There's something about this year that just seems to be whipping passed, more so than usual. It's great in some ways - I can feel myself racing towards the end, to exciting trips and deadlines and events, but it's also leaving me nostalgic. Needing to ground myself in the month that's gone passed. So hey! Welcome to a new series! Books I Read This Month.
June was kind of light-on reading-wise, and certainly manga heavy (I'm inhaling Fullmetal Alchemist for the second time and just. You know. Relatively obsessed again), but I read some things I'd never touched before. Jane Eyre was a big one (cue gasps). It's a bit of a monster of a book too, and I really maintain you could cut the whole of the first section and not be robbed of any emotional sucker punching, but that might just be my inner editor talking. The romantic in me didn't love Jane Eyre (mostly because Mr. Rochester strikes me as pretty high on the cray cray scale), but I appreciated Jane a lot as a character - strong and stubborn and kind of brilliant.
Lost at Sea by Bryan Lee O'Malley was almost the opposite. A graphic novel detailing the coming-of-age of a girl who believes her soul's been stolen by a cat is both wonderful and slight (particularly compared to Jane Eyre). I read the Scott Pilgrim series a few years ago and this very much feels a precursor to it in terms of O'Malley's writing style and character types. Which isn't a bad thing! Just a thing.
I also ended up with Kate Lilley's collection of poetry, Ladylike, after partaking in an experiment with a writer at Emerging Writers Festival. The experiment involved doing an interview with her and then picking one of her pre-loved books to take home. I ended up with Lilley's collection and, while I find it mostly unremarkable, the process was something I really enjoyed and engaged with. It was pretty great.
And Fullmetal Alchemist! Well. I'll get to that when I finish the series again.
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