Tales from the Loathly Lady

How is this year almost halfway over? It really does seem like time moves faster every year.

( No big shockers in here, but I'm having fun DMing my D&D game still! )
What else should I be looking forward to? It's been a while since something really captured me, though I have high hopes of the D&D movie!

For a bit during this group I thought I was getting my TBR shelf under control, and then I got the annual Birthday Influx so now I'm back up over 20 unread books in my possession again. However, summer is coming soon, so hopefully I'll have a bit more reading brain!

( A pretty good batch, with the rest of the Beka Cooper series! )

Next time, I continue to tackle my TBR shelf, phew! Plus, The Great Tortall Read will come to a close, phew.

I'm in a bit of a reading slump right now, but I'm consuming some other media, and somehow we're 25% of the way through this year, so here is my update on all of that!

( So many streaming services, so few things I actually want to watch. )

And that's all for now! Any standout pieces of media I've missed in the last few months? When will Hozier release his complete album, now that the EP has whet our appetites?

I have been without my laptop for a week now, after a several-day spate without it earlier this month as well, which has both slowed down my reading (10-year-old laptop runs hot even when I'm not opening ebooks on it) and sped it up (for obvious reasons). There were some good ones in this batch, and none that I out-and-out disliked, so I'd call that a good thing! Also, throughout this entry there will be notes for a book bingo that I'm doing, because I want to track what goes on and off that card in some sensible kind of manner.
( The usual genre mix, with a second nonfic for the year, rare for me this soon! )

And that's all for this time! Next time, we move into the next subseries in Tortall (oh boy, Aly), and I try to make more of a dent in my TBR shelf before more preorders arrive. So much for my goal about savoring! Though Little Women and The Unbroken did both take me some time.

*Speaking of Beth dying, ever since I read the Alcott my heart has been crying out for a good wallflower historical romance where the heroine is shy instead of Too Independent To Be Popular but I feel like I've read most of the popular ones. Anybody got any good recs so I can pretend it's a happy ending for Beth? There's a true dearth of fanfic where she gets saved.

Off we go! And yes, I said I should read more slowly this year and promptly read ten books in two weeks, but in my defense, I started three of these in 2022.

( My usual mess of genres, and grappling with some weird worldbuilding from a childhood favorite author )

There are my first reads of the year! We'll see what I choose off the shelf next, I have a lot of pleasant prospects upcoming. I don't think any of these ten are likely to be in my yearly top ten unless I have a WILDLY disappointing year, but there's always the next batch!

What's your first read of the year?

Five more books to finish out the year! One DNF not recorded on my paper list, Cat's Tale by Bettie Sharpe, a Puss in Boots retelling where I was trying to forgive it for a protagonist I didn't much like because that was the point of her until she sexually assaulted the hero and the narrative seemed fine with that. So warning to steer clear of that one.

( Several holiday romances, a Pierce, and a lukewarm review to finish the year out! )

And that's my last book of the year, which means it's time for statistics and a top ten!

I read a whopping 186 books this year, 19 more than last year, continuing to break records while continuing to not want to be super engaged with reality thanks to the pandemic.

Of these books:

• 37 were rereads, up 7 from last year's 30
• 3 were nonfiction, steady with last year, but I'd like to do better on that next year
• 3 were graphic novels, up from last year's singular title
• 114 were science fiction or fantasy or otherwise spec-fic, up 16 from last year, I suspect because of my fantasy romance kick, because
• 93 were romance or romance-focused, which is a whopping 28 increase
• 23 were middle-grade or YA, 3 fewer but consistent with last year's total, though at least 7 of those were rereads

And, with the statistics out of the way, a top ten, maybe vaguely ordered but not enough that I would number them!

• Paladin's Hope and Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher, as usual for me, counting two by the same author as one entry
• Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
• Ocean's Echo by Everina Maxwell
• A Lady for a Duke by Alexis Hall
• The Grief of Stones by Katherine Addison
• Longshadow by Olivia Atwater
• A Restless Truth by Freya Marske
• The Devotion of Delflenor by R. Cooper
• Silk & Steel ed. Janine A. Southard
• Ravishing the Heiress by Sherry Thomas

And that is my year in reading! While I read a lot this year, there were not a whole lot of books that I deeply loved--making this top ten was harder than I assumed it would be. There are a lot of preorders I'm looking forward to in 2023, and some good things on my shelf, but actually, I think my goal this year is to read a bit less! I want to do more writing, and more crafting, and overall, I'd rather read fewer books that I really give myself time to savor. I also want to read more nonfic this year! I have a few I've been wanting to get for ages, so maybe this is the year. I also want to do a bit more Austen rereading, particularly Sense & Sensibility, which I haven't read since high school and want to give another chance.

How about you, out there? Top books I ought to try? 2023 preorders you're excited for? Let's talk books!

Perhaps a bit inflated by me reading a whole lot of Christmas romance novellas, but I like to record novellas too, so we're counting them! Also, one DNF in this time period, even a power outage was not enough to make me like Katherine Center's The Bodyguard enough to read more than a third of it, and even that was me desperately hoping I might start liking it at some point.

