winter reading recap

[quietmoon]

i surprised myself by absolutely devouring my libby bookshelf in january. february saw me slow down as i got distracted by other things and ended up reading lots of tabletop rpgs instead. which i suppose are still books, but i'm not counting them anyway lol. if they don't go on my goodreads they don't go in the recap. i was inspired by octahedrite to include a ✨ for particular recs. :)

in jan i read...

• Twisted Love - amazed i got through this one. i'm so relieved i didn't spend money on it. i really need to start reading blurbs instead of going entirely off covers and vibes...
• ✨ I'm Glad My Mom Died - AMAZING. lives in my brain rent-free. if i think about it for too long i have to remind myself to breathe; that's how much i liked it.
• An Elderly Lady Is Up To no Good - short and charming
• Sea of Tranquility - i feel like the first half is better than the second half. it's like, the sum of its parts added up to more than what we ended up getting. creative but anticlimactic
• ✨ And Then There Were None BBC Dramatisation - i wanted to dip my toe into mystery writing, so where else to start, right? i ended up loving it, but i got way more scared than i expected. in future we do not start agatha christie stories at bedtime. (i ended up watching the drama with Charles Dance after and it was even creepier than the audio drama lol i'm a big coward)
• ✨ Assistant to the Villain - fluffy buttery popcorn for the heart. so funny and meta. it was such fun to read but at the same time demanded so little of you, which after years of western fantasy fatigue i appreciated a lot
• ✨ Educated - a lot of hits in jan! the violence in this book shocked and scared me but i couldn't put it down.

and then in feb...

• Fourth Wing - this book slowed me riiiiight down. i was bumping off the first half but not terribly enough to put it down, and i ended up enjoying it a lot more once the pining period between mc and li was done and they were in mutual whatever. i am now, despite the nothing worldbuilding and bloated wordcount, unfortunately invested and will probably be reading the sequel this spring.
• Yellowface - and then i sped right up and read this in a day. funny, dark, but a little bit empty by the end? it didn't get to the point it was trying to make imo, and ended up feeling a lot like overhead footage without the necessary zooming in. surface-level, i suppose.
• At The Mountains of Madness Dramatisation by Richard Coyle - i started reading this because i got really into this one polar horror tabletop rpg oneshot i was going to run. then i got halfway through this book and got really obsessed with the specifics of the cthulhu mythos. now i've learned and read a bunch of call of cthulhu rpg modules and still not finished this dramatisation. i'm not crazy about the narrator, i can't focus on his voice.

all in all, an enjoyable start to the year! more updates to come in late spring. :)

Comments

[octahedrite]

Placed a hold on Assistant to the Villain, it sounds delightful. I read Educated (Tara Westover, right?) a few years ago and was really moved by it. & I'm flattered by the shoutout haha

[quietmoon]

Oh, I really hope you like it! I've seen in some reviews that the meta humour isn't for everyone, but I found it so charming and delightful. It's a fun little slowburn and I'm excited to read the sequel as soon as I can. I thought the narrator for the audiobook also did a great job, so if you enjoy that medium, it might be something to check out. :)

Yes, Educated was really intense. I recommended it to my mother immediately haha.

<3

[pauraque]

Nice to see you here! And Then There Were None is such a great book, I should re-read it sometime.

[quietmoon]

Thank you, friend! Hope you're doing well.

It was so good! I can't wait to read the full version soon.