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lamiacallsI’m back on my reading bullshit thanks to a Readathon this month. My stats for April were 22 books, coming to around 1,500 pages and 100+ hours of audio.
My thoughts aren’t very organised, but!
I would be very surprised if Fever Dream by Samantha Schweblin doesn’t make it into my top 3 of the year. A short horror novel where a delirious, hospitalised woman tells a boy (who is not her son) the events that led to her supposed poisoning. It’s extremely feverish, and has that cheeky, is-this-supernatural-or-just-normal-strange element that I love. It filled me with dread throughout and the audiobook narration was freaking fantastic. I’m going to be hunting down the rest of Schweblin’s books to swallow them whole!!
The Darkness Outside Us by Eliot Schrefer was SO GOOD yo! I went in thinking it was just YA sci-fi with gay astronauts and was not expecting there to be actual plot and twists and shit! I don’t want to say much more because it’s better to go in fresh, but goddamn. I had just buckets of fun listening to this.
Last Tang Standing by Lauren Ho was also a fun read! Very much a modern Bridget Jones’s Diary in Singapore. The audiobook narrator made Andrea so charming, too. A very flirty, bubbly little romance novel. I find it hard to find romance novels I actually like, despite loving rom coms, so this was a joy!
I enjoyed Heart in a Box by Kelly Thompson & Meredith McClaren too, a graphic novel about a recently heartbroken woman who wishes her heart away only to realise how dull life is without it and must hunt down the pieces of her heart to get them back. I could do with an entire novel with this concept, tbh, and maybe several of them?! The heart break of having to fight for your heart back, tricking people and hurting them so you can reclaim it, plus each piece brings back a flood of terrible feelings? Delicious and like, tailor made to my interests! Feels like potential AU material, hmm.
I also read An Enchantment of Ravens by Margaret Rogerson. The writing was good, the narration was lovely, but the story was just a little silly for my tastes. I should have DNF’d it really. It was very “instalove”, and had one of my least favourite tropes: we’re told at the beginning that Isobel is a very sensible, wise girl who has never let the Fair Folk get one over on her, and she has strict rules. Then a chapter later, she meets the Autumn Prince and is immediately smitten with him and lets rules be damned, for no real reason. They don’t even really talk, he’s just so hot that to hell with worrying about Fair Folk trickery, apparently. It was whatever the opposite of slow burn is. Seriously: the Prince says he loves her at about 40% of the way in, but why he loves her, I can’t quite tell. I will say they had great chemistry and I did enjoy all their little moments, plus their jumping each other’s bones and trying to come to their senses was fun. But I need a little more buildup, personally, especially if we’re going beyond crush/lust and straight into “love” territory. Plus, he’s not even cruel and tricksy like fae! I don’t want super nice fae, I want them mean and reluctant. Holly Black has spoiled me.
It’s a shame, because the body horror of the Barrow King was great, and I love the monstrous land of a corrupted Fae. I’ll probably still check out her other book, Sorcery of Thorns, as I’ve heard good things about it and the writing of this one was really enjoyable.
The absolute lowlight, though, was Murakami T by Haruki Murakami. It’a a book of “essays” (feels rich to call them that) about Murakami’s t-shirts. As someone who collects a specific kind of t-shirt, I was into the concept, and, even though I hate Murakami’s fiction, I loved What I Talk About When I Talk About Running so much. So expectations were maybe a little high but even so, this was not a good book! Anecdotes that went nowhere, little research into the t-shirts at hand, disordered thoughts all over the place. I really wish this had just been a coffee table book with pictures of the shirts, because I could happily flick through that for days instead of forcing myself through what felt like phone conversations with my least favourite relatives while they tell me that they don’t know what “Vote Pedro” means but the t-shirt looked nice in the shop and they thought it might have something to do with an election.
