Lynn's reads in 2016

Hello! I'm a... relatively long-time, mostly lurker? joining in with the reading tracking threads. Hopefully I'll do a (slightly) better job at not-lurking this year, but a brief introduction is probably nice. ^_^

Hi! I'm Lynn. My main bookish love is fantasy, but I'll read about anything if it sounds interesting enough. This year, I'm challenging myself to spend at least half a year reading no American authors whatsoever. I suspect it'll mean I end up reading more genres than I have in ages as a bonus, which I'm really excited about. (Except possibly it doesn't sound like I'm very excited at the moment because my brain is mush. *sigh*)

Two of my favourite books are Seaward (Susan Cooper) and The Last Unicorn (Peter S. Beagle) and two of my favourite authors are Guy Gavriel Kay and M.C.A. Hogarth, to hopefully give you an idea of what I generally enjoy reading. I also like playing RPGs and the occasional adventure game, but those aren't exactly books. ^_~

Um, I think that's it? Sorry, I'm not really good at introducing myself. Instead, I'll just talk about my first read of the year for a little bit and get my reading thread going. I hope that's okay! ^_^

My first read of the year is The Crying Child by Becca Lusher. (Disclaimer: She's a friend.) It's the second book in a series and doesn't stand alone as well as it might have with a bit more editing and polish. I found the beginning especially shaky, but I never felt the shifts in characterisation of Icaria quite worked and I thoroughly dislike the lust-at-first-sight-touted-as-love trope. I did like seeing more of some of the minor characters from Sisters of Icarus, however, and I especially liked seeing the central romantic relationship of that book shown so many years later.

Also that island is seriously creepy. Every book I read about that island, it manages to get creepier. There's one more book in the trilogy to go and I suspect I'll get on with that one much better. My main issue with this one came from the fact that I never settled into or believed in the way Icaria changed throughout the story.

I might pick up Sorcerer to the Crown next, but we'll see what I'm in the mood for. I should rearrange my shelves, actually. I put aside all the paper books that counted for this year's challenge and right now they're all tucked out of sight, so I wouldn't accidentally read them all in 2015. Now that it's 2016, it's high time I restored them to the shelf they should be on. ^_^

May your 2016 be filled with many fantastic and amazing reads!

Welcome! You fit right in. Good luck with keeping up the reading journal, but the reading is the most important part!

Wishing you a year of plentiful supply of good reading!

Hope you have good luck with your international challenge! It will be interesting to see what books you read.

Welcome! So happy you have delurked to share your reading joys with us. :)

Looking forward to following your reading. Seaward is one of my favourite books too!

Thank you, everyone! Hopefully I'll succeed in not spending the whole year lurking on everyone's threads this time.

#4 Hopefully it'll be interesting for people to follow! ^_^ I haven't made any concrete plans for reading this month. Normally, I pick three to four books from my pile per month and make it my goal to read at least those books.

*waves* Hello! Starred, and I look forward to reading your reactions this year! Best wishes for many good reads! ^^

Lovely to see you here - I look forward to hearing about your reading :)

Thank you, both! I'm looking forward to participating this year. ^_^ I'm still getting a feel for how best to style the thread so all the information is easy to find.

January Reads
The Crying Child by Becca Lusher (my thoughts)
The Secret Proposal by Aniesha Brahma (my thoughts)
In Morningstar's Shadow by Aliette de Bodard (my thoughts)
Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Kay Kristoff (my thoughts)

February Reads
The New Moon's Arms by Nalo Hopkinson (my thoughts)
The Tale of Yin by Joyce Chng (my thoughts)

March Reads
Courting Samira by Amal Awad (my thoughts)
Xiao Xiao and the Dragon's Pearl by Joyce Chng (my thoughts)
"Phoenix with a Purpose" by Joyce Chng (my thoughts)
"Ming Zhu and the Pearl that Shines" by Joyce Chng (my thoughts)
Of Books, and Earth, and Courtship by Aliette de Bodard (my thoughts)
The King of Ireland's Son by Padraic Colum (my thoughts)
I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett (my thoughts)
"The Daierwolves of Paris - Lou" by Roxane Dambre (my thoughts)
Black Tea and Other Tales by Samuel Marolla (my thoughts)
The Icarus Child by Becca Lusher (my thoughts)
Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta (my thoughts)
The Shepherd's Crown by Terry Pratchett (my thoughts)

April Reads
On the Edge of Gone by Corinne Duyvis (my thoughts)
The Letter for the King by Tonke Dragt (my thoughts)
Apex Book of World SF 4
This Census-Taker by China Miéville
Righteous Fury by Marcus Heitz

May Reads
Sorceror to the Crown by Zen Cho (my thoughts)
Kalpa Imperial by Angélica Gorodischer (my thoughts)
Between Two Thorns by Emma Newman (my thoughts)
The Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okakura
Minus Me by Ingelin Røssland (my thoughts)
No Sex in the City by Randa Abdel-Fattah (my thoughts)
Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon vol 5-12 by Naoko Takeuchi
Survival Quest by Vasily Mahanenko (my thoughts)
The Tea Lords by Hella S. Haasse (my thoughts)

June Reads
Amulet Rampant by M.C.A. Hogarth (my thoughts)
Any Other Name by Emma Newman (my thoughts)
Blazing Dawn by Becca Lusher
Only the Open by M.C.A. Hogarth (my thoughts)
Secondhand Memories by Takatsu
Servant of the Underworld by Aliette de Bodard (my thoughts)

So far January has been a big drain on my energy reserves, so I've managed to read very little and haven't felt like I've had the concentration. Booooo! I'm now up to my lowest number of books for a month.

I picked up a couple of short ones today as I waited for an update to finish installing, though!

The Secret Proposal is a DNF. It was badly edited and I bailed in chapter 4 after reading over the same section several times to try and convince myself it didn't had any continuity errors. (But it did.) That said, I did like characters and the way they played off one another. It just wasn't powerful enough to make me forget the issues.

In Morningstar's Shadow is a short collection. It's really more of a teaser for De Bodard's The House of Shattered Wings, which I've now added to my wishlist. I liked this one quite a lot, despite how little there is to hold onto if you're new to the setting.

I'm trying to figure out which other books on my list are going to be fairly fluffy and not very intense to read since I'm still not entirely recovered. (Why do To-Do lists never end? WHY?!)

>11 dovelynnwriter: If you liked In Morningstar's Shadow and are looking for fluffy, I'd highly highly recommend Of Books, and Earth, and Courtship, it's a short caper story about how Selene and Emmanuelle got together and it's lovely! Definitely among my favorite reads of 2015. ^^

Ooooh, thank you. That sounds lovely indeed! ^_^

After telling sakerfalcon that I'd try to bump Illuminae up on my TBR pile, I appear to have sped through it in, uh, two sittings.

I'm a little ambivalent about Illuminae somehow. I loved the way the book is structured and recommend that anyone interested in it gets a hardcopy to enjoy it in all its glory. I also really enjoyed the narrative, but I never quite connected with any of the viewpoint characters. Boo. It didn't help that I was never really convinced by the romance. I liked that it was there, but it felt very flat and I would have liked a little more indication on whether or not this was intentional. (I'm interpreting it as intentional because it works so well with the narrative.)

I seem to be having a particularly bad reading year due to a combination of fatigue and obligations*, but just now I finished Of Oysters, Pearls and Magic by Joyce Chng. It's the first novella in The Tale of Yin. I'm really glad I picked up on something short to host a readalong for now!

In any case, it's very different from the kind of storytelling that I'm used to. I'm a bit annoyed by the way the ebook was formatted and I think the story could use a good copy editor to tie together the switches between present and past tense more effectively, but I enjoyed it quite a lot!

