Hi, bookish friends! I’m back at it again with another Reading Recap for you guys, and I decided to try something new. Since my college classes just started back and I am doing a lot of reading of traditional texts, I thought I’d include these in my reading recaps each month. So, you’ll get to see what I’m reading for fun and those I’m reading in my LITS seminar class — cool, huh? Let’s get going on this thing then, what do ya say?
What I Read This Month
Let’s Break It Down
New Books Read: 3
New Novellas Read: 0
Book Re-Reads: 1
Novella Re-Reads: 0
Monthly Total: 4
Average Rating of this Month’s Reading: 3.66 stars
Favorite Read of the Month: From Blood and Ash by Jennifer L. Armentrout
Most Surprising Impressive Read of the Month: The Odyssey (Emily Wilson Translation)
Least Favorite Read of the Month: The Mahabharata
Ratings
If you read last month’s recap, you know that I was super upset to have had to list one of JLA’s books as the most disappointing read of the month. Well this month, my JLander heart overfloweth with joy because From Blood and Ash was FANTASTIC!!!! This is Jennifer L. Armentrout’s first adult high fantasy book, and it had just about everything I could have ever wanted in a book in this genre: a kick butt female protagonist, a very mysterious love interest, a truckload of romance, plot twists at every turn, stunning world building, and an ending that shocked the living crap out of me! My full thoughts on this bad boy will be share in a review in the very near future, so stay tuned for that in the coming weeks!
I’ve read numerous versions of The Odyssey, but Emily Wilson’s translation by far takes the cake as my favorite! While this text is LONG, it just reads so smoothly and so much like an adventurous bedtime story that I found myself unable to put it down. I’m also a sucker for Greek mythology, so anytime the gods and their shenanigans were mentioned, I was all for it! Overall, big fan, and if you’ve never read this version, you totally should!
While I loved the fact that I learned so much about early Indian culture, I had a lot of trouble following the storyline of The Mahabharata. A lot of this was because a great many of the names of the characters were very similar to each other, which made it hard for me to distinguish between who belonged to which of the warring families. I have actually read the Ramayana (another ancient text from India) and prefer it to The Mahabharata, but I did find the emphasis on religion and morality fascinating in this book. Overall, not a huge fan at all, but enjoyed learning about the culture in which it was written.
I was completely shocked by how much I enjoyed reading this play. It is based on a section from the Mahabharata, so going into it I just hoped I liked it more than I did that text … and I totally did! This play was super funny, but also gives the reader some great insight into early Indian culture. This was my last read of the month (literally finished it this morning!), and I have to say: it was a great one!
