September 2018 Books To Read and August Book Wrap Up

Today I’m sharing my September reading list and will also give a wrap up of the books I finished last month.

The Christmas season has begun! I mean, the fact that it is already the –ber month makes me excited and frightened at the same time. August 2018 was not as busy and eventful as July but I still failed to complete my reading list. I had plenty of days when instead of opening up a book I just scroll down my social media.

Anyways, for September am hoping to finish everything in my list.

September 2018 Reading List

Simplify Your Hectic Life by Annie Chapman with Maureen Rank

Last month, I wasn’t able to finish my devotional/Christian book pick – Desiring God’s Will.

And since my schedule is hectic for this month as I am taking discipleship classes at night, I decided to instead re-read Annie Chapman’s Simplify Your Hectic Life.

I’ve already expressed a short lessons learned for this book two years ago on my Books I’ll Be Reading This February 2016 list.

This book is short and can be finished in one sitting but the lessons inside will remain to you forever.

I am hoping to gain new insights and applications as I read again this book.

The Giver by Lois Lowrey

It was during my college years when I first heard of the book, The Giver. A professor of mine talked about this in class and the story somehow stuck on my mind since then.

The Giver is set in a society which at first appears to be Utopian (the so-called perfect, ideal city) but is revealed to be dystopian (cruel and frightening) as the story progresses.

It is a society wherein everyone has a given role to play all their life and then there’s this boy, Jonas who has been selected as the next Receiver of Memory.

I am so excited to read this book. I want to know the story unfolds.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Fahrenheit 451 is another dystopian book. The novel presents a future American society where books are outlawed and "firemen" burn any that are found.

This storyline sounds familiar because book burning has been present during the Nazi regime wherein books written by Jewish, pacifist, religious, classical liberal, anarchist, socialist, and communist authors were burned.

August 2018 Book Wrap Up

Out of the four books I planned to read, I only finished two. First, Into The Water by Paula Hawkins and second, Paper Towns by John Green.

Into The Water by Paula Hawkins

As I mentioned last month, Paula Hawkins is not a new author for me. I have read and reviewed her previous bestseller, The Girl on the Train which was part of my 17 Books Before 2017 Challenge.

My first half of reading experience has been nothing but good. However, the rest of the pages became flat.

There were too many characters that I lost track of what’s happening.

Because it is written like The Girl on the Train wherein each character speak out their point of view, keeping track of 10 different people’s story became hard.

Although the multiple characters help hide the plot twist in the end which is something I discovered too early for The Girl on the Train.

If I will rate this book I’ll probably give it a 3 out of 5 stars. The first half of the book I was highly intrigued but the last half felt blank. The suspense that was supposed to be Hawkins well-known style in writing didn’t develop fully.

The story was entertaining but not addictive. And the ending raised more questions than answers on my end.

Paper Towns by John Green

Finally finished Paper Towns.

After years of trying to read this book until the end it was only last month that I was able to savor the story fully.

I like to start by mentioning how much I love the Paper Towns movie. I remember watching the movie with Nica at Greenbelt 1 and crying towards the end scene.

Because I mostly watch either the movie or trailer first before reading, my expectations for the book was high. I thought it will be similar or even close to how the movie went.

BUT NOT.

And, for the first time in forever I found myself liking the movie more than the book it was based for.

Finding where Margo is on the day of the prom was brilliant for the movie. It became more interesting and helped for the ending to have a point. That at some point we are obsessed with defining other people on how we want them to be and not for who they really are.

I can sum up the things I like about the book into three

There are a lot of good lines from the book
The road trip and how it was written was entertaining and
Radar - Q’s nerd friend

But for the movie, everything became memorable for me. The movie made the story and the characters more interesting.

No regrets though and I still have Looking for Alaska (another John Green book) on my queue. This year I also want to finish The Fault in our Stars which I guess Green’s best book.

Related Read: My Lazy Rainy Day Reading List | Gone Girl Book Review

Overall

I guess last month wasn’t the best in the book department. Both Into the Water and Paper Towns were part of the biggest reading list online but I just didn’t find them that good.

Excited how my reading list for September will go.

See you on next month's books to read and book wrap up!

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