I don't think it's told along the conflict-resolution narrative that I'm used to seeing, as there's little to no conflict. I really liked the focus it had on Mirra's observations and development as a person.

* Some of them are pretty fun obligations! I ended January on rereading one of my novellas and finishing up the second part of my webserial. Perhaps now that I'm mostly done with both I'll be able to find a better read/work balance again? I can hope! I never feel quite right when I've not read anything for a while.

I'm glad I got started on the readalong I'm hosting, though, because I was a bit scared I'd somehow manage to fail hosting it entirely. I'll be trying to balance it with another book, I think, because otherwise I might try to zoom through the whole duology before the end of the month. I'm not sure what I'd like to read next, though. Possibly The New Moon's Arms by Nalo Hopkinson?

>15 dovelynnwriter: "I never feel quite right when I've not read anything for a while."

I hear you! Been having the same sort of start to my year and it feels weird.

>15 dovelynnwriter: those tense switches really jarred me every time. I couldn't tell if they were intentional or accidental...

I'm glad you're feeling a bit more on top of things. There's a lot to be said for short-form fiction when there's lots going on in life, I find - I wish I'd realised that a couple of years ago when I was too ill to concentrate properly (err, there's a lot to be said for short-form any time, obviously, but I think you know what I was trying to say!)

I finished a book! The New Moon's Arms by Nalo Hopkinson. I really, really enjoyed it, though I don't think I was really up to fully appreciating all that Hopkinson was doing in the book just yet. I loved the setting and the detail in it as well as the honesty to the writing. It was incredibly powerful.

Calamity is vocally homophobic and biphobic, though, so if those are triggers for someone I recommend treading cautiously because the couple of times it comes up are pretty ugly and intense.

This sounds interesting. I have Brown girl in the ring on my kindle and will try to read it this year. Nalo Hopkinson is a writer I know I want to try.

I'd happily recommend it. ^_^ I'm certainly eager to read more by Hopkinson in future! I've got at least one more book on the pile, so hopefully...

I've just finished the second part of The Tale of Yin earlier today. This second half of the duology was about Mirra's daughter, Kindness, and her journey. It was a really fascinating way to finish the narrative, but I don't want to say too much about it yet.

I'm also in the middle of Courting Samira by Amal Awad, which is a contemporary romantic comedy set in Sydney. I'm a bit torn about it, though. On the one hand, I'm enjoying the storyline and it's a fair bit of fun, but on the other I'm not really clicking with the narrator's voice most of the time. I think I might prefer this as an audiobook, actually.

I've decided that Courting Samira and I just weren't getting along well enough to keep reading it. I think it'd be a terrific book for anyone who clicks with the narration, but it kept hovering between something that I felt like I ought to like and... somehow didn't and something that felt too forced to be funny. It's odd. I think that what I read was well-written and worth reading, but I just really couldn't see myself finishing it. :/

I picked up some more of Joyce Chng's work after finishing The Tale of Yin and read those. Phoenix with a Purpose is a lovely YA space adventure. It's a little more... plotty than The Tale of Yin was, though it was equally focused more on Min Feng's emotional growth than its plot. I really liked it.

Xiao Xiao and the Dragon Pearl is the first part of a duology and, I think best read in combination with the sequel, which I haven't done yet. It ends on a cliffhanger, though, and nothing about the plot has been resolved. It's the story of Xiao Xiao who rescues a baby girl and the dragon who's vowed to protect the baby girl, now along with Xiao Xiao. It's not as polished as I would've liked, but oh how I enjoyed this even so. It's... middle-grade, I think, but it's lovely and exciting. I really enjoyed Xiao Xiao and Ming Zhu (the dragon) interacting with one another. ^_^

>21 dovelynnwriter: I... could stand to read more Joyce Chng. I may have to look these up :)

They both lean more towards the kind of plotty fiction you'd expect than The Tale of Yin did. They don't have the same level of diversity, but I think that's mostly because the stories are a lot more restricted in their setting. If you look them up, I hope you'll enjoy them too! ^_^

I've since added "Phoenix with a Purpose" and "Ming Zhu and the Pearl That Shines" to the list of books that I've finished this year. I really like Chng's eye for detail and lush descriptions, but I do wish the stories were better edited.

Next up, I've started on Of Books, and Earth, and Courtship by Aliette de Bodard. (Well. By "started on" I mean I've opened the file and read the first line. I haven't really been able to focus on starting properly.)

>24 dovelynnwriter: Hahaha! Hey, you can set your own definition for what constitutes "beginning'.

*Briefly de-lurking to wave*

I'm a lurker, too, so I'll lurk along here with you!

>24 dovelynnwriter: I'm sad to hear that more of Joyce Chng's work is under-edited. She has lovely prose (or rather - she would write lovely prose if she had a (better) proofreader).

I hope you enjoy Selene and Emmanuelle. It stole my heart :)

>25 zjakkelien: *chuckles* I most certainly can. XD Word definitions are there to be played with. XD

*waves at jillmwo and aviddiva* There's drinks and cakes and things over by the comfy screened chairs if you'd like them. Welcome. ^_^

>28 imyril: I'm really sad too. She has a lovely way with words and ideas, but the lack of editing really works against the stories because they don't get a chance to shine their brightest. I did enjoy Selene and Emmanuelle, yes. ^_^ Not as much as I was hoping to because I really don't get on with physical-attraction-based stories, but it was lovely and I'd happily recommend it to people. If you do get on with that, I suspect it'll be utterly amazing and even sweeter than it was for me. ^_^

I've since also read The King of Ireland's Son by Padraic Colum and I've just finished I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett, which means, I hope, that I can safely say that my reading concentation issues are rapidly fading. Huzzah! I think I've now read more in the first week of March than I've managed in the previous months combined.

I wasn't as enamoured of The King of Ireland's Son as I wanted to be. It's clever and fun, but sometimes the way the stories hung together felt a little... threadbare? The author could've done more with them, I think. I Shall Wear Midnight too felt like it had some coherency issues to start with, but there it might've been just me reading it when too tired to really follow what Pratchett was doing. Besides, it evened out in the end and, to be fair, Pratchett's endings always manage to thrill me and simultaneously made me feel dumb for not working it out sooner, so...

I did enjoy Preston a lot, though. ^_^

(And now I'm sad because I think I only have a handful of new-to-me Discworld books to read and there will be no more.)

I just reread all of the Tiffany Aching series, since his last book was The Shepherd's Crown. A bittersweet experience is all I can say. What is wonderful is, we can continue to reread them and find new delights when we do, because they are so rich and full. The more you learn of history and the world, the more you will pull out of Discworld's humour and philosophy.

Yes, definitely. I'm not a big rereader nowadays, but I adore returning to Discworld and picking up on new things. It's entirely possible that when I reread I Shall Wear Midnight that the issue I had this time around aren't there anymore. (It may also help if I do a dedicated Tiffany Aching reread and read the whole set close together, so the events are clearer in my mind.)

Still, I'm really looking forward to The Shepherd's Crown. ^_^

Since last checking in, I've read a couple more books.

The Icarus Child by Becca Lusher concludes a trilogy detailing how the first Aekhartain was born. It was a fair bit darker than I expected, but I enjoyed it and I'm glad that I finally got a chance to read that origin story! ^_^ Also selkies! I do love the way the trilogy as a whole is about different kinds of family. This instalment is all about found family and the joy that it can give you.

The less said about my experience with Black Tea and Other Tales the better. I really didn't like it. Horror in general doesn't tend to work for me, but this collection of three short stories was... Well. If I had to sum up my feelings about the collection in a single word, the one I'd pick would be: misogynistic. Can I leave it at that? Now I regret reading it for this year's reading challenge because it's the kind of book that I'd otherwise only note in passing and do my best to forget I ever tried to read it.

