Tales from the Loathly Lady

First post of the year! It's a better start than some I've had lately, so I will take it.

( Four werewolf mysteries, two sci fi novellas, and a partridge in a pear tree. )

That's all for this time! Hopefully the next batch will be similarly fast.

I've read five books since my last post, not quite as many as I wanted but more than I expected given how socially busy the end of the year has been (and given I reread two of my own books prepping for an edit I started at midnight last night and I don't count my own books to my total). I'll do quick reviews of those, and then I'll do my top ten and reading statistics for the year!

( Last five books of the year! )


And now the top ten! I feel like I said much the same last year (I did, I just checked), but while there were a good amount of books I liked this year, there were not a ton that I loved. I'd say the first six on this list were solid, would have made the top ten in most reading years that weren't exceptional, and the last four were ones I liked plenty but were kind of "the best of the rest."

• Cinder House by Freya Marske
• The West Passage by Jared Pechacek
• The Touchstone Series by Andrea K. Höst
• Murder By Memory by Olivia Waite
• Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
• Half-Witch by John Schoffstall
• The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar
• The Orb of Cairado by Katherine Addison
• Hemlock & Silver by T. Kingfisher
• The Marquis Who Mustn't by Courtney Milan

Interesting to me how many of those were novellas! Plus the one play, which is rather like a novella, I think, the point is "lots of short things in my top ten."

Statistics! I read 135 books this year, 13 more than last year, which isn't bad given I have still been reading rather ridiculous amounts of firefighters fic on the AO3. Of those books:

• 22 were rereads (more on that in a moment)
• 9 were nonfiction
• 1 was a graphic novel
• 85 were SFF (though 3 are better termed horror)
• 56 were romances or romance-focused
• Either 2 or 5 were mysteries depending on whether you count Addison's Thara Celehar books as mysteries or not
• 32 were for younger readers

I met a few reading goals this year! I read all of L. Frank Baum's Oz books, which was one of my major goals, and I got a blackout on my town library's book bingo card (only one bingo on another library's harder book bingo, though I didn't focus much on that one since I'm not eligible for the prizes). I also wanted this to be a year of reading epistolary fiction, and, well ... I had 22 rereads, and a lot of that was epistolary fiction. Overall, I just did a quick count, and I read 11 books I would term epistolary (one more featured some letters but was primarily narrative, and another contained lots of non-fictional letters but didn't get the correspondence vibe right), and I think four of them were new? I keep looking for lists of proper epistolary books and not finding what I want, and I'm not sure if that's because people are bad at writing lists or because there aren't as many epitolary books as I want there to be.

I'm not sure of my reading goals for this year! I think I only have two preorders on my list, which is pretty dire, and I do have a bunch of books on my shelves right now that I'm excited about, but I keep getting my hopes up and having them dashed, so I am really just going to hope that this year has some books that really sweep me away.

Saw the end of the year staring me down and got motivated to clear my shelves a little! And also I'm no longer in the busiest period of my year so I have a little more free brain space to read. I doubt I'll make it another full post before year's end, but we'll see, I still have one book bingo square to go ("sports or leisure activity" my beloathed, I may simply read a hockey romance novel since there are a bunch of them featured on the library ebook service right now thanks to the one show) and there are lots of options for me to enjoy!

( Some very solid reads, and I finally read Tom Stoppard's Arcadia! )

And that's all for this time! Now it's a race to the end of the year!

Took another trip, which meant airport books, and then a few fast reads, so a nice fast post this time, thank goodness! And I even managed to get one into my top ten for the year, which feels pretty miraculous.

( Two Baums, two Marskes, and some scattershot! )

No clue when the next one's coming, but hopefully I'll get another seasonal romance or two in among finishing the Oz series and maybe returning to some epistolary!

Tomorrow's a busy work day, so it's time for one of these again!

( My murder mystery era continues, and also my D&D table is writing so much fic and it's great. )

Okay, that's all! See you again for one of these at the end of the year and hopefully within the next week for a book post!

Slowed down again! Busy part of summer and when I haven't been busy my brain has simply been either Gone or focused on my D&D game, since my whole table is writing D&D porn right now. But I'm through a batch now, anyway!

( A mixed bag this time! )

And that's all for this time! There were some good ones in this batch, but man, so few books are completely whisking me away this year, the two rereads on this list are for sure the best, and it's not even close!

Normally I don't like to do these until the last day of the month they get posted in, but I'm about to go out of town and liable to forget, so I'll post a few days early instead!

( DMing is a Wild Time )

Man, I'm having trouble with paper books right now! Only three paper books in this group, two of which were middle grade (one a reread), and one of which was the one I had to write a whole post about the other day. Hopefully I can get back to paper books, because there are a LOT I want to read on my shelves right now.

( Perhaps not the group I've been most enthused about this year. )

Next time: hopefully some paper books and more Oz!

Another decently fast batch, thanks to one of the reading goals I've had for this year, more on that anon! I am too tired for much of an intro, so here we go.

( Spoiler alert: I'm reading the Oz books! )

That's all this time! Next time, maybe some books not written by L. Frank Baum! And maybe some epistolary, since I rather fell off on that goal.

A very fast batch, thanks to me speedreading a bunch of Katherine Addison when my pre-order of her latest shipped early! Plus it's amazing how much more energy you have to read when a. you aren't in pain (yayyy for being almost healed from my wrist injury) and b. things are only constantly Going Wrong on a national level as opposed to a personal level.

Also, SPOILERS for the new Katherine Addison beneath the cut, because I need to discuss some things and can't really do that without spoiling and I know some people who follow me on here read the series and might not have gotten to such a recent book yet!

( Really and truly spoilers for The Tomb of Dragons, but also there are other things in here! )

That's all for this time! Finally starting to make a very little bit of progress into my teeming TBR shelves, so hopefully that will continue in the next batch.