#end of the year book ask

[smalltownfae]

End-of-the-year book ask: 4 and 17?

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

Not really and I am still upset about that. After some years of finding at least a new favourite author per year I was getting used to it so this year was a bit of a disappointment.

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

A few. There are books I really enjoyed, but I was expecting to like them. These are the ones that I doubted would work for me but they did.

The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin

I didn't enjoy the first book in the Earthsea Cycle even though I loved the themes, but I still decided to continue the series since at least the themes and general ideas were good (plus, I like some of Le Guin's essays and her scifi books). The second book in this series is a fan favourite so I expected to like it much more. I did like this one and I found an improvement since the first book, but it was still just alright. Now, the third book was the one I enjoyed the most and the one that surprised me because no one seems to have it as their favourite in the series. So far, it is my favourite. There are still some weird choices in the execution, but I guess I enjoyed this one more because of the dynamic between the two main characters (the other two books focused on a single character) and because the plot with the magic being gone appeals to me in general besides the coming of age story. More details here.

Glitterland by Alexis Hall

I had read Boyfriend Material by this author before and I enjoyed it well enough, but romance (especially contemporary romance) isn't my preference. However, this book made me laugh so much and it also made me sad at times. It isn't perfect, but it worked really well for me and it was unique in comparison to the few contemporary romance books I tried. I also think this was a case of right book at the right time, which helped. I have a review here for more details.

Heartbreak Boys by Simon James Green

Like the former, I believe this was the right book at the right time situation. This one besides being contemporary romance it's also YA. I found it pretty funny and it reminded me of a teen movie. Both this and the former book are gay romances btw. Review here.

Luck in the Shadows by Lynn Flewelling

I had tried this book twice in past years, but never got far into it. This time I forced myself to continue because it was picked for my friends reading group and after chapter 8 I had a much better time with it. It might have also been a case of right book at the right time since I handled it much better this year than my former attempts. Looking back I would give it 4 instead of 5 stars and I have fallen a bit out of love with the series because of some disappointments, but I still remember how much I was enjoying it for a while. This is the first book in the Nightrunner series. The writing is not the best and the plot and world might look a bit cliché, but I really liked the fact that there were women in positions of power and that there were two bisexual main characters and there was no focus on the romance. The first and second book must be read together because the first one leaves a lot of unfinished business and the characters go on a side quest for a while. The series fails to have a stance on adult/minor relationships though because it seems to forgive in one case and vilify in another one. It is a weird one and it will not be for everyone's taste. I am not even sure why I loved it so much, but I still really really enjoy the first four books and more or less half of the fifth, but that one also brings me a lot of pain with how badly handled a lot of things were. The sixth is just a reminder of how the series failed me. If that was a standalone it would work fine as a fun adventure, but after the buildup to a dark plot that went nowhere I was left very unsatisfied.

Sorry for the late reply and thank you for the ask :)

[the---hermit]

17 and 25 for the book questions 💕

Hello!!

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

Definitely there were a few! The first to come to mind are what ended up being two of my favourite books of the year Gideon The Ninth by Tamsyn Muir and The Priory Of The Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon. I have surely been surprised by other books as well, but those two really did it for me.

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

I won't lie to to you I haven't sat down and thought about it yet, but I will definitely keep up the goal of reading as many books as I can from what I buy during the year. I started having this goal last year and I have been doing quite good so far so I will keep it up. I should also find a goal to get more books I physically own off my tbr but I haven't come up with anything yet.

Send me a end of the year book ask!!

[themelodyofspring]

Hey! For the ask game, 34 and 39 please ☺️

Hiya Lina ☺️ Thanks for the ask.

34 - What’s a book you’ve recommended the most this year?

Woah okay kind of tough to answer because I'm always recommending The Stormlight Archive and Riyria books to people. But I think I've recommended The Sandman comics to people more since the Netflix show came out and I listened to the audiobooks. Definitely recommended them a lot in our discord server 😂

39 - Five books you absolutely want to read next year?

