#I've did dnf a lot of books this year though

[villainousauthor]

I wonder if I should do a reading review of 2024

[ninja-muse]

2024 Year-End Reading Wrap-Up

Reading-wise, I think 2024 was about diligence. I kept reading even when I felt slumpy. I managed my goals of minimum one book off my physical TBR per month, minimum 20 non-fiction titles, and 75 of the books I wanted to get to. I didn’t do so great at keeping my book acquisition down, but at least I got rid of as many as I took in (and a lot of the books I bought were used or cheap). I even took in fewer reading copies and managed to pass on a fair number of them! I didn’t quite get to my 2023 total of 128 books and I didn’t quite manage 45,000 pages, only 44,865, but that’s okay. They’re kind of wild goals and I got darn close. Of the 126 books I did read, 29 were off my TBR and 38 were reading copies. That means that 59 were library books, which, thank goodness for libraries! This is why I donate to mine every year.

What I didn’t do so well on were most of my other goals. (2023 for comparison.) I’m still steadyish on Canadian and female authors, steadyish on classics, up on authors of colour (!), but sadly way down on gender-diverse authors. I’m going to have to find more enbies and genderqueer folks I want to read, but that’s hard as it still seems like most non-binary fiction goes towards the dark and grim and realistic and most of my reading choices goes towards the light and hopeful. I will happily take suggestions.

I’m most bummed, though, about breaking my StoryGraph reading streak of 567 days. I went home for Christmas on a late-night flight and the next day, I was just not awake enough to read dense non-fiction. I am looking forward to outdoing myself on this new round.

Yearly total: 126, excluding rereads and picture books Queer books: 37 (29%) Authors of colour: 19.5 (15.4%) Books by women: 77.5 (61.5%) Authors outside the binary: 3 (2%) Canadian authors: 12 (9.5%) Classics: 7 (5.5%) Off the TBR shelves: 29 (23%) Books hauled: 47 Books unhauled: 47 ARCs acquired: 40 ARCs unhauled: 46.5 DNFs: 10 Rereads: 3 Picture Books: 11

Outside of the stats and goals, I think my choice to mostly leave Tumblr was a good one. I’m feeling a lot less pressure to read The Right Things or whatever everyone else is, and less pressure to be constantly posting, though I do miss seeing what you all are reading. Please, please, feel free to tag me in reading wrap-ups and reviews, especially if you think it’s a book I’d be interested in. I do check my mentions regularly. (Friendly reminder that I’m ninjamuse on Storygraph and LibraryThing, if you’d like to follow me there.) And not posting as much as helped me get more writing done. I’m not quite finished the first draft of the cozy fantasy WIP, but I’m within sight of it, if I manage to get my mojo back after Extreme Retail Season.

My goals are 2025 are fairly reasonable and predictable. 126 books and 40,000 pages, and I've set up StoryGraph challenges to encourage myself to read 50 new releases and 50 backlist titles. I'm going to try for 20 non-fiction again too, though this year that was very much by the skin of my teeth. And of course, the enby author thing. And I'm going to finish the dang WIP and restart an old one. Wish me luck?

Click through for more book recs and breakdowns:

Books Reviewed Eve - Cat Bohannon I Love Russia - Elena Kostyuchenko The Briar Club - Kate Quinn Evelina - Frances Burney How to Become a Dark Lord (and Die Trying) - Django Wexler The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport - Amit Basu The Disenchantment - Celia Bell The Dollmakers - Lynn Buchanan Submerged - Hillel Levin A History of Ancient Egypt - John Romer

And if anyone’s interested, here are the rest of my year’s highlights: Top Five Fiction (not ranked) Rose/House - Arkady Martine How to Become a Dark Lord and Die Trying - Django Wexler The Briar Club - Kate Quinn Navola - Paolo Bacigalupi The Disenchantment - Celia Bell Top Five Non-Fiction (not ranked) History of Ancient Egypt, Volume 3 - John Romer Malady of the Mind - Jeffrey A. Lieberman Sociopath - Patric Gagne I Love Russia - Elena Kostyuchenko The Demon of Unrest - Erik Larson Most Impressed By: I Love Russia - Elena Kostyuchenko The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport - Amit Basu Evelina - Frances Burney Nicked - M.T. Anderson

Most Disappointing: Wordhunter - Stella Sands Bad Glass - Richard E. Gropp The Black Bird of Chernobyl - Ann McMan The Dishonest Miss Take - Faye Murphy The Voyage of the Damned - Frances White Longest Book: A History of Ancient Egypt, Volume 3 - John Romer Best Queer Book: A Desolation Called Peace - Arkady Martine

Did I beat 2023? No, but 126 is really close to 128. Did I beat my Best Year Ever? No. That would be 2021. Did I read more classics? Yes Did I read more Canadians? No Did I whittle my TBR shelves down any? No. Was it a good reading year? Average. Breakdowns by month:

January February March April May June July August September October November December

[aurorawest]

The Scottish Boy by Alex de Campi - 5/5 stars

This book managed to rip my heart out at least 3 times. I loved it. Medieval enemies-to-lovers slow burn; very romantic. Kinda read like fanfiction at times but in a good way. 10/10 would read a follow-up love story about Arundel and Captain Wekena. If you like Captive Prince, give this one a try.

Reforged by Seth Haddon - 4/5 stars

Pretty good bodyguard romantasy. Ironically CS Pacat blurbed this one (another am-I-in-the-matrix moment). The world was interesting and I enjoyed the politics, though they're definitely not as complicated as other SFF politics I've gone feral over (see: Captive Prince, Winter's Orbit, A Memory Called Empire). I ordered the sequel after I finished this.

The Doctor's Date by Heidi Cullinan - 4/5 stars

A Power Unbound by Freya Marske - 5/5 stars

Where do I start? I love, love, LOVE A Marvellous Light. It's one of my favorite books ever. None of the rest of the books in the trilogy could live up to it, really, because it's so good. You'll notice I rated this one 5 stars though, because quite honestly I fell prey to a bit of The Academy Paying The Lord of the Rings Trilogy Its Due syndrome. I did love this book and thought it was better than A Restless Truth (which I still loved!) but part of that is, quite frankly, just due to the fact that I prefer m/m romance to f/f romance.

Anyway. This was such a good finale to the trilogy. I loved that the romance was a giant middle finger to purity cultists. I loved that one of the mains was Italian. I loved finally getting the story of what happened to the Alston twins. One thing I thought was really cool was how, viewed from the outside, you totally get why Edwin is such a loner. I really admire from a writing perspective how Marske pulled that off.

I feel like there's a lot to be said about what Marske was trying to SAY with this book, but I definitely need to reread it first before I can articulate any of it. The purity culture stuff is obvious, but the magic system too. I feel like Jack when he's almost able to connect everything in his mind into a bigger idea, but he can't quite get there.

I've got a special edition from Illumicrate coming, so I'll be rereading it when I have that.