It’s rare that I re-read anything, but I’ve been in a weird mood, so I ended up listening to the audiobook of Valiant by Holly Black in basically a single setting. It’s the first book I ever read by her (who would have thunk, almost a decade and a half later, I would still be obsessed with her) and I was very nervous going in. It didn’t, in the end, live up to my expectations. The romance is not super well developed. It’s especially unsatisfactory when comparing it to The Folk of the Air, where the slow burn is exquisite. But! I still really liked it, had a lot of fun reading it, and enjoyed Ravus, the ultimate sad boy troll, just as much as usual. It’s also a lot darker than I remembered, even from the start. I’m not sure if I’ll revisit the other Modern Faerie Tales — I never liked them as much as I liked Valiant (I’m not even sure I ever finished Ironside?) but maybe that’d be different now.
In a re-reading mood, I also returned to The Tower Room by Adele Geras and…wow, does it not hold up. I had such fond memories of it! But no, the romance is kind of nothing, very “instalove” and not built up satisfactorily. And I really didn’t like the love interest at all. A shame, I was planning to do a full re-read of the series but I think I’m giving it up here.
Other books I’ve enjoyed this month:
- A Dowry of Blood by S.T. Gibson — I didn’t jive well with the ebook when I tried it, but on audio, it was perfect. Really sumptuous prose, from a Bride of Dracula confessing to Dracula.
- A Lesson in Vengeance by Victoria Lee — there are things I would change about this if I could, but I still liked it a lot! What’s not to love about lesbians in a boarding school with maybe-witchcraft-maybe-madness-maybe-murder?
- Locke & Key, Vol. 1 & 2 by Joe Hill & Gabriel Rodríguez — these have been on my TBR since…pretty much their release?! So I’m glad to finally get to them. I didn’t like the second as much as the first TBP, but it’s still solid, interesting stuff and I’m looking forward to the rest.
- The Project by Courtney Summers - YA cult stuff! I was worried it would be too thriller-y for me, but it’s actually not like that at all. Excellently written & narrated, I really loved Lo. I felt very uncomfortable at many times, mostly because of how blisteringly creepy the leader of the cult is. The thing that let me down was the ending was a little confusing and rushed, but it was otherwise solid.
- Payback’s a Witch by Lana Harper - cute romcom with bisexual witches! It did lose me a little in the middle, and I wasn’t there wasn’t quite as much “millennial” style humour, but I really enjoyed it nonetheless as a frothy, silly read with a surprising amount of plot.
I will almost certainly slow down my reading a bit in May, although I have some horror middle grade on deck since it’s halfway to Halloween and there’s nothing I like better than themed reading! Gonna try and update during the month so it isn’t this ridiculously long post where I ramble about books in the future ^_^;
What has everyone else been reading this last month?
My thoughts aren’t very organised, but!
I would be very surprised if Fever Dream by Samantha Schweblin doesn’t make it into my top 3 of the year. A short horror novel where a delirious, hospitalised woman tells a boy (who is not her son) the events that led to her supposed poisoning. It’s extremely feverish, and has that cheeky, is-this-supernatural-or-just-normal-strange element that I love. It filled me with dread throughout and the audiobook narration was freaking fantastic. I’m going to be hunting down the rest of Schweblin’s books to swallow them whole!!
The Darkness Outside Us by Eliot Schrefer was SO GOOD yo! I went in thinking it was just YA sci-fi with gay astronauts and was not expecting there to be actual plot and twists and shit! I don’t want to say much more because it’s better to go in fresh, but goddamn. I had just buckets of fun listening to this.
Last Tang Standing by Lauren Ho was also a fun read! Very much a modern Bridget Jones’s Diary in Singapore. The audiobook narrator made Andrea so charming, too. A very flirty, bubbly little romance novel. I find it hard to find romance novels I actually like, despite loving rom coms, so this was a joy!
I enjoyed Heart in a Box by Kelly Thompson & Meredith McClaren too, a graphic novel about a recently heartbroken woman who wishes her heart away only to realise how dull life is without it and must hunt down the pieces of her heart to get them back. I could do with an entire novel with this concept, tbh, and maybe several of them?! The heart break of having to fight for your heart back, tricking people and hurting them so you can reclaim it, plus each piece brings back a flood of terrible feelings? Delicious and like, tailor made to my interests! Feels like potential AU material, hmm.
