Books Are Jazzy: ARC August

Ophiuchus by Alexis Leriger de la Plante and Natasha Tara Petrovic was one of the books I read for ARC August. It's a graphic novel that is released today, August 27th, and I know I'll have to pick up a physical copy of this sooner rather than later!

The eponymous main character, Ophiuchus's life gets thrown off track when someone breaks through the gate that she has been guarding for ages, followed almost immediately by two robots who rope her into joining their quest to defeat an evil virus.

While the stakes of Ophiuchus are life and death, I really liked that the story was mainly focused on the emotional connections between the three main characters. My favorite aspect of Ophiuchus was the art style and how color was used to tell the story!

I can't wait to see more from these authors in the future, hopefully in a similar art style!

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

What are your favorite graphic novels? Let me know in the comments below!

-Laura

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Thank you Edelweiss+ and White Lion Publishing for a free ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions expressed herein are my own and not influenced by the company or its affiliates in any way.

Urban Aviary: A Modern Guide to City Birds by Stephen Moss was one of the first non-fiction books that I read for fun in a good while. I received a free ARC of the book through Edelweiss+ and it was the first book I read for ARC August! Urban Aviary was published by White Lion Publishing on August 6th.

As it's name suggests, Urban Aviary describes various birds that live in urban settings. Combined with the description of the bird species at hand, including information regarding their size and wingspan as well as how local human residents have reacted to sharing their space with these birds, was a beautiful water color illustration of the bird. The illustrations were done by Marc Martin and were my favorite part of the book in the sense that having the birds shown in water color illustrations rather than through photography was a fun surprise for me, and thus sets Urban Aviary apart from other books about birds that I've read in the past.

Stephen Moss is one of Britain's most well-known nature writers and has previously published a variety of books about birds and birding. Marc Martin is an Australian illustrator whose work has been featured in GQ and Wired, among other publications.

Overall, Urban Aviary was a fun palette cleanser while still teaching me a boatload of interesting facts, for example that the name for Alcatraz island came from the Old Spanish word meaning "pelican"! It also opened up my eyes to a different way of looking at my environment when I'm in an urban setting.

Rating:⭐⭐⭐

Have you ever read any books about birds? Do you pay attention to the birds that live alongside us in our cities? Let me know in the comments below!

-Laura

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ARC August is an annual readathon hosted by Read.Sleep.Repeat., with the aim of helping book reviewers get through their piles and piles of unread ARC's (Advance Reader's Copies) during the month of August. This is the 6th year of the readathon, but the first time I'm taking part in it! You can read Read.Sleep.Repeat.'s original announcement for it here!

This year they have created a host of challenges to take part in during the readathon, including a word search, a crossword puzzle, and a bingo! Personally, I'm most looking forward to hopefully filling out the Bingo card as I read through some ARC's. Check out the empty card below!

I'll be posting pictures of the card on our instagram stories as I fill it out, and you can follow along here!

When I started making my TBR, I knew it would end up being way longer than what I'll actually have time to read, but I wanted to really challenge myself and see how many of these books I could read through during my last two weeks of vacation before I head back to college. And now, without further ado, my TBR list for #ARCAugust!