I took some time out this morning to visit the forest before all the leaves blow off the trees. I also paused in the park with the tagged book, which I‘ve decided to focus on since I can‘t seem to click with my current novel. It ain‘t gripping, but it‘s interesting and readable.
I almost forgot to do #ManicMonday! I‘s another easy letter.
Book: Interview With the Vampire by Anne Rice
Author: Eva Ibbotson
Movie: Iron Man 3
Band: I Mother Earth
Song: In the Evening - Led Zeppelin (Honourable mention to I‘m Shipping Up To Boston - Dropkick Murphys)
Did some nighttime outdoor reading while Casey scrounged for shards of the treat he chewed on earlier. CARRIE SOTO is my least favourite of the TJR books I‘ve read so far, mostly because the structure doesn‘t quite serve the story early on, but the relationships build really well and the tennis is exciting for anyone who loves a good sports novel (whether or not they love tennis). By the end, I was so invested that I couldn‘t put it down.
September stats! I had a lot of 7s last month; appropriate.
I spent WAY more than usual, thanks to the return of the Children‘s Hospital Book Market, but I got more reference titles than anything else so my TBR didn‘t explode. Whew.
Quality wise, I found one new 5-star read (tagged), upgraded a former 3.5er to a 5 (GIDEON THE NINTH by Tamsyn Muir), and found a stellar 4.5er (LESSONS IN FUSION by Primrose Madayag Knazan). Good times.
I finally got around to making my second recipe from the tagged book: bacon and bleu cheese cake! (While it‘s a quick bread by Canadian standards, Lebovitz says the Parisians call this sort of thing le cake.) It doesn‘t look very flashy, but it‘s frickin delicious. The crumbled bleu cheese spreads through the whole of that spongy crumb and the bacon adds the perfect smokey element. Totally worth the million and one steps to prep the ingredients.
My audio hold came in five weeks early, so I bumped Harrow to the top of the stack and zipped back and forth between the two formats. While I loved Gideon way more the second time through, I loved this one a smidge less. I think it was a concentration issue rather than a quality issue, though—boo sleepless nights—and I DID still love it. THIS SERIES IS SO COOL. Fingers crossed they get Nona through processing good and quick. #somanygideons
This is probably my last larger library haul for a while. So many of my holds have (finally) made it through processing that I haven‘t had time to read any of the stuff I‘ve purchased recently, and I don‘t like to let those pile up. The rest of the novels on my list are now suspended until the end of October, barring a couple I‘m especially eager to read.
I‘m pretty sure I‘ve spent more on books this month than in the whole rest of the year. Today, $6 got me two Eva Ibbotsons I want to reread, a biography of Sarah Bernhardt, and an early novel by a future Pulitzer Prize winner. I think the bottom two came from someone‘s grandma‘s big clear-out; there were a lot of books of a similar age.
Charlie‘s fast asleep in front of my wee book stack. She snores like you wouldn‘t believe. Seriously, this dog sounds like a very small train.
Charlie‘s helping me through JEWEL OF THE THAMES, a mystery that caught my eye at the library a couple weeks back. Unfortunately, it‘s not as gripping as my last random borrow. I like it enough to keep going, but little logical missteps keep taking me out of the story. I find both the prose style and the London touchstones make Portia‘s world feel much more like the early 1900s than the 1930s, too; another jarring element.
It‘s #ManicMonday time! H is an easy letter.
Book: Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid
Author: Robin Hobb
Movie: Hocus Pocus
Show: The Hungry and the Hairy
Singer: Jimi Hendrix
Song: House of the Rising Sun
I swung by the library with the moss wall because they had a print copy of Harrow on the shelf and I loved Gideon so much that I don‘t want to wait five more weeks to reread it on audio, like I originally planned.
Daisy is the latest addition to my Home For Wayward Dogs. She‘s only 3.5 months old, and between her boundless energy and her tendency to bait Charlie, it was tough to get anything done this morning. I only managed to log some halfway serious reading time when she finally fell asleep for a teensy stretch.
(For the record, Casey‘s spent a lot of the day under the dining room table. Annoying puppies are less likely to go there, apparently.)
pickSometimes I read a book and I‘m like, “Yeah, that was really good. I liked it a lot.”
Then I reread it and I‘m all, “WHAT IS THIS COOL, PERFECT BEAUTY WITH ITS GORGEOUS ATMOSPHERE AND SNARK AND GENERALIZED AWESOMENESS AND WHY DID I NOT LOVE IT WITH EVERYTHING IN ME THE FIRST TIME BECAUSE IT. IS. EXCELLENT.”
Yeah. This‘s some good shit.
Also, Gideon Nav is still my favourite Gideon of all the Gideons. #somanygideons
4.5 stars. No; 5.
I‘m basically running a home for wayward dogs this week. Charlie arrived on Wednesday and has fully committed herself to being my new reading buddy. We‘re gonna tackle the most recent Vlad Taltos novel next.
