♡ The Cozy Book Nook ♡ discussion

Hello and welcome to my nook! :)

I'll mostly be using this to track my reading and post thoughts and art for whatever book I currently have on the go, but feel free to pop in and chat! I'd love to get your recommendations and get to know you.

Edit: For collection of best opening lines, comment 102

My physical TBR on joining this group:
📚 107 books

We're aiming for a downward trajectory! It will be super interesting to see this time next year how much I've managed to get it down.

Hi Beth! Congrats on your nook:) Wow, that is a great goal! My TBR has only been growing XD What book are reading now?

Thanks Catherine! It's so hard to walk past bookshops rather than into them! It's the danger of books, they're just so tempting...

Fiction-wise I'm reading All the Seas of the World, which is the latest book from my favourite author. Not my favourite of his but still stunningly written and with some great characters. It's a fantasy world but very heavily based on the Mediterranean around the time of the fall of Constantinople, with lots of reflections on the way small decisions can shape world history.

Then my current non-fiction is on the archaeology of counter-witchcraft. It's super interesting. Things like protective markings and shoes hidden in chimneys that people thought would protect them from being cursed by witches, and all the places they have been found around the UK.

How about you, what are you reading?

Haha, that's so true XD

Cool! I don't think I've heard of Guy Gavriel Kay before, but I do love fantasy & history, so I'll definitely check him out. What's your favorite book of his?

Wow, huh. That's a very niche book topic- how'd you find it?

To be honest, I'm in a very long reading slump, besides reading my Bible. Fiction-wise I've been reading 1984 and The Hobbit, and otherwise I've been reading The Locust Effect: Why the End of Poverty Requires the End of Violence. I rarely find time to read these books, but I do enjoy them when I do get to them:)

Ahh I hope you do check him out! My first and still my favourite of his is Tigana. It's a chonky book but I have no words for how much I love it.

Haha yeah, I read some very niche books! This one was actually a present from my dad who knows I'm interested in folklore and traditions, but I find a lot of my non-fiction by looking in the indexes of other books I have found interesting.

Reading slumps are the worst, I'm so sorry to hear that. I definitely believe that things are meant to happen when they happen, though, and it might be that your energies are supposed to be directed elsewhere at the moment. You'll come back to it when the time is right <3

1984 and The Hobbit are both brilliant books! Very different though :D The Locus Effect sounds fascinating.

Planning to finish All the Seas of the World tonight. I have about 70 pages to go.

The end of a book is always a tense moment - both needing it to be good and, with Kay, fearing the heartbreak that often comes.

Currently reading The Illearth War, book 2 in the Thomas Covenant series.

Thomas isn't getting any more likeable. I'm so surprised Mhoram doesn't just punch him in the face. Like, that guy's patience is unbelievable.

Covenant, dude, you're in a secondary world where all your personal problems are solved. Do you know how many people would kill for that chance? No need to be rude about it.

Beth wrote: "Ahh I hope you do check him out! My first and still my favourite of his is Tigana. It's a chonky book but I have no words for how much I love it.

Haha yeah, I read some very niche b..."

Cool, thanks for the rec! I'll check it out, it looks interesting:)

Awesome! That's so thoughtful of your dad. I'm not great at giving gifts; it's something I definitely need to work on :(

Thank you! I believe that as well. Yes, I can't wait to really get back into reading soon/one day ;)

They are! I actually was able to read some of The Hobbit this past week. Bilbo is such an endearing character. Have you read other books by George Orwell or JRR Tolkien?

What did you think of the end of All the Seas of the World- was the ending satisfactory? The end of the book has so much effect on how I view the book as a whole.

Haha yeah, dislikeable characters are hard to tolerate XD

Gifts are so tricky. I like giving them when I know the person is going to love them but trying to find something when you feel like you have to is always hard. But I also think most people just appreciate that you have thought of them, so it doesn't matter so much about finding the perfect thing.

I've read a couple more by Orwell (Animal Farm and Down and Out in Paris and London) and I really like the way he writes. 1984 is still the best though. I think by this point I've read everything Middle Earth-related that has been published, plus grammars of Tolkien's made up languages XD
How about you? Have you read any others?

