It’s that time again! We want to hear all about what you’re reading!
Susan: I’m reading Roslyn Sinclair’s Truth and Measure and I am incredibly resentful of every commitment I have that keeps me from reading more. The ice queen just woke her assistant up at 5am to talk about their (totally hidden, super platonic) feelings, and my bosses expect to do my job instead of screeching about that?!
Tara: Susan, it’s soooooo freaking good that I’m having a hard time reading on my Kindle anything after finishing both parts of that duology. It’s my favourite book ever now.
On audio, I’m listening to Harvey Fierstein’s autobiography I Was Better Last Night. ( A | BN | K | AB ) I’m still only in the first hour or two, but there’s something both beautiful and heartbreaking about how he discusses growing up as a gay, fat, and Jewish kid so many decades ago.
Amanda: Loved Nettle and Bone! Kingfisher balances quirky and dark very well.
Shana: I’m bouncing between books right now. I’m reading Land by Simon Winchester, ( A | BN | K | AB ) which I want to be a polemic on land reform and is actually a meandering collection of moments in the history of land ownership.
I’m also reading Three to Love by Rebel Carter but if they don’t bang soon, I’m going to bail.
Claudia: Bumblebeeing my way through several, too, and slightly jealous of all the good-book feelings here!
Elyse: I haven’t picked up a new book yet but on my 13 hrs of travel yesterday (thanks Spirit airlines! You suck!) I watched the HBO docuseries Black & Missing. Anyone who likes true crime should watch this. There’s so much bias to address both racially and gender based (ie there is no such thing as a “child prostitute”)
Maya: Ohhhhhhhh, thank you for the rec!! I’m currently going hard on true crime!!
I just finished listening to Bound to Battle God by Ruby Dixon. I generally enjoyed it, so I’m pretty excited about working my way through her back catalog. I also just started listening to This Poison Heart by Kalynn Bayron. ( A | BN | K | AB ) So far loving it. It’s the best when a truly beautiful book cover is only the beginning of the good stuff a book has to offer!
What are you reading? Tell us below!
Is it too weird to add that I liked The Great Gatsby and have read it several times?
I’ve been trying to read my stack of paper library books, but nothing is sticking, my brain wants cozy comforting rereads.
Currently rereading the Cafe La Femme cozy mysteries by Livia Day (pen name for Tansy Rayner Roberts) – started with the Blackmail Blend novella, then moved on to Drowned Vanilla and now dipping into A Trifle Dead. Amateur sleuth gets information out of people by feeding them baked goodies, there’s a romance subplot, lots of snark and banter. And recipes. First book is free if you sign up for the author’s email newsletter.
Cozy mysteries in space – Uhura’s Song by Janet Kagan, a Star Trek novel, new to me; it was recommended by many on a recent Books On Sale thread. Then I went back to read Hellspark again because my first read (a week ago) was rushed and missed some nuances. Also I wanted to spend more time with the characters, they are so kind to each other despite their differences.
Scooped up another anthology from hoopla, sci-fi this time, Unidentified Funny Objects #7. “Take Meme to Your Leader” by Jennifer Lee Rossman has aliens who learned about Earth from internet memes, it’s great silly fun. The Seanan McGuire short story is full of competence and kickass heroines.
Oh and I’ve been rewatching Taskmaster. Next season is starting soon, it should arrive on YouTube pretty quickly for those of us not in the UK. Also The Big Fat Quiz of Everything 2022 showed up in my YouTube feed and made my day.
It’s 73 out today and it finally feels like spring is here. Of course it’s going to be 37 by Wednesday so my plans of uncovering the deck furniture and reading in the sunshine this week have been thwarted again.
Still working my way through my Wallflowers/Ravenels reread and finished Secrets of a Summers Night and started It Happened One Autumn. These books are so solid and comfort re-reads.
I also finished I’m Only Wicked With You by Julie Anne Long. This is my first book from this author and while some parts were good, others dragged, and I didn’t really think the main characters had much chemistry. Lillias just felt like a cold character and I never felt like I got into her head.
