Assignment 2 - Matthew Klee - Books from the Past 6 Months

The most recent book I've read this year was A Court of Wings and Ruin, the third book in the four-book series A Court of Thorns and Roses. This book was a fantasy novel telling about the adventures and action of a human turned Fae (basically an immortal with some sort of elemental powers). Overall, the series has presented no challenging content but more of a satisfying storyline and presents the urge to read more and more (I somehow ground out the first three books of around 600 pages each in just under a week). I've found that in recent years I have become less inclined to read, if I start a book it must catch me from the beginning or I won't even finish the first chapter.

Another book I read (this past summer) was Midnight at the Electric. I started reading this book out of boredom because my sister had picked it up for me from the library in my need for a source of entertainment for plane and car rides. The book was realistic fiction, set in both the past and future. It told the story of a girl accepted into a space program to populate Mars due to drastic climate change on Earth. It made parallels with another story that the main character was discovering through old letters sent to her aunt. Overall, the message of this book was to appreciate the now, give love to everyone especially family. This book was very predictable and overall I would say its a waste of time to read. This really didn't change my way of thinking at all and the language was so simple I felt like it was made for a third-grade reader.

One last book I read in the past six months was The Teenage Brain (for summer reading of course). I found this book to be interesting in the first couple of chapters because I did not take psychology last year as most of my peers so the information was new. However, once I got to the chapters on drugs, alcohol, and other bad habits teenagers fall into I felt like I was being lectured by my parents again on how these things are bad. Although the information was likely correct I found it repetitive to things I'd already learned after the first few chapters of microbiology. I had a difficult time finishing this book, first because I viewed it as homework, and second, because there was no chapter where I felt left wanting more, it was just a relaying of information. Overall, I thought the book had good content but could have been formatted more interestingly to encourage reading.