The ending of All The Seas of The World was beautiful - exactly as I have come to expect from Kay. I still need to write my review. For some reason it's harder for books I love than books I have issues with! You're so right about endings being important. Best Ending is actually one of my categories for my little book awards I do each year. I agree, it makes such a difference to the way you remember the book.

Thoughts on The Illearth War, at just short of the halfway point:



I think I'm actually enjoying this more than the first book. Perhaps because a lot of the introduction to the world was done in book one (and there are some heavy lore drops in this series) and now we can just get on with the story. Definitely because Covenant is showing some development. He's still an arse but there are little glimmers of hope for him.

I'm finding it very interesting the way Donaldson writes him. He's so not a hero. His decisions are still more about self-preservation than anything else. But whereas in the last book he spends all his time being contrary and uncooperative, now there are moments where you can see he wants to be a better person but doesn't know how. He's spent so long convincing himself that the world hates him that now he is unable to either accept overtures of friendship or know how to respond. And he's starting to accept the Land. Even though he tells himself he doesn't. I still don't forgive him - and won't ever - but he's starting to become slightly more tolerable.

There are some deeper explorations of free will and trust and duty going on here too, especially with the introduction of Hile Troy. He's such an obvious foil for Covenant but so necessary to force Covenant to face all the thoughts he doesn't want to. And with Troy being from Covenant's world he can do it in a way that the inhabitants of the Land never could. He doesn't have that same almost naive pacifism that they have. He can curse and argue and express dislike in a way that Mhoram or Elena are entirely incapable of. And still he has his own weaknesses and challenges. I'm enjoying that we are starting to get his POV, and Mhoram's too - a nice break from being in Covenant's angsty head.

If nothing else, I am enjoying this series for how much it's making me think. So much analysis I can get out of it and book analysis is my happy place :)

Hollywood presents an image of "strong female characters" (a term I really don't like but that's a rant for another day) who all look like Wonder Woman, who all have this kind of "don't need no man" feisty attitude and reject female-coded traits, who still look like models while elegantly fighting battles with perfect hair.

If you want to see a really strong woman, look at Elena. How much stronger is it to forgive Covenant for everything he did? How much stronger to lead the armies of good into a fight in which they are hopelessly outmatched and to do it with such conviction that she inspires them with faith? How much stronger to do a duty that demands so much of her and never once complain, and still be able to smile through it? We need more Elenas in fantasy - in fiction in general.

Soooo uhh... Elena kinda got problematic. (view spoiler)[Even skipping over the whole incestuous infatuation thing, the second she started getting all lovey over Covenant, all of that strength and determination thing that I loved got nerfed. And then she made a stupid mistake and died. (hide spoiler)] There are a lot of interesting thoughts to unpick here about free will and the way Foul uses people's hopes and desires against them, but mostly I'm disappointed that a brilliant female character in fantasy fell into the category that so many do.




One author who won't let that happen is Claire North. I'm currently reading Ithaca (indulging the Odyssey obsession that is all I can think about at the moment) and it is a book full of so much rage. Hera's voice is cynical, biting, indignant at the lot of women in Ancient Greece - and you can't help but feel in the modern world too. I do wonder if the feminist fury pushes too far in the other direction, but it certainly makes a point.

Oof so Ithaca was a lot. I ended up crying over (view spoiler)[Clytemnestra (hide spoiler)] of all people! Never thought that would happen.

My Odyssey fixation isn't showing signs of letting up any time soon so straight on to House of Odysseus!

Things I am adoring in the Songs of Penelope trilogy:

Penelope's quiet bravery. Quiet bravery is something that always gets me. Like the muscled hero who stands up to whole armies is great and all, but is it achievable? Much more powerful is the bravery to speak up when something isn't right, to support people who need it, to find the strength to do your duty. And in those respects Penelope's bravery is staggering.

