#books i read in august

[why-the-heck-not]

24.08.23, thursday

I’ve been treating my journal like a podcast where I just keep rambling while doing things that give me anxiety. Getting the anxieties out right away and feels like I have some emotional support there even tho it’s just me & my journal. Sure it takes a bit longer bc u’re basically doing 2 things, but at least something’s getting done u know?

[roseworth]

i love this one. btw. if you even care.

[thingsthatcometomymindwheniwrite]

father forgive me for the type of fictional characters I say “he just like me fr” about

[nightswatchdisbandmentera]

TIL that once the Northern lords find out that Jon is Rhaegar’s son, they will detest him to the point of immediately slitting their wrists instead of accepting him as a fair and worthy leader…

….nevermind that 1) the Northern lords have thus far shown NO hostility towards Rhaegar, 2) Jon is also LYANNA STARK’s son who has thus far been romanticized to some degree, 3) Jon was raised and directly acknowledged as NED STARK’s son, the very same Ned who the mountain clans are willing to die in a raging winter for, the very same Ned whose fathering of Jon compells Alys Karstark and other minor lords to go to the Wall in search for the Lord Commander….

…none of that will ever matter. Because our headcannons dictate that Rhaegar sucks so Jon sucks ass as well, cannon be damned 🙂

[ryan-sometimes]

Y’all so I’m Brazilian but I moved to the US aged 18 without my family for college. My parents are still in Brazil. I’m also a big reader, and one thing that made me upset when I moved to the US was how expensive books in Portuguese are here. They can cost 5x what I would pay in Brazil!

I complained to my parents that I really wanted to read a specific book by a Brazilian writer called Machado de Assis, but it was super expensive here in the United States. Today I get this text from my mom:

Translation: daughter, your father bought you this

It’s a box set. Of pretty much EVERY BOOK by Machado de Assis. What?????

[thestormlightnetwork]

he hit her with the Old Man McGucket line😭😭

[hanzajesthanza]

dandelion: geralt — a moment ago, i spoke with a dryad in the common speech, she spoke without an accent, she told me . . .

geralt: you dreamed it, dandelion. this is brokilon. many things can be dreamed here.

dandelion: really?

geralt: of course. many strange and illusory things can be dreamed. for instance, i dreamed we had sex last night.

dandelion:

dandelion: that actually happened, though

geralt:

geralt: oh yeah. so it did

[asexualbookbird]

August feels. Blurry. The Thursday of the year. Of the summer? IT feels like the year. I managed to fill out my entire Summer Bingo Board for the library. I haven't heard back about winning any prizes, but I had fun and that's what counts. Bingo made me branch out of my comfort zone which was really neat. Can't say I'll do it more often, a comfort zone is comfortable, but I do enjoy reading something Different every now and then. Did some crafty things this month, which has been a lot of fun, and I've been Smart and Wise and started on holiday gifts so I'm not scrambling in December. It's called personal growth~

The Bone Season: Tenth Anniversary Edition by Samantha Shannon ⭐⭐ - I'm salty about this. Yes, it's an improvement, but it still sucks. The world and magic is so neat, but we're stuck with a plot Like That. Made me do an actual full review on goodreads and on tumblr if you want all the details.

The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon ⭐⭐- I kept my original rating because honestly I felt the same as I did years ago. It's worse than the updated version, but it's the core of the novel that needs changing. Props to this one at least for making Paige asexual. I do not want to see this book on ace book lists ever again.

The Adventure Zone: The Suffering Game by The McElroys and Carey Pietsch ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐- One of the best installments so far. The art is AMAZING, I love the meta they're doing with Griffin and The Hunger, it was a little rushed and I'm bummed we aren't getting a full adaptation of The Stolen Century, but this is still right up there with Petals to the Metal for me!

The Hollow Places by T Kingfisher ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - T Kingfisher has never written a bad novel to me, but this one did take me longer than her others to really click. The audio narrator had some inflections that didn't work for my brain, but once they went through the door, things got Weird and picked up. These two made so many stupid decisions, but it still felt in character! Big Stan Pines energy coming from that uncle.

Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves by Nicola Twilley ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - For book bingo! Got me a square for Read Nonfiction, Read Something About The Environment, and Read Something You Found from Book Page (a magazine advertising new and upcoming books). AND it had a local connection. I learned a lot, it was really neat and didn't feel like I was reading a textbook. It was very engaging, and has me looking at grocery stores differently. It was hard to find, though, because Frostbite is a very common name in the urban fantasy romance genre.

