Books of 2019- Installment #18

86. The Changeling by Victor LaValle
This book wasn't even on my radar until a "pen pal" of mine mentioned she had just finished reading it, and it was amazing! Well, I just finished it, and it is amazing! It's haunting and gripping and devastating. It is a fairy tale. It's about fairy tales. It's an examination of fairy tales. It's beautiful and gruesome just like a fairy tale. It's about monsters and glamours. It's about parenthood. It's about marriage. It's about being a black man in America. It's about New York. It hurt to read this. It was beautiful.

87. Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes
Listen, I've been a long-time fan of Pop Culture Happy Hour and so of course had to read this!! And it was awesome!! I laughed! I cried!! I love this story!! But I will confess... Every time Andy spoke I heard Stephen Thompson's voice. Sorry! I read the acknowledgements- I know it's not based on your friendship.... and yet!!

88. Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
This is my third book by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Signal to Noise & Certain Dark Things). I loved the premises of all of these books, but perhaps my expectations were too high fort he first two. I liked them but wanted to love them. This book is by far my favorite of hers. My friend was stationed in Merida, Mexico for a time, and I visited her twice while she was there. Since this book takes place in part there, I was pretty jazzed. The fact that it draws on Mayan mythology thrilled me.

89. Hollow Kingdom by Kira Jane Buxton
I heard about this book on the podcast All the Books and knew it was one I had to check out. I love, love, love reading stories with non-human narrators!!!!! But man, is it way more awesome than I thought! I looooooooooooooooooooove this book!! It's sooooooo good!! I had a terrible time choosing which quote to pick. I settled on this one because I think it ties in nicely to the idea of having a non-human narrator. It's sooooooooooooo goood!! Read this book! Not to be bossy but omg!! So goood!!!!

90. The Archive of Alternate Endings by Lindsay Drager
I love novellas and I think that's why I got this book. It's an oddly nice companion piece to Hollow Kingdom. While I don't want to give anything away, I will say there's a little through line that dovetails nicely. At first blush it seems like it's going to be a collection of alternate endings to the folktales collected by the brothers Grimm. But well, it's a novella, and you'll just have to see for yourself!

I've read 90 books so far and 65 were by woman, 22 by men, and 3 anthologies with both female and male authors- two of which were mostly female authors. My year of reading lots of women is still going strong!!!

Books of 2019- Installment #17

81. The Drowning Eyes by Emily Foster
I'm not gonna lie. I totally wanted to read this book because of the gorgeous cover!! The fact that it's a super short novella didn't hurt!! This book really reminded me of the world that Truthwitch by Susan Dennard is set in.

82. Recursion by Blake Crouch
I loved Dark Matter but not the Wayward Pines series, so I didn't know if this book would be for me. But it was!!! It was an incredible ride that I did not know what to expect from. The premise is there is this incredibly smart scientist whose mother has Alzheimer's, and she wants to find a way to preserve her mother's (and other Alzheimer's sufferers') memories for her/them. She invents something but what that ends up being used for is not Alzheimer's! Amazing!!

83. Of Sorrow and Such by Angela Slatter
I can't think of any other Australian fantasy that I've ever read before and I really enjoyed this novella. It has a lot of familiar elements but also ones that were novel- hello! Wonderful! This is about a little rural town and the witches that live in it. Well, you know how women and witches are treated...

84. Hither, Page by Cat Sebastian
I'm not super into English stories. So many!! I don't really need more! I really don't want to read any more WWII stories! OMG! I don't remember where I heard about this book, but I put it on hold at the library and was a little like, "Oh, English countryside... sigh..." But I was actually surprised to find this book is set after WWII and found that really interesting. So there's a murder in an English town and a British spy is sent to investigate because the murder took place in the house of an important military/businessman (cuz he's landed gentry and that's what they do?) living there. The inhabitants of this town are interesting, and there's some really interesting character development related to the psychic wounds inflicted on soldiers. I quite liked it.

85. Do You Dream of Terra-Two? by Temi Oh
I don't know what inspired this book, but it feels like the author said, what if the British Empire had developed a space agency? What if the Soviets/Russians, Americans, and Brits were on more equal footing during the space race? It's the year 2012 and the Brits are sending a ship on a 23-year journey to Earth 2 aka Terra-Two. It's part alternate history, part space adventure, and part colonization story with great character development.

I've read 85 books so far and 61 were by woman, 21 by men, and 3 anthologies with both female and male authors- two of which were mostly female authors. My year of reading lots of women is still going strong!!!