Outbox and October Books in Review (NaBloPoMo)

I posted two Outbox blogs during October. Not too shabby! And ended with 16 books read for the month.

The first was a mid- month review, where the clear top picks of the first two weeks of October were The Fair Fight by Anna Freeman and All our Pretty Songs by Sarah McCarry. Neither book was really what I expected, which is probably why I enjoyed them so much.

The second Outbox was about a week later, after the Dewey's 24 hour readathon. The Big winner during that week was I Am Princess X, a fast- paced, slightly suspenseful slightly predictable little ditty.

I rounded out October with 4 books that were outrageously different from one another and were each read for a reason.

I read Deadly Sexy by Beverly Jenkins as part of Mission Book Riot Live, which is going horribly. My plan was to read one book by each of the authors presenting at the event. But said event is this weekend... so... not gonna happen. Anywhoo... I really enjoyed the book, with it's sexy, romantic murder suspense thing going on.

The Hunted by Matt de la Pena is the sequel to a book I read for Mission: Teen Book Festival. TBF is an annual, yes, that's right, book festival. I loved the first book and loved the second.

Beatrice and Virgil was recommended to me by a new friend. He loved it and I think that reading a book that a person loves helps you get to know them better. I liked it. But it was weird. Unnecessarily so.

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers is a micro-history that satisfied that category of the Book Riot Read Harder Challenge. It was really fascinating. It's kind of a collection of essays about the historical usage of human cadavers since, well, since people started dying and other people started using the bits: food, medicine, medical education, etc. I'm not sure I would have read it otherwise, but I definitely enjoyed the read. I'd recommend not starting the book around meal time. You get used to it after a while, though.

I also put two books back on the shelf. One was Queen of the Fall by Sonja Livingston, a collection of short stories about being a girl and blah blah blah. I really didn't care for it. My reading A Festival of Insignificance by Milan Kundera was interrupted and I was only a little interested, so I let it go. I love his work, usually, so I might try again.