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A Guide to Books for Completing Her Grace’s 2024 Reading Challenge

kristen2 Comments

Since I decided to make my own reading challenge for 2024, I figured it is a good idea to figure out which books I might want to use to complete the tasks. I’m going to see how many of my own TBR books I can use, first, and how many I can do with women/LGBTQ+/BIPOC authors for as many as I can. Below are some suggestions for each task. Double-dipping is totally allowed!

Also, as I researched for books to complete these tasks, I learned that I need better definitions for some things, or that some others could be worded differently, or be defined in a broader way. Sorry about that! I will try to do better for next year’s tasks.

If you have any suggestions for any of the tasks, please share them in the comments! I love book recs!

A title longer than 6 words: The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (Catherynne Valente)
Written by an author with your initials: Katherine Mansfield for me
The MC is an animal: The Bees (Laline Paull) or Hollow Kingdom (Kira Jane Buxton)
Takes place underwater: The Mountain in the Sea (Ray Nayler), Startide Rising (David Brin), A Darkling Sea (James L. Cambias)
Doesn’t have the letter “e” in the title: Hollow Kingdom (Kira Jane Buxton) or Loki’s Ring or any number of others on my list, I reckon. Or Gadsby by Ernest Vincent Wright if you want to read an entire book that doesn’t have an E anywhere.
By or about being a refugee: Downbelow Station (C.J. Cherryh), Girl at War (Sarah Novic), The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (Michael Chabon), or American Dirt (Jeanine Cummins)
In translation: The Little Paris Bookshop (Nina George), The Three-Body Problem (Cixin Liu), Walking Practice (Dolki Min)
A cover featuring neon colors: The Ultimate Cyberpunk Anthology
The MC is a non-human entity (robot, alien, etc.): Murderbot! I plan to read the whole series this year. Other options are The Last Unicorn (Peter Beagle) or The Bees (Laline Paull).
Set in space: Since I mainly read sci-fi, any number of books will complete this task. The first one that comes to mind is Downbelow Station by C.J. Cherryh. Another option is The Best of All Possible Worlds (Karen Lord).
Written by an Indigenous/Native American/First Nations author: Braiding Sweetgrass (Robin Wall Kimmerer), Walking the Clouds (ed. Grace L. Dillon), or anything by Stephen Graham Jones.
An anthology: Walking the Clouds or The Ultimate Cyberpunk Anthology
Released in your birth month: March: Loki’s Ring (Stina Leicht), Infinity Gate (M.R. Carey), The Mimicking of Known Successes (Malka Older), Walking Practice (Dolki Min), A House with Good Bones (T. Kingfisher)

The title is a question: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (PKD) or How Long ‘Til Black Future Month? (NK Jemisin)
The MC or author is transgendered: Light from Uncommon Stars (Ryka Aoki), Pet (Akwaeki Emezi), The Memory Librarian (Janelle Monae), or Bang Bang Boddhisattva (Aubrey Wood)
The weather plays a significant role: The Maddaddam trilogy (Margaret Atwood), Parable of the Sower (Octavia Butler), The Broken Earth trilogy (NK Jemisin), or The Road (Cormac McCarthy)
Has an unusual format (epistolary, choose your own adventure, etc.): Me Being Me Is Exactly As Insane As You Being You (Todd Hasak-Lowy, told in lists); Horrorstor (Grady Hendrix, told in Ikea catalog format)
The protagonist is a plant: Semiosis (Sue Burke), Legacy of Heorot (Larry Niven), the Dragonriders of Pern (Anne McCaffrey), or the Southern Reach trilogy (Jeff VanderMeer)
2024 adaptation: The Salt Path (Raynor Wynn), The Three-Body Problem (Cixin Liu), or Mickey7 (Edward Ashton)
You have no idea where you got this book: I mean, this is the majority of my TBR. I look at some of them and wonder where the fuck this book came from.
The MC has a phobia: The Yellow Wallpaper (Charlotte Perkins Gilman), Murderbot Diaries (Martha Wells), or Fangirl (Rainbow Rowell)
Set during your favorite holiday or event: A lot of sci-fi books have holidays such as a “Founder’s Day” or something similar. Pern has Hatching Day, so I might go with that. Or Something Wicked This Way Comes (Bradbury)
A one-word title: Annihilation (Jeff VanderMeer), Anathem (Neal Stephenson), or Fingersmith (Sarah Waters)
The MC is a time traveler: Long Division (Kiese Laymon), Door into Summer or Farnham’s Freehold ( both by Heinlein), or How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional World (Charles Yu)
By or about a person who is asexual: The Sound of Stars (Alecia Dow) or Guardians of the Dead (Karen Hawley)
A color in the title: The Woman in White (Wilkie Collins) or Red, White, and Royal Blue (Casey McQuiston), or Red Mars trilogy (Kim Stanley Robinson)

