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Gideon has a sword, some dirty magazines, and no more time for undead bullshit.
Brought up by unfriendly, ossifying nuns, ancient retainers, and countless skeletons, Gideon is ready to abandon a life of servitude and an afterlife as a reanimated corpse. She packs up her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and prepares to launch her daring escape. But her childhood nemesis won’t set her free without a service.
Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House and bone witch extraordinaire, has been summoned into action. The Emperor has invited the heirs to each of his loyal Houses to a deadly trial of wits and skill. If Harrowhark succeeds she will become an immortal, all-powerful servant of the Resurrection, but no necromancer can ascend without their cavalier. Without Gideon’s sword, Harrow will fail, and the Ninth House will die.
There was a buddy read for it on my online bookclub and I couldn’t resist! I’ve also had it on my TBR for a while but wasn’t actually planning to read it so soon, but the buddy read got me.
The Quotes
“But Gideon was experiencing one powerful emotion: being sick of everyone’s shit.”
“If you do not find yourself a galaxy, it is not so bad to find yourself a star.”
“Maybe it’s that I find the idea comforting… that thousands of years after you’re gone… is when you really live. That your echo is louder than your voice.”
“They do not have to enjoy each other’s society; they must simply take their togetherness as assumed. The cavalier who will not sleep in the same room as their necromancer must question themselves as to why. Their love is the love that fears only for the other: the love of service on both sides.”
The Narrator(s)
Moira Quirk. I’ve listened to her on other books before and quite enjoy her narration. She was great here too. I think my issue with this book is that it’s not very easy to follow on audio. I get the gist, but I feel like I missed a lot of details and the details are important for this story.
My Thoughts
I really enjoyed the story and the narration, but as I said, I think I missed a lot of details that might have been important. I caught the broad strokes, I get what’s happening, but apparently I missed a lot of the nuances, jokes and puns, the little scenes that make it great. I think I’ll come back to this book again on print. Especially since I want to continue with the series and I’d like to be sure I get the details before moving forward.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
Fans of Jacqueline Woodson, Meg Medina, and Jason Reynolds will fall hard for this astonishing New York Times-bestselling novel-in-verse by an award-winning slam poet, about an Afro-Latina heroine who tells her story with blazing words and powerful truth.
Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking.
But Xiomara has plenty she wants to say, and she pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers—especially after she catches feelings for a boy in her bio class named Aman, who her family can never know about.
With Mami’s determination to force her daughter to obey the laws of the church, Xiomara understands that her thoughts are best kept to herself. So when she is invited to join her school’s slam poetry club, she doesn’t know how she could ever attend without her mami finding out. But she still can’t stop thinking about performing her poems.
Because in the face of a world that may not want to hear her, Xiomara refuses to be silent.
I recently listened to Elizabeth Acevedo’s Clap When You Land, and several people recommended this book as well. So I listened.
The Quotes
“And I think about all the things we could be if we were never told our bodies were not built for them.”
“Burn it! Burn it. This is where the poems are,” I say, thumping a fist against my chest. “Will you burn me? Will you burn me, too?”
“She tells me words give people permission to be their fullest self and aren’t these the poems I most needed to hear?”
“When your body takes up more room than your voice, you are always the target of well-aimed rumors.”
The Narrator
Narrated by the author herself. It was wonderful and I loved how expressive she was.
My Thoughts
I thought it was brilliant and so beautifully expressed. The story, and the narration, pulls you right in, and I can just feel Xiomara’s essence oozing through the words. I’m not sure I like the ending though. I feel like it ended too conveniently and it didn’t feel realistic. Things don’t just work out that way overnight. But still, I loved the experience of listening to this audiobook.
My Feels
I don’t read poetry often enough, but I find that I’m really loving Acevedo’s works. Xiomara’s voice is so powerful, her story is so powerful, listening to her speak and express herself is so powerful. I felt so deeply, everything that she talked about, her experiences, her discovery of her self and her voice. I’m so angry with her family. Her mother, especially. How can a mother do such horrible things to her child? It resonates very personally for me.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
An emotional novel of suspense about two families at war.
Nina and Simon are the perfect couple. Young, fun and deeply in love. Until they leave for a weekend at his family’s cabin in Vermont, and only Simon comes home.
