#end-of-year book asks

[devotion-that-corrupts]

4 8 and 17 for the end of the year book ask meme! 📚

end-of-year book asks

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

catherynne m valente my beloved!! i'd had "deathless" and "comfort me with apples" on my tbr list for a while, and this year i've finally picked them up, as well as one of her short story collections. the combination of atmospheric magical realism, folktale motives and reimaginings, beautiful writing, and meta narrative has me by my throat.

8. Did you meet any of your reading goals? Which ones?

i don't really do reading goals tbh. my goodreads one is set at 24 so it wasn't that hard to beat. i'm still not done with my old tbr, but i got 14 books off it this year. also i've been reading more books written by women, i'm very happy with my progress in that regard.

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

yes! two books in particular.

the first is "the bog wife" by kay chronister. i expected it to be moderately fun but nothing extraordinary, like all the other recent gothic horror releases i've read. instead it turned out to be genuinely great. it has everything i want from the genre. a family isolated from society, siblings who "have uncannily grown into each other", their different kinds of strangeness, their interactions and dynamics distinct and full of rituals, the slow collapse of the world as they know it, and very importantly writing that is both lyrical and oppressive. it's just great. i highly recommend it.

the second is "and i darken" by kiersten white (it's part of the trilogy titled "the conqueror's saga", but after i liked the first book i obviously wasn't surprised when i liked the others). the thing about it is that it has no right to work. i could tell you the premise and the direction of the plot, and it wouldn't sound good at all, or at least it wouldn't sound like something i would normally like. and the fact that the author mostly wrote ya paranormal romance before that didn't give me much hope either. and yet i enjoyed it a lot. mostly because of unapologetic batshit insanity of our female mc and her messy relationship with the second pov character, her brother. you can really tell that she's genderbent vlad the impaler, i'll leave it at that.

[volturialice]

Hey, G! For the book asks, how about 3 and 10?

not me queueing up an ask game and then forgetting to log in to the entire app all day sorry ioco ily

3 - What were your top five books of the year?

I feel like 80% of what I read this year were flops, but now that I look at this list, I read so many books that 20% non-flops isn't too bad, actually. My favorites this year were mostly "finally got around to reading" books that are only new to me! And of course we had some gems from Bella's Book Club, both regular and from the summer reading challenge (shoutout to Braiding Sweetgrass, the Emily books, and The Hollow Kingdom!)

the His Dark Materials trilogy - Yeah yeah, everyone's been telling me to read this since I was 10 to the point where I was like "there's no way this could possibly live up to the hype" but oops yes it does

The Haunting of Hill House - shirley is Mother

Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower - if shirley is Mother, tamsyn is God

System Collapse/my more diplomatic answer: the Ancillary Justice series - AJ isn't as good as Murderbot but that's an insanely high bar so it's still pretty good

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall - Wasn't expecting to like this nearly as much as I did, but found I was just stoked to keep reading every time I picked it up

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

At the beginning of the year I said it was gonna be System Collapse and I was 100% correct, it was System Collapse

send me end-of-year book asks

[vorbarrsultana]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

what a mess.

[candyheartedchy]

I think I just discovered a repressed fictional crush and I’m not sure how I should feel about it.

[taylor-titmouse]

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

what a funny thing to gotcha me on

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

so yeah. the last thing you said.

[addamvelaryon]

Taking both seasons into consideration, this scene might just be my least favourite from the entirety of HOTD. Of course, I’m biased in saying that because Addam is my favourite character. The show speedrunning his character assassination in this moment doesn’t sit right with me, especially since it’s only done for the sake of Rhaenyra (so basically the same treatment the rest of house Velaryon received in the show).

Addam interacting with Rhaenyra before he ever does with Corlys was already such a huge red flag to me. Though I did predict, at the start of season two, that the show would distance Addam from Corlys as much as possible, to center Rhaenyra in his story. I was proven right. Then I saw what the people working on the show had to say about this scene, and I was proven right again.

That being said, it’s kind of cathartic knowing that this scene is also the beginning of the end for Rhaenyra. There’s a strange irony in the show sacrificing Addam’s story arc to build up show!Rhaenyra’s story but still keeping him in the position of “the queen’s undoing” that he was in the book.

[coquelicoq]

if we assume that each of the three pillars comes exactly three times for a total of nine times, and we know that the 7th time it was the 40-year guardian, and if we assume that was her final visit and the last two visits will be split between the 30-year guardian and the 8-year guardian, we can calculate how long ago the miharu family made that deal: (40x3)+(30x2)+(8x2)=196 years. 196 years ago it was 1828, but i think this is supposed to be set in the 1980s or 90s, so call it the late 1700s. that's the kind of thing matoba as the head of the matoba clan has to concern himself with - deals with youkai made by people 200 years ago from families that don't even exist anymore. it's an interesting contrast to the thing he says to natsume at the end of this arc, about the 9th visit, which is 30 years away, being someone else's problem. he's embroiled in the past but doesn't even think he'll get to have a future.

[violentdelightshavevioletends]

What if Violet didn’t marry Xaden to save Tyrrendor… what if she married Bodhi?!

