February 2020 Book Haul

Yep. We fell off the book ban bus. I knew it wasn't going to work, but I at least wanted to try. We went to a cute little bookstore in New York (state) and I couldn't resist. $1/paperbacks and $2/hardbacks. So naturally I couldn't resist. Then we went out to a writing event in a bookstore and I was missing the group read for one of the two readathons, so I picked that up along with more manga in the one series I'm reading and a book that looked good. Since I cannot remember most of why I bought them, instead of reasoning (some were just pretty), I'm only going to list what I bought.

American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz
Mystic Warrior by Tracy & Laura Hickman
The Replacements by Brenna Yovanoff
Alien in a Bottle by Kathy Mackel
Tithe by Holly Black
Valiant by Holly Black
Ironside by Holly Black
White Cat by Holly Black
Red Glove by Holly Black
Magic or Madness by Justine Larbalestier
Dragonswood by Janet Lee Carey
The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor
Seeing Redd by Frank Beddor
Anatomy of a Murder by Robert Traver
 The Girl King by Mimi Yu
My Hero Academia #7 by Kohei Horikoshi
My Hero Academia #8 by Kohei Horikoshi
If I'm Being Honest by Emily Wibberly & Austin Siegmund-Broka
Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian
Red Sorghum by Mo Yan
The Dark Road by Ma Jian
To Dream is to Die by Sarah Lampkin

So, my book buying restriction is going super well. I think in March I'll be better able to actually you know, write out why I bought each one. I'll start using my notebooks or my phone to record my reasoning why when I buy them. At least I kept it reasonable and only got 25 this month, instead of the like, 45 I used to do. 

Anyway, I'll see you in the next haul~

February 2020 Wrap Up

I know. I haven't been doing these all that often. In February, I managed to read 5 books. Let's just hop right into the wrap up~

#1: Talk to the Paw by Melinda Metz - This was lent to me by one of my lovely residents at work (yeah, I have that kind of relationship with my wonderful little duckies) and I loved it. It isn't my normal genre, I'm not much a fan of contemporary romance novels, but this was just funny. The little subdivision they were living in, Storybook Court, reminded me so much of a theme park I used to visit as a child called Story Book Land in New Jersey where there were, ironically, building shaped like various houses and castles from classic children's fairy tales. MacGyver was so much fun. I loved him. He reminded me of my own cat who had a bad habit of stealing things. Jamie really should have been paying more attention to what was happening around her though, to notice Mac getting out. I think I will enjoy the rest of the series. I figured who the love interest would be the minute they introduced them to the story period. Can't wait to keep going.

#2: Assassination Classroom #12 by Yusei Matsui - Definitely more interesting than the last few, but still not super compelling in my mind. I do rather like the Grim Reaper and I know of a student that is just like him. Nagisa. The Grim Reaper uses a more trained version of the same tactics that Nagisa used when they were fighting Takaoka. Subtlety. The victim had no idea they were in danger until it was far too late to do anything at all about the situation. Both Nagisa and the Grim Reaper come off initially as entirely harmless individuals. You don't get scared because you don't think they can do anything to hurt you. 

#3: American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins - I had to have it. I saw a post on Facebook talking about how the publishers had to cancel the scheduled tour for this book because of the backlash it was getting. I looked into it and it was because the author herself isn't Latinx. So? Does she explicitly have to be? There are tons of authors who write books based on cultures they are not part of. The first example that always comes to my mind is Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden. He's not a Japanese woman. He's not a Japanese man, and yet no one rose any kind of stink over what he wrote. There was also some controversy saying that she was painting Mexico in a bad light. Also somewhat incorrect. She was only talking about one small part of Mexican culture. The part no one wants to see. No one wants to look at. Mrs. Cummins did talk about a lot of good things as well. People looking out for one another, people helping each other in times of need and not expecting anything in return. This is a story about one woman's struggle to just find safety for herself and her child. You could really just stick them anywhere in the world and the story wouldn't be all that different. I liked it.

#4: My Hero Academia #7 by Kohei Horikoshi - Yay~ Finally remembered to get the next volume in the series (I also picked up #8). I am further along in the anime than I am in the manga, because manga is sort of expensive and I can't always get to the stores that sell it, but I have been enjoying this series. In this volume we get to see Iida grow exponentially as a character and a hero and them start really learning how to be the heroes they've dreamed of. I enjoyed watching them figure out how to take on a villain on their own. Looking forward to #8.