The Shepherd's Crown by Terry Pratchett, however, was bittersweet. It, understandably, didn't feel quite finished or as deep as his other works, but it was still beautiful and warm and everything I've come to love about his work. I also felt that it was... poignant that so much of the story is about passing things on to a new generation and the legacies we leave. I was teary-eyed and had to stop reading a few times because of it.

I'm still trying to sort out my feelings on the book and putting them into coherent words, though.

I've just updated my links for the March thoughts. I suspect I won't be reading any more books before April. I've been buried in either unexpected family commitments or working on my own stories. I have added the webserial Becca began earlier this year, Wingborn, to my reading, so I'm slowly making my way through that as she's posting it! ^_^

My final book for March was Sea Witch by Helen Hollick, but I put that aside for the time being. It's historical romance that I just wasn't in the mood for at the moment. Far too much description of the hero for my tastes. I'd like to get back to it some time later and give it another try, though. I was intrigued by what I read. It just... was very much bad timing.

I'm also in the middle of On the Edge of Gone by Corinne Duyvis. I'm having a blast with that one. I can see it making my "Favourites of the year" list quite easily. Part of me feels a little guilty because the topics are really serious (in the event of global destruction, who gets to survive? What determines someone's worth? Etc) and the tone isn't comic in the least. The tone's pretty serious too. It's just that I think there's so much life in the story and so much heart.

I've been looking at On the Edge of Gone, so I'll be interested to see what you think when you're done.

>34 dovelynnwriter: I keep hearing good things about On the Edge of Gone - I must pick up a copy in due course.

>35 SylviaC: It's... very different from what I was expecting! It's closer to what I'd expected from dystopian/post-apocalyptic narratives than Memory of Water, but still very different. It has to be the lack of an evil government regime to overthrown. Hopefully I can finish it over the weekend! ^_^

>36 imyril: If you do pick it up, I hope you'll enjoy it! ^_^

Hi! I'm Reilly!

I hope someone can find a book that will make me feel emotional. I really love those books! ^_^ My favourite (haha Canadian spelling) book so far is Awake and Dreaming by Kit Pearson. I defiantly recommend this book to readers who love books about a girl's life that will make you cry.

Thanks! ^_^

Hi, Reilly! Books that make you feel emotional are awesome, aren't they? What kind of books do you usually like? You've only listed the Kit Pearson (which I hadn't heard of before, but it sounds pretty intriguing!), so I'm afraid any recommendations I'd be able to offer would be a complete stab in the dark at the moment. I found On the Edge of Gone, the book which I mentioned earlier today, to be an incredibly emotional read, though, so you might want to check that out. It's about an autistic teenager who is trying to keep her family together and safe after a comet strikes Earth.

I just finished it and... I'm not entirely happy with a couple of the plot twists at the end and wish they'd been worked out a little more, but they're relatively small niggles. It was an emotionally satisfying read and I loved the strength of friendship and family that ran through it most. I loved Denise's tenacity and her strength as well. She was a fantastic protagonist.

>35 SylviaC: It's a story that's very much about helping each other and working together. It's... a quiet story about a young teen trying to find her place in a world that's completely turned upside down and inside out and trying to figure out what right and wrong is. She's also trying to look after her mother and find her sister and... Denise is a fantastic protagonist. I loved her loyalty to her mother and her sister, even as she grew and learned to stand on her own feet and to stand up for herself and that neither family member is quite what she's thought they were. Um... *ruffles hair* I'm still a bit starry-eyed from having finished it, but let me know if you have anything specific you'd like to know about the story! I really enjoyed it and would happily recommend it to people. Still seeing it get onto my end-of-year-favourites list with ease.

>39 dovelynnwriter: It does sound very good! How's the violence level? I'm always looking for good, low-violence apocalypses.

I might have to look out for On the edge of gone, it sounds intriguing.

I read Awake and dreaming a few years ago and loved it.

>40 SylviaC: It's definitely low on the kind of violence you'd expect in post-apocalypse settings. No graphic fights for resources or the like. But, since most of the people in the story don't know that Denise is autistic, there are a lot of issues with consent and people not respecting Denise's boundaries and microaggressions. Those moments can get incredibly intense. It's not the kind of post-apocalyptic, us-or-them kind of violence that I'd think of, though, nor the dystopian kind of "Effectively starting a civil was is the only way that we can change anything" that I might've expected.

>41 Sakerfalcon: I hope you'll enjoy it if you decide to give it a go! I really enjoyed it. There's a strong note of cooperation running through it that was a delight to see. So often when I encounter these stories they're all about conflict wherein one side is absolutely right and the other is absolutely wrong and... I didn't get that from this book.

Is Awake and Dreaming outright fantasy or more leaning towards magical realism, do you remember?

>42 dovelynnwriter: Those bits sound like they will be tough to deal with, but I can handle that better than graphic physical violence. I'll put it on my list of books to look for.

>42 dovelynnwriter: Awake and dreaming is more magical realism, I'd say. I thought the fantasy and real-life elements were well blended.

>43 SylviaC: *nods* They can be. I'll probably put up a warning about them when I write up my book talk thoughts because I think some people will appreciate if not need them. I hope you'll enjoy it if you decide to give it a go!

>44 Sakerfalcon: Oooh, that sounds lovely. ^_^ I like magical realism, though I don't read much of it. Going to have to keep an eye out for this one. ^_^

Things have been... more than a little hectic here and they don't seem to be letting up any time soon! I've barely managed to read anything yet this month!

Since I last checked in, I've managed to read a good chunk of The Letter for the King which was... very disappointing. The language relies a lot on telling which just rubbed me the wrong way entirely. Eventually I just skipped and skimmed ahead until I found it what was actually in the letter and how it ended. I think it's a great book if you get along with it. It's a nice mixture of an overarching storyline and a more episodic set of mini-arcs divided by location, so the structure itself lends itself to dipping in and out of the story. That may be a better way to exprience it!

I counted about one female character who gets to do something in the third or so I read, though. And by "Do something", I mean the following scenario: Fairly early on, our hero is being chased by knights who think he's responsible for murdering his friends. I should note here that these knights are supposed to be the good and chivalrous guys. They catch up to Tiuri, our hero, while he's sheltering from a storm at a lord's castle. They ask the lord to imprison Tiuri, which the lord does, and pretty much proceed to assume him guilty on no evidence whatsoever and they're planning on killing him in the morning. So Lucretia (I think), the lord's daughter, sneaks into the room where Tiuri is imprisoned to offer him weapons from her father's armoury to defend himself with. And that, as far as I know, is pretty much the extent of her activity. She shows up again on Tiuri's way back to be a sudden!love-interest for the would-be knight. Who, despite being a single vigil away from being knighted and pretty much having grown up at court/with a father who is a close adviser of the king, knows absolutely nothing about his country's heraldry, customs, or famous knights.) So I just skipped ahead to the part that DID keep my interest somewhat and left it at that.

I've started in The Apex Book of World SF 4, but have made very little progress and remember nothing at all about it.

I've also managed This Census-Taker by China Miéville. Reviews seem to be divided, but suggest that this isn't actually a god place to start exploring Miéville's work. That's good to know, because I really didn't like it. It reads more like a prequel. Hopefully Miéville will publish a book set in this world that explores the peripherals of this story. I think this novella would have a lot more bite because it reads like it's written for people who are familiar with the book it's a prequel to.