Published in the year of a big historical event in your lifetime: 1986: Count Zero (William Gibson) or The Physician (Noah Gordon) or Howl’s Moving Castle (Diana Wynne Jones)
The protagonist has a weird job: The Ravenmaster (Christopher Skaife), The Trauma Cleaner (Sarah Krasnostein), or Ancillary Justice (Ann Leckie)
A MC who collects something unusual: Keeper of Lost Things (Ruth Hogan)
A book that has won an LGBTQ+ literary award: Dhalgren (Samuel Delany), The Female Man (Joanna Russ), or The Sparrow (Mary Doria Russell)
Over 400 pages: Anathem or Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
A novella: Murderbot, The Seep (Chana Porter)
Written by an author who shares your zodiac sign: Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Dan Simmons, Life on Mars (Tracy K. Smith)
Features 24 (a 24-year-old MC, or was published 24 years ago, etc): 1999: Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson), Flashforward (Robert Sawyer)
Women in STEM/ Girl coders, etc: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (Gabrielle Zevin), The Calculating Stars (Mary Robinette Kowal), Braiding Sweetgrass (Robin Wall Kimmerer)
An attention-grabbing title: Noor (Nnedi Okorafor), Cyteen or Downbelow Station (C.J. Cherryh), or Thistlefoot (GennaRose Nethercott)
Author or MC is HIV positive: The Immortals (Tracy Hickman), Push (Sapphire), or Darker Proof (Adam Mars-Jones and Edmund White)
Takes place in a haunted house: Possibly Annihilation (Jeff VanderMeer), Revelation Space (Alastair Reynolds), and there’s always The Haunting of Hill House (Shirley Jackson)
Title starts with G: Gateway (Frederik Pohl), Glory Road (Heinlein), Gnomon (Nick Harkaway), Goliath (Tochi Onyebuchi)

A book of poetry: the witch doesn’t burn in this one (Amanda Lovelace), Anne Sexton’s fairy tale poems, Life on Mars (Tracy K. Smith)
A microhistory: An Informal History of the Hugos (Jo Walton), Extra Virginity (Tom Mueller)
By or about a neurodivergent person: Ninefox Gambit (Yoon Ha Lee), The Speed of Dark (Elizabeth Moon), Rules (Cynthia Lord), A Girl Like Her (Talia Hibbert), or Happiness Falls (Angie Kim)
Book with a main character over 60 years old: Remnant Population (Elizabeth Moon), Old Man’s War (John Scalzi), The Adventures of Amina-Al-Sirafi (S.A. Chakraborthy)
It has a pretty cover: The Hazel Wood (Melissa Albert), The Last Unicorn (Peter Beagle), The Sparrow (Mary Doria Russell)
MC has a strange hobby: The Utterly Uninteresting and Unadventurous Tales of Fred, the Vampire Accountant (Drew Hayes), Mostly Dead Things (Kristen Arnett), The House of Small Shadows (Adam Nevill), The Taxidermist’s Lover (Polly Hall)
Set in a city you’ve never visited: The House of Shattered Wings (Aliette de Bodard), The Little Paris Bookshop (Nina George)
By or about a person with a mental illness: The Devil in Silver (Victor LaValle), Planetfall (Emma Newman), Outside (Ada Hoffman), Stormlight Archives (Brandon SAnderson)
A title that rhymes: Eye in the Sky (PKD), Wed, Read, and Dead (V.M. Burns), To Brie or Not to Brie (Avery Aames)
Set in a parallel universe: The Space Between Worlds (Micaiah Johnson), Ilium/Olympos duology (Dan Simmons), Interworld (Neil Gaiman and Michael Reeves)
Published in your birth year: Dinosaur Planet (Anne McCaffrey), The Persistence of Vision (John Varley), Gateway (Pohl), Lucifer’s Hammer (Niven and Pournelle)
Indie or small press published: Ancient Oceans of Central Kentucky (David Connerly Nahm), Alien Stories (E.C. Osondu), Winterset Hollow (Jonathan Edward Durham)
By or about a person on the autism spectrum: Outside (Ada Hoffman), The Speed of Dark (Elizabeth Moon), 600 Hours of Edward (Craig Lancaster)

A random list of books based on an IG challenge
book review · books · fantasy · random · sci-fi

A random list of books based on an IG challenge

kristenLeave a comment

Greetings, fellow book nerds! I hope your summer is off to a good start and that you have many adventures to look forward to. I am looking forward to a couple short trips and, of course, making some kind of dent in my TBR. Which is hard because I seem to be in a reading slump and I haven’t read very much lately. 