#5: Archenemies by Marissa Meyer - I read this as part of a buddy read with a friend of mine, TW, from Facebook. I liked it. It didn't suffer too badly from second-book-syndrome. I've had too many of those. The book itself was interesting in that a lot of the book was unnecessary to the plot development. It did have sbs, but not as bad as other middle books in series have had. It was very well written just like Renegades. I enjoyed the reveal and some of the fight scenes very much. I feel like there just didn't need to be as much romance in this as there was. Not because I'm not a romance fan (though I'm not), but because it just didn't quite seem to further the plot along much. I didn't like that Nova kept having to tell herself over and over that it was just a mission. I'm almost willing to bet that if Ace weren't alive, she would have just gone to the Renegades after a while. Nova got so hung up on the fact that they weren't there to save her parents. When they had so much on their plates and they were still so new. Stuff happens. The heroes won't always be there. It's just a fact of life. Looking forward to Supernova probably in April (own it, have a massive TBR for March).

Currently Reading: 09 to 22 February 2020

Currently Reading

- Mac on a Hot Tin Roof by Melinda Metz (11%)

- The Sound of Stars by Alechia Dow (29%)

- A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas (47%)

- A Reader's Book of Days by Tom Nissley (08%)

- Schrodinger's Cat by Robert Anton Wilson (01%)

- 魔道祖师 by 墨香铜臭 (13%)
- The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (06%)
- Paradise Lost by John Milton (07%)

- The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek by Rhett McLaughlin & Link Neal (07%)

-  IT by Stephen King (40%)

- Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en (29%)
- The Original Illustrated Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle (59%)

* * *

I had been hearing rumor about this book for quite a number of weeks now. American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins. From what I understand, this book is highly controversial. The author is not Latinx herself, and she painted the Latinx culture in a rather negative light. She really didn't from what I have read so far. She's probably not Latinx herself, sure, but I don't think she painted Mexico in any other kind of light than the one it naturally deserves. The whole point of the book was trying to get us Americans to see what is going on. Reasons why people are acting the way they are and why they are fleeing from Mexico the way they are. I'm sure I will have read more of it before the end of the week to update you further. 

Broke my book-buying restriction. It was a special thing though, technically. I went to Binghamton (why do I always forget how to spell that or want to put Birmingham...?), New York with some friends over the weekend of the eighth to the ninth. We went to breakfast on the ninth to this place called That Coffee Place (or That Coffee Shop, forget exactly which it was) and they had a used book space in the corner. I ended up buying eleven new books.

March Readathons

Hello there. I thought, after watching a video about putting up more content on one's channel, that I would actually do the thing. Sort of? I haven't a BookTube channel that I actually post on because I'm still very screen-shy. However! I do have a bookish blog. With that in mind, let's get into our new post. 

As you could see from the title, this one is about two readathons that I have found that I want to try to take part in in March, Backlist Readathon and Spring into Reading Readathon from BookTube. I'll go over each one individually here. 

Backlist Readathon

From what I understand based on the description from Mel to the Any on Booktube, this readathon is about reading your backlist books. What does "backlist" even mean? It's a term used to describe earlier books written by an author. Example, Tithe by Holly Black would be backlist because she's written many books since then, but Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo wouldn't because it's the most recent release from the author. There needs to be at least one book published after a book picked for the challenge for it to actually count. This particular reading challenge takes place from 09 to 15 March 2020. 

Here are the challenges for the Backlist Readathon: 

1) Read the Shortest Book You Own - For this challenge, I've chosen the shortest book I know I own, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. It comes in at an impressive 124 pages long. I think I could even finish this in a single day.

2) Read a Book that Intimidates You - I chose Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas because it's one of the books that I've had on my TBR for a while, and in recent years it had a huge following. The hype has recently died down a bit with her other books coming out, but she still has a very strong fan base and I'm rather nervous about reading it. Especially since I'm not really all that impressed by A Court of Thorns and Roses. 

3) Read a Book Recommended by a Friend - I had a few choices for this, but I eventually went with one that a friend lent me while we were helping him move house. Schrödinger's Cat by Robert Anton Wilson, a book that seems quite out of the ordinary. I've no idea what to expect, but it looks pretty good and I'm interested in reading it. 

4) Read a Book You are Excited for - I've been all about Chinese history, myth, and culture lately, so for this challenge I picked one of the books from an author I have read before. I chose Wild Swans by Jung Chang. I have already read her biography of the Dowager Empress Cixi and quite enjoyed it. This is the story of her family going back three generations. It looks very interesting.

5) Read a Diverse Book - This one also ended up coming from Chinese. I picked up what I think is another memoir. Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian. This is a tale of his travels after being diagnosed with lung cancer. It is definitely diverse for me, because at least the last time I checked I was not a older Chinese man with lung cancer. I want to know. 