Personally, I don't think the story delivered on the promise of the description. I don't think Miéville quite pulled of the pov switches he tried to use and the tone is too distant to create any kind of emotional attachment. This is the story of a small child living with a presumed murderer and desperate to get away told from the child's view, albeit his view as an adult. It's also an unreliable narrator about the way our mind and memory can deceive us. Either of those should be terrifying. A combination should be "I am scared to go to sleep" levels of creepy. But the lack of emotional attachment means it's boring, the pov switches didn't, for me, convey the slippery slope of memory and recollection. There's an intriguing story with the (magical?) keys and the hints of world-building we get as well as the introduction of the census-taker and Miéville plays with language very subtly in ways that tie in with these elements, but the pov and focus means we never see more than glimpses of it. And that would be fine! The narrow focus and the way the story is kept to the margins is something that can work brilliantly. I just don't think this novella pulls it off.

It's really disappointing! A friend of mine has been trying to convince me to read Miéville for years, but I disliked it so much that I actively have to tell myself that a lot of people didn't think it was representative of his work and that it's not a good introduction.

Things likely will remain hectic throughout the rest of April too. I'm entirely frazzled. T_T

>46 dovelynnwriter: You had the same issues with The letter for the king that I did. The lack of female characters was especially disappointing (you didn't miss any others by skipping ahead). I get the impression from seeing reviews that this book is well-loved by those who read it in childhood and perhaps didn't notice the rather plodding storytelling.

I hope you have a more relaxing time for the rest of this month!

>47 Sakerfalcon: I'm glad to hear I'm not alone! (And that I didn't miss much.) I think it's probably a much more enjoyable story when you watch the film adaptation.

Thank you! I hope I can get a more relaxing time too and that your April is treating you much better than it's been treating my family so far.

I really enjoyed The Letter For the King, but I was about 9 when I read it (and the author's sister was one of my teachers, so it was all very close to home!) - that said, it's one of those books I remember absolutely nothing about, and from your description there's a reason for that :)

Best wishes for everything you have going on. May there be some quiet moments and good tea (or preferred drink) to keep you going.

>49 imyril: I think it's definitely a story that's best read when you're younger. It's a fun enough narrative, but the way it's told didn't agree with me at all.

Thank you! I'm glad to report things have settled down a little and I hope it'll last. I actually got some reading done this weekend!

I, sadly though not unexpectedly, remember absolutely nothing about The Apex Book of World SF 4. I enjoyed it, but short stories tend to be forgotten within moments after reading them. I'd happily recommend it to anyone, though, and look forward to diving into the other volumes at a later date!

I attempted to read Righteous Fury by Marcus Heitz, but I was about ready to throw my kindle against a wall before I'd even finished the first chapter. I loathed it that much. I'm sorry, but I draw the line at someone voluntary signing themselves over into slavery because the dudebro she's enslaving herself to was pretty. And that's without the victim-blaming that she's doing to herself or the fact that our, ah, protagonist seems to think it absolutely hilarious. (Okay, fine. He didn't think it was hilarious, but he's still highly appreciative of it.) And. I just. Based on what I read, I would rather watch or read the way Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire treats its women. I'm sure I've read books that were worse for their treatment of women in as short a time frame. I must have. But I don't remember any of them filling me with quite this much desire to absolutely lose my temper. Wait. No. I lie. I do. The Shadowed Sun filled me with a similar amount of rage when I read it. But at least I finished that.

The title at least is very apt because it's all I felt for the section that I read. It may be a great book taken as a whole. It's premise certainly sounded extremely promising and the prologue just heightened that. And then it decided to follow that up with a human woman who is, of course, so unusually pretty for her people that the magical race overlords can actually stand to have her going about unveiled for that she's almost as pretty as they are and does not offend their sensibilities and who voluntarily signed into slavery - not bondage, but an actual agreement to be treated as chattel - because she thought a dude was handsome. And then she accidentally forgets to fill a pot of paint on time, yes? So the guy she gave herself up into slavery for gets rather irate because this kind of failure is punishable by death, yes? But he does not want to kill the pretty slave creature, so he stabs her eyes out instead. And then she proceeds to a) not be all that bothered by pain, b) not be all that bothered about losing he sight, c) spends all her time seeking medical aid going on about how it was so definitely her fault because she is stupid and foolish and oh her poor master wasn't he so generous to allow her to live and only gauge out her eyes?, d) and then her only concern is for not displeasing her master again and have I mentioned how she's not the least bit troubled by PAIN and is only minorly inconvenienced by the blood flowing down her face and the inability to see where she's going? And then AND THEN the dudes the story is about go and discuss how it was a crime punishable by death and how everyone would've killed her and oh isn't our anti-hero so very generous and isn't it grand how she thinks it's her own fault and this is so much better than killing her because her distress at failing her master is so much better torment and I CANNOT EVEN. I JUST CANNOT.

You can check out the Amazon sample if I'm not making sense, which I might not, because I didn't make it out of that. I WISH I'D KNOWN THAT BEFORE I BOUGHT IT THIS IS WHY SAMPLES WERE INVENTED.

So then I decided to follow it up with Kalpa Imperial which I enjoyed a lot. It wasn't what I was expecting because there wasn't as much overarching narrative. It's a collection of stories interlinked by being set in the same general area and if I were a different sort of person I would contently write a dozen scholarly articles on the way these pieces connect and intersect and intertwine with our own modern world.

And then I picked up Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho at long last and was decidedly unimpressed. It was fun and I enjoyed myself enough to finish it and more than enough to have to make an effort not to mimic the language and mannerisms of the narrative -- I'm probably failing -- but... I don't know if I'm just in a generally disagreeable mood and read it at the wrong time or whether I just genuinely didn't like the way Cho handled the narrative. It might be the latter. I remember feeling similarly disgruntled with her work before.

I'm almost scared to pick up a book now. I seem to be mostly indifferent to them at best right now. Maybe I should pick something by an author whose work I know I enjoy? That might help. But gah. I just want to read another book I can fall madly in love with again. T_T

>50 dovelynnwriter: WTF. O_o I just don't... seriously, WTF, I can't even words beyond just WTF.

I'm sorry you didn't get on with Sorcerer to the Crown, I quite enjoyed it but I can definitely understand the reasons it doesn't work for a lot of people. I am glad to hear good things about Kalpa Imperial though as I've had that in my TBR for quite a while now.

Maybe a reread of a favorite older book might be in order as a palate cleanser?

>50 dovelynnwriter: That was pretty much my reaction. I'd like to give the book the benefit of the doubt and go "Oh, I'm sure it's just crankiness that had me misread things badly enough to nope out so fast", but I really don't think it is. What's more: this is the first female character we meet in the book. And sure there's another that is introduced shortly after who is NOT okay with events, but at that point I admit I had used up all my ability to be in any way generous. I might have managed a bit more if the second woman had been someone who had some kind of power or the narrative showed any inkling towards giving her a starring role, but neither of those seemed to apply.

I'm sorry I didn't get on with Sorcerer to the Crown too! It sounded like exactly my kind of story! I think some of my reaction is down to just bad timing, but a large chunk of it is that I just didn't connect to it in any way. I suspect I would have loved and adored it if I'd liked Prunella even a little. T_T I liked the moment with the sybil, though!

I hope you'll enjoy Kalpa Imperial when you get to it! There's a lot to be read in between the lines of all the stories and you can have a lot of fun trying to tease them out. ^_^ It also offers a lot of fun if you enjoy stories that play with narrative voice. Because of the nature of the pieces, Gorodischer plays around with narrative voice a lot and it's really fascinating to see. (One of the stories I disliked purely because the narrator's arrogant interjections got on my nerves so much. It was marvellous.)

At this point I'm scared of the Suck Fairy. T_T But perhaps rereading an old favourite, or curling up with friends' works that I'm almost certain I'll enjoy thoroughly, isn't a bad idea.

