June 2019 Reads

June marks the beginning of my summer break.  It's been a ride transitioning from the near constant go-go-go lifestyle that is my current teaching life to a much slower teacher-on-summer-vacation life.  But this means that my reading life has picked up a bit.  It is so nice to have this time.  I've very grateful.

These are the books I read during the month of June and I will highlight a few of them below!

• Undead Girl Gang by Lily Anderson
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (This was a reread, you can check out an old review HERE!  My updated rating is one star less)
• Educated by Tara Westover
• Archenemies by Marissa Meyer
• Macbeth by William Shakespeare (This was also a reread as I will be teaching this play this coming school year.  You can read that review HERE.  My updated rating is one star less).

 Undead Girl Gang by Lily Anderson

Once upon a time, I tried a monthly book box service that is no longer in existence.  I thought it was nice, so I may look for another one at a later date, but not at this time.  I have so many books that still need to be read as it is.  But anyway, this was one of the books that turned up in my mailbox.  

I was pleasantly surprised by this book.  It looks a little bit gimmicky on the outside, but don't let this cover fool you!  It's a wonderful fantasy/supernatural YA book and I can't wait to share it with my students.  

I loved the representation of Wicca as a religion/spirituality and the conversations about why some people hold certain beliefs.  I can only think of a scant handful of books where young adults are challenged to think about religion and what role it does or doesn't play in our lives.  I also appreciated the content about grief.  I think young people who have lost someone will identify with the feelings the main character feels about losing her friend and what it's like to cope but shows that things will turn out to be okay in the end, given enough time and closure.

I just thought this was an at times funny, fast-paced, off-the-wall, and engaging read.  Once I started, I couldn't put it down!

Educated by Tara Westover

This has been sitting on my Kindle for ages, just waiting for summer to arrive so that I could read it.  

This was such an engaging read.  I seriously gobbled it up in about two days.  I really like reading books about entirely different lifestyles and this one, despite being a memoir, had an apocalyptic feel to it, which was interesting.  Tara Westover was born to a Mormon family, but honestly, it's not Mormonism that is recognizable.  Her father was obsessed with living off the grid and not engaging with the government in any way.  Some of Tara's siblings went to school when they were younger, but all were eventually pulled out for homeschooling, which fizzled out very quickly and just didn't occur after a while.  Tara has never set foot in a public school.  Any schooling they had, the kids had to fight for and work for themselves.  

It's a desperate situation that Tara lived through and while it makes for an excellent read, it doesn't escape me just how terrifying it must have been to live life this way.  There were so many times that Tara wanted to give up because it felt like so many things were working against her, but she didn't give up.  Eventually, she earned her undergraduate degree and was invited to complete a Masters and PhD, utilizing her skill as a writer.

What was really scary to me was how her family messed with her mind.  I don't mean keeping her out of school in this case, but making her feel outcast from the family and from the religion she grew up with and making her question what was real in the first place.  This really gets through to the reader because she lays out her (fact checked) experiences that she remembers and then also lays out what her family is telling her and it's very contradictory.  It's helps you get insight into what her life is like because you question what is real too.

This story became even more interesting to me when I found out that the business Tara's mom and her sister run have a Facebook page and so do many of her family members.  That led me down a little bit of a rabbit hole trying to figure out who these people really are.  But this just made the story that more interesting to me.  This is one of my absolute favorite books and I hope that someday I can have conversations with people who have also read it.  I need to verbally process this book a little more.

Archenemies by Marissa Meyer

This one was a work in progress for a while, but I thought it was much better than its predecessor, Renegades.  

One of the things that annoyed me about renegades was that it switched first-person perspectives every chapter.  So, one chapter was from the perspective of Nova and the next was from the perspective of Adrian.  Honestly, I thought Adrian's perspective was boring.  But this problem was fixed because the story is told from a third person perspective.  It does switch focus each chapter, but it's not as jarring and it's still interesting.  This sequel was much better at keeping my attention.  So even if I picked up the book and didn't touch it for another week, I still remembered very clearly what was happening. 

I love that you get more of a glimpse into Nova's life with the anarchists.  There is a much clearer view of the divide that Nova straddles with the Renegades and Ace Anarchy's gang and how she has a real choice between which world she sees herself as being part of and which world she feels like she owes.  I love this.  I thought it made Nova a much more round character than in "Renegades."  She isn't just a girl who was wronged in her childhood (irreversibly so, but still) seeking revenge, but now she has more of a choice to make.  I think Nova became one of my favorite characters from a book after finishing this read.

The next (last?) installment of this story comes out in November of this year (2019) and my students and I are so excited to see what happens next!

That's all for my June reads!  There are so many books I can tell you about already in July, but there is still more of the month to go.  See you for another reading highlights post in a month or less!

Thanks for reading!
--Jude