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - Oof. Very heavy, very creepy, very GOOD. Did not expect the many graphic dog deaths, but that was on me. Technically I WAS warned, my brain just didn't register "SGJ dogs are not safe" as "The dog dies in this one". The audio narrator was very good, but I had to listen to the opening a couple times to really get everything to click. It might've been easier had I" read it myself, but the cadence of the narrator really added to the story.

The Last Heir to Blackwood Library by Hester Fox ⭐ - Wow when was the last time I had a true one star read. (Actually not too long ago. It was The Novice.) This wanted so badly to be The Haunting of Hill House, but if you want another book like Hill House, just read Starling House. We missed what actually happened in the book because the main character was losing her memory. If you want that, go read Harrow the Ninth. This was a mess and I hated it.

On that note, I need to read something to recharge my faith in books, so MURDERBOT TIME! That's my only reading plan for September, but now I'm feeling Rushed because the year is almost over and I still have about half of my reading goals list left. Whoops. I'd also like to at least attempt some of the Swordtember prompts, if not do all of them. That looks like a lot of fun! So! Onward we go!

[shalom-iamcominghome]

The jewish love language really is giving each other book recommendations you think they'd like........

[why-the-heck-not]

existential dread book pile

[fictionadventurer]

August: Day 30

Adventures

...I must have done something.

Accomplishments

Wrote and scheduled this year's Inklings Challenge announcement post

Paid a bill (that could only be accomplished in a mildly inconvenient way that I'd been putting off for no reason at all, so it feels like a major accomplishment to have it off my list)

[wundrousarts]

Going to do a Nevermoor series reread in June + July + August ? if anyone else also wants to do a reread around that time, could be fun to have more of the fandom prepping for Silverborn

Did initially make a roadmap plan to split the books up into weeks on top of already being months, so that people could focus on specific parts and discuss each week….. but between the fact that I messed it up the first time, Silverborn kept getting delayed as I planned it, and I’m actually really bad at keeping to stuff like that (looking at you, Silverborn Countdown Challenge…) I’m deciding to just go for it at whatever pace happens.

[sneez]

gwynplaine and dea through the seasons [id under cut]

id: a seven-panel digital comic in a watercolour style showing gwynplaine and dea from the man who laughs together in various natural scenes. on each panel is a stanza from the simon & garfunkel song 'april come she will'.

the first panel reads 'April, come she will / When streams are ripe and swelled with rain'. it shows a young gwynplaine and dea running after the caravan in a sunny spring rain shower; gwynplaine is covering dea's head with his coat.

the second panel reads 'May, she will stay / Resting in my arms again'. it shows gwynplaine and dea lying on a sunny hillside, their faces obscured by daffodils in the foreground.

the third panel reads 'June, she'll change her tune / In restless walks she'll prowl the night'. it shows gwynplaine and dea silhouetted against a field in the evening light; gwynplaine has his hand raised to shield his face.

the fourth panel reads 'July, she will fly / And give no warning to her flight'. it shows gwynplaine and dea sitting together in the door of the caravan as the sun sets, with hills receding into the background.

the fifth panel reads 'August, die she must / The autumn winds blow chilly and cold'. it shows a desolate snowy landscape, in the centre of which the child gwynplaine kneels beside the vague shape of a body in the snow and reaches out to the baby dea.

the sixth panel reads 'September, I'll remember / A love once new has now …' it shows gwynplaine and dea sleeping together in a warmly-lit room; dea has her head on gwynplaine's chest, and his face is turned towards her. his hand is resting on hers.

the seventh panel reads '… grown old'. it is a close-up of their hands from the previous panel. end id.

[literatureaesthetic]

august '23 favs

lolita by vladimir nabokov — my fav of the month. harrowing, haunting, and so beautifully written. i feel like i could write a dissertation on this novel (which is always the mark of a good piece of art)

natural beauty by ling ling huang — we follow a young musician into an elite, beauty-obsessed world where perfection comes at a staggering cost

stung with love by sappho — a collection of a few salvaged fragments of poetry by sappho. female-oriented and beautiful <3

[thecounterfeit-redhead]

Assistant to the Villain got me out of my post finals reading slump and I’ve never been happier to find true joy in reading but I don’t know what to do with myself cause I WANT THE SECOND BOOK IN MY HANDS RIGHT NOW

[studyaxis]

🕮 Read in August

“All this time I told myself we were born from war—but I was wrong, Ma. We were born from beauty. Let no one mistake us for the fruit of violence—but that violence, having passed through the fruit, failed to spoil it.” ― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous