January Reading Wrap-Up

As I mentioned in my New Year's Resolutions post, I'm aiming to read 25 books this year. To start off the year on the right foot I should have finished 2 books by now, with just one week left in January. Am I? Well surprisingly (to me at least), yes!

Read:

The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
I started, and finished, this book right at the beginning of the month. I think I finished it in two days, before I got stuck into revision and other such distractions. It was a pretty easy read, I went into it already knowing most of the plot (who doesn't these days?), and didn't find myself forming any particular emotional connection to the characters or storyline, I wasn't particularly invested but enjoyed it nonetheless. I doubt it's a book I'll go back and re-read at any point, but I'll be giving the remaining books in the trilogy a chance.

Sisterhood Everlasting - Ann Brashares
I bought this on my Kindle towards the end of last year, having read all four of The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants books when I was younger, and then promptly forgot it even existed. Then one evening I was pondering over what film to watch and stumbled across my copy of The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants DVD, I watched it, and then remembered the book I had yet to read. Already a little enveloped in the universe of Bee, Tibby, Lena and Carmen, I started reading it that night.

Sisterhood Everlasting is set 10 years after the previous book in the series, Girls in Pants, and brought with it a huge sense of nostalgia, taking me back to the summer I read the first three books back to back in my dad's old bedroom in my grandparents house. Unlike reading The Hunger Games, I was emotionally invested right from the start, and I felt connected not only to the familiar characters, but to my younger self. Sisterhood Everlasting is by no means a happy-go-lucky conclusion to the series, in fact, quite the opposite, I cried my way through most of the book, out of frustration, out of loss and finally out of some sort of happiness. It is by no means a perfect book, but it's flaws are, in my opinion, worth overlooking in favour of the bittersweet nostalgia it brought.

This probably isn't a book I'd recommend reading if you didn't read, and enjoy, the series when you were younger, but for those who did, it was an emotional reconnection with characters who were hiding around somewhere in the depths of my imagination.

Currently Reading:

As usual, having only one book on the go at the time just isn't the way I roll...so here's what I've just started/am midway through:

Yes Please - Amy Poehler
Ready Player One - Ernest Cline
 

Stopping me from Reading:

Given that I've not managed to fit much reading in this month I thought I'd include what it's been that has got in the way of that. I've lost count of for how many years January has been a month of exams, even if this will be the last, and as someone who is not able to pick up a book and put it down any less than a number of hours later, reading does not work as any form of study break for me. Instead I have to turn to Netflix, where the entertainment comes in 25/40/60 minute chunks - and yes, sometimes this turns into a little longer, but not quite in the way getting stuck in a good book does.

Pretty Little Liars
January's Netflix obsession of sorts came in the form of Pretty Little Liars, an American teen drama which has proven to be very addictive. All 5 seasons are available on Netflix, with new episodes added the day after they air in the US, and in typical procrastination mode I've managed to watch the entirety of the first four seasons so far this month. There's nothing particularly groundbreaking about PLL, but the combination of dramatic (yet ridiculous) storylines, unsolved mysteries, and an attractive cast keep me coming back for more.

Hannah-Rose x

Books Read in 2015: 2