#what if i say that an abundance of katherines was actually my favourite john green (fiction book)

[neighbourskid]

2020

What a year, huh? Surely not anything anyone has expected to happen when we woke up on this day a year ago. I certainly haven’t. I’m not even sure, now, where to begin to sum up this year like I’ve done years prior. But then again... I may just as well just dive right into all the media I consumed this year, as I have done every year. I haven’t kept track as detailed as I have last year, but my year was definitely punctuated by pieces of entertainment that have come into my life.

Continuing on from 2019, my obsession with Good Omens was still going strong. Which was ideal, since I was gonna spend the first half of the year writing my Bachelor thesis on it. The intensity of the obsession may have waned a bit since, but I still love that show and book dearly and hold it close to my heart, and I don’t think that will ever stop. But while Good Omens was certainly an overall theme throughout my year, there were some other things that actually stood out.

With January came new episodes of Doctor Who, and having returned to that particular bandwagon the year prior, I was all about that. Jodie’s second season finally brought what I had longed for in her first--a darker kind of Doctor. She wasn’t quite as bubbly anymore, you could finally see some of the depths in the character that I loved so in the previous regenerations, which made me love Peter’s Doctor so incredibly much. In this season, I felt, Jodie was finally becoming the Doctor. Overall, that season catered to me personally every single episode. So many of the time periods they visited were of people I loved, and the introduction of Sacha Dhawan as the Master was absolutely....well, masterful. Sacha is brilliant in that role and I am utterly stunned by his talent. Although both John Simm and Michelle Gomez brought things to the Master that I liked, it’s Sacha’s completely unhinged take on it that made me finally like the character. He’s a madman and I love it.

The next major thing was The Good Place. I tend to have a talent of getting into shows just as they either ended their entire show, or the final season is just coming up. It’s happened quite a bit, and it was the same with this. I finally binged the show early in January and it would end its final season at the end of the month. True to form, I was completely obsessed with it for about a month, before I only occasionally thought about it again. But, thinking back now, I get this incredibly fond feeling for this show, and I remember that the finale absolutely wrecked me and I basically ugly sobbed through the entirety of it. Also very true to form, actually. I want to rewatch it again some time, but honestly preferably with someone who has never seen it before. Which, obviously, is a difficult thing to do given, well, everything.

Next up is something that surprised me a lot. In the middle of having to write my BA thesis, my procrastination thought it would be a great idea to rewatch and catch up on the entirety of Criminal Minds. And so I binged 15 seasons of that instead of writing my thesis. Which, coincidentally, had also just aired its final season not long before I started my binge in March. Rewatching this, I realised just how little I took in of the actual, like, stuff in the show when I first watched it as a teen. Although I mostly cared about the characters and their found family this time around--although I do find the cases really fascinating most of the time too--I noticed just how much I am not watching this for the fact that they are in the FBI. I was hyperaware of how often they shot at people before doing anything else, how many of the suspects died before ever being questioned or being brought in, and it made my skin crawl. I am aware how fucked up the criminal justice system is, and especially in the US, how the police functions and how incredibly glorified they are in the media. But rewatching this show, I realised how little I actually paid attention to anything when I was younger. Big yikes. Still, I remembered my love for these characters, and I really enjoyed that rewatch a whole lot. Found family will always get to me.

Once I finished writing my thesis and handed it in early in July, I then found my next momentary obsession: Community. The show had finally come to Netflix earlier in the year and a friend of mine had watched it then. I remember watching that pilot episode back then and being completely uninterested in watching it. The comedy felt like it wasn’t quite up my street, the characters were entirely unlikeable, and I especially disliked Jeff who the show was more or less centred around. I binged Criminal Minds instead, but then decided to give it another try. And, well, I watched it twice through without taking a break to watch something else in-between. Ironically, and maybe actually unsurprisingly, Jeff ended up being my favourite and I found myself relating a lot to him and his arc throughout the series. I even found myself writing some short ficlet-like things in the notes app on my phone. I made an attempt at starting a third watch, but I guess then the month was up, and my brain decided it was time for something else. My hyperfixations usually tend to die out after about a month. Which is why my complete devotion to Good Omens was a pleasant surprise. I did, however, end up watching quite a bit of Joel McHale and Ken Jeong’s The Darkest Timeline podcast throughout August. 

