Recent Updates and Currently Reading | July 30

Hello, friends! I hope you are having a wonderful weekend. I managed to get some reading done this week! I have Fourth Wing to thank for that. I'm hoping I can carry that momentum forward into other books this week.

Have you seen the trailer for A Haunting in Venice? The movie is based on Agatha Christie's Hallowe'en Party. I've seen mixed reviews for Hallowe'en Party over the years so I've never picked it up, but I plan on reading it next month so I can watch the movie. I'm so intrigued! Details below in the TBR section if you want to buddy read Hallowe'en Party with me.

Posted Last Week

 

 

2023 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize Shortlist - If you like to read Adventure novels, check out the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize shortlist for some recommendations!

Favorite Books of 2023 So Far - Last week I posted my favorite books of the year so far.

Book Review | Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel ⭐⭐⭐⭐★ - My thoughts on Sea of Traquility.

Finished Reading

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros ⭐⭐⭐⭐★ - Highly addictive read. Review soon!

Currently Reading

Belladonna by Adalyn Grace - A selection from the TBR jar, and I was immediately hooked! I'm so glad I saw great reviews for this last year. On a side note - I saw the B&N exclusive paperback edition the other day and it was gorgeous. If you've been wanting to read this, pick up that edition. It has purple sprayed edges.

Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward - I haven't been able to sit down long enough to finish this one, but I'm OK with the long savor here!

Added to the TBR

Hallowe'en Party by Agatha Christie - As I mentioned earlier, I picked this up to read because of the A Haunting in Venice trailer. I have a buddy read set up to start August 18th on the Horror Spotlight discord server if you want to join us!

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This post is being shared as part of The Sunday Salon at Readerbuzz, Book Date’s It's Monday! What Are You Reading? and Caffeinated Book Reviewer's The Sunday Post.

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Review | Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

Source: borrowed from my library. This is a review of my reading experience.

 

A novel of art, time travel, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon five hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space.

Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal--an experience that shocks him to his core.

Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She's traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive's best-selling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him.

When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended: The exiled son of an earl driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe.

A virtuoso performance that is as human and tender as it is intellectually playful, Sea of Tranquility is a novel of time travel and metaphysics that precisely captures the reality of our current moment.'

The best thing about book club is we are reading books we otherwise wouldn't have. Even though I enjoyed Station Eleven, I haven't been making time to pick up Emily St. John Mandel's other books.

I wish I had known The Glass House and Sea of Tranquility were connected. I would have read The Glass House first. I don't think it affected my enjoyment, though. I enjoyed reading Sea of Tranquility!

There was a section in Sea of Tranquility that triggered the covid lockdown memories - be aware. It really brought me back to those early days.

Sea of Tranquility is a time travel/time trippy type of story. It's well crafted and even a bit mindblowing. I have very low mental capacity right now but I was able to follow and understand (mostly!)

Emily St. John Mandel is a wonderful writer and one I hope to keep making time to read.

⭐⭐⭐⭐★
4/5 stars

Favorite Books of 2023 So Far

Today's Top Ten Tuesday topic is supposed to be my most recent DNFs, but I don't want to talk about those so I'm posting my favorite books of 2023 so far instead! Let me know if you've read or plan to read any of these!

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty

Chlorine by Jade Song

What Lies in the Woods by Kate Alice Marshall

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

Book Lovers by Emily Henry

Beach Read by Emily Henry

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

Below by Laurel Hightower

One Piece, Volume 9: Tears by Eiichiro Oda

2023 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize Shortlist

Do you read adventure novels? I have just discovered the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize. Below you will find the 2023 shortlist for the Wilbur Smith Best Published Novel, but first some information about the award (award info taken from the Wilbur and Niso Smith Foundation website).

About the Award

The Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize is an international prize that supports and celebrates the best adventure writing today. The Prize is open to writers of any nationality, writing in English.

About the Wilbur and Niso Smith Foundation

Launched in September 2015, the Wilbur and Niso Smith Foundation is a charitable organisation dedicated to empowering young writers, the advancement of the adventure writing genre and the promotion of literacy.

