrifying villain, and the way Gaiman revealed it was masterful.

White Holes

This was the only nonfiction I read, and it was a small and concise book about white holes, essentially the inverse of black holes. The content was like a thought experiment so it was very easy to follow. I would highly recommend this!

The Handmaid’s Tale

This book doesn’t seem far off from our society considering the news that comes out these days. It was a very important read about oppression that is very relevant to the times.

Unfortunately, because school started, I won’t be reading as much as I would like. But hopefully, there will be posts going into detail on the books I have already read. That’s it for my summer reading!