Weekly Reading Update #1

Welcome to my new format, which will be weekly reading updates, most likely on Wednesdays.

Most of my reading in the past week was focused on finishing The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett. I started reading it a couple weeks ago and kind of put it down for a bit to read a couple short romance novellas. I read it as an immersion read, where I listen to the audiobook and read along in the physical book. I think this was a best way to read it. It wasn’t a particularly hard book to read, but sometimes the fantasy names can make my brain trip up and it takes me longer to read the book. The audiobook is very well done, and the narrator kept my attention as the story unfolded.

I think The Tainted Cup was a very unique story. It effortlessly blended a well-drawn fantasy world with a murder mystery. It has one of my favorite things, which is a quirky detective who has a sidekick. Ana is the quirky detective character in this book, and she gets overwhelmed by too much input, so she mostly stays inside and wears a blindfold. She sends her assistant, Din, to the crime scenes, and since he has a modification that lets him imprint information perfectly into his memory, he can accurately describe the crime scene to Ana as she asks him her specific questions.

I love the concept of the modifications that people can make to themselves in this world. There are people who enhance their senses, enhance their strength, enhance their memory. It all comes from these giant monsters they call leviathan, that come from the sea and regularly attack the human settlements along the coast. It felt like there was a mystery embedded into the existence of the leviathan, and I hope we get more information about them later. Din sees one at one point and mentions that they have faces. He mentioned it to another character and their answer was basically “Don’t worry about it,” which I find very intriguing.

I was going to wait until the second book, A Drop of Corruption, came out in paperback before I read it. However, I want to read it sometime before next year (when I assume the paperback will come out – I didn’t realize that the hardcover just came out like last month or something), so I have placed a hold on it from the library and will run by after work tomorrow to grab it.

Yesterday, I started reading A Curse Carved in Bone by Danielle Jensen. I am again reading both the physical book and the audiobook simultaneously. I read the first book when it came out last year, and I pre-ordered this book almost immediately after I finished reading it. I was worried that I had forgotten too much about the story and would feel lost if I just started reading this one without rereading the first. I have read about half of it so far, and I am 100% back into this world. I had forgotten how much I love both Freya and Bjorn as characters. Freya is such a strong woman, who is given a truly shit hand in life. I forgot how much I hated her husband in the first book, and I’m glad we are where we are when the second book starts. Bjorn is a very loyal character who is put into a complex situation that should have made him break his loyalty, but he has managed to make enough changes that his loyalties have not completely come into conflict.

I hope any of this makes sense. I feel like I’m trying to talk around what I want to talk about with this book. It’s the second book in a duology, so talking about anything in specifics feels like spoiling the first book. Just know that I am enjoying the book and I will be finishing it today.

The rest of the books I read last week were Kindle Unlimited titles that I started as I was trying to fall asleep. I love a short novella that I can read as I fall asleep and finish either during breakfast the next morning or on my lunch break at work. The majority of my reading are these books, I think.

At the moment, I am also in the middle of the second Dungeon Crawler Carl book, Carl’s Doomsday Scenario. I read the first book a couple months ago and have been meaning to continue the series. I first got introduced to it when I was watching the YouTube channel Gavin Reads It All. I didn’t really know what LitRPG was before starting this series, but I am very interested in how different authors interpret the genre. It took me about 50-100 pages to get into the humor in DCC, but once it clicked I flew through it. I am about 30% into DCC2, and will probably be picking at it off and on over the next few weeks.

I hope this weekly update was at all interesting. I will be back next week with an update on my reading and some more rambles. Have a great reading week!

Is this blog dead?

It has been pretty quiet around here, hasn’t it? I still read quite a lot, but I just stopped writing blog posts about them. I haven’t even really written reviews on Goodreads over the last few years. Most of my Goodreads reviews have been very short and very reactive, just something I dashed off quickly immediately after finishing the book.

I want to bring my blog back and make more of an effort to write out my thoughts about what I’ve been reading. Over the last year or so, I have started keeping a daily journal – an actual, physical journal – where I have written some things about what I have been reading. It has made me want to be better about thinking more deeply about the things I read.

