January 2017 Wrap Up – Dumbledore’s Army Readathon & #DiverseAThon

This month I participated in two readathon revolving around diversity. I did ok in one of them, but completely failed in the other. At the end, I read seven books in January, six of them for the readathons and another one for a buddy read. The reviews for all of these books will be posted in the next few of weeks.

1. Dumbledore’s Army Readathon

At the beginning of the month I participated in the #DAReadathon and I had so much fun chatting with people on twitter about the books I was reading. There were 7 promps, so that means participants were supposted to read 7 books. I didn’t accomplish that goal, I read 5 books and started the 6th. This readathon took place in my last days of uni break and I thought that I was gonna have a lot of time to read, but I ended up going on several trips and that took a lot of my reading time. Nonetheless, I felt I did a good job.

Redefining Realness by Janet Mock  (4,3 stars)

A beautifully written memoir of a trans woman of color. This book is captivating, honest and touching. Here’s my review.

When Reason Breaks by Cindy L. Rodriguez (4,4 stars)

This book  portraits depression through the stories of two main characters that experience this mental illness in very different ways and that it’s definitely the thing that makes this book incredibly important, as well as unique. Something else that I really like about it is all the Emily Dickinson poems and references; they add so much to the story. Here’s the full review.

Delicious Temptation by Sabrina Sol (3 stars)

The main characters of this book are latinxs and the story revolves around traditional latinx food and desserts. Even if that sounds amazing, the characters end up being really two dimentional and that means that, if we take the traditional food and random spanish phrases, it was hard to tell they are latinxs at all. Here’s the full review.

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling (3 stars)

I was expecting this book to be funnier and I was expecting it to be more about Mindy’s job in The Office and about her writing. Even if this books talks about those things, it also spends way to much time in Mindy’s childhood and teen years, and I didn’t find that part entertaining at all.

An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir (4 stars)

This book is intense and nerve wracking; as a reader you spend the entire time worried about the characters. The plot isn’t entirely unique, but the setting makes it feel refreshing and intresting. The main characters are captivating and the villains are intriguing. I can’t wait to read the sequel.

2.#DiverseAThon

I completely failed at DiverseAThon, I was hoping to read 3 book and ended up only reading one. Also, I didn’t have time to participate in the twitter chats.  But the one book I read was really good, so at the end, it wasn’t so bad.

Not Your Sidekick by C.B. Lee (4 stars)

A cute book with a biracial, bisexual main character, a trans character, an interesting post-apocalyptic world, amazing conversations about gender and sexual orientation,  villains that are not so evil and heroes that are not so good. If that sounds like sometime you would like, I totally recommend it.

3. Buddy Read as part of Read with Marines 

A booktuber I think you may know called Marines hosts really casual  buddy reads and for January she choose a book I was really excited to read and that’s why I decided to join in.

 

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante (4,2 stars)

An amazing book about a complicated friendship, that deals with a variety of topics from poverty and the connection it has with education to war enemies living in the same neighborhood after the war ends. A complex story, with a lot characters, written in a beautiful yet simple way. Here’s the full review.

Have you read any of these books? Did you like them? What did you read this month?