What I’ve Been Reading Lately (November & December, 2023)

On December 27, 2023December 26, 2023 By cherylmahoneyIn ReviewsLeave a comment

With all the writing focus on NaNoWriMo in November, I missed doing a reading update last month! So now that the dust has settled on NaNo and on the holidays, I thought I’d hit the highlights today for the last couple months, before doing my annual Reading Round-up at the end of the year.

In the past two months, I read two more Terry Pratchett books, Interesting Times and The Last Continent, both wizards/Rincewind books. Rincewind went first to Discworld Asia (with a surprise return of Twoflower) and then to Discworld Australia. Chaos ensues, of course, and they were both quite amusing.

I got one more Martha Wells book in this year – City of Bones, a stand-alone with Wells’ usual excellent world-building, if a little less found family than I usually find in her books. And I did one more T. Kingfisher book as well, Thornhedge, a truly delightful spin on Sleeping Beauty. Continue reading “What I’ve Been Reading Lately (November & December, 2023)” →

What I’ve Been Reading Lately (October, 2023)

On October 30, 2023October 26, 2023 By cherylmahoneyIn Reviews1 Comment

Happy almost-Halloween! I think I’ll kick-off this month’s recap of reading with my one spooky book – Goosebumps: Revenge of the Lawn Gnomes by R. L. Stine. My book club opted to go fun and nostalgic this month, and each of us picked a Goosebumps book to read. I was actually never a fan back when I was the target age (although I later read Phantom of the Auditorium…of course) but this was a fun, silly read now. It’s a basic enough premise of lawn gnomes who come to life, create mischief, and get the twelve-year-old boy protagonist in trouble until he figures out their secret weakness (spoiler: it’s the dog whistle). I will say, though, I deeply, personally related to the boy’s older sister, who alphabetizes her books by author, and the main character and his best friend really were as obnoxious and annoying as the sister thought they were! Fine to read, would drive me nuts in life I’m sure.

I finished out a trilogy with The Master Magician by Charlie N. Holmberg, trying to finish the sloooow burn romance of the previous two books. They did ultimately get together, but there was surprisingly little pay-off for the long build-up. The couple went from maybe to inevitable with very little fireworks about it. The magic was good though, and the adventure was enjoyable too. Continue reading “What I’ve Been Reading Lately (October, 2023)” →

What I’ve Been Reading Lately (September, 2023)

On September 30, 2023 By cherylmahoneyIn Reviews1 Comment

Squeaking in at the end of the month with an update on September’s reading! Let’s jump right in…

Wrong Place, Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister was a very good time-twisty mystery. Jen watches her teenage son commit murder – and then starts living her life backward, each morning waking up on an earlier day. I really liked seeing her try to put the pieces together to unravel what had happened, and how to prevent the murder. A couple twists I saw coming, but others surprised me.

My book club selected How to Take Over the World by Ryan North as our non-fiction read of the month. It’s basically a pop-science book about the current edges of technology, loosely centered around the idea of pursuing a career as a super villain. It’s a career strong on secret bases and low-to-nonexistent on actual villainy. The final section on how to preserve a message for the future (on the order of thousands or millions of years) was probably the most intriguing. Continue reading “What I’ve Been Reading Lately (September, 2023)” →

What I’ve Been Reading Lately (August, 2023)

On August 31, 2023 By cherylmahoneyIn Reviews2 Comments

Nearly the end of August, and hopefully cooler weather is ahead! Time for some reading updates.

I finished reading After Anne by Logan Steiner, which I mentioned in my last update. A novel based on L. M. Montgomery’s life, it was interesting and the people were portrayed very well – but I personally would have made a lot of different choices in what to focus on and how to interpret some of the more ambiguous things in her life.

I enjoyed Indexing Reflections by Seanan McGuire, sequel Indexing. It was another very good, if dark, urban fantasy based on fairy tales, and I liked how much it delved into the backstories of the characters we met in the previous book. I’d have enjoyed a touch more romance, but there were still some nice moments. Continue reading “What I’ve Been Reading Lately (August, 2023)” →

What I’ve Been Reading Lately (July, 2023)

On July 24, 2023July 23, 2023 By cherylmahoneyIn Reviews1 Comment

Happy July! Summer has arrived with a vengeance here; after a cooler June, July has had much hotter days. Good for staying in and reading, I suppose! I’ve been having a month of mostly fantasy books, which has always been a favorite, of course. Lots of variety within that category, though!

I mentioned in my last update that I was reading a book about a character people forget – that book was The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab. It sounds like the same premise as The Sudden Appearance of Hope, but it felt and played out very differently. Hope felt like (fuzzy) science fiction, while this was straight fantasy. Addie makes a deal with the devil – or at least, one of the “old gods” – in the early 1700s. She gains “freedom” – immortality but also no one can remember her. The book intercuts between stories of Addie’s past through the centuries and a modern story when she finally meets a man who can remember her. This hits multiple story types I love, and there was a lot to enjoy here. Her story felt deeply sad, though, in a way Hope didn’t, and I wasn’t entirely satisfied by the ending. So I guess it was 98% of a very good book.

In the Lives of Puppets by T.J. Klune was one I was hotly anticipating. Klune wrote the incandescently wonderful House in the Cerulean Sea and the hilariously funny How to Be a Normal Person, so that sets up a ton of expectation! It’s a bit of Pinocchio with a little Wizard of Oz, about a human who was raised by an android and then goes on a kind of quest with three robot friends. This definitely had a lot of Klune markers to it, a found family story where everyone is a little bit against the norm. The book also, unfortunately, had a tendency to use deep social awkwardness (mostly robots saying inappropriate remarks because they’re robots and have no filter) as humor, and I found that, well, awkward. That toned down as the book went on, though, and overall I enjoyed it quite a bit. Continue reading “What I’ve Been Reading Lately (July, 2023)” →