Happy Tuesday everybody! It’s been a while, but I just wasn’t feeling the last couple of prompts (I don’t have a bucket list and I couldn’t think of ten books that described me). I’m cutting it a little close, but I really wanted to participate this week!
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly post currently hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. It celebrates lovely lists, wonderful books and the bookish community. This week’s topic is April Showers. It’s a very open prompt, and can be anything from rainy day reads, to books that made you cry, to books that wash away a bad reading experience.
I’m going with Books That Washed Away a Not Great Reading Experience. And by this I mean: books I DNF-ed, books I read but didn’t like, or books I didn’t hate but were very slow for me to get through. (I consider a book feeling too slow to be a bad reading experience for me personally; even if sometimes I end up thinking the book itself is alright (around three stars) after the fact.)
Anyway, without further ado, let’s get into it! From most recent to least recent.
Don’t Let the Forest In by CG Drews: I didn’t really enjoy the book I read before it.
How to Defeat a Demon King in Ten Easy Steps by Andrew Rowe: It took me a while to get through the last two books I read before this one, even though I ultimately thought they were alright. It was a real slog for me to get through them though, and I was in a slump for a bit until I read this.
Dark Moon, Shallow Sea by David R. Slayton: I DNF-ed the book I read before this one.
This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone: I didn’t hate the book I read before this one, but it irritated me a lot. This book being so good helped turn my mood around.
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke: I DNF-ed the book I read before this one.
A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers: I didn’t really like the book I read before this one.
White Trash Warlock by David R. Slayton: I didn’t really like the two books I read before this one.
The Chalice of the Gods by Rick Riordan: I really didn’t enjoy the two books I read before this one.
In the Lives of Puppets by TJ Klune: The book I read before this one was a slog for me to get through. This was a real pick-me-up.
In Deeper Waters by FT Lukens: I really didn’t like the book I read before this one.
What did you do for April Showers? What books washed away your not-so-great reading experiences?
As always, thanks so much for reading, and I hope that you have an amazing day/night!
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly post currently hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. It celebrates lovely lists, wonderful books and the bookish community. This week’s topic is Quotes From/About Books. So you can share book quotes that you love, quotes about books themselves, quotes about being a reader, etc. I decided to highlight Quotes That I Really Like From Ten Books That I Love. I went with the last ten books I gave five star for this one, because I’ve just read so many books.
Without further ado, let’s get into it! From most recently read and rated to least recently read and rated – to keep them straight in my head (but mostly because I’m having trouble choosing which books I like better than others).
#1
Perhaps that is what it is like with other people. Perhaps even people you like and admire immensely can make you see the World in ways you would rather not.
Susanna Clarke – Piranesi
#2
“You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don’t know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. You don’t need to justify that, or earn it. You are allowed to just live. That is all most animals do.”
Becky Chambers – A Psalm for the Wild-Built
#3
One doesn’t need magic if one knows enough stories.
Heather Fawsett – Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries
#4
Art doesn’t need to be good to be valuable. I’ve heard it said that art is the one truly useless creation-intended for no mechanical purpose. Valued only because of the perception of the people who view it. The thing is, everything is useless, intrinsically. Nothing has value unless we grant it that value. Any object can be worth whatever we decide it to be worth.
Brandon Sanderson –Yumi and the Nightmare Painter
#5
There is no such thing as a single truth. There are just the stories we tell others, and the ones we tell ourselves.
Chelsea Abdullah –The Stardust Thief
#6
Humanity is awful, angry, and violent. But we are also magical and musical. We dance. We sing. We create. We live and laugh and rage and cry and despair and hope. We are a bundle of contradictions without rhyme or reason. And there is no one like us in all the universe.
TJ Klune – In the Lives of Puppets
#7
Real hearts are nothing but trouble. They break and bleed and bring their owners torment. But without them existence is hollow, only breath following breath.
Frances Hardinge –Unraveller
#8
You are the Ship of Theseus. We all are. There is not a single living cell in my body that was alive and a part of me ten years ago, and the same is true for you. We’re constantly being rebuilt, one board at a time.
Edward Ashton – Mickey7
#9
“Not every story is willing to reveal itself right away. Some of them are bashful.”
Marissa Meyer – Gilded
#10
“I’d rather die on an adventure than live standing still.”
