Hey y’all! I’m planning out my reads for July, and most of them are already started or at least in hand and ready to be started shortly. I’m so excited for these ones!
I’m always up for traveling somewhere in a book. Plus royalty and court life is my weakness that I just can’t resist 🥰 My library hold just came in, so I’ll be starting this one shortly for sure!
I love a good retelling with a twist, and this one had all the elements that promised to be just that! It didn’t hurt that my friend Abby recently finished this and highly recommended it!
Recommended: yep For a delve into Arthurian legend from the side of Elaine the seer, for a form-shifting read that excels at mirroring the readers’ experience with the characters’, for a dark yet hopeful spin
Summary
Everyone knows the legend. Of Arthur, destined to be a king. Of the beautiful Guinevere, who will betray him with his most loyal knight, Lancelot. Of the bitter sorceress, Morgana, who will turn against them all. But Elaine alone carries the burden of knowing what is to come–for Elaine of Shalott is cursed to see the future.
On the mystical isle of Avalon, Elaine runs free and learns of the ancient prophecies surrounding her and her friends–countless possibilities, almost all of them tragic.
When their future comes to claim them, Elaine, Guinevere, Lancelot, and Morgana accompany Arthur to take his throne in stifling Camelot, where magic is outlawed, the rules of society chain them, and enemies are everywhere. Yet the most dangerous threats may come from within their own circle.
As visions are fulfilled and an inevitable fate closes in, Elaine must decide how far she will go to change fate–and what she is willing to sacrifice along the way.
Thoughts
The first thing I’ll say is that I have NO IDEA who Elaine is outside of this story. I have no other context to compare her to, so I really can’t speak to that aspect of the experience. If you’re familiar with the lore already from other media, I have no idea how this might align with the way it’s been told elsewhere. That said, I think the way it was told here was quite compelling.
My absolute favorite aspect of this book (besides the plot itself) is the way my experience reading it mirrored Elaine’s experience as a seer so well. Past, present, and future all blend together with timeline and perspective shifting often, and not always with clear delineations. If this might drive you crazy, then be forewarned, but I promise it enhanced the book, not detracted. Elaine’s glimpses of the future bleed in to every action of the present and affect her memories of the past. How can you act on love when you literally KNOW it will lead to heartbreak of the most dire kind?
Hey y’all! I have some very exciting news (for me, at least!) to share:
The Complete List of Jericho has finally arrived!
Chris Jericho is a wildly successful wrestler who just celebrated his 30th year in his career. As part of that milestone, he released a book based on notes he’s kept since his very first match that detail who and where he fought, how much he got paid, and his rating of his own performance. It also includes anecdotes, photos, and other lists. Top 10 places to wrestle, top 10 lucha matches, top 10 wrestlers who influenced him, etc.
For a while, one of his character gimmicks was adding people who pissed him off to a list, presumably of people on whom he was now seeking vengeance. xD His character was always very dramatic and hilarious, but he’s also an incredibly talented performer (both in the sense of his skills in the ring as well as in promos!).
I have been SO looking forward to this book, and it’s finally finally here! I’m probably going to be diving into watching some of these matches of his and enjoying them while knowing his commentary for them. 🥰
PS – I also bought his champagne to have my own little bit of the bubbly. It was delish! 😊
If you’ve tracked this blog over the past year, you’ve probably read about me complaining about all the work I’ve been doing on the house. It’s been kind of terrible, but happily it’s just about at a close for now.
What that means, my friends, is that I CAN FINALLY MAKE MY LIBRARY A REALITY! One of the most exciting things about buying the house is that my partner and I would each have room for our spacious hobbies (his: music production, mine: reading, both: gaming). So he gets a studio setup downstairs, and I get a library upstairs. 😍
Predictably, one of my favorite things to do in the past year has been to make a list of all my favorite books that I definitely wanted hard copies of for my soon-to-be personal library. It’s so indulgent, and I am so so lucky and grateful that I’ll get to set one up. So here’s my list of 15 books that I’m DEFINITELY going to get for my library!
Standalone standouts (single books)
Hart & Seoul by Kristen Burnham
Because culture shock when shared is one of my favorite things to read about, and especially when I have my own experiences with it to relate to!
Hey y’all! I’m in the middle of Half Sick of Shadows by Laura Sebastian right now. “In the middle” might be a little optimistic, but I’m at a solid 200 pages now! This is a slower read for me, and I’m not hating it.
Since the main character is an oracle, the style reflects that mindset, and it has a really engaging effect for me. Elaine is constantly bombarded from all sides as she remembers her past, navigates her present, and weaves (literally) the future. In turn, the reader gets snippets of her past interspersed with the present, and of course the pepperings of glances forward, the possibilities, the problems she worries will be created in the future by her actions right now.
I really sink into whenever I sit down, and I find myself thinking about it often throughout the day. I love a book that sticks with you!
