February has been a complicated month for my virtual bookshelf.
I only completed nine (9) books, due to some books I kept trying to read even though I knew I didn’t want to, and eventually shelved. I’m also knitting my first sweater, and sometimes (frequently) knitting a sweater is easier and more fun than getting through the first chapter of a book you know you should read but aren’t excited about. (Y’all? The Magicians isn’t very interesting in the first 60 pages, and there’s a lot of small words on those 60 out of 400-odd pages. I don’t know if my affection for Summer Bishil and Jason Ralph can stand up to this.) I’m also, as you might know, revising my novel, and at this point in the process, it’s more straight-up rewriting than anything – and, in case I haven’t mentioned this enough, rewriting a book that was once 200,000 words long (I’m guessing it’ll be closer to 150,000 when I’m done this time, fingers crossed) is a taxing process.
Look, reading is not my highest priority atm. My Goodreads challenge counter is very unhappy. I don’t like making Harry Potter references but it feels like a Howler to the face every time I open the app.
Lucky for me, February has been a bizarrely successful month in terms of quality.
no. 1: reading & challenges
I read four (4) books towards the Popsugar Challenge, one (1) book towards the Read Harder challenge, a book for February’s Monthly Motif, and one (1) book towards the What’s In A Name challenge, along with four (4) books that weren’t explicitly for challenges:
- Dubliners by James Joyce (PS: published in the 20th century)
- The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin, Inheritance Trilogy #1 [reread]
- Only Ashes Remain by Rebecca Schaeffer (MM: red cover/title), Market of Monsters #2
- Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey (PS: trans/NB author)
- The Deep and Dark Blue by Niki Smith (PS: published in 2020 – WIAN: ampersand in title)
- The Bone Houses by Emily Lloyd-Jones
- We Wish You Luck by Caroline Zancan (PS: favorite past prompt, title is a full sentence)
- The Mojo and the Sayso by Aishah Rahman (RH: play by author of color)
- Live and In Color! by Danitra Vance (RH: play by author of color)
- The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner [reread, audiobook]
I found the anthology Moon Marked & Touched By Sun: Plays by African American Women, ed. Sydné Mahone, for the RH prompt, and read a few from it to fulfill it, since drama is such a quick and easy read and it felt like cheating just to read one. I also read the excerpts from Fires in the Mirror by Anna Deavere Smith.
I didn’t read much this month, but what I did read was exceptional! James Joyce and I don’t get along well, and Only Ashes Remain suffers from middle-book syndrome, but everything else I read was a lot of fun. I read The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms a few years ago and it held up to my esteemed memories of it – I know Jemisin has become much more well-known for her later series, but I’ll always have a soft spot for Yeine and Nahadoth, no matter how Jemisin’s style has grown and matured. Same for my reread/relisten of The Thief. I remember being less than impressed with the first book of The Queen’s Thief series, though the later books manhandled my emotions in a way few stories have had the guts to do since, but this time around I’m enjoying it a lot more just for itself. I have a Storycraft Review ready to go on it for next week while I try to figure out how to write a Meander plot for Jane Alison, so suffice it to say for now: it’s a very good book to listen to the audio of.
The highlight of this month was probably The Bone Houses, which was one of my random picks for my first haul of the year. After I DNF’d most of the YA from that haul, and knowing that it was also an OwlCrate book (I love OwlCrate goodies and hate OwlCrate books), I expected to DNF The Bone Houses, too, but I was bowled over by how enjoyable it was. Of course the romance was obvious from the start, but when was the last time a YA author bothered to, like, let her characters have conversations that made sense in the context of the story before they fell in love? What is this??? Where I am??? Ryn makes a very convincing lead, and her attachment to her axe was my favorite part of the book. That and the zombie goat. And Ellis’s general adorableness. A lot of it, actually. Don’t go in looking for a wildly original story, but, more importantly, it’s a well-tended story, looked after with kind and thoughtful hands. I’m putting Emily Lloyd-Jones on my “authors to adore from afar” list.