>50 dovelynnwriter: I haven't read the book so maybe the author totally bungled it and deserves to have the sofa and the rest of the furniture thrown at them, but it sounds like you went in expecting modern day morality and conventions when the tale was more about old fashioned fey (the absolutely scary ones with blue & orange morality and A+ ability to put mortals out of their own minds).

>53 Jarandel: I love stories with 'old-fashioned fey', actually, and picked this up precisely because it promised to be about the more ruthless and nastier depictions of Themselves in a more nuanced way than "They are capricious and evil and we cannot hope to understand them!". What I got, however, was a story that decided to pass off modern day (im)morality as fey. That, on its own, is not grounds to put the book down. What sealed it for me was the way Raheela reacts to what happens to her. This is her response to having her eyes gauged out: "The girl shrieked, but she did not flinch, accepting the punishment".

It's a translated book, so it's possible that the original German reads differently, but I'm just not inclined to find out. *throws pillow at it* If someone here has read it, I would appreciate hearing whether these issue get handled any better later on. Please? I would really like to know it is not as terrible as it starts off as. (I liked the creepy-as instrument made of bones and brain fluids. Ish. In an "This is creeptastic and terrifying and WTF" kind of way.)

Ugh, I'll avoid the Righteous fury! I have so many books on my tbr pile that an unrecommendation is always welcome!

And as one of those books on my piles is Kalpa imperial, I'm very to see that you enjoyed that, especially given your uncertain reading mood at the moment. I hope you find something else that hits the spot that way that did.

>55 Sakerfalcon: Same here! Unrecommendations are always welcome. ^_^

I definitely enjoyed Kalpa Imperial, though I think it's one of those books that's made better by discussing them with other people. Probably also by going into it knowing it's a collection of stories that... are only very loosely connected by virtue of being set in the same general area. Sometimes the connections are a little stronger, though, and it's fun to connect everything up as best you can. Rather: I thought that was fun. Other people may well feel differently.

Thank you! I hope so too, but I think perhaps I should take it as a sign that I'm not in a reading mood at present? That's also a possibility. I tend to cycle between reading and writing moods.

May turned out to be a pretty interesting month in that I spent most of it running around trying to arrange things (or fending off anxiety), but I did get some reading in!

Minus Me by Ingelin Røssland
Sailor Moon (vol 5-12) by Naoko Takeuchi (reread)
The Tea Lords by Hella S. Haasse
The Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okakura
Survival Quest by Vasily Mahanenko (DNF)
No Sex in the City by Randa Abdel-Fattah
Between Two Thorns by Emma Newman

And now it's time to continue running around for the day, but do ask about any of them if you have questions. ^_^ I've written up book burbles/reviews for most of these and got caught up on that at last. I'm also in the middle of reading Servant of the Underworld by Aliette de Bodard. It's good, but it's not gripping me how I would've liked to have been gripped. T_T

I've read The Book of Tea; I found it to be a truly rewarding rad.

>59 jillmwo: I quite enjoyed it! It suffered a bit from the fact that I find non-fiction difficult to read and I had a headache to boot, but it was absolutely fascinating and I'm very glad I read it. I'll have to see about rereading it a little more slowly some time as well. I'm definitely recommending it to any tea-loving friends who haven't read it before. ^_^

I need to find my copy of Between two thorns and read it, as I've just finished and loved Planetfall by the same author.

>61 Sakerfalcon: I hope you'll enjoy it! I was... not its biggest fan, but I joined up for the readalong of the sequel, Any Other Name, and I'm enjoying it much better. My main issue with Between Two Thorns was Cathy because the book never explained quite how she managed to be so modern in her thinking with the upbringing she had and because she spends much of it sulking and moping, but Any Other Name addresses both of those issues.

Apart from Any Other Name I've also read Amulet Rampant, which marks my first US-author read of the year. It's a little sooner than I planned, but the sequel just came out and I really want to try and join in with the discussion posts! (Also I have been moody and upset most of the month so far and reading a favourite author was just what I needed.) I'm a quarter of the way through Only the Open, the aforementioned sequel, and some ways through Secondhand Memories by Takatsu as well. I've also read through one of my own books, twice, to prepare it for a proper release. (So close!)

Next up is going to be a book I'm proofreading for a friend! I... appear to have committed to reading a few more books than I'd originally thought this month, so I'll have to see if I can make it through all of them! :O

>37 dovelynnwriter: Did someone say post-apocalyptic?

>63 clamairy: I did, yes. ^_^ To be fair, On the Edge of Gone is more during-apocalypse and immediately-after-apocalypse with its timing than post-apocalypse, but I'm not sure how else to describe it to people quickly and easily?

>64 dovelynnwriter: I use the term "apocalyptic fiction".

>65 SylviaC: Hmmm... I think that might read a little too dark for me, but it definitely fits better timeframe-wise, thank you! ^_^

With June slowly winding down, I'm... finally getting a chance again to sit down and look at my reading here. I seem to have quite a lot to catch up on!

So far I've finished Only the Open and enjoyed it quite a bit. I do so enjoy watching the mixture of fantastical tropes meeting soft (military) science fiction tropes. It's absolutely delightful and I adore that we're getting to see more of all the Pelted and the Chatcaava empire. I love the way this book nuanced the empire and the cultures within it.

I think I read the last part of Servant of the Underworld first, but my brain is quite scattered at the moment. It's such an odd feeling, though. Objectively, I really liked this book. I thought the world-building was fantastic and the characterisation was delightful. I really liked the attention to detail and the way the world felt like it was dynamic, but the book never gripped me emotionally. It always kept me at a distance.

I've also finished up Secondhand Memories. It was quite a fun read, but the formatting bumped against a bit pet peeve of mine (apparently) and I wasn't much impressed with the way some of the Japanese words were used. I also didn't really care much for the resolution since I never felt it was given the depth it deserved. Our protagonist did... something to our antagonist and our antagonist has spent the entire novel avenging it, but I felt like we were never clearly told the what or the how and it read more like "I need more drama!" which is a shame because the novel does spend time building up to that particular reveal. I did like it a lot for the emotional turmoil and the Japanese teenagers going road-tripping over the summer, though. It's a fun story and if you're looking for a light, sweet read with a fair bit of romance and friendship, I'd happily recommend checking this out.

June also saw me continue Becca's Wingborn serialisation and I also got to betaread a related novel! Can't wait to talk about it! (Suffice to say: if you love dragons and giant birds, you will probably enjoy this one a lot.)

And I finally started on Resistance by Amy Rae Durreson! But I didn't get far into it yet. I started to read it right around the Brexit referendum and my brain hasn't been in a reading mood since. I've only managed tiny bits of story. T_T It's starting up really nicely, though, and I'm looking forward to continuing it!

Um, I think that was everything I read since my last update. I'm so scatterbrained at the moment. *sigh*

Your reaction to Servant of the underworld (that it kept you at a distance) was how I felt about House of shattered wings by the same author. Great worldbuilding and concept, interesting characters, but it didn't engage me emotionally.

>67 Sakerfalcon: T_T I'm so sad to hear that. I was really hoping that House of Shattered Wings wouldn't have the same problem and I would love it to bits and pieces, but it sounds like that won't be the case. I'm still very intrigued by it, so maybe the advance warning means I'll enjoy it more for what it is. *crosses fingers* It also sounds like it might be a general part of De Bodard's style as well?

And I've finished Resistance! Whoo! I have my reading back! I didn't much enjoy the romance in this one, but I did enjoy the fantasy narrative and the characters. I also liked that we got a more nuanced look at Tiallat now that the Shadow and most of the fanatics have been driven out of the country. Apparently I really like stories about gods who don't believe in gods?