(but will absolutely fail to read them!)

Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree (acquired!)

The Lost Metal (Mistborn #7) by Brandon Sanderson (delivery expected on Jan 1 🥳)

The 4 Secret Sanderson project books I pre-ordered through the Kickstarter.

Emma by Jane Austen (acquired 2 editions 🥲)

Ocean's Echo by Everina Maxwell

Greywaren (Dreamer trilogy #3) by Maggie Stiefvater

[gatesofmyimagination]

Hi! For the "End of the year book ask":

1, 9, 13, 14? :)

Hi! ^^

1.  How many books did you read this year? 21 but i had way to many i dnfed in like the middle of the book. so it should be higher if i'd count those in (also i am positive i'm gonna finnish the one what i am reading right now so the ending is probably gonna be 22)

9. A book that was better than you expected it to be; The catcher in the rye

13. The funniest book you read this year; My year of rest and relaxation

14. A book that made you cry; If Cats Disappeared from the World

Thank you so much! <3

[revvethasmythh]

10 and 22 for the book ask game!

10. What was your favorite new release of the year?

As it turns out, I read very few books that came out this year, but I did quite recently read A Demon's Guide to Wooing a Witch by Sarah Hawley and it was an extremely fun paranormal romance/rom-com, very much recommend if that genre is in anyone's wheelhouse!

22. What’s the longest book you read?

Lmao, as it turns out the longest book of the year for me was New Moon by Stephanie Meyers (which, yes, I was rereading for shits and giggles and it is very fun to read for shits and giggles).

Second longest was Fury's Kiss by Karen Chance (some of the longest, more absurd urban fantasy books I own and absolutely one of my top 3 favorite UF series. I think this was the fourth time I reread that book since high school? Always a good time)

Ask me about books!

[bulletnotestudies]

5 (I might be exposing you hehe) and 12!

5. What genre did you read the most of? i mean it's romance (SHOCKER!), a girl had to cope with all the exam stress somehow abshdjkq

6. Any books that disappointed you? oh for sure, i had solid expectations for love on the brain by a. hazelwood, since i did quite enjoy the love hypothesis, and then another big disappointment was all of us villains by a. foody and c.l. herman bc the premise was so so good (hunger games but with magic!) and the execution was so lackluster and so intensely *ya* i just read so it could be over yk. also, icebreaker by a.l. graziadei - it wasn't bad in the least and i did rec it to some friends who ended up giving it 5 stars, but for me it just didn't give what i'd expected (it was my top most anticipated release of the year and fell a lil' flat)

end-of-year book ask <3

[vorbarrsultana]

i finished rereading the first four vorkosigan books (+ "the flowers of vashnoi" because ekaterin!!!), and you really have to feel for piotr vorkosigan because what a nightmare life, truly.

imagine you are born just in time for your world to be unified by dorca vorbarra and rediscovered by people from wider galaxy. things are finally looking good, for the first time in 600 years of isolation there is no more feudal infighting, and the promise of galactic medicine and technologies being available lightens everyone's perspectives. sure, your grandpa is called count pierre "le sanguinaire", but who doesn't have terrible relatives?

then you are 15, and suddenly your planet is attacked by the aggressive eugenecist space empire hell-bent on subjugating your people and turning them into disposable material for unethical genetic experiments. you flee into the mountains, away from your family, and create guerrilla forces from locals sworn to your dad, and it's really terrible for a very long time. you have no high-tech weapons and no food, you sleep in a cave in the dead of winter, and the cetagandans try everything (from carpet bombing to chemical weapons) to murder you.

but hey, at least you now have your bff ezar vorbarra, and (from the bff's words on his deathbed) it sounds like you two had so much fun between unimaginable horrors and despair, and it's not surprising, since no one really believes in death after life at 20. then the emperor makes you a general at the tender age of 22. fortunately for him, you & bff make a frighteningly competent dream-team, and the joke's on cetagandans.

