Things I Read in July

I'm definitely not going to freak out about the fact that it is now August, but seriously, how is it August already? I feel like someone really dropped the ball there, if I'm honest. Are we really going to have to start taking 2016 seriously now that it seems like it's really happening? I hope not!

This has been such a lean reading month for me that I feel like I should apologise to everyone, except that would be insane so I'm not going to do that. I read three books this month, and one of those was sort of half book, half comic book, so reaaaally it's only two and a half, but if we consider the fact that I also got through more than half of the second Game of Thrones book (at time of writing, about 520 pages worth!) it's not so bad. Really this is a positive sign, and just means that I've been both living more, in having had things to do pretty much every weekend in July, and that I've caught one hell of a lot of Pokemon. NO REGRETS!

Here are the books, anyway.

Cell by Stephen King

If you can believe it, I have already reviewed this and everything right here. If that's a bit TL;DR for you, then to summarise- I had a lot of problems with the plot of this one, but at the same time I was truly scared by it and needed a bit of a cuddle afterwards, so it kind of did everything that I would traditionally want a Stephen King book to do. But still, there were those plot problems... I still haven't really come to a conclusion about this.

The Diary of a Teenage Girl by Phoebe Gloeckner

I can't even describe how good this book is. I only knew it was a thing because a film involving Alexander Skarsgard was made of it, but having read and seen both in quick succession, I can confirm that, as almost always, the book is so much better than the film. It's partly autobiographical, and the main character (Minnie) is frustrating and honest and raw and wonderful and basically everything you expect and want a teenage girl to be. Even though her teenage experience has basically nothing to do with my teenage experience, there are parts of it that are so universal that I had to text Frances pretty often with quotes from the book because THIS IS ME. This was me. Sometimes it still is me. 

This is a really good book.

Jane Austen: A Life by Claire Tomalin

Why was I reading a biography of Jane Austen as if it was a gentle summer read? It's difficult to say, except for the fact that it's not too big, so was pretty portable to carry with me on my travels over this month. I don't want to say too much about this one, because I actually want to review it in big style (I know), but let's just say that it was incredibly well written for non-fiction, and didn't make me want to hurt myself by making loads of unsubstantiated claims like so many other biographies. Really a very impressive book, and really interesting if you care about Jane Austen in any way at all.

And that's all I got through! All three were really pretty good though, so I'm good with the quality of what I read anyway. Yay July!