BOOKENDS: What I Read in June 2024

- Meg

I feel like June was a decent reading month. It started off slow because I did not enjoy The Warm Hands of Ghosts as much as I thought it would which was disappointing because I adored her Winternight Trilogy, and it put me in a reading slump that lasted until about the last week and a half of June where I read/finished up the rest of these. I listened to Pride and Prejudice narrated by Rosamund Pike on a trip to visit my mom, and I loved revisiting that familiar story this way. I devoured Yellowface in a single sitting while waiting for an oil change, and I kicked myself a bit for putting it off for so long. I enjoy Kuang’s writing so much. The historical romance was solid, and I’ll definitely be checking out more of her writing in the future. I want to read all of the Best American SFF, and I reread 2015’s edition and thought the entries were solid still after almost a decade! The Amazon Original Stories are great for me at getting out of reading slumps too because they’re short and I can usually read one or two in a sitting, so that helps get me out of a slump and get my reads for the year number up, especially when I feel like I’ve been slacking a bit.

WHAT I READ

💖 purchased/owned | 🌠 library/borrowed | 🔮 review copy | 💞 reread | 👻 dnf

🌠 The Warm Hands of Ghosts, by Katherine Arden
💖 Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
💖 The Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2015, ed. Joe Hill
🌠 The Long Game, by Ann Leckie (Kindle Unlimited)
🌠 Just Out of Jupiter’s Reach, by Nnedi Okorafor (Kindle Unlimited)
💖 Yellowface, by R.F. Kuang
🌠 Slow Time Between the Stars, by John Scazi (Kindle Unlimited)
💖 Dreaming of a Duke Like You, by Sara Bennett

BOOKENDS: What I Read in May 2024

- Meg

May was a much more enjoyable reading month overall, no duds, just solid reads. It was in organizing my Goodreads that I figured out that I’d read another book this month (Ana Maria and the Fox) because somehow Goodreads kept my update/review about the book but didn’t mark the date on which I finished it. Now that Emily Henry’s books are being released in hardcover first rather than paperback originals, I’m fortunate enough to access the arcs and read those while I wait for the paperback releases to match the rest of my books. Summer Sons is excellent Appalachian dark academia horror, and I definitely want to read more of Mandelo’s work. Juniper & Thorn and Godkiller lived up to my expectations, which was a nice surprise after reading some other popular stuff in the previous months that was just… not great.

WHAT I READ

💖 purchased/owned | 🌠 library/borrowed | 🔮 review copy | 💞 reread | 👻 dnf

🌠 Ana María and the Fox, by Liana De la Rosa
💖 Summer Sons, by Lee Mandelo
💖 Superman vs. Meshi, vol. 1, by Satoshi Miyagawa, illus. Kai Kitago
💖 Juniper & Thorn, by Ava Reid
🔮 Funny Story, by Emily Henry
💖💞 The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Tales of Terror, by Robert Louis Stevenson
💖 Godkiller, by Hannah Kaner

BOOKENDS: What I Read in April 2024

- Meg

While it looks like I read more in April than March, it was a lot of finishing things I had started in prior months! I also wavered for a bit about counting the books I read for my courses, but I decided that the hard work needed to count for these! 🤣 The Reformatory is such great historical horror, and my first Tananarive Due (and definitely not my last). I had two DNFs this month, too: Icebreaker (sports romance is not my thing but I was curious about the Gru thing [iykyk] but it took so long for any part of the story to be set up that I lost any shred of interest that I had) and The Blacktongue Thief. This was one of my 12 in 24 reads, but it felt like it was a story being told around the actual story and nothing about it really engaged me, so I decided not to waste what little time I had to read that month on something that I wasn’t enjoying. Both of these DNFs came one right after the other and tie that with some weird course experiences, I was just like I DO NOT WANT TO READ ANYMORE. But I did end up rounding out the month by finishing Said’s Orientalism and MacLean’s Bombshell. I had read parts of Orientalism before, but not the entire work, and I really enjoyed it. MacLean’s historical romances are always a fun time.

WHAT I READ

💖 purchased/owned | 🌠 library/borrowed | 🔮 review copy | 💞 reread | 👻 dnf

🌠 The Reformatory, by Tananarive Due
🌠 The Beast and the Bookseller, by Eva Devon (Kindle Unlimited)
🌠👻 Icebreaker, by Hannah Grace
💖👻 The Blacktongue Thief, by Christopher Buehlman
💖 Ebony and Ivory: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities, by Craig Steven Wilder
💖 A History of American Higher Education, by John R. Thelin
💖 Budgets and Financial Management in Higher Education, by Margaret J. Barr
💖 Orientalism, by Edward W. Said
💖 Bombshell, by Sarah MacLean

BOOKENDS: What I Read in March 2024

- Meg

Considering my March page count, I read a lot of shorter, easier to fly through books this month. The Scourge Between Stars is one of my favorite reads of 2024 because it’s such a spooky science fiction read that I wish had more, and a reread of Anne of Green Gables is always welcome (and much needed as a comfort reread). The rest were okay! The Cat Who Saved Books was adorable and heartwarming, the historical romance was fine (not out of the ordinary/genre defying, but good, well-paced, and entertaining). I’ve read two of Hazelwood’s books so far and they are basically the same thing, just in different fonts. The Batman manga was interesting! I loved the art style most of all, and I like seeing familiar characters in different lights.

WHAT I READ

💖 purchased/owned | 🌠 library/borrowed | 🔮 review copy | 💞 reread | 👻 dnf

🌠 The Cat Who Saved Books, Sosuke Natsukawa
💖 One Scandalous Kiss, by Christy Carlyle
🌠 The Scourge Between Stars, by Ness Brown
💖💞 Anne of Green Gables, by L.M. Montgomery
🌠 Love on the Brain, by Ali Hazelwood
💖 Batman: Justice Buster, vol 1, by Eiichi Shimizu, illus. Tomohiro Shimoguchi

BOOKENDS: What I Read in February 2024

- Meg

February started off strong with the continuation of the Throne of Glass series reread, but the heaviness of Davis’s and Kozol’s works tied in with a lackluster-to-me series ender with Jordan’s The Duke Effect put me in a reading slump (along with word and taking two courses at the time, it was all too much).

WHAT I READ

💖 purchased/owned | 🌠 library/borrowed | 🔮 review copy | 💞 reread | 👻 dnf

💖💞 Crown of Midnight, by Sarah J. Maas
💖 The Duke Effect, by Sophie Jordan
💖💞 Heir of Fire, by Sarah J. Maas
🌠 The Shrinking of Treehorn, by Florence Parry Heide
💖 Women, Race & Class, by Angela Y. Davis
🌠 Savage Inequalities, by Jonathan Kozol