6) Read a Book with Blue on the Cover - This one actually sparked an "fight" (I actually hissed at one person and got in a tug-of-war with another). I saw the book on the shelf at That Coffee Place and I just had to have it. For this challenge, I have chosen a book that is almost entirely blue with a splash of black and grey-silver, The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. 

Spring into Reading Readathon

I found this one via Completely Melanie (yes, someone else from Mel to the Any), and this is just a fun little readathon to help boost one's reading during the year. This challenge takes place from 19 to 29 March 2020. From what I understand there are actually a few other seasonal challenges that they do. I'll see about doing the Summer, Autumn, and Winter reading challenges if they have them. Let's get on to the challenge list! 

1) "Spring Cleaning" Read a Book that Has Been Gathering Dust - For this, I went for what is technically (I got rid of it from the shelves and then added it again) the oldest book on my Goodreads. That's just been around forever. Dracula by Bram Stoker. I want to read it, I really do. I just never seem to actually get around to it. 

2) "It's Time for a Vacay" Read a Book that Features Vacations or Travel - I feel silly. I was struggling with this one and then it hit me while I was doing some household chores (because part of it puts me in the library) that I have a book set in one of my favorite places that involves a vacation. China Rich Girlfriend by Kevin Kwan. I read the first book in the series last year and I completely forgot about it. 

3) "Love Is In the Air" Read a Book Featuring Love or Friendship - I'm not much of a romance fan personally, so I actually took the literal route and picked Love and Friendship by Jane Austen, a book featuring both words from the prompt in the title. I believe it's a collection of short stories written when the author was a teen, making fun of the gentry. There are love and friendship stories in it. 

4) "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" Read a Book with Pink or Yellow on the Cover - I struggled for about 0.4 seconds on this. I wasn't sure I had books that fit the bill, then I remembered a sequel I want to read this year. Autumn Princess, Dragon Child by Lian Hearn...which has an almost entirely yellow cover. I've a brain, and it works, I promise. 

5) "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" Read a Classic Fairy Tale or Retelling - Couldn't even begin to tell you why, but the book that jumped to the forefront of my mind was Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie. I have to go dig through my library to find it, but I was just automatically sure that that was the one I wanted to read for this challenge.

6) "Women's March" Read a Book Featuring a Strong Female Character - I went with a mentally and emotionally strong female character for this one over a physically strong. I chose Ashes of Roses by M.J. Auch, which follows the tale of a girl who has to learn to survive in a new country after tragedy befalls her and her sister. Looked interesting and I had to grab it.

7) "Spring Break Bash" Read the Group Book - For this, I kind of had no choice but to pick If I'm Being Honest by Emily Wibberly and August Siegmund-Broka. I have no idea if I am going to get to it or not, since it's far outside my standard genre preference, but I will try. I'll see if my local library has it or if I can get it cheap on Kindle or something. I don't know. If there's a paperback, maybe I'll see about picking it up before the readathon.

* * *

Currently Reading: 01 - 08 February 2020

Currently Reading

- Talk to the Paw by Melinda Metz (11%)

- The Sound of Stars by Alechia Dow (02%)

- A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas (47%)

- A Reader's Book of Days by Tom Nissley (08%)

- Schrodinger's Cat by Robert Anton Wilson (01%)

- 魔道祖师 by 墨香铜臭 (13%)
- The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (06%)
- Paradise Lost by John Milton (07%)

- The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek by Rhett McLaughlin & Link Neal (07%)

-  IT by Stephen King (40%)

- Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en (29%)
- The Original Illustrated Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle (59%)

* * *

Yeah, I see the one in funky characters. That is the proper name for Mo Dao Zu Shi by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu, also known as The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation. The novel that sparked the manhua, donghua, and live-action drama called The Untamed on Netflix. I've been slowly making my way through the ExR Scanlations edition of it that they put up. I happily admit that I am obsessed with it. Like to the point where I am constantly thinking about it. 

What else interesting has happened recently that I can tell you about? Let me review my reading journal...interest sparked at some point or other to start working on my writing again and now I have my old list going and my schedule up for when they are ready. It's weird. I know it won't be weekly that I post that many stories, but when the chapters are complete and ready, they have a designated time/day to go up. Example of this would be the first one Harmonize, I would only upload it on Tuesdays at 19:00. Why? I have no idea. 

