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!!!

Books of 2019- Installment #16

76. The Secret of the Old Clock by Carolyn Keene
I read gobs and gobs of Nancy Drews as a child, but I never revisited them. And I never would have quiet frankly if it were my book club's pick for this month. It's short and easy to read. She is a great empowered teen (18! I didn't remember her age at all), and that's fantastic. But I see Phryne Fisher as the grown-up version and much prefer that. Still, I think it was great I had Nancy all those years ago as young girl.

77. Her Halloween Treat by Tiffany Reisz
I heard about this book on Get Booked and just had to get it! And my ever-so beautiful library had it and I devoured this book!! So if you like very subtle romance novels, walk away- this one isn't for you! If you like steamy consensual sex with lots of uses of the f-word then this book is for you! I mean one sex scene crossed chapters! But what I really liked about this one was the resolution of the problems, her humor, and her strength.

78. Hearts Unbroken by Cynthia Leitich Smith 
I heard about this book on Get Booked and was super interested! This is a YA book (not my usually thing) set in Kansas where the narrator is navigating high school. She's got a great, loving family, but she's still the new kid, and she's native in a fairly white school district. So while she's got a pretty wonderful life in many ways, she's still got to handle dating and finding the people she wants to be with. I loved all the Wizard of Oz stuff in this book, and like the characters in this book, I have a pretty complicated relationship with Oz and Baum, so I appreciated the discussion in this book about that.

79. Her Silhouette, Drawn in Water by Vylar Kaftan
When I started this novella, I had flashbacks to The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling because this story begins with a woman cave climbing. It quickly becomes clear it's not like that story, but it has a mystery at its heart too. And unraveling that mystery with the narrator is awesome! I definitely enjoyed this book for reasons that I feel will give too much away to state here... but there is a question of identity and trust in here that were fascinating to me.

80. Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach by Kelly Robson
I've been on a Tor.com novella kick, and it's a time-travel, so I had to read this one! It took me a bit to get into this one, which I can't explain why. I certainly enjoyed the contrast between the distant future and the distant past. My favorite part was the ethics of time travel part.

I've read 80 books so far and 57 were by woman, 20 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 #15

71. The Test by Sylvain Neuvel
Gruesome and brutal. And absolutely apropos for our times. A traumatizing citizen test that has lasting effects, which should freak us all out.

72. A Christmas Tartan by Paige Shelton
Scottish time travel with ghosts- sign me up!! Was this one? I'm not sure, but it definitely had ghosts! I love this world Paige Shelton has created and this short, little romp was a delight!!

73. The Poison Thread by Laura Purcell
This book was sold to me as a gothic supernatural thriller. While I really like it, I would not characterize it that way. It's definitely suspenseful and it's set in Victorian times, but supernatural? Nope. It's a bit gruesome in the beginning and my life is a mess at the moment which made it hard to take. I need sweet at the moment. So while this is fascinating, it also was hard for me to read.

74. The Loch Ness Papers by Paige Shelton
I really needed something delightful after The Poison Thread, and this was exactly what I needed! My favorite Scottish bookshop, the Loch Ness Monster, and a wedding! C'est magnifique!! 非常好!

75. The Black God's Drums by P. Djeli Clark

I've read a couple of P. Djeli Clark's works before and find his writing such an exciting read! I never know where he's going to take me, but it is always exciting. This story is set in an alternative New Orleans (well, really whole world but set in New Orleans) where it is a free state and the Civil War didn't end the way it did in real life. I don't want to say more because this is a novella, and you should check it out for yourself!

I've read 75 books so far and 52 were by woman, 20 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 #14

66. Unraveling by Karen Lord
I read a Karen Lord novel, The Best of All Possible Worlds, a while that was quite good, so I was quite interested in reading another of her novels. This book is ostensibly a supernatural serial killer story. There are human and undying actors in this story and it is about the unraveling of the murders and corollary unravelings. I can tell you the plot points, and that the writing was good but that I didn't really get this book.

67. Everything Belongs to the Future by Laurie Penny
This novella is ostensibly about a future were the rich and the "deemed-worthy" can live for decades without aging. So one of the central questions our this story is what does a drug that halts ageing do to society... or rather what do we do with such a drug and how does that change society. But this book it's clearly a product of its time as is the author. She is clearly a woman and clearly not American and just as clearly British. So she examines the way women are treated and certain aspects of British society. I found this tiny novella packs a powerful and engaging punch! 

68. The Taiga Syndrome by Cristina Rivera Garza

I had this book on my TBR for quite a long time. I don't know if I never looked to see if the library had it or not our if I wanted to wait until I could put it on hold (I almost never check out a book of it is available. I prefer to just get whatever comes to me from my holds list. Yeah, it's weird.), I never left myself a trail of breadcrumbs. But I finally read it, and like The Luminous Dead it is very atmospheric . It's got some amazing ideas in it, but for the most part, I'd say I don't know what I just read. I can tell you some plot points ( a female detective who cannot be described as being the most accomplished detective is hired by an ex-husband to find his former wife who ran off to the taiga  with another man. She travels with an interpreter on her quest through this fairy tale land. But after that... I'm not so sure...  