Sometimes when I’m in a reading rut, I will try reading a genre that is completely opposite of the book I just finished. That often helps me get back on track. That doesn’t always work, though, and then I have to try something else. This time, I went to Instagram and dug around in the #bookstagramchallenges hashtags. I also follow the bookstagramchallenges channel to see a variety of book and reading challenges. Sometimes those are great for kicking me out of a reading rut. Plus, they’re just fun! Also, they’re like lists! I love lists. I love getting to cross things off of them. 

For this, I absolutely cherry-picked the prompts I wanted to use from a few different challenges. I went with an all science fiction and fantasy theme for these, since I’m in a big sci-fi mood. I also recognize that there are entirely too many books listed here. I had a hard time picking just one for some of the questions! 

  1. Last, current, and next reads: The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro; The Big Book of Science Fiction, edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer (print) and Seveneves by Neal Stephenson (audio); The Sound of Stars by Alechia Dow. 
  2. Favorite SFF series: Sci-fi – The Expanse series by James S.A. Corey; Fantasy – The Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey.
  3. Side characters you wanted to see more of: Kamazotz, the Death Bat from Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. I guess it isn’t really a proper sidekick, but I would have a ball flapping around on a death bat while on epic quests. 
  4. Quick reads: All Systems Red by Martha Wells. We need more Muderbot in our lives!
  5. Sad reads: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro; “There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury; and several of the stories in Alexander Weinstein’s excellent collection Children of the New World, in particular the titular short story as well as “Saying Goodbye to Yang.” 
  6. Funny reads: Job: A Comedy of Justice by Robert A. Heinlein (possibly the most hilarious book I’ve ever read); Redshirts by John Scalzi; How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu. 
  7. Weapon on the cover: The Rising of the Moon by Flynn Connolly.
  8. Favorite mentor: Ged from The Earthsea trilogy by Ursula K. Le Guin. 
  9. Books and drinks: Split and Scumble, both from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series! And, although these aren’t from books, honorable sci-fi drink mentions are: Green (AKA Aldebaran whisky) from the episode “Relics” from Star Trek TNG and A Warrior’s Drink (prune juice eww!) from the TNG episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise.”
  10. Unpopular opinions: Only Dune is good in the Dune series. The first rule of reading the Dune series is that you should only bother with Dune, not the rest of the books.
  11. The chosen one: Bastian Bux from The Neverending Story by Michael Ende.
  12. Revenge plotlines: Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie.
  13. Favorite creatures: Mother Thing in Have Space Suit, Will Travel by Robert A. Heinlein; the Tendu, the frog-like beings in The Color of Distance by Amy Thomson; and the hen with a demon in her in Nettle and Bone by T. Kingfisher. 
  14. Loyal and noble: Robbie the robot, the titular character in Isaac Asimov’s short story “Robbie.”
  15. Book that I would recommend to new SFF readers: The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. For fantasy, I’d go with Spinning Silver by Naomi Novak or Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier.
  16. Maps: There’s an awesome map in Cyteen by C.J. Cherryh. Also, I know I mentioned her several times in this post,  but the Dragonriders of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey has some excellent maps as well. I spent hours as a child poring over those, visualizing the various weyrs and halls of the planet. 
  17. Favorite anthology: The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu; Black Thorn, White Rose, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling (any anthology edited by either of these women are excellent); and Mirrorshades, edited by Bruce Sterling. Click on the clicky-link! It takes you to a free, online version of the Mirrorshades anthology, which is awesome since it’s almost impossible to track down a copy anywhere. 
  18. Book that takes place during winter: City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders. Well, it isn’t winter so much as the night side of a tidally locked planet. Cold counts as winter, right? 
  19. High-flying characters: Sirantha Jax in Grimspace by Ann Aguirre.
  20. Favorite villain: Sydney from The Prey of Gods by Nicky Drayden; The Gentleman with the Thistle-Down Hair in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke.
  21. Cool animal companions who aren’t main characters: The Wolf in The Witch’s Boy by Kelly Barnhill; Solovey, the horse in The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden.
  22. Hopeful characters: Keyne from Sistersong by Lucy Holland.
  23. Rogues and scoundrels: Trouble and Her Friends by Melissa Scott.
  24. Ocean or beach setting: The Mountain Under the Sea by Ray Nayler.
  25. Bounty hunters or assassins: Warcross by Marie Lu.
  26. Droids and robots: Starship Grifters by Robert Kroese.
  27. Purple book stack: Star Trek TNG: Q-In-Law by Peter David; Sword Stone Table, eds. Swapna Krishna and Jenn Northington; Flames of the Dark Crystal by J.M. Lee; Prickle Moon by Juliet Marillier; and Smoke by Dan Vyleta. 
  28. Monthly book haul: Print books – The Rex Nihilo series by Robert Kroese, Star Trek Discovery: Somewhere to Belong by Dayton Ward, Loki’s Ring by Stina Leicht, The Blighted Stars by Megan O’Keefe. Audiobooks: Bacchanal by Veronica G. Henry, Anathem by Neal Stephenson, The Municipalists by Seth Fried, The Fold by Peter Cline, and the Themis Files trilogy by Sylvain Neuvel.
  29. Monthly wrap-up: I’ll be working my way through The Big Book of Science Fiction for quite a while. I haven’t been reading as much as usual. Also, Seveneves will take me forever to listen to because I can usually only listen when I’m driving. WFH and my kid’s summer break means that I hardly drive anywhere. So I expect that my reading stats for the month won’t be too much bigger than those two books plus The Buried Giant that I read for book club. 
bookish things · books · lists