Managed to finish one of the books for the Books and Tea 2020 Challenge. I got done with the prompt You Might Not Have Known and used Emperor of the Eight Islands by Lian Hearn. That's an author I have never heard of beside stumbling across it on BookOutlet. Once. So, I suppose that will do. I think I may use Mo Dao Zu Shi for Full of Pride because Mo Xiang Tong Xiu has repeatedly stated that her characters are gay. :) 

I have to remember at some point to actually finish transcribing 魔道祖师 to my laptop. That way I have it for later. I don't want to have to constantly be going back and forth from the web page just to finish it. Why did it have to be so long?!

January 2020 Wrap Up

I started a new thing where I cannot read books not on my TBR. This is a trial run and is likely to fail, but hey, let's see what we can do with it, right? Anyway, I had 18 books on my January TBR list and of them I have read 4 book(s). 

#1: A Bookshop in Berlin by Françoise Frenkel

In 1921, Françoise Frenkel--a Jewish woman from Poland--fulfills a dream. She opens La Maison du Livre, Berlin's first French bookshop, attracting artists and diplomats, celebrities and poets. The shop becomes a haven for intellectual exchange as Nazi ideology begins to poison the culturally rich city. In 1935, the scene continues to darken. First come the new bureaucratic hurdles, followed by frequent police visits and book confiscations. Françoise's dream finally shatters on Kristallnacht in November 1938, as hundreds of Jewish shops and businesses are destroyed. La Maison du Livre is miraculously spared, but fear of persecution eventually forces Françoise on a desperate, lonely flight to Paris. When the city is bombed, she seeks refuge across southern France, witnessing countless horrors: children torn from their parents, mothers throwing themselves under buses. Secreted away from one safe house to the next, Françoise survives at the heroic hands of strangers risking their lives to protect her. Published quietly in 1945, then rediscovered nearly sixty years later in an attic, A Bookshop in Berlin is a remarkable story of survival and resilience, of human cruelty and human spirit. In the tradition of Suite Française and The Nazi Officer's Wife, this book is the tale of a fearless woman whose lust for life and literature refuses to leave her, even in her darkest hours.


This was my Jolabokaflod gift from a very good friend of mine. 4/5 stars. I really liked it. This memoir follows a woman on her harrowing journey to freedom from the Germans. I just wish we had learned more about her husband, who seemingly disappeared at the beginning of the memoir and is never seen or heard from again.

#2: The Last of August by Brittany Cavallaro

Jamie Watson and Charlotte Holmes are looking for a winter-break reprieve after a fall semester that almost got them killed. But Charlotte isn’t the only Holmes with secrets, and the mood at her family’s Sussex estate is palpably tense. On top of everything else, Holmes and Watson could be becoming more than friends—but still, the darkness in Charlotte’s past is a wall between them. A distraction arises soon enough, because Charlotte’s beloved uncle Leander goes missing from the estate—after being oddly private about his latest assignment in a German art forgery ring. The game is afoot once again, and Charlotte is single-minded in her pursuit. Their first stop? Berlin. Their first contact? August Moriarty (formerly Charlotte’s obsession, currently believed by most to be dead), whose powerful family has been ripping off famous paintings for the last hundred years. But as they follow the gritty underground scene in Berlin to glittering art houses in Prague, Holmes and Watson begin to realize that this is a much more complicated case than a disappearance. Much more dangerous, too. What they learn might change everything they know about their families, themselves, and each other.

This suffered from mild second-book-syndrome, but it wasn't that bad. I liked that even I couldn't figure out some of the plot points which is something that I do rather often. If I can figure out the mystery before the detective (or detective-in-training in Holmes's case), then I am not happy with the story. This one actually didn't do that to me. I liked the mystery of it. I did figure out a few things before they did, but to me they seemed almost painfully obvious. I gave this a 3/5, and plan to continue the series.


#3: Emperor of the Eight Islands by Lian Hearn 

An ambitious warlord leaves his nephew for dead and seizes his lands. A stubborn father forces his younger son to surrender his wife to his older brother. A mysterious woman seeks five fathers for her children. A powerful priest meddles in the succession to the Lotus Throne. These are the threads of an intricate tapestry in which the laws of destiny play out against a backdrop of wild forest, elegant court, and savage battlefield. Set in a mythical medieval Japan inhabited by warriors and assassins, ghosts and guardian spirits, Emperor of the Eight Islands by Lian Hearn is a brilliantly imagined novel, full of drama and intrigue - and it is just the beginning of an enthralling, epic adventure: The Tale of Shikanoko.

