#(also look up the chrestomanci series order)

[sunkentowers]

So I have a Young Wizards (Diane Duane) reread scheduled as... soon, since I know details have been escaping me. Not to mention that there are parts of newer books that just... Don't Exist in memory due to tired binge reading periods.

But I do know that there was a time when I was conflating parts of A Wizard's Dilemma with Diana Wynne Jone's Deep Secret.

[ofliterarynature]

AUGUST 2023 WRAP UP

[ loved liked okay no thanks DNF (reread) bookclub*]

Witch Week | A Perilous Undertaking | 2 AM At the Cat's Pajamas | The Last Sun | The Lives of Christopher Chant | The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo* | (The Angel of the Crows) | The Enchanted April | The Art of Prophecy | A Curious Beginning | Q's Legacy | The Grimoire of Grave Fates | Charmed Life | Ocean's Echo | (Band Sinister) | (Unfit to Print) | Camp Damascus | Wanted, A Gentleman | Translation State | The Mistress of Bhatia House

I’m late I’m late I’m late! Oops

It’s only a month late, right? ‘Only’ lol, work has been exhausting! Anyways:

At this point I wonder if Ann Leckie can ever do wrong, Translation State was good! I was completely enthralled, which is all I ask, even if I don’t get as passionate about it as the main trilogy.

I continued the KJ Charles reading, with these supposed stand alones that are also kind of related? Honestly it’s no less of a stretch than Society of Gentlemen to Lilywhite Boys, so I don’t know why she can’t officially list them together. Anyways, mostly fine, and Band Sinister is still a delight!

Camp Damascus…I’m thrilled for Chuck, really, and I think he’s a delight to follow, but this one wasn’t for me. Religious trauma is turning out to be a hard no.

Ocean’s Echo was good! In some ways I definitely thought it was better than Winter’s Orbit - miscommunication is the worst I’m sorry, this story was more consistently engaging! I just like the characters from WO a bit more.

Chrestomanci! I’ve been going by the suggested reading order on Goodreads, and while I wasn’t particularly enthused by Charmed Life, once I had a grasp on the world the other books have been fun! Im very sad this might be my last DWJ, as I seem to have exhausted my library’s collection of her audiobooks :(

Grimoire of Grave Fates had a really interesting premise that lured me in, despite my reservations - an anthology where all the stories work together to solve the mystery of a murder at a magic boarding school? I thought it worked fairly well (and could definitely spin itself out into a series of novels), but just ok for me. Maybe one day I’ll finally concede I can’t read YA or boarding school books anymore.

Q’s Legacy was the last (I think) of the 84 Charing Cross Road books, and honestly the worst. It had its interesting moments, but it lacked the cohesion of the other two, speed,-running the before and during of those stories, to then spend the second half on the adaptations. It was not at all what the descriptions led me to expect. Maybe worth a single read but not a revisit.

I will also be honest, I didn’t really like the first Veronica Speedwell! The plot felt a bit contrived, and Veronica was so blunt as to almost read as rude or mean. Also very unexpectedly…clinically horny? Does that make sense? I’m not quite sure what prompted me to continue, but I’m now several books in and enjoying it! To be blunt myself, the historic setting is just set dressing, the plots can feel contrived, the mysteries are mediocre, but the real draw is the Veronica and Stoker show once they get themselves settled in and comfortable with each other. It’s a hoot.

I’d heard good things about The Art of Prophecy, but I still didn’t know quite what to expect going in. It was wonderful. Maybe a little long, but if you’re looking for a fantastic fantasy with lots of fight sequences, no romance, and some fascinating characters, this is a great read. The sequel comes out soon and I can only hope it doesn’t take as long for my library to get the audiobook as it did for this one.

I don’t know where I first found An Enchanted April, but it’s been on my TBR for a little bit, and I thought it would be the perfect fit for my classics challenge I gave myself this year! It wasn’t what I expected at all - it’s entirely character driven and very focused on their flaws, and the entire first half I thought I was going to hate it. But the second half, there’s a twist, almost, born of some very  naïve optimism that nonetheless works out. Very improbably, but I was happy for them, you funky little weirdos. 

What can I say about The Angel of the Crows except that it is still very good! It’s maybe lost a little of the shine it held when I got obsessed with it for a few months last year, but it is definitely now one of my comfort books. I really ought to read more canon Holmes though lol.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo was, to be fair, one of my suggestions for book club. It was OK, but there were definitely parts that really did not work for me, the frame narrative in particular. The other members of the club really liked it but I don’t have any plans to read more of the authors work.

I’m almost tempted to put The Last Sun last just so I can yell more. I’d heard such good things about this series, but turns out my expectations were a bit skewed - it is not historical or secondary fantasy world, oops. So we got off to a bit of a rough start, not to mention all of the Capital Words. Not usually a good sign. And while I still wouldn’t say I love the worldbuilding necessarily, or that these are the next great work of fantasy, the action is really great, and the characters are flipping fantastic. You’ve got a pair of 30 year olds who are bad ass fighters, have a traumatic past, are immature assholes, can be so so kind, and accidentally adopt a posse of troubled teenagers? Sign me up, I love them, this reminds me so much of my days reading tons of Teen Wolf fanfic AUs.

My history with 2 AM At the Cat's Pajamas is that they cannot stop recommending this thing on the Book Riot podcasts. When I found a copy at Goodwill, I thought surely it’s meant to be! Well. It was not bad, but it was not great. I don’t know. It just wasn’t for me and I will not be keeping my copy. I probably should have DNF’d it, but I continued in hope.

Only one actual DNF this month though, The Mistress of Bhatia House - the newest Perveen Mistri book. I was actually fairly excited for it despite my reservations about the earlier books, but I hit a mental roadblock with this one. There was some contrived feeling tension with her sister-in-law, but really, I realized that one of my main problems with this series is that, despite being in a very precarious social position, Perveen is just incredibly reckless - usually in the name of doing good! - but it just hit all the wrong nerves at the moment. I’m hoping there will be a better time to read this, but not right now. 

[willowcrowned]

top five books read in childhood!

[prompt]

in no particular order:

the enchanted forest chronicles by patricia c wrede. i think it's still really easy to see her influences on my style today, and they're also just magnificently fun books

the ranger's apprentice books by john flanagan. am i proud to admit that they may have shaped my sense of humor? not really. did they? absolutely. I haven't read them in a good long while so I don't know how they hold up, but my mother read them with me and enjoyed them so I'm assuming there's at least a little something substantive there

I read DWJ pretty late, but I think I still read Chrestomanci young enough for it to count as a Proper Childhood Book (series). also formative, to the point where I still borrow from the bit where Chrestomanci goes vaguer and vaguer the more he's thinking about something. i'm still waiting to find something that i can steal the dressing gowns for though

Tolkien—not necessarily read, because my mother told me the Silmarillion from memory as bedtime stories and later read The Hobbit out loud when I was still too little to read, but it was such a huge part of my literary landscape as a kid that it feels weird not to mention it.

