October Reading
Nov. 14th, 2023 01:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sultrybutdamagedOctober is usually my best month for reading, since I do a Halloween-themed readathon. I like the accountability that comes from being on a team of readers; keeps me reaching for my books instead of my phone in my free time. Things are still hectic at home and work so I came in a little under where I was last year, but I still finished 17 mostly short books. Luckily I was able to keep to my year goal of only picking books from my (massive) TBR.
Dracula by Bram Stoker - Since I’m doing a classics challenge, (re)reading Dracula was the obvious choice for Halloween. Mina Harker is one of my favorite female characters in classic literature. She defeats a vampire by organizing everyone’s notes and looking for patterns. I’m pretty sure I couldn’t like, chop off a head or something, but I could totally fight a vampire that way.
My Soul to Lose by Rachel Vincent - Novella-length prequel to an urban fantasy series called Soul Screamers, which is about banshees. These kinds of prequels are hard to get right because the author wants to hold the main introductions until the first real book, but the way this one establishes a lot of mysteries and solves none of them seems like a good lead-in to the series.
Merry Happy Valkyrie by Tansy Rayner Roberts - I love holiday stories. This one is set in the only town in Australia where it always snows on Christmas and is heavily influenced by Hallmark. If, alongside small town girls who move to the big city, reunions with your ex and learning lessons about the true meaning of Christmas, those movies also included a mountain that wants to kill everyone.
Learning Curves by Ceillie Simkiss - Another sapphic romance novella. This one did not have a plot. Like, at all. The main characters were well developed, they had chemistry, the way they fell in love was angst-free and probably what we’d all want in real life, but in a book it was boring.
Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree - This one suffered a bit from being overhyped to me, but I still enjoyed it. It’s part of this sub genre, cozy fantasy, that is having a moment right now. The main character is an orc mercenary who leaves behind a life of violence to open a coffee shop, and the whole thing is about her starting the shop, getting people who’ve never had coffee before to give it a chance, and building a found family with her employees.
The Musician’s Daughter by Susanne Dunlap - A strong historical mystery set in 1790’s Vienna. The main character is the daughter of a musician who is murdered and the plot involves lots of real-life characters and political intrigue. The ending was a bit too neat in some ways, but I enjoyed this and plan to read the next one in the series soon. They infiltrated two fancy dress parties to get information, so that’s a win for me.
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng - Another book that suffered from all the hype I’d heard before I read it. I picked this one up because I loved Our Missing Hearts, but it didn’t work as well for me. There were strong themes around motherhood, social obligations, and the conflict between the desire to follow the rules versus the desire to burn everything down, but there was also a lot of dull teenage drama and the most interesting subplot was delivered in summary form, without the reader getting a chance to feel attached to any of the characters.
Help Wanted by J. Emery - This was another romance novella riding on the reader finding the main character relatable, but unlike in Learning Curves, here it worked. Em is questioning her gender identity and sexuality (is she nonbinary? Asexual? Does she want her love interest or want to be him?) and what I loved about the book was that it didn’t demand she sort those issues out before she was allowed to pursue a romance, or happiness. Also, the story was set at a magical college, but that was oddly irrelevant to the plot.
Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You by Scotto Moore - This was such a weird little book, but I loved it. The unnamed narrator hears a song from a band called Beautiful Remorse that sends them and everyone else who listens to it into a frenzy of pleasure, and the next thing they know, they’ve joined the band for a national tour complete with ritualistic murder, eldritch horror and a barely coherent plot interspersed with a lot of pretentious talk about the world of indie bands.
Of Noble Family by Mary Robinette Kowal- The fifth and last book in the Glamourist Histories, a series of Regency romances with light magical elements. It’s funny to look back on how annoying I found the main characters in the first book because I’ve come to love them and their relationship so much. These books do so many things so well - character development, historical detail, handling of trauma, dealing with period-typical prejudices without giving the main characters an easy out - but they are strongest in the way they build up Jane and Vincent’s relationship. Their happy ending made me happy too.
Waters of Versailles by Kelly Robson - I read this novella on Tor.com when it was first published and I remembered how funny it was, but I had forgotten the emotional way it ends. It’s about a soldier who wins his way into the court at Versailles by trapping a water spirit and using her to create the miracle of modern plumbing. I realize this sounds silly, but the relationship between Sylvain and the nixie was really lovely and the story played with the idea of what you lose when you give up where you came from very well.
