May Book Reviews (May 1 - 17)

Turns out I've read 8 books in May so far, which is a pretty huge jump from usual - I read 8 books in the previous 4 months put together! It is fabulous being off for the summer, and in particular these last 3 weeks I've been completely off so they've been my best chance all year to get reading done, and I'll probably slow down a bit once I start work on Monday. Also, I've been intentionally reading a lot of short books because that's what I feel like at the moment, so not that impressive. All pagecounts below are from Goodreads even if they weren't the exact amount in the edition I read.

Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda - Becky Albertalli

Rating: 3/5
Source: Local library app (Borrowbox)
Date finished: May 3(?)
Pages: 303

Blurb
Simon is a gay highschooler who's being blackmailed by someone threatening to tell the school he's gay, while conducting an online flirtation with a mystery guy in his school over email.
Review
This book was pretty cute and funny, but the main character is a bully who makes fun of people for being weird, and it's not acknowledged, so I can't support that. You can't do that just because you're gay. He's also bizarrely friendly with his blackmailer so the stakes didn't feel super high. 

I liked that he was kind of private and so was his boyfriend, not super campy (which is fine, obviously, etc), even though I'm the type to be open about my sexuality.


A Thousand Perfect Notes - CG Drews

Rating: 4/5
Source: Bought for Kindle app on iPad
Date finished: May 5
Pages: 282

Blurb: Beck spends most of his days practising piano, which he hates but is forced to do by his abusive mother who is making him into a piano prodigy so she can live vicariously through him. The abuse keeps escalating but he has no hope until he meets a girl called August at school. 

Review: August was absolutely a manic pixie dream girl, so that was annoying, but having experienced it myself I can say the abuse was good representation - contrary to those who said it was unrealistically brutal, except perhaps at the end - and I liked the book. 


Bad Taste in Boys - Carrie Harris

Rating: 3/5
Source: Bought for Kindle app on iPad
Date finished: May 7
Pages: 201
Blurb: When a high schooler discovers the coach is giving the players illegal steroids, she investigates and discovers that they're turning the players into zombies and there's now an epidemic spreading through the school. She has to sort it out. 
Review: This was a fun, short book (read time only 2 hours). I really liked that the heroine was a scientist, but I hated that she loved dissecting animals (aka murder) so that really knocked my enjoyment. Also, the writing was significantly flawed - far too many plot-convenient decisions not to tell someone about the zombie epidemic and trick scares making it seem like zombies were attacking when it was just a cockroach/a haunted house/someone being normally sick. Unless it's a sophisticated story about what happens to someone's mind under pressure?

Craic Baby - Darach O Seagdha

Rating: 2.5/5
Source: Local library app (Borrowbox)
Date finished: May 13
Pages: 268

Blurb: A meditation on the place of Irish, with random Irish words and phrases shoved in. 
Review: I really liked his essays, especially about his daughter, and would gladly have read more of those, but found the lists and boxes of Irish words gimmicky - maybe they help sell the book, since they're found on the cover. A lot of them were very tenuously inserted, like he'd say X, not to be confused with [Y that doesn't sound at all similar to X], and I didn't like the chapter on Hiberno-English. But I really did enjoy his essays and musings, on Irish and other things. 

(I did get a nice word for 'bad inheritance' though.)

Losing Earth - Nathaniel Rich

Rating: 3/5
Source: Local library app (Borrowbox)
Date finished: May 15
Pages: 224

Blurb: The story of the decade from 1979-1989 during which climate change was a bipartisan issue that came tantalisingly close to a global accord to solve the problem, and how it all fell apart. 

Review: Pretty good, and less depressing than I had expected (which is why I delayed reading it), probably because of the very historical tack. The author takes a very intense tone at the end, though, vilifying those merchants of doubt who deny climate change and continue to destroy earth, or at least humanity's chances of a future on it. A weird book to read, but better to be informed hopefully. One of its most interesting points is that pretty much all the science has been known for 50 years - which, come to think of it, reminds me of this infuriatingly true Onion headline: 




The Unexpected Everything - Morgan Matson

Rating: 4/5
Source: Bought for Kindle on iPad
Date finished: May 15 
Pages: 519

Blurb: Andie is the daughter of a congressman and is used to being the perfect daughter, never doing anything to jeopardise her dad's career, and having her medical career path mapped out. But when a scandal means Andie's dad steps down from his job and she loses her prestigious summer internship, she is cut adrift. This incredibly Type-A personality ends up walking dogs all summer, in the meantime meeting the mysterious, adorable Clark, spending the summer with her tight group of friends, and actually seeing her Dad for the first time in years. 