— Just saw someone say this and I have not been the same since… like I know it’s not real… but still

[devotion-that-corrupts]

for the book ask - 3 and 12!

end-of-year book asks

3. What were your top five books of the year?

ohh, that's a difficult question. let me see. r.f. kuang's "babel" is definitely up there, "deathless" and "the bog wife" i've mentioned in another ask, hmm… well, that's top three. i'm not sure about 4-5. i could say "under the pendulum sun", or "the secret history" which i've finally read this year, or "my dark vanessa", or "the bread we eat in dreams", or one of the books in "the conqueror's saga", probably "now i rise"… i don't know!! as far as i'm concerned, they're all somewhere in this year's favorites.

12. Any books that disappointed you?

there were two that i dnfd, but out of those that i did finish… yeah, "do androids dream of electric sheep?" by philip k dick. i was excited to read such a classic, and the idea was great, but god, the blatant misogyny made my experience much worse than it could've been. it wasn't necessary, it didn't say anything about the world or the possible future the book was set in, it was just there. it made me remember a quote of his, iirc i saw it in a screenshot from r/menwritingwomen, about "melon-shaped breasts bobbing with agitation". i was reading the book thinking yeah, i can see how this is written by the same author. tbh i shouldn't have been disappointed by it, i should've expected it, but i wanted to be optimistic. oh well.

[volturialice]

3 4 5!!!!

3 - What were your top five books of the year?

Answered!

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

Feels weird to say this when none of their individual books are my favorite, but I really like Ava Reid's prose. I also didn't trust the hype about Laini Taylor but turns out I really like her style, too. And I liked Our Share of Night enough to go buy it in the original Spanish, so I guess Mariana Enriquez too!

5 - What genre did you read the most of?

Just from skimming my list, I'd say fantasy, with sci-fi, horror, and classics trailing close behind. Also a lot of genre-blending stuff, in particular historical horror and historical fantasy/fantasy of manners

send me end-of-year book asks

[liriostigre]

‎ 💭 🛌🏻

[dullahandyke]

that reminds me i need to watch any and all adaptations of tcomc with eugenie in them. badly. even the ones where they straightwash her like gankutsuou. i miss her i miss her badly i need to reread tcomc i miss ittttttttt the adaptations are so overwhelmingly focused on the romance which impacts the revenge plot to the degree that morcerf is elevated to the primary antagonist above danglars and villefort and caderousse because where the others also wronged edmond, morcerf did it for the purpose of stealing his wife, which is the ultimate wrong in the eyes of a romantic story. there's not a great number of ways to condense a 1200 page story to a movie of a reasonable length, but i wish so many didn't make the genre shift to romance. it's been done before! there are other angles to explore it from! make a movie focused on the younger generation like albert and franz and beauchamp and have the main plot going on in the background! refrain from showing any backstory at all and only show how we get to the downfalls of the villains! i love mercédes, but cut the romance, i am begging you.

[ferronickel]

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

[sunnyxjarrus]

TW. Vent

(basically me talking about how my relationship with my sister is)

me and my sister have always had what I would consider a forced relationship but sometimes it actually works and flows on it’s own despite the fact that we have practically nothing in common and we are polar opposites and it’s really saddening to think about

anyway my sister and I actually texted back and forth today about snow bc our area got a few inches and she was asking about how bad things are at my moms because we live on a 13% incline on a backroad in a small town so I sent a couple of pictures told her about shoveling the driveway earlier and asked how things were at our dad’s house where she is staying for winter break until her second semester starts in a few weeks (she’s a freshman in college)

and it hit me how even if we have our moments where conversations are easy and we don’t really fight we still fall into the pattern of older mature perfect sister and problematic childish little sister who can’t seem to be able to even compare to her.

Still we mirror each other relentlessly if I do something wrong at my moms I’m ‘just like my sister’ if I dare defend her when they wrongfully comment about her calling her selfish or ignorant for not wanting to deal with them after they literally said the equivalent to hoping she was severely injured at the least ‘I am taking lessons from her’ or ‘being corrupted’ and it’s exhausting

@local-lover-boy

[visenyaism]

14

14. Favorite book you read this year?

I really wish I read more this year I’ve def started to associate it w grading which is terrible. That being said fav nonfiction was Wilmington’s Lie by David Zucchino, fav fiction was obviously transparently Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel I’ve been evangelizing abt Thomas Cromwell like an insane person all year

[diz-eaze]

Genuine question: Where are the limits for you? Like I know, this is a dark content blog, but I just started Ritalin and had the most diabolical idea involving medication tampering, interference with dosages, and meds being used as gaslighting, and it scared me enough into being like "Oh damn, I should ask first, huh?"

my limits when it comes to dark content would be pedophilia. i abhor any content involving children that isn't in a platonic context <3 but other than that, I'm pretty much open to anything ! warnings would be placed at the top of the post and also placed in the tags using "tw [content]" <3

yandere, drugging, brainwashing/hypnosis, stalking, manipulation, noncon/dubcon, pseudo-incest and stepcest (incest is situationally dependent bc i need to like the characters to an unhealthy degree first, i fear), age gaps, power imbalance/abuse of power, coercion, babytrapping, amputation/crippling (dark otome prepared me for this), etc. are some of the things i can name from the top of my head :00