2025 Reading Challenge discussion

1. Days of Blood & Starlight (January 21, 2013)

My one lone non-acedemic completed book so far, oh dear. I will say, I enjoyed it a lot. It's the sequel to Daughter of Smoke & Bone, and I think it's the weaker of the two, but still a good read, and certainly very engaging.

Compared to the first book in the series it's a lot darker and certainly more brutal, which may not be to everyone's tastes (or what you thought you were signing up for with the first book). I'm still not sure how I feel about many of these plot developments myself - beyond the gory and gruesome stuff, some of them had implications that made me a bit uncomfortable. Another thing I would mention is that the first section of the book feels to drawn out at times, and I found myself wishing something would just happen already.

On the bright side - Laini Taylor's prose is as beautiful as ever, the old characters we revisit are just as lovely the second time around, the new ones introduced are no less fascinating, and when the plot gets going, it definitely gets going. Despite some of my misgivings, I really did enjoy this book.

Overall I'd give it - a strong 3.5 stars? Dammit Goodreads, just give us the half star option already.

2. Fun Home (April 20, 2013)

I had a day or so off, so I figured I'd read something that's been on my to-read shelf forever, and I'm really really glad I did! It's a graphic novel and a pretty quick read, but totally engaging and brilliant.

I find it quite difficult to properly review it, just because it's so personal? Naturally, being a memoir. And even though my life is in many respects very different from Alison Bechdel's, it felt very personal for me too. Maybe it was the subject matter, maybe the unusual way the story was told (probably both), but this little graphic novel made me very emotional. Gah, I'm just repeating myself like a twit, but it's a strangely hard piece to talk about. Suffice to say, I loved it a lot and would super recommend it.

Rating wise... 5 stars. I sort of reserve 5 stars for thing that just GRAB me, and this definitely did.

I have Fun Home on my TBR too! Your review definitely makes me want to read it even more now.

It's honestly so lovely and engaging, I couldn't recommend it enough! And such a fast read, too.

3. Hellebore & Rue: Tales of Queer Women and Magic (May 24, 2013)

(I know, don't even look at me. It's embarrassing that I'm only on my third book this year. On the bright side I'm about a third through Les Mis? Argh. Let's speak no more of it.)

This was another book that's been in on my TBR for ages, and I finally got off my ass and ordered it off Amazon (I opted for the paperback over the ebook this time mostly because of how pretty the cover is; there's no shame in appreciating beauty). It's pretty much what is says on the tin - an anthology of a dozen short stories about ladies who are into other ladies and are involved in various magical plots. That happens to be just the kind of thing I'm interested in, so I was looking forward to it. I picked it up, read the first story, and sadly didn't really like it - so I put it down for some ten days or so before picking it up again. Luckily, after the first story I started enjoying it much more, and ended up really liking it, for the most part!

I did a more detailed review with a mini-breakdown of each story here, if anyone's interested, so I won't go into that aspect of it too much. I will say that one of the things I really liked about the stories was that they really felt like stories about ladies with interesting magical lives who happened to be queer, rather than Stories About Being Queer. And if you've read more than a few stories about non-straight folks (as I have), you'll have noticed a lot of them are About Being Queer in a way that's really heavy and tiring, and I'm honestly pretty over that. So this was refreshing, on that level. Some people might think that it should've been more explicit on that front and that it was... chickening out? I don't know. I never really felt that - especially considering the fact that we're dealing with short stories, here.

Overall, I'm glad I picked it up, and after I got through that unfortunate first story, it was a really quick read. If you're looking for some fun fantasy literature that's a bit different from the regular straight fare, but also not, you know, massively depressing - I'd recommend it!

I'd give it something like a really solid 3.5 stars, which is a really good rating for an anthology!