Read Harder 2022!

kristenLeave a comment

Here it is! The new Read Harder 2022 reading challenge! I confess that I fully blew off the 2021 RH challenge. I’ll post that in a few days, but I barely made a dent in that list. But here is the new list and, as always, I really like trying to figure out what books I will read for each task. I try to make it more feminist and find a book written by a woman for each task as well. Maybe I’ll do what I can to complete it with as many SFF books as possible this time. That would be fun! So would using books I already own to complete the challenge. Wouldn’t that be something? Seeing what I plan to read versus what I actually end up reading is always interesting to me. 

Hidden below the cut since my list is fucking long. One day, I will be found buried under my giant pile of books.

book pile

Continue reading “Read Harder 2022!” →

book review · bookish things · books · lists

2020 Read Harder results and year-end wrap-up

kristenLeave a comment

2020 is finally coming to an end. This was one of the most miserable fucking years ever and it can piss right off. While my life wasn’t really impacted all that much by any kind of quarantine – I’m practically a shut-in in my daily life anyway – I did miss traveling. I am incredibly lucky and grateful that I have a job that allows me to work from home and that my daughter and I have remained healthy. So has my mom, though the rest of my family didn’t come through the pandemic unscathed. Everyone is doing ok so far, though, and I am happy for that. I feel terrible for the many millions of people who have lost their jobs, for the over 300,000 Americans who have lost their lives to COVID-19 (and the more than 1.6 million worldwide), and everyone who is struggling in ways large and small during this very strange and awful time. My grandmother would have said, “This, too, shall pass,” and I know she is right. Sometimes it is hard to see that, though, in the middle of events.

Of course, even the worst times have some bright points. Or, as Emperor Georgiou quoted in “Terra Firma part 2,” “Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.” The BEST thing has to be Biden kicking Idiot Hitler’s fat ass. A related bright point to Biden’s election is that we also get Kamala Harris as our first Madam Vice President. I can’t wait! Having a compassionate, intelligent, engaged, literate President and Vice President in office will surely be a sea change after the past obscene four years of the sub-literate, cruel, anti-science, racist, misogynist, corrupt excrescence currently squatting in the Oval Office. Can’t wait for that creature to become irrelevant again, and likely imprisoned. 

Image credit CBS All Access

For me, books and reading are always a refuge and solace. I can travel by way of books, even if I am physically stuck in Arizona. I can go to other parts of the world or to new worlds entirely. I can encounter people who are facing the same struggles I face, or I can learn more about others who face completely different challenges in their life. I always aim to read 100 books a year. According to my Goodreads Year in Books, I didn’t get to 100 this year, though if I were to add up all the articles I read for research, I would probably get to 100 books total easily. But I didn’t count articles. I’m done researching now, though, and my manuscript is in to the publisher and I hopefully never have to think much on it again! Never thought I would be sick of medieval Europe, but here we are.

RH 2020 complete

Also, as anyone who spends any time with me at all knows, I love reading challenges because they stretch my comfort zone. I love learning about authors and cultures I’ve never been exposed to before. I am passionate about supporting and amplifying the voices of women and authors of color. So to try to do all of these things, I always participate in Book Riot’s Read Harder challenge. I don’t always get through the whole list, depending on what all is happening, but I did this year! I even reviewed almost all of them. I try hard to write a review for every book I read, but sometimes I don’t get around to doing it. But at least I finished it, even WITH all the research and work I was doing to write my own book. I’m pretty proud of me. How did you do on your various reading goals this year? Mine are below the cut.books

Continue reading “2020 Read Harder results and year-end wrap-up” →

bookish things · lists

Reading Women 2021

kristenLeave a comment

Heyyyy, this year I decided also to outline what I might read for the Reading Women challenge. I tend to complete that challenge most years, too, but rarely write about it. I don’t know why, especially considering how hard I try to amplify women’s voices, work, and literature. Probably it’s because many of the tasks here overlap a little with the Book Riot Read Harder challenge so I don’t focus a lot on this one in its own right. Here’s what I’m thinking of. Where possible, of course, I am going to overlap with the Read Harder tasks. Every book listed is written by a woman, which makes sense because it’s the Reading Women Challenge. 