As of about midnight last night, I finished my 100th book of the year. I read a lot of short romance stories, usually ones that are recommended to me on the Kindle app. A lot of them are kind of terrible, but reading something short helps my brain shut down before bed so I keep reading them. It helps balance out the longer titles that I have been reading for various book clubs.

One of the book clubs I have been participating in has been the Three Swords Along, hosted by Aaron (AKA Booked and Busy) on YouTube. It is a readalong from June through August, reading the Memory, Sorrow, Thorn trilogy by Tad Williams. The first live discussion took place this past Sunday, covering The Dragonbone Chair. This book has been on my TBR for several years now, ever since it was recommended by a long-defunct YouTube channel, Let’s Read.

The Dragonbone Chair is a very chunky classic fantasy novel, following a very oblivious 15-year-old boy named Simon. Simon is a pretty frustrating character to follow, because he is very young and is very coddled by the people around him. Even having lived in the world his whole life, he has no idea about just about anything going on around him. He spends most of his time trying to shirk the work the head maid gives him, climbing trees to save birds or catching frogs in the pond. Simon gets pulled into an adventure and I assume as the books go along he will grow and mature as a character. I hope this comes true, and that the “hero’s journey” transforms him into a character worth following.

The Dragonbone Chair is the first in my journey in trying to read down my extremely large classic fantasy TBR. One of the ways I am going to work on this TBR is joining in on the Hardest Reading Challenge You Will Ever Do #2. I joined the first HRCYED last July and managed to keep up with it and complete a few of the challenges until around December/January this year. I gave up on HRCYED1, but I feel optimistic about HRCYED2. One of the challenges I have set myself has been to use my collection of classic fantasy novels to read a book from every year I’ve been alive (I’m 37, so that’s A LOT of books).

This has been pretty aimless, but ultimately I want to say that I want to bring this blog back to chronicle my attempt to read down by classic fantasy TBR and my participation in the Hardest Reading Challenge. I don’t know how this will go. It’s entirely possible I will lose steam, but I want to try.

Feel free to follow this blog and watch me succeed or fail. Let me know if you are participating in HRCYED2 and what crazy personal challenge you chose to complete.

Reflecting on Life and Reading in September 2024

I have not updated this blog since December 2023. I said in that post that 2023 was a terrible year, but the me of last December had no idea what 2024 would bring.

This year has been full of work stress and acute grief. I lost my beloved 14-year-old cat Harley in June and it has been very difficult to work through that grief. I am not going to trauma-dump my grief onto the internet for all to read, but losing him has affected me deeply, including my ability to enjoy doing things like reading and blogging.

Harley in January 2024

I still read quite a bit, but it has been hard to put my thoughts into words. Most of the books I have been reading have been short romances that are entertaining in the moment but ultimately I forget about. I have not been listening to audiobooks at the same rate I have in the past. For context, last year I read 84 audiobooks, and this year I have only read 18. I feel like my reading this year has been largely forgettable and it has made me less likely to want to write about what I am reading.

I decided to do the Hardest Reading Challenge You Will Ever Do, put on by Qwordy on YouTube. One of the rules of the challenge has been to review every book you read in some way, whether it is an in-depth review or a little blurb on why you liked/disliked it. You can film it, blog it, put it on Goodreads or Amazon or Storygraph. However you want, just review them. I have mainly been doing this on Goodreads, but part of me really wants to revive this blog to something I can be proud of again.

I never gained many followers for this blog and barely anyone reads it, according to the analytics. I don’t really care if no one reads it, honestly. I just want to have something I am happy with, where I can share my thoughts and feelings about the books I have read. If you start seeing me post on this blog more often, feel free drop by and say hi.

With the death of Twitter (never X) on the horizon, connecting through blogs might be the way we come together to share our love of books again. I know there is TikTok now, but there are still those of us out there who are maybe not as comfortable being on camera but who still want to talk about the books we love (or hate).

