Reading Wrap-Up – January 2019

January has finally finished and to me it honestly felt like it lasted forever, but it was a great reading month for me, as I ended up reading 5 books! I did a rough calculation too and it ended up at 1,319 pages read according to Goodreads. Now to get on with telling you what I read and what I rated it, alongside a small summary of what I thought. The books here that I have reviewed I will also provide links to!

1. Norse Mythology – Neil Gaiman (5/5)

As someone who enjoys reading about mythology and who loves Thor and Loki in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I thought it was a good idea to educate myself about the characters outside of the MCU, the ‘real’ Thor and Loki. This is a bunch of short stories that I got through fairly quickly, and I felt like I was actually learning something about all these characters from Norse mythology. I have done a full review and that is linked here.

 

 

2. Catherine the Great: A life from beginning to end – Hourly History (3/5)

I recently became aware of Hourly History, a collection of short books that can be read in, as you would guess, an hour. They’re summaries of whatever you wish to learn about, and a lot of them are actually free on Kindle, so I ended up downloading a bunch. I have previously read one of Hourly History’s books on George VI, and one on Greek Mythology, both of which I found educational. Although this book was also educational, I felt as if it didn’t contain as much information as the previous books did, so I don’t feel as if I’ve learnt much about Catherine the Great. I think these books will be a hit or miss, depending on the subject matter.

 

3. On the Other Side – Carrie Hope Fletcher (4/5)

I knew of Carrie Fletcher from YouTube, and became excited when I learnt that she had become an author. I had previously read her book ‘All I Know Now’ and enjoyed it, but it was a non-fiction book. So when I saw them all cheaper on amazon, I ended up buying all of her fiction books (except the latest one) and decided to read them in order of publication. I found the writing and storyline a bit strange at first but did really enjoy it in the end. A link to the full review is here.

 

4. Harley Quinn Volume 4: A Call to Arms – Amanda Conner (4/5)

I love comic books and have slowly been making my way through this series of Harley Quinn comics on my iPad. I really enjoy them! I love Harley Quinn and these comics capture her personality perfectly, and in this series she’s away from the Joker so we do see the real Harley.

 

 

5. Desert Oath: The Official Prequel to Assassin’s Creed Origins – Oliver Bowden (5/5)

I am terrible at the Assassin’s Creed games, so if I want a dose of the AC world, I tend to just read the books. This is the prequel, about a boy named Bayek learning to become a Medjay and it is set in 70BCE, whereas I think the actual game linked to this book is set in around 40BCE, so Bayek is a fair bit older. I’ve read one other Assassin’s Creed book and also really loved it. I like the writing, I’m fine with the violence & I think the plot is so action-packed! A full review is linked here.