I also read An Enchantment of Ravens by Margaret Rogerson. The writing was good, the narration was lovely, but the story was just a little silly for my tastes. I should have DNF’d it really. It was very “instalove”, and had one of my least favourite tropes: we’re told at the beginning that Isobel is a very sensible, wise girl who has never let the Fair Folk get one over on her, and she has strict rules. Then a chapter later, she meets the Autumn Prince and is immediately smitten with him and lets rules be damned, for no real reason. They don’t even really talk, he’s just so hot that to hell with worrying about Fair Folk trickery, apparently. It was whatever the opposite of slow burn is. Seriously: the Prince says he loves her at about 40% of the way in, but why he loves her, I can’t quite tell. I will say they had great chemistry and I did enjoy all their little moments, plus their jumping each other’s bones and trying to come to their senses was fun. But I need a little more buildup, personally, especially if we’re going beyond crush/lust and straight into “love” territory. Plus, he’s not even cruel and tricksy like fae! I don’t want super nice fae, I want them mean and reluctant. Holly Black has spoiled me.
It’s a shame, because the body horror of the Barrow King was great, and I love the monstrous land of a corrupted Fae. I’ll probably still check out her other book, Sorcery of Thorns, as I’ve heard good things about it and the writing of this one was really enjoyable.
The absolute lowlight, though, was Murakami T by Haruki Murakami. It’a a book of “essays” (feels rich to call them that) about Murakami’s t-shirts. As someone who collects a specific kind of t-shirt, I was into the concept, and, even though I hate Murakami’s fiction, I loved What I Talk About When I Talk About Running so much. So expectations were maybe a little high but even so, this was not a good book! Anecdotes that went nowhere, little research into the t-shirts at hand, disordered thoughts all over the place. I really wish this had just been a coffee table book with pictures of the shirts, because I could happily flick through that for days instead of forcing myself through what felt like phone conversations with my least favourite relatives while they tell me that they don’t know what “Vote Pedro” means but the t-shirt looked nice in the shop and they thought it might have something to do with an election.
It’s rare that I re-read anything, but I’ve been in a weird mood, so I ended up listening to the audiobook of Valiant by Holly Black in basically a single setting. It’s the first book I ever read by her (who would have thunk, almost a decade and a half later, I would still be obsessed with her) and I was very nervous going in. It didn’t, in the end, live up to my expectations. The romance is not super well developed. It’s especially unsatisfactory when comparing it to The Folk of the Air, where the slow burn is exquisite. But! I still really liked it, had a lot of fun reading it, and enjoyed Ravus, the ultimate sad boy troll, just as much as usual. It’s also a lot darker than I remembered, even from the start. I’m not sure if I’ll revisit the other Modern Faerie Tales — I never liked them as much as I liked Valiant (I’m not even sure I ever finished Ironside?) but maybe that’d be different now.
In a re-reading mood, I also returned to The Tower Room by Adele Geras and…wow, does it not hold up. I had such fond memories of it! But no, the romance is kind of nothing, very “instalove” and not built up satisfactorily. And I really didn’t like the love interest at all. A shame, I was planning to do a full re-read of the series but I think I’m giving it up here.
Other books I’ve enjoyed this month:
- A Dowry of Blood by S.T. Gibson — I didn’t jive well with the ebook when I tried it, but on audio, it was perfect. Really sumptuous prose, from a Bride of Dracula confessing to Dracula.
- A Lesson in Vengeance by Victoria Lee — there are things I would change about this if I could, but I still liked it a lot! What’s not to love about lesbians in a boarding school with maybe-witchcraft-maybe-madness-maybe-murder?
