Bookends is a weekly feature on my blog that is a little reflection on what I’ve read/watched/enjoyed (or not) over the past week.
This past week was an incredibly stressful week, and I didn’t get much of anything read or done.
CURRENTLY READING
I finished some books this week, but I am still trying to finish out some of these before I start anything else new!
📚 bookshelf pick | 📓 physical review copy | 📱 digital review copy | ⌛️ library/borrowed | 💾 ebook | 💞 reread
📚 A Court of Mists and Fury – Sarah J. Maas (4%)
📚 A People’s History of the United States – Howard Zinn (29%)
📱 Black Sun – Rebecca Roanhorse (71%)
📱 She Come By It Natural – Sarah Smarsh (17%)
📚 The Big Book of Science Fiction – edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer (15%)
📚 Mansfield Park – Jane Austen (9%)
FINISHED READING
I finished reading three of the books I was halfway through, and I was pretty pleased about that!
Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary reminded me a lot of the humor and style of The Martian, and I was thoroughly entertained.
Into the Drowning Deep has left me never wanting to step foot into an ocean again.
Deathless was a masterful fairy tale with Russian influence.
I have had a stack of books on my desk since the beginning of the pandemic, and the other night I sat down and read a little bit of them and did some further research on them to decide what to keep and what to unhaul. I decided to keep a little less than half and started reading Shanghai Girls. While I really liked the beginning, there is a sexually violent scene that completely turned me off from wanting to read the rest. I’m not in the mood to read anything like that right now, and I wish I would have read into this book a little bit more before I started reading it. I’ve liked other books by See, but this one wasn’t it for me.
📚 bookshelf pick | 📓 physical review copy | 📱 digital review copy | ⌛️ library/borrowed | 💾 ebook | 💞 reread
📚 Into the Drowning Deep – Mira Grant (5/5 stars, review to come)
📚 Deathless – Catherynne M. Valente (5/5 stars, review to come)
📱 Project Hail Mary – Andy Weir (5/5 stars, review to come)
📚 Shanghai Girls – Lisa See (DNF)
ON THE HORIZON
I’ve only added one new book to my current upcoming “tbr” and that’s The Gilded Wolves. I’ve had an e-arc of the sequel for a bit, but I never read the first one even though I had good intentions!
📚 bookshelf pick | 📓 physical review copy | 📱 digital review copy | ⌛️ library/borrowed | 💾 ebook | 💞 reread
📚 Beowulf – trans. Maria Dahvana Headley
📚 Real Life – Brandon Taylor
📓 Red Noise – John P. Murphy (thank you, Angry Robot!)
📓 Stranger in the Shogun’s City – Amy Stanley (thank you, Scribner!)
📱 The Orphan of Cemetery Hill – Hester Fox (thank you, HQN/Graydon House!)
📚 The Gilded Wolves – Roshani Chokshi
WHAT I ACQUIRED
I bought a lot of romance off of eBay due to some serious stress-related retail therapy, and I’m happy with the known medieval historical romances that I got and decently surprised by the mystery box (I knew it was a mystery box and it wasn’t guaranteed to be a 100% success). I also bought a lot of romance and other books from thrift stores that I don’t really remember, but I did get a copy of The Tethered Mage by Melissa Caruso because even though I’ve had a digital review copy for a long time, I thought trying to read it as a physical book (for $1!) would be a good way to help get my Netgalley percentages down. I also found a copy of Kerri Maniscalco’s Stalking Jack the Ripper for also like… $1.50, and since I’ve heard so much about it, I thought I’d give it a try!
I also decided to try my hand at some popup opportunities through BookSparks and received a few books that way! I’ve been so behind on Instagram posting that I really need to at least get those photos posted by the end of the month, and I might end up posting several in a day just to be sure I’m getting them in on time.
📚 bookshelf pick | 📓 physical review copy | 📱 digital review copy | ⌛️ library/borrowed | 💾 ebook | 💞 reread
📚 The Tethered Mage – Melissa Caruso
📚 Stalking Jack the Ripper – Kerri Maniscalco
📓 They Wish They Were Us – Jessica Goodman (thank you, BookSparks!)
📓 The Endangereds – Philippe Cousteau and Austin Aslan (thank you, BookSparks!)
📓 A Place Called Zamora – LB Gschwandtner (thank you, BookSparks!)
📓 Caley Cross and the Hadeon Drop – Jeff Rosen (thank you, BookSparks!)
ON SCREEN
GAMING: I did a few achievements and dungeons in World of Warcraft, but I’ve not had much time for anything else.
TV: Still, I have only really been watching The Golden Girls while I play video games or before I fall asleep.
MOVIES: I watched the last half of Black Panther on TV the other night, and some of the scenes hit a lot harder after Chadwick Boseman’s death.
There are a few movies and shows on Netflix I want to watch, and I need to make a list so I stop forgetting what they are. If you have any recommendations, let me know!
PERSONAL
Broccoli took a severe turn for the worse this week, and she died on the morning of the 27th. I won’t go into too much detail because it’s so heartbreaking, but I miss her a lot already. She’s not in pain anymore, and I knew this was the right step to take. Having looked back on so many months of pictures, I can see how quickly her physical and mental state deteriorated due to the effects of her kidneys failing her, and even though I wish I could have done more, I know there was not much else that could be done.
Mr Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance, that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary and yet somehow lovable. At friendly meetings, and when the wine was to his taste, something eminently human beaconed from his eye; something indeed which never found its way into his talk, but which spoke not only in these silent symbols of the after-dinner face, but more often and loudly in the acts of his life. He was austere with himself; drank gin when he was alone, to mortify a taste for vintages; and though he enjoyed the theatre, had not crossed the doors of one for twenty years. But he had an approved tolerance for others; sometimes wondering, almost with envy, at the high pressure of spirits involved in their misdeeds; and in any extremity inclined to help rather than to reprove. ‘I incline to Cain’s heresy,’ he used to say quaintly; ‘I let my brother go to the devil in his own way.’ In this character, it was frequently his fortune to be the last reputable acquaintance and the last good influence in the lives of down-going men. And to such as these, so long as they came about his chambers, he never marked a shade of change in his demeanour.
Title: 
Half-way down a by-street of one of our New England towns, stands a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely peaked gables facing towards various points of the compass, and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst. The street is Pyncheon-street; the house is the old Pyncheon-house; and an elm-tree of wide circumference, rooted before the door, is familiar to every town-born child by the title of the Pyncheon-elm. On my occasional visits to the town aforesaid, I seldom fail to turn down Pyncheon-street, for the sake of passing through the shadow of these two antiquities; the great elm-tree, and the weather-beaten edifice.