Bookends

BOOKENDS: What I Read in August 2023

- Meg

I’ve been trying to listen to more audiobooks because I can get more done while I’m doing other things, like playing video games or doing things around the apartment, and I really enjoyed Star Wars: Doctor Aphra! It’s short too, and I really liked the full cast. I tried reading Hild a couple years ago and wasn’t in the headspace for it then, but I definitely was now and it is one of my favorite reads of the year so far. I love Brandon Taylor’s presence on social media, and while he’s said before that he doesn’t tweet like he writes, I can definitely recognize a similar energy coming through in his writing. I couldn’t put Real Life down. These short novella series from Amazon are always interesting to me, and this set of science fiction stories piqued my interest. I enjoyed James S.A. Corey’s installment!

Reluctant Immortals was a campy, enjoyable romp into 1960s California featuring favorite characters from Dracula and Jane Eyre, and it was everything I wanted it to be. I still haven’t finished the Throne of Glass series, so I started my reread of the ones I’d already read (and I hadn’t read The Assassin’s Blade until now!). I’ve always enjoyed this series, and with rumors of a multiverse, I definitely need to catch up on all that I haven’t read yet. Levine’s My Roommate is a Vampire is the romance fluff I didn’t know how much I needed until I read (aka devoured) it. I hope there’s at least one more set in this universe, because these characters are so good.

Bunny is weird, creepy, and one to read if you like weird girls and campus novels. I ate it up, and I want to read more by Awad in the near future!! I read The Spice Must Flow around the time it was announced that Dune, Part 2 was pushed back, and this is a dive into the pop culture history around Dune and its sequels. Forget Me Not is a cute florist/wedding planner romance. It’s set in Sacramento, and consequently, I was flying out of Sacramento the day I started reading it! This was a pretty solid reading month, and I didn’t have any misses!

WHAT I READ

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

💖 Star Wars: Doctor Aphra, by Sarah Kuhn
💖 Hild, by Nicola Griffith
💖 Real Life, by Brandon Taylor
💖 How It Unfolds, by James S.A. Corey
💖 Reluctant Immortals, by Gwendolyn Kiste
💖 The Assassin’s Blade, by Sarah J. Maas
🔮 My Roommate is a Vampire, by Jenna Levine
💖 Throne of Glass, by Sarah J. Maas
💖 Bunny, by Mona Awad
🔮 The Spice Must Flow, by Ryan Britt
💖 Forget Me Not, by Julie Soto

BOOKENDS: What I Read in July 2023

- Meg

July was a rollercoaster of a reading month that also felt pretty meh? The historical romances were entertaining to meh, the historical mysteries were enjoyable but nothing out of the ordinary. I read The Remix for a course, and I absolutely hated the presentation and perspective of it. Then the remaining three books of the month were gossipy and delicious (Glossy), immersive (The First Binding), and entertaining but not the best (Fourth Wing).

WHAT I READ

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

🔮 Brazen and the Beast, by Sarah MacLean
🔮 Daring and the Duke, by Sarah MacLean
🌠 Murder in Postscript, by Mary Winters
🌠 A Brush with Shadows, by Anna Lee Huber
💖 Remix: How to Lead and Succeed in the Multigenerational Workplace, by Lindsey Pollack
🔮 Glossy: Ambition, Beauty, and the Inside Story of Emily Weiss’s Glossier, by Marisa Meltzer
💖 The First Binding, by R.R. Virdi
💖 Fourth Wing, by Rebecca Yarros

BOOKENDS: What I Read in June 2023

- Meg

June was a romance-heavy month for me! It wasn’t until I got everything entered into Goodreads that I noticed three (and a half) of the books I read featured a romance plotline, but June was also a weird month and I didn’t feel like I could focus on too many heavy reads in a row. Not the Kind of Earl You Marry and The Heiress Gets a Duke were my favorites of the romances I read, and The Perks of Loving a Wallflower was good but felt a little flat at times. The romance hints in Of Manners and Murder definitely had a hint of what is to come with the series, and I may borrow the second book from the library once it comes out even though I found the first to be a bit slow in the first half. Thornhedge is another winner from T. Kingfisher, and it has proven that I will read anything her and love it, so I need to get my hands on her backlist. The Future of Another Timeline is a riot of a read, and it makes me miss the riotgrrl days a bit. I loved the time travel concept in this, how history and the future can be and is changed even without time travel, and the writing in this has a buzz running through it. Linden’s The First Sister was a surprise read for me in how much I loved it! I recently purchased the sequel, and the conclusion to the trilogy comes out later this year – feels familiar but subverts a lot of science fiction tropes in a way I enjoyed. Green’s The Anthropocene Reviewed feels just like listening to him speak on social media, and it makes me want to listen to the audiobook in the future.