About the Panel and Judges

Before the shortlist of books reaches our expert judging panel, they are carefully assessed by a panel of librarians and library staff. Working to strict guidelines of what constitutes an adventure story, the panel discuss which of the novels entered should be put forward for the longlist and then shortlist.

Once a novel reaches the shortlist, copies are distributed to our judges. Each year, we invite professionals from the literary and adventure worlds to join us.

2023 Shortlist for the Wilbur Smith Best Published Novel

My Name is Yip by Paddy Crewe

The year is 1815. One October night in the small town of Heron's Creek, Georgia, Yip Tolroy is born, the cord snaked around his fragile neck, his skin a deathly white. As his mother still lies in the blood-slicked sheets, and Yip takes his first gulps of air, his father disappears without trace. By the time Yip reaches his fifteenth year he has not spoken a word - he is mute, friendless, an outcast. But his life is about to change irrevocably.

Gold is discovered nearby, and Yip commits a grievous crime that leaves him with no choice but to flee. In the company of a new and unlikely comrade, Dud Carter, Yip must take to the road, embarking on a journey that will thrust him unwittingly into a world of menace and violence, of lust and revenge. And, as Yip and Dud's odyssey takes them further into the unknown - via travelling shows, escaped slaves and the greed of gold-hungry men - the pull of home only gets stronger...

My Name is Yip on Goodreads

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Going Zero by Anthony McCarten

Going Zero, a high-concept thriller from Oscar-nominated screenwriter Anthony McCarten. Erase yourself. The hunt has begun. Perfect for fans of I Am Pilgrim and The Circle.

TWO HOURS TO VANISH
Ten people have been carefully selected to Beta test a ground-breaking piece of spyware. Pioneered by tech-wunderkind Cy Baxter, FUSION can track anyone wherever they are on earth. But does it work?

ONE CHANCE TO ESCAPE
Each participant is given two hours to 'Go Zero' – to go off-grid and disappear - and then thirty days to elude the highly sophisticated Capture Teams sent to find them. Any Zero that beats FUSION will receive $3million in cash. If Cy's system prevails, he wins a $90 billion-dollar contract with the CIA to develop FUSION and revolutionize surveillance forever.

ZERO ALTERNATIVES
For contestant Kaitlyn Day, the stakes are far higher than money, and her reasons for entering the test more personal than Cy could have ever imagined. Kaitlyn needs to win to get what she wants, and Cy will stop at nothing to realize his ambitions. They have no choice but to finish the game and when the timer hits zero, there will only be one winner…

Going Zero on Goodreads

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Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris

Sarajevo, spring 1992. Each night, nationalist gangs erect barricades, splitting the diverse city into ethnic enclaves; each morning, the residents – whether Muslim, Croat or Serb – push the makeshift barriers aside.

When violence finally spills over, Zora, an artist and teacher, sends her husband and elderly mother to safety with her daughter in England. Reluctant to believe that hostilities will last more than a handful of weeks, she stays behind while the city falls under siege. As the assault deepens and everything they love is laid to waste, black ashes floating over the rooftops, Zora and her friends are forced to rebuild themselves, over and over. Theirs is a breathtaking story of disintegration, resilience and hope.

Black Butterflies on Goodreads

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The Half Life of Valery K by Natasha Pulley

From the author of The Watchmaker of Filigree Street and The Kingdoms, an epic Cold War novel set in a mysterious town in Soviet Russia.

In 1963, in a Siberian gulag, former nuclear specialist Valery Kolkhanov has mastered what it takes to survive: the right connections to the guards for access to food and cigarettes, the right pair of warm boots to avoid frostbite, and the right attitude toward the small pleasures of life so he won’t go insane. But on one ordinary day, all that changes: Valery’s university mentor steps in and sweeps Valery from the frozen prison camp to a mysterious unnamed town that houses a set of nuclear reactors and is surrounded by a forest so damaged it looks like the trees have rusted from within.