69. Lost Books and Old Bones by Paige Shelton
I love the main character Delaney Nichols!! I love her bookstore (well, it's Edwin's), her boyfriend, and her bookish voices. So this book was a pleasure to read and spend time with her even if I learned some rather gruesome Scottish history. This particular mystery centers around a medical student, and I couldn't help but recall my trip to Edinburgh when my friend and I were eating lunch and some medical students sat at our table (the restaurant had one tiny table), talking about cutting up corpses!

70. Mandelbrot the Magnificent by Liz Ziemska
So when I was in college fractals exploded! Everybody was interested in fractals. Since I was a math major in college, I was caught up in the fractal craze as well and wanted to know more about chaos theory and fractal geometry. So how could I not be interested in reading about Benoit Mandelbrot? This novella had my name written all over it. Henri Poincare noted mathematicians are born and not made, and I learned in college that I was not a mathematician. But Liz Ziemska does an amazing job showing us the mind of a mathematician! This is a fabulous look inside the mind of a great mathematician who also happened to survive Hitler's terrifying destruction across Europe.

I've read 70 books so far and 49 were by women, 18 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 #13

61. Unnatural Habits by Kerry Greenwood
I love Phryne!! I love Phryne!!! This was a wonderful Phryne story! Made me so happy!

62. The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling
I loved this story about a woman's journey exploring a series of caves for an employer that has dubious reasons for sending people into these caves. I really had no idea where this story was going or why the employer was motivated to send explorer after explorer into these dangerous caves. This book was described as claustrophobic and atmospheric. And I would say for the first half of the book, I couldn't understand why it was claustrophobic. Atmospheric- yes, claustrophobic- no. Then there was a shift, and I was like, "Yeah, okay. Got it."

63. Forest of Memory by Mary Robinette Kowal
I am reading a bunch of books right now but they are large tomes that, while interesting, aren't grabbing me. So off I went in search of some Tor.com novellas. This is the first one that I landed on, and it's amazing. No surprises there since Mary Robinette Kowal is amazing!!! This is an abduction tale that takes place in the near future. Technology and nature mingle in interesting ways and there's a central mystery that is not completely resolved, which I loved!! Oh, this is neither here nor there, but she wrote the story with intentional typos, which I loved!!

64. Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You by Scotto Moore
My next Tor.com novella was Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You. It was a little bit horror, a little bit humor, and a whole lot of obsession with music. It scratched the itch that I thought We Sold Our Souls by Grady Hendrix would. Don't get me wrong- I really enjoyed We Sold Our Souls.
Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You is just the book that I thought We Sold Our Souls was going to be- that's all.

65. The Murders of Molly Southbourne by Tade Thompson
I saw this book on Tor.com a lot when it was new (2017), but the cover and title creeped me out. I had no intentions of reading this novella. Then last week while I was in Canada Tor.com gave it away for free. Oh, boy I hesitated!! But the problem is I read Rosewater and loved it, so now I know I enjoy Tade Thompson's writing! I downloaded and read it because I'm in the middle of a Tor.com-novella-reading-fest I had to do it! It is exactly as creepy and bloody as I imagined but mysterious and captivating too!! What does it mean that Molly's life is the way it is? What is happening in this world that seems like ours but might not be?

I've read 65 books so far and 44 were by women, 18 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 #12

56. Exhalation by Ted Chiang
OMG!! I love Ted Chiang! I love Ted Chiang!! This short story collection is amazing!! Amazing!! I can't tell you how much I love his writing! He takes this really interesting philosophical questions and creates an incredibly interesting and realistic world around it.

57. August by Romina Paula
I sent in a request to Get Booked by Book Riot, and this was one of their recommendations. I was looking for an amazing book in translation. This is a definite win! I really enjoyed the style, the narrator, the cat, and the setting. The narrator travels back to her hometown in Patagonia for the cremation of her best friend, who did 5 years prior.

58. Black Mad Wheel by Josh Malerman
I loved Bird Box and was so excited to read this book. And even though that was like 2 years ago, I just got to it. I think that was a good thing because I really enjoyed this book when others didn't. I think that they didn't because this book, unlike Bird Box, isn't a gripping-holy-crap-what-happens-next?!?!?!?! book. It's set in 1957 and 4 men in a band who were also in the army together (as a band) get sent by the army to Africa to investigate a mysterious sound. It was so good!

59. Escape from Camp 14 by Blaine Harden
This is not my cup of tea. I do not read much nonfiction, and I really don't read books about torture. So, why did I read this book? It was my book club's choice, and so I read it. Was it good? Yes. Was it informative? Yes. Was it an important book? Yes. Was it relevant? Yes. Did I enjoy it? No. Should you read it? You'll have to decide that for yourself.

60. An American Princess: The Many Lives of Allene Tew by Annejet van der Zijl
I am sometimes an anxious traveler. And for my most recent trip (to Canada) I was extremely anxious. I couldn't rest and I couldn't read anything alarming. So I read this book that I downloaded for free when Amazon was celebrating translated books. It was perfect! I didn't know anything about Allene Tew and so wasn't particular interested in her, but I learned a lot and this book was a perfect balm to my frayed nerves. Two nonfiction books in a row was unexpected but I really enjoyed learning about her fascinating life and getting a European perspective on America was fascinating!

I've read 60 books so far and 41 were by women, 16 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!!