V.E. Schwab –A Darker Shade of Magic
What are your favorite quotes? Are they from your favorite books? Do you have any quotes you really like that are just about books and reading in general?
As always, thanks so much for reading, and I hope that you have an amazing day/night!
It’s been a few weeks, but I’m here again (sort of) participating in Top Ten Tuesday.
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly post currently hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. It celebrates lovely lists, wonderful books and the bookish community. This week’s topic is Books for Armchair Travelers, but I wasn’t really feeling the prompt, so I went rogue and decided to do one from a couple of weeks ago that I was interested in, but didn’t have time: Book Covers Featuring Pretty or Unique Typography.
Anyway, without further ado, on with the post! I couldn’t narrow it down to just ten, by the way, so here’s twelve.
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Jaysea Lynn – Both pretty and unique
Girls of Dark Divine by E.V. Woods – Unique
How to Defeat a Demon King in Ten Easy Steps by Andrew Rowe – Unique
A Thousand Nights by E.K. Johnson – Pretty
A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers – Unique
Prince of Fortune by Lisa Tirreno – Pretty
Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawsett – Pretty and unique
The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle – Both pretty and unique
Kingdom of the Wicked by Kerri Maniscalco – Both pretty and unique
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir – Unique
Tigers Trek by Colleen Houck – Both pretty and unique
Of Owls and Oolong by Shari L. Tapscott – Both pretty and unique
What are some books with covers with your favorite typography? Do you prefer books with a pretty or a unique title font? Or do you like both equally?
As always, thanks so much for reading, and I hope that you have an amazing day/night!
Hey everyone! Happy Tuesday! Here’s another Top Ten Tuesday.
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly post currently hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. It celebrates lovely lists, wonderful books and the bookish community. This week’s topic is New to Me Authors I Discovered in 2024. I don’t think I have to elaborate further on the topic – I think it’s pretty self explanatory.
Anyway, on with the post! Here are the authors new to me from last year, in order of reading from the beginning of 2024 to the end of 2024!
Kerri Maniacalco via Kingdom of the Wicked
Laura R. Samotin via The Sins on Their Bones
Becky Chambers via the Monk & Robot series of novellas
Meg Shaffer via The Lost Story
Susanna Clarke via Piranesi
Ann Leckie via Lake of Souls: The Collected Short Fiction
June CL Tan via Darker by Four
Cecy Robson via Bloodguard
Mo Xiang Tong Xiu viaGrandmaster of DemonicCultivation (MoDao Zu Shi)
Jennifer D. Lyle via Snow Drowned
What authors were new to you last year? What did you think of their books? Are you planning on reading other novels by them in the future?
As always, thanks so much for reading, and I hope that you have an amazing day/night!
A Prayer for the Crown-Shy is a story of kindness and love from one of the foremost practitioners of hopeful SF.
After touring the rural areas of Panga, Sibling Dex (a Tea Monk of some renown) and Mosscap (a robot sent on a quest to determine what humanity really needs) turn their attention to the villages and cities of the little moon they call home.
They hope to find the answers they seek, while making new friends, learning new concepts, and experiencing the entropic nature of the universe.
Becky Chambers’s new series continues to ask: in a world where people have what they want, does having more even matter?
My Review
The thing about fucking off to the woods is that unless you are a very particular, very rare sort of person, it does not take long to understand why people left said woods in the first place.
A Prayer for the Crown-Shy, though not quite hitting the same spots for me as A Psalm for the Wild-Built that convinced me to give it a perfect star rating, was still a very fantastic novella to read. I really enjoyed my time with this book, as well as being heck in this world and seeing Dex and Mosscap again. I was a bit worried that it wouldn’t live up to the first one enough, which is why I put off reading it for a bit, but luckily my concerns were unfounded.
This little sequel builds a little bit on the world first introduced in Psalm. But gently – this is still a soft sci-fi series, after all. Not to mention that these little books are primarily character focused. But yeah, I enjoyed reading about Dex and Mosscap going around and interacting with people and places here, it felt like a very natural way to explore (and explain) the world.
It was also such a treat to meet new characters and have Dex have more than a couple lines of dialogue with them. Don’t get me wrong – I love how the first novella pretty much completely focused on Dex’s thought process and his evolving new friendship with Mosscap. But I really, really like character interaction, and a good chunk of book one is just walls of text.
