#check out Sparrow Hill Road by Seanan Mcguire

[aidenwaites]

If the Rose Marshall/Sparrow Hill Road books get adapted and Lord Huron isn't doing the score then what's the point

[juicingbeetles]

I read them at 18 - 19 years old, after reading adult fantasy for years (my last urban fantasy at the time was The Dresden Files) and I like them pretty well! A super easy read, fun characters, and I passed them on to my brother, who is a huge mythology person. Its great fun to chat about them with him!

That being said, I'm truthfully too old for them I think? The books are good but for tweens. I was obsessed with Warrior Cats and Rangers Apprentice as a tween and I'll be the first to admit they arent the best. Percy Jackson is probably better than those, I think. If I read them as a 13 year old I would have been obsessed.

They're urban fantasy! I LOVE urban fantasy! I was obsesed with The Dresden Files, Seanan Mcguire's various series such as October Daye and the Ghostroads. But going from the more mature entries in the genre to Percy Jackson was a bit underwhelming.

I'd say if you're grown, check out Dresden Files or Sparrow Hill Road for that sweet sweet U.S. travel-fantasy vibe (bonus: a wizard goes on a heist to steal the holy grail from Hades) but also Percy Jackson is pretty cool! I actually enjoy the show a lot too so check that out as well.

What's it like reading Percy Jackson for the first time as an adult? No nostalgia no expectations beyond the memes I've seen by blogs i follow that did read them as a kid. Despite being a Greek Myth nerd as a kid I never actually got into these books*

*I did buy the second book at a book fair not realizing it was the second book of the series, and when I did I put it on my bookshelf and said I'll buy the first book at some point and just never did

[foreverlostinliterature]

4/5 Book Deals

Good morning and happy Monday! :) I hope you’ve all had a wonderful and relaxing weekend. I got woken up by a surprisingly large-ish earthquake this morning, so I’m a bit more tired than I’d like to be, haha, but what can you do. How was your weekend?? Hopefully no earthquake for you guys. 

There’s a ton of really awesome books on sale today, so do be sure to have a look! I absolutely love The Bear and the Nightingale (and the entire Winternight trilogy) and it’s one of my favorite, so I of course recommend that one. I also love  Spinning Silver and Into the Drowning Deep, and I’ve heard so many good things about so many of these! Ring Shout is also a recent release that I’ve been really wanting to check out. I’m actually surprised by how many books there are today, haha. 

Anyway, I hope you all have a truly wonderful start to your week--and happy reading! :)

Today’s Deals:

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden - https://amzn.to/3wDFGZY

Ring Shout by P. Djeli Clark - https://amzn.to/2PEEIvD

Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant - https://amzn.to/31Kaqdo

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs - https://amzn.to/39IqFMG

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik - https://amzn.to/3wwzD9A

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie - https://amzn.to/3fJZtAD

Wicked Saints by Emily A. Duncan - https://amzn.to/3sR17nP

Ruthless Gods by Emily A. Duncan - https://amzn.to/39LXzMm

Heartstopper: Volume 1 by Alice Oseman - https://amzn.to/3dtiIvy

Shadow of the Fox by Julie Kagawa - https://amzn.to/3wsQw4G

The City & The City by China Mieville - https://amzn.to/3rPvsBZ

Sparrow Hill Road by Seanan McGuire - https://amzn.to/3wtrX7S

The Mere Wife by Maria Dahvana Headley - https://amzn.to/3wqQzhv

Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventure, and Innovations by Mary Beard - https://amzn.to/2PC3yfB

Outlawed by Anna North - https://amzn.to/3wuNVqT

Darling Rose Gold by Stephanie Wrobel - https://amzn.to/3dyYSPD

Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard - https://amzn.to/3sTC6Z9

Dinosaurs Without Bones: Dinosaur Lives Revealed by Their Trace Fossils by Anthony J. Martin - https://amzn.to/3sScSKS

Marion Lane and the Midnight Murder by T.A. Willberg -  https://amzn.to/3dzpiRx

Vampire Hunter D, Volume 1 by Hideyuki Kikuchi, Yoshitaka Amano - https://amzn.to/3mmW8sw 

Genuine Fraud by E. Lockhart - https://amzn.to/2R31VId

The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson - https://amzn.to/3rOTsFu

The Book of V. by  Anna Solomon - https://amzn.to/31MPHpl

NOTE:  I am categorizing these book deals posts under the tag #bookdeals, so if you don’t want to see them then just block that tag and you should be good. I am an Amazon affiliate in addition to a Book Depository affiliate and will receive a small (but very much needed!)  commission on any purchase made through these links.

