#tbrbusterchallenge2023

[storytime-reviews]

Currently Reading: I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

#booklr #i'm glad my mom died #jennette mccurdy #tbrbusterchallenge2023 #bookbanditchallenge #reading #books #book pic #currently reading #really looking forward to this

[leer-reading-lire]

Last read:

Title: Dracula

Author: Bram Stoker

Illustrator: Edward Gorey

Number of Pages: 427

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

First published: 1897

Read: 3 May – 27 November 2023

Thoughts: 

I finally got around to re-read this novel! And I couldn’t have done it without Dracula daily and everyone in Tumblr commenting the story and sharing their art. 

I loved the experience of reading along with so many people and their posts about it always gave me food for thought. It truly made my reflections about the book richer. 

The first time I read this epistolary novel I was fifteen years old and since then I had forgotten many important plot points, as well as some characters. However, I remembered that I had loved the story, and I was fascinated by Mina Murray and Jonathan Harker. Mina was my favorite character and, back then, my favorite suitor was John Seward, followed by Quincey Morris. 

I definitely appreciated reading the letters and diaries’ entries in chronological order. I think it may be the better option for a first-time reader.

This time around I felt Jonathan’s terror, hopelessness, and desperation. I was genuinely moved by his trials and tribulations when he was held prisoner at Dracula’s castle.

I loved the voyage of the Demeter because I could feel the anxiety and fear of the sailors. The whole journey was nerve-wrecking.

A character that took me by surprised and completely won me over was Lucy Westenra. I’m angry in her behalf for all the horrible adaptations that portray her under misogynistic lights. A particularly terrifying scene for me was Mrs. Westenra’s death. And when Lucy died was heartbreaking. 

The part with the Bloofer Lady was intriguing. Here I have to say that while I had overlooked Arthur Holmwood in my first reading years ago, this time I got to appreciate his character and I could clearly see why Lucy had chosen him. He was so kind and loved her very much. They were so in love and eager to start their live together, it was all so tragic. 

Likewise, I’m in awe for John Quincey, Arthur Holmwood and Quincey Morris’ friendship. The affection that the three friends had for each other is hard to miss. I was astonished by Stoker; all his depictions of masculinity are something else. Specially, in Jonathan’s case.

Abraham van Helsing annoyed me and frustrated me for most of the time that he was on the page. I think I only warmed up to him in the final part when he and Mina traveled to Dracula’s castle.

Mina was extraordinary! I loved that she liked to ask about ghost stories, and she was so smart, organized and kind. I’m particularly keen on her hyperfixation with train schedules. 

The whole scene when Dracula attacked Mina was appalling, truly nightmarish and gruesome. I can’t for the life of me figure out why there are so many adaptations and (fan)fiction where they’re presented as a romantic couple! In my opinion, romanticize abuse is nauseating.

In general, I think pop culture has failed both Lucy and Mina and they certainly deserve better. 

The last section where the whole gang finally comes together; they miraculously stop keeping information from Mina (as they obviously should have done from the beginning); and they work together to defeat Dracula is very exciting! 

The ending was gratifying in many ways, although of course it was ultimately bittersweet. 

This is a fantastic book, extraordinarily well written and full of adventure, fright, suspense, anticipation, mystery, and action. It’s without a doubt one of my favorite novels ever. 

#tbrbusterchallenge2023 #bookbanditchallenge #reading challenge #book review #book reviews #dracula daily #daily dracula #dracula daily 2023 #bram stoker #mina murray #jonathan harker #lucy westenra #john seward #quincey morris #arthur holmwood #abraham van helsing #booklr #leerreadinglire #books and reading #last read #booklr community #dracula #mina harker #count dracula

[backlogbooks]

👻☕️

#book photography #tbrbusterchallenge2023 #mary emma’s posts

[jsalim-art]

Welp starting a new book now and this involves mermaids! This is another of my owl crate books in my tbr pile that I'm looking forward to reading and thus exclusive cover in my opinion is very pretty

#tbrbusterchallenge2023 #bookbanditchallenge #Skin of the Sea #Natasha Bowen #jehan reads a bunch of books

[bookbandit]

Announcing the #tbrbusterchallenge2023

Welcome to the Fourth Annual TBR Buster Challenge!

