Ah, August. My last big reading month before school starts. But this is my last semester, so soon I’ll be back to my old reading habits again. As of the end of August, I’m up to 115 books for the year (20 this month, of those 9 were fiction/11 were non-fiction). 14 were from my TBR pile bringing me up to 65 TBR for the year, not bad at 57% of total. The books that spent the longest on my TBR before reading were Dr. Mutter’s Marvels, The Science of Shakespeare, and The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There (all since January 15, 2017). I like last month’s format where I only commented where I felt a need to comment, so I’m running with that here.

• This is How You Lose the Time War (hardcover, fiction).
• Exit West (ebook, fiction, TBR 3-19-17).
• The Mansion on the Hill: Dylan, Young, Geffen, Springsteen, and the Head-On Collision of Rock and Commerce (paperback, nonfiction). Interesting, but I feel like I learned more about the business side of music from No Simple Highway.
• Brazen and the Beast (ebook, fiction). Possibly my favorite of MacLean’s books so far.
• The Cambridge Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics (paperback, nonfiction). Call me Chidi, but I enjoyed this!
• Dr. Mutter’s Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine (audiobook, nonfiction, TBR 1-15-17). I’ve been to the Mutter Museum, but I really had no concept of his role in medicine until I read this. What a guy.
• Sister Revolutions: French Lightning, American Light (hardcover, nonfiction, TBR 1-25-17).
• Return of the Black Death: The World’s Greatest Serial Killer (hardcover, nonfiction, TBR 1-16-17). Absolutely love the deep dive into the data of the plague. I want to own this.
• The Tacwacores (ebook, fiction, TBR 2-2-17).
• The Colony: The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai (hardcover, nonfiction, TBR 1-29-17). Heartbreaking.
• The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There (hardcover, fiction, TBR 1-15-17).
• Napoleon’s Buttons: How 17 Molecules Changed History (hardcover, nonfiction, TBR 2-3-17).
• Heavenly Bodies: Cult Treasures & Spectacular Saints from the Catacombs (hardcover, nonfiction, TBR 1-29-17). Gorgeous and fascinating.
• Dark Cities: All-New Masterpieces of Urban Terror (ebook, fiction, TBR 5-1-17).
• The Science of Shakespeare: A New Look at the Playwright’s Universe (hardcover, nonfiction, TBR 1-15-17). Should have been called “Here’s a science-y thing that happened in Shakespeare’s lifetime. Did he know about it? Probably not! But let’s try to find it in the text anyway.”
• See You Later (paperback, fiction). I loved this book as a middle schooler, and I can understand why – even though the main character is a jackass, the second half of the book is lovely.
• The Ghost Bride (ebook, fiction, TBR 2-12-17). Gorgeously magical and haunting.
• LaGuardia (paperback, fiction). Loved, loved, loved this look at travel bans and immigration.
• My Own Words (audiobook, nonfiction, TBR 2-5-17). I knew she was a brilliant badass, but damn. This was interesting and empowering; I’m glad I got the audio to hear some of hear actual statements and speeches.
• The World Without Us (paperback, nonfiction).
• A Map of Home (ebook, fiction, TBR 3-11-17). I fucking love Randa Jarrar’s books. There’s something about them that rubs me raw in the best way.