Also reading A Forgery of Roses by Jessica Olsen. This is a YA Gothic about a painter who can heal by painting the subject as whole. She’s hired to paint the dead back to life and this is right up my alley. So, so good so far.
And finally I blew through Kresley Cole’s Dark Desires After Dusk. This was the book I was waiting for since reading about the Woede brothers in the earlier books. Yay! Yay! Yay all the way!
Up next is Susan Grant’s Hunting the Warlord’s Daughter and my reread of The Queen of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner. I finally convinced my book club to read this book and I will sob if they all hate it.
Thank you to everyone – lots of samples are headed to my kindle because of this thread.
VERY GOOD
KARMA BAKERY SERIES by ERIN FLYNN (F Urban Fantasy) The sister of Zeus opens a bakery in Boston. CW for former abuse. This drew me in and hooked me, and made me really want cookies and steamed buns and for there to be a Karma Bakery in my city. There are parts where the magic gets a bit much, but the amazing baked goods kept me going.
JILTED JAREN by NORA PHOENIX (M/M Contemporary). A lovely slow romance between the jilted groom and the brother of the bride.
Good
ARROWTOWN SERIES by Lisa Oliver (M/M MPreg Shifters). Series of stories set in a small shifter town with shifters beyond the usual range (rabbits, bison, snakes…). No heavy angst and likeable characters. Partial re-read and catchup with the latest books.
NAUGHTY OR NICE by Various Authors (M/M Contemporary Holiday Novels) Contemporary ‘winter holiday’ books ranging from short stories to full novels all based on the premise of a santa ‘daddy’ writing a letter and being matched to his perfect ‘boy’. Discovered some new to me authors and read several of last years series which I somehow missed then.
ARTEMIS UNIVERSITY SERIES by Erin Flynn (F/M/M… Contemporary Fantasy) Got caught up on the last 4 books of the series. Like how the characters are changing and growing and there is more ‘lets talk it out’ instead of ‘big misunderstandings’. Sometimes I want to get angry at how the heroine is treated, but it is probably more true to life than the rest of the magic and fairies.
UNIQUELY AVERAGE by SUSAN HAWKE (M/M Contemporary). Novella of a romance between a retired lawyer and a neurodivergent chef.
BORN DADDY by MORTICIA KNIGHT (M/M Contemporary). A romance blooming between the former ‘boy’ and former friend of a serial killer (all killing done offstage and before the beginning of the novel)
@Eliza. One of the best things about WAYR is exploring books that I wouldn’t have run into otherwise. So after reading your close-to-squee review of Tal Bauer’s YOU & ME, I immediately got it from KU and read it and have to agree, it’s really good. Thank you for the rec!
And despite being a bit embarrassed about reading the entire series in two days (as a means of decompressing from, and avoiding doing, taxes), I read Shaw Montgomery’s six book series, ROMANCES AND REVOLUTIONS, an omegaverse series. I liked the first four of the series more than the last two, which were fine, but not fabulous. I have ranted about omegaverse romances before (hating them with the force of galaxies of suns), but Montgomery gave this omegaverse a wonderful twist that was the backbone of each of the stories. In this world “omega rights” had been taken to the extreme, so much so that omega subs (and even alpha doms) and BDSM entirely were seen as abusive behaviors, and omegas weren’t even allowed to go into a “novelty store” (= sex toy store) unless married. And omegas were expected to be captains of industry while popping out babies by the handful. It was a fascinating twist that kept the stories of six omega sub friends most compelling. I got the first book, TANNER, as a freebie (I think it still is on Amazon), which started the whole slide into omega subspace. Oh. And there were NO babies (YAY!!) although “littles” were mentioned.