Chronicles of Narnia, which I, like most other Jewish kids I know, adored until about the fourth grade, at which point we all realized it was about Jesus and got really disgusted with it for a while. I came back to it later, because it's one of those worlds that works really well when you look at it through a framework the author wasn't using (like twilight!) to fill in the narrative holes. I personally like rereading it with an Aslan who isn't even a god, let alone actually noble and good. makes the british imperialism side of it a lot more interesting

[vagueandominousvibes]

top five books!

Sam. You're asking someone with an MSc literature — someone who turned down a PhD in literature, not because she didn't want to do it, but because her mental health was shattered — about her top five books. Do you realise what you've done? You've enabled me, Sam.

I struggle choosing favourite books even on the best of days, so for the purpose of this I hope you don't mind if I expand it to also include literary series. In no particular order:

The Trials of Apollo, by Rick Riordan. I wrote one of the first 15,000 word research theses on this series. It hasn't been published, but it got me an overall Distinction in my MSc and I would gladly have done my PhD solely on this series. There is so much to talk about — the conversations about trauma, the triumph over childhood abuse (gaslighting), the realisation that sometimes you can't leave your family and have to find ways of living with it. And Apollo. I relate to Apollo, who starts out as The Worst children's novel protagonist, because I too grew up as a spoiled brat and had to work through years of trauma to become a decent human being (something I'm still working on, but that's another story). This series is so well written, so engaging, and touches on so many important issues. And I have a lot of feelings about it.

Smith of Wootton Major, by J. R. R. Tolkien. "But, Kalh," you might say, "why not The Lord of the Rings? Or The Hobbit? Or The Silmarillion? You know, the stuff you've published peer-reviewed research about?" No. Listen. Listen. The Legendarium is amazing and great and fantastic, but SoWM is where it's at. It's Tolkien's writing at its best. It's the epitome of a fairytale. It's short, tells half the story through symbolism and metaphors, and is absolutely gorgeous. It fully and completely embodies his theory of fairy stories, and years of literary research and writing. And it shows.

Howl's Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones. I would have gone with the Chrestomanci series (also by her), but this novel has a decidedly special place in my heart. It was adapted as Studio Ghibli film, and I can absolutely see why. Reading it feels like looking at one of Marie Brožová's illustrations (example below). There's so many seemingly unimportant details that leap out of the background at various points, it's all fantastical, and it feels like a world where everything is possible. We all know Tolkien is renowned for his world-building, but god damn, Jones' is up there. You can tell she loved writing, because HMC practically glows with that love. It's magic incarnate and I'm so sad my copy of it is at my parents' place three flights away, because now I really want to re-read it.

(Source)

Deeplight, by Frances Hardinge. Ok, so I think I have pretty much every children's book Hardinge has ever written, because her world-building, her characters, and her prose is just that good. That said, Deeplight was the first novel by her I read. I was half-way through my MSc and was tired of Ballard, and Beckett, and Smith, and Spiotta, and I had picked this one up some weeks earlier because the cover intrigued me (yes, I judge books by their covers — it's how I've come across over half the books on this list). It's 442 pages long. I read it in one sitting. I still remember the absolute rollercoaster of rage and joy and grief and deep terror I felt reading it. I don't know if it would stand up to a re-reading, but I know that as a one-time read, it's fantastic.

Under the Whispering Doorway, by T. J. Klune. I was going to talk about Ross Montgomery, whose books I like more than Klune's, but UtWD has a special place in my heart due to the circumstances under which I read it. Last winter was rough (to the point where I considered moving six feet down). I had my parents' numbers blocked, refused to visit them alone, and spent the holiday with @foolsbangle (tagging you bc I don't know that I've ever actually expressed how much spending Christmas with you and your family meant to me). I had barely touched a book in several months, and was struggling through a one-year course on the History of Ideas. When I went to An's, I brought some books with me, in the hope that I'd be able to read again. One of these was UtWD. I retrieved it while An was drawing, snuggled up against them, and opened the book. After a while, I became aware An had started reading over my shoulder, and that — the fact that we were both reading the same book at the same time — kept me going. One of my last nights there, we stayed up until 7AM, snuggled up like that to finish the book. UtWD itself is alright. It has fun queer representation and some delightful character, but I've read better prose. Reading it with An like that, however, made it very special to me.

Other honorary mentions that were serious contenders for this list:

The Chime Seekers, by Ross Montgomery

The Midnight Guardians, by Ross Montgomery

The Snow Song, by Sally Gardener

This Is How You Lose the Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

Six Crimson Cranes, by Elizabeth Lim

Men Without Women, by Haruki Murakami

Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils, by David Farrier

The Land of the Green Man, by Carolyne Larrington

Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett

You may be surprised that the Four Swords manga isn't on this list. This isn't because it's not one of my current favourites, but rather that the list only contains books and series I feel satisfied having read and analysed, without engaging in their respective fan communities. Think of it like the difference between walking through a museum and going to the playground. The above books are artefacts in a museum of literature, exhibited under spotlight, and I walk through the shadows to the curiosities I'm interested in examining. I look at their age and composition, discover their individual contexts, and peruse the research associated with each artefact.

The FS manga is a playground. It's somewhere where I get down on my knees and dig in the dirt, climb the monkey bars, and sit down with others to play with the dolls and action figurines scattered about. It's bright, sunlit, and colourful. It's paint splattered on walls and colourful handprints on thick paper that mum will make you sign in wobbly letters when it's dried. It's a creative endeavour that inspires joy and laughter, rather than the solemn contemplation of artefacts.

[sylvanfreckles]

Freckles' non-HP fantasy world roundup!

If you're looking for more magic in the world, I have a few suggestions for you!

- We've already discussed Sufficiently Advanced Magic (the Arcane Ascension series by Andrew Rowe), so I'll just say go here if you want a magic series that tries to deal with the in-universe issues of racism, gender and sexual identity, escaping parental neglect/abuse, and forging your own destiny even when everyone else tries to tell you who you are.

- The Paper Magician (Charlie Holmberg) I'll admit I haven't finished the series, but it's a unique look at a form of elemental magic. Ceony is forced to take an apprenticeship with a paper magician when she really wanted to study metal, but when the magician she's studying with is attacked and left seriously wounded she goes on a quest to save him. It's more of a young adult romance series, so while there is magic and fantasy there's also "plucky heroine falls in love with distinguished hero", if you like that kind of story.

- Written in Red. (The Others series by Anne Bishop) Shhhh...just let me have this one. It's not strictly magic, but it is vampires and werewolves and blood prophecy. There is romance in the series but it takes FIVE BOOKS to resolve, and it's pretty sweet and not the most important thing for the whole series (a little in the last book). It's an alternate earth where shapeshifters are the dominant life form and humans are just prey that can make useful things, and I appreciate that the entire thing isn't Freaky Werewolf Secks (there's none in fact). It reads like a young adult novel style-wise, but there's a lot of strong language, adult content, and horror elements. Also I'm pretty sure Meg is autism coded. She likes order, things need to be in the same place, and can't have too many new experiences in one day. (But the big warning here is that the blood prophecy only comes when certain women cut their skin, so it might not be good if you're sensitive about cutting and self-harm issues, and some of the women including Meg allude to being sexually assaulted. That part isn't shown in detail, but it's still there.)