Tnen I followed it up with "Screaming Down Splitsville" by Kayla Bashe. It was... far too short for my liking and read more like a rough draft or an outline than a finished story, but it's a sweet YA f/f romance all the same. It has some adorable moments between the two main characters and it made me smile. I just wish it'd been a full-length novel.

And then offline life happened and knocked me sideways substantially again. So now, horridly belated, another check-in with my reading for the past month or so.

After finishing Screaming Down Splitsville, I moved on to the collected works of Patricia Grace. I can't seem to get the touchstone to work, but it's her first three short story collections in one volume. I only made it partway through the second 'part' before life got knocked sideways again and I wasn't really enjoying the stories. They're fascinating, but they weren't really my thing. I much prefered Potiki, so I'm hoping it's just that I don't really get on with her short work.

I also betaread Blazing Dawn, which is Becca Lusher's latest release. It's high fantasy with dragons, giant eagles, skyships and shapeshifting. Also politics and mysterious curses. And I finished up reading her first serial novel, Wingborn. It's set about 200 years after BD and is very different in tone. It's YA fantasy that mixes up fantastical schooling with pseudo!Regency settings, giant eagles, strong friendships, and a class full of 'first girls to'. (Sort of. More like 'first girls in X decades years to'.) And yes, girls as in plural. ^_^

I also read Bloodchild by Octavia Butler. I seem to find her stories very hit-and-miss in terms of taste. I find all the ones I've read exceptionally written, but they don't all have the same appeal. Still, I'm glad I read this and I especially appreciated the author's note/discussion at the end.

I followed that up with the princess saves herself in this one which is a short poetry collection by Amanda Lovelace. It's a deeply personal collection and I really enjoyed reading it. It's in free verse, though, so if that's not your thing you might not enjoy it all that much.

Then I finally got around to reading An Alphabet of Embers, which follows par the course for multi-author anthologies in that there were pieces I adored and didn't in about equal measures. I'd happily recommend it, though. It's a delightful volume.

I deviated a little from fantasy by reading When Our Worlds Collide, which is a HFN romance, sort of, that is absolutely adorable. It's not as tightly written as I would have liked, but Brahma has such a great sense of character and writing happy, fluffy stories. I'm really glad that I gave it a chance. ^_^

I was back to SFF with Leena Krohn's Collected Fiction: Part 1, but I didn't finish that either, sadly. I tried several of the novels and they're the kind of books I'd love to read with a group and discuss, but reading them by myself, I find that I miss... something to truly draw me in. So I put them aside and hopefully I'll return to them and fare better when I have people to share the experience with.

I also read Champion of the Rose, which is one of the oldest books on my TBR pile, I think, for all I forgot to add it here. (I have no idea how that happened. I would have sworn they were all added. But oh well.) I have some general misgivings about the way the book handled the aftermath a particular scene in the beginning, but I think that's largely my own fault. Other than that, I really enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to getting the second book sometime. ^_^

I've also started on my comparative read for Thomas Olde Heuvelt's Hex. I'm reading it in English and Dutch both and then geeking out about the way it's translated on a chapter-by-chapter basis. Except two chapters in, I was already so annoyed by one of the pov-characters' sexism that I went and read the whole book in one language to make sure I actually wanted to finish the project.

My very short initial impression: I didn't find it scary -- to be fair, I don't Do written visual horror; I find it boring beyond belief -- I felt the sexism, homophobia and islamaphobia intolerable and the localisation served absolutely no purpose. It does necessitate a few large changes that I'm curious to see handled by localisation, but my first impression is that the setting has absolutely no impact on the narrative and the whole localisation accomplishes little more than cultural erasure.

And yesterday, lastly, I finished up Last Rituals by Yrsa Sigurðardóttir, which is also a translation and which got to KEEP its setting. (Admittedly, the setting is integral to the plot.) It's a murder mystery and I really enjoyed it. It features a 36-year-old single mother of two and balances between work and home. It also features a thoughtful portrayal of multilingualism and I really liked the fact that the protagonist and deuteragonist didn't end up as a couple. That was refreshing. ^_^

Wingborn sounds amazing. Do you know if there are plans to release it in one volume, rather than as a serial?

Is Champion of the Rose a stand-alone fantasy novel or is it the lead-in to a trilogy? I'm intrigued but don't have the stamina for multiple volumes of anything at the moment.

#71 Becca does plan to release it in one volume, yes. I know she's said she's planning to release it on Smashwords and Amazon. I can let you know once it's available if you'd like. ^_^

#72 Champion of the Rose is technically part of a duology, but it contains a completed storyline. The next book features different protagonists and, while I expect the narrative to rely on events in the first book, it's not a direct continuation. They sound closer to companion novels than a series with an overarching plot to me. I hope that answers the question!

>73 dovelynnwriter: it answers my question very nicely. Thanks!

>73 dovelynnwriter: That would be great, thank you!

>74 jillmwo: Yay! I'm glad it did.

I have... been in a reading slump since last I updated here, but it's also been the end of the holidays and I've been trying to sort out a fair number of things. (Such as potentially going back to university for a second degree. Meep. Also trying to figure out whether I'm allergic to something and, if so, to what. The most likely answer is 'pets'.) I think the slump is down to HEX, sadly. I enjoy geeking out about the languages, but I just... don't like the story. Or the constant questioning of whether I'm being overly sensitive or whether something is genuinely as -ist as it seems to me.

More cheerfully, I finally got around to Every Heart a Doorway and I so desperately wish it was longer. It's both because the central mystery is extremely easy to guess and the story just doesn't have the space to build up a lot of tension and because I just wanted more of Nancy. Why did no one who read this before me tell me that Nancy is EXPLICITLY asexual?! I don't need the explicit representation as much as some ace spec people do, but OMG! I was not expecting that and it was really great and I wanted to see McGuire handle Nancy's asexuality and her friendships.

Uh, yes. That's all I've managed to read since my last update. As I said, I'm in a slump. I've just tried to get settled into some short fiction (one of the Uncanny Magazine issues), but I was not feeling it in the least. I think this final burst of summer is just too much for my brain to handle on top of trying to sort out and arrange all the things. It's just too hot for comfort. T_T

I finally read something this month!

I started off finally settling into Cantor for Pearls which while lovely left me feeling somehow dissatisfied and I haven't yet been able to figure out how to word that dissatisfaction. T_T

I also read most of a Dutch-language book. In Dutch! O_O Arthur, gevolgd door Kroniek van Madoc It was, um, challenging and an exercise in frustration. I finally gave up 40 pages or so from the end because I just could not. I just couldn't. (But then by that point the text seemed to have decided that it needed to prove the validity of claims they'd just spent TWO CHAPTERS declaring as hoaxes and nonsense.) I was actually hoping for a really fascinating look into how Dutch/Flemish medieval texts tied into the Arthurian canon, but it wasn't quite what I got. Which is a shame because several texts DO exist and what little I know of them is really intriguing, but what I got was one of the most convoluted looks at the history of Arthurian literature (I know it's complicated, but you can usually make sense of it!) and then an even more convoluted and confusing hunt for a lost manuscript. (I was promised a literary-historical detective novel. I got nonfiction that kept criticising authors for speculating without addressing the speculating it was doing. It recognised some, but not all.)

I'm continuing to read very little at the moment. I've made some slow progress with HEX in the past few days. I'm almost a third of the way through and I'm really hoping that now that we're settling into the narrative properly, I'll end up writing shorter commentary posts and be able to move through the book at a quicker pace.