@Eliza & @Qualisign: I grabbed YOU AND I from KU based on Eliza’s recommendation (which I’d read earlier this week at Dear Author); I’m about halfway through and am really enjoying it. I usually don’t care for the friends-to-lovers trope, but I that’s because generally when the book opens the MCs have been friends for a while and I just find it hard to believe they’ve never realized they had sexual feelings for each other. One of the refreshing things about YOU AND I is that you see the two men meeting for the first time, becoming friends, and then becoming more than that. Also, it’s often difficult to present truly good, kind, decent characters without making them either unbelievable or boring, but I think Bauer is doing an excellent job of making a good man three-dimensional. If the last half of YOU AND I is a good as the first half, it will be Highly Recommended and I’ll have the backlist of a new-to-me author to add to my tbr. Thank you for the recommendation.
So, I guess I’m the only one who truly liked “The Great Gatsby”. I found Gatsby rather hard to believe in as a character, but nonetheless Fitzgerald’s descriptive writing immersed me in Gatsby’s world (those silk shirts! the green light at the end of the dock!), and his description of Tom and Daisy near the end of the book is all too close to some of the people in public life today (“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” ). When my book club read it a few years ago, we then visited Fitzgerald’s grave, which is in a suburb of Washington, DC. Carved on the headstone is a quote from Gatsby: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Maybe it’s just me, but I found that immensely poignant, both in the book and thinking of why it is such a fitting epitaph to Fitzgerald’s life.
As for current reading, I’m in the midst of Neil Gaiman’s “Neverwhere”. It takes place in an alternative London (we all live in London Above, much of the book takes place in London Below), with characters who are all too human in their bravery and vulnerability (the hero, Richard Mayhew), admire and hold in awe due to their inhuman abilities (Hunter), and be scared out of our wits by (Mr. Crouch and Mr. Vandemar) — not to mention the character who sets the plot in motion, the Lady Door, and the Marquis de Carabas (shades of other fairy tales).
“Before the Coffee Gets Cold” by Toshikazu Kawaguchi is a quirky sort of fairy tale that takes place in a Tokyo coffee shop. If you sit at a special table, you can travel back in time. But time travel isn’t so simple, there are rules that must be followed, and you can’t change the present. Most important, the trip can last only as long as it takes for the coffee to get cold. The four customers we meet who sit at the table all use their time travel in different ways. Clever and different.
In one of those weird timing coincidences, I’ve been reading the mysteries written by British barrister Sarah Caudwell (she only wrote 4). Parts of the stories go over my head as the main characters are all British lawyers, and British trust law and tax planning is something I know nothing about (don’t know anything about US trust law and very little about US tax planning either, if truth be told). But the books are snarky and funny, and I enjoy them. Late Wednesday night I finished the third in the series. The book mostly takes place on Sark, one of the Channel Islands. Early Thursday morning an email from InnTravel, a UK travel agency, appeared in my mailbox with information about their excursion to Guernsey, Herm, and Sark. That Sark should appear in two such different contexts within 24 hours was an example of unusual synchronicity.
Also rereading the Thief books by Megan Whalen Turner, and I’ve got “In a New York Minute” by Kate Spencer and “For the Wolf” by Hannah Whitten sitting on my nightstand waiting to be read.
Good comment, Susan/DC. I read The Great Gatsby at a young age and didn’t “get” it but I’d very likely have a different opinion now. It’s one of those books that so many Americans only read in high school and no wonder they don’t like it–never mind how deadening many English classes are, it just isn’t a book that most teenagers would relate to at all. The practice of forcing teenagers to read “the great books” in school for fear that otherwise they won’t read them at all is probably harmful. The French equivalent is Madame Bovary which every child is made to read and is widely detested. Now me, I read it for the first time at age 30-something and it knocked my socks off, and there is no earthly way I would have been ready to read it much before that. It is true that a lot of people never read after high school, so how will they ever discover the books that’ll only speak to them later in life? Being made to read them before they’re ready to won’t do much good, and is part of the “literature as bad-tasting medicine” attitude that high schools can instill. Sorry, rant over…
@Susan/DC: Sarah Caudwell’s books are treasures, so glad you found them. I suppose some might think they’re dated now, but to me, they are examples of the witty, erudite writing English authors do so well. Thanks for the reminder.