4. Zeus Grants Stupid Wishes: A No-Bullshit Guide to World Mythology (June 2, 2013)

I think one of the reviews for this one described it as being kind of like listening to a vaguely drunk frat boy retelling myths at you, and that's very much what it feels like. That makes it sounds like I did't enjoy it at all, which isn't true - much like drunk people, it was kind of fun and kind of uncomfortable in roughly equal measure. In any case, it was a quick, light read that I'm not even gonna attempt to rate. (I'm really shit at ratings. Don't tell anyone.)

5. Why We Broke Up (June 9, 2013)

First and foremost, the language in this book is absolutely gorgeous. Just flowy and lyrical and wonderful, I wanted to bathe in it. It may skirt into pretentious territory for some, but I just loved it. If you're familiar with Daniel Handler's other stuff (say, the Series of Unfortunate Events books), this isn't gonna be surprise to you - he's a master at it.

Even if I'd ended up hating everything else about it, the language alone would've made it a worthy read - thankfully, I found a lot to like. The setting is very - well, it's very American High School (I swear high school doesn't work like this anywhere else), but the feelings and confusion and messes behind it felt very real and engaging. Somewhere halfway through the book I found myself wishing for a different outcome to the one I knew was coming - the one telegraphed by the title - and that's a pretty good sign of the story working on an emotional level, I think.

I will say, the one thing that bugged me about it was that it seemed to that thing which I hate so much - oh she's not like those other girls, she's not like the girls he always dates, she's different. It pops up a lot in YA and it's genuinely pretty harmful and I really can't stand it, and there was some of that here. I felt like it almost got torn down by the end? But I wanted more. I don't know, it bugged. It was still a pretty good book though, and I'm glad I read it.

6. Boy Meets Boy (June 16, 2013)

I'd sort of weirdly been - well, not avoiding, exactly, but not-reading David Levithan, even though his books (YA LGBTQ) are pretty squarely in my field of interest. I'm not sure why exactly it took me a while to get around to him (dubiousness at his much-lauded excellence, the fact that I'm kind of tired of so much LGBTQ representation just being gay men? the options are many), but this was a really cute book.

The setting is this delightful sort of borderline magical realism town where there's no prejudice and the boy scouts are super queer and the school's most fabulous drag queen is also the start quarterback (or maybe some other position - look, I'm not a sports expert), and genreally all sorts of fun and proud shenanigans go down (just that town, mind - the next town over is completely different). I've seen some (straight) reviewers express worry over whether this would actually be a positive thing for queer kids to be reading about, being so far removed from what reality tends to be like, but let me tell you - after reading the billionth sad queer book about sad queer kids who get kicked out of their homes and sent to ~straight camps~ and rejected by everyone - this book is very welcome.

(Look, I'm not saying the sad queer stories have no place in lit and shouldn't exist - they should, and they do portray something relevant. But I'm tired of so much queer lit being about sad coming out stories - there's more to LGBTQ folks than that! People go through shit and live their lives and it's not all tragic! Queer people face issues that are less overtly dramatic but can be just as harmful and painful and those deserve to be written about too! Queer people are more than their Coming Out Story, is what I'm sort of getting at, I guess. And also - queer folks have just as much right to their escapist fantasies as straight people. But I'll stop myself before this turns into a rant of queer lit rather than a book review.)

What really makes the book, though, is that it feels just perfectly teenage - sure, a little over the top, but really genuine with all those fluttery nervousness and little dramas. This is where you can sort of tell good YA from bad YA, I think - on whether it makes you buy all those whirlwindy messy emotions of adolescence, or it just makes you sort of roll your eyes at the drama of it all. This book really sells it, in a super sweet way that had me awww-ing through half the scenes (especially the ending - awww, you kids). It's really short as well, just around 200 pages, so it's just a perfect little heartwarming read. So, okay internet, you win - I'll probably be reading some more David Levithan. I'll even try to stop thinking his last name is actually Leviathan. (I'm sorry, David - I know you're not actually a huge sea monster.)

7. Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (June 18, 2013)

(Everybody and their pet goldfish has read this book by now, so I'll be short.)

I'm getting that this is a bit of a marmite, love it or hate it book, and apparently I'm firmly on the "love it" side. It's a really fun little mistery, but my favourite part was the sort of - interaction of (to use the book's own terms) old knowledge and new knowledge. Just looking at all the arguments that go on about paper books vs ereaders, it's such a fascinating, uniquely 21st century clash, and there's so much to explore and talk about, so much great stuff about how these things fit together. This book really tackles all of that, but in a very lighthearted, quirky way, and it totally won me over.

Also: there's secret centuries old cults and dramatic (yet practical!) dark robes. C'mon. Secret cults, guys.

8. Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist (June 30, 2013)

Harrumph. I cannot for the life of me decide whether I liked this book or not. At moments it was very funny and effortlessly quirky, but then it would just become super over the top and, hm - it would feel almost like it was trying very hard to be witty and different and odd, I don't know.

I read David Levithan's Boy Meets Boy just a few weeks before I read this one, but where that book made the expected teenage drama feel very genuine and relatable, here it just... had me rolling my eyes a lot of the time. Really mild spoiler (it's revealed in the first ten pages or so): (view spoiler)[Nick's angst over his breakup with Tris especially felt really overdramatic and hollow. I just wanted to shake him a bit. Come on, man. (hide spoiler)] I mean, I'm not really complaining about Nick and Norah being a tad obnoxious (although I mean, they were particularly obnoxious sometimes) - they're teenagers, how else are they gonna be - but in good YA all that... teenness is balanced out by the genuinely tumultous and messy emotions that come with that age, and the fact that you're dragged into it and convinced by it. (Look, okay, I know I'm only 20 and this sounds a bit ridiculous, but. Shhh.) That sort of fell flat for me here, which is why I don't think I enjoyed it as much as I wanted to. And I really did want to! And the bits that I liked I really did like, but it just... didn't come together quite right, in the end. I don't know.

(Also, fuck it, I was kind of annoyed by all the throwing around of skank/slut/whatever. Tris and Norah's relationship ended up being really interesting (more interesting to me than Nick and Norah's, to tell you the truth - I would read a whole book about Tris and Norah), but I could've done without Norah calling her a "lying skank" or whatever every twelve pages. I really hate those words used like that, and people need to quit doing it.)

9. St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves (July 13, 2013)

Okay, let's just get one thing out of the way: this book is odd. If you don't like stuff that gets described with words like "quirky" and "offbeat", you'll probably hate this one. Give it a pass. Now, for some bullet points. I'm tired.

What I liked:

- I really enjoyed Karen Russell's prose. It felt really smooth and flowy without coming off like you were reading a thesaurus, which is always a worry with more lyrical styles of writing, I think.

- The ideas behind a lot of the stories were genuinely really interesting and very original. Goggles that let you see ghosts underwater, a camp for kids with sleeping disorders, a girl dating a ghost via possession, the titular home for girls raised by wolves - all very intriguing concepts.

- The sort of loose connectedness of the stories? Outwardly they were mostly pretty separate, but characters from one story would be mentioned in passing in other stories, and it was implied the stories were (mostly) set in the same place, and I really enjoyed that.

The ehhhhhhh stuff:

- I lied, it's not "stuff", it's just the one thing: every story ending in medias res. Okay, look. I get that it was a deliberate choice, and in some stories it really works! Some of the stories felt more emotionally powerful for the open ending, and with some the ambiguousness felt appropriate, if not necessarily satisfying. But it didn't always work (a few stories just left me really irritated more than anything else), and frankly, after reading ten stories in a row that did the exact same thing on that front, it got pretty old. I wish she'd changed it up a bit.

That being said, the stories I liked, I really did like - the titular "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves" definitely being my favourite. So I'll definitely be giving Karen Russell another chance. We'll see how it goes.