Top 5 Books I’ve Read in 2023

Long time no see! 2023 has sucked majorly and I lost my motivation down the black hole of despair, but I read a couple cool books. Let’s talk about them.

The first book that really got under my skin (affectionate) this year was A Taste of Gold and Iron by Alexandra Rowland. I read it way back in January, and it wrang every bit of emotion out of me in a very efficient way. I was so invested in the relationship between Kadou and Evemer, but what really sealed the deal for me and made it one of the top books I read this year was the political intrigue running throughout. It was so expertly done, and the larger worldbuilding left me wanting more. When it was announced that the second book was up for pre-order, I immediately ordered it. This book really set the bar for the entire year.

This year was a pretty heavy fantasy year for me, so of course I have to put The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty on this list. Talk about solid worldbuilding! I didn’t realize until part-way through the book that it is in the same world as the Daevabad trilogy, which is one of my favorite series of all time. Chakraborty is a master of building a world, setting up intriguing plots, and introducing you to some truly amazing characters. Amina was no exception, and I am so excited to see where this series goes next.

And now for something completely different. Yellowface may have been written by a brilliant fantasy author, but it is firmly in the general fiction category. It wasn’t a perfect book, but it was some compellingly readable that I finished the entire book in a couple hours. I had only planned on listening to the first hour or so of the audiobook, and the next thing I knew I was finished with it. It honestly just grabbed me and yanked me the whole way through. I don’t know if it was because I just really needed to know what happened next or what. R F Kuang hit just the right level of addictive with this one.

Is it cheating to consider a reread as a favorite of the year? I reread Good Omens every year, and I got a hankering to read it again back in August (I usually read it around Christmas time). I just love the characters Pratchett and Gaiman created, and the humor just really hits for me. There is just something so genius about this book, and I will continue to reread it forever.

Finally, I got curious after seeing someone go nuts over this book in a YouTube video, and then I learned it was a big book on TikTok. Butcher and Blackbird by Brynne Weaver was another book that really just grabbed me and took me along for a ride. The plot of this book is so bonkers, and it just keeps getting more bonkers as it goes along. A romance between 2 serial killers, where the relationship part is actually the healthiest part of the book? Amazing. I was so charmed by the banter between Sloane and Rowan! I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Lots of content warnings for so many things. Stay safe and look them up if you have any triggers.

I am very interested to know your top 5 books this year! Please let me know in the comments if you’ve read any of these. ❤

Reading the Wheel of Time series: midway check in

**Mild WOT spoilers, but no real specifics.

I don’t know what possessed me to start reading this series. I have now read the first 7 books, and I have thoughts.

Actually, no, I remember why I wanted to read this series. The TV show was starting to pick up momentum and news kept coming out about casting. In 2019, I decided to read The Eye of the World just to get a feel for the series and see what all the hubbub was about. I was pretty ambivalent about it. I rated it 3 stars on GoodReads. I had a vague notion about continuing the series but wasn’t super enthralled.

I picked at The Great Hunt for almost 3 years before I managed to finish it. T H R E E Y E A R S. I very nearly gave up on the series at that point. I still don’t know what kept me going. Sheer stubborness, maybe? At any rate, I forced my way through it and finished it in 2022. I got smart with The Dragon Reborn and started listening to the audiobooks, and since then have averaged 1 WOT book per month.

I can definitely say with confidence that the first book is a thing of its own. The Eye of the World is its own contained story, and is very much a Lord of the Rings-style narrative, with a group of folks thrown together by circumstances on an Epic Quest to take down a Dark Lord. We have a Chosen One, we have the sage mentors who keep the Chosen One to the correct path, and we have Evil people who are trying to stop them.

Side note on Team Evil: I have long considered the Myrddral to be the Nazgul analog, but HOLY CRAP my brain just made a big connection as I am sat here writing this post: Is Padan Fain the analog to…GOLLUM? Someone weigh in on this in the comments, because I think I just blew my own mind. Especially with his obsession with the knife! Oh my god, how has it taken me 7 books to get there???? If Gollum could blend into normal society, he would be Padan Fain.