Oh also, this book was the embodiment of all that one tumblr post -

The Guncle by Steven Rowley - 5/5 stars

I saw this in bookstores for years before I finally gave in and bought it. The blurb makes it sound insufferable and twee. Ignore the blurb. This was such a good book about grief and learning how to live again after terrible loss.

I Like Me Better by Robby Weber - 4/5 stars

At last I can stop getting the Lauv song stuck in my head whenever I set eyes on this book (it's stuck in my head as I type this). Pretty standard-issue YA, but it was cute and had a good message.

The Stagsblood King by Gideon E Wood - 4/5 stars

Another book about moving on from grief! This is the second book in a trilogy. When I was trying to determine if I wanted to read on beyond book 1, I scoured the internet for information about what happens in books 2 and 3. Eventually I decided, hell, I enjoyed book 1 well enough, even if what I want to happen in the rest of the trilogy doesn't happen, they're worth reading. SO, to that end, I will tell anyone looking for info that Tel gets romantically involved with a new man in this one, which, eh. I still want him to somehow end up with Vared. It was still quite good though.

In the Lives of Puppets by TJ Klune - DNF at pg 82

So funnily, we were at the bookstore the day I was about to start reading this, and my wife pointed out Ravensong (also by Klune) to me and said, "Do you have this one?" I made a face and said, "That's an older one of his books and I'm wary of his early work after that horrible Verania series. I don't think I've ever read an author as hit or miss as TJ Klune."

I wrote the above when I was 60 pages in and now I have officially DNFed this. Listen. You know how in Thor: Love and Thunder, Taika Waititi was clearly given free rein to do whatever he wanted, so all of his worst impulses made it to the final cut unchecked? Yeah. That's what this book is like.

Here's my Storygraph review: I see Klune is officially Too Big To Edit now. This book has exactly the same problem that his awful Verania series had—a joke that's funny at first but quickly grows tiresome when it's repeated five times per page. The emphasis on Victor's asexuality was also weird and read like Klune was just super proud of himself for writing an ace character.

Lion's Legacy by LC Rosen - 4.25/5 stars

Queer, YA Indiana Jones, but less #problematic. This book had some eerie similarities to my own archaeology adventure novel(s), which made me wonder half-seriously if I somehow know Lev Rosen? Anyway, I feared this would be very heavy-handed and not nuanced on archaeology's ethical dilemmas, since it's YA and also the current culture is to view said dilemmas as completely black and white with no nuance, but I was pleasantly surprised. It manages to examine that, queerness, and daddy issues, plus has time to be a genuinely fun and exciting adventure story. Highly recommend.

Too White to be Coloured, Too Coloured to be Black by Ismail Lagardien - 4/5 stars

I picked up this memoir in a bookstore at OR Tambo airport in Johannesburg as research for Six Places to Fall in Love, since Percy is coloured. A pretty brutal read, but good, and definitely good research. The author was a photographer and journalist through the most violent years of apartheid.

The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson - 5/5 stars

Two nonfiction books in a row?? This is the second book by Erik Larson I've read, the first being the excellent The Devil in the White City. I'm not, in general, all that interested in WWII when it comes to military history, but this book is about the day to day lives of Churchill and the people surrounding him (with brief stops to visit FDR and high-ranking Nazis sprinkled throughout). This is a very, very good book, and I recommend reading it if only as a reminder of the resilience and bravery of ordinary people under terrifying circumstances.

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh - 5/5 stars

Holy shit. Holy shit is this book good. Imagine the love child of Lost, Person of Interest, and Battlestar Galactica, but queer and with multiverse shenanigans thrown in.

I need everyone to read this book. Now. Yesterday. Get to it.

[ofliterarynature]

NOVEMBER 2024 WRAP UP

[ loved liked okay nope dnf (reread) ]

Kicking Ice • (The Bride of the Blue Wind) • Animal Farm • The Lost Manuscript • Heart's Blood • Hotel • The Liar's Knot • The Education of Pip • The Glassblower • Terec and the Wall • (The Hands of the Emperor) • The Village Library Demon Hunting Society • One Good Turn • The Silence of Bones • (The Raven Tower) • The Art Thief • Safer Places • Letters to Half-Moon Street

* * * * * *

Letters to Half-Moon Street - an absolutely charming epistolary regency romance told mostly through letters between the main character, his siblings, and his love interest. The mc is gay and demi-sexual (and a younger son) in a queer-norm England where gender norms have been replaced by rules about birth order, and there's magic - it's very Sorcery & Cecelia meets KJ Charles (if not quite as good). As I said, very charming, but when I read the two shorter follow ups, One Good Turn and The Education of Pip, it was pretty clear that the epistolary format (and romance) helped cover a lot of hurts. I applaud the author for including an aromantic character and trying to write stories about finding your place and self-recovery without romance, but in her attempt to create comfort she sacrificed any real development to the characters or the plot. (also, while the rich upper class characters are exceedingly nice to the lower-class characters, we still almost never see any of their servants. hmm.) There's a few more books in the series that are romances (and at least one looks like it might be epistolary), so we'll have to see if she improves. Fantastic covers though!

Safer Places - a comic collection that was supposed to be for my book club but didn't quite work out unfortunately! These comics were very strange and dreamlike, making me not quite sure what happened but very much wanting to think about it. The artist also returned to a story idea several times, sometimes taking on an entirely new shape, and it really lent a sense of connection to the book as a whole. Would recommend!

The Art Thief - I'm not really one for more narrative-type nonfiction or for true crime, but non-violent crime involving fine art? I don't know why I find the fine-art world (and crime) so fascinating, but I do, and I enjoyed this! It was actually a fairly nice, chill read to distract myself with in the middle of the election.

The Raven Tower - revisiting my first Ann Leckie 5 years later - this was incredible! Slow yes, but watching the story build itself out of all the pieces was absolutely fascinating. 100% satisfied with the ending, but it was also a bit of a cliff-hanger? I'll be absolutely fascinated to see what kind of stories Leckie felt compelled to write that take up half of the Lake of Souls collection.

The Silence of Bones - DNF @ 11%. I was very interested in this as a historical mystery with a female protagonist set in Korea, but leery of it being YA. I admit I wasn't a big fan of the audiobook narrator, but an hour and a half into the audiobook I still hadn't hadn't settled into the story, so decided to drop it.

The Village Library Demon Hunting Society - This was very high on my watch-list for 2024 due to my love for CM Waggoner's first book Unnatural Magic, but was somewhat leery of the cozy-fantasy vibes it was giving. My first shock came when it turned out to have a fairly modern and contemporary setting and was not in a fantasy other-world, though as expected it was definitely going for the cozy-fantasy and elderly-person-solves-murder vibes that are popular right now, and with which I've personally had mixed results. Overall though, it was aiming to be a sort of meta-commentary on cozy mystery tropes, which I think it was successful at! I think it definitely did better than its sci-fi cousin, the Midsolar Murders series by Mur Lafferty. I just wish it had a better title, this one is a bit of a mouthful and only semi-relevant.

