Hi everyone! I hope everyone had a good weekend. Time for some books! So I had a slow reading month until last week. Then I got quite a few books down!

It’s kinda hard to read this month as school started and for the past two weeks I’ve had a lot more homework too. Ah well, it turns out that I don’t actually have to read for my management class as the professor puts it all on the presentation so that’s good. Accounting though is completely different.

So this month I read 5 books, three of them within the past week. That brings my total for the year to 46 out of 50 books, which is my goal. By now it looks like I will meet my goal so that’s a relief. There’s still 97 days left in the year apparently so that should be plenty of time to read 4 more books.

So onto the books!

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Drowned City: Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans by Don Brown

4 out of 5 stars

The first book I read this month centered around Hurricane Katrina, which hit the US in 2005 and caused catastrophic damage to the city of New Orleans. It is a graphic novel which I normally don’t enjoy but Drowned City was so wonderfully written and illustrated.

After a quick introduction to the start of the hurricane and it’s early stages, the book dives right into the story of New Orleans. In quick succession it describes what happened during the hurricane, depicting a couple who has to cut a hole in their own roof to try to escape the rising flood waters, people desperately trying to keep their heads above water once they’re in, the Superdome’s roof tearing apart due to Katrina’s strong winds, and even police officers who abandoned their posts and the city to save themselves.

I thought the book did a great job of displaying both the good and bad aspects of what happened after the hurricane. After the hurricane the city emerges to massive flooding due to the broken levees, oil spilling into the water that is now sitting in the city, slow drainage, stranded residents, and many, many dead. The good emerges when it shows other states taking evacuees, citizens taking their own boats and forming their own rescue systems, and pets being saved after being left behind.

In fact, it was Hurricane Katrina that forced emergency services to rethink their “no pets” policies as many people who consider their pets to be family refuse to leave. While Katrina did cause huge amounts of damage and loss of life, many lessons were learned from the disaster. Reading this around the time of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, which were compared to Katrina in many ways, it was easy to compare what happened in 2005 to now.I did give this book four out of five stars.

Savage Summit: The True Stories of the First Five Women Who Climbed K2, the World’s Most Feared Mountain by Jennifer Jordan

4 out of 5 stars

Continuing in my mountain climbing books obsession, I read Savage Summit this month. When the book was written, five women had climbed K2, three had died on their climb down from the summit, and the remaining two had died on other climbs. By the time the book was finished a sixth woman had climbed K2 and successfully made it down. K2 is smaller than Everest but it’s considered to be much more dangerous due to the tough terrain leading up to the mountain, the harsh weather, and difficulty of the mountain.

The book gives us more about the five women who climbed K2 by detailing not only their climbs but their lives as well. Wanda Rutkiewicz, Liliane Berrad, Julie Tullis, Chantal Mauduit, and Alison Hargreaves are the woman featured in the book with a bit about Araceli Segarra, the sixth woman to summit K2. While the book felt slow at times it was very interesting and gripping. I gave Savage Summit four out of five stars.

All Rights Reserved by Gregory Scott Katsoulis

2 out of 5 stars

After two non-fiction books I finally picked up a fiction story. In All Rights Reserved, the story centers around Speth, who got her name from a discounted list for girls names. In Speth’s world, Freedom of Speech is no longer a known phrase. Up until the age of 15 words are free, but once the citizens turn 15 they’re expected to pay for their words. Every word and gesture is owned by someone and through copyright, trademark, or patents, everyone has to pay for everything they do. They are tracked by a cuff that records the words they speak and gestures they make. Even hugs are charged. And since Speth’s family is poor, she’s preparing to give her Last Day speech and accept sponsors that will help her pay for her words. However, something happens to Speth that causes her to instead chose to never speak again, which then results on a complete upheaval of her life.

The idea of the book was great and it started out very strongly. The book does a great job of introducing the world at the beginning and the characters. However towards the middle I started to feel like I was getting bored. It seemed very repetitive and Speth’s actions were constantly infuriating. I did like that Speth continued to try to find solutions for the situation she put her family in, but she didn’t seem to understand or even try to understand the true implications her actions had on society. She also came up with the strangest plans to try to fix their problems. I did give the book two out of three stars.

Bloom by Estee Lalonde

2 out of 3 stars

Estee was one of the first youtubers I started to watch regularly and I do still occasionally watch her channel. I have to admit, I stopped watching after her rebrand from Essie Button as it just didn’t feel as genuine to me. I thought it was too showy after she changed her channel. Since I still watch her videos though I wanted to give her book a try.

I didn’t really fully get if it was supposed to be a motivational self-help mixed with a memoir but that’s what it felt like. It was very pretty and the photos were great but the content was pretty boring due to how simple it was and there were tons of typos. Overall it seemed unfinished. I gave Bloom two out of five stars.

Cross my Heart and Hope to Spy by Ally Carter

2 out of 5 stars

The second book of the Gallagher Girls series was not as good as the first by a long shot. I want to do a full review on this book as I did with the first book of the series. However Id id have much of the same thoughts as before. Cammie just seemed like she was still too obsessed with the whole “I’m in spy school! Cool!” thing and didn’t actually seem to be very good at the “being a spy” thing. More to come on this one but I gave it two out of five stars.

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And that’s my September books! Let me know what you’ve been reading lately. I’d love to know!

Thanks for reading!

Pamela

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