Read Strays of Ruined Springs

 All the books I read in March and what I thought of them  I want to apologize to my readers because this blog post is unusually late. The problem may be that I have too much to do for school; the problem may also be that I now spend half of my free time constructing crosswords. I also want to extend my thanks to my friend Frank for bugging me to write this blog post.  I read five books this month. I have celebrated Passover 40% as many times in April as I have read a book in March. That's sort of frightening. ✨✨✨ The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land in Between by Hisham Matar rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ My professor kindly peer-pressured me into reading Hisham Matar's entire body of work. At the time of writing, I have read half of his full-length novels and, at the rate things are going, the next one I read is going to be fantastic amazing beautiful, and the one after that is going to be literally the best book I have ever read (from my sample size of two, the quality of each book...

 All the books I read in February and what I thought of them This month I read four books, which isn't a lot, but the reviews are long, so from your perspective I assume it comes out to the same thing. ✨✨✨ Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐✨ I kept seeing this book everywhere on the internet, and then I also saw it in the library, so I had to read it. Who could possibly have predicted that when everyone is talking about a book, it's because the book is fantastic? Our protagonist Cyrus is sad and lonely and obsessed with death. He has a hard time feeling alive (as opposed to numb to everything) and he wants to die in a way that his absence will mean something. So, basically, this is like those books I love/hate about self destructive women, except this is about a self-destructive man, and also it didn't make me feel empty inside. Cyrus is just a little guy and I want to give him a hug. Cyrus starts from a really awful place mentally, but, throughout the book, he starts feel...

 All the books I read in January and what I thought of them I am crowdsourcing this paragraph from the people currently in my common room. It's a new year, and with that comes new books, and new ideas, and new opinions. This month, I read 7 books. I don't have time to give you a good sentence, so just write "get glizzled." No, just write "get glizzled." Get glizzled. I was going to say, if your dad has any questions, I'll field them eventually. Winnie-the-Pooh is in the public domain now. I don't do well under pressure, Clara. That's great. [I am redacting this sentence]. I think I met my protein goal today, so I'm happy. I can't believe you didn't read Six of Crows yet. Clara, you haven't read Six of Crows yet? That's crazy! That's what I've been saying! ✨✨✨ The Steerswoman by Rosemary Kirstein rating: ⭐⭐⭐ A few weeks ago I underwent an episode of out-of-character delusion where I decided I did in fact like fantasy. I...

Some statistics and trends in the books I read last year This is a graph of the genres I read last year (2023). I read 2 books in the following genres that my chart didn't label: children's book, classics, humor, and sci-fi. I also read 6 genres which the chart does not label since I only read one book in the genre: these genres are fictionalized memoir, plays, mystery, collection of speeches, YA historical fiction, and the genre I titled "stupid" (a self help book called The Artist's Way  which makes statements of attempted fact that bear no similarity to reality). My favorite genres (in which I read at least two entries I had not previously read), apparently, were literary fiction (average rating 4.305555), historical fiction (4.083333), and myth retellings (3.875) and my least favorite genres were memoirs (2.3 repeating), and then a 3-way tie for second-to-last place (average rating 2.5) between YA fantasy, anthologies, and humor (by humor I mean P.G. Wodehouse...

 All the books I read in December and what I thought of them  In December I read 13 books and completed my secret Goodreads reading challenge on the last day of the year. The official Goodreads reading goal was 55 books because my resolution this year (last year?) was to set easily achievable goals, but the secret Goodreads reading goal was 100. I medically cannot handle reading a number of books where the last two digits are different (last year? two years ago? in 2022 I read 111 books and that did nice things to my brain). I read a lot of nice and interesting books this month. ✨✨✨ The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ My biggest quarrel with C.S. Lewis is he thinks that friendship means seeing the same truth and working toward the same goal; the affection you have for other people because you've come to appreciate them for who they are rather than because your similarities is something entirely different (affection). I can believe these are separate kinds of love, but t...

 All the books I read in November and what I thought of them I wonder how it is that I stay up so late and I still don't get anything done. I think if I could eat time I would get more out of it than I currently do. It's just a thought. I read three books in November; I liked all of them. On a lot of levels it was a good month.  ✨✨✨ The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune (reread) rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ I reread this book mostly because I liked Linus and Arthur's relationship, and then I realized that their relationship is a much smaller part of the book than I remembered, and for most of the book, it's building up to them getting together (which I don't think is a spoiler because it's very clearly the kind of book where the protagonist and the love interest get together) and I really don't care. But it is a really cute relationship, and it makes me happy that they clearly love each other a lot, even before they get together in a romantic sense. There are too many...

 All the books I read in October and what I thought of them In October I read 8 books, and two of them had anything interesting to say about love, and neither of those books had a central romantic relationship. Romance books never have anything interesting to say about love. I am making that inflammatory statement in hopes that someone will recommend me a book with a central romantic relationship that says something interesting about love because my dad says that if you put false information on the internet, someone will get mad at you and correct you, and, therefore, lying on the internet about something you don't understand is a more effective way to get your questions answered than asking the question in the form of a question.  Anyone who has been worried about my sleep deprivation because of my comment last month about how sleep deprived I am should take comfort in knowing that last night I didn't stay up late, and then it started snowing, and I missed it. One way to look...