Also the way Menelaus' power is written. North introduces him off-page and the way characters think of him or react to him already forms an impression. We know this guy is powerful, we know he's a threat. Then you have the moment he turns up in the plot, drawn out just enough to build tension. Then the short sentences. Single line paragraphs that are just his name.
Menelaus.
There he is.
Like, that makes a statement. You have all the deliberate power signalling with the richness of his fleet, the drummers, the awning and robe from ransacked Troy, bringing Helen (more thoughts on that needed). And then you have the way he actually behaves: charismatic, genial, bold; unafraid to walk straight up and hug Penelope even though no man has touched her for nearly 20 years, unafraid that there will be any implications from that - and he uses touch as control, steering people physically while pretending to be friendly; every word he says seems like the greatest assurance of friendship and it's not like there are double meanings, it's so much more subtle than that. He's so nice that it drives you insane, just waiting for the blow to fall. This is incredible writing.

April Wrap-up!

Carrying this over from my previous group because it was always good fun :)


Physical TBR
📚 102/111


What I read in April
Books:


Short stories:



Book of the month

⭐⭐⭐⭐
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The feminist retelling of Penelope's side of the Odyssey that I didn't know I needed. Told with so much anger but also so much compassion, and Claire North has always been so good at seeing into her characters' hearts. Maybe a little too much effort needed to find story where the original source material has so little, but well grounded in Greek myth and never dull. I cried. No better recommendation of a book than that.


Challenge progress
📚 TBR Cleanup: 10/20
📚 BOTM authors: 2/11
📚 SFF combat: 10/24


May reading goals
📖 Get down under 100 books on physical TBR (so close now!)
📖 Participate in Malazan buddy read
📖 Read at least one more BOTM author

So thinking about Helen...

- Book one was from Hera's perspective and Clytemnestra was special to Hera - perspective of the narration saying something about the shape of the plot.
- Book two is narrated by Aphrodite which, based on the previous model, suggests Helen is going to be somehow integral here.
- (Two princesses of Sparta in the first two books - does that mean book 3 will be Penelope-centric? Isn't the series as a whole supposed to be? Which goddess will narrate?)
- So far Helen seems vapid and twittery but no one in this series is what they seem, waiting for more revelations.
- Why is Helen on Ithaca?
- Not a society in which most women have freedom of movement so it must be Menelaus' decision to bring her. But is Menelaus the sort of man to allow his wife freedoms after the whole Paris issue? What is he saying by bringing her?
- Either Helen has a secret mission which has yet to be revealed...
- ... Or it's more power signalling? "Look at the control I have over my wife - she has to come when I tell her to"? Or "Let's contrast Penelope and Helen - make Penelope feel second best"? Or something completely different?
- And how does all of this tie in with the subplot of Elektra and Orestes? We know Menelaus' goal but what is Helen's? Is she even operating under her own agency?

Another three quarters(ish) of the book to go so much more no doubt to be revealed but these are just some initial thoughts.

Beth wrote: "Gifts are so tricky. I like giving them when I know the person is going to love them but trying to find something when you feel like you have to is always hard. But I also think most people just ap..."

They are!! I guess it would help if I practiced more 😅😬 Thank you for the encouragement :)

Oh, I don't think I've heard of Down & Out in Paris & London! Animal Farm is definitely on my to read, too. That's so cool! Yeah, Tolkien's languages are really fascinating. I haven't read any other books of Tolkien's, but the LOTR movies are among some of my favorite movies.

Awesome! Haha, that kind of makes sense that it's harder to write reviews for books you love- there's something inexplicable about good books that can be hard to put into words. Personal book awards, what a great idea! What other categories do you have?

Beth wrote: "Thoughts on The Illearth War, at just short of the halfway point:



I think I'm actually enjoying this more than the first book. Perhaps because a lot of the introduction to the worl..."

"Glimmers of hope for him" XD

Oh, I love that 😍 Thinking about those sorts of topics and discussing them is my favorite "type" of conversation.

It sounds like the author does a really nice job creating realistic and distinct characters. I admire that about authors so much. So cool :)

Beth wrote: "Hollywood presents an image of "strong female characters" (a term I really don't like but that's a rant for another day) who all look like Wonder Woman, who all have this kind of "don't need no man..."

If you're ever up for it, I'm curious as to why you don't like the term "strong female characters" :) HAHA yes, warrior model does very much sound like Wonder Woman.

Aw, I love that. Yeah, to me, a person of strong character is so much more valuable than warrior models. Elena does sound inspiring- I love her name, too.

Oo I'm a big fan of Greek Mythology :0 Yess, quiet bravery! That's really cool, about Menelaus. Thanks for sharing!

I love your April wrap up and your thoughts about Helen. Do you annotate your books?

Catherine wrote: "Personal book awards, what a great idea! What other categories do you have?"

Honestly it's kinda grown to a ridiculous number. I get carried away haha. But this is the current list:

Best book
Best debut
Best non-fic
Best short story
Best new-to-me author
Best cover
Best opening line
Best ending
Biggest surprise
Most amusing
Most heartbreaking
Best worldbuilding
Best map
Best prose
Best single passage/line
Best magic
Best character
Best supporting character
Best villain
Best character relationship
Best character description

Catherine wrote: "Oh, I love that 😍 Thinking about those sorts of topics and discussing them is my favorite "type" of conversation."

Mine tooooo! Literally any time you want to analyse books with (or even at) me, I will be delighted!

Catherine wrote: "If you're ever up for it, I'm curious as to why you don't like the term "strong female characters" :)"

OK so this might get looong if I go into it in depth, but here we go. (I'll put it under a spoiler tag to make it easier to scroll through posts.)

(view spoiler)[Firstly, if we are talking about the importance of including "strong female characters" it suggests that there is still a bias we are working to overcome. In the same way that if you need to describe yourself as a feminist it means that women still don't have equality. Otherwise why would we need a word for it? If we're talking about a "strong female character" it means that we are still seeing gender as a defining trait. The real important thing is to write characters who are people and for that it doesn't matter if they're male, female, non-binary, gender fluid, animals, purple aliens from Alpha Centauri, whatever. When people talk about a book or a film having a "strong female character", what they mean is a character who is deliberately not a man. Could have been, but the creator(s) of the fiction decided to show their inclusivity and modern attitudes by graciously allowing the character to be a woman.

Then there's the fact that a "strong female character" is only ever one specific type of character. It's your Wonder Woman, your feisty character who fights and doesn't listen to authority and girlbosses her way through the world. That overlooks two very important things.

Number one, that there are so many different sorts of strength. Strength isn't just an ability to use weapons and blaze your way through the world. Strength isn't just doing the things we expect a male hero to do. Everyone has their own pains and fears and trials and anyone who stands up to those is showing strength. A "strong female character", when discussed by reviewers and critics, has to reject all female-coded activities and conform to patriarchal ideas of what strength means - in other words a woman can only be strong by being more like a man.

Number two, it reinforces harmful ideas that there is only one kind of masculine strength. Again, strength comes in all shapes and forms. You don't have to be an alpha male to be strong. There are so many boys growing up without good role models of other kinds of strong men, who suffer with all sorts of mental health problems that they don't feel able to discuss because it's not "manly". When we talk about "strong female characters" and mean what Hollywood means, we are telling those boys that even women think that's what strength means. It's no wonder we have the problems with misogyny and sexism that we see in the world when even our fiction reinforces that imbalance.

"Strong female character" should be such a positive term but instead it's patronising ("look, she's trying to be a man"), limiting ("this is the only definition of strength") and ultimately redundant (everyone who doesn't succumb to all the horrible things in the world is strong, regardless of gender, regardless of the trial). (hide spoiler)]

Catherine wrote: "Oo I'm a big fan of Greek Mythology :0 Yess, quiet bravery! That's really cool, about Menelaus. Thanks for sharing!

I love your April wrap up and your thoughts about Helen. Do you annotate your books?"

Ahhh amazing! I'm down such a Greek mythology rabbit hole at the moment. Have you listened to EPIC: The Musical? If not I cannot recommend it enough!

I don't annotate my books directly (I'm one of those people who won't even let there be creases in the spine) but I do stick page markers everywhere and write down quotes and reflections and bore my friends to death talking about them 😆 I find other people's annotations interesting though and there's something really cool about picking up a second-hand book that someone has clearly had that relationship with, seeing how much they have clearly loved it and interacted with it. Do you annotate yours?