The Hands of the Emperor - started slowly rereading this a few months ago with the intention of getting around to my first reread of the sequel. Honestly, the perfect book to be reading during an absolutely horrible election, I imagine I'll be burying my head in the Nine Worlds a lot in the upcoming years.

I wasn't quite ready to head directly into AtFotS after finishing Hands, so jumped around to some of Victoria's short stories I hadn't read yet. Terec and the Wall is the second Terec story - I admit I really don't have much interest in this sub-series? This one in particular was at least interesting in the second half because of its crossover with the Greenwing & Dart series, so I recommend you don't read this until you've read that. The Glassblower was...fine. It showed promise, but it was so short! I hope the second part fleshes out more, but idk. It's also related to the Ysthar collection of books, which is the only part of the Nine Worlds that I haven't bothered to revisit yet. To skip ahead a bit, the third of the Sisters Avramapul novellas is finally out! It's been a while so I decided to reread the first two books, starting with The Bride of the Blue Wind. It's a Bluebeard retelling and deals with pregnancy/body horror and is not for the faint-hearted! Sardeet was SO YOUNG in this, I don't think I quite realized before. Good but not my favorite of the series.

The Liar's Knot - loved loved loved. These books are so good even if (or because?) all of the plot twists are somewhat soap-operatic. I think this is my favorite in the series because the characters are a bit more settled but also having to learn to trust each other. And all of the secret identity reveals!!! I had a wonderful time.

Hotel -DNF @ 8%. picked this up at a recent library sale because a mystery at a hotel sounds cool! Then I started it on audiobook and realized it was a thriller (not my thing) written by a guy in the 60's (ditto). What I read was certainly passable and maybe I could have gotten through it, but I lost interest.

Heart's Blood - I've seen Marillier's work around somewhere, and picked this one up at a library book sale at some point. I got so close to DNF'ing this early on and almost wish I had. It wasn't bad I think, it has some beauty-and-the-beast vibes, but it felt excruciatingly slow, and something that I couldn't quite put my finger on was annoying the heck out of me. It made me wish more times than I should admit that I was reading Chalice by Robin McKinley instead. I'm not entirely scared off of trying Marillier's other work, but I'd proceed with extreme caution.

The Lost Manuscript - DNF @ 19%. A surprisingly lighthearted novel told in letters about a woman who finds a manuscript in a hotel bedside table and proceeds to track down the original author, only to discover someone else had added to the manuscript at some point after he lost it. She and her contacts try and trace its history back to find the mystery author. Seemed very nice, if you're looking for something calm and lighthearted? Just not what I was looking for at the time.

Animal Farm - somehow managed to escape reading this for school, and a podcast I listen to loves recommending this, so I picked up a copy at the same sale as Heart's Blood. I feel like I spent most of the book sagely nodding my head, like yup, that's how it can be! Very smart book, not a favorite but I'm glad I read it.

Kicking Ice - backed this on Kickstarter ages ago when I was still deep in my Check, Please! fervor. Finally picked it up because it was short and I needed to finish another book for my owned-tbr challenge. It was ok. Maybe a better choice if you're a young girl interested in hockey or sports in general? I also didn't like the art style used for most of the book, so a pass from me. I'm sure a lot of the info about the NWHL is also outdated by this point.

[todisturbtheuniverse]

i've finished The Game, and now i'm going to go on a weird tangent. here are some thoughts. the Veilguard spoilers are vague. this is also about the book Somewhere Beyond the Sea, for some reason, so spoilers for that, too.

i finished reading Somewhere Beyond the Sea last week. honestly, 10% in i did not think i was going to keep going. i pushed through because i rarely DNF a book, and i figured it was just taking me a minute to get from one fictional place (the last book i'd read) to another (this one).

that was probably part of it. the other part was this book was so relentlessly positive. against impossible odds, our main cast of characters triumphs. i don't think there was ever any doubt in my mind that that was how it would go. i knew enough about this author and this particular story to know that.

and by the time i closed the book (or whatever it is you do with an ebook, yeet it into the digital void or whatever), i thought, well, that was nice, but it would never happen.

my own brain kind of took me aback, in that moment. it's...a fantasy story. there are many layers of it would never happen, here. what the hell does that matter?

i just kept mulling it over and over until i went to bed. it would never happen. everyone was too nice. too many people stood up for the right thing. good triumphed over evil. the government was beaten back, at least for now. the heroes are safe, and loved, and fed, and housed, and unafraid.

on the one hand, i understand my reaction. i need a lot of salt in my sweet. i want to see the heroes get bloodied (physically or metaphorically, not picky). i want them to lose something to make the eventual victory feel earned. i don't think that's what this book was intending to do, and that's completely fine--it's subjective, whether that's what you'd like at the moment or not. i do think the characters certainly go through a lot, it just wasn't enough for me.

on the other hand, it feels a little like i've allowed the general state of things to twist me into a more cynical version of my usual self, one who doesn't believe good things happen. i'm definitely talking about the world at large here (climate change, AI, american politics, many more things). though personally, i've also had a...dip...these last few years. and this is even though, personally, lots of good things have happened to me! it's just that some bad stuff has happened, too, and it's definitely been a trial working my way out. to some extent, every time i get some breathing room, something else happens. it's exhausting. but it's like i sort of expect that now, for me and everybody else, to be continually ground down. i don't exactly like that, but it is where i am. i see the angle i'm approaching everything from, at least.

so. Veilguard. i thought a lot while i played about how everyone in the group is too nice to each other. the friction is limited and short-lived. i wanted a lot more of it. there were parts of the game that really hit for me, to the point that i'd probably call it a 7/10, but i kept coming back to how nice everyone was. i've always liked Hawke's messy Kirkwall crew best, so it's understandable that i'm annoyed about the lack of drawn-out hissy fits amongst the Veilguard.

but i also get wanting that. wanting people to be nice, kind, understanding, empathetic. to have their own shit together enough to understand your shit. it's not necessarily for me, for whatever reason, but it's not inherently bad. i can make up more friction for fanfiction.

i also think that, first time through, i probably missed some muted friction that comes through in party banter. is it a dragon age game if all the banter just doesn't trigger often enough and you miss half of it? a good example is Harding and Lucanis. early in my second run i heard some banter from them that i just did not get the first time, Harding being so suspicious of him, reserving a special arrow for him, etc. i saved Minrathous the first time through, so i didn't even get the quest where Spite takes Rook into Lucanis's head and a version of Harding is there, suspiciously looking out. it's not super overt, her suspicions and concerns are reasonable, but i hadn't seen that distrust in my first run of the game, so their later conversation over coffee didn't hit the same. that's going to be a feature of a game in this style and this size, that there is so much content and sometimes you miss some of it, especially when most of the folks on the team seem to be real adult-adults and are more muted about their issues with each other.

i said this was going to be a tangent. anyway. loved pretty much all the Solas stuff. the moment-to-moment gameplay was fun in both classes i've played so far. i'm midway through my second run and have been able to take my time and explore more, since i'm not co-piloting with my husband and i'm not driven by the frantic urge to know how it ends, and the bits and pieces you find out in the world are pretty cool. the lore drops, also largely fascinating. i get a little deflated by those answers to huge, long-time worldbuilding questions, but only because i love the journey and hate that it's over, lol. that in some way, some possibilities have ceased to be.

i definitely wanted more romance content, but i'm liking the Harding romance a lot more than i liked Neve (sorry, Neve) and looking forward to romancing some others on the team in the future.

it wasn't my favorite dragon age game, but i'm glad we got it, finally. and i hope it's good enough that they'll get to make another one, whatever that looks like.