Early in September, while already preparing for the new term at uni, and my first semester in my Master’s studies, I then turned to New Girl. Friends of mine had seen it and recommended it, and I remember watching probably the entire first season on TV while I was in San Diego the first time around back in 2016. Or at least I think it was the entire first season. Either way, I binged that whole thing, realised through Nick Miller that the go-to character I am drawn to and tend to project on in any piece of media is usually what I like to call “the garbage man,” which Nick is a prime example of. And although I spent a month watching the show in-between starting university again and volunteering at a film festival, I didn’t spend much time afterward thinking about it and moved on to other things rather quickly. I enjoyed watching it, that much I remember, and I’m pretty sure I cried at the finale because it was done wonderfully, but seeing as another month was up, my brain was probably like “okay fine that’s enough”.

I then spent most of fall and early winter watching every single bad Christmas movie available on Netflix, which was quite fun. In that moment of festivity, I also watched a movie I found absolutely brilliant and fell in love with immediately. It’s a beautiful movie called Jingle Jangle, it has a magnificent soundtrack and is absolutely incredible. I had no idea Forest Whitaker could sing and he completely blew me away. If you haven’t seen it already, I highly recommend it. It doesn’t matter that Christmas is already over, it’s beautiful either way.

By the time December finally rolled around, I was already over the whole Christmas thing, to be honest and I turned away from festive movies or shows, and eventually ended up finally picking up a gem I had heard much about and had been meaning to watch for a while. A show which, as it were, also aired its final season earlier this year. This little show is Schitt’s Creek. I will be going on about what this show means to me probably in another post at length, but for now just let me say: if you haven’t seen it, find some place to watch it, and put this beautiful show in your eyeballs. I am on my second run through already (although I’ve seen the second half of the show a second time already while watching it with a friend on their first run through), and it brings me so much fucking joy. It’s a gift, this show. And it will likely stay with me for a very, very long time.

That’s about it for the big things. I also watched a whole lot of other stuff, including entirely new things, or just newly released seasons of things I was already watching. Here’s what I can remember off the top of my head:

Charlie’s Angels (2020). The Night Manager. The Witcher. Dolittle (2020). The Librarians (rewatch). Harley Quinn (2020). Sonic the Hedgehog (2020). The Chef Show (S1 part 3, S2 part 1). Avenue 5. Money Heist (part 4). The Good Fight (S4). Brooklyn Nine-Nine (S7). DuckTales (2017 reboot). Frankenstein live. Staged (2020). Hamilton. Sense8. Julie and the Phantoms. The Boys in the Band. One Night in Miami. Enola Holmes. Supernova. His Dark Materials (S2). Happiest Season. The Great Canadian Baking Show.

I also got some reading done in-between what I had to read for my thesis in spring, and then for regular university courses in fall. Here’s some of what I can remember:

Anthony Horowitz, The House of Silk. Ramona Meisel, Sunblind. Donna Tartt, The Secret History. Good Omens novel and script book. Matt Forbeck, Leverage: The Con Job. Keith R.A. Decandido, Leverage: The Zoo Job. Greg Cox, Leverage: The Bestseller Job. Greg Cox, The Librarians and the Lost Lamp. Greg Cox, The Librarians and the Mother Goose Chase. Greg Cox, The Librarians and the Pot of Gold. Neil Gaiman, Marvel 1602. Christina Henry, The Lost Boy. Neil Gaiman, Norse Mythology. John Green, An Abundance of Katherines. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh. Maria Konnikova, The Confidence Game. 

Having mulled over all this entertainment I consumed in 2020, there are also some non-tv or book things I need to point out. As many, many other people around the globe, I have also spent a large amount of time this year on my Nintendo Switch, playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons. It is a game I have waited for since the Switch was first announced, and I fell in love with it from the moment the first trailer dropped. It has brought me great joy in this weird fucking year, and I have more or less consistently played it since it came out in March. I ended this year with the in-game New Year’s Eve celebration and I feel like that summed up this year quite neatly and appropriately.

This year also brought with it another game very close to my heart: Super Mario Sunshine. With their release of Super Mario 3D All-Stars in September, Nintendo finally brought my all-time favourite Mario game to my all-time favourite console, and I played the entire game through in the first week of owning it, in-between university courses and volunteering at the film festival. Also contained in that package was Super Mario Galaxy which I have also played through in its entirety since. All that’s left for me now is Super Mario 64, which I am excited to play through in the coming year.

And to round off my year of entertainment, there are two more things I would like to mention. First, David Tennant Does A Podcast With..., which released its second season this summer. It is one of the only, if not the only podcast I keep up to date with and listen to immediately whenever a new episode drops. I’ve loved the first season dearly, and David came back with some incredibly fantastic guests for the second season as well. I can’t wait for what the podcast will bring in the future, but I will wait patiently until it is time. I can highly recommend it for everyone who likes interesting conversations between lovely people who clearly adore each other a whole lot.