I have bitten the bullet and finally taken on the epic that is Malazan Book of The Fallen.

I have been warned that this is a somewhat impenetrable series. At about 200 pages in I am not completely lost but I am beginning to see what folks mean. We've just had a location shift and - I think? - a time shift, but Darujhistan's year dating system seems completely different from the Malazan system so I have no idea if we're before or after the events of part 1. (From context, I think after?)

I like the writing so far. It's very grim but Erikson picks out just the right details to make it immersive without burdening us with too much information. Paran, Tattersail and Whiskeyjack seem like decent sorts, though I get the impression this is a series that focuses more on plot than character.

I like the little hints we have so far of a grand game going on between gods, in which people seem to be the playing pieces. There are a lot of terms being thrown around without explanation so I very much feel I'm just clinging on to understanding. But I have the good sort of questions - the 'how is this going to play out' questions - and that will keep me reading.

It's slow and heavy going so I reserve judgement for the time being.

May Wrap-up!

May has been a lovely reading month. It's finally warm enough to read outside in the evenings and though I haven't taken as much advantage of that as I possibly could, there are still warm days and long evenings to come. I'm just back from a week away in Sweden and as well as having a wonderful holiday I managed to get though most of Gardens of the Moon - hopefully finishing that tonight! So 6 (and a bit!) books finished this month, and though I bought lots more in Sweden, a little tweaking of my rules means that my physical TBR still isn't looking too scary. I have a couple of personal challenges on the go and IF I succeed until the end of June and IF I get through a few more books, then I can allow myself to buy a couple that I really want to read :)


Physical TBR
📚 101/111
(OK so it should be lower but it's so hard to get Swedish books in the UK now that I had to take advantage of the opportunity and get a few more when I was there...)


What I read in May



Book of the month

⭐⭐⭐⭐
I fell head-over-heels for this book. And OK, admittedly most of that was for Orestes - and you could argue that Orestes has very little to do with Penelope in pure Odyssey terms. But there's so little story to get from Penelope that I'm willing to forgive some artistic license, especially when it's done this well. North's writing is, as ever, stunning. She sees right into the heart of people's secret pain and lays it out excoriatingly. I loved the cat-and-mouse element of Menelaus coming to Ithaca and the incredible power signalling in the way his character was handled. Yes, the Miss Marple elements maybe didn't feel very authentic and I find it hard to believe that a secret army of women could exist in the kind of oppressive society North has constructed, but to be honest I am so happy to overlook minor quibbles when a book is this good.


Challenge progress
📚 TBR Cleanup: 10/20
📚 BOTM authors: 3/11
📚 SFF combat: 10/24
(Not much progress this month but some more to add soon :) )


May reading goals
✔️ Get down under 100 books on physical TBR (I did but then I went over again, oops! June will be better!)
✔️ Participate in Malazan buddy read
✔️ Read at least one more BOTM author


June reading goals
📖 Get down under 95 (!!!) books on physical TBR
📖 Read at least one more BOTM author
📖 Take advantage of the summer weather and read outside more!


I hope you have all had a wonderful May and I wish you happy summery (or wintery if you're in the southern hemisphere!) reading in June <3

Beth wrote: "Catherine wrote: "Personal book awards, what a great idea! What other categories do you have?"

Honestly it's kinda grown to a ridiculous number. I get carried away haha. But this is the current li..."

Very cool! That is a very thoughtful list. I would be very interested to see which books end up winning at the end of the year :)

Beth wrote: "Catherine wrote: "Oh, I love that 😍 Thinking about those sorts of topics and discussing them is my favorite "type" of conversation."

Mine tooooo! Literally any time you want to analyse books with ..."

Aw, thank you!!

Beth wrote: "Catherine wrote: "If you're ever up for it, I'm curious as to why you don't like the term "strong female characters" :)"

OK so this might get looong if I go into it in depth, but here we go. (I'll..."

That is such an interesting perspective that I've never considered! I really appreciate your depth and clarity of thought.