Review: This book was too long, but really sweet and touching. It's frustrating how self-destructive Andie is (in terms of not trusting people enough to be vulnerable with them) but it's a good arc. I'm very fond of all of the characters and thought it was fleshed out really nicely and made into a sweet, realistic coming-of-age story. A really nice book for some summery warm-and-fuzzies with depth.

This is Going to Hurt - Adam Kay

Rating: 3/5
Source: Bought for Kindle on iPad
Date finished: May 16
Pages: 256

Blurb: Adam uses diary entries from his years as a doctor (all the way up to senior registrar level) to show what life was like and just how ridiculously punishing life as a 'junior' doctor is. He throws in a lot of humour throughout.

Review: Fundamentally, he makes a very important point, and I don't know how on earth people survive that or why we do that to doctors (seriously, why the masochism in the profession?!). I do feel however that he leaned too much on crude jokes (since he was a gynaecologist, he had a lot of those anecdotes) and the fact that nearly all of it was told through page-long diary entries meant that it was very choppy and didn't have much of an overarching narrative structure. 

The Mathematics of Love - Hannah Fry

Rating: 3/5
Source: Bought for Kindle on iPad 
Date finished: 16 May
Pages: 128

Read this one in one sitting in the early hour(s) of this morning, more for the maths than the love. It was a bit cheesy in that way pop science authors can be when they're really trying to make it not scary, but the maths things in it were really interesting (seems unfair to call them maths really, rather than game theory or something...) and I might write a blog post on them or think of some biology projects I can do with them! 

It touched on the following. I've bolded ones I didn't already know about.

• discrete choice theory
• Nash and Pareto equilibria
• stable-marriage problem & Gale-Shapley algorithm
• OKCupid's matchmaking algorithm - was particularly interested to see that it asks your answer for X, what you want their answer to be for X, and how important this is to you for weighting
• being polarising (in how people rate your beauty from 1 to 5) is better for success on dating sites than being a consistent 4
• sealed bid auctions & second-highest bid winning (did this in the Harvard thing, can't remember the reasoning now though)
• Iterated Prisoners Dilemma and Tit for Tat
• network analysis and why the hub is so important to the spread of diseases (most likely to get infected AND most likely to pass it on), and how to best distribute vaccines
• optimal stopping theory
• making wedding guest lists
• organising seating plans to maximise happiness

Also, a great quote: 'Love consists of overestimating the difference between one woman and another.'


Also, I only realised halfway through the book but I am so thankful that the book with this title was not just a list of stats, because I could totally see someone just making a book called The Mathematics of Sex and filling it with random trivia like 'the average person has sex X times'. Which, I mean, this book did have, but it was mostly concepts with just the occasional stat. 

The Hamilton Book Tag

Joining in on this tag about 2 years late. It was invented by booktuber Maureen Keavy but I got it from Erin @ booklovingnut.com. There are no spoilers visible, and two hidden in a spoiler button.

Like every single carbon-based lifeform in the universe, I adored Hamilton: an American Musical a few years ago and listened to the whole soundtrack every single day for months. I actually thought my friend was exaggerating when she told me she'd done that but nope. Cool fact: I was introduced to Hamilton on a plane flying over the Irish Sea. I got sick of it eventually but it's growing on me again. Without further ado, the tag.

The Room Where It Happens - A World You'd Put Yourself In

Harry Potter! I think a lot of us desperately wanted to go to Hogwarts. Probably not while Harry was present though - I'm the Ravenclaw version of Hermione and would like to be left in peace to learn magic.