[accidentalspaceexplorer]

2024 in Reading:

Last year, I read a lot, more than I have any year for the last 10 years. By my count (which includes DNFs) I read 233, of which 30 were re-reads and 16 were DNFs. This is the first year I've tracked my reading where I broke 200, which is really wild to think about.

Ultimately, I had a really good reading year too. I found a lot of books I loved (I had 41 5-star reads) and DNF'd a relatively small proportion. My average rating was 4.13, which was the highest it's been since 2021.

I read a bunch of amazing series: I caught up on the October Daye books, reading 14 books in less than a month because I was desperate to know what happened next; I read all of the Greenwing & Dart books by Victoria Goddard and fell in love with Jemis & his adventures; I read the science-fantasy Innkeeper series by Ilona Andrews and got caught up in the worldbuilding; and finally the Evander Mills mystery series, which paints such a vivid picture of queer life in San Francisco in the 50s.

Some other miscellaneous facts:

Fully 3/4 of the authors I read from were women

Almost half of my reads were sequels (45%)

Over half of my reads were >5 years old (56%)

I read my first horror book in over 5 years (I didn't like it lol)

How did I do on my goals? Not great. I did not succeed at reading down the number of series I have ongoing that I haven't caught up on (I added three more than I removed this year). I did not succeed at reading down my TBR, I only managed to bring down the number two or three months out of the year, and it ballooned by a couple hundred early on. I did manage to read a chunk of the backlist titles from favorite authors I have outstanding (34/220) but as you can see there are still a lot left. I'm doing better on award winners, of which I read 13. That means I'm up to 142/203, which is honestly pretty good! I'm happy with that. Finally, I'm still plugging away at my old top-of-TBR list, of which I read 6 this year. I'm down to 206 of them, so the end is absolutely not anywhere close to in sight. Someday, maybe, just like everything else, this list will no longer haunt me.

Overall, though, I had a wonderful reading year, and as I think it's likely I'll be escaping into fiction to avoid the real world this upcoming year, I'm hoping for another good one in 2025.

[cultivating-wildflowers]

2024 Reading - July

Finally, things are turning around! I managed to pick some good books to read this month; even the printed books weren't the trial they have been for me lately.

Total books: 10  |  New reads: 8   |   2024 TBR completed: 6 (1 DNF) / 26/36 total   |   2024 Reading Goal: 44/100

June | August

potential reading list from July 1st

#1 - All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy - 5/5 stars ('24 TBR, audio)

mild content warning for language and some sexual content

McCarthy's writing is some of the most gorgeous and atmospheric writing I've ever read. It's also incredibly depressing. I want to continue with the rest of the trilogy but I'm in such a mental funk after finishing All the Pretty Horses that I'm scared to keep going.

More like this: McCarthy's writing reminds me of Wendell Berry in some ways. They both have a soothing, melancholic style that is deeply immersed in the period and setting of their chosen stories. But where Berry tends more towards righteous anger, McCarthy tends toward bleak inevitability.

#2 - The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson - 5/5 stars ('24 TBR, audio)

Not at all what I was expecting from this long-time resident of my TBR. Thoroughly enjoyed. Absolutely would not recommend to most people, but I DID recommend it to Kenzie:

#3 - Shadows in Flight by Orson Scott Card - 2/5 stars (audio)

Possibly the worst missed opportunity in this series yet. We could have had so much fun with this one. It could have destroyed me emotionally. ANYTHING could have happened. Instead we had the most dull, drawn-out little episode where Bean is basically a vegetable (heh) and his bratty children argue for 200-odd pages. The discoveries aren't incredible, the revelations fall flat, the emotions don't exist, the characters are artless caricatures, and near the end I was yelling in frustration because Card had to go and get snotty and superior in the name of writing a "realistically hyper-intelligent person". All of the little things I dislike about Card's writing? All here.

Side note: I got the actual, physical audiobook CDs for this one and when I went to pick up my holds, the librarian looked at me, looked at the CD case, and said, "You know these are CDs, right? Some people don't realize that." Hoopla didn't have this one on audio and I was already physically reading two books with two more fresh from the library, so I was kind of desperate. The downside is that I can't speed up an audiobook when it's physical CDs.

Second note: The part that had me yelling in frustration had to do with Card's prediction of why artificial wombs might be outlawed in most places in a futuristic world, and why his characters thing most places are unreasonable. His take: "Because they're unnatural. Or they deprive surrogate mothers of a livelihood. Lots of reasons, but it comes down to the real reason: artificial wombs suggest that women aren't necessary, and that really bothers a lot of women." Your Mormonism is showing, Orson.

#4 - Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens - 4/5 stars ('24 TBR)

the usual content warnings apply

This book, something I probably never would have picked up on my own, came to me as a recommendation. There was some content I didn't care for (easy to skim), but the writing grabbed me from the first page and the pacing, characters, and setting were incredible. I haven't finished a printed book this quickly in ages.

#5 - The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street by Karin Yan Glaser - 4/5 stars ('24 TBR, audio)

Simply adorable.

More like this: I've only seen the movie, but it immediately reminded me of "Ramona and Beezus". The description also says it's in the tradition of "The Penderwicks", which I haven't yet read.

#6 - A Morbid Taste for Bones by Ellis Peters - 4/5 stars (audio)

Tumblr rec time! Some of y'all have been chatting about this one, so I snatched it up.

It was a fun, cozy sort of read. I definitely enjoyed it for the most part, though I felt like the ending kind of dragged. Not particularly interested in pursuing this series.

More like this: I'm not a huge fan of Father Brown (personal taste), but this had the same tone that I recall from the Father Brown collection I've read.

#7 - Network Effect by Martha Wells - 5/5 stars (reread, audio)

As good as ever.

#8 - The Food Explorer: The True Adventures of the Globe-Trotting Botanist Who Transformed What America Eats by Daniel Stone - 5/5 stars

What a treat!!! I was recommending this to people before I even finished it. Quick, fun, engaging, and informative; one of the best nonfics I've read all year. Now I want a buddy adventure film about Fairchild and Lathrop.

More like this: "Salt: A World History" by Mark Kurlansky.

