Reading List
Rating Key¶
🛑dropped = hated it, did not finish (DNF) (dark red)😡
⭐ = did not like it, difficult to get through but I finished it (red)😒
⭐⭐ = it was just okay, probably wouldn't recommend or read again (orange)😑
⭐⭐⭐ = liked it, some complaints, but overall good (yellow)🙂
⭐⭐⭐⭐ = loved it, thoroughly enjoyed it, definitely recommend (green)😊
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ = obsessed, can't stop thinking about it (dark green)😍
I like to go over the way I rank my reviews since it's an ambiguous scale and I want to provide clarity for what I personally mean when I mark something with a certain star rating. For some people, if you mark a book with anything other than 5 stars then that means you hated it, but that's not the case for me. If I mark all books I like with 5 stars then the scaling system should really just be a thumbs up or thumbs down system instead. Using a scaling system like 5 stars helps me to categorize my reading by what I liked (3 stars) vs what I loved (4 stars) vs my next great obsession (5 stars).
Books on Writing¶
| 📖 Book | 📋 Review |
|---|---|
| The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I love this book, it's full of so many writing tips and tricks that are foundational and longstanding good principles to always remember. It's also a great book to own a hard copy of because there are example for everything that are really great to see and highlight. This guide is so full of quality information for writers and it doesn't waste any page space on anything but outlining that information as cleanly as possible. Definitely a book I recommend all writers have a physical copy of. |
| Microstyle: The Art of Writing Little by Christopher Johnson | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I highly recommend this book to all writers, no matter what mediums you primarily work within. This book is all about how to write quality content, not just short form copy. This book taught me so much about the quality of words and how to write quality content over quantity content, whether I've needed 3 perfect words for some ad copy or want a clean, quality final draft for my novel that doesn't drag on and on. |
| Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style by Virginia Tufte | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ This book is all about how all writing is poetry if you know what you're doing. All good writing is art, so all writers can benefit from this insightful work on how to take all your writing from just words to an art form. |
| They Say / I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing by Gerald Graff | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Sound and Sense: An Introduction to Poetry by Laurence Perrine | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Writing and Rhetoric by Brett McInelly and Brian Jackson | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Falling Into Theory: Conflicting Views on Reading Literature by David H. Richter | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
Books on Marketing¶
| 📖 Book | 📋 Review |
|---|---|
| Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ I've been in marketing for almost 10 years, so I can be rather harsh on marketing books since they often suffer from being conceptually incestuous. What I mean by that is most books on marketing are actually just products to sell to marketers and not actually helpful for marketers to use in practice. So when I find marketing books that are actually helpful and insightful, with actionable things most marketers can employ, I like to make note of them. Contagious was a very interesting read that really dived into the psychological reasons some things spread within a community while others don't. This book deepened my understanding of the psychology of gossip and how to utilize the oldest and strongest marketing strategy there ever was—word of mouth. |
| The 1-Page Marketing Plan: Get New Customers, Make More Money and Stand Out from the Crowd by Allan Dib | 📖reading... |
Standalone Fiction¶
| 📖 Book | 📋 Review |
|---|---|
| Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ so good, it wasn't written "as Charlotte Bronte" but still kept the vibe of her writing and the eery worlds she creates. It felt like a very "book accurate" book for technically basically being "fan fiction" about Rochester's wife Bertha. this new take on the story felt very much like an inside look into a potential truth about the story and it made me really want to learn what happens to Jane when Rochester inevitably does the same thing to her. I felt for her so much hearing her story like this. i didn't love the formatting, they didnt use quotation marks for example and it was often really hard to tell whose POV it was ("Bertha" or Rochester) because the book doesnt follow formatting conventions like at all. But I do think this added to the vibe of Bertha's story being a free spirited and in some ways uneducatedly so child in the fantasy land of the islands she grew up on (historical fiction, fan fic, alternate reality, tragedy, mental illness awareness) |
