I Read 29 Books This Year (And Why That's Disappointing)

Hello guys,

A bit of an introspective post today.

I logged into my goodreads account to start following some more groups and maybe even get an idea of what to talk about in blog posts (maybe join top 5 Wednesday for a start). Instead I was confronted with how many books I managed to read this year and felt a weird sense of longing and disappointment.

Now, in case you were wondering I managed to read 29 books this year which was 4 over my goal of 25. You would think that was a good thing and in a way, it is. The thing you don't know though is that earlier this year, from January to July I was reading about 7 books a month. I was active in goodreads groups and often participated in monthly challenges.

Then my husband came back from deployment and I stopped reading as much, falling into an incredibly long book slump. I have started about 10-15 books and have only managed to finish a few of them- three books.

I have read three books since July. And as someone who loves to read, someone who used to carry a book in her bag a la Rory from Gilmore Girls and was almost always with a book, this hurts me. I feel as if I let my inner bookworm down which is stupid yes, but it doesn't take the feelings away.

On the positive side, I did read 29 books this year and while not a lot of them were 5 star reads, quite a few of them were pretty great.

Amber

Currently Reading: Eleanor and Park

Hi guys,

It's me again and I'm here to tell you a bit about what I'm currently reading.

Now Eleanor and Park is a book that has been around for quite some time. If I remember right it was published in 2013, during a time where I wasn't really doing much reading. Now I have already read two Rainbow Rowell novels, Fangirl and Carry On and I loved them a lot, especially Carry On which was just beyond magical to me and also added a lot of humor to the whole Chosen One trope but Eleanor and Park is a book that I have recently heard a lot of not so good things about.

Recently, it came to my attention during a twitter thread that there were quite a few things within Eleanor and Park that were triggering to poc culture, especially Korean culture. This made me feel a bit conflicted about reading it but since I had bought a signed copy before knowing that it contained anything racially insensitive I decided to warily read it anyway.

Is it bad that I still love Rainbow Rowell's writing style? Because I have to tell you that I do. There is something lovely about how Rainbow Rowell writes a book. Her way with words is just fantastic but I do have to let you all know that right from the beginning I found some things within the literature that were racially insensitive. Things were mentioned about people that I felt did not need to be mentioned and would not have been mentioned had the characters in question had not been POC.

As for the book itself and the friendship/eventual romance between Eleanor and Park, I do find that at first, I was a fan. Their friendship was very adorable and they both gave things to each other that no one else had but I do feel that they sort of went a bit weird once they confessed their love for each other (for example: Eleanor's comment about how Park has "magic eyes" and makes her feel like a cannibal <--- say what now?).

I'm hoping that once I get going again on this book that I might be able to enjoy their romance a bit more. If so, I'll give you all the details and if not, you can be sure to hear all about those details as well.

Amber