Friday Reads on a Saturday
June 25
Almost every post, I talk about how quickly the year is passing by. It is already June and soon will be July.
I am enjoying the weather and the so far manageable heat where I live. Not sure about other places. I also had time to enjoy music at a festival, delicious food and beverages, and walking around the city and seeing the streets lively with activity. The effects of Covid are still being felt and is a reality for so many, but the world continues to turn. What are these sorrows, pains, and fears? They are real, but so are the stars in the sky with light that is ancient by the time they can be detected with human sight. Who knows what we are to any observers lightyears away from us?
Yes. I tend to go into philosophical and scientific musings sometimes. This post is supposed to be about the books I am interested in reading this week. I will definitely not get to all of them, but I have high hopes of getting to them some day.
Books For this Week:
Green Grass Running Water
by Thomas King
Radio Silence
by Alice Oseman
Mini-Haul:
Blood Washing Blood: Afghanistan’s Hundred Year War
by Phil Halton
Alligator
by Lisa Moore
Leave Society
by Tao Lin
Library Pick:
The City We Became
by N.K. Jemisin
Friday Reads
June 17
The official start of summer will soon be here. I have actually been in summer mode since the end of May, and I find that the days are passing by quickly with the assignments that keep popping up and keeping me busy. I have to say that I am not doing the reading I would like to do, but I am actually on track for my reading challenge for 2022. I have technically read 26/52 books I have set for my goal this year. Today, I am adding more books even though I know it will take me a while to get to them.
So here are the books on my Friday Reads.
Less by Andrew Sean Greer
Angel’s Blood by Nalini Singh
Mini-Haul
Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took on the West
by Catherine Belton
The Summer of Bitter and Sweet
by Jen Ferguson
Library-Haul
When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East
by Quan Barry
Necessary People
by Anna Pitoniak
Friday Reads
June 10th
After trying out a more ambitious approach to my reading. I find I have to be more realistic. I want to read all the books, but I can only go at a pace I am comfortable with.
For this Friday Reads, I have drifted back towards titles I have been meaning to read. I got distracted by some newer works, but I feel it is time to go back to ones I had planned to read before and give them a go. If you can tell that I have been watching British booktubers, that is correct.
Here are the books I plan to read this week
The Forest of Stolen Girls by June Hur
The Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis
The Book of M by Peng Shepherd
Book Added to Collection
All The Seas of the World by Guy Gavriel Kay
Friday Reads
June 3
It is a quiet evening as I write this. With June here already, there is a sense that the world is moving ahead no matter of the problems. The Earth still rotates and travels around the sun. The days go by, and flowers bloom in the garden and grassy fields. The rain falls one day, and the next day it is sunny.
I have here my Friday Reads for the first weekend of June.
The books are split into 3 categories:
Books I am reading, A Library Book Haul, and a Mini-Book Haul
Hope you enjoy and find something interesting to you.
Currently Reading
The Summer Tree
By Guy Gavriel Kay
Frankly In Love
By David Yoon
Library Haul
The Electric Hotel
By Dominic Smith
My Ackee Tree: A Chef’s Memoir of Finding Home in The Kitchen By Suzanne Barr with Suzanne Hancock
The Premonition: A Pandemic Story
By Michael Lewis
Mini-Haul
The Idiot
By Fyodor Dostoevsky
Animal
By Lisa Taddeo
June TBR 2022 Summer Time Reads
June TBR 2022
Hi. My name is Jeanne. Welcome to my blog, JKStar88 Reader
Today, I am here to do a June TBR.
These are the books I hope to get to in the month of June. Are you ready for them?
First, I would like to read Frankly In Love by David Yoon.
I haven’t read any books by David Yoon. I’ve held on to his debut novel for a few years now. He has since released a few more books, so I am excited to finally put it on my TBR for June.
It is about Frank Li in Love, a Korean-American boy. He is 18 years old and is dating the girl of his dreams. His parents have other ideas. They want him to date a Korean-American girl.
He turns to a family friend to help him out. They essentially fake date so his parents don’t find out who he is actually dating.
The book was popular on book tube awhile ago. Now that the hype has simmered down, it is time for me to take it off the shelf.
The next book on my list is Alligator by Lisa Moore.
Lise Moore is an author who recently released a new book. Started reading it, but have decided to go back to reading Alligator, which is a book I started before.
I’ve talked about it in a previous post.
I would like to read the library copy I have before it is due back at the library. If I make time this week, I should get it done.
The book is about a cast of characters who call St. John’s, Newfoundland home.
The title says alligator which might mean the book is about nature, or it could be a metaphor about what appears on the surface is not what there all is there to know about individuals and neighbours.
Lisa Moore draws inspiration from Flannery O’Connor, so I will have to see about that and the things people want to hide about themselves in town.
I am doing my best to read new titles released this year. I have a few already, but I tend to put off reading them.
I have decided that has to change slightly, so I have a book released this past week in my possession.
That book is Either/Or by Elif Batuman. The book is a follow-up to the Idiot which was inspired by a book with the same name by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
While I found the novel by Elif Batuman to be so-so, I decided that when I heard that there would be a follow-up novel, that I had to get it.
Now Either/Or is here, and I am trying to hype it up in my mind so I will read it immediately.
The story is about the second year that Selin spends in her undergraduate degree in Harvard. It is meandering dense novel where nothing seems to happen. Sometimes the style works for me, sometimes it doesn’t.
So, I’ll have to see how I find this second novel.
It is almost summer. For me it is the perfect time to read horror and thrillers. I have meant to read Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler.
I have read the Parable of a Sower duology, which I found intense. I think I found Fledgling at a thrift store and it has sat in a box under by desk for awhile now.
I also have other titles by Octavia E. Butler as ebooks, but I have decided that this relatively short book about vampires as my way back to the many worlds Butler has created through her very impactful speculative novels.
Finally, I have one more book to talk about in this June TBR video.
That book is Green Grass, Running Water by Thomas King. I keep starting and stopping this novel. You might be able to see a trend when it comes to my reading habits.
Thomas King is an Indigenous novel I have read a few works by. The first thing I read was his Massey Lecture, The Truth About Stories.
There is a lecture series in Canada called the CBC Massey Lectures held by the public television and radio network where a lecturer is chosen to deliver a talk about a matter of public importance. The Truth About Stories is an important book for me that I read early in my life engaged in the work of writing and journalism. It helped me to understand the role of storytelling in Indigenous cultures and started my journey in understanding my role as a settler in colonized land.
I actually have a few more recent books by Thomas King, but I have decided to go back to this one from 1993.
That is it for me in this post. See you again for more.
Books Mentioned:
Frankly In Love by David Yoon
Alligator by Lisa Moore
Either/Or by Elif Batuman
Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler
Green Grass, Running Water by Thomas King