- The Fire Within (Elemental Warriors/Elemental Academy series by D. K. Holmberg). A little more straightforward "outcast orphan of parents who might have defied the dark lord goes to magic school". I've only read the first book, but it's pretty good so far. Definitely building up to something bigger. Tolan makes it into magic school by accident...he can't do magic! He has a lot to learn if he wants to graduate and be able to return home.

- A Charmed Life (Chronicles of Chrestomanci by Diana Wynne Jones). Last but not least. A six-book series with slightly different protagonists each book. In the first book, Eric Chant and his sister Gwendolyn move in with the Chrestomanci, a nine-lifed sorcerer who oversees the usage of magic in the nine worlds in their series. What I love about this series is how it focuses on finding out who you really are and how that's where your true power and happiness are. I won't go into too much detail for fear of spoiling it, but this is one of my favorite series.

That's my list! For now, at least. Feel free to add your own! I'd love to see more recommendations <3

[isfjmel-phleg]

Clothing in the Psmith series

With Psmith being who he is, there are numerous specific references to clothing through the series. These serve not only a humorous or aesthetic purpose but play a number of different thematic roles throughout.

For Psmith, who always has something of the theatrical about him, clothing can be a sort of costume or performance. At Sedleigh, he makes a point of visually distancing himself from the other boys through his immaculate attire. “Do I look as I belonged here?” he says when Mike asks if he too is new to the school. He keeps up the performance wherever he goes, ensuring that he always visually stands out (or that his appearance disarms those whom he wishes to underestimate his intelligence). After losing his money, he continues to dress as he always has, leading others to assume he’s well-off, and although he does correct misconceptions if they get in the way of, say, his intent to apply for a job, it’s likely that he deliberately chooses to continue to project this image. Anything else would be too much of a comedown for a Shropshire Psmith. He carefully selects his attire around Eve--openly admitting that he’s worn his best suit when meeting her at the station in order to impress her. He makes her stop and wait while he dons the correct pale flannels (a summer suit) for their row on the lake--changing his costume for the new scene and possibly setting off her ensemble if she’s wearing the black dress again. (And note the colors he chooses: the stark black and white of various suits, lavender gloves, pajamas in blue and sea-green. Cool tones that complement dark hair and a fair complexion. He knows what he’s doing.)

Eve too knows the importance of a well-selected ensemble, but her deceptively opulent hat and dress are more of a reflection of her personal desires and aspirations (and lack of impulse control!) than a part she plays for others’ benefit.

But clothing can also be a weapon. Psmith frequently uses interactions with his attire as a deflection mechanism when uncomfortable in a conversation--dusting and inspecting and polishing to avoid having to look someone in the eye. He’s used a dressing gown cord as a literal weapon and “faultless evening dress” to silently taunt the sloppily-dressed Bickersdyke. In New York, when Psmith’s hat takes a bullet and his trousers get ruined with mud in a street shootout, he uses this to emphasize his grievances (and deflect from the seriousness of what’s actually troubling him) and keeps pushing the issue of the perpetrator’s need to pay for the hat--and gets his reimbursement plus the solution to the tenement problem in the end. When called upon to deal with a flowerpot-throwing Baxter, Psmith carefully chooses to meet him in pajamas with a white rose in the buttonhole and a Homburg, with a golf club in hand, solely for the purpose of...I don’t know, weirding him out?

Elsewhere, Mike’s first appearance to Sedleigh in cricket attire makes an intimidating statement to his opposition since he’s so clearly in his element while thus dressed.

And finally clothing reveals character through a contrast of public attire versus private. Psmith brands himself with a specifically magnificent look when appearing to most people. So it’s a surprise when, in Psmith in the City, after he’s been overdressing for work and going out in evening clothes, he emerges from his room at the end of a rough day not in a majestic Chrestomanci-esque dressing gown, but in pajamas and an old school blazer--the Edwardian equivalent of a hoodie and sweatpants. Alone with Mike, he’s free to let his guard down and set aside the need to impress; in private, he’s not an otherworldly aristocratic being but a teenage boy seeking comfort. This side of him is strictly for the home; it’s particularly embarrassing in New York when he’s dragged to the police station in “sea-green pyjamas with old rose frogs,” which is “not the costume in which a Shropshire Psmith should be seen abroad in one of the world's greatest cities.”

But then there’s the Turkish Baths, a public setting that requires the most informal attire of all. In contrast to the hauntings at the club in evening dress, Psmith’s penultimate confrontation with his nemesis Bickersdyke is conducted in towels. The narrative calls attention to this detail, including Psmith’s admiring himself in the mirror. Despite the vulnerability of this attire (especially in a culture in which one normally wore what we would consider a lot of clothes at almost all times), Psmith is perfectly comfortable in it, powerful even. Armed with blackmail information, he doesn’t need the concealment of his typical costume to maintain the upper hand and make Bickersydyke feel insignificant.

Yet another reason we need a good film version of this series: the costuming would be amazing.

[tamorapierce]

Tammy's Spring 2020 Reading Recommendations For the Bored

Sooner or later the bookhounds among us are going to start joining my relentless song, from age five on up, of “I don’t have anything to read!!!!”

 I am here to help.  In this space, as I get to it (knowing, as my readers do, that I have no sense of deadline), I will be posting a constant set of collections of book titles by authors my team and I have read and will recommend in a wild variety of genres and for a wild variety of ages.  (And I’ll give a short hint as to the subject of the first book/series—if I did them all I’d never finish this.)  This last is for the many of you who are reading teen and adult books in grade and middle school, and those adult readers who are reading teen and kidlit. These people are for those who love books and don’t care who is supposed to be reading them.  

 Also, you may have to look far and wee, since we will be drawing upon not only recently published books but older ones that we have either read recently or that we read long ago and have re-read or have never forgotten.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you when the writing is archaic.  If you’re a true nutsy reader like the rest of us, you won’t care.

 -Tammy Pierce

                                                        *     *     *

Assume the book came out within the last 2 years unless I put LO next to the title, which means you have to check libraries and bookstores online and paper for copies.

 *     *     *

 Diana Wynne Jones  LO

A generation or two of fantasy writers, particularly those who love humor, bow to this woman as our goddess.  Not only was she out of her mind in a very British and manic way, but with her TOUGH GUIDE TO FANTASYLAND she taught a number of us to ditch some ill-considered tropes of our genre.  If you write historic fantasy in particular, move heaven and earth to track this book down.  There’s a bonus: some of the entries will make you laugh till you cry.

           She is best known for her books for middle grade and teens, but they are enjoyable for all readers.  I cannot list them all here because my fingers will break (curse you, arthritis!), but these titles will give you a jumping-off point.  And remember, authors change with each book, so you won’t encounter the same author with each title as the author you read in the previous one!