[thoughtfulfangirling]

January 2021 Books

I tend not to come to dislike or hating things very easily. Generally, the things I try, I can find a lot I like in them and go with the flow. I feel like it doesn’t make me very good about recommending things because I’m not too picky once I get invested in things, but here are my takes on the books I’ve read this month. (I can be super picky about what I pick up in the first place, but once I overcome that and get a foothold in something, the above applies.)

Anyway, belatedly, here’s last months reads and blurbs on my thoughts under the cut (long)

1. A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J Maas

I somehow didn’t realize this was YA. It has the plot simplicity I’m used to seeing in YA but it definitely got darker and more sexual than I would have expected for the genre. I actually rather appreciate this series for that reason. It did some things alternatively I didn't expect and was quite delighted by it. Fantasy, romance (f/m), fairies, light political intrigue (setup for book 2), etc.. I have since read book 2 and would have caveats about this depending on who was interested.

2. This is How you Lose a Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone

This was amazing! A quick read of poetic language and dark love across sci fi warring factions. Primarily told through a series of letters exchanged back and forth between protagonists and focused on the characters.

3. Sparrow Hill Road by Seanan McGuire

What a great ghost story! it's told a lot like a series of short stories that come together into a winding narrative of a ghost's journey through the roads of America. Heavily American mythology vibes. Fascinating world building, intriguing characters, and beautiful message and arc. I'm thinking I might pick up more from this series in October. I got pointed in this book's direction due to how the way the book is structure feeling like a great depiction of trauma and how things get segmented and out of order and intangible, and it was just a really neat book. Would definitely recommend.

4. No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us by Rachel Louise Snyder

I’ve now read a fair amount on the topic of domestic abuse, but they have largely focused on the individuals involved, and while this book does pick particular individuals as an example of extreme DV, this book zoomed out and looked at this problem from a broader perspective, talking about stats and looking at environmental and systemic factors. It’s a dark book that gets heavy and dissects sensitive situations but didn’t feel like it failed to humanize the issue, sometimes more so than a reader may expect. I definitely found it an insightful and interesting read. It’s the first book in quite a long time that was a physical book I held in my hands. I expected I might struggle too much between it not being audio and being nonfiction, but I moved through it quite quickly.

5. Her Royal Highness by Rachel Hawkins

This was a re-read. It’s a cute little wlw class romance. I think I read it in 2018, and it was fun to revisit. It’s a quick read with some enjoyable characters, and for those who do audiobooks, some cute accents. 

6. The Magician’s Assistant by Ann Patchett

This was a beautiful story about grief and the way our connections open us up to new possibilities and changes in our lives if only we’ll reach out grasp them. It’s a slow paced story, functioning mostly in the internal monologue of our protagonist dealing with the loss of the man she’s loved and the things she comes to find out she didn’t know about him. 

7. Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

This was another reread, doing a chapter an evening with Empty. It helped so much to listen to this a second time between being able to see the pieces put down and not listening to it at such stressful times and in such a fragmented way. I love how it is somehow a puzzle, a haunting, and a journey of growth in an old relationship that seemed doomed to fail in so many ways. Plus I love big, sarcastic, sentimental butch disaster Gideon so goddamn much. XD 

8. Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Córdova

This was very enjoyable, but I can definitely tell that I’ve outgrown a lot of YA. It’s not that there’s anything wrong these stories-I would have loved to have grown up with this book-it’s just that it lacked a complexity I’m getting used to and that I look for in these stories. I’m so glad though to be seeing more writers of color writing experiences and characters more like them getting attention in the literary world, and I will continue to find reading these stories worth it to get glimpses into that, but I wish I saw more of this sort of hype for these writers around more adult books. It’s out there I’m sure; I just have to find it yet. Working on it! But for a YA reader I think this is a great story. I like the worldbuilding so much and the costs of the magic and the journey. I might still have to check out book two when I need an easier read. 