Your first paragraph was especially thought provoking. With all due respect, I still think that women aren't treated with equality in certain places/situations; however, I also agree that inclusion is easily overemphasized in our culture. I completely agree with your last paragraphs, and I think you put it so well.

Thank you for taking the time to share! I always delight in exploring different views and figuring out what I believe about these sorts of things :)

Beth wrote: "Catherine wrote: "Oo I'm a big fan of Greek Mythology :0 Yess, quiet bravery! That's really cool, about Menelaus. Thanks for sharing!

I love your April wrap up and your thoughts about Helen. Do yo..."

Oh, quite a few people have recommended EPIC, but I haven't listened to it yet! I'll listen to it this weekend. Musicals are another thing I adore, though it takes me a while to get into one.

Haha, nice! There is something so satisfying about keeping a book in its prime condition. So true; you can learn so much about a person from their annotations. I'm also very careful with my books, but I like to annotate my Bible if I learn something about a passage that I want to remember.

Beth wrote: "

I have bitten the bullet and finally taken on the epic that is Malazan Book of The Fallen.

I have been warned that this is a somewhat impenetrable series. At about 200 pages in I am not complete..."

Woo hoo, congrats!! That does seem like an impenetrable series :0 That's crazzy- I'm really impressed that you have the patience and grit to power through a series like that. I hope it's rewarding!

That's great, that you enjoy the writing and plot! Let me know you how like the rest of the series!

Beth wrote: "

May Wrap-up!

May has been a lovely reading month. It's finally warm enough to read outside in the evenings and though I haven't taken as much advantage of that as I possibly could, there are sti..."

(What a beautiful picture! It reminds me of the prettiest cherry blossoms where I live that bloom for a couple of weeks at the beginning of the spring.)

Warm evenings are the best :) Sweden, so cool! Sweden has such stunning scenery. Did you eat any good chocolate there? XD Nice!

Great goals, good luck! Happy reading in June for you as well! :D

Catherine wrote: "Your first paragraph was especially thought provoking. With all due respect, I still think that women aren't treated with equality in certain places/situations; however, I also agree that inclusion is easily overemphasized in our culture."

You're absolutely right, it's still a battle. This is why it's so fascinating to see female characters written well, as characters and not 'just' women.

Catherine wrote: "So true; you can learn so much about a person from their annotations. I'm also very careful with my books, but I like to annotate my Bible if I learn something about a passage that I want to remember."

I'm so interested by the way people annotate. Do you have a system? Pencil/sticky notes etc.?

Catherine wrote: "Sweden, so cool! Sweden has such stunning scenery. Did you eat any good chocolate there? XD Nice!"

Not so much chocolate (dairy and I don't get on very well ;__; ) but lots of amazing Swedish cakes and they now have cinnamon bun flavoured icecream!!! Worth doing battle with dairy for that ^_^

So I finished Gardens of the Moon - review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

The TL;DR is that it was epic, complex, mature (sometimes trying a little too hard to be mature), with incredible imagination and imagery. There were a few things that didn't work for me (the dialogue, oh goodness it was bad) and it was definitely confusing at times, but I am intrigued enough to read on.

I need to rave about The Angel's Share.

You can read the whole short story here: https://reactormag.com/the-angels-sha...

Margaret Mead's house is infested by angels. But not the pretty kind. These are the multi-eyed, multi-winged nightmare variety. And they do answer prayers, but they also feed on suffering.

This story is so emotionally complex. Cahill drip-feeds information carefully, subtly, transforming humour into warning into horror. Sorrow and empathy bleed off the page. There are many levels of understanding here: how suffering creates more suffering, how hurt causes others to hurt, in both the intransitive and transitive sense.

The simple action of the plot is a story we have seen before, but rather than feel worn it feels inevitable: necessary and recognisable steps on a path to healing. The deceptively simple prose is a vehicle for emotions that are anything but simple, human feeling in all its messy, indefinable illogic. But it makes sense. It makes a frightening kind of sense that I think will, on some level, affect every reader.