#9 - Agent Garbo: The Brilliant, Eccentric Secret Agent Who Tricked Hitler and Saved D-Day by Stephan Talty - 5/5 stars ('24 TBR, Top 5 Anticipated Read)

"There are three kinds of people," [Pujol] wrote later, "those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what happened."

Ahhhhhhhhh this one was fantastic. Like many, I was first introduced to Agent Garbo via tumblr, and I was really hoping this book would do his story justice; it absolutely does. It is expertly compiled and written. An adventure from start to finish.

Side note: I read excerpts of this to my dad on our drive to church and already have him interested in it.

More like this: "Agent Zigzag" by Ben MacIntyre. <- also shared this one with my dad (he read it in two days) and he loved it and others from MacIntyre.

#10 - System Collapse by Martha Wells - 4/5 stars (reread, audio)

Still not quite sure exactly how I feel about this one, but I enjoyed it overall.

DNF

On Death and Dying by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross ('24 TBR) - Either I'm dense or this (at least in the first chapter) is another case of someone with a highly specialized field of study interpreting the larger world through that lens, combined with some historical nuances that I'm completely missing. Possibly it's a worldview conflict and I ought to have pressed on for my own edification, but every page was a fresh slog.

The subject matter itself is fascinating, as is the viewpoint of someone in the medical field in the 60's. (Hello, common practice of fully sedating women during childbirth. I hate you.) The delivery is dry and academic. (Side note: I didn't realize until browsing reviews that THIS BOOK is where THE five stages of grief comes from.)

The Last Shadow by Orson Scott Card - Gave up within the first chapter after rolling my eyes every other paragraph. Hot garbage, which the good folks in the Ender subreddit confirm. I don't care how the series officially ends. Children of the Mind was a good enough conclusion for me.

The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World by Eric Weiner - Not my style at all. The man took his self-ascribed title of "grump" way too far.

Updraft by Fran Wilde - Somehow I didn't really pay attention to the fact that this was YA fantasy until I started reading. That's on me. But between an incoherent opening action scene and over a dozen Special Words introduced in the first chapter alone, it quickly became obvious that this wasn't for me.

Currently Reading:

Disorderly Knights by Dorothy Dunnett - As expected, I'm still working through this one.

Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell - I just started this one.

[bedlamsbard]

The one New Year's habit I've had pretty consistently for the past decade+ is going through my yearly reading spreadsheet just to see how much I actually read -- I've got spreadsheets from 2012 onwards on this computer, though I think I started in 2010. I also start the new spreadsheet for the year on January 1. I do it in Excel, with sheets for Books, Shorts and Novellas, Comics, and Audiobooks. At one point I had a DNF sheet, but I don't tend to DNF books so I got rid of it last year or the year before. (This is simply because I just don't read books I'm not likely to finish -- I don't really read new-to-me authors and I do a lot of rereading.) I color code throughout the year at the end of every month; the color coding is based on vibes, and 2023's colors tended to be pretty faded/muted. I read more nonfiction for fun this year than I have in many years because I did so much WWII and Cold War research for Home, which was somewhat of a relief to me because I'd been worried that I'd lost my ability to read nonfiction for fun in graduate school. (For those that don't know, I'm a history PhD student, which means all I do is read nonfiction, not for fun even if I enjoy my subject.) I don't count any reading I do for school on my spreadsheet.

Total numbers this year:

Books: 103

Short stories and novellas: 15

Comics: 6 (5 trades, 1 single)

Audiobooks: 55

These are pretty low numbers for me; I had a couple months this year where I only read 3-4 books, which is for me a very, very bad sign. It is noticeably better than 2022, where I read under a hundred books, the lowest numbers since I started tracking (and 2022 was a really bad year for me). My best year on record is 2019, where I read 200 books. I think this was the highest year for audiobooks, though -- I listen to audiobooks in the kitchen. (And I do a lot of repeats, because I have very specific qualifications for what I'll listen to on audiobook, and there were a number of occasions this year where I listened to the same audiobook on repeat three or four times in a row, listened to something else, went back to that one. Anyway, the Code Name Verity audiobook is great if you want to cry in your kitchen.)

I'm a very, very fast reader; I also do around 90% rereads -- lower than that this year because I went on that nonfiction spree. I do so many rereads that it's not really worth asking me what the best book I read this year is, because I've read most of them before. I usually do a couple of nearly-full author backlist rereads over the course of a year, which might take several months; this year was Barbara Hambly and S.M. Stirling. (If you've got an author you really like, it's actually quite fun to do this in chronological order, but if it's someone like Hambly, you do have to clear 4-6 months for that. Or longer if you're not as fast a reader as I am.)

anyway. 2024 spreadsheet's open now and I'm carrying over anything unfinished from 2023 onto it, so we'll see how this year shakes out.

[fujoreads]

Weekly Update (18/8/2024)

Hello hello, everyone! I was supposed to have published this a few hours ago as it's Monday here already, but alas! This will be a shorter post, just updating what I've been up to this past week :)

Surprisingly, I haven't touched a book besides finishing The Unwomanly Face of War. It was such an impactful book, and I think it mentally prepared me to finally watch Come and See which has been on my movie bucket list for years now. The things told there are brutal and will make you cry for these women who gave so much for their motherland only to be ignored after the war is over. Definitely a new favorite, 4 stars.

Speaking of reading! I finished 2 more Visual Novels, and dropped another. The DNF goes to The Fruit of Grisaia—it had everything to be good and keep me hooked, but the reliance in anime archetypes had me bored out of my mind. So sorry to all the Grisaia fans! Anyway, during the first days I also finished Sexcalibur: Knights of the Pound Table, which was another dumb smut, and one I deeply hated having to read. It was so lazy and in my humble opinion, not sexy at all. Would have DNFed it but I did end up skipping a lot of H-Scenes by the end of the game. 2 stars.

The other 2 VNs were Queen of Moths and un/FRAGMENT. Two very short reads, perfect for a weekend session! Queen of Moths is more of a Pixel Art Horror game. It plays a lot like those older point and click games but, as short as it was, it still makes you tense and ready for a scare. I enjoyed it! 3 stars. un/FRAGMENT. is another short game, more of a linear story this time. It was made for Nanoreno, so the dev only had 5 days to make everything. It was only 10-minute long and had the dev more time to develop the story more, I think it would have been a pretty decent work. The art is pretty nice, and the reveal was not all that bad, although my emotional connection to the character's feelings suffered from my short exposure to the story.

I also started Needy Streamer Overload and it's been so fun! It's definitely keeping me past my screen time limit but it's been a while since I've been this addicted to a game. It's somewhat dark and if you're not in a good space mentally, I wouldn't recommend it. I'm almost done with all the 22 endings! I can't wait for another game from the same devs called Yunyun Syndrome!? Rhythm Psychosis to release. I'm SO excited for that one specifically, since I can properly relate to the protagonist's struggles more (though that's not a good thing, necessarily LOL)

As commissioned by @diowatcher, I've been watching Serial Experiments Lain and I'm currently on episode 6. It's getting extra trippy right now, and I'm enjoying it a lot! The opening is so gooooood, I can't believe I had never heard it before. I've also been listening to the opening to Revolutionary Girl Utena and aagh it's so good! I'm adding it to my anime list.