In City 40, Valery is Dr. Kolkhanov once more, and he’s expected to serve out his prison term studying the effect of radiation on local animals. But as Valery begins his work, he is struck by the questions his research raises: why is there so much radiation in this area? What, exactly, is being hidden from the thousands who live in the town? And if he keeps looking for answers, will he live to serve out his sentence?

Based on real events in a surreal Soviet city, and told with bestselling author Natasha Pulley’s inimitable style, The Half Life of Valery K is a sweeping new adventure for readers of Stuart Turton and Sarah Gailey.

The Half Life of Valery K on Goodreads

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No Country for Girls by Emma Styles

GOLD. THEFT. MURDER. A ROAD TRIP TO DIE FOR.

'It's not exactly how I imagined the week starting. An accessory to murder. On the run in the victim's vehicle . . .'

Charlie and Nao are strangers from different sides of the tracks. They should never have met, but one devastating incident binds them together forever.

A man is dead and now they are unwilling accomplices in his murder there's only one thing to do: hit the road in the victim's twin cab ute, with a bag of stolen gold stashed under the passenger seat.

Suddenly outlaws, Nao and Charlie must make their way across Australia's remote outback using only their wits to survive. They'll do whatever it takes to evade capture and escape with their lives . . .

Thelma & Louise for a new generation, No Country for Girls is a gritty, twisty road-trip thriller that follows two young women on the run across the harsh, unforgiving landscape of Australia.

No Country for Girls on Goodreads

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Four Treasures of the Sky by Jenny Tinghui Zhang

Daiyu never wanted to be like the tragic heroine for whom she was named, revered for her beauty and cursed with heartbreak. But when she is kidnapped and smuggled across an ocean from China to America, Daiyu must relinquish the home and future she imagined for herself. Over the years that follow, she is forced to keep reinventing herself to survive. From a calligraphy school, to a San Francisco brothel, to a shop tucked into the Idaho mountains, we follow Daiyu on a desperate quest to outrun the tragedy that chases her. As anti-Chinese sentiment sweeps across the country in a wave of unimaginable violence, Daiyu must draw on each of the selves she has been—including the ones she most wants to leave behind—in order to finally claim her own name and story.

At once a literary tour de force and a groundbreaking work of historical fiction, Four Treasures of the Sky announces Jenny Tinghui Zhang as an indelible new voice. Steeped in untold history and Chinese folklore, this novel is a spellbinding feat.

Four Treasures of the Sky on Goodreads

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Winner Announcement

The winner will be announced on 18th October 2023.

Recent Updates and Currently Reading | July 23

Hello! How is your weekend going? My weekend hasn't been too exciting, but it's been very productive. My youngest son was over at my aunt's house because his cousin is in town. I took the opportunity to remove everything from his room and his closet to deep clean. I put his furniture back in a much better configuration which he says is so cool. Now we have the task of going through everything that didn't make it back into his room to see what he wants to keep or donate.

The One Piece trailer came out this weekend. This is exciting news in our house. I think season one will cover the first 12 volumes of the manga series. I'm nearly done with volume 10 so I'm in a great spot to be able to finish those before the live action series starts. I'm so glad I started reading these last year.

Posted Last Week

Book Review | Be Sure by Seanan McGuire ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ - This is a great way to start reading Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children series if you have started that yet!

Books With One-Word Titles - This was a fun and easy Top Ten Tuesday.

Currently Reading

Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward - I'm so stressed at work all I do when I come home is curl up and watch baseball so I haven't finished this yet. It's amazing, though.

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros - I definitely get the hype around this one. I'm 110 pages in so I don't know where I will land on the obsession scale yet.

Added to the TBR

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang - This book was 100% me falling off the book buying ban. I blame my husband. I'll feel less guilty when I read it and love it. 😆

Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle - This is the September pick for the Horror Spotlight discord group. (I'm so sorry; I think I usually forget to link to the discord server. We have 350+ members who chat about much more than horror books if you want to join us!) I am excited that Chuck Tingle has written a horror novel.

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros - I unhauled two bags of books and sold them to my used bookstore. I used my credit towards buying Fourth Wing because I am absolutely giving into the hype. I couldn't take one more reader calling this their book of the year without finding out why! Have you read it yet?