WHAT I READ

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

💖 Not the Kind of Earl You Marry, by Kate Pembrooke
🔮 Thornhedge, by T. Kingfisher
💖 The Future of Another Timeline, by Annalee Newitz
💖 The Perks of Loving a Wallflower, by Erica Ridley
🌠 Of Manners and Murder, by Anastasia Hastings
💖 The Heiress Gets a Duke, by Harper St. George
💖 The Anthropocene Reviewed, by John Green
💖 The First Sister, by Linden A. Lewis

BOOKENDS: What I Read in May 2023

- Meg

May was a solid reading month for me, and I read eight books! The Once and Future Sex was a great introduction to women’s medieval history and provided a jumping off point if you wanted to get started with reading beyond a men’s-focused frame of reference. Some Dukes Have All the Luck was an addictive read that I couldn’t put down once I started it and made me want to read this author’s backlist immediately!! Deanna Raybourn’s Silent in the Grave is her debut, and I can see a lot of the threads that would become evident in her Veronica Speedwell series (which I also love and need to catch up on). The Crane Husband is a solid novella and once I’d recommend to those really interested in fairy tale explorations, while The Witch’s Heart was a bit of a disappointment because Loki as a character in that felt… juvenile. One can be a trickster without seeming like a one-trick pony. Ash Princess is a solid series opener, so I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the trilogy as I’m trying to read more of what I have on my kindle. The only two that were less than great, but not bad, were The Death of Vivek Oji (I was not expecting some of the elements as I’d not really seen them spoken about in some of the reviews I read, and I felt the incest took away from the impact of the story) and Our Share of Night (seemed a bit too long in the middle and dragged, and the best part of it was in the last quarter of the book or so).

WHAT I READ

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

🌠 The Once and Future Sex, by Eleanor Janega
💖 Some Dukes Have All the Luck, by Christina Britton
🌠 The Death of Vivek Oji, by Akwaeke Emezi
💖 Silent in the Grave, by Deanna Raybourn
💖 The Witch’s Heart, by Genevieve Gornichec
🌠 The Crane Husband, by Kelly Barnhill
💖 Ash Princess, by Laura Sebastian
🌠 Our Share of Night, by Maria Enriquez

BOOKENDS: What I Read in April 2023

- Meg

I read eight books in April! Leech was delightfully creepy, though I don’t really know where the Wuthering Heights comps came from except maybe for the atmospheric/on the moors remote sort of vibe. I really enjoyed Vo’s The Chosen and the Beautiful as a stand-alone work and as a companion to The Great Gatsby. Neill’s The Bright and Breaking Sea was so much fun, and I hope there’s more after the sequel that I can’t wait to read. I read Fangs on a break at work, and I thought it was cute. I also finished up my listening to The Old Kingdom trilogy on audio with Abhorsen. It still remains one of my favorite series of all time, and I feel like I could read it over and over again while getting something new out of it each time. One Dark Window is a series/duology opener with a card-based magic system that I really enjoyed and found fresh in the wake of a lot of romantic fantasies lately. The only book I found myself disappointed in was The Witch and the Tsar, a Baba Yaga retelling with none of the bite I expect from Baba Yaga. As Death Draws Near was a fine series continuer, but not one of my favorites of the series. I got the next book from the library as I am trying to get caught up on series I enjoy reading and are still active!

WHAT I READ

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

🌠 Leech, by Hiron Ennes
💖 The Chosen and the Beautiful, by Nghi Vo
💖 The Bright and Breaking Sea, by Chloe Neill
🌠 Fangs, by Sarah Andersen
💖💞 Abhorsen, by Garth Nix
🌠 The Witch and the Tsar, by Olesya Salnikova Gilmore
🌠 As Death Draws Near, by Anna Lee Huber
💖 One Dark Window, by Rachel Gillig