| Weyward by Emilia Hart | 📖reading... |
Fantasy Series¶
| 📖 Book | 📋 Review |
|---|---|
| From Blood and Ash Series | 📖reading... |
| From Blood and Ash (Blood and Ash 1) by Jennifer L. Armentrout | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire (Blood and Ash 2) by Jennifer L. Armentrout | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| The Crown of Gilded Bones (Blood and Ash 3) by Jennifer L. Armentrout | ⭐⭐⭐ very slow until the very end it really picked up again. This didn't need to be it's own book, we should have jst ended the last book with the main events of this book (fantasy, slow pacing) |
| The War of Two Queens (Blood and Ash 4) by Jennifer L. Armentrout | 📖reading... starts out very slow and boring as well |
| A Soul from Ash and Blood (Blood and Ash 5) by Jennifer L. Armentrout | 📘to be read |
| Visions of Flesh and Blood (Blood and Ash 6) by Jennifer L. Armentrout | 📘to be read |
| The Primal of Blood and Bone (Blood and Ash 7) by Jennifer L. Armentrout | 📘to be read |
| Flesh and Fire Series by Jennifer L. Armentrout | 📖reading... |
| A Shadow in the Ember (Flesh and Fire 1) | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ could not put this book down, every second was great to read, delivered on all it's promises, a girl trained her whole life for one job, to assassinate a god she was destined to marry. I felt like book delivered more on the enemies to lovers than the blood and ash series really did (fantasy, spicy, enemies to lovers) |
| A Light in the Flame (Flesh and Fire 2) | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ just as good as the first book, not a second wasted (fantasy, spicy, romance, enemies to lovers) |
| A Fire in the Flesh (Flesh and Fire 3) | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I know reading this book before The War of Two Queens (Blood and Ash 4) and A Soul from Ash and Blood (Blood and Ash 5) goes against the recommended reading order, but I realized I cared more about the Blood and Ash books not spoiling the Flesh and Fire books for me than I cared about the Flesh and Fire books spoiling the Blood and Ash books. So I went ahead and read away and so far I don't regret it. This book was gripping from start to finish like every book in the Flesh and Fire series for me so far. I think the pacing is quicker, which unfolds the complex world building to me as the reader quicker, which makes it all make easier, faster sense too. Because Blood and Ash's pacing is so much slower, its harder to keep the world building nuggets we get front of mind as new things unfold. |
| Born of Blood and Ash (Flesh and Fire 4) | 📘to be read |
| Maze of Shadows Series by Kathryn Ann Kingsley | 📘to be read |
| The Unseelie Prince (Maze of Shadows 1) | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| The Unseelie Throne (Maze of Shadows 2) | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ great plot, really researched the actual history of fae lore and that was really cool to see displayed in a well thought out world (fantasy, very spicy, dark romance, enemies to lovers, impossible conflicts) |
| The Unseelie King (Maze of Shadows 3) | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I had no idea how they could ever wrap up and solve all of the complex conflicts in this story but somehow she did in the most pleasing and beautiful way (fantasy, very spicy, dark romance, enemies to lovers, impossible conflicts, happy ending) |
| ACOTAR Series by Sarah J. Maas | 📖reading... |
| A Court of Thorns and Roses (ACOTAR 1) | 📘to be read |
| A Court of Mist and Fury (ACOTAR 2) | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ tons of ret conning of the plot and characters, it felt like everyone's entire personalities were changing all the time for the sake of the plot and feyre always being the victim in every situation (fantasy) |
| A Court of Wings and Ruin (ACOTAR 3) | ⭐⭐ This should have been Nesta's book, she was the true main character of this portion of the story. It was frustrating to have the true main character's story narrated to us from Feyre's perspective for some reason. There was also more personality retconning in this story with their "deadbeat absent father" suddenly showing up at the end to be heroically killed in an effort to selflessly save his daughters, (just kidding readers, he's actually been secretly a great dad this entire time and actually has been doing a butt ton of work to secretly help his daughters). She does this with characters so much and it gives me whiplash as a reader. You never really know who any of these characters are because in the name of Plot anyone's personality could suddenly completely change. |