The goal of this challenge is simple: read the books that have been languishing on your TBR lists.  Some of you may have impossibly long TBR lists. Some of you may have a TBR list that only includes a few books. Maybe you have a physical shelf stacked full of books. Or maybe it’s just an amorphous list that lives in some half-forgotten corner of your mind. No matter where you fall on this spectrum, this challenge is for you!

The greatest part of this challenge is that it allows you to focus on what YOU want to read. You have the freedom to focus on whatever books you want. In the past, some people have issued their own personal challenges to focus on specific genres or lists of books. Others just plucked the next book that interested them from their shelf. Some people plowed through their lists like they were on a ferocious mission. Others read only a handful of books. This challenge is designed to be flexible!

So why not give it a go? Bust your TBR shelf with me!

The Basics to Get Started

Read a minimum of one book per month that has been languishing on your shelf. Want a more ambitious challenge? How many books do you read per year on average? Try making half of the part of the #tbrbusterchallenge2023. Don’t have time to read one book per month? That’s okay, too! You can pop in and out of this challenge as it fits into your schedule, and everyone will be here to support you :)

Post about the books you read! I am hoping to post mini-reviews every month. Don’t like review? No problem! Do you like taking photos of your books? Post ‘em! Do you like book quotes? Post ‘em! Anything and everything is welcome!

Tag your posts with #bookbanditchallenge and #tbrbusterchallenge2023 so I can see them and show you some love!

That’s it! Those are the rules. Hopefully, simple enough that everyone feels they can join in. Together we can help each other read some of those books we’ve all been intending to read.

#tbrbusterchallenge2022 #tbrbusterchallenge2023 #bookbanditchallenge

[alderwoodbooks]

alrighty y’all.

I’ve been a bit afraid to write up my final thoughts on Red Rising by Pierce Brown because this book series has a cult following, and I’d love to sit here and tell you I understand why, but I truly can’t. A reminder before I get torn to threads that taste is subjective and I’m not telling you that you can’t enjoy these books! I’m just saying, I very much did not. <3

This book felt like a dumpster fire from start to finish. I posted earlier, when I was less than a quarter through the book with some of my issues with the book (the lack of originality, the insufferable main character, the clunky dialogue and overall just poor writing in general, and the way that all women are portrayed in the book as less than) and unfortunately for me, it did not get better. I read a review from someone else that said this book felt like if an angry 12 year old boy rewrote the hunger games and it made me laugh because I couldn’t agree more. There are so many elements of the story that remind me of other stories and it just makes the whole story fall very flat and feel very unoriginal, and very try hard. Despite the brutality in the story, it very much reads like a bad young adult dystopian novel, and good lord have I read my fair share of those.

One of the biggest issues I had with this book was the extreme misogyny. All of the female characters are constantly treated as less than, they are never seen as strong leaders, and if they are, they are quickly defeated by you guessed it, the strong macho men. The women are seen as prizes to be won in the games of war, the amount of extreme violence against them was astonishing. To me- it didn’t fit within the world of the book. These women are literally genetically modified to be the best humans in the world/universe, and so why are they seen as weaker and smaller and frailer than the men, and then dealing with all of this violence against them? Maybe it was supposed to be a “lord of the flies” type of moment, but if so, it was not written clearly enough, and instead just reads as misogyny coming from pierce brown himself? I’m not sure, but it didn’t feel right, and it was also painful to read. I was told that there was a reason behind it and that it gets explained at the end of the book, and maybe I’m just missing something, but I didn’t catch it, and also, I don’t want to have to sit through an entire book of misogynistic and at times, extremely homophobic (the pixies comments throughout the book feel a little ick to me personally, I dont love it.) bullshit for no real reason.

I’ve read a lot of sci-fi and fantasy this year, in fact, I’ve read almost exclusively sci-fi and fantasy, and Red Rising was probably one of the worst books I’ve read this year, but, it’s so loved by many, and I was encouraged to finish it because “it gets better!” I am still debating on reading the second book because again, I’ve heard it gets better, but I’ve also got three other sci-fi books on my tbr list that I know for a fact are going to be good (the second murderbot diary’s book, the new edition of the bone season which I’m so excited to dive into as soon as I finish my current read, which is the traitor of baru cormorant, which is such a nice pallet cleanser, and then I’ve got two neil shusterman books I want to dive into) and so I’m not so sure I want to devote the time or energy into it.