A Book Longlisted for the JCB Prize: A Burning by Megha Majumdar, which I already own, so bonus! Or Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara sounds really good as well.

An Author from Eastern Europe: Maybe Seeing People Off by Jana Beňová. Or There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya. Eastern European literature seems really fucking long, depressing, and boring from what I can tell. These two seem tolerable. There is a reason I’ve never read War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Crime and Punishment, or The Brothers Karamazov. Is it just because it’s frigid winter for like 10 months out of the year there? Is there not enough vodka? Too much vodka? I mean, FFS, I could hardly get through The Death of Ivan Ilyich and that wasn’t too bad, relatively speaking. But by the end of it, I wanted to swim in a barrel of vodka. Is vodka made in barrels? Whatever the fuck it’s made in, I wanted to swim in it.

A Book About Incarceration: Affinity by Sarah Waters! That should be awesome. Sarah Waters is awesome.

A Cookbook by a Woman of Color: Caribbean Potluck by Suzanne and Michelle Rousseau. I will need to track down a Caribbean restaurant near me so I can also eat all the food.

A Book with a Protagonist Older than 50: Illumination Night by Alice Hoffman. I love Alice Hoffman.

A Book by a South American Author in Translation: Savage Theories by Pola Oloixarac.

Reread a Favorite Book: Jeez. So many could go here.

A Memoir by an Indigenous, First Nations, Native, or Aboriginal Woman: Heart Berries by Terese Mailhot. This has been on my radar forever. 

A Book by a Neurodivergent Author: Maybe Otherbound by Corinne Duyvis (autism) or All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders (Sensory Integration Disorder). I think I own the Anders book, so probably I’ll read that.

A Crime Novel or Thriller in Translation: The Vegetarian by Han Kang. I don’t know how this is really a crime novel, but it is listed as such on the Pan Macmillan site (Our Favourite Crime Novels in Translation) and I’ve had it for ages, so I’m gonna go with that. 

A Book About the Natural World: The Long, Long Life of Trees by Fiona Safford, Rain: Four Walks in English Weather by Melissa Harrison, or To The River: A Journey Beneath the Surface by Olivia Laing. 

A Young Adult Novel by a Latinx Author: Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo.

A Poetry Collection by a Black Woman: Audre Lord seems popular, so I will try her writing. Or There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonce by Morgan Parker.

A Book with a Biracial Protagonist: Caucasia by Danzy Senna. Probably there are a ton of books I will read that can cover this one, but on the off chance none of them do, I will try this one.

A Muslim Middle-Grade Novel: Shooting Kabul by NH Senzai. I got this for my daughter a while back because I wanted to read it.

A Book Featuring a Queer Love Story: Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston.

About a Woman in Politics: The Woman Who Would Be King: Hatshepsut’s Rise to Power in Ancient Egypt by Kara Cooney, or maybe Nefertiti by Michelle Moran. Or, because she’s fucking awesome, The Truths We Hold by Madam Vice President Kamala Harris!

A Book with a Rural Setting: Real Queer America by Samantha Allen from my RH list can cover this. So can The Round House by Louise Erdrich. 

A Book with a Cover Designed by a Woman: Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (cover design by Abby Weintraub).

A Book by an Arab Author in Translation: Women of Sand and Myrrh or Only in London, both by Hanan al-Shaykh, or Girls of Riyadh by Rajaa Alsanea.

A Book by a Trans Author: Red, White, and Royal Blue will also work for this one. So will Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender

A Fantasy Novel by an Asian Author: These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong because I own it, but OMG there are so many I want to read! 

A Nonfiction Book Focused on Social Justice: When They Call You a Terrorist by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and asha bandele or White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo.

A Short Story Collection by a Caribbean Author: The Pain Tree by Olive Senior seems like a great collection. 

