It’s most of the way through the third week of 2024, so to keep up with my usual aim of reading 52 books in the year I should be most of the way through my third book.
As it is, I am actually making a dent in my fifth title so I am ahead of myself.
*
My first read of the year was Variable Valve Timings: Memoirs of a Car Tragic by Chris Harris.
This was a delight, even for me. I am not much of a motorhead – I like rally cars, muscle cars, 90s Shoguns, and have a weird soft spot for the Citroen Cactus that I can’t really explain – but it is all very shallowly about what they look/sound like, and nothing to do with what is under the bonnet.
This passing interest is more than enough to appreciate this book though, because Chris’s style is easy to read and contagiously passionate. It’s like listening to your best friend talk about their favourite thing – it doesn’t matter if you don’t share their passion, because their enthusiasm is contagious and for the time where they’re talking, you are just as excited about it all as they are.
A great start to my reading year for sure.
Next, I listened to the audiobook of Teresa: Everybody Loves Large Chests Vol. 5 by Neven Iliev and very much enjoyed that, too.
I love this series. It had a bit of a wobble with book 2, but has gone from strength to strength since.
LitRPG is definitely not a genre for everyone, but it is truly one of my guilty pleasures and I am more than happy to spend hours vanishing into these audiobooks, often giggling away to myself at the terrible puns and farcical perils.
I then listened to The Wicked King: The Folk Of The Air #2 by Holly Black which was possibly even better than book one (The Cruel Prince), which surprised me.
Twisty turny fairy politics is one of my favourite things – the fae can’t tell lies but they can deceive, so spotting loopholes in deals and promises becomes more an act of survival than a game and makes for great plot twists.
The fourth book I finished was one I started… in April 2023. This would be less embarrassing if it wasn’t also really short and really good.
I misplaced it, okay? About 40 pages in, it turned out.
But then I found it again when I was putting Christmas away and promptly finished reading it in just two evenings.
Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion is an excellent read. Sweet, thoughtful, funny, and surprisingly gentle which was not a thing I expected from a dystopian zombie romance.
Don’t get me wrong – there are plenty of moments of brain munching, humans shooting things, and zombies zombie-ing, but overall the story is full of warmth, hope, and buckets of love.
It is also an excellent movie.
Yeah I said it. Warm Bodies the movie is a rare exception to the ‘book is always better’ rule.
*
My fifth read of the year is Pet Sematary by Stephen King which is the exact opposite of a short, sweet, and hopeful romance, but also excellent so far. If you like horror books, that is.
I find Stephen King books too all-consuming to have a second book on the go with them, so I am not currently listening to an Audiobook. But the one I have lined up next is Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree which will definitely be the fluffy, peril-light antidote to the inevitable trauma Pet Sematary will leave me with.
*
What have you been reading this month?
Carole Finds Her Wings 