All in all, I went into this book not expecting much, just knowing that I heard many mixed reviews. I wanted to like the story, I really did, but it felt like a poor rendition of a bunch of other, better written, better executed, dystopian stories, mixed with some white boy misogyny, homophobia and rage. I ended up giving it a 1.5 stars out of 5 and I still feel like that’s being generous.

#book blog #book review #bookish #booklr #books and reading #fantasy books #red rising #scifi books #study motivation #studyspo #scifi #scifibooks #pierce brown #tbrbusterchallenge2023 #tbr list #tbr pile #book tbr #kindle #kindle reads

[ma-tsi]

The boy, the mole, the fox and the horse by Charlie Mackesy

#tbrbusterchallenge2023 #bookbanditchallenge #books #mine #matsi reads

[readingaway]

TBR Buster Challenge - September

This is an ambitious month for me. My primary goal is to plunge through The Aeneid. After that I'd like to get through as many of the rest of these as possible.

(the rest of the books are Ulverton, Tress of the Emerald Sea, The Year They Burned the Books, Vespertine, From Hell to Breakfast, and Lights)

#tbrbusterchallenge2023 #bookbanditchallenge #book photography #my books

[clockwork-reads]

Brief Book Reviews #8

It's been a hot minute and I'm sorry. IRL stuff happened for most of the year and I've only just gotten back to reading again- I'm glad I have, though.

#1: Laura Thalassa, Pestilence (The Four Horsemen, Book 1)

Dark romance with a Horseman of the Apocalypse. It's about as fucked up as it sounds, and I love it.

The story sets the scene for post-apocalyptic Earth: the Horsemen rode out in all four directions some years before the story begins, and with their arrival, all electronics stopped working, save for the lucky few who had backup generators I guess. Then, five years after they vanish, Pestilence shows up, riding across North America to spread a plague. Our protagonist and narrator, Sara Burns, is the unlucky firefighter who tries to shoot him off his horse- she succeeded, for a bit, but sadly this Horseman is immortal and she becomes his prisoner. It's a slow burn, Stockholm syndrome, enemies-to-lovers kind of deal, and god dammit, I love it. There's a few sex scenes and graphic depictions of the dying (including children), so, heads up if you're thinking of getting this book.

...and I might want to play Darksiders again because of this lol.

#2, S.A. Chakraborty, City of Brass

...Well that was a rollercoaster from start to fucking finish. And there's two more books in this series. Holy shit.

I love the world building and political intrigue, and above all, I love how down to earth Nahri is. The bond between her and Dara is believable (and heartbreaking, in later chapters). Ali, though- poor kid can't catch a break. I kinda wish he'd grow a spine, but I don't blame him- his father's a right bastard, honestly. I hope the Qahtanis get found out before the series is over, and that they get what they deserve. I honestly can't say too much without spoiling anything, but as awful as Nahri's situation is, I am left hiking up my standards again after Dara being very ready to kill anything and everything for her. *sigh.*

#3: Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb trilogy, Book 1)

This book was a fucken trip- and I had a couple of friends get very excited over me reading it. I can understand why, this was a fun read. Like a mix of dark fantasy meets Dead Space. Muir's done a good job of it. Sure, "Lesbian Necromancers IN SPAAAAAAAACE" is a good way to market it, but damn. The murder mystery was a nice touch. Gideon being a disaster lesbian is funny, and I kept hearing Taliesin Jaffe as Percy de Rolo whenever Palamedes showed up. Palamedes my beloved. Dulcinea didn't deserve you. ;_;

Tiktok was enlightening when it came to this series, too- apparently the author pulled the whole thing from their own Homestuck fanfic, and the parallels are very obvious. Then again, I'm still Homestuck'd after all these years, I don't have a leg to stand on here. Gideon is quite obviously Dave, Harrow is obviously supposed to be Karkat, and you can tell if you've been in sharpie bath hell for several years. It's done quite well, though. Can't wait to read the next one. Not sure what I'm gonna read in the meantime, though...

#bookblr #brief book reviews #tbrbusterchallenge2023

[batrachised]

The Machine Stops - EM Forster.

A novella published in 1909 that was prescient about the role of technology in distancing humanity from...well, humanity. It almost felt personal; was personal, in how it detailed dislike for human interaction and a preference for screens, and man's rejection of nature, and willingness to sacrifice meaning for comfort.

