Autumn by Ali Smith has been shortlisted for the Man Booker, and also it shares a name with the upcoming season so it’s a very timely read. It was a 4 star read for me, meaning I really enjoyed it a lot and would recommend it to lots of people. 

This book weaves back and forth between the lives of Daniel, a 100(+?) year old man, and his old neighbor Elizabeth, now in her early thirties. Their lives intertwined when Elizabeth was just eight years old, and her mom started using Daniel as an impromptu babysitter. In the present day, Elizabeth deals with the realities facing her country after Brexit and Daniel remembers (through dreams, mostly) many moments from his life, some featuring Pauline Boty and her art.

To say that this book is lyrical is almost an understatement. The writing is so beautiful and vivid, I actually took pictures of some of the pages as I was reading to remember the words. The descriptions in this book are like poetry. Elizabeth is very relatable and I really liked her character. Daniel is somewhat mystical but his dreams really set a scene.

Here’s a description of October: “October’s a blink of the eye. The apples weight down the tree a minute ago are gone and the tree’s leaves are yellow and thinning. A frost has snapped millions of trees all across the country into brightness. The ones that aren’t evergreen are a combination of a beautiful and tawdry, red orange gold the leaves, then brown, and down.” For every month that passes in the book, Smith puts you right there in the middle of it.

Normally I’m not a fan of character and description driven, structurally loose books that don’t have a ton of plot action. This book was absolutely the exception to the rule. The rich, whimsical prose and nuanced depictions of Elizabeth’s life in both post-Brexit Britain and Daniel’s past combined perfectly in this extraordinary work of art of a novel. I would highly recommend it if you like descriptive prose and really feeling a book more than reading it, if that makes any sense. I know I’ll definitely be picking up the next books in this quartet. 

Let me know if you’ve read this book and what you thought of it. I got this book from the library but I kind of wish I had a copy now! And if you decide to pick it up based on my recommendation, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Hi! It’s day two of being a book blogger and I finished a book last night so it’s about time for my first review! 

First I want to say a little about my personal rating system (because potentially unpopular opinion incoming). I only give five stars to books I LOVE love love, so those are pretty rare. I give four stars to books I really like but maybe for some reason I didn’t feel as strongly about, but four stars still means I was a big fan of a book. I give three stars to books I… like. Just like. Which means, I still usually think they’re pretty good, but maybe I didn’t have that total immersion into the book that I wanted, or maybe there were aspects of the writing that bothered me, or something like that. I give two stars to books that I finished but were just okay. And finally, the lowly one star goes to books that I really can’t stand.

Anyway, this review is about The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. 

This book is SO popular right now, and it’s been getting RAVE reviews from basically everyone. It has a 4.61 rating on Goodreads right now, which is pretty dang good. However (and here’s the unpopular opinion)… this was only a 3 to 3.5 star read for me. I liked this book, I really did, and I enjoyed reading it! I just didn’t LOVE love it, ya know?

I bought this book awhile ago because of the high praise. I read a couple of chapters and then never picked it up again. I was reinspired when it was picked for the September YA book for the Diverse Books Club (find them on Instagram or Goodreads). This time I was determined to commit, and I’m glad I did. 

The Hate U Give follows 16-year-old Starr Carter after she witnesses her childhood friend Khalil get murdered by a cop. This is an all too familiar story at this time in history, and the narrative is unfortunately not an unfamiliar one. Before the shooting, Starr bounces back and forth between her two mostly separate lives with ease, living in the poorer mostly minority neighborhood of Garden Heights while going to a fancy school in a rich mostly white suburb. After Khalil’s death, race issues move to the forefront of Starr’s life. As the only witness to the murder, Starr has to decide if and when to speak out when the media justifies Khalil’s death by calling him a drug dealer and a thug.

This book captures the complicated feelings of a scared teen (really a kid) thrown into a fight for justice for a murder she witnessed. This book definitely opened my eyes to different aspects of white privilege and racism. It was enlightening reading about how Starr learns to use her voice and stand up for what she knows is right.

The Hate U Give deals with more than just police brutality against black people. It also deals with what it’s like to live in a neighborhood where you have to deal with gang violence and drugs on a regular basis, and it isn’t uncommon to hear gunshots. This book tackles extremely heavy issues in a way that is digestible and makes Starr’s struggle (and the Black Lives Matter struggle) relatable for every reader.

However…. and here is where my opinion may be controversial. I didn’t love the writing. I felt that the prose was choppy and heavy on dialogue. In my opinion, the characters had so much promise but were more caricatures than fully developed individuals, which made me struggle to really connect with them. The writing was too straightforward and lacked any subtlety that would make you think. Everything felt super BAM, in your face. Maybe that is because it was YA? I’m not sure. I also think the book was way too long and could have been cut in half in length. These things distracted me from the story and made the book less enjoyable for me.

Okay here is a picture of the book with my cat to calm you down in case you got really mad at anything I said in the previous paragraph. 

So… there you have it. I liked this book but I didn’t love it. I understand why it’s so popular and important. I’m actually very excited for the movie, which I think I will like more than the book. 

Also here is another picture I took for bookstagram but rejected. I tried to do one of those super cute “flat-lays” or whatever they’re called with a succulent but wtf, how do people make pictures of books on a bed look so good? Mine ended up looking awkward because of the height difference between book and overwhelmingly huge looking succulent but hey, this is my blog so I’m posting it anyway. 

Have you read The Hate U Give? Did you like it? Let me know what you think! You can leave a comment (!!! which nobody has done yet) or find me on Instagram.

Hi readers! Reader? Anyone? Will anyone actually read this?

I’ve been thinking about starting a book blog for awhile now. I read a lot, I’m active on bookstagram, and I review all my books on goodreads, but I’ve been thinking I’d like to add more pictures/thoughts/feelings in a longer more free-flowing form, when I feel like it. 

So, hi! Welcome. You can find me on instagram as @jennareadsbooks. Or, you can find me on goodreads as… I don’t know, here’s the link. 

For this first post, I’m not going to talk about books. I’m just going to introduce myself and say a little bit about what this blog will be. 

My name is Jenna (I hope you already knew that), I live in Washington with my boyfriend and two cats, and I read a lot. I also hike and climb and take pictures and have a full time desk job and a few math degrees (yes, math, and yes, I’m the purest of nerds). This blog will likely be mostly about books but sometimes about some of those other things. Here are some pictures of me so you can see my face. The first one is at Zion National Park, my favorite place in the WHOLE WORLD (at least, so far), at the top of Observation Point. The next one is Josh and I and Josh’s chip at a wedding where I was wearing a romper that I quite like. The last two are from Mt. Rainier, which is just a short jaunt away from our house. 

Thanks for reading, readers. Reader? Anyone? Josh at least? Mom?

I’m excited about this! See you soon for an actual book post!