#52books

Starting a New Book

Today, I’m starting

"Sherlock Holmes und sein erster Fall"

— a borrowed copy from a good friend.

There’s something special about reading a book that has already passed through someone else’s hands, carrying a bit of shared trust and recommendation with it.

I’m curious where this story will take me and what clues, thoughts, or quiet moments it will leave behind.

A new book, a new beginning.

Yours,

Unethical experiments, alien invasions, and a man called Brian—this is my month of reading.

The Tea Dragon Tapestry by Katie O'Neill

The beautiful conclusion to the Tea Dragon books! This is still a visually stunning graphic series. The characters are so distinct and engaging! I adore the little dragons, and was pleased to see all the characters 'on screen' together finally.

Though meant for kids, these charming books are great for any reader.

And it's lauded as a classic. It's known as a book that is universally loved.

I want to like it. I really, really want to like it.

But I am 20% of the way in and I am hate reading it at this point. I don't know why I'm doing this to myself. Maybe because I'm curious about what happens. I know for a fact that some of the central characters have not been introduced and I want to meet them.

But, my God, it is so incredibly dull. I have read reviews of the prose and how it's lyrical and tongue-in-cheek humour. And, look. Maybe it is. Maybe it's all lost on me. But I'm yet to find an interesting page in the book.

It strikes me as odd that I'm so dogmatic in my pursuit of finishing this book. If this was a fanfic, I would have given up by now and maybe skimmed the last two chapters for closure and then closed the browser and thought nothing of it. But I am approaching this book with a determination that now I'm almost enjoying how much I cannot stand it.

“For everyone who deserves a better story than the one they have”

The random number generator created 99X (I forgot to put in the last number and can't remember what it was) which is History and Geography > Oceania and elsewhere. Two interesting books were available: Selkirk's Island about a real life Robinson Crusoe, or Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia. I went with Christina Thompson's Sea People.

Sea People explores the history of Polynesia and the mystery of how humans populated a triangle of ocean stretching from New Zealand to Hawaii to Easter Island with some islands thousands of miles from each other. It goes through the "discovery" of the islands by Europeans, the first written accounts of their history, through Polynesian oral traditions, scientific attempts to decipher the origins, attempts to recreate sailing to the islands, and finally modern science's input.

Yes, the Royal Society makes an appearance, in that they needed somewhere to study the Transit of Venus near the equator in 1769 and just as a ship returned telling of a wonderful island called Tahiti. There they were able to talk with the natives and learn a bit about them. Most importantly they met a learned man named Tupaia who agreed to go with them on their voyage home where they encountered other groups of islands like New Zealand where he was of immense help translating and advising on proper behavior. Most intriguingly he made a map of all the islands he had heard of, and it remains a mystery to this day how to interpret it. It's not strictly a Cartesian coordinate map and many people have tried to explain how the islands are arranged.

The book mentions Maui and his amazing fish hook, and a guy who humped a pile of sand to make humans (best origin story yet). Funnily enough, the best, most learned scholars of the 19th century thought that Polynesians were Aryan in origin. That's real Iranian Aryans- not phony baloney blonde Nazi Aryans. However science of the early 20th century tried to go by "race" for the origin by measuring facial features and using, I swear to god, a skin color chart like that Family Guy terrorist meme. Obviously that failed for so many reasons. Currents to Polynesia generally run East to West so a lot of people, including Thor Heyerdahl thought the people must have come from South America. Unfortunately for them, computer models show that Kon-Tiki only made it to Polynesia because it was towed out to a good current, and that natural rafts would not have made it that way. In fact it showed it was nearly impossible to drift to Hawaii or New Zealand and that meant the Polynesians who settled there must have been heading in a general direction of exploration to get there.

Spoiler alert modern DNA shows that Polynesians came from Taiwan via Melanesia to Polynesia though they're still working out the details of how long they stayed in Melanesia and when they settled various islands. And they're perfecting interesting techniques like looking at the rat DNA of the ubiquitous stow-aways from Polynesian settlement.

BEST LINE: "From the perspective of the twenty-first century , a lot of this work looks creepy, and for good reason."

SHOULD YOU READ THIS BOOK:

I wish it had some maps of Polynesia and Melanesia and Micronesia so I could have had a better idea of keeping those straight, so look that up on wikipedia before you read, unless you already know, in which case kudos! But I do suggest reading the book. It's very interesting from a historical and science history perspective.

ART PROJECT:

The 20th century investigators took a lot of photographs of Polynesian natives and this is a drawing of one of them.

Its that time of the month where Im counting down my journey to 52 books. Though I failed horribly this month because we had our little vacation and distractions and goodreads is horrible at tracking what I read. Turns out I read more than I remembered and I'm not convinced I counted everything.

Think I started the month doing Bone Shard Daughter and Blood and Ash at the same time and I found BSD far superior. Had an interesting twist at the end and I'd read the sequel.

Keeper of the Lost Cities just looked easy and cute and I see it everywhere in all book stores. I wanted something light coming off of the last 2 books and it sucked. I had actually tried to read this book once before and DNF'd it but I decided to try again because maybe I just didn't pay attention enough but no..I genuinely hated it. Sophie is the most obnoxious "Im so perfect" person ever.

Read The Book of Koli as a somewhat buddy read with my husband. We finished listening to the audiobook on our disney trip. It was intriguing but he's listening to the sequels now and from what he's telling me they are not worth it for me to continue.

Where'd you Go Bernadette and A man Called Ove. Ofcourse I'd love these. I really really really want to enjoy fantasy books but I always rate the more modern contemporary books much higher.

King of Scars I thought would be my final book this month but I managed to sneak in Howls Moving Castle which was super short and sweet. But KoS. Idk, I kinda enjoyed it and I kinda feel like it hit some tropes that I normally enjoy..I just don't feel like the main characters had that much chemistry. Also I feel like Zoya is just kinda a random character...to do anything...she just didnt convince me..

January 19th- Book of the Week

Hello all!

I decided to combine these two posts this week, so let’s hop right into it!

For starters, I read the book ‘Sadie’ this week. I have to say, it wasn’t my cup of tea. However, it was amazingly written and crafted if you’re into murder mysteries. I say murder mysteries, but it’s almost more of a coming of age story? A mix of both I suppose! I simply found it a bit distressing, which took away from the writing for me.

<3 Melody

reading challenge- week 3

Which book(s) have you re-read the most?

I think probably my comfort books are the most loved! This would be Anne of Green Gables, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, and the Mallory Towers Series.

Would you call yourself a bookworm?

I think probably not to be honest. Other people would call me one perhaps, but I don’t think I quite fit the ‘bookworm’ title. I often only read at night, or when there’s quite time. And I’d schedule other things over reading most times. Although once I start reading, there’s no stopping me!

Currently on book 8/52