It’s time again to write about romance novels! To my eternal sorrow, I always read fewer romance novels than I want to read, because they are much easier to get as ebooks, but I much prefer reading physical books. So if I check out five physical library books and five library ebooks, I will prioritize the five physical books and forget about the five ebooks. This is especially a problem if I want to read independent or self-published romances (which I do), which often don’t exist as print books at all. It’s a problem for which I have not yet…
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I am constantly endeavoring to get myself into mystery novels, after a lifetime of reading almost no mystery novels, and my results have been… mixed. Not because I’ve read mysteries that were my enemies, but more because I have a hard time, when I’ve picked up one mystery novel, remembering to go back and pick up another. But I am undeterred! If I keep trying, eventually I will alter my reading habits and then I will love mysteries. It worked with spinach and it’s going to work with mystery novels. Arsenic and Adobo was a perfect mystery to help me…
Leave a CommentIntisar Khanani has a new book! And it’s out today! Can you believe our good fortune? The Theft of Sunlight is the first wholly new Intisar Khanani book I’ve read in what feels like a thousand years, and it felt like coming home. The Theft of Sunlight is a companion novel to Thorn that doesn’t (in my opinion) require prior knowledge of Thorn in order to read it. It follows Rae, a country girl who comes to the royal court and becomes handmaiden to the new queen, Alyrra (Thorn from Thorn!). There she begins to learn how to navigate the…
Leave a CommentHappy Monday, friends! The Ex Talk, Rachel Solomon Here’s a twist on fake dating I’ve never seen before: Fake exes. In order to save their small public radio station, Shay Goldstein has to team up with the pretentious hotshot at her work, a man named Dominic Yun who’s beloved of their sexist boss and can’t stop talking about his master’s degree in journalism. They’ll be working on a podcast called The Ex Talk, where two exes discuss the world of relationships and dating, as well as their own unsuccessful relationship. Except Dominic and Shay have never dated; they’ve barely even…
Leave a CommentWelp! No One Is Talking about This is the absolute strangest book I have read in a while! But like, in that way where you’re thinking, “yep, this is who Patricia Lockwood is as a writer. Yep. This checks out.” Her entire career up to this point has followed a trajectory that must always have led to this: a book that is half about the asinine minutiae of the internet, and half about the grief of losing a desperately beloved baby niece, who was born with a rare disability that killed her after six months. A WARNING: If you are…
Leave a CommentAaaaaaaaand romance continues to get all its romance kissing cooties all over the genre of science fiction. Glorious! Long may it reign! Winter’s Orbit is about the rakish prince Kiem, who gets tapped to be part of an arranged marriage with his cousin’s widower, Jainan. Though neither of the two men is particularly interested in getting married, the alliances among their world’s nations depends on their engagement. But soon it comes to light that Jainan’s late husband, Taam, may not have died accidentally; and worse than that, Jainan may be a suspect in Taam’s death. Let’s start with the romance!…
Leave a CommentHere’s something that has changed under quarantine: I now place holds on books. I so rarely did it in the olden days! I used to go to the library every Saturday or every second Saturday, and I didn’t need to place holds, because there were always loads of amazing books to read. I would make a list of maybe five specific books that I wanted to get that day, and I’d get them, but then I spent most of my library trip trawling the New Books shelves in every genre. I had a system! Nonfiction first! Then regular fiction! Then…
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