🐉🧌 🏞️ 🏰 So Much Reading!

 

    There was a lot of reading this week--mostly fantasy, but also literary. I was fortunate to get a copy of Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros. It came out last Tuesday and is the third in a planned five books in a popular series called The Empyrean. Yarros keeps the story moving about Violet Sorrengal and the many, many others. Having a character list to refer to would have been helpful, but I focused on the main characters and rode out the rest. Yarros does a fantastic job of solving some problems and raising new ones. It's an exciting read. A final boss battle gives the book a feeling of an ending but also drops a huge plot point that makes me wish the next book was written and waiting. 

🐉🐲⚡️👥

    Honestly, I will enjoy almost anything written by T. Kingfisher (AKA Ursula Vernon). Nine Goblins is the tale of an unlikely protagonist, a female goblin captain who gets accidentally transported behind enemy lines with her squad. She must get her band of none-too-bright goblins through a magical forest inhabited by enemy elves, deadly wizards, and hungry predators. It isn't as easy as it sounds.

🧌🧝‍♂️🦴🦄

    Elizabeth Strout is a strong writer, able to evoke deep, unsettling emotions, bring them out, and critically examine them. Her latest book, Tell Me Everything, continues the narration of the life of Lucy Barton and connects her with Olive Kitteridge. I find this book challenging to describe. There are many plots and lives woven together. At the center is Lucy Barton. She tries to understand the why of life, especially lives that are blighted by the cruelty of others. Lucy and Olive tell each other stories of unrecorded lives and what they mean. It is thoughtful, gentle, and winsome. Strout well deserves her Pulitzer Prize.

Reviews of other Strout books: https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/search?q=Strout

🏞️🍁🌱❄️☀️

    Dreadful by Caitlin Rozakis reminds me of T. Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon--a compliment! A dark lord--evil sorcerer--finds himself in his burning workroom, minus his memories. A goblin minion is knocking at the door, asking if he needs help. He does, but who is trustworthy? Once, Dread Lord Gavrax, who now thinks of himself as Gav, must decide who he will be--good or evil or somewhere in between-- but he doesn't have much time before the scariest Dread Lord of all arrives, his town is destroyed, his captured princess is sacrificed, and the heroes storm the castle. 

🏰🧌👸🪄😈

    

Books I read this week: Foundation and Oh William!

   I read two very different books this week. The first was Foundation by Isaac Asimov. I read it because I watched the Apple TV series and liked it, but I was also puzzled by how all the parts fit together. I thought reading the book would help me. It did not.

    It was published in 1942. That explains why everyone smokes and women barely have a speaking role. After researching, I learned there is a Foundation trilogy. Maybe if I read all three, I'll understand? There are also a companion series, Empire, and several prequels. I don't know if I'm going to dive that deep. 

    The other book was also strangely loosely part of a trilogy. It is Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout. I find Strout to be a writer whose power and pathos sneaks up on me. It feels the story she's telling is small and intimate--the relationship between an ex-husband, William, and his wife, Lucy Barton--but there is a larger question about how adult children understand their parents, and can we know one another, and are we all selfish and mean? It made me want to rethink my life--briefly.  😇

From Mysteries to Misery to Making

 

  I was ecstatic to read the latest installment of the Thursday Murder Club, The Bullet that Missed by Richard Osman. His quirky, complex characters and the ridiculous situation they get into make me laugh out loud. My minor complaint is there are many characters, and I get confused if I've encountered this or that person in his previous books. Is there something crucial I'm supposed to remember? In the third book, the Murder Club takes on a cold case of a missing-presumed-dead reporter who was about to break a huge story. There is also continuing fallout from previous cases. Spicing things up is a dash of romance amongst the senior set. 👵🏻 ❤️👴🏻

   The Dry by Jane Harper was also a mystery. It appears a struggling farmer, Luke, kills his wife, son, and himself. His estranged best friend, Aaron Falk, returns to the rural town that drove him away to attend the funeral. He gets roped into investigating the deaths. Harper paced this book well. Luckily I started it early in the day because it sucked me in, and I didn't want to stop until I reached the end. I listened to the audiobook, and the accents added to the Australian setting. It was a tense, secretive story that kept me guessing till the end. 

  Both the mystery books I read this week were stellar, but in different ways. Reading them one after the other caused me to appreciate the skill it takes to build a compelling mystery and the various paths authors take to achieve their goals. 🤩

  I find Elizabeth Strout to be a gifted author. When I read her books, I am wrapped in the sadness and struggle of her characters because their voices are that authentic. Lucy by the Sea continues the story of Lucy Barton, a fresh widow who lives in New York when the pandemic strikes. Her ex-husband William convinces her to go with him to Maine until it passes. About three weeks or so, right? Strout captures the terror and unpredictability so well. I returned to the world of washing my groceries, isolation, and worry. Lucy has a complicated relationship with her rural roots and family. This cripples her enjoyment of the family she's created as she battles self-doubt and anxiety. It is written in the first person. Having read the previous books in the series, I feel I'm residing in Lucy's head, hearing her thoughts and wrestling with her concerns. Her self-talk is abysmal, realistic, and too much like my own. She makes me feel my latent sadness and fear as I enjoy her first-rate writing.😢😱

  I'm so glad the next book I picked up was this one.

    Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic was the antidote to depressing inner monologue of Lucy Barton. Gilbert kicks butt and takes names when it comes to facing her fears surrounding creativity. This was my second read through this book and I liked it even better this time. Her enthusiasm and just-try attitude fired me up to invest in writing. I am inspired by her letter to fear because it is a negative self talk neutralizer. 😌 

Here is a cute video of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utW2cq17nBk

    What a great reading week I had with four stellar, wildly different books. 📚

New Series and End of Year Round Up

    I started reading the Longmire series by Craig Johnson. The Cold Dish and Death Without Company are the first two. I'm really enjoying them. Craig Johnson writes a tight mystery- always enjoyable- but I'm most captivated by the dry humor and the supporting cast. The protagonist is mildly depressed, and it would be a much darker book if it weren't for the strong women surrounding him and his faithful best friend. If he can keep this up throughout the series, it will be a fun year for me reading through his catalog. Book 19 is due to come out in 2023. In a future post, I'll compare the book series with the Netflix version. 

🤠🤠🤠🤠🤠

    I have done the GoodReads reading challenge for several years. I have settled on aiming for 100 books and usually pass it, but I'm reluctant to up the number. 100 is a satisfying number, and 125 or 150 just isn't. 

I see some trends in the latest books I read. One is the multiverse and, perhaps related, time travel within your life. Another is same-sex relationships. If it's not the centerpiece relationship, there is one somewhere in the book.

I read several terrific books this year, and a few I wish I hadn't.

📚📚📚📚📚

Most Helpful: Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert

Favorite Mystery: The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

Most brutal to Read, but Worth It: The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to the Sexual Revolution by Carl Trueman

Favorite Sci-Fi: The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson

Most Disappointing:  The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

Most Comforting: The Penderwick Series by Jeanne Birdsall

Favorite Fantasy: Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

Most Interesting Relationship: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Favorite Memoir: Taste: My Life Through Food by Stanley Tucci

Most Surprising: Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark

Made Me Think: Hell of a Book Jason Mott and The Sentence by Louis Eldrich

Most Disturbing: The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives by Lola Shoneyin

My Favorite Book of 2022 is:

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

2022 READING 
CHALLENGE

Participants	6,758,337
Books Pledged	334,703,276
Avg. Books Pledged	49
Time Left	3 days, 17 hours

You have read 134 of 100 books in 2022.

YOUR 2022 BOOKS

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