Australian YA (snapshot from my bookshelf)

Something that frustrates me about the internet is how easy it is to get stuck in an American centric place, particularly when it comes to book recommendations. The other night on Twitter I noticed a few people tweeting photos of their favourite Australian YA novels under #loveOzYA

I grabbed some of my favourite Australian YA authors off my shelves. Australia has a lot of talented authors, I couldn't recommend highly enough. I think I would probably frequently say Melina Marchetta is my favourite author. 

Of course there are heaps more amazing Australian authors who I don't happen to own.

I'm trying to work on increasing the number Indigenous books I read, I know this list is lacking in that. I hope to fix that in the future.

Crush Your TBR

I have a TBR pile that never seems to get any smaller. So I decided to participate in the #crushyourtbr readathon this weekend.

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart.

This was really good. I'd heard so much hype, and then so much talk saying it didn't live up to the hype, that I went in without high expectations and was pleasantly surprised. Perhaps pleasant is the wrong word. I cried. I couldn't put it down. It was a good reading experience.

Landline by Rainbow Rowell

I'm still not sure how I feel about this book. I am glad I read it. It was a little painful though, like I was hesitantly reading for most of the book and only in the last third or so I really started wanting to finish it. I was tempted to stop reading, but wanted to know what would happen and couldn't bring myself to just read the ending. I'm glad I persevered but I'm not sure if I'd recommend it. I guess it depends on what you want from a book. It made me think. And it made me work hard to like the main character.

The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson

So fun. I really enjoyed the concept, the world was interesting and I especially liked trying to figure out the mystery element. It was a strong, well crafted story.

Family Life by Akil Sharma
So this is literary fiction, which I have a particular kind of love for. For me, if literary fiction is well written, it generally doesn't matter so much what it is about. As well as being well written, Family Life tells an interesting story of an Indian family's immigrant experience, with very specific difficulties. I really liked reading it.

I also finished listening to Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling and almost finished My True Love Gave to Me edited by Stephanie Perkins.

I managed to finish the books I meant to read by Saturday and was going to read more but got caught up watching Arrow on Netflix.