It’s June, Let’s Freak Out!

Somehow, possibly by accidentally falling into a time warp, I ended up in June, and have no idea where the first half of the year disappeared. It was only yesterday that I threw back a whiskey (sorry, sipped it, yes, I’m not that uncivilized) to celebrate New Years Eve, and now this!

To be fair, things are rather peachy, and I surprised myself by reading 50 books till now. There was a time when that number seemed like my dream of ever joining the Starfleet: impossible. But here we are, I did it! Will I reach a 100 this year? Well, the plot thickens…

Kelly @Another Book In The Wall often tags me in various things and every time she does  I get excited, then overwhelmed, don’t feel creative enough to participate, and eventually just give up and silently hope everyone forgot about it. Now on the other hand, I feel like I’m on a roll, and the Mid Year Freak Out Tag is a great way to see what I’ve been up to so far.

Shall we?

Best Book You’ve Read This Year?
Beartown.

‘Nuff said. Well, no, it’s not true. I can literally not shut up about Fredrik Backman’s book. I will keep recommending it to everyone all the time. You remember Barney from How I Met Your Mother and how he promoted Ted all the time?

That’s me with Beartown.
Hi! Have you read Beartown?

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Best Sequel You’ve Read in 2018?

Well, that’s easy, because I only read one sequel this year. Yes, I’m horrible at keeping up with series.

The Final Trade by Joe Hart is the second book in the Dominion Trilogy, set in a dystopian world where a mysterious worldwide epidemic reduces the birthrate of female infants from 50 percent to less than 1 percent.

Dunn-dunn-dunn!
It’s good. Try it.

 

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New Release You Haven’t Read Yet But Want To?
The Outsider by Stephen King. Obviously.

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Most Anticipated Release For The Second Half Of The Year?

Hands down The Consuming Fire by John Scalzi.

The second book in The Interdependency series is a book I’ve been waiting for ever since I finished The Collapsing Empire last year.

Seriously the best book I’ve read in 2017.

A delicious space opera with a bunch of wiseass characters, awesome humour and some weird, sort of backwards technology, this book is a must-read for sci-fi fans.

 

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Biggest Disappointment?

The Favorite Sister by Jessica Knoll.

I was looking forward to reading this after I saw the glowing review by Dennis.

I usually rely on his opinion a lot because we seem to have very similar taste in books, but this one was a disaster for me.

What a waste of such a pretty cover!

 

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Biggest Surprise?

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng.
First of all, I don’t read many contemporary books. Seconly, I have never read anything by Celeste Ng before, so I had no idea what to expect.Well, it was not this for sure!

A brilliantly written story about small town politics, family dynamics and secrets that is just so relatable.

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Favorite New To You Or Debut Author?

John Green

He’s not a debut author, but for me he was a new discovery this year. I only read Turtles All the Way Down so far, but I enjoyed it a lot and since then I have bought four more of his books.

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Newest Fictional Crush?

I wouldn’t call it an outright crush, but I did develop a certain admiration for badass Takeshi Kovach, the protagonist of Altered Carbon.

Come to think of it, I don’t think I ever really had a crush on any character. I just simply don’t seem to read the sort of books fictional crushes usually come from.

Newest Favorite Character?

Wolf!
I do love a wiesass and William Oliver Layton-Fawkes is the true embodiment of a smartypants with his razor sharp comebacks.

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Book That Made You Cry?

I’m a barbarian, I don’t cry on books.

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Book That Made You Happy?

Well, this was a hard one, because most of the time I just simply don’t read the sort of books that makes one happy.

The books I read usually make me shrivel up in horror, upset me, make me contemplate life.

But I think we can safely say Since You’ve Been Gone by Morgan Matson has done none of those things, so in conclusion, we can say it possibly made me happy.

It didn’t make me miserable for sure.

 

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Favorite Book-To-Film Adaptation?

True to my savage nature I also don’t watch movies very often, and have not seen any this year so far.

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Favorite Post You Have Done This Year?

That would be the one in which I confess that I don’t like books, and attempt to tell you why. A book blogger who doesn’t like books? 

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Most Beautiful Book You’ve Bought This Year?

I love most of the covers I bought this year, but I think The Girl In the Tower is the prettiest so far.

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What Books Do You Need To Read By The End of the Year?
ALL OF THEM! No, but really… I have about 600 books on my virtual list of books to read, but the ones that often pop in my mind and fill me with a sense of urgency are Force of Nature, Six Stories, The Great Alone and the Red Rising Series, starting from book #2.

 

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I’d love to see Vera, Debby, Samantha, Annemieke and Kristina freak out, just a little bit.

Mwhahaha!