I find myself appreciating the craft of the book a lot more this time around, though because I'm deliberately paying attention to it I'm also finding the foreshadowing a lot more in-your-face than I'd like it to be. Some element of that is the fact that I've already read through the book once, of course, and so the foreshadowing is already much more obvious than it was the first time I read it.

I also wish I knew more people who'd read the book, so I could discuss some of my thoughts as I have them. It got really good reviewers from most of the bloggers I follow (well, those who read it, of course) and no one seems to be having as many problems with the book as I am and I keep wondering whether or not I'm just imagining things since everyone else loved it. (I'm told that no, I am not, but I still worry about it.)

Most of my other reading has consisted of short online pieces, and I really feel like I need to find a better balance, as much as I hate reading two books at the same time, I think I need to stick to my plan of trying to balance the reading out with lighter books.

I have accomplished reading in the last week or so of October! WHOOT!

I'm still struggling through HEX, but I was faced with a good chunk of train travel and thus read lots of books that were NOT that. Okay, it wasn't lots, but I'm happy anyway!

I read Buried With Him by Alex Beecroft, which is a very sweet little novelette about faith and the power of love. I also reread "The Lioness and the Spellspinners" by Cheryl Mahoney, so I could write a proper review of it. Then the blind book date I picked out, turned out to be Awkward which is an utterly adorable MG graphic novel about friendship. And I finished it all off with The Olive Conspiracy by Shira Glassman. It was a lovely way to spend the travelling time. Reading a couple of books that are just about as opposite of HEX as you can imagine was greatly soothing. I think varying the reading I do is definitely going to be key to the project. Also allowing myself to read the book in chunks rather than trying to do one chapter a day because that clearly isn't working for me.

>79 dovelynnwriter: Awkward looks like something I would love. I'll have to add it to my wishlist.

>80 Sakerfalcon: I hope you will if you pick it up. I really liked the characters and the way the story bloomed. My favourite part was Peppi trying to balance having two very different friends who didn't see eye-to-eye at all.

I've finally gotten around to updating my bookish records. I've been so bad at adding them in a timely fashion. :(

But now I have caught up! And since the last time I checked in, I've read several shorter pieces.

The Oak King and the Holly King and The Story of Gilly Flowers by N.W. Moors, both of which were... not really my thing. The first one was cute, though I recommend taking the sequel note to heart. It doesn't stand on its own well. I was really hoping they would be. I like books about the Fair Folk, after all, but eh. They weren't really for me. I wasn't a fan of Moors' writing style.

Yesterday I also read Wheel-Mouse vs All the Crazy Robots by Celyn Lawrence, which is a very cute little picture book for charity. It's only 9 pages or so and should make anyone smile. ^_^

I followed it up with The Year of the Crocodile. I know Milan had the second book in the Cyclone series out. I didn't know that she had a short story with Blake and Tina out too!

And then, for good measure, I followed it up with the first chapter of In the Land of Invented Languages by Arika Okrent, which is fascinating. Not quite what I was expecting and the startburst corners are really distracting (the page count is positioned awfully), but mostly it's a very interesting look at the history of invented languages. I enjoy working on conlangs for my own settings and have always enjoyed poking at other people's to some degree, but I've never really looked into the history of it. I knew about Esperanto (the book hasn't covered it yet), of course, but I didn't know it was popular to work on an invented universal language in the 17th century! Or that the earliest known documented conlang comes from the 12th century! Okrent's writing is incredibly legible and quite fun too, which makes it a really nice read. I feel like I can take in a lot more information than I usually do before getting slowed down by information overload.

A few days ago, I decided to settle in with a couple of novelettes and novellas because they tend to be good choices when I'm low on energy and can't focus well.

I read The Forgotten Wizard by C.J. Thompson, which I think needed a couple more rewrites and a healthy dose of editing. It's also not a book, but barely a novella that ends on a cliffhanger I'd expect at the end of a chapter or a serialisation, not one advertised as a book.

Prom Queen Perfect by Clarrisse David was a lot better and far more enjoyable, even though contemporary (YA) romance isn't quite my thing and I wish the epilogue had hinted at the way the relationship between Alex and her mother changed, thanks to the events of the narrative. I'd actually recommend skipping the epilogue because I found it so dissatisfying.

Danse Macabre by Laura M. Hughes sadly followed the trend that I just find horror books boring. It would have helped if it'd been a little less predictable, but I expect fans of the genre will enjoy it far more than I did.

With Roses in Their Hair by Kayla Bashe was a delightful f/f retelling of Tam Lin. I wish we'd seen a little more of the setting because it wasn't as immersive as I'd have liked and it meant the ending felt a little rushed, but I enjoyed it a lot. I really liked seeing how Bashe used the elements of the tale to create her own.

Graveyard Sparrow (also Bashe) was also quite fun. This is the book that originally drew me to wanting to check out Bashe's work, but it sadly disappeared off Amazon before I could snag a copy and I didn't want it badly enough to set up yet another eretail account. It returned, though, and I pounced. I'm glad I finally had a chance to read it. It was a lot of fun and I liked the way the characters interacted. ^_^

I also picked up a couple that I didn't get far enough into to count them here. I just didn't click with them in any way. :(

But yay! I read things!

>83 dovelynnwriter: I understand the preference for the shorter forms when real life is busy and/or overwhelming. That's where I am as well at the moment. I think the appeal is that finishing one of those at least gives one the sense of accomplishment of *having* finished SOMETHING, where a full-length novel may just be too time-consuming (and thus too dispiriting) to even attempt. I want a nice big 3-day snowstorm where I can just suddenly announce that it's a snow day and thus I'm not working. (Telecommuting be d*mned.)

>84 jillmwo: Yes, finishing something is definitely one of the appeals. ^_^ It feels good to feel like I managed to at least read something close to my monthly average book count. For me, one of the issues with short stories is that I can't read a lot of them in a row. Novellas and novelettes are a perfect middle ground between needing something hefty to glom on narratively and needing something short because my brain can't deal with novels at the time.

I hope you'll be able to get your snow day!

>83 dovelynnwriter: There's a reference to Tam Lin... Just when I had forgotten all about it. :o)

>87 dovelynnwriter: It's one of my favourite folk tales and ballads. I was all over this retelling when I heard about it. I still don't know why it wasn't available in my region for a while, though. When it finally was, I snatched it up. With Roses in Their Hair's release actually has a sad background as well, as I understood it. I think any profits from the book go to charity.

>87 dovelynnwriter: If you could recommend one Tam Lin book to me, which would it be? I'd prefer it wasn't a children's book.

>88 clamairy: Oh, good question. *thinks* Given the books we share, I think I'd recommend Tam Lin by Pamela Dean most strongly. If I recall, the protagonist is a literature student, so it's got quite a few literary references in it as well, and that can make reading it quite dense. It's set in (then) modern times, but it's pretty faithful to the original.

If you're okay with YA and want something that follows the ballad pretty much beat-by-beat (except in a novel format), there's An Earthly Knight by Janet McNaughton. That one also covers another ballad, Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight, as a B-plot.

If you'd like something a bit more original in its execution and more inspired by the ballad than being a concrete retelling of it, there's Winter Rose by Patricia McKillip. I found that one extremely dense and difficult to follow on a first read, but well worth the effort.

My favorite Tam Lin retellings are Diana Wynne Jones's Fire and Hemlock (no, not a children's book, really, even though part of it takes place while the main character is a child) and the more YA The Perilous Gard. Pamela Dean's version just didn't do it for me.

>89 dovelynnwriter: Oh, I've read a McKillip book (The Book of Atrix Wolfe) and really loved it. Maybe I'll give that a shot.

>90 Marissa_Doyle: I'm going to look for that first one you mentioned, too.