- Locke & Key, Vol. 1 & 2 by Joe Hill & Gabriel Rodríguez — these have been on my TBR since…pretty much their release?! So I’m glad to finally get to them. I didn’t like the second as much as the first TBP, but it’s still solid, interesting stuff and I’m looking forward to the rest.
- The Project by Courtney Summers - YA cult stuff! I was worried it would be too thriller-y for me, but it’s actually not like that at all. Excellently written & narrated, I really loved Lo. I felt very uncomfortable at many times, mostly because of how blisteringly creepy the leader of the cult is. The thing that let me down was the ending was a little confusing and rushed, but it was otherwise solid.
- Payback’s a Witch by Lana Harper - cute romcom with bisexual witches! It did lose me a little in the middle, and I wasn’t there wasn’t quite as much “millennial” style humour, but I really enjoyed it nonetheless as a frothy, silly read with a surprising amount of plot.
I will almost certainly slow down my reading a bit in May, although I have some horror middle grade on deck since it’s halfway to Halloween and there’s nothing I like better than themed reading! Gonna try and update during the month so it isn’t this ridiculously long post where I ramble about books in the future ^_^;
What has everyone else been reading this last month?
no subject
Date: 2022-05-07 05:25 pm (UTC)I haven't read the Murakami running book and now I want to try it!
I did read An Enchantment of Ravens; I found it mostly forgettable, but I vaguely remember adoring some of the minor characters. I think that was my experience with Sorcery of Thorns as well -- the minor characters were much more interesting to me.
I don’t want super nice fae, I want them mean and reluctant. Holly Black has spoiled me.
:D
And Heart in a Box sounds amazing, and I agree, that should be an AU concept.
I’m not sure if I’ll revisit the other Modern Faerie Tales — I never liked them as much as I liked Valiant (I’m not even sure I ever finished Ironside?) but maybe that’d be different now.
Valiant was the one I never finished of those books; I read Tithe and Ironside, but over a decade ago -- I may try them again for the glimpses of faerie politics outside of the High Court.
(Also, hi! :D I enjoyed browsing through your DW updates -- adding you, if that's okay!)
no subject
Date: 2022-05-08 12:14 am (UTC)I recommend it! Even though I'm not (and never will be) a runner, it's really well-written.
I think that was my experience with Sorcery of Thorns as well
Ooh, okay, maybe I won't bother then. I did like the side-characters in Ravens too (especially...the Lord I'm forgetting the name of now and his young ward, as well as the main character's sisters), but not enough to carry the book.
Valiant was the one I never finished of those books
Oh interesting, what tripped you up on Valiant? I think it's because I read Valiant before Tithe so was more invested in Val than Kaye and...oh my god. I just that Valiant is a pun, typing her name out just now. Goddammit.
But yeah, I do love that Roiben plays a significant part in some of The Folk of the Air (and, actually, a bit of Valiant, as I discovered on this read). I'd be interested in hearing what you think if you do pick them up! My library annoyingly doesn't have either of them, only Valiant, otherwise I'd be more tempted, but buying them feels like a big investment.
(Also, hi! :D I enjoyed browsing through your DW updates -- adding you, if that's okay!)
Hello! Absolutely!! Have added you back :D
no subject
Date: 2022-05-08 06:29 am (UTC)Oh interesting, what tripped you up on Valiant? I think it's because I read Valiant before Tithe so was more invested in Val than Kaye
Hmmm...that was fifteen years ago, but as far as I can tell...I read Tithe first and really liked Kaye, and then Val was new and also human, and IIRC, Valiant was grittier and probably too gritty for me at that time? In hindsight I think a lot of the appeal of Tithe for me was the power dynamic and how it skewed in favor of Kaye after she learned Roiben's name, and then all the scary faerie queens hanging around, and I don't think Valiant had that to hook me. I remember being vaguely disappointed by Ironside as well.
...I also just got the pun. :P
My library annoyingly doesn't have either of them, only Valiant, otherwise I'd be more tempted, but buying them feels like a big investment.
Oh, no! D: I'm glad your library has Valiant, at least.