Recent Updates and Currently Reading | July 13

Hi, friends! I've been a way for a while. Mostly I was focusing on my career. I finally left my job of 16 years, and I'm in a much better place now! I've also been allowing myself to fall deeply in love with reading again. I can't wait to do some catching up and share my thoughts.

For now... here are some of my favorite 5⭐ books that I've read while I've been away:

Murder Road by Simone St. James

A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez

Better Than the Movies by Lynn Painter

Read Last Week

Middle of the Night by Riley Sager ⭐⭐⭐💫★ - This was mostly a great time. I'm going to try to start reviewing again so I can post some full thoughts.

The Rom-Commers by Katherine Center [dnf] - Oh, no. This was my first Katherine Center and it was not for me. I'm bummed.

Currently Reading

Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson - I'm trying to fill in the holes in my cosmere reading before the end of the year so I can read the fifth Stormlight Archive book with the rest of the Brando Sando reading world. Enjoying it so far!

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante, translated by Ann Goldstein - I found an amazing bookstore while I was out of town last week that was filled with works in translation. I was excited to find this, and I've already started it.

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Much love to you guys. I hope you are reading something special and have an amazing week.

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This post is being shared as part of The Sunday Salon at Readerbuzz, Book Date’s It's Monday! What Are You Reading? and Caffeinated Book Reviewer's The Sunday Post.

Recent Updates and Currently Reading | February 11

Hello, friends. I'm finally crawling back out of the deep pit of Dungeons & Dragons. I haven't done much reading over the past couple of weeks because I've been consuming so much D&D content. We are still playing and having a great time. I'm finally starting to feel like I have a handle on the rules and being a DM. It's freeing up the small amount of free space that I have in my mind to read again!

My kids were on winter break from school this past week. My husband and I took a few days off from work which was nice. We took a road trip and had some good food and did some shopping. It was fun.

It's super bowl Sunday. Will you be watching? We were planning to put the game on in the background for commercials and the half time show so I may get a lot of reading done tonight.

Posted over the last two weeks

New-to-Me Authors I Discovered in 2023

On My Wishlist | Island Witch by Amanda Jayatissa

On My Wishlist | In Ascension by Martin MacInnes

Finished Reading

Mislaid in Parts Half-Known by Seanan McGuire ⭐⭐⭐💫★ - Book #9 of the Wayward Children series. I'll hopefully have some thoughts posted this week.

The Eleventh Metal by Brandon Sanderson ⭐⭐⭐★★ - I'm hoping to be a Cosmere completionist by the end of the year. I don't get particularly excited about the shorts and novellas, but I'm trying to read them all.

Currently Reading

Elantris by Brandon Sanderson - I have a weird relationship with this book. This is my fourth time trying to read Elantris. It has been a struggle connecting with this one until now. I have my theories as to why, but I'm finally connecting to and loving Elantris.

Added to the TBR

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas - I have such a fun friend group and we are about to do a buddy read of A Court of Thorns and Roses. I can't wait to finally be in the know about ACOTAR and have a great time with friends.

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This post is being shared as part of The Sunday Salon at Readerbuzz, Book Date’s It's Monday! What Are You Reading? and Caffeinated Book Reviewer's The Sunday Post.

On My Wishlist | In Ascension by Martin MacInnes

In Ascension by Martin MacInnes is a Booker Prize nominee that is being released in the US later this month.

An astonishing novel about a young microbiologist investigating an unfathomable deep vent in the ocean floor, leading her on a journey that will encompass the full trajectory of the cosmos and the passage of a single human life.

Leigh grew up in Rotterdam, drawn to the waterfront as an escape from her unhappy home life and volatile father. Enchanted by the undersea world of her childhood, she excels in marine biology, travelling the globe to study ancient organisms. When a trench is discovered in the Atlantic ocean, Leigh joins the exploration team, hoping to find evidence of the earth's first life forms – what she instead finds calls into question everything we know about our own beginnings. Her discovery leads Leigh to the Mojave desert and an ambitious new space agency.

Drawn deeper into the agency's work, she learns that the Atlantic trench is only one of several related phenomena from across the world, each piece linking up to suggest a pattern beyond human understanding. Leigh knows that to continue working with the agency will mean leaving behind her declining mother and her younger sister, and faces an impossible choice: to remain with her family, or to embark on a journey across the breadth of the cosmos.

Exploring the natural world with the wonder and reverence we usually reserve for the stars, In Ascension is a compassionate, deeply inquisitive epic that reaches outward to confront the greatest questions of existence, looks inward to illuminate the smallest details of the human heart, and shows how – no matter how far away we might be and how much we have lost hope – we will always attempt to return to the people and places we call home.

In Ascension had me at "deep vent in the ocean floor". I'm here for a science fiction novel that made the long list for the Booker Prize especially if it deals with the ocean. I've seen comparisons to Jeff VandeerMeer which I find very exciting.

Are you interested in reading In Ascension?

On My Wishlist | Island Witch by Amanda Jayatissa

Island Witch is an adult horror novel by Amanda Jayatissa.

Inspired by Sri Lankan folklore, award-winning author Amanda Jayatissa turns her feverish, Gothic-tinged talents to late 19th century Sri Lanka where the daughter of a traditional demon-priest—relentlessly bullied by peers and accused of witchcraft herself—tries to solve the mysterious attacks that have been terrorizing her coastal village.

Being the daughter of the village Capuwa, or demon-priest, Amara is used to keeping mostly to herself. Influenced by the new religious practices brought in by the British Colonizers, the villagers who once respected her father’s craft have turned on the family. Yet, they all still seem to call on him whenever supernatural disturbances arise.

Now someone—or something —is viciously seizing upon men in the jungle. But instead of enlisting Amara’s father’s help, the villages have accused him of carrying out the attacks himself.

As she tries to clear her father’s name, Amara finds herself haunted by dreams that eerily predict the dark forces on her island. And she can’t shake the feeling that it’s all connected to the night she was recovering from a strange illness, and woke up, scared and confused, to hear her mother’s frantic No one can find out what happened .

Lush, otherworldly, and recalling horror classics like Carrie and The Exorcist, Island Witch is a deliciously creepy and darkly feminist tale about the horrors of moral panic, the violent space between girlhood and adulthood, and what happens when female rage is finally unleashed.

Island Witch is being compared to Carrie and The Exorcist. It sounds like a scary novel of female rage that I'm here for.

Is Island Witch on your radar?

New-to-Me Authors I Discovered in 2023

Today's Top Ten Tuesday topic is New-to-Me Authors I Discovered in 2023. Several of these were favorites!

 

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty (10⭐ out of 5)

Book Lovers by Emily Henry (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐)

Chlorine by Jade Song (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐)

 

Ice Planet Barbarians by Ruby Dixon (⭐⭐⭐★★)

At the End of Every Day by Arianna Reiche (⭐⭐★★★)

Below by Laurel Hightower (⭐⭐⭐⭐★)

 

Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield (⭐⭐⭐★★)

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros (⭐⭐⭐⭐★)

Wild Spaces by S.L. Coney (⭐⭐⭐⭐★)

 

Camp Damascus is a horror novel by Chuck Tingle ( ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐)

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐)

The September House by Carissa Orlando (⭐⭐⭐★★)