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This post is being shared as part of The Sunday Salon at Readerbuzz, Book Date’s It's Monday! What Are You Reading? and Caffeinated Book Reviewer's The Sunday Post.

Review | Be Sure by Seanan McGuire

Source: review copy provided by publisher. This is a review of my reading experience.

Where it all began―the first three books in Seanan McGuire's multi-Hugo and Nebula Award-winning Wayward Children series.

Join the students of Eleanor West, and jump through doors into worlds both dangerous and extraordinary.

Book 1: Every Heart a Doorway
Book 2: Down Among the Sticks and Bones
Book 3: Beneath the Sugar Sky

Children have always disappeared under the right conditions; slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere... else.

But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children.

Meet Nancy, cast out of her world by the Lord of the Dead; Jack and Jill, each adopted by a monster of the Moors; Sumi and her impossible daughter, Rini.

Three worlds, three adventures, three sets of lives destined to intersect.

Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children
No Solicitations / No Visitors / No Quests

But quests are what these children do best...

Be Sure collects the first three books of Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children series. The Wayward Children series is one of my absolute favorite series.

In the Wayward Children books, the characters find a door into another world but are eventually forced to go back home. These children struggle to cope and often wind up at the school for wayward children. Some books are set in another world and some are set at school.

If you haven't started reading the Wayward Children books, Be Sure is such a great way to start! Here are some of my non-spoiler thoughts on the books included in Be Sure:

Every Heart a Doorway

Every Heart a Doorway is a perfect introduction to this universe and what it's like to be a wayward kid who has gone through a portal to another world and forced to come back to the life they left behind. I love the magnitude of what Every Heart a Doorway spells out for these characters. There's an imaginative quality to Every Heart a Doorway, but it's also horror adjacent and should appeal to a wide range of genre readers.

Down Among the Sticks and Bones

Down Among the Sticks and Bones tells the backstory of two characters we meet in Every Heart a Doorway. Down Among the Sticks and Bones is a dark story in the dark world of the Moors, but the true beauty of Down Among the Sticks and Bones is the portrayal of gender roles. It's so heartbreakingly relatable.

Beneath the Sugar Sky

In Beneath the Sugar Sky we meet a brand-new character and head into a brand-new world, but we start our adventure at the school for Wayward Children with characters we already know and a problem we are sort of already familiar with. While there is still darkness in this volume, Beneath the Sugar Sky shows us just how different these worlds can be.

5/5 stars

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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Books With One-Word Titles

Today's Top Ten Tuesday topic is Books With One-Word Titles. These are some favorites (and one currently reading)!

Chlorine by Jade Song

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

Cackle by Rachel Harrison

Sundial by Catriona Ward

Later by Stephen King

Below by Laurel Hightower

Elantris by Brandon Sanderson

Thirteens by Kate Alice Marshall

Horrid by Katrina Leno

Recent Updates and Currently Reading | July 15

If you were around last weekend, you saw that my husband and I watched some rock climbing documentaries. A lot can happen in a week! Yesterday, my son and I made a trip out to a climbing gym to climb! It was so much fun. I'm not as sore from the actually climbing as I am from keeping the tension in my son's (16yo) rope and bringing him back down. By the end he was just letting go of the wall and letting me lower him. 😆 I wish we could do it more often but the gym is a couple of hours away. I think we are going to drive out to a different gym next time.

This past week was the All-Star break for baseball which means I had time to read! That was so great. I'm reading some great things, too.

Posted Last Week

Review | Beach Read by Emily Henry ⭐⭐⭐⭐★

Finished Reading

The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold ⭐⭐★★★ - I read this for this month's book club. There was SO MUCH information. My fellow book clubbers seemed to love that fact - so that's excellent. I found this book to be so depressing.

Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield ⭐⭐⭐★★ - This was another depressing read. I'll have a review out soon.

What Lies in the Woods by Kate Alice Marshall ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ - Kate Alice Marshall is an absolute shapeshifter. Review for this soon, too!

Currently Reading

Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward - I. Am. Obsessed. This is so good.

