every book I read in June | classics, making progress on series & sci-fi

This is a book that I like pre-knew. I pre-knew I knew that I was going to hate it and I hated it.

Like it was still entertaining, and that's kind of what made me want to tackle Aurora Burning, but gee whiz, this was so boring. And how is that possible? It's like a space opera.

I was really not liking this until the end. That's the thing, if I like read a book and I'm like, "Oh my god." but then it ends tragically, if it's like a tragic story, Calcifer!

Did I like this? No. This was really I don't even want to say interesting to read.

A lot of this first book is also a meditation on writing novels. How do you go about writing? And at times it's extremely sloppy but because he's kind of set himself up as taking on the guise of a narrator in here who is writing his first novel or writing something it's kind of excusable in that way which is something cool to explore as well but yeah, overall I gave both of these three and a half stars and this just made me want to read all the Murakami in my life so I'm really happy I picked these up.

Like I said, I ended up liking volume one a lot more, but I'm so excited.

Really, really like this. Really like this. Hisoka?

Five stars, one of the best books I've read all year. Read it. Just read it.

Wasn't really obsessed with Ralph Waldo Emerson, although I did like Emerson's writing style better than Thoreau's, but I liked Thoreau's ideas and exploration.

This was the worst conclusion to the series for me. I thought it was so poorly done. It felt so rushed.

I did end up liking Pinball a lot more, but these two are connected and I believe there are four in total Murakami works that follow the unnamed narrator of these two novels as well as his friend, who is just this guy known as the Rat.

And Resistance to Civil Government, that was that was the best out of this trio. It's also known as Civil Disobedience.

I thought this was going to be such a cute wholesome kind of similar food manga because I was really liking Kitchen Princess and I kind of wanted something more like that but this was entirely ridiculous. It was not heartwarming to me and I was just like I am uncomfortable I don't want to be here.

Wasn't really obsessed with Ralph Waldo Emerson, although I did like Emerson's writing style better than Thoreau's, but I liked Thoreau's ideas and exploration.

One of the reasons I loved listening to Sleeping Giants, which is the first one, so much in lockdown is because it was about the world falling apart at a time when the world was falling apart.

Some of his sentences hit me so hard, and a lot of his sentiments I really do I'm just in love with, but as well sometimes he's just so annoying, like so annoying, so full of himself, so It's just too nebulous. It's too nebulous for me.

This was so incredibly helpful. I highlighted so much. I took notes.

The thing that stopped me from giving it any more than four stars, and like it was kind of just a four-star for me, is that I wanted a lot more time with our characters because this is a relatively short book, and there are a lot of people in here who have incredibly deep, complicated, meaningful relationships. I wanted more of that.

Four stars. Not quite a five because what I will say is that this book is completely charming, so easy to love, so fun, very clever, very heartwarming.

The reason that I DNF this was because I was finding the writing so inconsistent, specifically with Molly. And I've seen other people talk about this, too, when I went on Goodreads.

But this book also follows a bunch of other Dickensian characters and it was just in my opinion not funny, not interesting, not clever. It lacked Dickens' really fantastical magical descriptions for me. It lacked his humor.

Turn of the Screw is one of my favorite books and so this for me was just Henry James 180, like he can really do anything, I think, which is cool, but as a story, like I would definitely not recommend this unless you have to analyze it.