Books Read in January

I told you I was back!

So, my goal for the year--for every year, really--is to read 100 books. This used to be easily achievable, but with my mental illnesses come a shocking loss of motivation to do the things I wanted (but that's a whole other post). Yet I still persevere. I figure if I blog about the books I've read each month, I'll be more inclined to read faster, better, and with more gusto than usual.

"A book is made of paper, but a story is a tree."
pg 448

This month I read

1. The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
2. Burn for Me (Hidden Legacy, #2) by Ilona Andrews
3. The Last Wish (The Witcher, #0.5) by Andrzej Sapkowski
4. Loki: Where Mischief Lies by Mackenzi Lee

I'll be posting reviews/dissections of The Last Wish and Loki because those are the two books that left me with a lot of thoughts.

The Starless Sea, though... That captured my heart. It was a book for book lovers. This is an unofficial review, more of an excited squeak and demand that you go out and read it.

Well, that's it for today, but stay tuned for reviews and news about upcoming projects. Here, have a puppy Layla to see you off.

February's Book Haul

My Relationship with Books

To be a writer, first you must be a reader. (I think someone important said that.)

My first interaction with books was when my mother would build me little forts out of books, and I'd choose one to pore through. I don't have any memory of this, but mum insists it was really cute.

My first memory of books was reading in the dead of night. When I was a child, I was scared of the dark (still am, come to think of it), so the light in the hallway outside my door was lit until one of my parents woke up or so. Each night, I'd wait for my parents to fall asleep, and creep out into the hallway and sit right down on the floor with one of the numerous books I'd borrowed from the library.
That was how I'd read most of the Harry Potter books, and the Lord of the Rings, as well as playing Pokémon Silver. When I heard the creak of my parent's bed, or the sigh of them being roused from sleep, I would hustle back to bed and pretend I'd been asleep. If I was lucky, it would be a false alarm, and I could go back to reading until it was time for school.
To this day, I have reading-induced insomnia.

When I was in highschool, reading was never really cool, so I stopped it for the sake of joining in with my friends. What they didn't know was that I was devouring books like Les Miserables and attempting at War and Peace. I was the first one in my group--and probably the school--to read Twilight, and thought it meh before moving on to real vampire books like Anne Rice's series.
I'd also spend my nights reading fanfiction, or original fiction online, on fictionpress and its sister site. I must have read hundreds of words worth of books in those years.

It was only when I had graduated from highschool, when I'd removed myself from several toxic relationships, that I'd enveloped myself in the world of books.
I firmly believe that it was my lack of books during my teenage years that made me so heavily suicidal. Now years later, I have my books and I feel so much better.

Books are magic. Everyone says that, and that's because it's true. Twilight was so popular because girls could leave their boring/over-complicated/abusive/etc'd lives for a little while. And it's because I can leave myself for so many hours at a time that I've been able to cope with depression.

And with the devouring of books came the inevitable writing of books. I'd run out of books I'd wanted to read. I'd read everything on fictionpress; so I wrote something I'd want to read.
That part still remains. Right now I'm in the mood for selkie/mermaid hybrids and the end of the world and human sacrifices, and that's exactly what I'm writing.
Write the book you want to read (I'm sure someone definitely said that.)

Books read in January

This was a difficult month for me. I didn't get many books read, only 10, 3 of which were graphic novels.
It being the middle of summer, we've had weeks where doing anything but lying comatose in front of the air con was unbearable, with temperatures exceeding 40 degrees (Celsius, for all you American readers. You have the polar vortex, and we have Summerpocalypse.). And at the same time, depression got in the way, making it difficult to want to pick up books, even if they're wonderful and  make me feel good. I just felt so apathetic about it all.

But whatever, we're here to talk about books, aren't we?

Are Comics Real Books?

Ah, the great question. When I was in school, teachers would always tell off anyone who brought comics or graphic novels to silent reading time. "They're not books!" they would exclaim.
Aren't they?
They have words. They have a story, characters, conflict. They inflict a painful amount of feels at times. They discuss issues.
Is it that they have pictures that makes them not worthy of being called books?

To me, it seems snobby to claim that graphic novels don't count in literature.

Becky Cloonan has written a trilogy of sorts, The Ink and Thunder series, and each issue is a one-shot. They're carefully crafted, written, illustrated and inked by Becky herself. And I would call them literary-fantasy crossovers. There's a lot of hidden things in her work, imagery, symbolism, everything you'd find in a regular book.
I dare you to check them out. Each issue is only 99 cents on comixology.

So, what do you think about comics as books? Goodreads thankfully counts comics as books towards my yearly reading goal, since I've slowly started reading more comics than books lately.