This year has been a lifechanging one, being my first year away at college.  I've had to focus all my attention on my classes - on papers, exams, writing responses, and tons of reading.  Between all of that, it's been a bit of a challenge this past year to squeeze in reading for pleasure.  I did manage to get a few books in, and I was thankful to read some incredible books that are actually the kinds of books I enjoy reading when I took Young Adult Literature this past Spring quarter.


 In those final days of Spring quarter as I was writing up final papers, completing my last required projects, I kept thinking to myself, I can't wait until summer. I'll finally have all the time in the world to do some much-needed reading on my own.  I have so many books on my list I want to read...!  It's now the 5th of July, and I can definitely say I've gotten some good reading in and still more to come.  I actually got the incentive to do this post on summer reading yesterday when I picked up a much-beloved book that's been on my To Buy list for some time, Every Day by David Levithan, one of my all-time favorite YA Lit authors.  About a month ago, my mom got a call from my old community college while I was up at school, and she then called me to tell me that apparently I still had store credit at their bookstore.  I finally managed to go there just a couple days ago, and it turns out there was a gift card issued to me that I never spent, and even though I graduated last summer, I could still use it.  Sweet!  I still couldn't believe that I came across it.  The bookstore at my old community college is incredibly small and usually didn't have very many good contemporary novels, so it was great that I could spend this measly gift card on something I actually really wanted!
This book is so good.  It's pretty similar to Anne Brashares' My Name Is Memory (which I also own), both about protagonists who have lived multiple lives and continue to go from one body, one life, to the next.  Both novels are partly love stories as well, as both protagonists struggle with their unbelievable circumstances while trying to be with their loves.  It sounds cheesy when I say it like that, but these books are in no means just clique romance novels.  They're stories that travel across time and place, about fighting the odds, about holding onto every moment while you have it.  Whereas My Name Is Memory is more about multiple lives across time, Every Day takes place in the same time period, but the protagonist has no idea how far away or in which body - male or female - he'll end up in.  Both are beautifully written novels.  Oh yeah, and both drive me crazy in that they each have major cliffhangers at the end... and no sequels yet released!  Erg!  I just looked up "David Levithan Everyday sequel" and apparently he is planning on making a sequel that will be released in 2015.  So that's not too bad.  I'm a bit nervous because I want the sequel to live up to its antecedent and it's just going to ruin it if the sequel is really crap.  I have faith in Mr. Levithan, though, that he will deliver just as magnificent a book as Everyday was. 

Well, I hope you enjoyed that mini-review.  Ha.  Anyway, my point going off of that was that this is going to be my summer of books!  Mostly in reading them, but I'm noticing that I've also been acquiring a lot of books since summer started, what with visiting all those bookstores while on my trip in Victoria, BC., taking with me plenty of books back home across the border, plus buying Everyday just this week.  This year I also decided to do my first Reading Challenge on Goodreads.  I was still pretty new and active on Goodreads and had never done a reading challenge before, so I decided to take it on, and I figured it would give me more motivation to read more.  I aimed high at 50 books, and right now I'm at 24 books.  Since I didn't have as much time during the school year to read as much as I'd like, I'm hoping I'll make good progress on my goal during the summer, with all the extra time I have to read.  And if all else fails, I might go back into my Reading Challenge settings and lower the book goal a tad to make me feel better.  Ha!  Regardless of whether I actually complete my goal for 2014 or not, I am glad that I went ahead and did this, because it really did motivate me to read more and I liked having a goal to see ahead of me.  On the other hand though, I don't think this reading challenge is something I'd like to continue doing in the future, at least in trying to complete a goal of reading a certain amount of books each year.  I may do reading challenges again in years to come, but only to keep track of how many books I'd read that year.  Doing the challenge this first time around, it feels like I'm in a race to read 50 books, so because I'm wanting to reach that number I find that I'm sort of rushing my reading, jumping from one book to the other, rather than taking my time with each book.  I am reading each book in full and enjoying them, but there's very little time afterwards to reflect on what I've read, go back to passages I liked, and such.  Nope, I have to start up on the next book.  So while I am really appreciating this Reading Challenge I've dived into, after this is over I'll be glad to be going back to easygoing, leisurely bookreading again at my comfortable pace - it's not a race (woo, rhyme!).