And finally, I watched the 2020's The Boys in the Band yesterday. It was SO GOOD!! I had no idea this was a cinema adaptation of the Broadway revival, but it makes so much sense; it reminds me of the Falsettos stage revival, though that one doesn't have a movie adaptation, as far as I'm aware.

Anyway, it was truly a queer movie—as depressing as ever. It was an open ending too, ugh! I have a love/hate with queer works, as they have only started to become a bit more lighthearted these past years. I love these darker stories, but they also leave me bleeding (figuratively.) This is going to my favorites!

And that is all for last week! Let's see what this one brings us~

[redheadgleek]

March Books

My parents were here for 10 days and we were doing work around my house, so I did not get as much time as I would have liked for reading. So I focused on some shorter books.

What I Read: 

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern. The latter half struggled a bit and lost a plot, but it was still good and the ending was lovely if a little wistful. I do feel like it's one that would benefit from a rereading, so I'm listening to it on audio. 

Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia Hersey. It's a short book. It could have been a New Yorker article and that would have been sufficient. One of the reviews suggested thinking of it as a sermon, which helps somewhat with the framing, but it still needed help.

The Proposal by Jasmine Guillory. The last 1/4 of the book infuriated me so much I nearly DNF, even though I had enjoyed the first 3/4. The MC completely and totally pushes on FC's established boundaries and then throws an absolute fit when she doesn't give into him.

Most Ardently by Gabe Cole Novoa. A sweet trans retelling of Pride and Prejudice. A few minor quibbles: the author aged Oliver/Elizabeth down to 17 which was not needed and was annoying and the setting was moved to London, which did not work with the scene where Oliver tramps across mud to take care of Jane. 

The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles by Malka Older. The second book of the Mossa and Pleiti murder mystery series that takes place on Jupiter. Overall, I enjoyed the story a lot; I have issues with "does she really like me or is she just spending time with me" internal diatribes with adults.

Romancing Mister Bridgerton by Julia Quinn. I've enjoyed the Netflix Bridgerton series as the smutty cotton candy that they are and the ebook was on sale. It was fluffy and light (and light on the smut too, hurumph) and I didn't appreciate that the plump herione slimmed down before she was attractive.

How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith. Audiobook. He's a sociology professor and a poet, which made for a wonderful combination in this exploration of how slavery is written into our foundation and our current mindset. Excellent book.

At First Spite by Olivia Dade. The story was a touch unbelievable, but it's a romance so that's forgivable. There were some really lovely scenes in this book as the protagonist battles depression. The medical stuff was almost believable. But. I'm not sure if describing plump female characters as "lush" is any better than "voluptuous."

A Short Stay in Hell by Steven Peck. The author is LDS and I'm not sure that he really realized that his version of Hell (that we are all young and white and delightful and the same) is what the church has taught as what eternal life with God would be like and why I had nightmares at 12 about dying. 

The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister. Such beautiful prose. There were some descriptions that will linger with me for a long time, I think.

What I'm Reading:

Howl's Moving Castle by Dianna Wynne Jones. Audiobook. It's been more than 20 years since I last read these books, so it's been a treat. 

The Book That Wouldn't Burn by Mark Lawrence. I think I'd be a little more excited about it, if it felt like hadn't just finished a book with a similar sort of theme (Cloud Cuckoo Land).

Still making my way through A Short History of Nearly Everything. It was so engrossing in the first couple of chapters ...

What I'm Reading Next:

I'm in a middle of a reading lull right now. So many books to read and just having a hard time picking one.

[m-madeleine]

hi! for the end of the year asks: 1, 3, 9, 14, 22, 24?

Hiiii!

1. How many books did you read this year?

Officially 33, although counting is difficult because I interned in publishing this summer and read some books that weren't out at the time. I keep thinking of more books I finished half a year ago. There's one that's announced for February and I guess I'll be counting it for this year instead??

Then there were also a couple that I technically finished, but am not counting for my goodreads challenge for Reasons, like I was basically skimming because of fast review deadline...or found so artrociously horrible I don't even want it to stain my account lmao. And that last one, I did the final edit for, so I know how bad it was even after multiple professional editing rounds :P

3. What were your top five books of the year?

In no particular order

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik (EL!!! El, the girl who was born to be evil and fights tooth and nail to stay good out of spite T-T) (Also I realized I operate nigh daily on the exact same level of vigilance as a kid in a school that will KILL YOU and that's....a lot)

The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane (chill nonfiction about hiking and sailing mostly around Britain)

Shadow Girls by Carol Birch (girl's schools and ghostssss)

The Death of Bees by Lisa O'Donnell (two girls bury their own parents in their backgarden; macabre in the best ways, grim but full of love)

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn (essentially a fictional true crime case where you actually get the satisfaction of unpeeling all the layers through a round dance of POVs, left me Pondering for daysss)

Bonus: Along the Trenches by Navid Kermani (a travelogue that gets into the nitty gritty of the history and politics of Eastern Europe and the Caucasus) (I've only gotten halfway through, but I have to mention it NOW because it's amazing and Kermani has been cemented as my non-fiction crush)

9. Did you get into any new genres?

Not really! I def felt a taste for dark stuff this year though.

For the opposite of Getting Into, I had to read a lot of r0mance novels and new adult fiction for work, and mmmmmmm no. No shade, I did enjoy a couple, even though I'm not sure I would've finished them if I didn't have to. But they're just so formulaic T-T I need my books to have a kick.

14. What books do you want to finish before the year is over?

Worked hard on finishing In Männerkleidern by Angela Steidele. It's somewhere between an academic work and a conventional biography? The subject is a working class AFAB person in early 1700s Germany who lived sometimes as a woman and sometimes as a man, had a really interesting life, married a woman but eventually got busted and executed for "sodomy with a woman".

I think Steidele is pretty solid about dealing with the transman or lesbian or?? controversy potential, refers to the main character as whatever gender they were presenting as at the time and when discussing the possibility of interpretation at the end gives evidence for and against all possibilities fairly imo.

You're usually not gonna catch me reading history stuff outside uni, but this was a treat.

22. What’s the longest book you read?

Mansfield Park!

24. Did you DNF anything? Why?

Oh yea. For one, a lot of that was involuntary through work, often you'll only get a 50 page sample, sometimes the rest isn't even written yet.

One thing for work I DNFd more or less voluntarily was What Doesn't Kill Us by Ajay Close (sent in for translation licensing). I actually loved it and for the first and last time felt that famed editor "This is MY manuscript and I'm FIGHTING for it" feeling. Buuuuut it's very dark and visceral and I wasn't in a great headspace at the time, so I kind of just quiet quit on it during my last week. I did still write it a recommendation for as far as I got.