@Vasha – yes, after reading ‘Northanger Abbey’ in school, I was pretty convinced Jane Austen wasn’t for me – and of all her books, it’s still the one I like least. There’s something about the way we had to read the books as well – I’d always read them pretty much immediately, and then you had to plough through them again at snail’s pace, pretending to get excited about the use of metaphor.
I read the latest Ben Aaronovitch ‘Amongst our Weapons’ and really enjoyed it. Just exactly what I wanted. Having said that, I suspect the plot wouldn’t hold water if you stopped to think about it, and you could write a great pastiche of it if you wanted to – I can imagine reading it in a different mood and finding it really irritating. However, there were reasonably few deaths, enough of Lesley, and I enjoyed the moment where I belatedly placed the title.
Re: F. Scott Fitzgerald & THE GREAT GATSBY: I have a couple of recommendations for anyone looking for fictionalized accounts of Fitzgerald’s life. The first is Liza Klaussmann’s VILLA AMERICA. It’s really more about the lives of Sara & Gerald Murphy, wealthy American ex-pats who lived in the south of France in the 1920s and gathered artists and writers of the “lost generation” (Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Picasso, etc.) around them. Fitzgerald and Zelda are only supporting characters, but they are presented as the alcoholic folie-a-deux they undoubtedly were. For a measured, melancholy look at Fitzgerald’s last years (he was only 44 when he died), I recommend Stewart O’Nan’s WEST OF SUNSET. By the late 1930s, Fitzgerald was struggling with drinking, had money problems, was trying to support the institutionalized Zelda, raise their daughter, write a screenplay, finish a novel (the never-completed THE LAST TYCOON), and was involved with journalist Sheila Graham. O’Nan does a great job of bringing into focus the last few years of the life of a man who died in relative obscurity (his posthumous fame arrived with the wide distribution the THE GREAT GATSBY during and after WWII). Many years after Fitzgerald’s death, Graham published her memoir of their affair, BELOVED INFIDEL. The merits of that book are somewhat, ummm, debatable.
I liked The Great Gatsby in high school but maybe only because it wasn’t assigned. I think it’s chic now to castigate all the white male writers from the 20th century we’ve been told are great literature. There are very good reasons to be critical of these works and question their place in the literary canon (and in American high schools), but the knee-jerk response “these are bad books and people who enjoy them should feel bad” doesn’t seem constructive.
There’s a lot that has been said and can be said about Catcher in the Rye, but I thought it was a really good story about a teenager dealing with intense grief. I’m not going to pretend I never liked it because it’s become a cliche.
Still in the Burrowes backlist, this time just finishing up WILL’S TRUE WISH which IMO is one of her most entertaining. Hero is a dog trainer and thinks of everything in canine terms while villain is a gender-swapped Cruella DeVille complete with two henchmen named after hers, which fact made me laugh out loud when they showed up. Intelligent bluestocking lethal-parasol-weilding heroine foiling a dognapping-for-profit gang along with four impoverished but dashing brothers? Yes please!
I’m in a reading slump so I’ve been rereading Meredith Duran books. My library doesn’t have ALL of them and it’s unacceptable.
Some great recommendations, thanks all.
Mine are:
The Rakess by Scarlett Peckham. I resisted this because I didn’t like the title (I know…) but a rec here persuaded me and once I read the author’s intro, I was all in. Excellent writing, characters with real depth and a hero to die for. I loved it. A second novel in this world was promised for 2021 but I can only assume it has been disrupted by *all this*.
At The Bride Hunt Ball by Olivia Parker was highly enjoyable. Shenanigans at a house party designed to find the ‘spare’ a bride because the heir has vowed never to marry. Well we all know how that goes…
A second book in the same timeline, To Wed a Wicked Earl, is slightly less entertaining but held my attention because I like the characters and the sparky writing.
I am most of the way through A Lady of Rooksgrave Manor and it’s utterly bonkers but I must be enjoying it because I have pre-ordered the next in the series.