BONUS READS:

A Book by Alexis Wright (Waanyi Aboriginal): The Swan Book

A Book by Tsitsi Dangarembga (Zimbabwean): Nervous Conditions 

A Book by Leila Aboulela (Sundanese): The Translator

A Book by Yoko Ogawa (Japanese): The Memory Police sounds awesome. 

books · lists

20 Books about Fire

kristenLeave a comment

fireI often enjoy reading groups of books that are thematically similar, or pair well together. For one thing, I find it easier to remember titles if I group them. Sometimes I even remember plots! I swear I do a memory dump every time I finish a book and couldn’t tell you a single plot point or character name, even if I loved it. I really hope I don’t ever meet an author who wants me to tell them my favorite part of a book just on the spot. I’ll be reduced to screaming, “I loved your book! I READ ALL THE WORDS!!” Then, of course, I would just melt into a puddle of embarrassed flaming goo. 

So because embarrassed flaming goo is apparently on my mind, I thought I would give a list of books that are, in some way or another, about fire, burning, explosions, etc. Maybe it’s in the title, maybe it’s related to the plot, maybe both. Who knows. No, I am not going to list any of the Game of Thrones books. Do you have any other recommendations?

  1. Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng. Seemingly perfect lives all go up in flames! Literally and figuratively.
  2. The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin. Necessary reading regarding racism in America.
  3. A Burning by Megha Majumdar. Three people trying to rise in life, connected by a shared catastrophe.
  4. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty. A medievalist takes a job at a crematory and learns about the culture of caring for the dead.
  5. The Fire This Time edited by Jesmyn Ward. Using James Baldwin’s narrative, several writers offer essays and poems on race.
  6. A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge. A galactic war brought about because a person’s potential is determined by its location in space, known as regions of thought.
  7. The Incendiaries by R.O. Kwon. A young woman at an elite university is drawn into domestic terrorism by a cult with ties to North Korea.
  8. The Association of Small Bombs by Karan Mahajan. A bomb in a market in Delhi impacts the life of a survivor in ways that may seem impossible.
  9. Girls Burn Brighter by Shobha Rao. Two girls in India find a friendship that helps them survive a life of crushing poverty, abuse, trafficking, and immigration.
  10. Smoke Signals by Sherman Alexie. Two Native American boys, Victor and Thomas, on a journey and the lessons they learn along the way.
  11. Smoke by Dan Vyleta. In an alternate Victorian England, people who are sinful are surrounded by smoke and soot while the virtuous are clean and pure. 
  12. A Burnable Book by Bruce Holsinger. In 1380s London, a seditious book predicting the assassination of Richard II is causing a lot of problems. So bureaucrat Chaucer asks poet and information trader Thomas Gower for help.
  13. Miracle Creek by Angie Kim. A hyperbaric chamber at a specialized treatment center explodes. Layers of mystery and secrets lead readers to discover who is behind the explosion.
  14. Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg. A woman loses her entire family in one horrible accident. She drives across the country to get away from the memories, and finds connection in shared heartbreak with others.
  15. The Fire Line by Fernanda Santos. The story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, an elite team of firefighters, and the Yarnell firestorm tragedy.
  16. Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson. Lillian and Madison, best friends from college, drifted apart after they left school. Years later, Madison contacts Lillian, begging her to come and take care of her twin stepchildren who spontaneously combust when agitated. Lillian figures why not. 
  17. Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman. Short stories by Neil Gaiman. What else do you need to know?
  18. Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center. Cassie is one of the first female firefighters in Texas, she is great at dealing with emergencies. And then her mother asks her to move home to Boston to tend to a different kind of emergency.
  19. The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan. Astronomer Sagan discusses why scientific thinking is necessary both for the pursuit of truth as well as for the health of society. Because how can you make good decisions if you don’t know the difference between myths, pseudoscience, and actual testable scientific fact?
  20. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. In the future, all entertainment is on the TV and literature and books are forbidden. Firefighters are those who seek out and burn books. One firefighter, Guy Montag, begins to question everything he thought he knew. 
books

Read Harder 2020 plan!

kristenLeave a comment

br_rh2020_fb-1024x536-1
Read Harder Challenge. Image credit Book Riot, https://bookriot.com/2019/12/03/2020-read-harder-challenge/

Yay, it’s here! Read Harder 2020 is here! I look forward to this list every year. In part, I just like to see what the brains at Book Riot have come up with, and in part, I love to put together a plan for myself for how to cover the tasks. Additionally, I try to make it more feminist by finding books to cover each task that are written by women or authors who identify as women. For various reasons, this doesn’t always happen, but I try hard to make it so. #RequisiteStarTrekReference

So, what do we have this year? How will this pan out? I am thinking of the following: 