Read this as part of a readathon, and it was interesting. We don't get much of the uncle/nephew dynamic except for about ten to fifteen pages in the beginning and ten to fifteen pages in the end where they are running away. Other than that it was a decent read about a more rural Japan that people don't often talk about. The smaller villages and towns that are near an Imperial city that are affected by political intrigue. I do have the next volume in this series and if I like it, I will look for the other two. I wasn't impressed much by Shikanoko. He just seemed to allow life to happen to him, he never took much stand in what was going on until the end where he just walked out. It was strange. The book sort of just...stopped...like the other Asian (mostly Chinese and Japanese) books I've read do if they are in a series. Hopefully I like the next one.


#4: Brimstone by Justine Rosenberg

Sariel, a fugitive slave, is running from the desert mines, and from an Empire that is hungry for a new and mysterious metal that the alchemists call brimstone. In a moment of mercy and lust, Ava Sandrino, herself a knight fallen from grace, shelters Sariel from his pursuers, and in the light of the moon, he speaks to her of a door. It is a gate that opens into a world that lies beyond the Northern Dark, over the edge of their farthest horizon. There, paupers rub shoulders with princes, and there are riches to be had by those with the will to seize them. Swayed by Sariel's tales of strange oceans and distant stars, and tired of a past that holds her down, Ava joins him on the trek to the kingdom where souls are remade. Together, they must cross a borderland that is the domain of magicians, the humans that serve them, and the One O’clock King: a faceless despot who guards the crossroads of worlds.

It was good. 4/5 stars because while I enjoyed a ton of it, I'm not sure that we needed the sex scene or to be told about Ava's previous dalliances with members of the Guard, random opium addicts, that sort of thing. They didn't add much more to the story beyond us knowing that in the House of Tong, she would be deemed an unfavorable. I hear there are to be more in this series and I am looking forward to them. I got this book in return for a review from NetGalley. I did quite enjoy it. 

Currently Reading: 01 - 11 January 2020

Currently Reading

- The Magicians by Lev Grossman (02%)
- The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek by Rhett McLaughlin & Link Neal (07%)
- The Last of August by Brittany Cavallaro (27%)
- Brimstone by Justine Rosenberg (15%)
-  IT by Stephen King (40%)

- Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en (29%)
- The Original Illustrated Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle (59%)

* * *

I can hardly believe it's already 2020. Seems like only just last year was the start of 2019. Amazing. I'm hoping that this year is a better reading year than last year was. I've set my goal in the standard of 50 for 2020, but the personal goal I will be aiming for is 6 books per month. I have a few good readathons starting in January that should help me push my bookish count.

I'm starting the new year with a nonfiction book. I wonder if that is a portent for the rest of the year? I also bought a bunch of books that I normally would not read on my own. Spacey science fiction/fantasy, which is a genre that I don't normally like (I've bought Skyward by Brandon Sanderson and Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir) and a few memoir/nonfiction books (Girl, Stop Apologizing by Rachel Hollis and Dear Girls by Ali Wong). Who am I? 

Yay! My copy of Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir has arrived. It has such wonderful black pages. I was planning on painting them myself if they were not already sprayed, but I got the black. Naturally I threw this right onto my currently reading. Which, by the way, Goodreads, why can we not update from the main page? Is that an updated feature where we will now HAVE to go to the book's page to update our reading or use the app? I don't like that. Fix it.

I think in the beginning of each month's new Currently Reading, I will include my TBR list for the entire month. So, this is the one for this month:

Dracula by Bram Stoker

The Magicians by Lev Grossman

A Bookshop in Berlin by Françoise Frenkel

The Last of August by Brittany Cavallaro

The Case for Jamie by Brittany Cavallaro

Skyward by Brandon Sanderson

Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor

An Enchantment of Ravens by Margaret Rogerson

The Original Illustrated Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Paradise Lost by John Milton

Emperor of the Eight Islands by Lian Hearn

The Neverending Story by Michael Ende

Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas

Brimstone by Justine Rosenberg

The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek by Rhett McLaughlin

Sworn to Raise by Terah Edun

A Forbidden Rumspringa by Keira Andrews

Yeah, that last one...it was a free eBook and I cannot wait to figure it out. If memory serves, it's an Amish LGBT+ featuring gay men. Don't quote me. I don't know. I made a goal to read at least two eBooks a month and that is one of the ones that came up in the random generator.

For now, though, we are going to start working on seriously figuring out what the fuck we are doing for our 2020 writing goals. We intend to get 100,000 words by the end of the year. I'm going to start working on it now, typing out what I have that makes sense to keep and getting rid of whatever doesn't.

Well it didn't take long to get through the first book of 2020. I finished A Bookshop in Berlin by Françoise Frenkel on 02 January. I liked it. It was pretty decent of a book. I think I'm going to actually work through my TBR instead of allowing myself to pure mood read and pick up Gideon the Ninth. I want to try this whole make a TBR and stick to it thing.