>91 clamairy: I too have a great fondness for The Book of Atrix Wolfe. However I haven't read Winter Rose.

>89 dovelynnwriter: I have a different question. How did you recognize that ballad as the B plot in An Earthly Knight. Have you read up on a lot of these different ballads? I've never heard of Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight, but I am intrigued.

>92 jillmwo: Yes, you're the one who recommended it to me. It blew me away.

I'm not overly fond of Tam Lin stories myself, but I can confirm that The Perilous Gard is excellent.

>90 Marissa_Doyle: Ooooh, yes. Those are good too. 91 In that case, I definitely recommend the McKillip. I need to read more of her work, though her style seems to be a bit hit-or-miss for me. Either I find it really smooth and enjoyable, like The Bards of Bone Plain, or I find it somehow makes me really seasick. :/ Winter Rose leaned more towards the latter for me, so I hope you'll get along with it much better if you decide to pick it up! ^_^

>92 jillmwo: I think my copy of the book mentioned the specific title and includes at least part of the lyrics. It's been a long time since I read it and I don't think I ever got the book back after lending it out, though, so I'm afraid I can't check. :( That said, I do have a soft spot for ballads and folklore, true, but I doubt I'd have known the name if it hadn't been mentioned sometime around when I read it. I'm a lot better at remembering plot details than titles.

>94 SylviaC: Oooh, what don't you like about the stories, Sylvia? *curious* If you don't mind answering, that is. ^_^

>95 dovelynnwriter: I can't really pinpoint the root of the problem, but I've just never gotten along with Faerie Queens. They are usually pretty heavy on the arbitrary cruelty and vengeance, which I never enjoy reading about. It could also be that the story is so ubiquitous that I get the "Oh, this again" feeling. I'll admit, though, that there is something appealing about the idea of the girl having the strength and determination to hold onto her love through all the transformations.

I love your description of some of McKillip's writing making you seasick. I know exactly what you mean! I like some of her books a lot, but others I put down pretty quickly because my brain just couldn't go through those convolutions. Sometimes her prose makes me think of vines growing in a lush jungle.

>96 SylviaC: I can see that! I admit that prefer my Faerie Queens to have some sense of structure to their behaviour. I don't need to understand it perfectly, just get the feeling that it's not actually random. One of the story's great strengths for me is Janet. While there are plenty of female protagonists in fairytales and folklore, very few of them have the same kind of independent spirit that Janet does.

I love your description too. I can see her words as vines in a lush jungle very easily. ^_^ I'm so glad to know that I'm not the only whose brain has trouble with her prose sometimes. I really love what I've read of her work so far, but I'm very slow at reading more both because of budget issues and because the very first McKillip I read was The Sorceress and the Cygnet, and it was one of the seasickening ones for me. It left such a strong impression that there's also a wariness that I need to get through before I manage to open one of her books. >>

>97 dovelynnwriter: Yes, it's very much all about Janet's character for me, too. But that's why The Perilous Gard is so good--the Janet character and the Faerie Queen are worthy opponents, with equally strong motives for what they do.

>98 Marissa_Doyle: Very much so. I really enjoyed The Perilous Gard as well. ^_^ The others inch ahead in memory, but it's been a while since I read any of them and I'd recommend all of them in general.

Meanwhile, I have made some small bits of reading progress on HEX. I have no idea how I'm going to finish this or how long it will take me. I seem to hate that book more with every chapter I get through. And I've now reached the part where the dog dies a horrible death because OF COURSE the dog dies. It's horror. I think I'm just going to work on accepting the fact that I can't rush this project if I want to stand a chance of finishing it.

Other than that I've read Crystal Shrouded Goddess on sandstone78's recommendation. It was certainly interesting! I'm not sold quite yet, but I'll be interested in reading a bit further even so. It's a magical girl story that's only just started to find its footing and it promises to be more hopeful than some of the modern Madoka-based magical girl stories.

I just saw an interview where the author of HEX said he'd changed the ending. T_T There goes my final hope of pleading out of the project after getting past the most interesting bit. T_T Slow and irregular working on it, it is then!

On a recent trip, I managed to read Hurricane Heels by Isabel Yap and the last two issues of Zodiac Starforce. Both are magical girl stories, though they're quite different. Hurricane Heels deals with adult magical girls and the question of what happens as you grow older. It didn't blow me away as much as I'd have liked, but that could be grumpiness from timing and bad editing. (My copy restarts one of the stories from the beginning and it's not intentional.) It's also a little predictable and, while it hits on pretty much all the beats I'd want, it misses out on a crucial one: why is this person the central character in the magical girl narrative? I'd still recommend it, though, if you're interested in magical girl stories. I enjoyed it a lot, just not as much as I was hoping to.

Zodiac Starforce is one that I really want to reread, though. I opted not to reread the first two volumes this time because I can usually remember plot details enough not to need a reread, but I think that I was far too tired and frazzled to parse graphic novels/comics decently when I read it. It felt like the story was missing a chunk to explain some of the character connections, but I'm not sure if it's actually missing or if I was just too tired to connect things properly. :(

>100 dovelynnwriter: I hadn't picked up Hurricane Heels because for some reason I thought it was YA / teen girls. So now I am intrigued. I loved An Ocean the Colour of Bruises (similar themes) and A Cup of Salt Tears, so I've been looking forward to some longer form from Isabel Yap.

>101 imyril: I thought we'd been getting "YA with adult protagonists" when I picked it up as well. I think it's how much it adheres to and relies on the magical girl tropes, so I was expecting it to... kind of stick to that overall feel, but it really doesn't. The book's a set of interconnected longer stories, with each protagonist looking back on how they became a magical girl and a personal defining moment in their teens, strung together with a fairly flimsy "present day" plot about the Final Battle. For me, all of the stories in the book shone most brightly when they were dealing with adult friendships and the way that life affects them. It deals with how people lose touch with one another, how they reconnect, what it means when one member of a tighly knit group decides to get married... If you're unsure about picking it up, I'd recommend reading the first of the pieces on The Book Smuggler's website and seeing how you get on with it. All of the stories are written in that vein, though Aiko's structure breaks the mold a little. If you do decide to give it a read, I hope you'll enjoy it!

>102 dovelynnwriter: oh my. That sounds wonderful, and I can absolutely see Isabel Yap doing an amazing job of it. I'm in.

>103 imyril: It is absolutely lovely. I have some qualms about the execution, but I'm sure I'll adore it more whenever I reread it and catch more of the nuances. I hope you'll enjoy it whenever you get a chance to read it! ^_^

I may have just lost all of my 2016 stats rambling. Oops. So I will give you the short redux version!

I actually have conflicting statistics on the number of books I've read! :O I don't know how that happened and trying to sort everything out has given me a headache, so I'm going to say that I read around 85 books this year. I failed at keeping up with my Year of International Reading from about July onwards, but if I'm honest then this is also about the time that my reading for the year took a permanent nose-dive into Not Happening Today. They're tangentially related in that it meant that when I did pick up a book, enjoyment was a much higher priority than "read less Americans already".

But it was a very fun challenge while my reading stayed high and I really enjoyed expanding my genre horizons! 2016 was... very far from what I planned it to be in all ways, really, so I'm hoping that 2017 will be its polar opposite. If nothing else, it'll certainly be ambitious. XD

>81 dovelynnwriter: I got Awkward for Christmas and loved it! The story and the art were very well-matched, and both were lovely. I'm so glad you hit me with that book bullet!

I hope that 2017 is a great year for you in books and life.

>106 Sakerfalcon: Yaaaaaaay! I'm so glad to hear you loved it too! It's such a sweet story and there's so much that it manages to discuss (or at least touch on). I love it to pieces.