As for where I am on books at the moment, I just finished The Firebird by Susanna Kearsley yesterday.  The synopsis seemed promising enough, a story about a young woman who has a gift of being able to glimpse the history behind any object she touches and about its previous owners (called psychometry) and, wanting to help another woman who holds a family heirloom - a bird carving called The Firebird - attempts to trace back the story of this Firebird in Scotland.  It started off pretty good.  I loved the language Kearsley writes in, and I just love stories that travel back in time, especially in a place like Scotland.  And of course there's the preternatural aspect that pulled me in.  After awhile, though, it seemed like it was mostly turning into a love story between Nicola and Rob whenever the story took place in the present.  Literally, every time Nicola was finished looking into the past and was pulled back into the present, her and Rob would comment about it, and it went a little bit like this: Wow, that's interesting... *sexual tension, gazing into each others' eyes, I want to love him and yet I can't tell him how, gosh look at his arms, he's gorgeous*  It wasn't anything quite as ridiculous as, say, 50 Shades of Grey.  It was an alright romance, but I felt it was just a little too much and like it was the same thing over and over every time her and Rob came back from looking into the past.  But even the story that took place in the past started to wear on me, too.  It began to feel a but slow, a bit boring, and a bit like your typical Victorian novel where the women have petty worries and are expected to be proper, while the men patronize the women, etc. etc.  Finally, there was quite a bit of history in it that I wasn't familiar with and so many details I had to try to remember.  I'm afraid I'm not very good at dealing with heavy history in stories.  It bores and overwhelms me after some time, so by the end of The Firebird I found myself a lot less intrigued than when I first began it.  I will admit that it was very well-written, nonetheless, and an interesting story, so I gave it about a 3 out of 5 stars. 

After finishing The Firebird, I quickly went to my next book to read which I already had with me, Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born by Tina Cassidy.  I came across this book via Goodreads while looking through one of my favorite lists on there, a list of "microhistory books."  I'm pretty interested in histories related to women, so I thought this would be a really captivating read, to look back on history and all of the ways childbirth was done before the 21st century: the tools they used, the procedures they underwent, the notions about childbirth, and everything else.  I also looked in the comments on Goodreads and some said this book gets pretty gruesome at times when going in detail about how doctors used to have to get the infant out, like with forceps and such.  Something like that.  I don't know if this makes me a terrible person or not, but a part of me was even more drawn to this book by that detail and it made me want to read it for myself.  There's something horrifying about gruesome methods such as the ones I may very well come across in this book, yet also something that piques your interest even more so that you can't resist it.  I hope that made sense.  Anyway, I'm early in the book right now, but so far it seems like it's living up to the interest it gives off, and I appreciate how straightforward and well-written it is.  Not too dense or anything.  Just perfect.  After I finish with that book, then I think I'll start on Orange Is The New Black by Piper Kerman that I picked up while in Canada!  I love the series this book is based off of.  I vaguely remember hearing there was a book with the same name when the series first took off, but I watched the series first during Winter quarter because people had kept bringing it up in both my LGBT History class and Women's Studies class.  And, really, can you help it, with a show about a female prison, armed with characters that transcend race and sexuality?  Once I finally got around to watching it, I was hooked.  And still unapologetically am.  I've watched about halfway through Season 2, but haven't gotten around to watching the rest, both because I simply haven't gotten around to it, and also because I want it to last as long as possible (curse Netflix and releasing the entire season all at once).  There's no doubt I'm addicted to the television series, but let's just hope that I'm as taken by the book, too.

Center: Finished - The Firebird by Susanna Kearsley; Upper left: Currently Reading - Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born by Tina Cassidy; Upper Right: Next To Read - Orange Is The New Black by Piper Kerman.

So that's what I have in store for my summer reading thus far!  I know that there are pleeeeenty of other books on my To-Read list that I'll hopefully get around to as well.  Until then..!

I have a feeling this will be a very bookish summer.