  1. Read a YA nonfiction book: #NotYourPrincess by Lisa Charleyboy or How Dare the Sun Rise by Sandra Uwiringiyimana
  2. Read a retelling of a classic of the canon, fairytale, or myth by an author of color: Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi OR One Thousand and One Nights by Hanan Al-Shaykh. Probably the 1st one since I’ve owned it forever and haven’t got round to reading it yet.
  3. Read a mystery where the victim(s) is not a woman: The Appraisal by Anna Porter OR The Distant Hours by Kate Morton OR Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson
  4. Read a graphic memoir: Photographic: The Life of Graciela Iturbide by Isabel Quintero
  5. Read a book about a natural disaster: Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala OR Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward 
  6. Read a play by an author of color and/or queer author: Angels in America by Tony Kushner. Mostly because I know Jason Isaacs (Twitter) was in this play at one point. Carrying on with my hardcore Jason Isaacs (Insta) crush. 
  7. Read a historical fiction novel not set in WWII: The Land Beyond the Sea by Sharon Kay Penman. Also, this task is funny to me, as ALL the HF I read is set in a time other than WWII. Is there really that much WWII HF? LOL. I’m already reading this one, so I might as well use it for this task; I won’t get it finished before the new year, so I reckon it counts.
  8. Read an audiobook of poetry: If They Come for Us by Fatimah Asghar OR The Poets’ Corner by John Lithgow
  9. Read the LAST book in a series: Big Sky by Kate Atkinson (don’t know if it is the LAST, last, but it is the most recent one out in the Jackson Brodie series). Also, DID YOU KNOW that there is a TV series of these books called Case Histories? It stars… wait for it… Jason Isaacs! Dear god, that man’s eyes… 
  10. Read a book that takes place in a rural setting: Gilead by Mary Robinson OR The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily Danforth
  11. Read a debut novel by a queer author: How to Survive a Summer by Nick White OR Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead OR Bright Lines by Tanwi Nandini Islam
  12. Read a memoir by someone from a religious tradition (or lack of religious tradition) that is not your own: Muslim Girl by Amani Al-Khatanahtbeh OR Educated by Tara Westover. Every religion is different for me. Hardcore atheist…
  13. Read a food book about a cuisine you’ve never tried before: Longthroat Memoirs: Soups, Sex and Nigerian Taste Buds by Yemisi Aribisala OR Notes from a Young Black Chef: A Memoir by Kwame Onwuachi (both Nigerian chefs). This was hard for me even to find some since it turns out I’ve eaten a LOT of different cuisines, and many that I haven’t seem not to have any books written about them.
  14. Read a romance starring a single parent: Maybe Home Again by Kristin Hannah, mostly because someone gave it to me and so I don’t have to look for something else. I really don’t know yet since I am definitely not a romance reader. I might pick one from this list because it’s awesomely comprehensive: Smart Bitches, Trashy Books
  15. Read a book about climate change: Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward (double dipper!) OR The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert
  16. Read a doorstopper (over 500 pages) published after 1950, written by a woman: The Land Beyond the Sea by Sharon Kay Penman (double dipper!)
  17. Read a sci-fi/fantasy novella (under 120 pages): Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire OR Last Summer at Mars Hill by Elizabeth Hand. Probably the 2nd. I love Elizabeth Hand; her stories are so fucked up.
  18. Read a picture book with a human main character from a marginalized community: No idea. I’ll probably just wander around the kids’ section at the bookstore and pick one while my daughter is browsing.
  19. Read a book by or about a refugee: Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai (because my daughter already has it, so that’s convenient) OR The Silence and the Roar by Nihad Sirees
  20. Read a middle grade book that doesn’t take place in the U.S. or the UK: Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai (double dipper!) OR Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibb. Probably the 1st since the 2nd seems a little older than middle grade.
  21. Read a book with a main character or protagonist with a disability (fiction or non): House Rules by Jodi Picoult or maybe Me Before You by Jojo Moyes
  22. Read a horror book published by an indie press: After the People Lights Have Gone Off by Stephen Graham Jones. Been wanting to read this one forever.
  23. Read an edition of a literary magazine (digital or physical): I have a backlogged stack of Arthuriana that will do nicely for this.
  24. Read a book in any genre by a Native, First Nations, or Indigenous author: #NotYourPrincess by Lisa Charleyboy (double dipper!) OR The Round House by Louise Erdrich

It’ll be interesting, at the end of 2020, to see how many of these books I’ve planned are the ones I actually ended up reading for this year’s challenge. 

book review · books

Read Harder 2019 – complete!

kristenLeave a comment


I did it! Here are the books I ended up reading for the 2019 Read Harder challenge. I am trying to write reviews for every book I read as well, although I didn’t manage to do so this year. Where I could, I linked to my review of the book.

