September Book Review (7)

Happy Tuesday everyone,

Literary Journeys (A reader's journal)

I picked this up on my last trip to the bookstore because any reason to buy a notebook makes me happy. As you use this to review books you may call this a review of a reviewer.

The cover, title, and overall design is much different than most reading logs.That attracted me to it in the first place. The cover art is very nice and I love the library-esc (esk?) details in the pages.

The journal includes,

• "Book Notes" to catalog each book you read. You log the date you started and finished the book, you rate it on a scale to five as well as things like plot notes, character notes, favorite quotes and other books to read by the same author besides of course the name and author of the book.
• "Books to Checkout" where you keep your reading list.
• "Notes, Ideas and Observations" this section is just lined paper, open to interpretation 
• "Reading Inspirations", a list of books to read if you don't have any ideas.

Adventures of Frog and Toad by Arnold Lobel
I loved these books when I was a kid and I saw a collection of the stories in the clearance section and decided to pick it up. Books change when you read them a second time, especially when over a decade passes between reads. I'm happy to report that I still love this series. The relationship between the characters is so sweet and the plot is very comical in a charming way.

I also love the theory that Frog and Toad could be a same-sex couple as the author came out shortly after publishing the first Frog and Toad narrative. The theory was not confirmed by Lobel himself although he did say much of himself made its way into his stories as is to be expected. His daughter, Adrianne, wholeheartedly believes Frog and Toad were very much in love.

My view on the theory is that Frog and Toad never came out, therefore, I can't say for sure what the intimates of their relationship were and frankly, it's no one's business but their own.

 I did a lot of reading at the park this month so I decided to do the photoshoot there. I brought my camerawoman, our friend, and my dog. Once we had all the pictures we pressed side by side on my little quilt and read each other the Frog and Toad stories.

Whiskey Words and a shovel I and II by r. h. Sin

I've seen a lot of r.h. Sin poems floating around and I really wanted to get a hold of the series. I bought the first two books and later realized there is a third that I now have to wait on. I have mixed feelings about this series that's making it hard for me to write a review on it. I liked a lot of the poetry. Some of it was out there. Some of it had me really question whether or not I liked the books as a whole. The second book is a bit too similar to the first for me. I get that it's a series but it just created too much repetition.



The princess saves herself in this one by Amanda Lovelace

I love everything about this book. I've never read a poetry book that read like an autobiography. All poetry books, I think, reflect aspects of the poet's life but this one is so much more than that. It's her life in poetry form. I think that's just such an amazing concept and it really inspires me as does her poems in general. The poetry itself is simply beautiful. I bookmarked so many pages. That's the highest compliment I can give to a poetry book. She writes about loss and love in a way I really relate to.

Her by Pierre Alex Jeanty

When I found this book I was a little upset because in it I recognized the book I want to write. I love how the author's name is his signature. I love the cover. I wish I could steal it but I would call my book SHE. I might still write a book called SHE but I would have to try not to steal a lot of aspects from this book.



Every page has a poem and some poems have little illustrations. It reminds me a lot of Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur which is one of my favorite reads. Milk and Honey has drawings with every poem and I think HER doesn't have enough drawings. I would like to find a middle ground. I felt there were HER poems that had a great opportunity for drawings that were missed, so I added some, not all are included here.

While reading I found this poem (Left) and drawing and immediately recognized it as a post I saw on Instagram that I saved because I wanted to copy the drawing (not to steal credit, just because I liked it) and read the book it came from.

I loved these two I only included one) drawing(s) (Right) as well because you don't see a lot of plus sized bodies in works like these and it felt amazing to see a body type similar to mine.


Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell

I did not expect to love this book as much as I did. There is a reason people say don't judge a book by its cover. At first glance, it looked like a stupid teenage romance that I'm kind of over. It's the same book over and over. But this one is so different! I loved it to pieces. At first, I really didn't like Park but he grew on me. Eleanor is very easy to relate to so I liked her a lot more. Their relationship is so sweet and so precious. The first kiss, the first phone call where you play twenty questions. It made me miss the sweet beginnings.

The chapters switch between the two perspectives which I usually don't like because I get attached to one character over the other but I really liked it in this book. I liked reading Eleanor worrying over her plus-size body then switching over to Park admiring her body.

The book is written interestingly in 1986. I thought this was because it would eventually switch to today but it never did. I didn't really notice the time difference besides the type of music they listened to and the way Eleanor dressed.

The ending started to fall apart a bit for me and it ended on a bit of a cliffhanger but overall I loved it and would recommend it to teenage to young adults. Actually, I think this would be the perfect first romance for teenage girls because it gives a sweet and more realistic take on high school relationships.

Adultolescence by Gabbie Hanna a.k.a The Gabbie Show

The Gabbie Show and The Gabbie Vlogs, both run by Gabbie Hanna, are two of my favorite channels on Youtube so I was so excited when she announced that she was writing a book and even better a poetry book that would feature illustrations that she did herself.

This being my first youtuber book I found it was a very unique experience because I read each poem in her voice. And a very unique voice (here I mean writing style) she has. I was expecting emotional and profound poetry, and there was a good amount of that, but there was also silly and funny poems that read like something kids would sing while jumping rope. There were so many different genres of poems within this one book. In videos leading up to the book coming out, Gabbie said that's how she wanted the concept of the book to be but I still wasn't expecting to be to the degree that it is. Most poetry books don't jump around with tone like this. Most poets feel all the poems must flow together and have cohesion (I know that word because of project runway) but Gabbie really changed the game with this one.

Another cool concept she implements in her book is having it printed it in several different colors, some more rare than others. Blue is the most common color I think but it's my favorite color so I'm happy.

I enjoyed every second of this book and I can't wait to see what Gabbie does next. She seems to be really blooming right now and I'm so proud and excited for her. She also did an amazing song titled "Out Loud" inspired by the poetry of this book.

Totally Ky