The new characters we met were pretty decent too. At the very least their dialogue was good. It flowed naturally and felt like actual conversations. My favorite interactions were with Dex’s family (finally we get to meet them!) and one that almost entirely happens off-screen interactions with Ms. Amelia. (The one we see is also funny, but the implied interactions between Mosscap and the old lady seem golden.)
“Is this customary?” Mosscap whispered to Dex as Leroy fetched some herbs from the pots on his windowsill. “In some of the books I read last night, people made each other breakfast after having sex, but not universally.”
Dex threw Mosscap a look and lowered their voice as far as it would go. “What kind of books does Ms. Amelia collect?”
“Oh, entirely pornography,” Mosscap said. “It was very educational.”
Of course, the heart of this story is still the growing friendship between Dex and Mosscap, and how it changes them as a person and an object. Dex is also still struggling with the stuff from Psalm as well and, at the moment, Mosscap is currently the only one they feel comfortable sharing with. Mosscap is also going through it a little – as it’s realizing that it is getting older, and may start to break down sooner rather than later. Time keeps moving, after all.
And it wouldn’t be a Monk & Robot book without discussions of philosophy and self, so of course there’s a bunch of that here, once again. Not to the degree of the first book, ’cause of the slight differences in story structure, but A Prayer for the Crown-Shy definitely doesn’t… shy away from the topic either.
“Well, I didn’t know then,” Dex said, “and I still don’t. But what I do know is… you help. You’re helping me figure it out. Just by being here. You help.”
“Then we have the same answer,” Mosscap said. “I don’t know, either. But you are my best help, Sibling Dex.”
All in all, this is an absolutely solid follow-up to A Psalm for the Wild-Built. I love the soft sci-fi system, and how character focused it is. And I definitely recommend A Prayer for the Crown-Shy to those who enjoy these things as well, and who like quieter and more contemplative stories.
As always, thank you to everyone for reading, and I hope you have an amazing day/night!
Whoa, it’s been a month since the last time I did this! Whoops! Happy Wednesday everyone!
WWW Wednesday is a weekly meme that used to be hosted at A Daily Rhythm, but has been taken over by Sam @ Taking on a World of Words. Now, without further ado, let’s get into the 3 Ws!
CURRENT FEELS: 😁😥 (very excited but a little nervous – I’ve been looking forward to reading it for a while, but I’m a bit afraid about whether it’ll live up to my expectations)
One Piece: Volumes 52 – 53 – 54 (Sabaody Arc) by Eiichiro Oda: There’s no might about this one – I’m definitely reading this one next! Then I’m gonna read the Impel Down and Marineford arcs immediately after. (I’m buddy reading this with my spouse and we’re loving it.) Then it’ll finally be the end of the pre-time skip stuff.
Prince of Fortune by Lisa Tirreno: Regarding stuff I’ll be reading next that’s not One Piece, this book might be a contender. I try to read one new release every month, and this novel might be it.
What books has everyone been reading lately? What have you thought of them? What are you thinking of reading next?
Anyway, thank you to everyone for reading, and I hope that you have a great day/night!
It’s been… forever since I’ve participated in this post. Like, it’s been over half a year. Geez. I dunno why I dropped it for so long, though part of it was ’cause I was still doing Weekly Wrap-Ups at the time, so doing WWW Wednesday felt redundant when I was already recapping which books I read recently and planning on reading next for my wrap-ups.
But then I got burned out on that too, so I wasn’t doing either. Basically, what I’m trying to say, is that I’m gonna be doing this post pretty regularly again.
So yeah.
Anyway.
WWW Wednesday is a weekly meme that used to be hosted at A Daily Rhythm, but has been taken over by Sam @ Taking on a World of Words. Now, without further ado, let’s get into the 3 Ws!
A Prayer for the Crown Shy by Becky Chambers: This has been on my TBR for a few months, ever since I read its predecessor, but has been pushed around for a while. I think I might be in the mood for a smaller read next, though, so it’s here as a potential.
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke: This is another that’s been on my radar for awhile – years in fact. But with the announcement of a movie produced by Laika, I’ve been reminded that it’s been buried in my TBR. It’s also shorter, so it’s also here for similar reasons as to A Prayer for the Crown Shy.