Favorite moment: when societal collapse occurred because everyone's beds were taken away, relatable lmao

Favorite quote:

#tbrbusterchallenge2023 #bookbanditchallenge #e.m. forster #the machine stops

[bibliophilecats]

tbrbusterchallenge2023

Here are the English books on my physical tbr that I want to read this year:

M. Stiefvater: Call Down the Hawk

M. Stiefvater: Bravely

R. Hartman: In the Serpent’s Wake

H. Fawcett: Even the Darkest Stars

T. Kingfisher: Paladin’s Grace

J. Fforde: Early Riser

J. Fforde: The Last Dragonslayer

A. Hall: Rosline Palmer Takes the Cake

J. Caplin: The Secret Cove in Croatia

C. Cotterill: The Delightful Life of The Suicide Pilot

R. Rowell: Scattered Showers

S.A. Chakraborty: The River of Silver

Bonus:

M. Stiefvater: Mister Impossible

M. Stiefvater: Greywaren

H. Fawcett: All the Wandering Light

T. Kingfisher: Paladin’s Strenght

T. Kingfisher: Paladin’s Hope

J. Caplin: The Little Swiss Ski Chalet

I am not focusing on all the books that have remained on that list from the beginning of 2022. Instead, this year I have separated the list in the main books I want to read and a bonus section. In the bonus section are mainly sequels because I do like to have at least a little time in between books in a series and/or by the same author which makes it harder to read them all in one year. Also this way I have a neat list of 12 books, one for each month.

#tbrbusterchallenge2023 #helen reads 2023

[storytime-reviews]

Just Finished: I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

Why do we romanticize the dead? Why can't we be honest about them? Especially moms. They're the most romanticized of anyone. 

#booklr #i'm glad my mom died #tbrbusterchallenge2023 #bookbanditchallenge #jennette mccurdy #reading #books #book pic #just finished

[leer-reading-lire]

Last read:

Title: Hallowe’en party

Author: Agatha Christie

Number of Pages: 260

Rating: ★★★★★

First published: November 1969

Read: 13 September 2023 – 24 November 2023

Thoughts: 

This book has become one of my favorite Agatha Christie’s novels, along with Murder on the Orient Express and The A.B.C. Murders.

I particularly enjoyed the friendship between Ariadne Oliver and Hercule Poirot. 

I was surprised by all the action in the end. The escaping the town, the kidnapping and the fight was nerve-wrecking. 

I really liked this classical whodunit and following the clues that led me to the culprits. 

#tbrbusterchallenge2023 #bookbanditchallenge #mini book review #agatha christie #hallowe'en party #hercule poirot #detective fiction #murder mystery #leerreadinglire #books and reading #books and plants #last read #booklr

[backlogbooks]

the way alison ames has crafted the monster in this book is amazing, i’m halfway through and the descriptions so far are the perfect mix of scary and gross and unnerving

#it looks like us #alison ames #tbrbusterchallenge2023 #i’vw already flipped back to read the first big moment because there’s something about that description that scratches a very particular #horror itch in my mind #mary emma’s posts

[jsalim-art]

Just finished reading this charming graphic novel and I find the main characters be adorable dorks with each other. 5/5 would reccomend

#tbrbusterchallenge2023 #bookbanditchallenge #Mooncakes #wendy xu #suzanne walker #jehan reads a bunch of books

[bunnyreading]

Mother's Boy by Patrick Gale

I got a signed copy of this book! I think I bought it on a birthday trip like a year ago, but I was too nervous to read the book lmao, I've read a few books by Patrick Gale and he usually writes real tragedies.

Mother's Boy is a fictionalised version of the early life of the poet Charles Causley. Patrick Gale lays down this idea for a queer early life.

I think this book suffered by being tethered to a real person instead of being inspired by someone, as Gale's usual drama and tragedy is not applicable when trying to still be respectful. I felt this cool distance between me and the characters, which meant I engaged less with all of them than usual.

But Patrick Gale is still an incredible author, his prose is always so good and it was an enjoyable read.

⭐️⭐️⭐️

#bookblr #books #reading #bookish #book photography #book review #queer books #books read in 2023 #tbrbusterchallenge2023 #tbrbusterchallenge