           The Chrestomanci books, all in the same universe, in order of story,

                       not publication

Charmed Life  (1977) An innocent lad follows his plotting egotistical sister to live with England’s chief wizard

The Lives of Christopher Chant (1988)

Conrad’s Fate (2005)

Witch Week (1982)

The Magicians of Caprona (1980)

Short stories

 The Dalemark Quartet begins with

The Spellcoats (1979)

3 sequels

 The Derkholm books are

Dark Lord of  (1998)

Year of the Griffin (2000)

  The Tough Guide to Fantasyland is standalone, but is a kind of offshoot of the Derkholm books.  You don’t have to have read the Derkholm books to get Tough Guide!

 There are other books and stories by Jones—I’ll let you find them on your own.

  Philip Pullman

To this day I am unable to call him anything but Mr. Pullman—that’s how much in awe of the man I am.  We’ve had dinner together, talked on the phone, talked at an event or two, done a conversation on audio with Christopher Paolini—it’s still Mr. Pullman to me.  (I was an assistant in a literary agency when I discovered his work, and I never recovered.) He is, in a word, brilliant, and his interests range through all kinds of areas, particularly history and religion.  I could have talked with him forever that night we had dinner, but the poor man had jet lag and I let him go to collapse.  It was one of the best exchanges of ideals, values, and books I’ve ever had.  

Read his work carefully, because what he discusses is never just the story on top.  No matter what he writes, he is making strong points about social justice, human nature, religion, and history without preaching.  He is one of the few male writers out there who can write female characters as people, not Something Different.  And you never know, with his work, where he will go next.

 The Ruby in the Smoke,

book 1,  the Sally Lockheart mysteries

Victorian mysteries with a female hero and male assistants,

           The Book of Dust and sequel,

first 2 books of The Secret Commonwealth

           His Dark Materials trilogy

                       The Golden Compass

                       2 other titles                

           THE COLLECTORS

           LYRA’S OXFORD

           THE WHITE MERCEDES

           FAIRY TALES FROM THE BROTHERS GRIMM

           I WAS A RAT!

           TWO CRAFTY CRIMINALS

           COUNT KARLSTEIN

           (I will stop here and let you find the rest. Most are available as Nook books.)

  Sharon Shinn

I discovered Sharon Shinn with JOVAH’S ANGEL, but a shortage of funds left me unable to pursue my interest (I am an economic disaster with libraries, so I buy rather than borrow) until, with a job and money to spend, I spotted THE SAFE-KEEPER’S SECRET.  It is the story of a medieval-ish world and a small village where a baby was left with a childless couple.  She is raised as their daughter and discovers, as she grows, that her mother is an important, a Safekeeper, the person to whom a secret can be told, relieving the person who told it of the weight of guilt from it, to be carried by the Safekeeper until the owner either decides to tell or dies.  (And if they die without giving permission, the Safekeeper never reveal the secret.)  The baby who is adopted by this town’s safekeeper becomes the safekeeper in her turn.

           The next book is THE TRUTHTELLER’S TALE, about a girl who acquires the gift (??) of telling the truth, whether the person she tells it to wants to hear it or not. The third book is The Dream-maker’s Magic.  The three main characters now learn why they have been brought together over the course of the two earlier books, in what I thought was a satisfying, if unusual, conclusion.

           And there’s more!  I just did the two I love best!

             THE SAFEKEEPER’S SECRET (book 1, two sequels)

           ARCHANGEL (4 books)

           TWELVE HOUSES (5 books)

           ELEMENTAL BLESSINGS (4 books)        

SHIFTING CIRCLE (2 books)

           UNCOMMON ECHOES

           GENERAL WINSTON’S DAUGHTER

           GATEWAY

 Daniel Jose Older

 I was a Daniel Jose Older fan before I was sent DACTYL HILL SQUAD for a blurb (preodactyls in flight!  Of all sizes!  Confederate spies!  Thuggish bigot northerners!  The backlash of Gettysburg and the forced recruitment of blacks for the war effort! And strong, smart, fierce kids of various ages, sizes, colors, national heritage, and skills doing their best to help the war against the slaves, keep escaped slaves safe, duck the cruel managers of the homes and jails where they are being kept, find a half-decent meal, free other kids in trouble, learn who’s killing their friends, and help the dactyls!  That’s part of it, anyway!

Yeah, I loved it.  And there’s at least one new book, and once I’ve mowed though that, there are his older teen books, and his grownup mysteries, with their half-dead taxi driver who doubles as a part-time troubleshooter for the undead powers in his Bone Street Rhumba series.  {happy sigh}

  Edgar Allen Poe

Yes, some of these are reminders of why we ended up to be the readers we are and to nudge us to corrupt—I mean, “introduce”—­new readers to the glories that are our legacies.

­

THE COMPLETE TALES AND POEMS OF EDGAR ALLEN POE

           Here are the greats:

poems like “The Raven,” and “Annabelle Lee”

stories like “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Telltale Heart,” and  ::shudder:: “The Pit and the Pendulum” (yes, a deep pit and a swinging pendulum topped with a razor-edged blade will be featured in this story).  

My dad would read these to us on dark and stormy nights when we lived near the Pacific ocean, when the fog came rolling in, softening every sound, when there were no cars driving by and no other sounds in our house but his deep voice and the crackle of the fire in the fireplace.  We would listen, soundless, as he wove the stories and poems around us and the foghorn sounded offshore.

           That’s the power of Poe.

  N. K. Jemisin

I think I began with Jemisin’s THE HUNDRED THOUSAND KINGDOMS, soon followed by its sequel THE BROKEN KINGDOMS.  The series ended with a third book, THE KINGDOM OF THE GODS.  She presented a rich and varied world from the aspects of people of different classes, showing the growth of societies and their formation.  I have a secret passion for society-building and social interaction, and whether or not a book is difficult to read (as Jemisin’s books are in spots because she refuses to insult a reader by talking down to them) is immaterial.  I want the world and I want the characters, and with her far-reaching mind and her respect for her characters she delivers each and every time.  I have read almost everything she’s written since that first trilogy: if I’ve missed something, it’s because I was in the middle of a deadline and on the road and somehow didn’t see it.  I’ll catch up!  This is just a sample:

           For readers of all sexes and adult reading skills

 The City They Became (pub’d April 2020)

 The Inheritance Trilogy:

           The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, 2010

           2 book sequels

Novella: The Awakened Kingdom, 2014

                       Triptych: Shades in Shadow, 2015 (3 short stories) 

             The Dreamblood Duology:

           For readers of all sexes and adult reading skills

           The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, 2010

                       Two sequels

 The Broken Earth series:

         The Fifth Season (August 2015)

                       Two book sequels

And there are plenty of short stories out there.  I may even have missed a book or twelve!

For those who prefer to hear my ramble in person, a video!

[i-just-want-to-destroy]

hey i hope your having a good day :] I’m going on a p long road trip soon and I kinda wanna know if you have any book recommendations to keep my occupied? I already went through your other recs from other asks and just wanted to see if you had something new! don’t feel pressured tho if u don’t lol

Ok reccing some of the books ive read recently

If youre in the mood for something heavy and fucked up and funny: catch-22 by joseph heller

If youre in the mood for a quick hilarious n somewhat absurd read: several people are typing by calvin kasulke

If youre in the mood for something funny and fantasy and, yknow, in the childrens book category: witch week, which is one of the books in the chrestomanci series by diana wynne jones. Or actually, just read the entire chrestomanci series. If you want to go by chronological order you can start with charmed life.