Ordinary Monsters by J.M. Miro: This has been on my TBR since last year. It was even on my Christmas list, so I received a copy then. I just haven’t gotten around to reading it, unfortunately. But with the sequel, Bringer of Dust releasing next month, I’ve decided that I gotta get on this.
What books are you guys currently reading? Have you read any of the ones on my list this week? What did you think of them, if you had? How do you feel about the book(s) you’re reading now?
Anyway, thank you to everyone for reading, and I hope that you have a fantastic day/night!
It’s June now, so it’s time to talk about what I read in May! This is super late compared to normal – and I wanted to post this way earlier – but I went on vacation last week, so my posting and my schedule in general both kind of got messed up. Sorry, I’ve been kind of MIA these last couple weeks.
Anyway.
My reading is the best it’s been so far this year! May was fantastic regarding books and stuff. I read 8 books – which is 2 more novels than I read in April! Woohoo! I’m really happy with my reading stats from The StoryGraph from May.
But yeah, without further ado, let’s get going with the May 2024 Reading Wrap-Up!
May Reading 2024
I read 8 books and 2,234 pages
😐 MOODS: There were a ton of different Moods this past month. Adventurous was of course the biggest chunk of the pie in May, but Mysterious was also pretty big. Making up the rest of the pie were Reflective, Lighthearted, Inspiring, Hopeful, Funny, Emotional, and Dark.
👢 PACE: My books from last month were all either fast or medium paced.
🔢 PAGE NUMBER: I read a lot of books with different page numbers. But everything I read was between 100 and 500 pages.
📖 FICTION/NONFICTION: It was once again all fiction this month.
🎭 GENRES: There were quite a few Genres in May, though not as many as in April. Fantasy was once again the biggest bar, as usual, though it is closely followed by Middle Grade – probably because I read the entirety of the Magisterium series last month. The three other Genres on the graph are LGBT+, Science Fiction, and Historical.
📄 FORMAT: This particular pie graph is once again wrong. All of the books that I read were ebooks.
⭐ RATING: My median star rating for last month was 3.94. The ratings I gave were between 2.5 stars and 5.0 stars, with three of the ratings being 4.0 stars.
📉 PAGES READ DAILY: I didn’t read as much as I’d have liked during the first week or so of May, but I really started reading after that. My highest reading peak was during the 21st thru the 23rd, but I had little reading spikes around during other parts of the month.
So yeah, so again for being late with this wrap-up and the gap in the posting. I’ve just had a few things going on the last couple weeks; particularly my vacation last week. I’m not sure how much reading of books I’m gonna get done for June, but I didn’t read any during my vacation, so we’ll see. Hopefully it’s at least like 5 or 6 books by the end of the month.
There are a couple of books that came out this month (June 2024) that I was interested in. I’ve already read one of them, and you’ll see what I thought of it soon. But I’m hoping to continue with One Piece again. We got busy at the end of May, so plans for continuing it last month kinda fell by the wayside. Other than that, I’m not fully sure what I’m planning on reading during the rest of this month.
Anyway, thanks for joining me in checking out my StoryGraph stats for my May reading in 2024. Thank you also for reading, and I hope you have an amazing day/night!
It’s been a few weeks, but here I am again, participating in another First Line Friday.
First Line Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers (formerly) hosted by Wandering Words, but I saw it over at One Book More.
What if instead of judging a book by the cover, author or most everything else, we judged it by its content? Its first lines?
If you want to join in, all you gotta do is:
📚 Take a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open it to the first page 📝 Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first 📙 Finally… reveal the book!
Here’s the first lines:
The thing about fucking off to the woods is that unless you are a very particular, very rare sort of person, it does not take long to understand why people left said woods in the first place.
Any ideas on what the book is? Here’s another hint if you don’t know.
Still don’t know what it is? Here’s some gorgeous photos of books to look at while you think…
Annnd the book is… 🥁🥁 A Prayer for the Crown Shy by Becky Chambers!!
A Prayer for the Crown-Shy is a story of kindness and love from one of the foremost practitioners of hopeful SF.
After touring the rural areas of Panga, Sibling Dex (a Tea Monk of some renown) and Mosscap (a robot sent on a quest to determine what humanity really needs) turn their attention to the villages and cities of the little moon they call home.