Outside of work, The First Day of Spring by Nancy Tucker. Only took me a couple pages to realize it was based on Mary Bell. I actually thought it was very well done, but it was tough to read just because of the subject and even flipping forward didn't help. I don't think I'll go back to it, I feel like I kind of know what it was doing and where it was going and I liked it, but don't need to experience it page by page.

[ninja-muse]

2023 Reading Wrap-up

I feel like this year was pretty average in terms of my reading. Some great books, some awful books, a lot of books in the middle. And while I feel as if I kept hitting slumps, I don’t think my stats really reflect that. I kept reading and even though I didn’t hit my goal of 140 books, that’s more because I read more thick and dense books, spent more time writing, and am one year further from the direness of 2020 and 2021.

This also seems to have been the year of T. Kingfisher for me (and also Ursula Vernon). I read several of her horror novels, as well as Digger and a bunch of the ebooks she makes free for patrons, which are really easy go-tos when you want something light and right now. I was kind of surprised when I realized she was my top author because usually that’s Seanan McGuire.

And I read more ebooks in general, because why should I wait for two months for the library to get a physical book in circulation when I can wait two weeks for it to come in on Libby? I’m still trying to reserve Libby use for lighter, faster, less involved books, because I tend to end up skimming a little more and there’s something about physical paper that helps me retain info better when the text is dense.

Now, stats! Yearly total: 128, excluding rereads and picture books Queer books: 44 (34%) Authors of colour: 15 (11.7%) Books by women: 74.5 (58%) Authors outside the binary: 7.5 (5.8%) Canadian authors: 14 (10.9%) Off the TBR shelves: 39 (30.4%) Books hauled: 41 ARCs acquired: 57 ARCs unhauled: 60 DNFs: 9 Rereads: 3 Picture Books: 6

If you look at last year’s stats and the year before’s, I’m pretty much holding steady in terms of my diverse reading—a little more than a third queer, about 60% female and 10% Canadian, around 6% gender-diverse authors. I’m way down on authors of colour though, and I didn’t hit my stretch goal of 20 Canadians, so those are things I’ll have to pay attention to in the year to come. It would be nice if I could manage more queer books too, but that’s not something I’m going to try for quite as much.

Two of my reading goals for the year were to read more books from my TBR than I acquired, and to keep my ARC levels about even. Seems like I pretty much hit them! I expect that 2024 will see fewer book acquisitions because a lot of my 2023 haul was bookstore visits with my dad and we’ve now hit pretty much every store in the city. I was honestly kind of surprised that my ARC problem stands where it does. I was so sure that I was going to have at least 10 more incoming books than outgoing. Go me! My spring ARC purge really, really helped.

I did all right on the rest of my reading goals. All but one book read (The Great Cat Massacre), which was the real point of the list! I only managed to finish one StoryGraph challenge, if you don’t count my pages goal, and as always I failed to read as many classics as I wanted. I’m starting to suspect I’m not a classics person, despite my interest in history and historical fiction. If anyone has classics recs for me, let me know?

To be completely honest, though, I'm not sure I'm going to continue posting to Tumblr. I pretty much stopped updating my feed in the summer and I've felt more relaxed, both in terms of Things To Do Each Day but also in terms of my reading. When I was more active on here, I felt pressured to read diversely at all times and though I try to have a healthy spread of perspectives, I know that I generally don't and am therefore a bad person by Tumblr standards. I am curious what my mutuals have been getting up to this year so please, sound off! And let me know if you do want to see reviews and wrap-ups continue here.

(Friendly reminder that I'm ninjamuse on Storygraph and LibraryThing, if you'd like to follow me there.)

And if anyone’s interested, here are the rest of my year’s highlights:

Top Five Fiction (not ranked)

The Hollow Places - T. Kingfisher

Menewood - Nicola Griffith

Bookshops and Bonedust - Travis Baldree

A Half-Built Garden - Ruthanna Emrys

The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi - Shannon Chakraborty

Top Five Non-Fiction (not ranked)

Magisteria - Nicholas Spencer

Diary of a Misfit - Casey Parks

Evidence of Things Seen - Sarah Weinman, editor

Lay Them to Rest - Laurah Norton

Like Every Form of Love - Padma Viswanathan

Most Impressed By:

Shubeik Lubeik - Deena Mohamed

Diary of a Misfit - Casey Parks

The Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard

A Half-Built Garden - Ruthanna Emrys

Most Disappointing:

Tortilla Flat - John Steinbeck

British Columbiana - Josie Teed

A Killing in Costumes - Zac Bissonette

Tauhou - Kōtuku Titihuia Nuttall

Longest Book: The Hands of the Emperor - Victoria Goddard

Best queer book: Diary of a Misfit - Casey Parks

Did I beat 2022? No. Did I beat my Best Year Ever? No. That would be 2021. Did I read more classics? Not even close. Did I read more Canadians? No. I held about steady. Did I whittle my TBR shelves down any? No. Was it a good reading year? Probably about average?

Breakdowns by month:

January February March April May June July August September October November December

[aurorawest]

Reading update

The Haunting Season: Ghostly Tales for Long Winter Nights - 5/5 stars

Again, bought this solely for Natasha Pulley's story, The Eel Singers, which is about Thaniel and Mori from The Watchmaker of Filigree Street. It's set between Watchmaker and The Lost Future of Pepperharrow. I loved it, obviously. The rest of the stories were also really good—a few of them were genuinely really disturbing.

Teacher of the Year by MA Wardell - 3.75/5 stars

This is the first book in Wardell's Teachers in Love series (the second being Mistletoe & Mishigas, which I read last week). I didn't like this one as much, though tbh I'm chalking that up to the fact that it's Wardell's first novel. He uses some very strange descriptors sometimes that really throw me off ('matte' was used once to describe dialogue, which I still can't really make sense of). I also got kind of frustrated with Marvin's freakouts over Olan's alcoholism—not really the fact that they happened, but just like...the pacing of them, I guess? After it happened once, it didn't really feel like there was any escalation of that conflict, just sort of the same conflict happening repeatedly.

That said, I did like the book! The characters are all great, and I really loved how Marvin has to take responsibility for how he can't move on from how his mother's alcoholism affected him, and how he's actually quite unfair to his mother and Olan when they both take recovery incredibly seriously. There was a nuance to that that felt really refreshing.

Fallow by Jordan L Hawk - 4.5/5 stars

Dragon Teeth by Michael Crichton - 3.5/5 stars

Only the Brightest Stars by Andrew Grey - 3.25/5 stars

Beautiful Undone by Melissa Polk - 3.5/5 stars

Fake Dates and Mooncakes by Sher Lee - 5/5 stars

Adorable book and read it made me so hungry. I need to try a mooncake next fall.