9. Well, That Escalated Quickly: Memoirs and Mistakes of an Accidental Activist by Franchesca Ramsey

I’ve been holding onto a hard copy borrowed from a friend of this for well over a year now. I got this book around the same time I got my hands on So you Want to Talk About Race and thought they were going to have very similar contents. I was incorrect. Well, That Escalated Quickly is much more about what it means to have a popular online presence. It was a really great read in a time when being online is, right now, for many of us, the only consistent way we can interact with others. I really appreciated her sharing her stories of her mess ups both as someone who needed to be called out and as someone who, for a time, was considered a ‘call out queen’ and her thoughts on community responsibility and bearing responsibility on both ends of those spectrums: it’s not just a person who messes up who bears a responsibility to act with community goals in mind to reduce harm, but also the responsibility of those who call out and when and how those might look for most effectiveness for change, personal wellbeing, and community responsibility. (The term community responsibility I’m using probably comes more from Conflict is not Abuse than this book, but I could very well see this book being a great primer for Conflict is not Abuse and might rec this to someone not yet ready for the later.) 

10. A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J Maas

This book was a roller coaster. I started off really excited about some ideas and themes it was exploring that I don’t really see done hardly ever and was really intrigued. About a third of the way through, it did something that I felt very much undermined one of the themes I was enjoying a lot, and up until the very end, I was very close to deciding against reading book three. At pretty much that last minute though, it intrigued me enough to want to see how a thing would be played out and a resolution would be found. I don’t even know if I’d say I super liked the book and thus series by the time I was done reading this one, but I was intrigued. Sometimes I get the feeling the author doesn’t trust her audience and spells certain things out way too much, sometimes to the detriment of the plot, and I’m really not a fan of the ‘so totally outclassed, all odds staked against the heroes’ thing that’s pulled in this book that comes out of nowhere and when this time we actually have powerful characters but here we are. I don’t think I’d actually recommend the series to others unless I knew their tastes aligned well, but I think I will be finishing it. 

[betweenelsewherenevermore]

"Sparrow Hill Road" Book Review

Check out my review of Seanan McGuire's "Sparrow Hill Road"

Sparrow Hill RoadSeanan McGuire Sparrow Hill Road introduces us to the world of Rose Marshall, the Phantom Prom Date, the Girl in the Diner, the Hitchhiking Ghost, the Girl in the Green Silk Gown. McGuire drops us into the Twilight with the coldness of a sudden wreck, with Rose as our guide. Rose is a hitcher–a ghost and psychopomp who walks among the living. She’s able to take on physical form…

[stupidbluegirl]

Thanks to @ficbredeamor for tagging me!😎

1) 🎃 pumpkin: favourite season?

Fall. Because it's the end of (gross) hot & humid weather.

2) 👻 ghost: do you scare easily?

Yes, unfortunately.

3) 🍭candy corn: what’s your favourite kind of candy?

ALL OF IT. Snickers, Twix, Take 5, Kit-Kat, Salted Caramel Milky Way, Reese's Cups, Hershey's with Almonds, Almond Joy, Peanut M&M's, Starburst, Laffy Taffy. JUST GIMME IT ALL.

4) 🧛‍♂️ Vampire: what is your favourite supernatural creature?

Just plain ol' ghosts.

5) 🧙🏼‍♀️witch: what superpower would you have?

Hmmm...mess with time like Piper on Charmed.

6) 🧡 trick or treat: what was your favourite Halloween costume?

I had a really great witch costume my grandma made for me: long dress, sparkly cape, floppy witch's hat.

7) 🐱 black cat: are you superstitious?

I used to be, when I had season tickets to a local hockey team. I'd wear the same jersey to each game if the team was winning, eat the same meal before games, never said the words "shoot out " or "shut out" outloud during games, etc etc lololol.

8) 🎲 ouija board: if you could change your name; what would you change it to?

Something not as commonplace as Amy, that's for sure! Do you know how many Amys I went to school with? Ridiculous. Hmmm I like the names Jordan and Eleanor so probably one of those.

9) ⚰ graveyard: do you know any scary stories?