I made it sixty pages into GOING PUBLIC over breakfast, even though I had two active wee dogs clamouring for their own breakfasts, and outdoor time, and snuggles. My first Hudson Lin novel didn‘t grab me, but I think I‘m gonna enjoy this one a lot.
My pal Duffy‘s staying with me for a few days, and he‘s as good a ready buddy as ever. He helped me get halfway through THE BODYGUARD yesterday, and he‘s gonna see me to the finish this evening.
I‘m really excited about this week‘s library haul! I got a nonfiction collection from my Litsy stack, Taylor Jenkins Reid‘s latest, a Hugo nominee a bit too late for the winners‘ announcement, more X-Men, a knitting book, and the tagged collection of stories and wisdom from Gwich‘in elders. I hope no one else requests it; at 700+ pages, it‘s gonna take me a bit.
#ManicMonday time!
Book: GRANDMASTER OF DEMONIC CULTIVATION by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu (honourable mentions to A GAME FOR SWALLOWS by Zeina Abirached and THE GENTLE ART OF FORTUNE HUNTING by KJ Charles)
Author: Neil Gaiman? Kieron Gillen? It‘s a tough call.
Show: Gilmore Girls or The Good Place? Another toughie.
Band: Goo Goo Dolls
Song: Loreena McKennitt‘s version of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. It‘s SO CREEPY.
Time to begin my irregularly scheduled full-series SKIP BEAT! reread! I dunno if I‘ll finish before the next volume drops in November, but even if I can‘t make that target I‘m gonna have an awesome time immersing myself in my favourite comic.
pickHOLY CRAP, Y‘ALL. I‘ve seen a lot of people say this book starts off way too slow, but I felt the intense creepiness right from the get-go, and Alyssa Cole only strengthens that feeling as more pieces of her plot click into place in advance of that explosive finish. It‘s stressful, scary, and so, so plausible—the hallmark of a great thriller. I‘m in book-love. 5 stars.
I went back to the Book Market this morning and found some more good stuff: a guide to altering basic sewing patterns into exactly what you want, a Mucha colouring book I‘ll probably never colour, and 8 opera librettos! I plan to look through them myself, of course, but they‘re mostly a Christmas gift for my dad. He‘s studying German and I think he‘ll find it useful to see the original German text side by side with the English translation.
I found three things from my wishlist at the Book Market, including a cross stitch collection I‘ve been searching for for 12 years! It has an unfortunate title but many lovely charts. An older lady was going to buy it, but she very kindly let me have it instead when we chatted about how long I‘d been looking for it.
I‘m glad to have more by Sara Douglass and Kate Elliott, too, plus a cool-looking old Penguin chosen at random.
THE CHILDREN‘S HOSPITAL BOOK MARKET IS BACK!!!! I browsed around for a good while this morning and snickered at every single [Genre] AF section because I have the sense of humour of a stereotypical 12-year-old boy.
Todays healthy breakfast happened indoors because we had a big thunderstorm last night and the outdoor tables were still drenched.
I like A BROKEN DARKNESS so far, but I miss the constantly shifting relationship dynamics that made the first book so good. This one‘s very much a What Happens After narrative featuring two people who know each other really, really well, but for whom everything has changed. We‘ll see how it develops.
McDonald‘s tourism + Sweet Valley this morning. This book was totally a filler episode, but I‘m still enjoying the series as a cultural artifact. Sometimes it‘s suuuuuper cringey and sometimes it‘s an obvious precursor to those late 90s/early 2000s hour-long dramas where each episode came with an Important Life Lesson (as opposed to the ones where everyone just schemes and torments each other, which it also resembles).
Did some more McDonald‘s tourism this morning. It was so windy and chill by this point in my bike ride that I decided to get an enormous latte instead of the black coffee I planned on.
I‘m 155 pages into THE PREMONITIONS BUREAU now, and I‘ve pinpointed why it hasn‘t clicked: it reads like an assigned story, not something Sam Knight has a true, deep interest in. It‘s still good, but that authorial distance keeps it from being great.
Penny, Geo‘s big sister, kept me company while I started THE PREMONITIONS BUREAU. It‘s pretty good so far, but I haven‘t found that click moment yet. Hopefully it‘s coming soon.
F‘s a tough letter, y‘all. I give so many Fs.
Book: do I go with FELIX EVER AFTER, my most recent F beloved? Or Ann-Marie MacDonald‘s FALL ON YOUR KNEES, though I haven‘t reread it in years? Or do we take the series route and plug Hiromu Arakawa‘s FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST?
Author: Matt Fraction
Movie: Frozen
Band: Flogging Molly
Song: don‘t make me choose between Fire (Barns Courtney) and Fire On the Side (Tori Amos)
#ManicMonday
I‘ve put THE ENCHANTED APRIL aside and turned to the X-Men for my lunchtime reading. My new pal Geo‘s been a big help.