And finally, while this year brought a whole lot of bullshit with it, it also gave me something I never thought possible and did not even dare to imagine in my wildest dreams. My all-time favourite show announced that it would be rebooted with the same main cast (minus one), a new wonderful member, and involvement of the original creators, and even started filming already in summer. Leverage is coming back. I still cannot believe it. I hoped for a movie, always. That maybe one day, they might bring the gang back together, for one last job, just one more encore. But to get a whole new tv-show with Aldis, Christian, Gina and Beth returning? With the addition of Noah Wyle? I can’t wrap my head around it. I am so excited for this. I predict that I will ugly sob through the entirety of the pilot episode, if not the first season, and will have to rewatch every episode because of it, but I have no doubt that it will be brilliant and wonderful.

True to form, I have now gone on about tv shows and movies for far too long, and haven’t really said anything about this year at all. 2020 was fucking weird. And I don’t think 2021 will be much different quite yet. I wrote an entire BA thesis in 2020. I successfully finished by Bachelor’s degree and started my Master’s studies and even got some excellent first grades in as well. I was lucky enough to be able to see some friends and family throughout the year, and even celebrate my birthday with a small circle of friends. I’ve become closer with friends, shared experiences I wouldn’t trade for the world, and, I think, maybe also grown a bit as a person.

I started this year excited to finally be able to start taking testosterone in February, and to finish the first part of my studies by summer. Although I did both of these things, they didn’t happen quite how I imagined them, but I am glad that I could do these things nevertheless.

2020 was a hell year, for sure. But there were some moments in there that I wouldn’t want to lose.

I’ve tried very hard to not be optimistic about this upcoming year, and rather take a more realistic, even pessimistic approach. But I can’t help but be hopeful. Hopeful that this year will be kind to us, and if it isn’t, that at least, we’ll be kind to ourselves and each other. It won’t be easy, and not much will change, I think. But we have to approach the coming time with kindness and compassion. That’s where I’m at currently. And I think that’s all for now.

Be well, friends, and take care.

[nocaptainreuben]

A Celebration of World Book Day 2018

I think any bookish person can tell you that the highlight of their calendar when they were at school was none other than World Book Day. Dressing up as my favourite characters and spending a day on activities dedicated to books and reading was about as close to my dream day at school as you could get. In fact, even after I grew up and left school, I loved World Book Day so much I decided to work in primary schools just so I could still join in! (Disclaimer, that may not have been the actual reason I became a Teaching Assistant.) This year is one of the first that I haven’t spent in a school in some form, so unfortunately I won’t be doing much to celebrate World Book Day today, but I couldn’t let it go by with no fanfare whatsoever, so I wanted to make sure I got a blog post up just to say: happy reading everyone!

I happened to find myself in a particularly well-stocked Tesco in Gloucester a few weeks ago, and was lucky enough to spot a very early copy of Tom Fletcher’s World Book Day title, Brain Freeze, so obviously I happy danced, picked it up and brought it home with me. If you follow me on social media, you probably know that I love everything the Fletchers do, so I was bound to love this little gem of a short story, and I’m happy to report that it didn’t disappoint.

Izzy’s grandpa was an ice-cream man, and he used to tell the BEST stories. There was the one about giving a 99 Flake to a pharaoh in Ancient Egypt – and another about feeding Fab lollies to a hungry T. Rex.

But what if they weren’t just stories? What if his blue ice-cream van had a secret magic of its own?

I mean, come on! Ice-cream, time travel, storytelling – what’s not to love there?! It’s such a sweet tale, with a lovely grandpa/granddaughter relationship at its core, and despite its short length and young target audience, it genuinely touched me and made me a little sniffly in places. Written with Tom’s trademark childlike imagination, it’s full of magic and adventure and fun, and will definitely appeal to little ones who like a bit of fantastical in their fiction. The writing style seems very accessible, so it’s certainly one that kids of junior school age can enjoy by themselves, but as with all of Tom’s writing, it has a lyrical quality which makes it perfect for sharing aloud at bedtime. Illustrated by the wonderful Shane Devries, the pictures are (as always) beautiful and really help to tell the story, adding to the humour and emotion of certain scenes. All in all, it’s a wonderful little book that I’m very pleased to have in my collection.