The second surprise was We Wish You Luck by Caroline Zancan, an adult literary fic told by a Greek chorus of MFA students about three of their colleagues, over the course of three residencies at a Vermont MFA program. I am as skeptical of adult literary fiction as I am of YA fantasy, and books about writers by writers can be nauseating, so once again my hopes were, if not low, at least reasonable. But I gave We Wish You Luck five stars on Goodreads – a sign of weakness, given at 4:30 PM in a library parking lot while a woman talked very loudly on her Bluetooth speaker in the car next to mine, as I fought back tears over the final five or so pages – and I don’t particularly regret it, at least not yet. WWYL is not without its trigger warnings, and I’m not sure who I’d even recommend it to – it is so deeply about writing, not storytelling in general but writing as a craft and an act of both expression and survival; I get the feeling from GR reviews that it’s not a lot of people’s cup of tea – but it feels like one of those odd books that was written towards you. Not for, never would I be so forward, but in my general direction, aimed at the part of the audience where I am sitting. I was touched and amused and held off revising my own book to keep reading.
no. 2: book hauls
I didn’t save my library receipts, so I can’t be sure that this is all the books I library haul’d in February, but I think these are the most important ones, anyway. The ones I didn’t mention above or include in this list, I must have DNF’d, so who cares.
- Ship of Smoke and Steel by Django Wexler (FINALLY)
- Carry On: the Rise and Fall of Simon Snow (am I allowed to read this without reading Fangirl? Fangirl sounds like Not My Thing.)
- War Girls by Tochi Onyebuchi (FINALLY ALSO)
- They Called Us Enemy by George Takei et al
- Cosmoknights Vol. 1 by Hannah Templer
- Belle Revolte by Linsey Miller (Mask of Shadows was one of my great 2020 disappointments so far but we’ll see if BR is more my thing)
- The Broken Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin (one of the RH prompts is the last book in a series, so I’m going to finally finish the Inheritance Trilogy this year)
- The Art of Resistance: My Four Years in the French Underground by Justus Rosenberg
I also got Frozen II but I don’t think anyone is proud of me for that.
As far as book-buying hauls, I actually ended up with a tidy stack this month! Most came from The Haunted Bookshop, my favorite local bookstore.
- The Bard’s Blade by Brian Anderson (a local author published by Tor! This man is living my dream and I hope he appreciated that I didn’t jump the autograph table and demand that he introduce me to his agent on pain of death by book-bludgeoning)
- A Hero Born by Jin Yong (I shelled out a lot more than I wanted to for this book but I’m very excited for it, and I’ll chip in wherever I can to encourage nonwestern spec fic in American bookstores)
- Soulmated by Shaila Patel (not a local author but she did stop by for a panel on YA romance at the Haunted Bookshop and she was a delight. I don’t really do YA PNR [burned by too many Fallens an Hush Hushes in highschool] but I had to get her book. Like, seriously, just a very fun person to listen to.)
- Finn Family Moomintroll by Tove Jansson
- The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole (an extremely lucky find at a local charity shop)
I love making these lists. I hate thinking about how long it’ll be until I actually read the books on them.
no. 3: March plans
challenges
I don’t have a lot in mind for challenges in March. Since it’s still early in the year, I have some wiggle room. I’m concerned about the Read Harder challenge, but I’ll probably have to dedicate an hour or so to scanning my library’s website and the Goodreads group for suggestions. Maybe I’ll try for Nectar From a Stone again this month.
The Monthly Motif for March is “Favorite Subgenre,” which could either be portal fantasy or space opera. Maybe The Magicians could fit there? Is it portal fantasy in the first book? We’ll see.
For PS, I’ll try Poison (first book I touched with my eyes closed), I Hope You Get This Message (author is a woman of color), Fabliaux (birds on the cover), and The Forest Lord (title caught my attention).
March releases
- The City We became by N.K. Jemisin
- Havenfall by Sara Holland (YA fantasy)
- When We Were Magic by Sarah Gailey (YA urban fantasy?)
- Super Adjacent by Crystal Cestari (YA superheroes)
- This Town Sleeps by Dennis E. Staples (adult contemporary
- The Last Human by Zack Jordan (adult SPACE OEPRA!!!!)
- The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo (adult fantasy – a Tor novella, enough said for me)
- The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune (adult fantasy – another Tor offering!! March is a blessed month!!)
- The Fire Never Goes Out by Noelle Stevenson (graphic memoir – cannot wait to hear from my first-ever graphic novelist fav. Even the title gives me shivers.)
- The Phantom Twin by Lisa Brown (YA graphic novel)
See you in March, with more books and more parentheses and more opinions to come!
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