( Quite a mixed bag, the only trend is Christmas romances, I guess! )

And that's all for this time! I am wildly unlikely to read another ten books in the next ten days, so most likely you'll see me with my reading wrap-up for the year on New Year's Eve or Day, but you never know, I might just read a bunch of novellas all on top of each other! Anyone have any good recs to end the year on? Particularly, the Cooper reminded me that fantasy romance was the genre I started the year reading pretty much all the time, but I haven't read much lately, so have there been any recent releases?

Another full month! In my defense, I put on a whole entire musical, the reading was slow for a reason. Also there were a few slow ones again this time, including one I DNFed! That one, for my own records, was City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett, which I couldn't stay engaged in. Plus I have a few worldbuilding bones to pick with it. That being said, I think it was a good book, just one I'm not the audience for. Now for the books that I did finish, though!

( A decent breadth of things I liked a lot and things I didn't like as much! )

That's all for this time! Unless disaster strikes, I'll finish at least another 10 before the end of the year, which means I'll have beaten last year's record, which is both good and a little ridiculous, but ah well, there are just a lot of good books in this world! In the meantime: questions? Comments? Recommendations?

Dear Author,

Yuletide season is always a wonderful time of year! Thank you so much for offering to write one of my beloved small fandoms, and I look forward to seeing whatever you choose to write. Feel free to depart from my given prompts if you've got an idea you've been hoping to write, too, but if you're a prompt person I hope these ones are useful!

If you wish to find me elsewhere I am lady_ragnell and theladyragnell. If you are here thinking about treats, I'm very delighted that my prompts inspired you so much, and I have gifts enabled!

General Likes and Dislikes

Likes

• Stories about relationships, be they romantic or platonic! I love banter, characters playing off of each other, relationships that feel lived-in. I also love relationships growing and changing, and stories about the moments where they shift! That can mean a shift from friends (or enemies or rivals or indifferent strangers) to lovers, or a growth in trust or respect in gen relationships.
• Happy or hopeful endings! I am perfectly happy with a lot of angst along the way, but I like to leave a story knowing that the characters are going to be okay.
• AUs, especially of the canon-adjacent kind (canon divergences and fix-its, roleswaps, things like that), but setting change AUs are also delightful! Putting a canon in space is always a delight, and I am also very fond of things like You've Got Mail AUs and other romcom fusions.
• Worldbuilding! I haven't requested it specifically, but anything you want to fit in is great, I love it when fics focus in on details of worldbuilding canons didn't have time to do much with and extrapolate them out, or quote from in-universe media or mythology.
• Off that last one, I love epistolary fic (particularly if you'd like to do epistolary for Dracula), and other found documents types of stories: letters, journals, recordings, voicemails, logs, anything of that nature is wonderful.
• Any rating, G to E, wherever you are most comfortable writing, from gen to non-porny romance to porn (though I would prefer porn as garnish to other things rather than PWP, and for any younger characters to be aged up to 18+).
• Assorted tropes and story elements I am fond of include: any and all marriage tropes (arranged, convenient, Vegas, fake), found family, hurt/comfort with lots of comfort (especially in survival situations and the classic "overworked to the point of fainting"), time travel tropes (going back to fix things, time loops, etc), anything about loyalty or fealty, pining, banter, dancing or Fancy Party Episodes, political/court intrigue, outsider POV (preferably from canon characters), and epistolary.
• Assorted things I enjoy in porn, should you choose that route, include: non-penetrative sex (penetrative is also fine! But I very much enjoy oral, frottage, etc.), characters having fun and laughing during sex, light informal d/s or bondage (particularly if partners switch off who's in charge), sex pollen in any of the space canons, phone sex or dirty talk (though I prefer the latter not be humiliation-related).

Dislikes

Overall, I am fine with these elements up to and including the level they're at in a canon, but don't like them introduced, pushed further, or focused on:

• Major character death, especially where not canonical
• Terminal or other major illness, particularly cancer
• Epidemics/pandemics, whether COVID-19 or any sci-fi/fantasy/historical plagues
• Abuse, particularly between partners
• Infidelity
• Incest
• Rape/non-consensual sex
• Gore (violence is fine to a canon point, but detailed descriptions of injuries or dead bodies is not)
• Horror (I have a very low tolerance for creep factor, alas)
• Porn-specific DNWs: humiliation, kink without appropriate negotiation or aftercare or that is or is implied to be a 24/7 arrangement, daddy kink (or baby kink), a/b/o, bloodplay, watersports.

Fandom Specific Likes and Prompts

( Barbie: Star Light Adventure )

( A Countess Below Stairs - Eva Ibbotson )
( Dracula - Bram Stoker )

( Tom Corbett: Space Cadet Series - Carey Rockwell )

Thank you again for writing for me, author! I'll look forward to whatever you come up with, and happy writing!

There were some good ones in here! As well as several rereads. Also, apologies in advance if this post is long, there were three whole Locked Tomb books in here and several others I have fairly extensive thoughts upon that I now have to condense.

( Whole lot of books about death in this one, which is mostly Tamsyn Muir's fault. )

Whew, sorry, there were some absolute walls of text in there! I just had a lot to say. This was, overall, rather a dark group, so I'm looking forward to some lighter fare when I write my next entry! In the meantime: questions? Comments? Recommendations?