The Pale Lady by Alexandre Dumas - If I was going to read two classics of 19th century vampire literature in one month, I probably should have kept Dracula for last so I could end on a high note, but oh well. The gothic vibes were strong here, but there was almost nothing else to notice - the plot just kind of happened, with no explanation, the characters were thin, and the romance was ridiculous.
Wink Poppy Midnight by April Genevieve Tucholke - This book is a lot. It is brimming over with atmosphere, unreliable narrators and poetic language. A few paragraphs at a time, it is beautiful, but after fifty pages of no one being able to speak without invoking a metaphor, it was exhausting. The plot beneath all those words was underwhelming. Also, the title is the name of the three main characters, and believing that a single town had three people with such twee names was a step too far for me.
I Love I Hate I Miss My Sister by Amelie Saran - I have mixed feelings about this one. It’s a beautifully written book about two Muslim sisters in France, both self-identified feminists who choose to express that it opposite ways. It takes on a lot of topics - multi-generation immigrant experiences, the role of religion in society, the way both religious and secular rules limit women’s choices - with nuance. But it also took a real incident, made it the brutal center of the story, and then added the religious element to it in a way that ends up enforcing some stereotypes that the author then doesn’t really address.
Anything but Typical by Nora Raleigh Baskin - This was for my Autism Reads book club. It’s a MG book about a boy who forms an online friendship with a girl who doesn’t know he is autistic with high support needs, and the pressure he feels when an opportunity comes up for them to meet in person. The depiction of an online friendship felt very realistic and I liked that the book didn’t sugar coat any of Jason’s relationships and portrayed him as very self-aware about how his disability impacted how others saw him.
Cinnamon Blade: Knife in Shining Armor by Shira Glassman - A really fun superhero-themed f/f romance that I liked a lot more than I expected to. It’s set in a very splashy, Silver Age type comics universe where the superhero, Blade, is a reformed thief, and the love interest, Soledad, is an adorable nerd she keeps rescuing. It was a much higher heat book than I usually read but I enjoyed that for a change.
The Trouble with Tony by Eli Easton - A very tropy, but fun, m/m romance that seemed heavily influence by fanfic (which is a good thing.) Tony is a PI who goes undercover as a patient in a sex clinic to investigate a murder and ends up falling for his therapist. Yeah, it’s like that. There were one or two elements I didn’t like - at one point the book kind of medicalized demisexuality - but the characters were really well done and the romance was cute and funny.
Dracula by Bram Stoker - Since I’m doing a classics challenge, (re)reading Dracula was the obvious choice for Halloween. Mina Harker is one of my favorite female characters in classic literature. She defeats a vampire by organizing everyone’s notes and looking for patterns. I’m pretty sure I couldn’t like, chop off a head or something, but I could totally fight a vampire that way.
My Soul to Lose by Rachel Vincent - Novella-length prequel to an urban fantasy series called Soul Screamers, which is about banshees. These kinds of prequels are hard to get right because the author wants to hold the main introductions until the first real book, but the way this one establishes a lot of mysteries and solves none of them seems like a good lead-in to the series.
Merry Happy Valkyrie by Tansy Rayner Roberts - I love holiday stories. This one is set in the only town in Australia where it always snows on Christmas and is heavily influenced by Hallmark. If, alongside small town girls who move to the big city, reunions with your ex and learning lessons about the true meaning of Christmas, those movies also included a mountain that wants to kill everyone.
Learning Curves by Ceillie Simkiss - Another sapphic romance novella. This one did not have a plot. Like, at all. The main characters were well developed, they had chemistry, the way they fell in love was angst-free and probably what we’d all want in real life, but in a book it was boring.
Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree - This one suffered a bit from being overhyped to me, but I still enjoyed it. It’s part of this sub genre, cozy fantasy, that is having a moment right now. The main character is an orc mercenary who leaves behind a life of violence to open a coffee shop, and the whole thing is about her starting the shop, getting people who’ve never had coffee before to give it a chance, and building a found family with her employees.
The Musician’s Daughter by Susanne Dunlap - A strong historical mystery set in 1790’s Vienna. The main character is the daughter of a musician who is murdered and the plot involves lots of real-life characters and political intrigue. The ending was a bit too neat in some ways, but I enjoyed this and plan to read the next one in the series soon. They infiltrated two fancy dress parties to get information, so that’s a win for me.
