May Ins and Outs: What I Bought and Read This Month

This month, I tried to keep my spending in check and read the books I already own, so I only bought a few comics and some audiobooks. Gotta love that Audible subscription. 

I've really enjoyed branching out into comics (beyond just Buffy), and this month I read the first trade and bought the second trade of Y the Last Man. I also read Evelyn Evelyn, the first issue of Saga (which everyone raves about), and the first two trades of Fables, and soon I'm going to read the first trade of Sex Criminals (which I've peeked at enough to know I'm going to really like it).

This month also marked a foray deeper into the works of Mary Roach and John Green. While Roach's Stiff delighted me even more that Packing for Mars and Gulp had, I thought Green's Looking for Alaska was noticeably a first novel. I liked it, but it just wasn't as polished as The Fault in Our Stars. The humor and the heart weren't completely there yet. He's definitely developed as a writer in the last few years. Have read his first and last novel, I'm curious now to see what the ones in the middle are like. 

I finally read The Perks of Being a Wallflower. I liked it, though probably not as much as I would have if I had read it as a teenage. I wouldn't say it's over-hyped; it's just maybe not the perfect book for me at this moment in my life. 

The Magicians has hooked me into a spiral that can only mean more Magicians books and Narnia books to read. I love how Grossman brings a dark nihilism to the question of what real magic would mean in a really unique way that I haven't seen explored in fantasy before.

The Secret History and Skippy Dies were both five-star books for me. It's rare that I discover more than one book I absolutely love in a month, but these both nailed it. They both were suspenseful and had lots of twists and turns as well as unique characters. I couldn't put down The Secret History while I was reading it, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about Skippy Dies since I finished it. I think both make for compelling examples of why some books totally need to be 600 pages long.