WHAT HAPPENED TO NINA?
Nobody knows. Simon’s explanation about what happened in their last hours together doesn’t add up. Nina’s parents push the police for answers, and Simon’s parents rush to protect him. They hire expensive lawyers and a PR firm that quickly ramps up a vicious, nothing-is-off-limits media campaign.
HOW FAR WILL HIS FAMILY GO TO KEEP HIM SAFE?
Soon, facts are lost in a swirl of accusation and counter-accusation. Everyone chooses a side, and the story goes viral, fueled by armchair investigators and wild conspiracy theories and illustrated with pretty pictures taken from Nina’s social media accounts. Journalists descend on their small Vermont town, followed by a few obsessive “fans.”
HOW FAR WILL HER FAMILY GO TO GET TO THE TRUTH?
Nina’s family is under siege, but they never lose sight of the only thing that really matters—finding their daughter. Out-gunned by Simon’s wealthy, powerful family, Nina’s parents recognize that if playing by the rules won’t get them anywhere, it’s time to break them.
I was craving a good mystery thriller and was intrigued by the premise. I’ve read one of Dervla McTiernan’s books before and liked it so I thought I’d try this one too.
The Quotes
“I just want to say, a thing can be crystal clear with hindsight, but just about as clear as mud when you’re actually living it. Also, sometimes it’s the walking away that gets you in trouble.”
“I tried to tell myself that I was letting my imagination run away with me. That there was no need and no reason to think the worst, but fear welled up inside me, and it refused to be pushed back down.”
“I knew my son. I knew him. He was not a murderer.”
“I started to get angry. The anger made the fear a lot smaller.”
My Thoughts
This book is scary because it happens in real life, and in fact, the scariest part of the book is the shitshow that is social media. It’s so easy to influence other people with misinformation, lies, wild speculations, and it’s so easy to turn people into angry mobs and witchhunters. It’s scary how some people refuse to see the truth even when given absolute proof, just because they are so invested in the narratives they’ve constructed in their own minds. It’s crazy to see when it happens in real life, and I thought it was very well portrayed in the book.
One of the things I like about Dervla’s books is also that the main characters aren’t always likeable. No one is perfect, and even the “good guys” can be flawed and make mistakes. In fact, it’s easy to get caught up in strong emotions, and there are times I wonder what I would do in that position, and I’m pretty sure I’d come out a lot worse than most.
My Feels
I was on the edge of my seat and so anxious to find out what happens next. There were several heartbreaking scenes, frustrating scenes, scenes that made me feel scared for the characters. I was afraid that we wouldn’t get a satisfactory ending, but I feel like I got what I needed in the end.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
A thrilling, addictive novel about marriage, betrayal, and the secrets that push us to the edge…
Picture a lovely cottage on a cliff, with sloping lawns, walking paths, and beautiful flowers. It’s Gabe and Pippa Gerard’s dream home in a sleepy coastal town. But their perfect house hides something sinister. The tall cliffs have become a popular spot for people to end their lives. Over the past several months, Gabe comes to their rescue, literally talking them off the ledge.
Until one day, he doesn’t. When Pippa discovers Gabe knew the victim, the questions spiral. . . .Did the victim jump? Was she pushed? And would Gabe, the love of Pippa’s life, her soulmate . . . lie? As the perfect façade of their marriage begins to crack, the deepest and darkest secrets begin to unravel. Because sometimes, the most convincing lies are the ones we tell ourselves.
Several people in my online book club was reading it and I got enticed by their comments about it.
The Quotes
“Sometimes,” I said thoughtfully, “the road to our destination leads us in a direction we don’t want to take. But does it matter, in the end, if it gets us where we want to go?”
“We trust people based on the strangest, most arbitrary things, none of which have any bearing on whether or not you are inherently good.”
“The thing about marriage a lot of people don’t understand is that you don’t get everything. Some people get passion, others get security. Some get companionship. Children. Money. Wisdom. Status. Then there is trust and fidelity.”