I am seeing a pattern at the moment in spec fic. There are always patterns. There has been the epic and the grimdark and the edging towards cosy. And now we are getting to the point of realising the crisis point that humanity has reached. We are seeing the stories telling the truth that what we need now - more than any advances, technologies, things - is compassion. This is an important revelation. Vital. And one that this story so perfectly explores.

Sabotage! Such well-meaning sabotage!

I forgot that birthdays mean gifts, and of course when people know you like books...

So we're back up to 101 and that reading goal is catapulted out of the window with glass-smashing force.

I'm trying. I really am. This hobby is not supposed to cause stress and gratitude is not meant to be subsumed by weariness but that's where we are right now.

Finished The Angel's Game without really having much to say about it. I feel like it lost itself in popularism a bit towards the end but that might have been deliberate, playing on the whole Grand Guignol theme. Otherwise elegant prose, excellent translation, and a nice blend of literary fiction and magical realism.


(I was looking for art of Sparhawk and found this Japanese cover of The Diamond Throne - he's so pretty!)

Now back to Eddings. And I know Eddings is a problematic author. I've made my peace with that. I know there are many opinions and I completely respect them all, but for me I believe that it is possible to separate artist and art (again, a discussion for another day).

The first Eddings series I read was the Elenium and I fell in love with Sparhawk. So when I found the Tamuli, I of course leapt at it.

I've read about 12 other Eddings books in the intervening span of years. They're comforting for me: easy to read, classic fantasy, and you don't need to stress because the heroes are obviously going to win and the authors won't let anything really bad happen in the meantime. Kind of like cosy before cosy was a subgenre.

The writing is kinda lazy. The same formulae appearing again and again across different books, planet-of-hats races and cultures, dialogue that would possibly work fine in film but reads weirdly in literature, very dated concepts of married life (that crop up often enough that I wonder what his own marriage was like). It's interesting the way I view Sparhawk differently now having had prolonged experience of other Eddings characters.

But there are other things I love. The little satires on past societies, the plays on medieval romances, the lightheartedness, even the way mentioning the weather makes it instantly more vivid. I'm looking forward to seeing where this story goes, spending more time with Sparhawk and watching him do his thing and be all heroic.

Likely more observations to come - even if Eddings' career was writing the same book 20 times.

Things Eddings does not do well: When a character says something funny, telling us that it is supposed to be funny.

Things Eddings does incredibly well: Creating embedded myths told in perfect Victorian-gentleman-translating-Norse-saga style. I can't get enough of it.

Happy belated Birthday! (If I read that post correctly)
I am in awe of you when it comes to tackling fantasy - I think you simply read on another level in that genre (compared to me, I mean). I am far too intimidated by series like Malazan Book of the Fallen. All the more interesting to read your thoughts about books I might never read haha! "Unfortunately" (not really, of course) you almost always manage to mention something that will intrigue me as well, "Creating embedded myths told in perfect Victorian-gentleman-translating-Norse-saga style" sound great for example - but who am I kidding, I am not reading much at the moment, no need to add to tbrs.
Still super nice to stop by here and read your thoughts and observations about the books you read.
I hope you're having a wonderful summer, Beth!

Hey Rapunzel! Thank you :) How are you doing? I hope you're having a wonderful summer too <3

Ahh no don't be in awe of me! The only reason I tackle huge fantasy books is because I have exactly the same reaction as you to other people's thoughts and updates and I don't want to miss out haha. And my TBR keeps getting longer and longer because there are too many that sound interesting... 😅

But I figure there's always something worth praising in any book and one of the best things about reading is getting to find those things.

June Wrap-up!

June has been a weird reading month. Sometimes it's felt like I'm crawling through books, other days I read a whole (admittedly short) book in one sitting. It's always weird at this time of year. It seems like I'm constantly busy and finding time to sit down and just read is hard. But the long warm days mean I can spend evenings out by the lake, just me and my book, watching the sky change colour and the hectic day settle down.


