Book Burning and Greeny Jungles (Book Ramblings)

I had some reading time while I was away. Yay! I read three books, and brought a fourth that I've read online. Here are my ramblings about them.


Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)

A novel about a man who burns books for a living. I know, I should get smited for not having read this earlier. It's a speculative fiction classic and all that. I tend to enjoy dystopian future books, so it's not much of a surprise that I liked it.


Zahrah the Windseeker (Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu)

This is young adult speculative fiction. It is set in the Ooni Kingdom, a civalisation on a jungle planet. The main character, Zahrah, has to come to terms with having dada hair (hair with vines in it). I loved the world and the plant technology, and that fact that Zahrah's coming-of-age included learning lessons about her culture as well as herself.

As a note to this, I'm trying to get a bit of a feel for the market as I edit my African fantasy. So if anyone knows of other African-inspired fantasies, I'm open to suggestions.


I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You (Ally Carter)

I brought this book in America, as it was about spies. I bet Bex doesn't announce she's a spy when she enters the US. I didn't like the start, but it did get better. It seemed as though the things I was interested in didn't get much of a mention, like the other classmates, how Macey got on in her early days and what they did in lessons. I will say that I too was a person who was excited the first time I got to use the wipers on a car.


Diary of a Wimpy Kid (Jeff Kinney)

A middle-grade humour book, about the daily life of a boy who is wimpy. This book was first available online, for free. You can still read it here. The online success led to it being picked up for publication. Sometimes these things do happen. It's just rare. Anyway, I enjoyed the book enough to buy the first one.