Hi, hello, how are you?
If you live in the States, you probably know that the past weekend was Memorial Day Weekend. It’s a bit different this year but usually I’d be ecstatic that there’s a three day weekend since people get to have a day off from work.
Since we’re already home due to quarantining and I’m slowly loosing the sense of time, I decided to get myself into “holiday” mode by trying to read a lot. I decided to participate in this 24 hour readathon with a couple of my friends and also work through my contemporaryathon TBR.
My end goal for this weekend was to read a lot of contemporary but also try to get closer to finishing my current reads. I’ve been in the middle of Pachinko and RWRB for quite a while and I really just need to finish them.
My contemporarython TBR consisted of:
I basically spent the weekend documenting my reading so feel free to grab yourself something hot to drink, get cozy, and read ahead 🙂
I wanted to start off my weekend of reading with some easy reads, books that I know I’d fly through. I decided to pick up Wasted Words by Staci Hart as it’s an ebook and I tend to read ebooks a lot faster. I was also in the mood for some easy romance and I knew that Wasted Words had all the potential to deliver just that.
Unfortunately, I DNF’d this book right after chapter two. The girl main character in this book really annoyed me. The girl mc believes that she has this power/gift of reading people and who they are and so she makes it her goal in life to set up people so they can find their happily ever after. Her power of “reading” people basically consists of stereotyping and generalizing everyone she sees, including complete strangers whom she knows nothing about.
She literally goes on about how nerds (men who love comics/graphic novels according to her) fall asleep thinking about sailor moon in their mother’s basements or some shit like that.
The scene that led me to DNF this book is when she tries to set up these random strangers together and her friend who was with her suggested that she doesn’t know these people and the guy may be abusive or something.
And then this girl SCOFFED and was all like “Yeah right, she could take him.” Who says YEAH RIGHT? Who SCOFFS? I just couldn’t get over that line, it didn’t sit well with me.
I quickly moved on and picked up Call it What You Want by Brigid Kemmerer and read about 1% before calling it a day for reading.
This entire day, I spent reading Call it What You Want By Brigid Kemmerer. Brigid Kemmerer’s contemporary books tend to all have the same blueprint but I honestly love them. They’re emotionally heavy and tackle very deep subjects. There’s always a romance but it isn’t necessarily the focus of the book, it’s more of a tiny subplot that’s just there. I always suggest to check the trigger warnings for these books before going into them.
Some of the trigger warnings for this book include: Discussion of abortion, loss of a loved one, grief, depression, suicide, and so much more. Again, please research the trigger warnings before going into this book!
I really loved reading from Rob’s point of view and it wasn’t until I was looking through Goodreads reviews that I realized that Brigid Kemmer used Robin Hood elements in this book. I thought that this was so cool because I’ve never really read a Robin Hood themed book.
It’s very easy to find yourself emotionally attached to at least one of the main POV’s in her books and for me this time, it was Rob. His character was so morally gray and at the same time he was just so broken. We got to see this poor kid devolve and go through so much stuff. Everyone he loved turned against him and he doesn’t find himself worthy for anyone to care about him because of what happened with his father.
I wanted to hug him and whack some sense into him at the same time.
I ended up falling asleep at midnight after crying over the end of this book for at least a good solid hour.
Apparently, I thought the perfect answer to come back after a book that made you cry a lot is to pick up a contemporary novel that’s more on the light hearted side. Which is what Frankly in Love by David Yoon was up UNTIL I picked it up on Sunday. The moment I started reading this book, shit started to go down and I couldn’t put it down until I finished it.
Basically, I didn’t like this book very much. The writing feels very immature and there’s way too many silly jokes and keyboard slams for me to care about this book. I also couldn’t get over the fact that there was cheating in this book. Overall, it was just very cringey.
This is why I picked this book up Sunday to finish because I knew it wouldn’t require much of me but I was WRONG.
The ending of this book made me CRY. I liked how the ending was more realistic and raw. Honestly, I wish the rest of the book was like the ending. It felt so much more MATURE and raw? The writing wasn’t that cringey and I was able to take the deep discussions more seriously.
Apparently, all the crying I did over the weekend with Call it What You Want and Frankly in Love wasn’t enough and I needed to emotionally drain myself even more.
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee was my mission today. I’ve been reading this book for quite a while and I really wanted to finish it today so I can start some books that WON’T MAKE ME CRY.
This book is really long and it’s long for a reason. It covers 80 plus years of Korean history. I love history and I found this book to be such a gem. I do have to admit that I had some problems with the writing as we reached the end of the book.
The writing in this book feels like a translation and there’s some sort of a distance between the reader and the characters. It also jumps to different POV’s in the middle of the chapter without any warning. Sometimes, I can see why it’s done and I appreciate it but other times, it feels a bit unnecessary.
It’s more of a plot driven book that’s centered around what it means to be a Korean in the beginning, middle, and end of a Japanese occupied Korea. The ending of this book went by so fast and I wish that we dove a bit deeper into the characters.
I hope you enjoyed this long winded post about my weekend alongside these reading updates? Mini reviews?
What books did you read this weekend?