What I’ve Read This Month #7: July

This book post might be a little late, but it’s also a little confusing, considering the fact that I’m scheduling it more than a week before the end of July! I wanted to make sure my posts were still coming up at the right time, so I’ve scheduled this for the start of August looking back over my July books, but that means I won’t get the ones that I’ve read at the end of July up in this post. There should be quite a few because I’ll be on holiday and reading quite a bit, especially because of the plane journey. But those will just have to come in the August post instead though. But here are my July books thus far…

Reality Ends Here by Alison Gaylin – 6/10 – This was a book that seemed good on the surface, about a teenage girl forced into a reality TV show all her life by her parents with a bit of an undertone of mystery – what happened to her father? Underneath though, that’s really all it was. A teenage girl who was in a reality TV show and a possibly dead father. It was a pretty shallow book, but an easy read to get through. Not one I would recommend to people, but overall, not too bad.

The Reluctant Detective by Sinclair Macleod – 7/10 – Ben asked me to read this book for him – this is becoming a common thing now – so that I could tell him if he would like it because I’m much quicker at reading than he is! Anyway, it’s another detective story, obviously. This time, a woman approaches Campbell, an insurance fraud investigator, to get him to help her discover what happened to her son – an ‘accident’ as it was labelled by the police, when she is sure it’s not. It’s set in Scotland and has a good quick pace. I wanted to find out what happened and I enjoyed it, a good read.

The Tiny Wife by Andrew Kaufman – 8.5/10 – This was a fun and interesting short story (88 pages) read. When a bank robber breaks into the bank, he doesn’t ask for money, but he demands something from each person – the thing they have on them that’s most important. And he leaves with nothing further. But then strange things happen to these people – the main story is of the wife who begins to shrink in what seem like random increments each day. You also have a tiger tattoo leaping off a woman and chasing her around; someone who becomes a snowman; and one made of candy. It’s ridiculous and fairytale like, but also touching in a way that you don’t realise until you read it. A really good read and one I would recommend.

Delirium by Lauren Oliver – 7.5/10 – Now this book reminded me in several places of The Glimpse (reviewed in April) with its dystopian world. Instead of all people with mental illnesses being segregated like in The Glimpse, this book portrays a not so distant future in which people are cured of love (or the ‘deliria’) as it is thought of as a mental illness. Of course, I’m sure you can guess the story – girl is supposed to be being cured of her delirium soon, but meets boy…what will happen? The world is again segregated into outsiders and those who are cured, and it was really interesting to see things from the other side of the spectrum – what if love really was a disease? It brings with it all sorts of complications such as parents not wanting to have children but feeling they have to, and being set up by tests to marry partners within a specific set of rules. I did enjoy this book, and I’m looking forward to the sequel  now.

After The Ending by Lindsey Farleigh and Lindsey Pogue – 9/10 – Another dystopian world, another very good read. This time the world is destroyed by a virus, sparing only around 10% of the population. The story is told in two perspectives in alternating chapters by two friends who are across the country from one another when the virus strikes. One ends up being rescued by the other’s brother, and they begin their travels across the ruined world to meet up together to try to make it to the colony where the survivors are. The problem is that not all the survivors are okay – some of them have turned into what the book calls ‘Crazies’, who try to attack and kill anyone or anything they come across. The girls communicate by email (by the way, I’ve read a lot of criticism of the internet still working – it’s their book, it’s their fiction; if they say the internet still works then so be it) and keep one another updated on their current troubles of trying to get around in an apocalyptic world. This is one of the best books I’ve read recently and I definitely enjoyed it. There is a sequel to come and I cannot wait! The book leaves you on a huuuuge cliffhanger, so yep.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum – 8/10 – I’m not even going to try to describe or review it, because everyone knows the story! I realised I’d never read the book, so decided I might as well now. It was a super quick read and very interesting because there are some parts that the film missed that I didn’t even know about (including Dorothy’s silver slippers – apparently they made them ruby to show off the new thing: technicolour!). And that’s that.