  1. An epistolary or collection of letters: Dear Committee Members – Julie Schumacher
  2. An alternate history novel: Blood and Ink – DK Marley
  3. A book by a woman and/or AOC that won a literary award in 2018: Circe– Madeleine Miller (and the best lines from Circe…)
  4. A humor book: Dear Committee Members – Julie Schumacher
  5. A book by a journalist or about journalism: Get Well Soon – Jennifer Wright
  6. A book by an AOC set in or about space: Binti – Nnedi Okorafor
  7. An #ownvoices book set in Mexico or Central America: Fruit of the Drunken Tree – Ingrid Rojas Contreras
  8. An #ownvoices book set in Oceania: Whale Rider – Witi Ihimaera
  9. A book published prior to Jan. 1, 2019 with fewer than 100 reviews on Goodreads: Pandora the Curious – Joan Holub
  10. A translated book written by and/or translated by a woman: All This I Will Give to You – Dolores Redondo
  11. A book of manga: Fence Vol. 1 – CS Pacat, illustrated by Johanna the Mad
  12. A book in which an animal or inanimate object is a point-of-view character: Wings of Fire: The Dragonet Prophecy – Tui T. Sutherland
  13. A book by or about someone that identifies as neurodiverse: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon
  14. A cozy mystery: The Tale of Hill Top Farm – Susan Wittig Albert
  15. A book of mythology or folklore: Trail of Lightning – Rebecca Roanhorse
  16. An historical romance by an AOC: Forbidden– Beverly Jenkins
  17. A business book: Total Money Makeover – Dave Ramsey
  18. A novel by a trans or nonbinary author: The Salt Roads – Nalo Hopkinson
  19. A book of nonviolent true crime: The Library Book – Susan Orlean
  20. A book written in prison: The Consolation of Philosophy – Boethius
  21. A comic by an LGBTQIA creator: Fence, vol. 1 – CS Pacat, illustrated by Johanna the Mad
  22. A children’s or middle grade book (not YA) that has won a diversity award since 2009: In the Footsteps of Crazy Horse – Joseph Marshall III
  23. A self-published book: Blood and Ink – DK Marley
  24. A collection of poetry published since 2014: Fig Tree in Winter – Anne Graue
bookish things · books

Arthurian Novels Round-Up!

kristen2 Comments

It’s been a while since I did any kind of round-up post, and I’ve been thinking a lot about Arthurian novels. Arthurian legend is probably my absolute go-to favorite for fantasy literature. I love a ton of different kinds of sci-fi and fantasy, of course, but if I had to pick one specific subgenre that really blows my skirt up, it has to be Arthurian. I’ll take it in just about any setting, I’ll read it without forgetting, I’ll read it at school, I’ll read it in the pool, I love stories of Arthur the King… I’ll stop. Ahem. Sorry.

Anyway, in no particular order, below are some of my favorites and I hope some are new to you!

51itaibuaqlOur Man On Earth (The Swithen Book 1) by Scott Tilek. An account based on some of the oldest extant manuscripts describing Merlin.

Black Horses for the King (Magic Carpet Books) by Anne McCaffrey. My beloved author wrote an Arthurian novel (yay!) about horses (winning!!), which is even better. All about the quest to find the perfect breed of warhorse for Arthur and his knights.

51ln1vvcazl._sx331_bo1204203200_The Kingmaking: Book One of the Pendragon’s Banner Trilogy by Helen Hollick. An historic retelling, stripped of magic and placed in a realistic medieval setting. One of the best, on par with Bernard Cornwell’s Arthurian Trilogy (The Warlord Chronicles: Books 1, 2 & 3: Excalibur / Enemy of God / The Winter King), which is also legit.

The Guinevere’s Tale Trilogy (Daughter of Destiny, Camelot’s Queen, and Mistress of Legend) by Nicole Evelina. The Arthurian legends told from Guinevere’s perspective. The tales get a fresh, feminist revision with a fierce new look at Camelot’s queen.

Child of the Northern Spring: Book One of the Guinevere Trilogy by Persia Wooley. Guinevere is a Welsh princess tomboy who was raised to become a queen.

Knight Life by Peter David. Arthur and Morgan in modern Manhattan, as told by the hilarious Peter David, whose Star Trek books I have universally loved. Especially Imzadi.

51gzvucvqfl._sx354_bo1204203200_Song Of The Sparrow by Lisa Ann Sandell. Actually, this is the story of the Lady of Shallott, told in verse, and it is lovely.

The Excalibur Murders: A Merlin Investigation by JMC Blair. Excalibur is stolen and a squire is murdered, so Merlin has to use his magic to solve the crime.

The White Raven by Diana Paxson. An historical setting of the Tristan and Iseult story, placed in medieval Cornwall. It is told from the perspective of Branwen, Iseult’s cousin and lady in waiting. Alas, I think this one is out of print, but I know you can get it from used bookstores and Amazon, because that’s how I got my copy. Just sayin’…