Also, i have not read this novel, but ive watched the movie and im fully obsessed with the movie. If ur in the mood for fucked up mystery thriller: confessions by kanae minato

All of these books have their respective TWs that you might want to look up. Or you can go off anon and i can tell you (what i remember). If you want pirate links also go off anon.

Have a good day as well (and safe trip!)

[that-jammy-sod]

Hello! I didn’t participate in tsubasa month because I haven’t drawn anything in almost a year and when I had tried to draw Sakura for day one it looked worse than It had when I first tried to draw her when I was eleven. I figured I would participate in the fan thing anyway though, since I want to get to know everyone more.

name/nickname, pronouns, age, country of origin : Elisha. (she/her) I’m twenty, British, biro/ace and a total fangirl.

why/how/who got you into Tsubasa: Tsubasa was actually my first introduction to manga and anime. I was eleven and had just chosen to learn Japanese over German or Spanish as the second language elective of my school. I made fast friends with the girl sat next to me and within 2 days of knowing eachother she had invited me to her house and introduced me to the first few episodes. It took me maybe a month to watch the whole thing and I immediately went on to read it all online.

my favorite thing about Tsubasa: I think what first got me into it was the multiverse idea. I knew nothing about CLAMP’s other works and hadn’t even heard of CCS but the idea of there being multiple worlds with the same characters living different versions of their lives in each one was a major fascination of mine. My favourite book series at the time was the Chrestomanci series by DWJ which features a similar idea and with each new world in Tsubasa being more fantastical than the one before, how could I resist? I’ve since fallen in love with the characters and the complexities of the plot, but the alternate worlds will always be my favourite.

personal hobbies outside of Tsubasa: books mostly. I adore reading and I always have. I was frequently considered rude as a child because I would bring books to resteraunts when we went out with the family and I preferred to read than to interact with my aunts. I also draw, although I haven’t in a while, and I love to swim.

other fandoms you belong to: I’m really into BBC’s Merlin at the moment. I think thats the biggest one right now. I’m also really into AMC’s Humans, The Librarians, chaos Walking and Skulduggery Pleasant.(I’m getting Ressurection tomorrow) Manga wise I’ve recently gotten into FMA. (I’ve just finished volume 21) I was also in the Vampire Knight fandom briefly, but the ship war is really vicious so I left that very quickly. I have read it all, but I prefer not to involve myself any more than that for fear of getting my head bitten off

any fun facts you’d like to share: I’m currently having botox as a treatment for chronic migraines, I’m left handed and when I was a kid my asexual little ass couldn’t see sexual tension/chemistry or whatever between anyone. Unless there was obvious displays of love I didn’t realise characters were in a relationship. When I first found out my friend shipped Kurofai, I didn’t get it and as she never explained why, I ended up googling it. the result of that was me immediately shipping Kurofai and finally understanding why people actually shipped characters. My life would be full of a lot less fanfiction had I never looked it up but I really can’t bring myself to regret it.

Also: I’ve never found a volume of Tsubasa in any normal bookshop except in a WHSmiths in Selsey, where it was almost twice the price of the other manga books. Even in Forbidden Planet, my local shop doesn’t sell it and doesn’t order it in. I’ve only ever found it in a Forbidden Planet in London.

anyway, I hope I’m not to late to post this and it was really nice to see everything in tsubasa month this year.

[caredogstips]

How ‘Harry Potter’ Saved Young Adult Fiction

What would the children’s notebook world look like if” Harry Potter” had never popped into J.K. Rowling’s head, as she’s described it, fully formed? Hypotheticals are never easy, but a “Harry Potter” -less world — well, that’s just about impossible to imagine.

By the same token, elucidating Rowling’s influence from the greater arc of children’s literature during the past two decades is a fraught assignment. Her “Potter” tale invigorated frenzied freeing parties, floundering numbers of pre-orders, millions of words of fan story and, as it stands now, nine feature film: It’s an easy assumption that this seminal sequence fundamentally changed middle-grade and YA fiction.

And it surely did. The sell for this type of volumes, especially fantasy, explosion during the course of its early aughts, as” Harry Potter” took off. Not exactly lightweight line like” The Baby-Sitters Club” or one-offs like The Fault in Our Stars , either; publishers embarked offering teenagers blockbuster succession like” The Hunger Recreation ,” ” Twilight ,” and “Divergent.” Then again, spate of writers were already offering well-crafted fantasy and realism for young readers. What can really be laid to Rowling’s account?

PA Wire/ PA Images

Twenty years after Harry first went into the world with the initial booklet of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone , we’re still amazing what the phenomenon has really meant for girls works and the publishing world at large, and where we would be without it. “Harry Potter” activated a cult that seemed totally unprecedented in the world of children’s literature. The books themselves, though — not much about them was absolutely unprecedented.

Aside from the whole magic aspect, tales of Hogwarts fall firmly into the beloved tradition of volumes about kids away at academy.” Obviously it was improving not on precisely fantasy but the boarding school works ,” Peter Glassman, founder of the children’s bookshop Books of Wonder, told HuffPost. Tom Brown’s School Days , The Little Princess , Daddy-Long-Legs , Malory Towers and other boarding school volumes free up their youthful boosters for escapade by separating them from parents and family obligations, residence them in a location where the relations with other children, and their round-the-clock hijinks, can take center stage.

The boarding school has proven to be a perfect mounting for a imagination novel throughout the past century.” The mystical wizarding academy had been did before ,” pointed out Joe Monti, the editorial director of Saga Press and a longtime participate in the children’s literature arena, in an email to HuffPost. He specifically praised Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic series “Earthsea” and Diana Wynne Jones’s ” Chrestomanci ” heptalogy, but it was a much more permeating trope than we are able to realize in a post- “Potter” nature. ( Now, when you Google” wizarding school ,” the featured snippet and nine of the 10 first-page results are specifically about Rowling’s fictional schools, which include Hogwarts and other non-British schools she has identified, such as Beauxbatons and Ilvermorny. The 10 th is the Wikipedia page for fictional wizarding schools, which prominently boasts the “Harry Potter” universe .)

Before Hogwarts, there were a number of wizarding schools that featured a number of aspects of Rowling’s hit. In Jane Yolen’s 1991 Wizard’s Hall , an 11 -year-old boy named Henry ascertains himself reading incantations in a mystical school where decorates express. Jill Murphy’s” Worst Witch” series, initially begun in the 1970 s, featured the inept Mildred Hubble, a student at Miss Cackle’s Academy for Witches, who has two well-meaning friends and one nasty, aristocratic rival. Tamora Pierce wrote her” Circle of Magic” quadruplet, which also firstly published in 1997, about four fledgling mages who find themselves at Winding Circle, a synagogue community, and learn magic from expert dedicates who live there. Set against this backdrop, Hogwarts seems like only another observe in a familiar tune.