The Schuyler Sisters - An Underrated Female Character

Either Romy from The Loneliest Girl in the Universe or Jarra from Earth Girl, for their resourcefulness under circumstances out of their control. Romy in particular grabbed me immediately and had me feeling all big-sister-protective of her the whole way through.








My Shot - A Character Who Goes After What They Want and Doesn't Let Anything Stop Them

Jarra from Earth Girl. She has an immune disorder that prevents her from living in space like the rest of humanity but she's determined to get into college and become an archaeologist despite her 'deficits', and turns her experience on earth into an advantage to become the best in her class at studying prehistoric Earth.

Review here.






You'll Be Back - Sassiest Villain


Not 'villains' per se but some of the antagonists (to each other) are pretty sassy in the Stormlight Archives, like Adolin to Kaladin. (Side note: I haven't read Oathbringer yet but is there a reason so many of their names contain 'in'?)

Non-Stop - A Series You Marathoned

Definitely The Hunger Games. I remember staying up most of the night so that I could ready books 1 and 2 in one sitting.

Satisfied - Favourite Book with Multiple POVs

One of Brandon Sanderson's books for sure. I've read (part of) two of his series, The Stormlight Archives and Mistborn, and in those he changes perspective a lot (in Stormlight Archives he also has these cool little vignettes between sections to show other aspects of the world). Every time he changed perspective I was like no don't change I need to know what happens in this storyline! but then every time he got to the end of the new chapter I said the exact same thing! So that's a testiment to how gripping his work is.

Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story - A Book with a Legacy

I am contractually obligated to put Harry Potter here or else JK Rowling will steal my glasses and I'll never be able to read again.

Helpless - A Relationship You Rooted for From the Start

I can't think of a romantic one, but the friendship between Maddie and Julie in Code Name Verity was beautiful and heartbreaking, and the following is a quote from the book: 'It's like being in love, discovering your best friend' so it counts. I'm not sure it was technically from the start, as it took me a while to get into the book, but still. Gorgeous relationship. Read my review here.







Ten Duel Commandments - Favourite Fight Scene

Ooh this has to be Brandon Sanderson again, either for Mistborn with its awesome metal-based magic system or for The Stormlight Archives because Kaladin leading his group into battle gave me that amazing goosebumpy excitement.

Say No to This - A Guilty Pleasure Read

I'm not sure I like the concept of a book you feel guilty for reading - Mein Kampf or something? - but there have been books where I could see that they were technically flawed but still very enjoyable, like Delirium by Lauren Oliver. Sure, I thought of tons of flaws while writing the review, but it was great fun to read.

Review here.







What Comes Next - A Series You Wish Had More Books

(Sidenote: boyfriend suggests Game of Thrones/aSoIaF.) 

Honestly, I very often find myself annoyed at books for being series when I just want to read some damn standalones, so I'm going to flip this and say series I wish were standalones:

• Delirium 
• Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor
• Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor
• maybe Mistborn but only because I hated the way the trilogy ended but adored the first book
• so many more

It's not necessarily that I don't love the universe - many of these are books I loved reading - but I have a lot of books to read and I love it when a book is short and sweet and packs its goodness into one nice package. I'm fine with books that need it - say Harry Potter or Skulduggery Pleasant - but I guess it feels like some YA books have been trilogies for no good reason, and the escalation feels formulaic. 

Right Hand Man - Favourite BROTP

First of all wow, what a phrase. This is a tough one but maybe Ender and Bean from Ender's Game, mainly because I want to get Ender's Game in here because it's fantastic. (I have a running joke with my boyfriend where whenever he asks what movie I want to watch I say Ender's Game). 








What'd I Miss - a Book or Series You Were Late to

Stay Alive - A Character You Wish Was Still Alive

Click to see spoiler: (  ) 

Burn - The Most Heartbreaking End to a Relationship 

Code Name Verity!

'Kiss me, hardy'...god. Ouch. What a way for it to end. What a demonstration of friendship. Click to see spoiler: (  )

The Reynolds Pamphlet - A Book with a Twist you Didn't See Coming

Ender's Game with that famous ending. Or My Sister's Keeper. Probably a fair few, I'm not very good at predicting endings, which is the way I like it.

Let me know if you agree with my choices!