Reading Roundup!

I don't spend much time anywhere online anymore besides scrolling mindlessly through IG when I should be writing. Executive Freeze or whatever it's called is a real.

This year, I've been reading small bites. Aiming to hit that 20 book goal by year's end, but also unwilling to expend the energy on things that are calorie lite. They have their place and sometimes they hit the spot, but this year I've been ... not interested. But here are the things that I have read this year! And mostly loved! Kelley Armstrong's Hemlock Island was the only flat out no. I did speed my way through the audiobook, but I finished it and it was ... insane and just ... No.

Everything else I read this year! Top Notch, Chef's Kiss. LOVED!!!

(sorted most recent at the top)

15 A Song for Quiet - Cassandra Khaw
14 We Used to Live Here - Marcus Kliewer
13 Don't Fear the Reaper - Stephen Graham Jones
12 What Moves the Dead - T. Kingfisher
11 Hide - Kiersten White
10 The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue - V.E. Schwab
9 Wild and Precious: A Celebration of Mary Oliver - various
8 Six-Gun Snow White - Cathyrenne Valente
7 Hemlock Island - Kelley Armstrong
6 The Spite House - Johnny Compton
5 Book of Night - Holly Black
4 Come Tumbling Down - Seanan McGuire
3 The Ballad of Black Tom - Victor LaValle
2 Beneath the Sugar Sky - Seanan McGuire
1 Hogfather - Terry Pratchett

DNF'd:
* The Parable of the Sower - Octavia Butler
* House of the Sleeping Beauties - Yasunari Kawabata

On the List of Things with a Bookmark in Them:
* The Searcher - Tana French
* Salem's Lot - Stephen King (goal is to finish this for October)
* Perdido Street Station - China Mieville
* A Song of Fire and Ice - George R.R. Martin
* Strange the Dreamer - Laini Taylor
* The Foretelling - Alice Hoffman

Book: A Song for Quiet by Cassandra Khaw

Cassandra Khaw kills me every time. A Song for Quiet is 100 pages of beautiful, bitter music vacillating between hope and despair. Khaw is Asian American and lovingly draws a careful portrait of the rawness of real life in Jim Crow America. If you're nervous about writing someone else's experience, I think this is a great example of how to truthfully and respectfully do that. Khaw is always a poet. She creates visceral experiences full of texture and emotion. A Song for Quiet is a jazz riff. It's tense, horrific, and grieves for human kind. If you've gone on to read Victor LaValle's The Ballad of Black Tom, I think you'll love this!