Back to my thoughts. The Great Hunt expands the world past that quest narrative, and weaves in more extensive world-building. We get more characters (Jordan is nothing if not good at introducing characters. He just makes all of their names RHYME) and a lot more history and geography. I was glad to see the story become more than just Tolkien Take Two.

His character work is great. The main cast is written pretty young for the first few books. The Emond’s Field characters are all around 18-20 years old, and they definitely feel that way. A lot of their squabbles and dramas feel very young and now that I am 7 books in, I am seeing how the characters are changing and maturing. It is one of the strengths of this series that the characters change based on the events taking place. Granted, the events from books 1-7 take place over a little more than a year, which throws me off every time it is mentioned. I had honestly forgotten how young they all were until Elayne mentioned that she is only 19 in book 7.

Speaking of Elayne, I want to expand on my small parenthetical gripe from above. Elayne, Moiraine, Egwene, Melaine, I think there was a Selaine at one point, Berelain. They all rhyme!! I have a hard time with fantasy names in general, but having all these rhyming names while listening to the audiobook is awful. In this last book, they kept mentioning Melaine talking to Egwene in one place, and I kept hearing it as Elayne. I kept thinking to myself – No, that can’t be Elayne because she and Nynaeve are off over here doing this other thing and are nowhere near Egwene right now. I had to go home and grab the physical book just to make sure I wasn’t going insane.

Anyway, that’s my little gripe. I can’t find my WOT Companion to look up the spellings of those names, so just pretend I spelled them correctly, okay?

As the series moves into the second half, I can especially see the Emond’s Field characters changing for better and for the worse. Mat started out as such an annoying character. Immature, lazy, a womanizer. He’s still a womanizer 7 books in, don’t get me wrong, but he’s not as gross about it. I had some gripes about the way he was treated in book 7 when it comes to a specific woman, but I won’t go that deep into it here. Suffice it to say, book 7 has a lot of issues surrounding consent and sexual politics that go largely unaddressed. Where Mat is concerned, since he is such a womanizer his consent is just taken as given even when he is expressly saying no. It’s written in a kind of la-di-da, of course he’s into it, he’s a man, manner that drove me nuts.

He has come a long way on the laziness and immaturity level, however. He has become a major part of the story and has stepped up in a way a lot of the background, comedy-relief characters don’t get to. He still really wants to be lazy and immature, but the narrative is tugging him along in a way that is forcing him to be a more active, responsible character.

Nynaeve and Egwene have also evolved over the last several books. I think Nynaeve took longer to mature, mainly because she refused to stop clinging to her waspishness when someone questions her knowledge. She becomes angry a lot, which fuels her magic, which does not give her incentive to change. It takes a long time for Nynaeve to want to change, and as of book 7 I can see it start to shift in her. Egwene was forced to grow up a bit faster, between her run-in with the Seanchan and with the Aiel Wise Ones. WOT fans will know that book 6 was a big change for Egwene and has made her character grow in a new direction. I think that has been one of the most enjoyable plot threads to follow.

Perrin has been perfect from page 1 and I will take no criticism of him.

And finally we have Rand. What to say about Rand? I go back and forth on whether I think he has matured as a person in these first 7 books. He started out as the reluctant Chosen One who mistrusts pretty much every new person he meets. Especially the Aes Sedai, who all seem to want to use him in some manner to control the way the world goes. He has this big destiny all written out before him, and he just really does not want it. He is a sheep farmer and he wants to continue to be a sheep farmer. Over the books, events have happened that convince him that he has to follow the path as it unfolds before him, but he of course has to have a couple temper tantrums along the way. That is why I go back and forth on him so much. I can see where he has begun to take responsibility for all these plot threads, but then he goes and does some boneheaded stuff to counterbalance it. If Rand was a real person I would want to wring his neck, I won’t lie.

