Did not spark any enjoyment-★☆☆☆☆
Okay-★★☆☆☆
Entertaining-★★★☆☆
Incredible-★★★★☆
Life-Changing-★★★★★
Reading Rate: 18.4 pages
Reflection
Overall, this month I am not too mad about my reading rate. I believe that my goals from last month helped me to achieve a much higher reading rate. I read books that I enjoyed a lot, so one of my goals is to find more novels within these genres to read to achieve better reading rates for the future. My goal is to read at least one fiction and possibly one piece of poetry as well. Books that I have in mind to read include Pachinko by Jin Min Lee and Home Body by Rupi Kaur.
The Books that I have Read this Month:
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens (350 pages)-★★★★★
Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur(202 pages)-★★★★☆
Where the Crawdads Sing
This is truly my new favorite novel and it is one to fully recommend to anyone as it touches on many aspects of life. This novel delves into the main character Kya, and because the main focus is on her, we get to see the development of her throughout the years. She starts off as a young girl and grows to become an old woman at the end of the novel. By the townspeople, she is called the marsh girl because she is an isolated individual from everyone else, and she has a bad reputation only because she seems somewhat strange as she lives alone with no family to take care of her. Everyone leaves such as her siblings and mother escaping her abusive, drunken father who almost never seems to be home. A few years later, one day the father leaves home and never returns. This creates the first major piece of suspense as she is just a young girl with no one to take care of her and no food or supplies given to her. This is where many new characters are introduced such as Tate, her soon-to-be lover, and the supply man she comes to visit for goods every week. Because of Kya’s reputation among the townspeople, Kia is easily one to be blamed for the murder of one of Chase Andrews. With this investigations and long trials are taking place throughout the entirety of the novel. Every flip of the page only makes me want to read more of it and a wide variety of emotions are released. So much suspense is being built throughout, and I found it to be so unique from a lot of the novels that I have read in the past. There is a lot of twists and turns that occur in this novel that is very much worth reading!
Due to the fascination with this novel, I definitely rate this book a five out of five stars. This is truly a novel that I would reread multiple times, and always remember the plot of because of just how good it is. The imagery is fantastic as it really does convey the home that the main character lives in such as the marsh, and around that, it creates the personality of the character. Making her the marsh girl only added so much more significance. I found myself reading through the pages and never wanted it to end. I have been trying to find novels that have this similar type of style and plot, so I can have that same amount of enjoyment.
Milk and Honey
I have already read this poetry book in the past, but I felt like I could not really understand it so I took the approach to reread it, and I can say that I truly enjoyed it the second time. Rupi Kaur’s book is of poetry and prose that dives into such themes as abuse, womanhood, family, connections, and personal power. She divides her different works into four sections, which I believe shows great importance to the book. My favourite poem from this book had to have been:
“what terrifies me most is how we
foam at the mouth with envy
when others succeed
but sigh in relief
when they are failing
our struggle to
celebrate each other is
what’s proven most difficult
in being human”
This is a poem that I could really relate to, and I feel like many others can relate to it themselves. I believe that I feel this way towards some people, and they feel the same way about me themselves.
In conclusion, I would rate this book a four out of five stars, I liked how there was an immense amount of variety within her pieces, and every poem or prose felt new or refreshing to read. I book helped me to actually enjoy poetry much more.