Physical TBR
📚 98/111
We're under 100, friends! Not much under, but under. Now I am allowed to buy books again - though never so many that we top 100 unread again. I already have my list... 😅


What I read in June
Books:


Short stories:



Book of The Month

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
One of those books you have to sit and devour in a single sitting and cry through every page. The way Porter portrays loss in this book is stunning. The writing is a postmodern masterpiece that is almost more poetry than prose. Maybe confusing at times but that just adds to the sense of dislocation that the loss of a wife and mother can cause. I will be recommending this to almost everyone.


Challenge progress
📚 TBR Cleanup: 12/20
📚 BOTM authors: 4/11
📚 SFF combat: 10/24


June reading goals
❌ Get down under 95 (!!!) books on physical TBR
(let's be honest, it was ambitious - but 98 isn't bad)
✔️ Read at least one more BOTM author
✔️ Take advantage of the summer weather and read outside more!


July reading goals
📖 This time we'll do it - get under 95 books on physical TBR!
📖 Buy books for BOTM challenge
📖 Make progress on TBR Cleanup challenge
📖 Read outside more! (Find a new reading spot?)


Please stay cool and safe in this heat, friends. I wish you the very best of reading months, with lots of time to relax and take it slowly ❤️

I've started The Coming of Night - can't remember where I picked this up but it was years ago and appears to be a self-pub (or, at least, it says it's published by a company called Browncoat Books but a search for the publisher turns up exactly zero results on Google so I dunno). It could definitely have done with a proofreader. Or even just another once through to pick up misspelled words and missing punctuation.

But I'm prepared to overlook that because I'm having fun so far. The concept feels delightfully old-school fantasy: mysterious disease turns any magic-users into some sort of werewolf thing called a Possessed; main character, a teenage girl from an insignificant village, discovers she has a unique power and it might be linked to solving the problem. Calling it now, I'm pretty sure she's going to end up finding a mentor in the archmage guy from the prologue who took himself away from society when the plague broke out.

This format gets a lot of bad press in modern fantasy - people seem pretty done with the chosen one trope, especially when the chosen one is a farmboy (or village girl) - but it always feels comforting to me. This was the fantasy I grew up on and dammit if I don't want some classic heroism now and then.

So far enjoying the threat of the Possessed (fast, strong, deadly, nigh unkillable - like the worst kind of zombies) and Janaway is doing a good job of teasing Enna's power (that was completely spoilt by the blurb but nevermind). The exposition is a little clunky ("it felt like this, as it usually did"; "I will call out the names, since I know them all") but I'm willing to give it time and see where it goes.

Totally called it. Had a montage. Now we just need a tragic mentor death to set Enna off on her new adventures.

Enna is quite a fun main character. She's supposed to be 13 and is definitely written older, but I'm liking her personality: over-courageous and headstrong but not in an annoying way. She's got all the energy she needs to drive her own story.

Very few points for originality in this book but I'm having a really good time with it. It reminds me of all the fantasy I read growing up and that's a good thing.

Only a few pages of The Coming of Night to go, hoping to finish tonight.

I totally called the (view spoiler)[mentor death (hide spoiler)]. Now, as had to happen, Enna is travelling with the Hunter Band and the grim and gritty soldiers are warming to the teenage girl. Some TLOU vibes going on. I really like the down-to-earth Duke. Guessing we've got a big battle still to go and maybe one more big secret to uncover. Possibly a(nother) noble sacrifice.

Some criticisms but they're mostly to do with the fact this is very clearly a debut novel - much could be tweaked and improved over the course of a career.

Sometimes when you have no expectations, a book is a lot more enjoyable. You judge it on a different level. I probably won't read the rest of the series but this has been fun.

Haha, that went almost exactly as I predicted. Fun book.

For my next book it was a toss up between continuing with teenage melodrama (Mortal Instruments) or grown-up melodrama (Thomas Covenant). It takes a lot to deal with Covenant, so City of Glass it is.

31 pages in, we've already had about three disagreements and one fight. About what I expected really... XD

Beth wrote: "Catherine wrote: "Your first paragraph was especially thought provoking. With all due respect, I still think that women aren't treated with equality in certain places/situations; however, I also ag..."

So true :) I was just listening to a talk about different definitions of what courage is. Most of the time, it said, the world relies on mustering up courage from the inside, but that courage doesn't always look like that.