I am well on track with the 50 Book Challenge this year, and I’m quite pleased with my progress so far. I am 10 books in to the challenge, and have quite a few good books lined up over the next couple of weeks (including school texts) so it’s all running pretty smoothly. As with my first ‘
recent reads‘ post earlier this year, here are 4 small reviews of some of the books I’ve read during the challenge so far.
The Forest Of Hands & Teeth by Carrie Ryan
I was initially drawn to it’s book due to the fact that it’s subject matter contained a post apocalyptic world infested with zombies. Stories that involve zombies (whether film or book) have always intrigued me, so I was quite excited about this book before reading it. I had been warned by various reviews that the female protagonist Mary was quite annoying and that wasn’t too far from the truth. Having said that, I was happy to put Mary’s personality and the annoying ‘young adult’ love triangle aside due to the more interesting aspects of the story (read: zombies). The village that Mary resides in is surrounded by fences that stand between humans and ‘the unconsecrated’. One day this fence is breached and Mary has to venture into the forest to try and find safety in another village. I enjoyed this book, it was a quick and interesting read and I am currently reading book 2 in the series, The Dead Tossed Waves.
The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
This book was quite a stumbling block for me. For some reason I really struggled to get involved in the first half of the story, despite it being an interesting and well written book. The story moves between three different timelines and a contains large collection of characters which made it hard at times to follow the flow of the story. Once I forced myself to sit down and really try to read a decent chunk of the story I was quite captivated and ended up finishing the second half of the book in a couple of days after struggling with the first half for over a week. I enjoyed it, and particularly liked Kate Morton’s style of writing. I’d be interested in checking out some of her other work in the future.
Z for Zachariah by Robert C. O’Brien
This was yet another of my high school texts that I recently felt the urge to re-read. The story revolves around a young girl who is doing her best to survive in a post-apocalyptic world following a nuclear war. The style of writing was slightly old fashioned, due to the fact that the book was written and published in the 1970’s, but I still found the story and themes to be really interesting. I know this subject matter isn’t for everyone, but if you’re interested in the whole post-apocalyptic theme like I am, this book might be for you. It was a quick and easy read and I managed to finish it in a couple of days.
The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis
Ahh, Narnia. I plan on re-reading the entire Chronicles of Narnia series this year, and on re-reading the Magician’s Nephew for the upteenth time I was reminded once again of how magical C.S. Lewis’ writing style is. Despite the writing style being somewhat old fashioned, Lewis’ humour and wit is still relevant and I actually laughed out loud a couple of times while reading this book. The magic of Narnia never really dies for me, and I will openly admit to being a huge geek and getting super excited when Aslan first made his appearance in the story. Yes, I’m sad. Who cares. Narnia is awesome.
As always, hit me with your book suggestions if you’ve got them!