| A Court of Frost and Starlight (ACOTAR 4) | ⭐ I really didn't love this book. It's essentially a "Christmas" in-between book where Feyre has everything she ever wanted and we are all supposed to hate and judge Nesta for no reason the whole time. I just don't understand how Nesta went from becoming this integrated member of the group and help save the world and then suddenly became a really mean drunk? She just seems like a scapegoat character to add social drama. |
| A Court of Silver Flames (ACOTAR 5) | ⭐⭐ It was really hard for me to get through the beginning of this book. The way Feyre treated Nesta, pulling Nesta in front of everyone in Feyre's "new family" to boss her around and judge her, made me so mad at Feyre. It also made zero sense to me why Nesta was suddenly acting this way after being super involved in the last book, there's no reason given for why she backslided so much into literally a mean drunk all the sudden? Also why was there all that relationship development between her and Cassian in ACOWR if she was just going to randomly decide she hated him now in this book? Why?! These characters' decisions don't make sense, their decisions are all plot devices. Like how did Nesta and Cassian's relationship go from the seriousness and depths of “I have no regrets in this life, but this. That we did not have time. That I did not have time with you, Nesta. I will find you again in the next world - the next life. And we will have that time. I promise.” to her hating him in the very next book? This is such a huge plothole for me. Like I've seen that quote everywhere, and yes, it is super romantic, but utterly ruined given that all of that is suddenly and randomly erased and completely forgotten so that we can go back and actually see Cassian and Nesta's relationship buildup that we didn't get to see in ACOWR because that book was written in Feyre's POV instead of Nesta's. |
| TOG Series by Sarah J. Maas | 📘to be read |
| The Assassin's Blade (TOG 0.5) | ⭐⭐ I was excited to get more backstory and lore on Celaena. She has so much potential to be a really interesting character. I should really like a story about a feral girl who grew up with the king of assassin's as a father who trained her to be the best assassin in the land. But this book really didn't tell us anything new and made Celaena's character more confusing to me. She takes great pride in being the best assassin, but her moral alignment suggests she should not want to be an assassin. There's even a line in this book where Sam is like, "We can't be like that" referring to this evil guy Farran who kills people, Celaena literally responds, "We're not like Farran, we know how to do it but we don't enjoy it, that's the difference." like really? You say you don't like assassinating people but now that you're free you still choose to do it and one of your reasons is money because you like fancy things. Her saying she doesnt like killing doesn't even make sense either since she's out of the guild here and can literally choose to do anything else but literally wants to start an assassins guild of her own. I also really hated how much we were supposed to hate Lysandra who was literally trained since a child to be a prostitute. When Celaena finds out the assassin king bought her virginitiy and slept with Lysandra, Celaena is enraged with jealousy and even throws a knife really close to Lysandra's face out of anger. That was wild to me. We were supposed to feel so betrayed and hate Lysandra so much and I honestly was just really appalled at Celaena who had no interest in saving this girl that could have so easily been her own situation and instead slut shames this child who was forced into prostitution. Just wild, I almost wish I didn't read this book because now I honestly don't like Celaena after that. |
| Throne of Glass (TOG 1) | ⭐⭐⭐ Starting the Throne of Glass series I was rather bummed to learn that this book essentially takes place at "assassin school." I know the format of a school, academy, or gauntlet provides a lot of plot structure but I just find it so boring, I just want to skip right to the interpersonal dilemmas and skip the push ups, trainings, and lectures about different kinds of weapons and poisons. Later in the story when we get to the magical lore, the word marks, and the secret magical murders taking place by hidden rune portals is where this book got way more interesting to me. I thought that was super clever. The story lost me a bit with Celaena being only 18 years old, like not even 19 years old, only 18 years old, it made a lot of her story feel pretty unbelievable to me so I liked to pretend she was actually like 26 at least. I also felt some whiplash from the whole Dorian will they won't they thing, I felt like the author couldn't decide whether they were endgame or not so there would be really beautiful lines about how he can't imagine life with anyone else but actually nevermind let's just be friends actually? I may also just be more used to dedicated romance writers who make love interest plotlines way more clear and I personally like that. |
