Tiara’s September Wrap-Up
September was supposed to be my time to shine with books, but unfortunately, that didn’t happen. This new school year has found me spending most of my afternoons helping my son with his homework. And since my job always has some project or another underway, I’m always pretty mentally exhausted when I get home and only want to watch television or play a game to unwind rather than read or listen to my audiobooks. I’m slowly creeping out of my turtle shell and getting back on track with reading.
Book Count
Many of the books I read this month consist of books that my son is reading for school. He had many “oldies but goodies” this month that I’d read as a child. He had a few I hadn’t read, so I read them to be able to better help him with his reading assignments. I didn’t include all his books since I’d already most of them, but I totally counted the ones that I hadn’t read before.
Audiobook Count
Popsugar 2015 Challenge Count
I ticked off just one book this month (A Book Set in High School) for this challenge, but that’s better than no books.
Goodreads Challenge Update
#ArgZombies
I bet you thought I wasn’t going to do anything with the suggestions given to me when I asked for zombie book recommendations a while back. Fooled you! I am totally reading zombie books for the month of October. Okay, I started and finished on early. Added to the short list I included on the original post:
- Zone One by Colson Whitehead
- The Girl with All the Gifts by M.R. Carey
- Donners of the Dead by Karina Halle
- Touch of Power by Maria V. Snyder
- Fiend by Peter Stenson
- Ex-Heroes by Peter Clines
- Your Brother’s Blood by David Towsey
Miscellany
TV/Movies
Husband just started watching Haven, and he’s managed to get me hooked on it as well. And Mr. DT and I finally started watching Orphan Black as well… finally.
Gaming
Just finished up the latest (and last) DLC for Dragon Age: Inquisition. Other than that, I’ve been on a real indie game kick. I am currently playing Never Alone (Kisima Inŋitchuŋa), which is a puzzle platformer based on Alaskan indigenous stories and features a young girl named Nuna and her fox companion as they try to restore balance in the eternal blizzard. I’m finding that I’m really enjoying these indie games based on folklore such as this one and Year Walk (mentioned in my last monthly post, based on Swedish lore).
And that is it for the month. Now, it’s time for me to start catching up on my reviewing, too.
The BiblioSanctum 
Yaaaay!! Tiara’s watching Orphan Black!! 😀 What do you think of it so far?
I don’t read a lot of zombie books, but Karina Sumner-Smith’s Towers Trilogy features nightwalkers as part of her world-building. Mogsy’s been reading that series, too, so you might want to check out her reviews on both books. The first one is Radiant, and the second is Defiant.
I’m a fan of Maria V. Snyder’s Study series, but haven’t checked out the Healer trilogy yet. Looking forward to reading your thoughts on Touch of Power.
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We’re enjoying Orphan Black. We haven’t gotten very far in at 4 episode, but we’re getting there. We’ve been enjoying it. My husband didn’t know anything at all about it, so he was a little surprised that it’s taken the turn that it has with the clones and all that.
The first book was okay, but everyone knows how I can be about YA speculative fiction. I still haven’t figured out why I’m so critical of it. I haven’t decided if I want to keep reading or not, yet. On one hand, it doesn’t seem like it’d be too bad if I did since it’s only a trilogy. On the other hand, I don’t know if I’m invested enough to read two more books.
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Ah, Season 1 is only going to get crazier from there. 😉 Have fun!
Maybe you should give Maria’s first book Poison Study a try. It’s personally my favorite of her books, and one with strong crossover appeal for adult readers because of Yelena’s arc and the story itself. I generally like Maria V. Snyder’s work, though some books have been “hit or miss,” so maybe trying a different series by her might help.
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Poison Study was what I originally planned to read as my first Snyder book, and I still do want to read it because it sounds like something I’ll enjoy. Honestly, the description on Touch of Power wasn’t the most compelling (for me), so I probably set myself up for this ambivalent feeling. However, I did want to at least give it a try since it had something like zombies in it. It wasn’t terrible, and there were certainly elements that I found interesting about it.
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There are zombies in Touch of Power’s world? Interesting. No one else I know who’s read that book has mentioned it to before.
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They’re not used in the traditional sense, and it’s not a big focus much even though I guess it’s important. It’s easy to forget really.
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I’ll look forward to your reviews of those zombies books! I’m sick of the traditional zombies too. Plague hits the world, group of survivors join, drama ensues. Hopefully you’ll find a good twist on the genre!
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I hope so, too, because as it stands I don’t really care for the zombie genre. We’ll see If I end this month more or less disgruntled with the genre.
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Good month 🙂
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Thanks! 😀
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Glad to see The Girl with all the Gifts made your zombie book list!! 🙂
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That was one book that was pretty much unanimously picked by everyone, and since I already have the book and the audiobook, I put it on the list.
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Great month you had! That superheroes book looks really interesting!
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Thanks, even if it didn’t feel great. Regrettable Heroes was interesting. It talks about off the beat heroes and their origins. If you like the history of comics/random trivia about comics, you might enjoy that one.
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Haven, huh. Well, it was good for the first couple of seasons. It meandered for season 3. It started heading downhill in season 4. My wife and I gave up during season 5 (judging by the ratings, so did most fans of the show). We didn’t like what they did with the characters. Hopefully, your experience will be better!
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We haven’t made it past season one yet, but we’ve watched most of it. I got into it a little later than he did. He was already 3 episodes in before I decided to start watching it, too. I saw that it had been cancelled during season 5, and I figured that probably meant that it took a real nosedive. We’ll see.
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