A June Throwback

Welcome to my monthly throwback, also known as my opportunity to look at all of the books I've read/listened to in the previous month.

Books

I read 14 books in June, which isn't as much as I hoped I would read but near the end of the month I got super busy (we were kinda but not really moving and I've been teaching more than usually) but it's still a nice number of books. 

14 books makes for about 5309 pages or 177 pages a day. (In July I'd like to average at about 200 pages a day but I'll have to hurry a little bit because it's taken ages to read All the Light We Cannot See.)

Those books are:

• Mein Herz und andere schwarze Löcher or My Heart and Other Black Holes by Jasmine Warga
• My Lady Jane (the Lady Janies #1) by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows
• The Goldan Compass (His Dark Materials #1) by Philip Pullman
• The Edge of Everything by Jeff Giles
• Crooked Kingdom (Six of Crows #1) by Leigh Bardugo
• Discord's Apple by Carrie Vaughn
• Wo das Dunkel schläft or The Raven King (The Raven Cycle #4) by Maggie Stiefvater
• Blaue Tulpen by Devon Wolters
• The Battle of the Labyrinth (Percy Jackson and the Olympians #4) and
• The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson and the Olympians #5) by Rick Riordan
• In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
• Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
• Der Prozess or The Trial by Franz Kafka

Of which my favorite definitely is Crooked Kingdom. It was such a fantastic book, a brilliant conclusion to this brilliant duology. If you haven't read Six of Crows yet you definitely have to get to that asap.

Other than Crooked Kingdom I also loved My Lady Jane which was just sooo much fun and I'd generally recommend the entire Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, which is brilliant and action-packed and funny, as well as, if you'd rather read something dark and twisted, Sharp Objects which is awe-inspiringly vicious.

As for books I didn't like: Discord's Apple. It kinda pissed me off at first but I eventually simply got bored with it. I was also kinda disappointed in My Heart and Other Black Holes and The Edge of Everything. The first I simply expected more of and the latter was just too much insta-love crap.

Audiobooks

Additionally to the books I read last month I also listened to a couple of audiobooks, three to be precise. 

• Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

The audiobook-disappointment of the month. It wasn't a "boring" story but the stereotypes were rather insulting to the perspective of a modern reader, even though I'm aware of Dicken's background and all that. I simply didn't like it very much, nothing much more to it.

• The Return of the King (The Lord of the Rings #3) by J.R.R. Tolkien

Obviously, I loved it. I'm an unashamed Tolkien-fangirl and I only regret not having read/listened to the story more often. Currently, I have an audio drama (I don't know whether "audio drama" is the correct word for it but it's basically a shortened version of the book where every character has a different voice and the story is supposed to be more interesting that way) and a German audiobook of The Lord of the Rings, naturally, the next step is getting my hands on an English audiobook and listening to it again (until I've memorized the whole thing. I'm only almost kidding.)

• Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

I very much enjoyed this audiobook, not least because of all the Islandic in it (names and short excerpts). The premise is pretty dark but executed very empathetically. The writing is beautiful and I strongly agree with the anti-death-sentence message lying underneath (and, I guess, the general "how not to treat prisoners"-thing). Would definitely recommend!

And, once more, that's it! As I said in the beginning, I'm hoping to read more in July but this still is a rather impressive list, I think. I'm, for one, am happy with it. I hope you can say the same of your reading month and I hope you're reading continues/commences to be as great in the coming month. Happy reading!