| Crown of Midnight (TOG 2) | ⭐⭐⭐ Celaena is now the king's official assassin and is being sent on all kinds of missions to assassinate different important people. But, she now has a concious and can't bring herself to kill these people. So she instead pretends to assassinate these people by convincing them to fake their own deaths and get out of town. Personally I found this plot point a little hard to swallow. I just can't imagine that really working but no one argues with her and everyone goes through their own efforts to fake their own deaths and leave everything they've ever known to flee into obscurity. Like not a single person argued with her on this? They all just listened to her and cooperated? It seems like a cop out a bit to me, to avoid Celaena being forced to actually do anything wrong while still maintaing the charcter title of assassin. The ending half of this book piqued my interest. I love the magical lore with the word marks and the doors and the king's monster creations. I also loved finally finding out more about Celaena and how she's fae, that makes her abilities make a bit more sense to me. I did find it a little bit comical how many names Celaena is burning through though. Like she was Celaena, then Lillian, then Elentiya kind of and now Aelin. This series could be called, "the girl with many names." I don't really know why finding out her true identity warranted a fourth name change. I also don't really understand why we're only learning these origins about Celaena now when she has technically known she was fae and who her parents were this entire time? I think it would have made more sense if maybe she had traumatic amnesia or something rather than her just not sharing this info with us until the very end of her second book. |
| Hier of Fire (TOG 3) | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ I'd definitely say this was the most interesting book in the series so far with more characters in play and more interesting characters in play too. I also loved learning a lot more about Aelin and her background, etc. I thought it was interesting the parallels between Aelin + Rowan and Feyre + Rhysand (Aelin's an "assassin," Feyre's a "hunter," both Rowan and Rhysand are dark and mysterious men and are both enslaved to evil ladies and both Aelin and Feyre free them). A beef I have with this book is Nehimia's death. It would have been a great death that Celaena could beat herself up about and really hurt over, but then we learn that Nehimia literally orchestrated her own death for the sole purpose of getting Celaena to be the hero, something she was basically already doing: "Nehimia thought her death could spur me to action, so she orchestrated her own death." (a literal quote from this book from Celaena). This is just a wild plot point to me and totally unecessary to make this the circumstances around her death. It would make way more sense to just let it be an assassination, not like this on purpose plan Nehimia had, that's so weird to me. All of Celaena's many many names are also a bit much. |
| Queen of Shadows (TOG 4) | 📘to be read |
| Empire of Storms (TOG 5) | 📘to be read This series is proving hard for me to get through. It took me a long time to finally finish book 5. My reasons for not enjoying the series feel rather petty, but sometimes that's just how it goes as a reader. I feel like I need to listen to a podcast breakdown of the plot to grasp what I've even read in the past 5 books. Listening to the book might also be greatly affecting my experience with these books, I'm not sure. It just feels tired and ridiculous to me how many names the main character has, like I'm not even sure what to call her because she has so many names, and then at the end of this book she sacrifices herself and they keep repeating this line "nameless is my price" which sounds like a cool sentence but what does it mean?? It's supposed to be meaningful because ANOTHER title she has among her growing list of names is "nameless" which I just find woefully ironic, I just can't 🤦She's literally the most opposite of being "nameless" she could be, the only reason she has this title is because it's being so strongly asserted in this book's final moments that the title "nameless" applies to her, not because it in any way feels true. I find this to be my biggest gripe with Maas books in general though. Nothing feels really organically wrought via a naturally flowing plot, but rather randomly strongly asserted according to the author's whimsy in that moment of writing. |