No one is totally original. Everyone builds on everyone else’s stories. Peter Glassman, founder of Books of Wonder

In an email interview with HuffPost, Pierce have also pointed out that the wizarding academy was only one of numerous tropes revisited by “Harry Potter.” ” The battlefield at the time ,” she wrote,” already had teenagers fighting through tough readings and unfair coaches; something strange going on at academy; hateful step-parents; boy heroes marked for Destiny with kill-crazy foes; boy heroes with a expand flubsy son crony and a super-smart girl crony; boy heroes with kindly mentors; boy heroes with pets; boy hero surprisingly good at athletics; son heroes with super influences/ magical/ artilleries; seemingly unkillable Big Bads with zillions of evil minions .”

Not that this should be the degree. Rowling may well be the first fantasy author some children read, or Hogwarts the first mystical academy some fallen in love with — but even if she wasn’t actually the first, so what?” No one is totally original ,” replied Glassman.” Everyone built around everyone else’s narrations. So originality isn’t the thing .”

Besides, Pierce added, the world of Hogwarts did furnish new revels.” Hidden school passageways and chambers in which children get into real bother( Hogwarts is the most unsafe institution ever !); a teach who physically tortures the boy hero; consistent law-breaking and’ right provided’ which rectifies nothing at all ,” she registered — those, along with the athletic of Quidditch, brought forward brand-new, or at the least newly popular, topics in children’s literature.

In our devastating eagerness to fete J.K. Rowling, though, it’s worth taking time to explore the full nature of children’s fiction and to recognize is not simply her forebears but her contemporaries and those who followed in her paces.” I think sometimes what get lost in the interference is the accomplishment of all those other scribes ,” Glassman articulated.” Yes, what[ Rowling] did was phenomenal. But a lot of other columnists are doing wonderful things — and I sometimes feel like, hey, what about them? And the ones who returned before ?”

mark peterson via Getty Images

Children standing online for a new “Harry Potter” journal at Glassman’s Books of Wonder, which has been devoted to children’s volumes, specially fantasy and fairy tales, since it opened in 1980.

Once Rowling — whom Glassman said he’s heard described as” a publisher’s dreaming “; good-looking, adept at being interviewed in any format, and a gifted author — embroiled onto the stage, it was quickly impossible for any other author to keep pace with her fame, force and acclaim. Children’s book columnists, specially fantasy scribes, who were once the masters of their realm discovered themselves ignored in media coverage and discussions among” Harry Potter .”

Pierce, “whove been” writing fantasize for boys for years by then, said she ever realise it” a spot of dignity never to be jealous of another generator .” Still, she found that” the bare mention of Harry or his scribe made me sulky .” For novelists “whove been” generating inventive, obliging imagination works for young readers for years, it must have been at least a little bit infuriating to interpret a brand-new writer scope in and garner all the recognition for introducing kids to the magical of decipher, and reading about magical. Then, Pierce alleged, she, along with other with YA writers and experts, participated in a board exclusively devoted to the popularity of the three then-published” Harry Potter” works. What was the secret sauce?

” By the time the members of the commission was over, I was free ,” she remembered.” Nobody knew . No one there could point to a determining factor that became the books popular .”

All of these components that girls seemed to latch onto in the sequence had been done before, they concluded. Rowling hadn’t detected some new formula or conception that had captivated a starved population of readers — she’d exploited known elements of children’s literature to write the right works at the right time for the right readers.

That doesn’t mean Rowling wasn’t extremely creative, from her absurdly fascinating wizarding vocabulary to the complex seven-book-long whodunit arc she crafted. In detail, her most massive innovation might well the present middle-grade and young adult fiction marketplace. If we think of favourite pre-Rowling authors as big fish in a small pond, they may now look like smaller fish for purposes of comparison — but the pond has become a Great Lake.

Harry Potter prepared the careers of numerous writers possible. Joe Monti, Editorial Director of Saga Press

The ” Potter ” furor, told Monti,” proliferated the market exponentially .” And when market expect originates, there are more a chance for the person or persons realizing the make — in such a case, that would be middle-grade and YA authors.” Harry Potter ,” he pronounced,” prepared the careers of numerous writers possible .” With minors( and, yes, adults) clamoring for something to read in the longer months and years between Rowling liberates, publishers had a lawful demand to meet: Fantasy sagas geared towards younger readers, and eventually any kind of myth written for middle-grade and young adult readers.

” When’ HP’ first strike[ the U.S .] in’ 98, it surely made an impact ,” responded Glassman. In his iconic children’s storage, Books of Wonder, he noticed that” parties were looking for books like that, because there was nothing else … “were in” selling a lot of Lloyd Alexander, E. Nesbit, plainly the “Narnia” volumes, The Hobbit , L.M. Boston .” Meanwhile, the publishing industry’s paraphernaliums were swerving. It takes a couple of years, Glassman pointed out, to jump on a brand-new, sudden publishing tendency. Editors and agents have to find people writing similar notebooks, acquire them, revise them and publish them , nothing of which can be accomplished overnight.

Eventually, though, it wasn’t just classics that were benefiting from the “Potter” mania. New generators were getting possibilities, more. Over the ensuing years, the sheer amount of volumes published for girls seems to have bagged; in 2011, The Atlantic reported that the number of YA journals had increased by a factor of 10 between 1997 and 2009. Those precise quantities have been feuded, but it’s not the only statistic. Year after year, annual sales statistics show that rising demand for children’s notebooks is bolstering the entire publishing industry.

Though realist writers like John Green have also prospered in” Harry Potter’s” wake, the effect seems to have been particularly potent for genre columnists. Gail Carson Levine, the Newbery Award-winning author of middle-grade fantasy tales, recalled that when she embarked paying close attention to the market in the 1990 s, most volumes for younger readers were general myth. After” Harry Potter ,” which debuted in the U.K. the same year that Carson Levine publicized her beloved fairy tale novel Ella Enchanted , she noticed that” there came to be more imagination. It was very good for fantasy because it was a market that parties knew existed .”

You can attract a dotted text to the mainstreaming of geek culture through ‘Harry Potter.’ Joe Monti

Glassman noted that some of the books that followed in Harry‘s paces may have been strictly simulated, but the enduring request the series had uncovered for fiction in young readers permitted ability in the category to flourish. Notebooks came out by fantasize authors who were encouraged by the Potter success, generators who might have thought to themselves,” I ever wanted to write like that but didn’t think I could sell them ,” he added.

It’s easy to forget, Monti clarified,” truly how disparaged fantasy was, as a category, in children’s and YA literature — a bias that intersected into adult as well. The information that’ Harry Potter’ midnight secrete parties were the contest to go to as a teen was altogether extraordinary in geek culture. You can draw a dotted route to the mainstreaming of geek culture through’ Harry Potter .'”

Pierce, who was already publishing high fantasize chronicles for girls when the” Potter” craze impressed, saluted this change.” Speaking as someone who was trashed to the dogs and back for speaking’ that rubbish’ and writing it ,” she said,” I am pleased about this .”

” It wasn’t a cult; we’re not going back ,” Monti read.” Fantasy is mainstream .”