Added to the TBR

Yumi and the Nightmare Painter by Brandon Sanderson - My copy of Yumi and the Nightmare Painter arrived. It's gorgeous.

People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry - Target had a sale on paperbacks, and I managed to score People We Meet on Vacation for $4.98! Woohoo!

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig - My book club is reading The Midnight Library next month, and I'm super excited about it.

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This post is being shared as part of The Sunday Salon at Readerbuzz, Book Date’s It's Monday! What Are You Reading? and Caffeinated Book Reviewer's The Sunday Post.

Review | Beach Read by Emily Henry

Source: personal purchase. This is a review of my reading experience.

Beach Read is a romance novel by Emily Henry.

A romance writer who no longer believes in love and a literary writer stuck in a rut engage in a summer-long challenge that may just upend everything they believe about happily ever afters.

Augustus Everett is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. January Andrews writes bestselling romance. When she pens a happily ever after, he kills off his entire cast.

They’re polar opposites.

In fact, the only thing they have in common is that for the next three months, they're living in neighboring beach houses, broke, and bogged down with writer's block.

Until, one hazy evening, one thing leads to another and they strike a deal designed to force them out of their creative ruts: Augustus will spend the summer writing something happy, and January will pen the next Great American Novel. She’ll take him on field trips worthy of any rom-com montage, and he’ll take her to interview surviving members of a backwoods death cult (obviously). Everyone will finish a book and no one will fall in love. Really.

I'm so happy to be reading Emily Henry right now. I need more.

I'm not typically a romance reader, but I do enjoy romance in my genre books and in my movies.

I love Emily Henry's style of romance. I've only read two, but they fit the cozy vibe I'm seeking right now. I like all of the characters, and I like that they communicate with each other. Beach Read is an enemy to lovers romance, but not the kind that makes you hate the enemy before they fall in love.

Emily Henry makes me cry and her books aren't even heartbreakers. She just gets me right in the feels. I cried reading Book Lovers and Beach Read made me cry, too. Heaven help me if she ever writes a tearjerker.

I took Beach Read to the beach with me to read, but thankfully I knew it wasn't actually a "beach read". It was a great excuse to read it, though, and also the perfect escape while on vacay.

I feel like I'm probably the last person making my way through Emily Henry's books, but if you are a genre reader making a reach into spheres that are more cozy than your typical read, have a look into Emily Henry's books. You might just enjoy them, too!

⭐⭐⭐⭐★

4/5 stars

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Recent Updates and Currently Reading | July 9

I feel like I actively read this week, and I still didn't finish anything. I'm starting to feel terrible about my reading skills. I did manage to post some reviews this week, though!

My hubs and I watched a couple of documentaries yesterday - Free Solo and The Last Tepui.

Free Solo was a tough watch! I am afraid of heights and the literal opposite of a person to Alex Honnold (who free climbs without ropes). It was a fascinating documentary. They did an MRI on Honnold's brain and found his amygdala to be essentially non-responsive. My amygdala on the other hand... I had to sit on the floor to watch Free Solo if that tells you anything. 😆

I watched Free Solo because I was really interested in watching The Last Tepui and wanted the background story on Alex Honnold first. The Last Tepui is about an untouched area of rainforest in Guyana. A scientist was looking to prove a Galapagos type of evolution in the region in order to gain environmental protections for the area. Due to terrain, they needed a climber like Honnold to make it up into the mountain. Such a beautiful place to see.

While I would never have an interest in climbing a cliff face, I'd love to have a climbing gym here. Do you have one where you live? Have you/would you ever go?

Posted Last Week

Review | Below by Laurel Hightower ⭐⭐⭐⭐★

Review | At the End of Every Day by Arianna Reiche ⭐⭐★★★

Currently Reading

What Lies in the Woods by Kate Alice Marshall - This is really great. I'm so impressed by Kate Alice Marshall's ability to change her voice for the genre she's writing in.

Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield - This is such a strange book, but I think I'm going to love it.

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This post is being shared as part of The Sunday Salon at Readerbuzz, Book Date’s It's Monday! What Are You Reading? and Caffeinated Book Reviewer's The Sunday Post.