then, several years later, you ask the emperor for weapons, because you still sleep on the bare cave floor, there are little resources, and every ghem on the planet is trying to murder you. he offers you the hand of his granddaughter instead, like it's some sort of twisted fairytale, but you grow to love your olivia more than anything, and the tide of war is finally turning, and you allow yourself to entertain the idea of peaceful life, and then...

the space eugenecist empire nukes your hometown, killing your mom, dad, surviving brothers, and two hundred thousand of your people. plus your bff (ezar) gets a radiation doze large enough for it to cause severe cancer thirty years later. great.

but you win! your district is in shambles, your capital is an irradiated crater, your castle is in ruins, but you win! the old dorca dies, and yuri ascends the throne, but politicking is secondary to the fact that you are alive.

yes, you are probably not entirely sane, and you've long forgotten what the peaceful times look like, but you are alive, just under 35, and your entire life is ahead of you. olivia is alive too, and ezar, and you now have three wonderful children, and the extended vorpatril-vorbarra family that hosts regular get-togethers. sure, your mom-in-law is a betan with all sorts of crazy ideas in her head, but she is not pierre vorrutyer. small mercies.

but then the new emperor goes mad, and decides to murder your entire family overnight. your brothers-in-law are gone, one of your sisters-in-law too, and all your nephews and nieces except little padma. but all of this pales in comparison to the facts that olivia is murdered, and that your heir and daughter lay dead beside her.

all you have left of her, of your house, of the family you've lost in vashnoi not a ten years ago, is aral, whom you keep by your side throughout the bloody civil war to put your bff on the throne.

but you win again. you are 43, and ezar vorbarra is now the emperor. you are responsible for the imperium's entire ground forces. you are also responsible for a severely traumatized boy of 13, and the only children you've interacted with without olivia's genle guidance were little messengers of guerilla companies.

what a mess.

[taylor-titmouse]

Coming in late on this one, but if you're saying you're not planning on your work being piblished... but isnt there a graphic novel coming out soon? There was a link to pre-order it at least via bookshop or barnes and noble (can't remember which off the top of my head). Were you able to get your blook distributed to them as a self-piblished creator? Or was the graphic novel trad-pub and you're just saying you can't see your prose writing/books getting published?

what a funny thing to gotcha me on

yes, i do have a traditionally published graphic novel coming out. under a different name. in a different genre. for a different audience. it's not relevant for me to bring it up every time somebody asks me here if my work will ever be physically printed because it's not the work they're asking about.

so yeah. the last thing you said.

[dayurno]

this is somewhat of a vent post & something i said i would not do again but has been plaguing me enough that i think getting it out might feel better. so. has anydoggy else been. Baffled and upset by nora sakavic’s refusal to speak on how terribly aftg has treated its characters of color? with the author of the series coming back with a new book and starting up on her online activity again, and questions of what she’d change about aftg bubbling up, it’s particularly glaring to me that we are all playing this very long game of pretend where we ignore how badly the non-white cast has been treated & her lack of thoughts on it

and i understand not wanting to bring up nicky and thea because people pick on her for it. i’m not trying to discredit nora sakavic’s terrible history of getting harrassed online by aftg fans. but i think it is very cynical, and it is very juvenile, and most of all very cruel, that she gets to ignore the very real ways the books have set up these characters to be hated. i think it’s obvious why the characters who get the most hate are the only canonical characters of color, and i think we do not get to treat this like a deliberate decision on the fandom’s part when the books have put these same characters in degrading and embarrassing and terrible positions in the first place. aftg is not a story about nice characters with clean pasts, but there is a very specific nastiness to the only characters of color being a brown man who sexually harasses and later assaults the main character, a black woman whose only scene is her lashing out at her love interest after being ignored for the first two books, and the japanese villain who gets maybe two lines of complexity before he goes back to being a terrible person. the white cast, in comparison, while not at all free from flaws, are never shown to commit mindless evil; all of their actions are ultimately justified. the book goes out of its way to give them concession after concession. we know exactly who to side with, because aftg tells us who these people are. does nicky’s assault ever get addressed in the books? does riko’s reasoning to be the way that he is ever gets more than briefly aluded to? is thea reserved even a shred of humanity or grace in her one scene?