| Tower of Dawn (TOG 6) | 📘to be read |
| Kingdom of Ash (TOG 7) | 📘to be read |
| Empyrian Series by Rebecca Yarros | 📘to be read |
| Fourth Wing (Empyrian 1) | ⭐⭐⭐ This world is fun and interesting but I'm not exactly in love with it. I don't love the "military school" premise just because I'm not a fan of books set in school settings in general. Everytime they're in a classroom or a teacher starts teaching I die a little inside. But I do love the premise of dragons and riders and magic. A couple gimmicky things that bother me were how Violet conveniently recites world-building facts out loud when she's nervous or how she has brown hair with silver ombre highlights, how her mother apparently does love her but would basically send her to her death, why of all the magic things magical modern pens are the most exciting thing for new recruits, or how she bonded with 2 uber powerful dragons for no real reason other than pure main character syndrome. I also didn't believe how or why Violet and Xaden fell in love. It seemed to just happen and it felt like we were just told to believe they're in love now rather than all the human things that go into falling in love with another human being. They felt more like characters who are each other's designated love interests than two people who fell in love with each other. I think part of why I felt this way reading their romance plotline was how Violet objectified Xaden so much. I don't think she ever gives a reason beyond how hot he is for why she's interested in Xaden. |
| Iron Flame (Empyrian 2) | ⭐⭐ This book felt a little all over the place and I didn't understand half of what was going on. But the part that lost me the most was when we learn (spoilers) that Xaden is an intinsic and we're supposed to be shocked by this info when Xaden and Violet have literally been reading each other's minds since very early on in book 1. Then were were supposed to feel so betrayed that he hadn't told her about this secret of his yet when she knows firsthand why he would keep this a secret, or we were supposed to feel betrayed because now maybe her feelings were manipulated since he could read her thoughts BUT then we learn that he literally can't actually read thoughts, he can just read "intentions" so don't worry reader, Xaden is safe from being canceled for any ability that could remotely compromise full consent, but Violet's gonna go ahead and feel betrayed for awhile anyway for the sake of the plot. This plot point really lost me. |
| Beasts of the Briar Series by Elizabeth Helen | 📘to be read |
| Bonded by Thorns (Beasts of the Briar 1) Elizabeth Helen |
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Great book that really delivered on the promise of a more grown-up retelling of beauty and the beast. The story is so complex, dynamic, and imaginative. I wasn't bored for a second! I burned through this book and you will too. |
| Woven by Gold (Beasts of the Briar 2) | 📘to be read love just as much as the first book, great continued momentum, we finally got to the part where the princes find out what "gaston" did to her and it didn't play out as well as I hoping it would. I felt like her complicated feelings around her abuser got rapped up too quickly with her very quickly being super okay with his demise. I think there was a missed opportunity here too by wrapping up this plot point so completely all the sudden, I wanted Quell to take him to the winter realm and become an ally for the rebels and kidnap her later with actual power behind his evilness |
| Forged by Malice (Beasts of the Briar 3) | 📖reading... |
| Broken by Daylight (Beasts of the Briar 4) | 📘to be read |
Science Fiction¶
| 📖 Book | 📋 Review |
|---|---|
| Annihilation Series by Jeff VanderMeer | 📖reading... |
| Annihilation (Southern Reach 1) | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Authority (Southern Reach 2) | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ fantastic read, mind bogglingly mysterious and spooky in a way i've never experienced before (fic, modern setting, mystery, sci fi, strange fiction, eery) |
| Acceptance (Southern Reach 3) | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ i did not see the ending coming and I was really grateful that the book did have a conclusion and answers to the mystery (fic, modern setting, mystery, sci fi, strange fiction, eery) |
| House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski | 📖reading... |