Also deep into Elizabeth Hoyt’s Maiden Lane stories. About to start book five: Lord of Darkness.
Sarah Caudwell’s mysteries are famous for featuring one of the first non-binary characters in mainstream fiction (at the time, one of extremely few outside science fiction) — the narrator, Hilary Tamar, intentionally never reveals what pronoun people refer to them by, given that in the 80s they couldn’t have convinced people to use “them.” (Alright, “non-binary” is projecting a current discourse into the past, but maybe fits…) Anyway, I did quite enjoy these books not long after their first publication — thanks for reminding me of them, I’m inspired to a reread.
@Eliza – Jeremiah by Jayce Ellis is an m/m with dual POV with distinctively different voices for the two heroes. It’s the first book I’ve read by that author and I was really impressed by that. I thought the romance took awhile to get going (the h/h have like 3 meet cutes before they finally have a conversation more than 25% into the book) but I ended up enjoying it quite a bit.
Kris Ripper is also good at writing distinctly different sounding characters. Some of zir books are just one POV and some are dual POV.
I’m having a pretty good reading month so far and I got a bingo in #SpringIntoLoveBingo!
I started reading What Fresh Hell Is This?: Perimenopause, Menopause, Other Indignities, and You by Heather Corinna and boy howdy do I wish this book existed when I started perimenopause 9 years ago. Still relevant to me today. Heather Corinna is the nonbinary feminist founder of Scarleteen (and national treasure) – she started perimenopause the same year I did and instead of just ignoring it, hoping it would go away, like I did, she wrote a book. WFHIT is informative, inclusive and also angry, funny and entertaining.
The Craft of Love by E.E. Ottoman, 4.5 stars / A-
Lovely queer historical m/f romance novella between two artisans (a silversmith and a needleworker) who know who they are, engaging in a low angst, slow burn courtship.
You & Me by Tal Bauer, mm contemporary, 4 stars
I also was inspired by @Eliza to read this lovely mm between two single dads who meet volunteering on the booster club for their sons’ high school football team. Excellent later in life bi-realization.
This Poison Heart by Kalynn Bayron, ff YA, 3.5 stars / B-
Queer YA UF with literal Black girl magic and excellent bi rep, plus a lot of references to Medea mythology and a little Secret Garden and Little Shop of Horrors mixed in. I bought this on sale for the beautiful cover and for the Garden square in #SpringIntoLoveBingo. I knew it was the first in a trilogy but didn’t realize it was going to end on a cliffhanger.
Carry On (Simon Snow #1) by Rainbow Rowell, mm YA, 3.5 stars / B-
I mostly enjoyed this m/m take on Harry Potter and other “Chosen One” YA fantasies, despite some bi-erasure and general cluelessness about LGBTQ+ identities. You can tell this started as fictional slash fiction (in the author’s book Fangirl).
Thanks to @Eliza for the heads up on the updated Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid. So glad to read the excerpt for The Long Game-I CANNOT WAIT! Tough work assignment through May 20th-and knowing this book is coming out end of April, something to look forward to. So I read the excerpt, so of course had to read the book again. Now I’m back into the first book, sure I’ll read the whole series to get me ready for the new release.
Ilya and Shane FOREVER!!
Really enjoyed Two Man Station and Lights and Sirens by Lisa Henry. New to me author, and I loved the Australian setting.
Burn This City by Aleksandr Voinov-not for the faint hearted but I loved this story. It was such an interesting concept and I really hope there is a book about one of the secondary characters. Led me down the road of the books about Silvio-and there is ALL kinds of content warnings for those. I think Dark Soul is the first one…I was interested enough to read, but definitely skimmed some parts. Burn This City had emotional nuance that I didn’t feel the Dark Soul books did.
I’ve been re-reading Rosalind James Escape to New Zealand series. They are total comfort reads for me. I love rugby, and I’m also rewatching the Amazon Prime series All or Nothing- New Zealand All Blacks. I feel like even if you aren’t interested in rugby, this would still be fascinating. Great narrator with Taika Waititi.