Author: Meg

BOOKENDS: What I Read in November 2024

- Meg

Be Our Guest was for work, and it’s nothing exceptional. I hadn’t ready Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, but after watching the incredible film, I had to read it. The film is a faithful book adaptation, and I enjoyed both for their explorations of finding one’s place at the intersection of self and religion in the midst of so many other life changes. Harrow’s Starling House is an incredible exploration of what it means to be haunted. Chlorine was such an interesting take on mermaids and is being added to my fav weird girl lit shelf!! Frankenstein in Baghdad was part of my yearly challenge in 2024, and I think it had potential to be much more than it was for me. It was good, but not as good as I was expecting it to be. On Tyranny was a helpful reminder that is still too timely, and Barbie: The World Tour was a fun look back at the Barbie summer of 2023. Ending the month with Starling’s Yellow Jessamine was a great send off to spooky season, and I’ve enjoyed so much of Starling’s work and was happy to finally get to this novella!

WHAT I READ

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

🌠 Be Our Guest: Perfecting the Art of Customer Service, by Theodore Kinni
💖 Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, by Judy Blume
💖 Starling House, by Alix E. Harrow
💖 Chlorine, by Jade Song
💖 Frankenstein in Baghdad, by Ahmed Saadawi
💖 On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, by Timothy Snyder
💖 Barbie: The World Tour, by Margot Robbie and Andrew Mukamal
💖 Yellow Jessamine, by Caitlin Starling

BOOKENDS: What I Read in October 2024

- Meg

I read a LOT in October. aka a lot of KU novellas for spooky season! I very much enjoyed the fae countryside fantasy vibes of The Good and the Green and I hope to read the follow ups of this soon!! I continued Bennett’s historical romance series with Curled Up with an Earl and enjoyed it! Spookily Yours was a candy sweet Halloween romance (the hero is a cat). I revisited The House of Mirth for the first time in twelve years, and it brought me back to my last semester of undergrad and brought up a deep reflection on the passage of time. Robert’s follow up in The Kraken’s Secret was enjoyable (and I still wish these had more)!! The Kindle Unlimited series had either hits or misses, and Joe Hill and Josh Malerman were my favorites.

WHAT I READ

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

🌠 The Good and the Green, by Amy Yorke
💖 Curled Up With an Earl, by Amy Rose Bennett
🌠 Spookily Yours, Jennifer Chipman
💖💞 The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton
🌠 The Pram, by Joe Hill
🌠 Ankle Snatcher, by Grady Hendrix
🌠 It Waits in the Woods, by Josh Malerman
🌠 In Bloom, by Paul Tremblay
🌠 Big Bad, by Chandler Baker
💖 The Kraken’s Sacrifice, by Katee Robert
🌠 Best of Luck, by Jason Mott

BOOKENDS: What I Read in September 2024

- Meg

September was a very meh reading month. Work was busy, I had car troubles that took up a lot of attention, and things weren’t great all around!! I did enjoy The Duke and the Dressmaker as a little historical romance palate cleanser. Everything else I thought should have been more fleshed out and longer!!! However, The Dragon’s Bride was very fun, and even though I wanted more, it stood on its own. The novellas from Kindle Unlimited often feel like starters, something that could eventually be built into a longer work, but is ultimately left as it is. The others were not even really worth revisiting for me, and I was disappointed in the execution of Squirrel Meets World and The Gothic. Peg and Rose Solve a Murder looks like it should have been more fun and have some of that spry old person/Golden Girls vibes, but it felt very bitter.

WHAT I READ

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

💖 The Dragon’s Bride, by Katee Robert
🌠 The Duke and the Dressmaker, by Eva Devon
💖 Squirrel Meets World, by Shannon Hale and Dean Hale
💖 Peg and Rose Solve a Murder, by Laurien Berenson
💖 The Gothic, by Nick Groom
🌠 The Backbone of the World, by Stephen Graham Jones
🌠 Bloody Summer, by Carmen Maria Machado
🌠 A Righteous Man, by Tochi Onyebuchi
🌠 Stag, by Karen Russell

BOOKENDS: What I Read in August 2024

- Meg

August was an okay reading month! Looking back on what I read, I definitely kept to some authors I know and some rereads, but sometimes that’s what you need! I have never finished the full Old Man’s War saga, so I wanted to reread the first book as a refresher before I continue with the rest. I’m terrible at finishing series. Hester Fox is a favorite gothic fiction writer of mine, and while The Last Heir to Blackwood Library wasn’t my favorite, it definitely had spooky Downton Abbey vibes. Midnight Pearls was a reread and a revisit of a teenage favorite, and I thought it held up well enough! Wildlife, The Tiger Came to the Mountains, and Awakening Anne were all ebook reads (and shorter reads) that I enjoyed. I’ve been reading a lot of those shorter novella series Kindle Unlimited has, especially when I feel like I’m in a reading slump. Awakening Anne felt like a gaslamp fantasy, but I felt kind of lost in the middle of it. I really liked The Murder of Mr. Wickham, and I thought Gray captured the essence of regency fiction. I’m looking forward to the next in the series! My biggest disappointment was The Paragon Hotel, because I have enjoyed Faye’s writing in the past but this fell very flat and weird for me.

WHAT I READ

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

💖 The Last Heir to Blackwood Library, by Hester Fox
💖💞 Old Man’s War, by John Scalzi
💖💞 Midnight Pearls, by Debbie Viguié
🌠 Wildlife, by Jeff VanderMeer
🌠 The Tiger Came to the Mountains, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
💖 Awakening Anne, by Kalynn Applewhite
💖 The Murder of Mr. Wickham, by Claudia Gray
💖 The Paragon Hotel, by Lyndsay Faye

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