Summer Reading 2015: A Recap

This weekend I finished the last book in my Summer Reading list! Now it’s time for a recap so I can tell you which ones I loved, which ones I hated, and which were just “meh.”

Room by Emma Donoghue

I wrote a review of Room already, and I don’t have too much extra to say. But the tl;dr of the review is that I loved it. It’s a dark story, but it’s really interesting and kept me hooked.

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I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai

I wrote a full review of I Am Malala as well, but I can’t say enough good things about it. Malala Yousafzai is one of the most remarkable women I’ve heard of, and it was amazing to find out even more about her. I can’t wait for the documentary to come out next month!

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Neil Patrick Harris: Choose Your Own Autobiography by Neil Patrick Harris

Neil Patrick Harris is wonderful. And his autobiography is even more so. It’s just as witty as he is, with a little bit of flare thrown in. Remember those Choose Your Own Adventure books from a few decades back? Well, that’s how NPH’s autobiography is set up.

“If you would like to experience a happy childhood, turn to page 8. If you would prefer to experience a miserable childhood that later in life you can claim to have heroically overcome, turn to page 5.”

I feel like this is one book I’m going to want to read over and over again. This time I read it straight through, while only following the directions a few times. Next time I really want to choose my own autobiography.

Kungaloosh.

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We Bought a Zoo by Benjamin Mee

I picked up this book because I loved the movie. Seriously, it’s super cute and it stars Matt Damon. How can you go wrong with that?

Unfortunately, the book was just okay. It was still cute, but it was a lot more about his wife’s brain cancer and the actual process of getting the zoo. Not nearly as cute as the little girl jumping up and down saying “we bought a zoo!”

It was a little dry, but still super interesting. You can tell they changed a lot to make it more fun for the movie. It’s one of the few cases where I think the movie was better than the book. That being said, I didn’t hate the book by any means. It was fine.

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The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

I’m really proud of myself for finishing this book, if that tells you what I thought of it. I really wanted to like it, because a) Russians love hockey, as do I, and b) Matt Smith of Doctor Who fame cited it as his favorite book.

But I just… couldn’t.

I spent most of the book entirely confused by what was happening. Some of it may have been lost in translation, literally. It was written in the 1930s in Russia, and was translated into English in the 1990s. I have the feeling that a lot of the story was over my head because I’m unfamiliar with 1930s Russia.

I’m sure it’s a great book… if you understand what the heck is going on.

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Those are the books I read this summer! What books did you read? What are your favorites? Let me know so I can add them to my fall reading list!