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng - Another book that suffered from all the hype I’d heard before I read it. I picked this one up because I loved Our Missing Hearts, but it didn’t work as well for me. There were strong themes around motherhood, social obligations, and the conflict between the desire to follow the rules versus the desire to burn everything down, but there was also a lot of dull teenage drama and the most interesting subplot was delivered in summary form, without the reader getting a chance to feel attached to any of the characters.
Help Wanted by J. Emery - This was another romance novella riding on the reader finding the main character relatable, but unlike in Learning Curves, here it worked. Em is questioning her gender identity and sexuality (is she nonbinary? Asexual? Does she want her love interest or want to be him?) and what I loved about the book was that it didn’t demand she sort those issues out before she was allowed to pursue a romance, or happiness. Also, the story was set at a magical college, but that was oddly irrelevant to the plot.
Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You by Scotto Moore - This was such a weird little book, but I loved it. The unnamed narrator hears a song from a band called Beautiful Remorse that sends them and everyone else who listens to it into a frenzy of pleasure, and the next thing they know, they’ve joined the band for a national tour complete with ritualistic murder, eldritch horror and a barely coherent plot interspersed with a lot of pretentious talk about the world of indie bands.
Of Noble Family by Mary Robinette Kowal- The fifth and last book in the Glamourist Histories, a series of Regency romances with light magical elements. It’s funny to look back on how annoying I found the main characters in the first book because I’ve come to love them and their relationship so much. These books do so many things so well - character development, historical detail, handling of trauma, dealing with period-typical prejudices without giving the main characters an easy out - but they are strongest in the way they build up Jane and Vincent’s relationship. Their happy ending made me happy too.
Waters of Versailles by Kelly Robson - I read this novella on Tor.com when it was first published and I remembered how funny it was, but I had forgotten the emotional way it ends. It’s about a soldier who wins his way into the court at Versailles by trapping a water spirit and using her to create the miracle of modern plumbing. I realize this sounds silly, but the relationship between Sylvain and the nixie was really lovely and the story played with the idea of what you lose when you give up where you came from very well.
The Pale Lady by Alexandre Dumas - If I was going to read two classics of 19th century vampire literature in one month, I probably should have kept Dracula for last so I could end on a high note, but oh well. The gothic vibes were strong here, but there was almost nothing else to notice - the plot just kind of happened, with no explanation, the characters were thin, and the romance was ridiculous.
Wink Poppy Midnight by April Genevieve Tucholke - This book is a lot. It is brimming over with atmosphere, unreliable narrators and poetic language. A few paragraphs at a time, it is beautiful, but after fifty pages of no one being able to speak without invoking a metaphor, it was exhausting. The plot beneath all those words was underwhelming. Also, the title is the name of the three main characters, and believing that a single town had three people with such twee names was a step too far for me.
I Love I Hate I Miss My Sister by Amelie Saran - I have mixed feelings about this one. It’s a beautifully written book about two Muslim sisters in France, both self-identified feminists who choose to express that it opposite ways. It takes on a lot of topics - multi-generation immigrant experiences, the role of religion in society, the way both religious and secular rules limit women’s choices - with nuance. But it also took a real incident, made it the brutal center of the story, and then added the religious element to it in a way that ends up enforcing some stereotypes that the author then doesn’t really address.
Anything but Typical by Nora Raleigh Baskin - This was for my Autism Reads book club. It’s a MG book about a boy who forms an online friendship with a girl who doesn’t know he is autistic with high support needs, and the pressure he feels when an opportunity comes up for them to meet in person. The depiction of an online friendship felt very realistic and I liked that the book didn’t sugar coat any of Jason’s relationships and portrayed him as very self-aware about how his disability impacted how others saw him.
Cinnamon Blade: Knife in Shining Armor by Shira Glassman - A really fun superhero-themed f/f romance that I liked a lot more than I expected to. It’s set in a very splashy, Silver Age type comics universe where the superhero, Blade, is a reformed thief, and the love interest, Soledad, is an adorable nerd she keeps rescuing. It was a much higher heat book than I usually read but I enjoyed that for a change.
The Trouble with Tony by Eli Easton - A very tropy, but fun, m/m romance that seemed heavily influence by fanfic (which is a good thing.) Tony is a PI who goes undercover as a patient in a sex clinic to investigate a murder and ends up falling for his therapist. Yeah, it’s like that. There were one or two elements I didn’t like - at one point the book kind of medicalized demisexuality - but the characters were really well done and the romance was cute and funny.
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Date: 2023-11-18 01:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-11-21 01:36 am (UTC)