They hope to find the answers they seek, while making new friends, learning new concepts, and experiencing the entropic nature of the universe.
Becky Chambers’s new series continues to ask: in a world where people have what they want, does having more even matter?
What books have you been reading lately? What’s on your TBR that you’re currently the most excited about?
As always, thank you for reading, and I hope you have an great day/night!
“Remnants are powerful things. Hard to ignore. But you have the sense and the tools to avoid getting sick from that water. And I… I know that the world I’m headed to is not the world the originals walked away from.”
In A Psalm for the Wild-Built, bestselling Becky Chambers’s delightful new Monk and Robot series, gives us hope for the future.
It’s been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again; centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend.
One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of “what do people need?” is answered.
But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how.
They’re going to need to ask it a lot.
Becky Chambers’s new series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter?
My Review
If you ask six different monks the question of which godly domain robot consciousness belongs to, you’ll get seven different answers.
I’ve read very few books in my life that I’ve considered perfect (or near-perfect, honestly), but A Psalm for the Wild-Built was absolutely one of them. Some might not consider it so, but this one really resonated with me, and it was a bit of an eye-opening read for me.
The journey itself and the basic plot was sweet. I really like how this whole thing was driven by Dex’s need to hear crickets – which are uncommon are living quite a distance from human civilization in A Psalm for the Wild-Built’s world. But as the novella goes on, you as the reader, begin to realize that this isn’t exactly what Dex really wants or needs. And it was beautiful and heartbreaking and so, so relatable when everything comes to light.
Also, I really found Dex to be very relatable. Their thoughts and feelings, which slowly came to light through their conversations with Mosscap (the co-protagonist), really felt like stuff I’ve had running through my head at several points in the last couple of years. Particularly the need to feel like you’re fulfilling a purpose or doing something to benefit other people or the world as a whole. That… was something that really resonated for me. I’ve never felt this much on the wavelength of a character I followed in a novel before, or said novel in general. It made me feel a lot better about myself, and also that I’d read this book sooner.
I also really enjoyed Mosscap and it and Dex’s slowly growing friendship. The character moments and growth was fantastic. It all almost felt slice-of-life. This was a very character driven story, which is not something I always like, but if it’s written well (which it was) and it hits just the right spot (which it did), then it’s amazing.
If you haven’t read this novella yet, I recommend you do so. It isn’t very long, and it’s a very sweet and relatable story. It’s a great little soft sci-fi experience, and I think that everyone should at least give it a shot.
Anyway, as always, thank you everyone so much for reading, and I hope that you have a fantastic day/night!
See ya ~Mar
Favorite Quotes
It was an odd feeling. Any other day, the act of going through a door was something Dex gave no more thought to than putting one foot in front of the other. But there was a gravity to leaving a place for good, a deep sense of seismic change.
Sometimes, a person reaches a point in their life when it becomes absolutely essential to get the fuck out of the city.
The robot noted this. “Did you just apologize to the bloodsuck for killing it?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“It didn’t do anything wrong. It was acting in its nature.”
“Is this typical of people, to apologize to things you kill?”
“Yeah.”
“I can go a hundred miles, give or take.”
“So, that’s… sorry, I’m slow at math.”
Dex frowned. “What?” How was the robot slow at math?
“Hush, I can’t multiply and talk at the same time.”
“We don’t have to fall into the same category to be of equal value.”
“I am made of metal and numbers; you are made of water and genes. But we are each something more than that. And we can’t define what that something more is simply by our raw components.”
“But that’s… that’s immortality. How is that less desirable?”
“Because nothing else in the world behaves that way. Everything else breaks down and is made into other things.”
“It’s pretty here,” Dex said. “I wouldn’t have imagined I’d say that about a place like this, but—”
“Yes, it is,” Mosscap said, as if making a decision within itself. “It is. Dying things often are.”
Dex raised an eyebrow. “That’s a little macabre.”
“You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don’t know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. You don’t need to justify that, or earn it. You are allowed to just live. That is all most animals do.”
“Then how,” Dex said, “how does the idea of maybe being meaningless sit well with you?”
Mosscap considered. “Because I know that no matter what, I’m wonderful,” it said.
