Monthly Archives: December 2019

Sunday Stuff – Reading The Rainbow

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Since we’re coming up on the end of the year, I’ve been thinking about what I want to do for Reading Challenges this next year. As normal, I will do my Goodreads Challenge, probably set to 150 books again, as that seems about right for my reading speed. I’m currently at 139, so I need to hurry up and read 11 more books before the end of the year!

This year I did Year of the Asian, and read a lot of Asian authors. I didn’t get to everything I wanted to read, but I did read 26 books by Asian authors!

In 2020 I’m going to do something similar, but for LGBTQIA+ authors. I’m going to call it Reading The Rainbow, and I’ll be aiming to review at least one book by a LGBTQIA+ author every week. (With June being completely LGBTQIA+ like normal!) I actually have a lot of LGBT books on my to-be-read list already, so this should be fairly easy to do. I’m looking into link party services, to see if I could perhaps make it a public reading challenge with a monthly linkup! I’m not really equipped to do any giveaways or prizes, though. Would anyone be interested in such a thing?

Friday 56 – The Warrior Moon

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warrior moonThe Friday 56 is hosted by Freda’s Voice. The rules are simple – turn to page 56 in your current read (or 56% in your e-reader) and post a few non-spoilery sentences.

This week’s quote is from The Warrior Moon, the third book in K. Arsenault Rivera’s Their Bright Ascendancy trilogy. (The first two are The Tiger’s Daughter and The Phoenix Empress.) I’ll be doing a combination review for the entire trilogy as soon as I finish this (650 page!) book.

Shefali and Barsalai are two names for the same person.

Two more li they travel, Barsalai clutching at the arrow in her chest the whole way. Dismounting is simple enough – all the excitement has granted her the energy to do so with little trouble.

It is the healing that will be the issue.

She slumps against a tree. Her blood drips onto the earth and she curses. Trees may be eternal symbols of everything the Qorin dislike, but that is no reason to poison them. When she is done, she will see if the kumaq can cleanse it.

But there is the matter of the arrows first. She snaps the shafts between her fingers. Shoddy craftsmanship, to start. Fletching with sparrow feathers is always bad luck. That the arrows are bone tipped and not metal should make this a little easier – they’re narrower. If she focuses, she can feel its shape.

Another deep breath.

Shefali stares at the arrow in her chest, at the wound around the base of the shaft, and wills the laceration to expand. Shifting her form like this takes focus – but it is easiest when she can stare down at the thing she wants to change. Holding the image in her mind is the integral part, after all.

Library Loot Wednesday

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I’ve gotten six books since I updated last! Forest of Shadows is a tie-in novel that goes between Frozen and Frozen 2. I haven’t yet seen Frozen 2, but I really want to! The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein is another Kiersten White novel, and I’ve loved everything else of hers that I’ve read. The Princess Who Flew With Dragons is the third book in Stephanie Burgis’s series about dragons and chocolate; I’ll be writing a combination trilogy review for those soon.

The last three are Make Your Home Among Strangers, Disaster’s Children, and Beyond the Black Door – an second-generation American story, a climate apocalypse story set in my home state, and a fantasy.

TTT – Holiday Reads

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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s theme is Holiday Reads. My Holiday Reads TEND to be anything I’m reading at the Holidays – similar to my issues with “Beach Reads” but I don’t think that’s what the topic is actually looking for. So. Books based around the holidays, I suppose?

krampus yule lord
Well the obvious first one is Krampus the Yule Lord. Written and illustrated by Brom, it’s a dark, fantastical tale of a small village’s brush with Krampus.

spinning silver
Next up I’m going to go with Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik, another wintry fairy tale.

In a similar vein to Spinning Silver, we have the trilogy that begins with The Bear and the Nightingale, a lush story based in Russian folklore. (The other two books are The Girl in the Tower and The Winter of the Witch.)

girls
Girls Made of Snow and Glass (a feminist Snow White) is the last of the already-read books I’m putting on this list. From here we’ll be getting into books I want to read that seem holiday-themed to me!

eight kinky nights
Eight Kinky Nights is a Hanukkah-themed f/f polyamorous romance with fat, queer, disabled, autistic characters. I’ve already pre-ordered the Kindle version, and I can’t wait for the 16th so I can read it!

You know, I thought I’d be able to come up with three more holiday books, but these seven are all I can think of. So I think I’m wrapping up here!

 

Sunday Stuff

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Hi folks! I’ll be returning shortly – possibly as soon as Tuesday, with a Holiday Reads Top Ten Tuesday. My short hiatus was wonderful, but I’m itching to start writing again, and I have books piling up that need to be written about, because I haven’t stopped reading! I have two trilogies that will be getting combination reviews – K. Arsenault Rivera’s Their Bright Ascendancy adult fantasy trilogy (with two women as the core duo/love story!) and Stephanie Burgis’s middle-grade trilogy about dragons and a chocolate shop. I have to finish my duology review for Victoria Lee’s Fever King/Electric Heir, which mistakenly went briefly up last week in its barely-started state – OOPS! I have a couple of Star Wars books loaned to me by a dear friend – one of them being the lead-in to the new movie, so that’s high on my to-read list. I also have a nonfiction set of essays about being a second-generation Cuban-American, and a fun space opera. LOTS of different things to write about!

I had a wonderful Thanksgiving – I spent the actual day lounging around the house with my husband and binging the entire third season of The Dragon Prince on Netflix. (IT’S SO GOOD GO WATCH IT!) Friday we went to a party at a friend’s house – where I got the aforementioned Star Wars books – and Saturday we went to a Thanksgiving Birthday party at another friend’s house and played a lot of board games. I hope everyone had an equally enjoyable holiday!

Tomorrow I have a doctor’s appointment – it’s a standard check-in, I have one every 3-6 months to check thyroid levels and other things while we mess with meds (oh, the joys of being chronically ill) but I’m a little anxious about it because I was supposed to get my insulin levels DOWN and they went UP instead. Which might explain some of my symptoms. We’ll see what happens!