Halloween Read-a-Thon Wrap Up

If you saw my TBR post, you’ll know that I participated in Lauren’s Halloween Read-A-Thon last month. This was the first readathon I’d ever participated in and I had so much fun! It was so cool checking the tag on Twitter and seeing what everyone else was reading, and it worked out to be a great source for horror recommendations! I also found that it really motivated me to read, when otherwise I’d have been putting even more hours into Skyrim, so that’s always a plus!

I managed to read three books over the course of the readathon. I was hoping to read more, but hit a wall with House of Leaves. Maybe the real horror of this book is that I will be reading it for all eternity. Jokes aside, for the most part I am enjoying it, and it is really cool, but it’s also a huge time commitment, and there’s no way I’m lugging it all the way to work with me. I also started The Loney, and could have finished it before the end of the readathon, but it’s not really what I was expecting, and I’m finding it a little slow and hard to get into. I’m aiming to finish both of these books in November –actually, I’m hoping to completely clear my currently reading shelf in November –so I’ll check in when I do finish them.

Now, though, here are mini reviews of the three books I did read! The covers of each will take you to their respective Goodreads pages.

MISERY BY STEPHEN KING

I’ve talked about this quite a bit, but I’m a huge Stephen King fan, and I’ve really been in the mood to read another one of his books lately. I thought Misery would be the perfect thriller, given that I’d already seen the film. At first I found that I wasn’t enjoying it as much as I’d hoped, but then I hit a turning point, and ended up really liking it. It wasn’t actually the thriller aspects of this book that I ended up enjoying the most, but rather it was what King had to say about writing, being a writer, and a writer’s relationships with their readers.

Obviously, this is completely cut from the film, and understandably so, as it wouldn’t work in a visual format. The film essentially strips the novel down to its skeleton, and primarily becomes an escape narrative—which, honestly, I don’t really have a problem with. This shouldn’t be too much of a spoiler, but during Paul Sheldon’s imprisonment at the home of Annie Wilkes, she forces him to write another Misery novel, as she is displeased with the ending of what Paul intended to be the final book. King’s Misery  features excerpts from this novel, and details Paul’s process of writing it. I wasn’t really expecting this, so I was pleasantly surprised.

All in all, it was a really great read, even if I did know the entire plot! Plus, it was really good to read a Stephen King novel again.

RATING: ★★★★☆

---

NAILBITER VOLUME 1: THERE WILL BE BLOOD

Next up I read the first volume of Nailbiter. I didn’t really know what to expect from this as I’d basically bought it on a whim after hearing the premise and thinking that it sounded cool. I ended up really enjoying it. As this was the first volume it was mostly introductory, so it mainly just set the scene and the tone for later volumes. It was a very interesting start though, and I’m already loving the characters. I’m really hoping to pick up the next volume in the very near future!

RATING: ★★★★☆

 

---

BIRD BOX BY JOSH MALERMAN

Of all the books I intended to read, I was most excited to get to this one. I bought Bird Box after seeing it in one of Jen Campbell’s videos, but for whatever reason, I had put off reading it. The premise is that there is something outside that causes people to become incredibly violent when they see it. As such, the characters rarely go outside and when they do, they do so blindfolded. Because none of the books I’d read so far for the readathon had particularly scared me, I decided to create more of an ~atmosphere~ while reading this one. I have a Kindle Paperwhite, which meant that I could read it pretty much in total darkness, and I think that was a big part of why this book freaked me out so much. This book was incredibly gripping. I decided to read it entirely at night and honestly, it was a real struggle to not just sit and read it all in one go.

The fear in Bird Box primarily comes from the complete lack of sight, which is why I think it worked so well for me in terms of freaking me out because not being able to see makes me so anxious. The claustrophobia of this was incredibly well captured, as was the tension whenever the characters did venture outside. I was a little disappointed in the ending, as things aren’t really wrapped up, but to be honest, I couldn’t see it ending any other way without the whole thing seeming rushed. This, and the fact that I think a lot of the fear does come from not knowing what’s happening, or why it’s happening. I loved the experience of reading this and I’d highly recommend it.

RATING: ★★★★★

---

 

So those are the books I managed to read! I’m quite pleased with it, to be honest, even if I didn’t manage to read the six books I’d initially intended to. I’m so, so glad I decided to participate and I’ll definitely be looking into participating in more readathons in the future!

If you’d like me to do more in-depth reviews of these books, let me know! Also, if you participated in the readathon and have written a wrap up post, or reviews for any of the books you read, feel free to send me links! 🙂

 

 

 

P.S. I feel like I’m always apologising for being absent, but I’m sorry I wasn’t around much last week. For some reason I’ve been finding it difficult to write reviews, as if I have a very, very specific writers’ block. I had planned to get at least one post up last week but then sadly we had to have one of our dogs put to sleep, so I didn’t manage to do anything because I was Too Sad™. I’m in much better spirits now, though, so I’m hoping to be back on track this week. Thank you all for bearing with me! 🙂