You know to be honest, I haven’t ready many new books this year that I really LOVED. Either I’m harder to please, or just picking duds lol. But here are a few from the past year or so that stuck with me:
Foul is Fair by Hannah Capin – a dark YA witchy Macbeth-themed book about a girl getting revenge on the group of boys who raped her (and have raped many others). The style of writing is really lyrical and it ALWAYS makes me want to read Macbeth right after because it’s so, so good. Not exactly a light read though
The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa – adult contemp translated from Japanese, the focus is very much on characters and you hear people’s stories. The way it’s told at times from the cat’s POV can be really sweet and funny, and is an awesome counterpoint to some of the heavier aspects of the book. Even though I knew early on what was coming, I bawled at the end nonetheless.
Moloka’i by Alan Brennert – a historical fiction novel about a Hawaian girl who gets leprosy and is sent to the leper colony island in Hawai’i. She sees a lot of events of the time through her lens there, and has a lot of interesting insight into growing up with leprosy, around others with it, and in that strange isolation yet specific kind of community. It’s a slow paced read with a lot packed in. I read this one by a pool in Cancun.
The Cat I Never Named by Amra Sabic El-Rayess. BEST BOOK I’VE READ IN A REALLY LONG TIME. It’s nonfiction that reads like fiction, except for when you remember it’s 100% real. By a Bosnian woman during the genocide from the Serbians, this is a war book and hopeful and distressing and just truly unbelievable. Might be a good one to read with older students, or select chapters from or something.
Invisible Women by Caroline Creado Perez. Nonfic. You’ll be angry and baffled after reading this, because it’s absolutely JUST INSANE how women are ignored and threatened daily from shitty research, or research that deliberately leaves us out because our hormones make tests difficult. EVEN WHEN ITS A PRODUCT FOR WOMEN. My god. Perez never once does any “blame the men” and in fact keeps a remarkably impressive angle of working together globally to solve the issue, more than finger pointing about who sucks the most. I listened to the audio book, but I just bought a copy so I can thumb through and find some of the ridiculous studies and aspects she goes into detail on.
Two of mine are somehow related to cats. xD I guess I sense a theme there. These are all books that are so good that I read them digitally and bought a physical copy to have, because I either already have or definitely will re-read all of these. Foul is Fair is at least once a year a re-read, when it gets to October and I want some witchy stuff.
Hey y’all! I’ve had a flux this year so far where some months I had plenty of time to read, and others I felt like I had none with everything else going on. It made me really value the time that I did have! And with that, I became pretty ruthless about not bothering to continue or finish a book if it was just not doing it for me. So far this year I’ve ditched 5. Here’s which ones and why!
*prepare for some potentially unpopular opinions* 🤣
Books that didn’t make the cut
Frankly in Love by David Yoon
This one got ditched because I had just read Super Fake Love Song by him, which was okay enough for me to pick up another book by him. However, I quickly realized that the characters and style are almost identical. I was bored pretty quickly after that. I may read this at a later time with some more distance, but it didn’t seem like I was missing out after having read the other one.
Blanca & Roja by Anna-Marie McLemore
This one actually was pretty good, it was just very abstract magical realism that I was way to tired to put in the effort of following. It took some focus, sort of like poetry, and I just was not in a place to dedicate that to it. I’ll probably come back to this as a summer read or something!
Well, I didn’t actually have a TBR post or much of a plan for March. After a fairly slow and dismal February (both for reading and for weather and for stress) I didn’t bother to plan anything for March because I had no idea how it would go. 😅
The Plan:
The rough plan was:
When The Apricots Bloom (a new release I’ve been waiting on and finally got from the library)
The Office of Historical Corrections (a BOTM short story collection I’ve been “in progress” with for months)
The Gilded Ones (a gift that I wanted to have time to read without having to hurry it)
The Result:
The fact that I finished Eldest by Christopher Paolini in a month, let alone also finished several other books, is a fact that would have astonished younger me. When I first tried to read it, I made it probably halfway through before I had to return it to the library. And then took a while to bother going back to read it fully. xD
Speaking of not finishing books, I DNFd two more this month. Blanca & Roja by Anna-Marie McLemore was just a little to abstract and lyrical for my current mindset, though it’s one I can see returning too another time when I’m more ready for it. Frankly in Love by David Yoon on the other hand… after just reading his other book, Super Fake Love Song, I just kept thinking that the characters felt exactly the same. Even the plot felt really similar. The writing style was spot-on consistent, which is generally a good trait, but left me feeling kind of bored. Considering I didn’t love the characters in Super Fake Love Song anyway, and getting more of that wasn’t going to do it for me. I’m probably done with his books to be honest, because I get the feeling that having read one, I’ve read them all.
All I read today was the paperwork for my house finalization! While it was ostensibly not very exciting to go through the legal terms and conditions of a lengthy, lifelong contract…. I HAVE A HOUSE, Y’ALL! ^.^
Hey y’all! While this day was supposed to be time to work on the house (as always) I instead have spent it feeling terribly sick and unable to stand since the wee hours of the morning. And so instead, I remained on the couch distracting myself with fake worlds. Here’s what I read to escape my body in the past 18 hours.