Actually,” Harry Potter” blended several calibers that publishers previously thought didn’t appeal much to girls: The reasonably nerdy category of fantasize, particularly thick-skulled books, and a long serial with an overarching narrative arc that challenged you start at the beginning and read the whole way through. All of these occasions may have existed in middle-grade and YA markets before “Potter,��� but the conventional wisdom was that they were indebtedness or ill-suited for the age group.

Carson Levine was, she speaks now, “astonished” at” how long [‘ Harry Potter’] was and how willing boys were to read that length. When I started, I was told at children’s volume meetings that you had to stay under 200 pages .” Though she acknowledges she didn’t stay under that target, service industries promise was clear.

Pierce reiterated that the” most major” affect of” Harry Potter” success was that it persuaded parties that children would read longer books.” I would have thought that the notoriety of Brian Jacques” Redwall’ books, beginning in the mid-1 980 s, would have reassured publishers kids required longer volumes, but it took’ Harry Potter ,'” she told.

Middle-grade and YA were once dominated by one-off volumes and by episodic line that seemed to have no inaugurating or dissolve –” Nancy Drew ,”” Sweet Valley High ,” “Baby-Sitters Club.” With the demand for Potter-esque dealerships, Carson Levine pointed out, succeeded an embrace of a different kind of YA brand. No longer did publishers assume that teenagers didn’t have the perseverance or notice distance for a single search split across two or more books. Grandiose sagas for children with” that very big tale arc ,” Carson Levine did –” Hunger Games ,” ” Twilight ,” “Divergent,” ” The Red Queen” — became popular.

Michael Hurcomb via Getty Images

After “Harry Potter, ” blockbuster Y.A. succession like “The Hunger Games became the new normal.

“Harry Potter” also did something both necessary, because of its length and massive fanbase, and risky, because it makes it difficult for new readers to binge-read the whole line. It embarked as a middle-grade serial, then originated steadily darker, longer and more challenging. By the time Deathly Hallows , the final notebook in the succession, produced, the series had clearly leveled up to young adults. The the main theme of budding virility, battlegrounds strewn with fatalities and ultimate self-sacrifice seem geared more toward boys than toward 10 -year-olds. Of track, the series’ initial followers got to grow up with the books and encounter out the whodunit that had hooked them from the beginning. But it’s a ticklish pattern for children’s literature; whereas you are able to read as many “Baby-Sitters Club” notebooks as you like for as long as you are in the target age scope and then stop, a tale like” Harry Potter” that evolves to span multiple age ranges stirs it more challenging for anyone to read the entire series within one year.

Despite the challenges posed by Harry’s, and the “Harry Potter” volumes ‘, coming of age, Jonathan Alexander, Chancellor’s Professor of English at the University of California, Irvine, interprets it as one of the line’ most powerful derives.” You don’t get a lot of those series such that the readers are growing up with the specific characteristics ,” he pointed out. There is precedent, of course; he quoth Anne of Green Gables , which was published over 100 years ago, and follows a spunky orphan from childhood into adulthood. Narratives about young men who come of age over the course of the toil have often, historically, been favourite — they’ve just been marketed toward adults. Even the serialized quality of the bildungsroman arc isn’t new.” It’s not at all dissimilar from David Copperfield , in which Dickens lays out […] the story of David Copperfield that you could follow over age, and watch him develop to adulthood ,” he pronounced.” That was pitched mainly to adults .”

Alexander argued that there’s a universal infatuation with growing up, even though works specifically about young people are frequently viewed as best suited for children.” I think we’re mesmerized by the development process ,” he told.” It’s not just for young readers to have a model, but for older readers themselves to meditate on how we grow up .” No wonder, then, that the” Potter” journals determined an anxious adult audience. As the line derived, it became more and more same to works that have, in the past, been sold to grown-ups: tales of young person discovering to make their road in a frightening and erratic macrocosm. The post-” Potter” Y.A. world-wide, Alexander recommended, has skewed more towards the sort of sophisticated, complex coming-of-age tales that have always appealed to adults — and adults and young adults alike are relishing them.

A health component of the brand-new popularity of young adult story can be attributed to these enthusiastic adult readers, but it seems that the” Harry Potter” phenomenon has also reinvigorated reading among young people. In 2011, McSweeney’s noted that according to the NEA, between 1982 and 2002, the number of young adults who speak literature had dropped by 20 percent. In 2009, the NEA found that this stat had rebounded — between 2002 and 2008, young adult readership had risen 21 percent.

Numbers can be tricky, though. We simply don’t know for sure how much of such an increase can be immediately find to “Harry Potter.” Much like Harry himself — an extraordinary hero whose victory over dark supernaturals likely depended on a legion of less-famous heroes, from Hermione and Ron to Neville Longbottom and Mrs. Weasley — the books are often singled out as the sole savior of YA, but it’s unlikely they alone built the abundant children’s literary landscape we have today. Perhaps the children’s journal world-wide was waiting for a savior, and Rowling just happened to arrive with the sword of Gryffindor. Perhaps the “Potter” phenomenon simply intensified an unavoidable raise in the sector.

” Speaking as someone who was trashed to the dogs and back for reading’ that garbage’ and writing[ fantasy ], I am pleased about this .” Tamora Pierce

With a health and prospering middle-grade and YA market, fortunes are we’ll never again see something like “Harry Potter”: A children’s book saga that captures the imagery of the whole world and leaves us forever changed. Inside the YA world, scribes and professionals who spoke to HuffPost replied parties aren’t expecting to find another ” Harry Potter .” Superstars, pointed out Glassman, “re coming out” specific circumstances.” Babe Ruth was just the right time to be the lore he was, ” he illustrated — and so was Rowling.” There’s never going to be another J.K. Rowling ,” Glassman replied.

Instead, today’s YA generators are playing inside a much greater sandbox, working for a known audience and pushing borders in other paths.” We’re lastly publicizing more fantasy — and specially science fiction — from express that have been marginalized in the past ,” suggested Monti. In Rowling’s notebooks, and in many past imagination ten-strikes, the central references were grey, straight, cisgender and able-bodied. Though the literary macrocosm remains far more grey, columnists like Sabaa Tahir ( An Ember in the Ashes ), Ellen Oh ( Prophecy ), and general story writer Angie Thomas ( The Hate U Give ) have begun to make inroads with most diverse exponents.” This pattern needs to keep ripening ,” Monti alleged,” because the idea that LGBTQ and brown kids don’t speak or sell is a rear opening scene .”

“Harry Potter” blew the roof off of children’s literature. But that doesn’t mean the work is done — for YA authors, it precisely entails more scope for the imagination.

From June 1 to 30, HuffPost is celebrating the 20 th commemoration of the very first” Harry Potter” book by reminiscing about all things Hogwarts. Accio childhood remembers .