If I had to choose one thing to be the strength of these novels, I would say it is Jordan’s character work. Second would be backfilling in the world-building. It definitely takes a book or two to really get moving, but once it does it hooks you in.

I have only read the first book in the part of the series affectionately referred to as “The Slog,” but so far it is not so bad. I can see why it is considered a slog – from where we start at the end of book 6 to where we end up at the end of book 7, not a lot has happened, plot-wise. I still found it a decent read.

I don’t know if this made any coherent sense. I mainly just wanted to get down some thoughts I’d been having while reading this series. I plan to start book 8 next week, and then march on until the end. I expect I will have more to say toward the end of the series, so stay tuned.

Let’s Talk Book Format

Everyone has their favorite book format; I know I do. (Spoiler: it’s mass markets. Keep your mass market hate on your own blog, kthnx.) Every format has its pros and cons, and preference for one format over another is so subjective.

I watch a lot of booktube, so lately I’ve been exposed to a lot of special edition hardcovers. So many folks go crazy over these special editions, most frequently the ones put out by Illumicrate, Fairy Loot, etc. Even the publishers are getting into special editions now, just look at books like The Fourth Wing with its black and gold stenciled edges. But can you comfortably read these editions? I’ve seen some booktubers who get other editions for reading and keep their special editions pristine. Now, I don’t have the disposable income nor the space for multiple editions of books, but some folks are living their best reading lives doing this, and as long as you can pay your bills and feed yourselves at the end of the day I support that.

I am one of those people who prefers mass market paperbacks, as I mentioned above. They are small, they are cheap, and they can take the most abuse out of any other format available. As someone who has a cat with a vendetta against any and all books, IE his little toe daggers frequently make contact with my book covers, having something durable and cheap is preferable. I’m not crying over my $5 paperback like I would be over my $40-$100 special edition hardcovers. The fact that non-special edition hardcovers are like $40 nowadays just hurts my entire soul, and if my cat destroyed something that cost me more than 2 hours of my workday labor I would have to send him to the middle of the ocean (this is a joke, I love my cat and I would never do this).

Side note: the fact that some newer mass markets have a price tag of $11.99 is a travesty and makes me sad. I miss my $5.99 mass markets. I’ll even take $7.99.

The less (financially) painful option that is more readily available in this day and age than my beloved mass markets are the trade paperbacks. Trades have gotten a lot more popular in the last 10 years, and some on the trades are getting fancier covers and some special treatment like foiling or sprayed edges. It’s a nice in-between format, and they can be satisfyingly floppy. The prices have been steadily increasing over the last couple years, and I saw one for US$21.99 the other day, which quite frankly made me want to rage-quit my own existence.

Some folks prefer a non-tangible format for their books, be they e-book or audiobook. I do like me a good audiobook, and services like Libro.fm and the library keep me from spending far too much on audiobooks each month. E-books are hit and miss for me. Sometimes the formatting is wonky or things like maps are difficult to read. And the prices of e-books are kind of ridiculous for something that you cannot technically own. $12.99 for a “perpetual lease”? That can be taken away for sometimes arbitrary reasons? Absolutely not. The best thing about e-books is how often they go on sale, and websites like ereaderIQ that keep up with titles you are interested in.

But I get the interest in non-tangible formats. I’ve seen those teeny tiny apartments in big cities that cost like $10,000 a month for 500-sq-ft with no kitchen and a sink to bathe in. There is no way some people can have a ton of physical books in their home, and some folks just don’t want them in their home even if they do have the space. Audiobooks are also game-changers for folks with vision problems and reading disorders.

I don’t know if there was really any point to this blog post. I was thinking about my collection of mass market paperbacks and being sad about how few books get published in that format now, which made me think about other formats and how I feel about each one. Everyone has difference preferences when it comes to format, and all of them are valid. I am interested in other folks’ feelings on format, and what your preferences are.

I wouldn’t be sad if publishers brought back the mass market on a large scale, though. (Please please)

Wrapping Up the #TransRightsReadathon

Today is the last day of the Trans Rights Readathon, and it has been wonderful to spend the last week reading books by trans authors and about trans characters. I read a couple really good books, and started one I’m not 100% sold on yet.

