Reading // June 2017

books read:
~ The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Sparks
~ Beyond the Pale: Folklore, Family, and the Mystery of Our Hidden Genes by Emily Urquhart
~ First, We Make the Beast Beautiful: A New Story About Anxiety by Sarah Wilson
~ Words in Deep Blue by Cath Crowley
~ The Hidden Life of Trees: What they Feel, How They Communicate - Discoveries from a Secret World by Peter Wohlleben
~ Voyager (Outlander #3) by Diana Gabaldon
~ The Garden Apothecary by Reece Carter (review)
~ Justice Hall (Mary Russell #6) by Laurie R. King
~ Margaret the First by Danielle Dutton
~ Rooms of One's Own: 50 Places That Made Literary History by Adrian Mourby (review)

currently reading:
~ Stranger the Dreamer by Laini Taylor (*clears throat*)
~ Solar Bones by Mike McCormack (review)
~ A Paris Year: My Day-to-Day Adventures in the Most Romantic City in the World by Janice MacLeod

10 books, and one of them is an Outlander book (over 1000 pages in this case)! Pretty pleased with that. A lot of my review books for this month were read beforehand, so it was kind of a light month for review books (up until now... I have five sitting here waiting for me to review them!).

I have a list of books that I asked for from my mum - classics, things she studied in Uni, things she thinks I ought to read. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was one of them, and I finally got around to it today. And... I am still not entirely sure what to think. I am considering watching the movie (partially because Maggie Smith) to see if I 'get it' a little more, as I feel that a lot of the humour and comments Sparks was making here kind of whooshed right over my head.

Over half of what I read this month was nonfiction, if you count Margaret the First, a re-imagining of her life as nonfiction (creative nonfiction, probably). I am really loving nonfiction lately and it is making me request it more often for review. I love cookbooks, particularly, but then amazing things like Beyond the Pale become buried into my mind and I can't rest until I have hunted them out and read them.

Two books were "returns to series" this month. Voyager has been sitting on my TBR shelf for well over a year now, since I last read an Outlander book, and it is quite the beast. I never feel overly that Gabaldon should have edited down more, though, but I do get a sort of sense of 'exhaustion' by the end of each book. I do wonder if the series could have been twice as long is she had made each tome into two instead... The other 'return' was to the Mary Russell series with Justice Hall and it was so comforting to be back here. Justice Hall was not the absolute best of the series, but even having said that, it was still fantastic and a true joy to read. I have the next one, The Game, ready to go on my ebook Library lending app, and I just need to get through a few more things before I can dedicate sufficient time to it.

What are you reading at the moment? Seriously, let me know in the comments. I love hearing about what people are reading! Also let me know if you think I should return to booktube...?

Love to all who read!

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