Whilst I will always love World Book Day, and I’ve just read and thoroughly enjoyed one of their children’s book offerings, I have always thought it a shame that it’s pretty concentrated on primary school age children, and there seemed to be nothing on offer in its’ place for teens. Which is why I’ve been particularly excited about this year’s event for some time, as 2018 is the first year that they are releasing a range of full length YA novels under the World Book Day banner! These are all £2.50 or £1.50 with a World Book Day token (bargain!), and the books on offer are:

- An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

- Fly By Night by Frances Hardinge

- Gangsta Rap by Benjamin Zephaniah

- I Have No Secrets by Penny Joelson

- Summoner: The Novice by Taran Matharu

I’m going to do my best to get copies of all of them because they all sound so good, and I wish I could afford to run a giveaway of all of them and spread the love, but alas, my bank balance lives to disagree with my desires. £1, however, I can stretch to, so I’ve decided to compromise and spread the love with a giveaway of the one World Book Day book I’ve actually read so far, the lovely Brain Freeze. If you don’t have a World Book Day token, but still want a chance to read this sugary sweet little story for free, head on over to my twitter and see my pinned tweet for how you can enter. And as with all my giveaways, there will be an exclusive, custom-handmade bookmark with it, so that’s just a bonus right there.

I know I’ve dropped the ball a little this month with my reading challenges; I’m currently trying to work out a balance between my newfound social life and general busy-ness, and still finding time to read and blog. But I am planning to pick them up and get back on track, and I do have some great content lined up for you in the coming weeks and months, so stay tuned for that. Also, head to my instagram and twitter for photos, giveaways, book chat and more. Happy World Book day everyone, and happy reading!

[tigertanyx]

There is, in fact a SPN book tag- but it leaves out Jack? How do you leave out Jack? So I made a new and (hopefully) improved SPN book tag!

Rules:

Link to the original post (this post)

Do not spoil season 15

Destiel is canon

Prompts:

Dean Winchester: The Tough Dad- A book that was emotionally difficult to read

Castiel Winchester: The “Talk” Dad- A book that explains a difficult concept 

Sam Winchester: The Supportive Uncle- A book  that leaves you feeling energized 

Jack Klein-Winchester: The Devil’s Cinnamon Roll- A favourite book you expected to hate OR a naive yet powerful character

Destiel: The Ship That Married Already- A book with the overdone trope(s) you love

The Bunker: Home- A book you’ll always return to

Lucifer: The Lost Devil- A book series that lost its way

Beer: High Tolerance- a “guilty pleasure” book/ series 

Pie: My Pie- A book you’ll never let a friend borrow

Impala: Baby- A book that got you through hard times

My Answers:

I saw a lot of myself in If We Were Villains. And if you’ve read the book, you know it’s very painful: slow burn gay panic, living pretending you liked a guy you hated so that they don’t suspect that you killed him, drowning in a cultist fandom.

  I don’t talk a lot about THUG, not because it’s not a great book, but because it’s hard. Her friend dies in front of her, she can’t trust the authorities, and that’s on top of going to a mostly white school. Angie Thomas is a fantastic writer who can take difficult concepts and pour it over you.

  Everything leads To You was the last book to make me almost cry with happiness. Mystery leading to mystery until you accept that some answers will always lead to more questions and it’s ok to let go. There’s also a slow burn that makes you scream in relief when it finally ends, and girls managing the start of what could be successful careers in film.

Tripped up by my own tag…

I don’t normally go in expecting to hate a book, unless I have to read it and I know that it’s not a book I’d pick up myself.  I did force myself to read all of the To All The Boys because once I started it was annoying to not finish when it wasn’t that bad. I personally found the third one to be the best one, because yay  no love triangle.

For a naive yet powerful character (which I put in when I recognized the fallacy of reading a book you expect to hate, unless you’re an English major or a trashy book reviewer (which is fun to witness but I don’t want to put myself through that.)) SAMWISE GAMGEE!!

If you hadn’t guessed my favourite tropes are slow burn, hopeless gays, and found family. I’m gonna make a stretch an say The Picture Of Hopeless Gay, AKA Dorian Gray. It’s been a solid 2 years since I read it, before I even knew I was hopeless gay, and my opinion of it has only grown fonder.  

I really should reread it.

I know the Impala has been our home longer, but it’s such a relief to have the Bunker- a place to actually rest, eat food, read, without worrying about where we’re going next or driving away from a thing. 

Harry Potter. My book home has always been, is and will be, Harry Potter. It’s the book my sister read me to bed every night, it’s the book I found solace and connection in when I was lonely, It’s a book that I’ve always loved and will love and no amount of bashing from JKR will ruin that for me.

The first thing that comes up is The Life And Death Of Sophie Stark. It’s a sad book about the all powerful filmmaker Sophie- who sacrifices everything for her art. She dates a girl in one of her films and puts her in a bad spot. She disappears for a while. There is a lake. 

