Contents
ORDERED BY MOST RECENTLY READ
Night Road
Kristin Hannah
141 of 385 pages (currently reading)
The Leavers
Lisa Ko
335 pages
4/5
New Boy
Tracy Chevalier
204 pages
4/5
The Sound of Waves
Yukio Mishima
183 pages
4/5
goodreads – The Sound of Waves
The Glass Castle
Jeannette Walls
103 pages (283 pages – 180 previously read)
3.5/5
The Girl on the Train
Paula Hawkins
144 pages (316 pages – 172 previously read)
3.5/5
goodreads – The Girl on the Train
TOTAL PAGES: 1110 pages
WEEKLY READING RATE: 278 pages
DAILY READING RATE: 36 pages
REFLECTION:
To be completely honest, I added these numbers up multiple times to make sure they were accurate because I was amazed. I am more than satisfied with my reading rate of 36 pages a day because to go from reading 18 pages a day to doubling that amount is amazing for me. And I also went beyond my goal of 25 pages a day! I hope I can maintain it to an extent next month, though it may be a bit of a reach as the workload increases. I will try my best to continue reading!
REVIEWS:
The Leavers
Lisa Ko
The Leavers was a book I picked up at the library after volunteering because I just needed something to keep myself busy with. Most of the time, I read books I have been recommended in an attempt to not waste my time reading something I don’t enjoy. This exceeded my expectations and was something that was fairly different from my previous novels. It is written in the first person perspectives of a mother and son who were separated when the former was deported to China. It follows Deming’s new life as Daniel after he is adopted by a white couple and moved from the Bronx to a small town. The life of an older adopted child is an interesting one as he has memories of his previous life and home, but he is forced to change in accordance with his new family. The loss of identity and language are most evident in Deming who spent a significant portion of his childhood in China. The story transitions smoothly from each time period showing Polly Guo’s (Deming’s birth mother) life when she first came to America and had her son to her new life back in China. The connection between the two – though strained for a majority of the book – is shown to be strong as even when a family’s circumstances change, the emotions and feelings they share don’t. It is definitely a look at an immigrant life that differs from those that I see in my life and has made me even more grateful for what I have. This was a book that was easy to read, even when considering the topics it discussed, as the writing style was simplistic, yet conveyed the emotions of each character very well.
New Boy
Tracy Chevalier
The novel New Boy is based on Shakespeare’s Othello and is set in 1970s Washington DC. It follows Osei, the son of a diplomat, who is the only black student at his new school. Dee is one of the most popular girls in their school and is assigned by their teacher to assist Osei throughout the day. They are in the sixth grade and the events that occur deal with topics of jealousy, trust, and jealousy as the smallest events get blown out of proportion. As the son of a diplomat and being the only black individual at the school in a period of high racial tensions, the combination provides an insight into two vastly different topics – Shakespeare and American racism in the 70s. I have not read Othello but having read this book I do hope to get to it next month. To see a Shakespeare play set in a time much closer to my own allowed me to understand the messages and significance of each character to a greater degree, as compared to my other readings of Shakespeare. Having a basic plot comprehension from reading a modern-day retelling I believe will allow me to respect and appreciate the original play to a greater level.
The Sound of Waves
Yukio Mishima
When Ms. Hunnisett first gave me The Sound of Waves, I didn’t know what to expect. I enjoyed the book in a different way than I do others. The plot was straightforward and did not make me want to read more because of it; that being said, I was far more drawn to the descriptions and imagery Mishima used because they were breathtaking. The words and techniques he used to describe the Japanese sea village allowed me, as the reader, to put myself in the place where I have never been. It is a lovely story of love and growing up that is set within a culture and time different than what I normally read. The two main characters fall for each other despite the circumstances and work to make their love work against those who wish a different life for them. The illustrations that precede each chapter have to be one of my favourite parts because they accompany the story itself so well. A nice, simple read for a when you just want to see something new in your mind.
GOALS:
My goals for the next month revolve around me getting out of my comfort zone and reading things I normally would not. Obviously, I tend to read more novels than anything else which I hope to change. I wish to incorporate more plays and short stories into my reading ladder as to cover more subject areas and literary styles. I am going to read one play, one challenging book, three just right books, and five short stories alongside my required class reading by the end of April.
Some of the items on my to-read list include:
- How to Read Novels Like a Professor by Thomas C Foster
- Othello by William Shakespeare
- The Crucible by Arthur Miller
- The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
- A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
- The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
- “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” by Mark Twain
- “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
- “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” by James Thurber
images:
hefseeba557
April 15, 2018 — 10:20 am
Dear Nimrat,
Hi again! Just wanted to say: excellent work with your reading ladder!! It stood out to me for it went into great detail and depth. Upon viewing this, I’ve added one more book to my reader list! It is well organized, easy to find, and excels above the normal expectations (in my opinion :), so good job!!
A couple of suggestions is that I noticed that the ladder is quite stractched out. To fix that, remove the space between each line. This will condense the work and make it look refined. Also, your book images appear more than once. To reduce this, make the description of the book come under the first image of each book.
Again, these are just my suggestions; however, if you like your formats, then please ignore me!! 🙂
Sincerely,
Hefseeba
nimjay
April 15, 2018 — 3:36 pm
Dear Hefseeba,
Firstly, thank you for reading and commenting on my work! Really appreciate it.
I totally get what you mean by my reading ladder looking stretched out. But I genuinely can’t get rid of the large space between each line – or maybe I just don’t know how to. I put in my next piece of information as a new paragraph which I don’t know how to change the spacing of or how else I could do it. If you have any suggestions feel free!
Because my reading ladder does ultimately does get stretched out, I put the book image with my top reviews as to make it easier for the people who are considering the book over having to constantly scroll. And at this point I am kinda making the reading ladder for me so I can reflect on my own habits cause I mean not many people really look at the books the blog writer has read – other than you I guess!
My table of contents is another combat to help the way I decided to format the ladder itself because I kinda like it and don’t want to change the centre orientation because it feels more like a ladder like that. So you can easily see what you want to see by clicking at the top.
I feel like I came off really set in my ways with the explanation, but I do appreciate the suggestions because I am constantly trying to make my reading ladder look the best it can! And if you think this is stretched out, you should see my January to March one for English!
Besides that, I am interested to know what book you added!
Sincerely,
Nimrat
(This is probably a really long reply)