Read more: http://ift.tt/hFWySe

The post How ‘Harry Potter’ Saved Young Adult Fiction appeared first on caredogstips.com.

from WordPress http://ift.tt/2t5Eopa via IFTTT

[ofliterarynature]

DECEMBER 2023 WRAP UP

[loved liked ok no thanks (reread) book club*]

Mixed Magics • Chalice • To Shape a Dragon's Breath • The Haunting Season • Hither Page • The Henchmen of Zenda • System Collapse • The Phantom of the Opera • An Unexpected Peril • A Minor Chorus* • The September House • (The Dream Thieves) • The Fragile Threads of Power • The Pinhoe Egg • (Network Effect) • Some Desperate Glory

total: 16 (audiobook: 12 / ebook: 4)

Happy New Year booklr! Here's to actually getting my last monthly wrap-up post of 2023 out in decent time for once.

Some Desperate Glory - I'm getting myself off to a bad start here because I don't actually remember much from the book and I didn't write a review at the time. oops. But I do remember that once things got going I was hooked, and I couldn't wait to pick the audiobook back up. Definitely some content warnings to look out for, but an incredible read. I definitely need to go back and check out the author's other work.

Network Effect - the last book of my Murderbot reread, still great, glad to have finally read this in a text format! Also better suited to be read *after* Fugitive Telemetry, I wish I'd known to read them in chronological order the first time.

The Pinhoe Egg - a nice wrap up to the main Chrestomanci series! Though if anyone can tell me why on eARTH the 'recommended' reading order is like *that*, please explain it to me. I'd forgotten so many things by the time we got back to Cat, if I ever reread I'm going chronologically.

The Fragile Threads of Power - lord help me, I could do a whole rant. A quick summary of my relationship to this series: loved Shades of Magic when it first came out, did not love/was very annoyed by most of it when I reread them in 2023. Also have not really liked any of Schwab's other work. BUT. I was under the impression that this spinoff would have new main characters, and the old ones would be present but not in the center. If I didn't just make this up, it was LIES. The original MC's still dominate probably at least 60% of the book, and you'd think 7 years in-book and more experience on behalf of the writer would mature them, but a) no, and b) so many goddamn flashbacks. And Kel's assasin-sona was so cringe I wanted to cry. I did actually like the new main character which really is the biggest shame of all. If you see me contemplating the next book please stop me.

The Dream Thieves - I don't know that I have much to add yet to my thoughts about TRB in my Nov post, but I've been having a very strange experience where when I'm actively reading these, I'm having an incredibly good time; when I'm not I completely forget I was reading it. lol?

The September House - this is possibly the closest to my ideal horror book that I've ever found??!!? I have a weird relationship with horror, wherein I am not uninterested, but I almost never enjoy the ones I read (I think it has to do with my irl anxiety, idk). But THIS one. It's such an INCREDIBLE blend of like, mundane horrors and dark humor? I loved it. The "you can live with the horrors if you just follow the rules" is very much my vibe, and the way the author chose to have it integrate with the main character's experiences of domestic abuse was very smart. Deeply enjoyed, but probably won't be a favorite.

A Minor Chorus - this month's book club pick! I really really wish I'd liked this, and I'm torn between "thank god it was short," and "oh I wish this was longer." It's about a queer Indigenous doctoral student in Canada who's somewhat lost his way on his dissertation and is instead writing a novel (maybe), inspired by the stories of people in his community. On one hand, the writing was sometimes very beautiful and the different stories were interesting! On the other, my academic-speak abilities are limited, and the narrator did not hold back. He even explicitly states at one point, oh I can't describe my book this way to [character] because he won't understand my academic language. And...yeah. My brain got a little overwhelmed and I skimmed a lot of those parts. The hopeful part of me thinks if that if the book had been longer maybe I would have had time to "get it," but idk.

An Unexpected Peril - Veronica Speedwell is as Veronica Speedwell does. Had a good time with this even though it's proving to not be the most memorable. Mostly I remember intensely panicking over whether or not V had practiced forging the princess's signature, lol.

The Phantom of the Opera - this was a last minute sub for my classics challenge; I've never seen any of the adaptations, but I happened to see the book on tumblr when I was scrambling for a replacement and thought it might be fun. And it was! Quite ridiculous and dramatic, and I had a good time reading it. I was surprised by the outsider POV on the story, but it was good, just a shame that it didn't allow Christine to tell her own story. If anyone has a Christine-centered retelling I should read, let me know! And are there any adaptations I should watch?

System Collapse - new Murderbot! I was so excited for this, I'm irritated that my brain and work schedule didn't want to cooperate and let me read my nice pretty hardcover; I ended up getting the audiobook from the library instead. I had an incredible time, because it's Murderbot, how could I not? But it's also interesting, because Network Effect felt quite cohesive and contained on its own, but this feels very much like an in-between story (almost like Fugitive Telemetry), rather than a continuation of the same thread. I'll be interested to see where Martha takes us from here.

The Henchmen of Zenda - my last KJ Charles of the year! I did mean to get through all of her books, but things slipped by me these last few months so I still have a couple, but managed to fit this standalone in! It's not the only time she's pulled characters from works of classic fiction, and I admit, I'm now very curious and kind of want to read the original Prisoner of Zenda? Definitely this version had an exciting plot that was fun to read, though I don't think it'll be my favorite of her works (yay for a non-traditional relationship structure tho :)

Hither, Page - I don't think I've read Cat Sebastian before, but I've had this one recommended and it sounds right up my ally - historical/cozy myster/spy shenanigans/gay romance! And it was an incredibly pleasant read, would recommend, but I do think it could have been better as both a mystery and a romance.

The Haunting Season - I almost picked this up in October for spooky season, but put if off for Dec since it's meant to be wintery ghost stories - and only just remembered it in time! I almost wish I hadn't. The first two stories were so meh for me that I almost DNF'd it, I just didn't want the fuss of having to find a new audiobook for work the last day before Christmas break. Luckily Natasha Pulley showed up next with a good story (I really ought to read her books) and there was a good run of 4 stories with another 2 meh to round things out. It wasn't a total loss, but I wouldn't really recommend.

To Shape a Dragon's Breath - If you've seen people singing the praises of this book, they're not wrong! It's a very good if sometimes heavy read, and this is definitely the closest I've gotten to liking a boarding school story since Protector of the Small (I got burned out on them very quickly, lol). It does sometimes read like the debut it is, it's not perfect (lots of infodump speeches, lord save me from the technicalities of alchemy/chemistry, and I would have liked to see more done in her relationship with her dragon), but it's also doing some incredible and unique things that really make me want to see more books in this series and whatever else the author writes.

Chalice - I've read Robin Mckinley before and I've found her work ok, but this one has been repeatedly recommended in the HOTE discord server - I figured it would be a good one to wrap up the year with! And surprise surprise, the fealty-coded discord loves a book about... fealty XD and good stewardship, and magic bees, etc. It's incredibly on brand, and I had a lovely time with this fairy-tale of a book.

Mixed Magics - a collection of Chrestomanci short stories; I actually read one of the stories a few months ago due to the recommended reading order (bleh), and thought it would be fairly simple to finish it off before the end of the year, now that I'd finished the rest of the series. All fun, if not equally interesting, and a nice end to the year. Now I just need to find a new Diana Wynne Jones series to try (not on audiobook, alas, my library is all out of those).

(I did almost consider then binging the Hither, Page sequel on new year's eve, just so I wouldn't split the series, but decided against it :D)