Another breakfast with THE ENCHANTED APRIL—which, I‘m sorry to say, hasn‘t grabbed me the way I wanted it to. Everyone‘s comments made it sound charming, but so far I‘m more frustrated than anything else. While I recognize that von Arnim means it to be a productive and/or humorous frustration, it‘s still kept me at a distance from the characters. Sadness.
pickI hadn‘t heard of LESSONS IN FUSION before it caught my eye on the shelf, but it sucked me straight in. There‘s so much here: delicious food, strong families with rough patches, cool friendships, Judaism, intense Winnipegness, pandemic realities, and a lot about tokenism in media. Primrose Madayag Knazan‘s characters make the best choices they know how to make—and when they mess up, they learn to do better. 4.5 stars.
I started another book from my Litsy stack over breakfast. THE ENCHANTED APRIL‘s first chapter made me almost unbearably sad, but I hope that‘s a sign these women‘s lives are about to turn around.
I ain‘t an autumn person, by any stretch, but I AM glad the library‘s begun their fall/winter hours, with weekends. Saturday library runs are much easier to schedule.
This week‘s haul features more X-Men, a Litsy-inspired romance, a romance by an author I‘ve bounced off before but want to try again, two mysteries for my mum (who stubbornly refuses to get her own card), and a Vlad Taltos novel I thought I accidentally skipped but DID read (oops).
I‘m hoping to sink into this Jewish Filipinx-Canadian reality cooking show novel tonight! Casey agrees it‘s off to a promising start. He‘s promised not to lick it while I read, even though it‘s a big ask. Something on the spine calls to him.
Today I did six hours of manual labour. Now I get to eat a peanut butter marshmallow square cheesecake doughnut while I read my daily X-Men.
I made my first meat-based Kashmiri recipe today: kaleji tchokh charvan (basically, spicy liver & onions, only I substituted leeks for the shallots specified because I don‘t eat round onions). The flavour‘s good, but my liver never did soften up. It‘s the first time I‘ve cooked it so I dunno if I did it wrong, I got a bad cut, or Romy Gill‘s instructions don‘t translate from lamb liver to beef (which is all I could get here).
pickRoan Parrish is so, so good at taking characters who‘re a little out of sync with the world‘s expectations and pairing them up with people who understand all the ways their differences make them wonderful. She does that here via a prank war in the lead-up to an elaborate Halloween decorating contest that gives both characters a chance to fully inhabit themselves. It‘s emotional, it‘s fun, and it‘s packed with fall feeling for them what wants it.
I haven‘t read much beyond X OF SWORDS these last couple days. It feels really good to immerse myself in the X-Men again.
Supper was a Nigella recipe featuring beet greens and noodles. The noodles were good but I won‘t rush to cook beet greens again. They made my whole mouth feel weird.
Today‘s Kashmiri recipe is aal posh mond (fried zucchini flowers) and HOLY CRAP THIS BATTER IS AMAZING. I cut the recipe down to 1/4 and still had some left, so I‘m gonna use the rest for fritters tomorrow.
On the repurposing sauces note, my proper supper‘s gonna be chickpeas in the sauce from wangun yakni (eggplant in yogurt). I wanted to eat it again but didn‘t have any eggplant. Turns out chickpeas are just as tasty!
My weekly goal is to finish the massive X OF SWORDS collection. Four or five issues a day should do it.
My subgoal is to keep Casey from showing undue interest in (ie, chewing on) it, since the cover price is a whopping $93.75 and I do NOT want to pay that replacement fee.
I hunkered down and finished POSSESSION last night, so I finally get to read something else! Hurray! I‘m excited to dig into Xiran Jay Zhao‘s first MG fantasy today.
Breakfast involved Nigella‘s pumpkin scones, which I think some of y‘all might like. The recipe isn‘t on her site anymore, but I found a version on SparkPeople: https://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-detail.asp?recipe=1329588 It adds melted butter; I‘d leave it out.
My long weekend goal is to finish POSSESSION. As good as it is, I‘m now at the point where I‘ve spent way too much time with it and I‘m ready to move on to something else. The tiny typeface they‘ve used for all the letters, journals, poems, and academic excerpts is doing me in. It‘s not a vision issue; it‘s about how I read for long stretches and get through, like, thirty pages. It‘s a frustrating progress to effort ratio.
This week‘s library haul fits perfectly in my new book bag. Whee!
I looked for the tagged book weeks ago because the catalogue said it was on the shelf, but couldn‘t find it and assumed someone else got it first. Turns out it was there all along, but it‘s part of the library‘s new thing where they catalogue some genre titles as Fiction instead of SF, Mystery, or Romance, with no apparent consistency behind the move. 🤷♀️
Did some outdoor reading on this glorious 33° day, with plenty of water and a choco pie for company. Korea is way better than Canada at Wagon Wheels.
I read the first chunk of UNTAMED during this session, and I think Doyle‘s memoir in vignettes is gonna hit me hard. So far, it‘s a powerful call to consider and fight against all the ways contemporary society guides us to be less than we are.
August stats! I didn‘t find any 5-star reads last month, but I loved the hell out of both the tagged book and ELIZA AND HER MONSTERS by Francesca Zappa.
The $2 Sweet Valley High omnibus accounts for 12 of the 15 books I bought. It‘s been fun so far, as a cultural artifact if nothing else.