The first book I picked up was Heart, Haunt, Havoc by Freydís Moon. I was blown away by this one. I’ve seen it on my recommended books on KU, but I hadn’t heard anyone talk about it. The charisma between the two main characters was absolutely off the charts, and the dialogue was really well-written. The world-building was top notch as well. Just a really great read overall.

The next book I picked up was Starting from Scratch by Jay Northcote, which pulled on my heartstrings as hard as it could. It dealt a lot with being comfortable coming out to the people around you, and establishing the trust needed to do so. It made me want to pick up the other books in this series and see how the rest of the couples had come together.

I stepped away from my “planned” TBR (see, I told you I would!) to read Caroline’s Heart by Austin Chant. I am so glad I did! Another well-written fantasy world with incredibly compelling characters.

I also read How to Bite Your Neighbor and Win and Wager by D N Bryn. I think this one was my favorite of the four books I completed. The characters were lovely, the writing was fantastic, and the dialogue was so natural. This was another well-crafted fantasy world that I would love the revisit soon (the next book comes out on 3/31, I think).

I also started an audiobook, but I’m not totally convinced it is a book I will enjoy. I came very close to DNF’ing it yesterday but I stopped myself and kept going. I was only at 19% and I wanted to give it another chance to hook me. I’m now close to 30% and it is better but still not great. That book is Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin. It is a brutal book with very graphic sex scenes (as well as sexual violence), and it makes me very uncomfortable to listen to. I know that is probably the point, so that is why I have been pushing myself to keep reading. I have a feeling that even if I do finish it, it will not get a very high rating from me. I am very torn on what I think of this book; it makes me very uncomfortable. I’m going to listen to it more today and decide if I want to DNF.

As a back up, I have the audiobook of The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid. I have heard nothing but good things about it and I have had it on my TBR since it came out a couple years ago. I saw Fadwa over at Word Wonders just rave about it and I knew I had to read it.

I hope you all had a great readathon! I am going to continue with the other books I chose for my TBR and keep my eye out for more. Let me know in the comments how your readathon went!

My #TransRightsReadathon TBR

This blog has been sparse in 2023 (try…empty), but there is a very important readathon going on this week that I want to participate in. The Trans Rights Readathon is going on from Monday, March 20 through Monday, March 27 and it is a readathon that hopes to bring awareness to the mass of anti-trans bills that have been introduced (and some that have passed) around the US. There has been a concurrent rise in anti-trans sentiment across the US and in the UK. The goal of the Trans Rights Readathon is to read as many books by trans authors or featuring trans characters as you can, while also raising money for trans rights organizations.

My hope is that I can read somewhere from 4-5 trans books this week, and I will be making a donation to a local LGBTQ+ organization called Prism United, which offers safe spaces and support groups for LGBTQ+ teens and families, as well as referrals to LGBTQ+ positive medical professionals.

I don’t talk about it much on the internet, but I live in rural Alabama and there are not a lot of resources here for LGBTQ+ folks. We are also one of the worst states when it comes to trans rights. It’s a shame, because despite popular belief, we have a sizeable queer community with many trans folks included. I see trans folks every day (for context, I work with the public, so I see a LOT of people every day) and I hate to think that they are living in the place that feels unwelcoming or actively hostile to them.

While researching organizations to support, I have only come across a couple across the whole state, and one in my county. Prism United seeks to support the queer folks who live in our community and get them access to medical care that will support them, not try to erase them.

There are many other great charity organizations across the US, so I hope you will all join me in supporting them while we weather this disconcerting political turn together. Only by banding together can we make it through intact.

On to the TBR! (kinda)

Anyone who has been following this blog for any length of time knows that I am absolutely AWFUL at following a TBR. A TBR is a surefire way of making me not want to read those books, so this is more of a list of trans books that I own or can easily access. I will use this list as a guide more than a strict TBR. If there is anything here you think I should prioritize, let me know in the comments!