Maybe I should put a time limit on these books because I’m bad at describing them. But I remember the feeling of being near Sophie, but never actually being her. There’s multiple POVs but never has hers. People know and love her, but never fully understand her. *This is an adult book

I know- its all reading. It’s all guilty pleasure. I’m proud of my guilty pleasures. 

But there’s something about manga that makes it feel extra guilty. It’s a valid form of reading, but they’re so easy to get through in a single setting. I think the guilt also comes because I used to read a lot of Boy’s Love when I was younger. “Straight girl” younger. 

There are so many “Wow that’s gay” moments I’m having.

I’m not actually that touchy- if I love a book, I want other people to read it. If I don’t love a book, I try to find someone who will.

But I think what I’m most touchy about is a series that has been lost forever- the copies of Harry Potter that were hand me downs. They had meaning beyond what was in the books- I have memories of reading them with my sister. I remember buying the later books. I know they were old, but they had memory. 

And my bloody mother went and replaced them. 

When I first got to college, I didn’t know where to find fiction books, so I’d borrow my roommates’. John Green and Nicola Yoon. I read Looking For Alaska and TFIOS before, but my library didn’t have An Abundance Of Katherines. I later bought Turtles All The Way Down. I probably never would’ve read Nicola Yoon if my roommate didn’t have them; I’d never heard of her and she’s not as talked about as she should be. I devoured Everything, Everything, and The Sun Is Also A Star over a weekend. I had so much book thirst.

I hope you join in! You, every last one of you, is tagged!

Support this blog on ko-fi

Team Free Will 2.0 Supernatural Book Tag! There is, in fact a SPN book tag- but it leaves out Jack? How do you leave out Jack?

[nikkixreads]

Top Five Favourite Polarizing Books

Top 5 Wednesday is a weekly meme/tag hosted by Samantha where every week book readers across all platforms share their list of Top 5 books/characters/genres, etc. it all depends on the topic for that week. If you’d be interested in joining T5W you can find the group on Goodreads.

This week’s topic is about books that readers either love or hate. There’s not really a middle ground for them, thus making them polarizing. These are the ones where we fall on the love it side of things, and for me personally, this ended up being more series that are polarizing that I love, than standalone books.

1. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

This is more a polarizing author in all honesty. People either seem to really like the characters and stories that John Green tells, or they hate them. There is no in between where people are like “eh, it was okay”. There is no middle ground. I really liked this book although, it was the first one of his that I read. I’ve tried to read An Abundance of Katherines but that had too much math in the beginning and made my head hurt. I thought Looking for Alaska was good although, it wasn’t one of my favourites. I have Paper Towns and will be reading that this year, so we’ll see what my opinions on that are.

2. The Southern Vampire Mysteries / Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris

I have read this entire series, even After Dead where we learn what happened to the secondary and tertiary characters. That’s how much I liked this series when I read it. I understand that some people hate this series, that they like the tv show so much more, that‘s fine. I personally think the show and books are two very different things, because they start veering off from each other at the end of the first seasons, but I like these books. I really like the characters and it’s true that some of the events read like a supernatural soap opera at times, but I loved it.

3. Precious Stone / Ruby Red trilogy by Kerstin Gier

These have time travel, a bit of political intrigue, fun characters to follow, and a whole lot of drama. I read these so quickly and really enjoyed them. I didn’t even mind that I could figure out some of the major plot twists before they were told to us, because I still enjoyed the story these books told so much. I get that some people think it’s insta-love and think the plot is pretty weak, but I didn’t have many problems with this series.

4. The Robert Langdon series by Dan Brown

I know all the reasons people don’t like these books. I understand their points of view, but you have to understand I am such trash for this series. I enjoy them so much; they are so much fun to read and try to put the little pieces of the puzzle together. I don’t read these for their believability or anything like that, because I know that half this stuff would never actually happen. But that’s what makes it so entertaining to read, because they’re so fantastical and a little over the top.

5. Twilight Saga by Stephanie Meyer

Yes, I admit it. I liked most of these books when I read them when I was like, 15. It was right before it got super hyped, and actually I was in the middle of the hype when I read the last one, which I’m wasn’t super happy about in any event. Here’s what I have to say: these are not terrible books. I’ve read way worse ones, and read way worse fanfiction. This series has really great secondary characters; they’re my favourites and why I like this series so much. I do have to admit that I enjoyed the twist on the whole vampire thing, besides the sparkling skin. The main trio/love triangle are what I don’t like, because they’re kind of bland and just annoying. The baby thing in the last book was weird in my opinion, but I appreciate it being there because we got even more awesome secondary characters.