Yes, there is a supposedly haunted cemetery near where I live called 13 Graves. Rumor has it it's either the graves of students (11 students plus the teacher) from a school for the deaf who were murdered by the caretaker OR died of a disease OR were sick from a disease and the caretaker burned the school down to stop it from spreading. The 13th grave is said to disappear (legend has it the disappearing grave is that of the caretaker), the wind blows and howls inside the gates regardless of the weather and the ghost of a boy with a lantern will chase your car as you drive away. It's under constant surveillance now. I'm bummed cause I want to check it out.

10) 💀 skeleton: have you ever broken a bone?

I've broken my right wrist 3 times and my left one once.

11) 🐺 werewolf: what is your favourite urban legend?

Phantom prom date/vanishing hitchhiker! Seanan McGuire's novels Sparrow Hill Road and The Girl in the Green Silk Dress are great retellings of the legend.

12) 📽 horror flick: do you like scary films? If so, which one is your favourite?

Not really. I stick to Halloween films like The Addams Family, Sleepy Hollow, etc.

13) 🏚 haunted house: would you prefer living in the city or country?

Neither. I hate crowds and bustle and I've lived in the country and it can be creepy. How about small town near a city?😉

14) 🧟‍♀️ zombie: do you think you could survive a zombie apocalypse?

Lololol NO, definitely not.

15) 🖤 cauldron: what kind of potion would you create, if you had the opportunity?

Felix Felicis! I could use some liquid luck.

16) 🌕 full moon: you you prefer nighttime or daytime?

Nighttime. Cause I'm home (or at least not at week).

17) 🌽 corn maze: what is your favourite autumn activity?

Watching fun Halloween movies, I guess. I really don't do ~activities.

18) 🧙🏼‍♀️ broomstick: what exciting places have you visited?

I've barely been out of my boring state. I'll have to go with Chicago and St Louis.

[astringofmadhousefloozies]

Oh man I haven’t been tagged in one of these forever. @forthegothicheroine tagged me for ten books I wanna read this year. No particular order:

Wuthering Heights by Charlotte Bronte. I attempted it like years ago, need to actually read it through.

Paperbacks from Hell by Grady Hendrix. My librarian has a copy and will probably lend me it!

The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix. The library’s been very good about getting in his actual novels, so I;m sure I’ll get a hold of it.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. I finally read Hill House earlier and it fucked me up.

Let the Old Dreams Die by John Ajvide Lindqvuist. I like his novels, I’d love the short stories.

Seanan Mcguire. I haven’t started any of her series that aren’t Wayward Children, so I’ll just put her entire bibliography. I’ll start with Sparrow Hill Road and Middlegame because they’re at the library.

Finish the Temeraire series by Naomi Novik. I adore it, but set it aside so I could focus on other things (and not blow through the whole series in a month). 

Sunshine by Robin McKinley. I’ve been curious about this for ages, but had trouble finding it (because I thought it was by Novik, for some reason).

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. I have next to no idea what this book is about, but everyone who’s read it just screams incoherent praise, so I wanna check it out.

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison. Similar to above, except I actually know what goes on and it sounds like a delightful read.

Uhhhh. I’ll tag @uncledante, @loppumon, @eebles-eebly, and anyone else that feels like setting a goals list for reading this year.

[unicornempire]

When the Ghost Roads are calling, there's only one place to go - Welcome to the Last Dance, your favorite new haunt on Sparrow Hill Road. Best burgers and fries this side of the afterlife; just don't forget to tip your waitress! I've been teaming up with author Seanan McGuire to make a series inspired by her work, and if you've never had the pleasure of reading one of her books you can pick up a fresh copy of Sparrow Hill Road on Amazon or your local book store with a cover illustrated by yours truly!

Check out the new [Seanan McGuire section] at Unicorn Empire!

[ninja-muse]

Bookwyrm Readathon, Day 8

Day Eight: Wrap-Up | The mundane has returned and our fun is over. Wrap-up your whirlwind reading week with what you were able complete and your general opinion on what you read.

SUCCESS!

I didn’t think I was going to manage my list, but then I DNFed Of Books and Bagpipes and that freed up time. (Probably that means I cheated. Ah well.) And I think the chapters of London were shorter than the average so far, which also helped.