Obviously this selection leads more towards romance, since that is mostly what I read nowadays. I will be looking out for more trans SFF recs throughout the week since I am almost done with the audiobook I’m listening to.

Let me know in the comments – do you plan to participate? Do you have a TBR or will you just wing it? I’m excited to see everyone’s posts!

The #TransRightsReadathon was created by Sim Kern (@sim_bookstagrams_badly on Instagram)

My Reading Year 2022

I’ve been largely absent on this blog this year. It’s been a very busy year for me — I bought a house in April and have spent a lot of time getting settled in, taking care of the yard, putting together my library. All the essential things.

One thing I have done this year has been read. As of today (Dec. 30), I have read 251 books this year. Looking at the stats page on Goodreads, most of them have fallen into the 4 star range, with the next largest category being 3 star. I only had one book I gave 1 star! I’d say that is a pretty good spread. It’s one thing to read 251 good books, and quite another to read 251 not so good ones.

I’ve read mostly romances and mostly shorter books this year, which I think has made my ratings skew higher overall. I tend to choose my romances more carefully. I have a pretty good grasp on what I do and do not like in romance. Sometimes SFF or mystery books can be more hit-and-miss, which will make me skew lower overall. Things that sound on their surface like something I would love might have tropes or writing styles that turn me off. And longer books take more effort, and have to work harder to keep my attention, which can make for a lower rating in the end.

As I head toward my 35th birthday, I think I’ve finally come to realize what makes me happy as a reader and how to curate what I read to my moods. I’ve learned that in times of greater stress — say, when closing on a house and all the mess that comes along with that — lighter and happier reads are best. When I am in a more relaxed mood, I can focus more on books that challenge me.

I spent some time this year reading The Silmarillion and The Unfinished Tales from JRR Tolkien. After watching Rings of Power and watching some videos of people reacting to it, I became very interested in how the source material differed from the show. I know that the only rights Amazon got was to LOTR itself and that they pulled from the appendices. So first, I went to the appendices to see what they started with. The answer was: not much. Pretty much just a chronological list of events with scarce details. Any details were in The Silmarillion or The Unfinished Tales, which they didn’t have rights to. I can see why they made the choices they made and it made the viewing experience much easier for me.

All this digression is to say that even though I have not been chronicling my reading on this blog much this year, I have been reading and largely enjoying what I’ve been reading. I think that is about all I can ask as a reader.

The Rivals of Casper Road by Roan Parrish

It’s officially spooky season and this was the perfect book to kick it off! This is the 4th book in the Garnet Run series and the second of the series to be put out as a Harlequin Special Edition.

We begin as one of our main characters, Bram, moves into Garnet Run to move on from a horrible break up. Bram lives with his golden retriever, Hemlock, and he is at loose ends. He has just moved into a house at the end of a cul-de-sac on Casper Road, which is famous for its yearly Halloween decorating contest. His neighbor, the intriguing Zachary, has won the last 6 years in a row, which sparks a little rivalry between the two. Zachary is very competitive so he quickly becomes obsessed with winning, and a prank involving yellow paint starts a good-natured prank war as well.

The relationship between staunchly put-together Zachary and easy-going Bram is a lot less contentious than the summary on the back of the book makes it seem. They very quickly becomes friends (friends who maybe think the other is hot 😏) and the rivalry and prank war becomes something they bond over.

I loved seeing two characters who are pretty much exact opposites come together and fall in love. The thing that makes this book such a hit for me is that both main characters are straight-forward with one another and communicate well. The third act break up does involve a miscommunication, but not one where there is a misunderstanding. It involves someone literally not communicating something to their lover that would have a pretty big impact on their relationship. The main characters then lean on great side-characters to come back together and make it work. It was probably one of the most effective third act break ups and make-ups that I’ve come across.

There are also cameos from the other couples in the series, which is a nice Easter egg for folks who have been reading along. This series has become a comfort read for me, and I can’t wait to see what Roan Parrish has in store next for Garnet Run.