Keeping Christmas: Yuletide Traditions in Norway and the New Land by Kathleen Stokker - 5/5 stars

I've had this sitting around for a few years now and figured I should read it around Christmas. It was super interesting—not only did I learn a lot about Norwegian Christmas traditions, I actually learned a lot about American Christmas traditions. Also it gave me an idea for a Christmas ghost story/romance.

The Winter Knight by Jes Battis - 5/5 stars

This book had a dreamy quality to it that was perfect for the subject matter. This is a murder mystery and kinda/sorta a retelling of Gawain and the Green Knight...I think? It's been way too many years since I've read Gawain and the Green Knight. The premise is that all the characters of Camelot are reincarnated over and over and stuck living out their myth cycles.

Death by Silver by Melissa Scott and Amy Griswold - 5/5 stars

Soooo much yearning. Two school friends reconnect over a murder case. Both of them think they're the only one in love with the other. If you're a Freya Marske or KJ Charles fan, this is very much up your alley.

Doc by Mary Doria Russell - 4.25/5 stars

The King's Delight by Sarah Honey - DNF at pg 72

[the-hype-dragon]

Books I read in May

Had kind of a bad start because a) I didn't want to finish reading the books I put down in April and b) I chose to start the month with a pretty "meh" book

The Heir of Night by Helen Lowe - DNF, 1/5

Too much dry worldbuilding and obvious infodumping and not enough focus on action in the moment or character building - like Brandosando on steroids. To top it all off there was only one interesting character. Disappointing because if you read her blog Lowe is obviously well-read and has some decent taste, guess I was just expecting that to reflect a little better in her own work. Didn't like it, though I did like the gender egalitarian society and (relatively) varied female characters.

Dark Lord of Derkholm by Diana Wynne Jones - 4/5

Another fun DWJ story, this time about a wizard family who takes down an evil capitalist from Earth who is exploiting their home world. As someone who grew up in a tourist trap I related pretty hard to the plight of these fantasyland folks. Had a weird anti-capitalist environmentalist message, felt very 90s. There were a couple things I didn't care for (one character is nearly gang-r*ped out of nowhere and there are two cases of insta-love late in the story) but otherwise I really liked it.

King's Dragon by Kate Elliott - reread, 5/5

Hits all of the things I like in a fantasy novel. Interesting constructed world (even if it is just Fantasy Germany and France with Fantasy Christianity lmao), varied and intriguing female characters, the magic is mysterious and kind of scary, lots of interpersonal drama, actions have realistic consequences etc. etc. I love it and highly recommend it, especially if you like ASOIAF, to me it scratches the same itch.

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie - 4/5

I've never read an Agatha Christie book before and I don't know if I plan to again but I really liked this. Am I nearly 100 years late to the party? Certainly. But it had great twists and fun characters.

Prince of Dogs by Kate Elliott - 5/5

Sequel to King's Dragon. I do not know whether to classify this as a reread or not - I know I didn't finish it but as I was reading I kept recognizing things I had read before, right up until I want to say the very last chapter. Anyway: this is one of those books where the action starts on page one and does not stop until the end. All 612 pages of it were a blast to read and it did not drag at all, kind of unusual in a big-ass epic fantasy book. I have heard Things about the later books in the series but I'm hoping they're all at least as entertaining as the first two. Fingers crossed!!!

<><><><><><><><><><><><><>

And that's that. Going in to June my plans are: continue Crown of Stars, reread Deathly Hallows. I see many gigantic books in my immediate future

[herhighnessrps]

1, 2, 4, 7, 12, 17, 18, 24, 25 oop my finger slipped <3

not this....

How many books did you read this year?

so far i've read 66 books! will definitely get to 70 by the end of the year

2. Did you reread anything? What?

this year i reread daisy jones & the six (right in time for the show to premiere) & the simple wild (a favorite of mine, to finally read the rest of the series, which lacked in comparison imo)

4. Did you discover any new authors that you love this year?

ashley poston!!! the seven year slip & the dead romantics were two of my favorite books this year

7. What was your average Goodreads rating? Does that seem accurate?

storygraph says for 2023 my average rating was 3.55, which checks out 💀 i'm still trying to figure out my ranking style, but 3.5 tends to be "was good enough but didn't amaze me" which i feel like i gave a lot of books this year

12. Any books that disappointed you?

always in december, romantic comedy, written in the stars, lessons in chemistry & (unpopular opinion time) beartown

17. Did any books surprise you with how good they were?

as a whole, the bridgerton series has been surprising me by how much i like it! didn't think that would be the case. i was also surprised by just haven't met you yet by sophie cousens, because even though i loved her book this time next year, i haven't heard anyone talk about it, which feels like a miss!

18. How many books did you buy?

you came at me with this question 😵‍💫 not counting my book of the month subscription, because that's technically a year-round christmas gift, i think 24? which isn't terrible!!

24. Did you DNF anything? Why?

i did not! 99% of the time i will force myself through a book regardless of if i don't enjoy it. i think the only book i've seriously dnf'ed is the secret history lmao

25. What reading goals do you have for next year?

read more of the books i own, for one 💀 my book of the month books in particular -- i've been doing that subscription since 2019 and i have some from back then that i haven't touched yet. i want to try to read whatever BOTM i get each month in the same month i received it. as for a number, i might try for 75 books next year, but i don't want to be too optimistic in case i suddenly lose interest in reading halfway through the year. would love to be the kind of person who puts 100 books but no idea how people do that, personally.

[lairn]

For the end-of-year book ask: 9, 12 and 24 please :)

Late reply, for some reason this was labeled "" in my activity?? Anyway, thanks!

9. Did you get into any new genres? Although I read an excess of fantasy, I do tend to dabble in other genres, so nothing is flat-out new. Pale Fire did qualify as "poetry" in Story Graph's stats and I don't normally read novel-length poems. I did read more young adult books than usual this year since I'm getting through the Queen's Thief series.

12. Any books that disappointed you? I thought I would like The Princess Bride because people indicate it's fun and the movie is very cute. But not such luck. I thought the author/"author" was too misogynist, racist, fat-phobic, and generally mean. I also think the movie performances add a lot of energy to the dialogue. I had hopes for The Blind Assassin because my friend lent it to me with the implication that it had an interesting narrative structure. I did not find that to be true and it was about double the length it needed to be. I had to drag myself across the finish line on that one and would have dropped it if a friend wasn't sharing it with me.

24. Did you DNF anything? Why? I haven't returned it to the library yet, so technically I haven't given up on The Feather Thief. It's non-fiction and I think I've coddled myself too much to easily read NF. I find I read a few sentences then put it down. Might try again though! I feel like it's good for me to read facts, haha. I dropped a book called Blood Sugar. An acquaintance at a party recommended it. It was pitched as "serial killer is accused of a murder she did not commit and works to solve the crime to exonerate herself." I thought it sounded trashy but fun. Read about 50 pages and called it because it hadn't started the murder mystery and instead was a dull recounting of the murders the serial killer had committed. Maybe it was supposed to be funny? I think we were supposed to sympathize with the killer. No thanks.