anyway. it’s been years of talking about this and the fandom has been constantly hostile to criticism in this regard, and more recently any criticism at all, and it’s Grating to be on the other side of this discussion. it’s exhausting to know that in ten years we do not get even an acknowledgment besides the author saying she will not answer questions about nicky and thea anymore. it’s upsetting and it’s ugly and i wish no one had to talk about this again, but we do because what i thought was common sense has been washed away by a sudden influx of no-nuance adoration for the trilogy. basically i hope we all explode

[kristybluebird]

Kozue accession as one of many surprises in an anarchic last year of operation at Ohtori.

In my freshman year of highschool there was a group of kids who spent 8th grade as the last class of students at a middle school that was to be decommissioned. The teachers were all either waiting to jump ship or retiring, a lot of work went undone, alot of student cruelty went unchecked. The upkeep was dismal, the roof leaked, light bulbs that extinguished themselves were not replaced, the students were only allowed in certain parts of the school. There seemed to be a liminality to the experience, spending most of your days within walls that would be torn down that very summer.

That's how I imagine Ohtori without Anthy and her power, a strange dwindling thing still shook by the conclusion of normality and humming with anticipation of the deathblow.

Anyway, Kozue Co-prez!

[themelodyofspring]

1 and 17 please! For the end of year ask 🤗🤗

Hiii thanks for the ask 🤗

1 -  How many books did you read this year?

65 ✨ Very happy with this number. I've realised over the past 2 years that if I reach 50 in a year then I'm happy. Working full time requires me to sometimes not have audiobooks on in the background because I need to focus on work. So no need to compete in the 100 books a year championship 😆

17 - Top five books of the year

Oooh my fav question 💙

The Sandman: Act III by Neil Gaiman (because of Brief Lives 🥺)

The Disappearance of Winter's Daughter (Riyria Chronicles #4) by Michael J. Sullivan

Cytonic (Skyward #3) by Brandon Sanderson

Down Among the Sticks and Bones (Wayward Children #2) by Seanan McGuire

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

[ferronickel]

Every three years or so, I get the urge to make new business card designs, usually right before a big trip or event or something. This time around I was bemoaning the fact that I couldn't post them (because I try my best to keep my wallet name off of tumblr) and then I remembered that I can just... type in a different name. So enjoy some slightly altered business card designs from 2018, 2021, and 2024!

[strawbebbiesart]

201km 🏘️💕🚌

[francy-sketches]

👀

2 very different depictions of aemond getting de-eyed lol. 2nd one is book version that's why the eye is different ☝

(end of year wips)

[bulletnotestudies]

1 and 3 for the book asks:)

How many books did you read this year? 72 and i'm currently in the middle of 3, so i think it'll round out to about 73/74 by the end of the month :)

3. What were your top five books of the year? of the ones i've finished, my faves were (not in order): - the cruel prince by h. black - gideon the ninth by t. muir (1st reread) - the anthropocene reviewed by j. green - iron widow by x. j. zhao - beach read by e. henry honorary mentions to in the dream house (which i am currently reading and it is written in-ge-ni-ous-ly) and some old faves rereads

end-of-year book ask <3

[hanzajesthanza]

dandelion is indeed the worst but if he’s not present in the next book i would legitimately be sorrowful as the whole thing will become a slog . you basically cannot have the “short stories” era-of-the-timeline iteration of geralt without dandelion, it would be like eating unbuttered bread.

though it’s not like season of storms did them dirty, i wasn’t disappointed with it (… with regards to them), but since it’s literally been over 20 years since the saga was finished i’m trying to prepare for any potential reality