Not counting Of Books and Bagpipes, I ended up reading 117 pages of London, 58 pages of How the Marquis Got His Coat Back, 302 pages of Sparrow Hill Road, 314 pages of The Kiss Quotient, and as of this writing, 12 pages of Neanderthal Opens the Door to the Universe by Preston Norton because I needed another desk book. So … 803 pages. Not bad. And I got through most of the challenges, too.

Thoughts on Books

Of Books and Bagpipes by Paige Shelton - My goal was to finish this since I was halfway but I quit it instead. It was decent but not captivating and I realized I didn’t care enough about the mystery or characters to keep going.

London by Edward Rutherfurd - I’m slowly plugging away at this one because it’s long and full of historical information that’s making me decompress with other books every so often. My goal was two chapters and I did that. It’s an all right book, more interesting for the historical detail and the way Rutherfurd shows the evolution of the city than for anything happening with the characters, who are relatively predictable and stereotyped. (There’s the angry redheaded family, the greedy thin family, etc.) It’s also twenty years out of date on historical thinking and it shows. I’m back to having this as my bag book now, at least for a few chapters.

How the Marquis Got His Coat Back by Neil Gaiman - My first success for the Dragon’s Challenges, as this was definitely under 150 pages and has been on my backlist since it came out (and my TBR pile since last year). I actually wrote a review for this one because I finished it during my review dump, so click the link for my thoughts.

Sparrow Hill Road by Seanan McGuire - Another one that’s been on my backlist and TBR pile since it came out in 2014! And a book with ghosts, which sort of fulfills the “book with monsters” challenge. I enjoyed this one quite a bit. The style felt more mature and literary than what I’m used to from McGuire, it’s steeped in ghost lore and Americana, and the structure of it was interesting too. It’s a good summer read for people who like spooky but not scary and a nice side-story to the Incryptid series too.

The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang - I don’t generally read straight romance, but own voices “autistic girl hires Vietnamese-Swedish escort” was too good a premise to pass up. (*checks off “diverse book” and “outside preferences* challenges*) This was sweet and cute and fun, right on the line between “solidly good” and “decidedly all right”, and had me relating to (and shipping) the characters from the start. Lots more sex than I’d expected, though.

Neanderthal Opens the Door to the Universe by Preston Norton - This probably counts as “diverse” and “outside preferences” too, but since I’m only 12 pages in, I’m not counting it. (Fat protagonist, queer author, I generally read YA with girls.) So far it’s interesting but hasn’t sold me. I’m going to give it my standard 50-70 page push, I think, and see. One of the book reps who stops by work really liked it.

The only challenge I didn’t manage was the 450 book one. Since I figure I read at least 200 pages more than if left to my own devices, I’m okay with that.

Also, apologies for the archaeopteryx. I ran out of dragons.

Have you read any of my TBR for the readathon? Do you want to?

[theemperorsfeather]

justabrowncoatedwench reblogged your post:I realized that if I invert the setting of those...

PLEASE check out Seanan McGuire’s Sparrow Hill Road, and it’s upcoming sequel. I think you’d both love it.

Thank you!

[unicornempire]

Grab a bite of Seanan McGuire’s Sparrow Hill Road series! I’ve really got to get my butt over to Barnes and Noble to check out the new covers. 

[justabrowncoatedwench]

PLEASE check out Seanan McGuire's Sparrow Hill Road, and it's upcoming sequel. I think you'd both love it.

I realized that if I invert the setting of those noxious posts, I can at least understand the underlying feeling of unease. I’ve been on a lot of long-distance drives, I’ve been through parts of most states in the US, I understand there are places where you just want to get through as fast as possible, because they feel deeply unsettling and unpleasant and horrible. The genre standard, of course, is that the creepy unsettling wrong-feeling places are those that haven’t been planned or developed to within an inch of their lives and then encased in concrete and asphalt; sometimes they are the remains of settlements but often it’s just land that hasn’t been completely covered with yet-another series of strip malls and other banal ugly architecture. I’ve felt unsettled once in a rural place, but many times passing through cities or small towns. And I think that even if I had more experiences with Concerns in the middle of “”“nowhere””” the whole genre of romanticizing how creepy and terrifying everything is outside that isn’t human-controlled would still infuriate me. How the hell do essentially the same groups of people pass around a million zillion “save the [wild critter we’ve decided is cute/useful]” and other pro-environment posts and also perpetuate these narratives about the land itself?