My Thoughts
I loved the whole ride! There were so many twists and turns and you don’t know who to trust and what is actually going on. I really enjoyed speculating and coming up with the most outlandish theories, and yet there was a lot to the story that was meaningful and important. I loved that it spoke to relationship dynamics, blind love, communication, trust and fidelity. The characters were flawed and stupid and I loved that for the story. It’s very human, and we all do stupid things.
My Feels
This book made me frustrated and angry at times. I feel like there’s so much unnecessary tragedy and unresolved issues but I also recognize that sometimes you don’t get everything all wrapped up nicely. It worked out in the book and it was a great story and very well told. I had a lot of fun reading it!
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
A novel of art, time travel, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon five hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space.
Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal–an experience that shocks him to his core.
Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She’s traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive’s best-selling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him.
When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended: The exiled son of an earl driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe.
A virtuoso performance that is as human and tender as it is intellectually playful, Sea of Tranquility is a novel of time travel and metaphysics that precisely captures the reality of our current moment.’
This is my in-person book club’s May BOTM pick. However, I did borrow it from the library on audio before it was confirmed as the BOTM, just because it was available and I’d been wanting to read it.
The Quotes
“If definitive proof emerges that we’re living in a simulation, the correct response to that news will be So what. A life lived in a simulation is still a life.”
“This is the strange lesson of living in a pandemic: life can be tranquil in the face of death.”
“What you have to understand is that bureaucracy is an organism, and the prime goal of every organism is self-protection. Bureaucracy exists to protect itself.”
“Perhaps we believe on some level that if the world were to end and be remade, if some unthinkable catastrophe were to occur, then perhaps we might be remade too, perhaps into better, more heroic, more honorable people.”
The Narrator(s)
John Lee, Dylan Moore, Arthur Morey, Kirsten Potter. I had a really hard time listening to John Lee’s narration of his part of the book. I don’t know if it was the recording or the accent, or some other factor. I didn’t have the same problem with the other narrators. I could hear them all clearly.
My Thoughts
I didn’t know what to expect going in, especially since when looking at the different parts of the book, they were separated by such huge time gaps. I should’ve realized that it would turn out to be a time travel story. All of the different parts of the book and the different characters’ stories felt like very interesting slice of life stories. I love how they all connected, and I loved how the story was told. It’s not thrilling or exciting in the way most time travel stories usually are, but it was thrilling and exciting in its own way.
My Feels
There was some discussion about how Olive’s story in the book was a self-insert by the author; the questions asked of her as she went on her book tour, the sexism on being a woman writer away from her child while her husband stayed home to “babysit”. In the book it was 2203 when it happened, but it resonates because things are happening in our current times that make me feel like we might be going backwards. It’s scary and maddening.
Other than that, I always enjoy time travel stories and how different ones have different ways to explain the time travel paradox. I like how it was handled here, and I’ll always believe in the possibility of it.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
The New York Times bestselling author of Better and Complications reveals the surprising power of the ordinary checklist
We live in a world of great and increasing complexity, where even the most expert professionals struggle to master the tasks they face. Longer training, ever more advanced technologies—neither seems to prevent grievous errors. But in a hopeful turn, acclaimed surgeon and writer Atul Gawande finds a remedy in the humblest and simplest of techniques: the checklist. First introduced decades ago by the U.S. Air Force, checklists have enabled pilots to fly aircraft of mind-boggling sophistication. Now innovative checklists are being adopted in hospitals around the world, helping doctors and nurses respond to everything from flu epidemics to avalanches. Even in the immensely complex world of surgery, a simple ninety-second variant has cut the rate of fatalities by more than a third.
In riveting stories, Gawande takes us from Austria, where an emergency checklist saved a drowning victim who had spent half an hour underwater, to Michigan, where a cleanliness checklist in intensive care units virtually eliminated a type of deadly hospital infection. He explains how checklists actually work to prompt striking and immediate improvements. And he follows the checklist revolution into fields well beyond medicine, from disaster response to investment banking, skyscraper construction, and businesses of all kinds.
An intellectual adventure in which lives are lost and saved and one simple idea makes a tremendous difference, The Checklist Manifesto is essential reading for anyone working to get things right.
A physician friend recommended this book to me more than 10 years ago. It was available on audiobook when I browsed my library’s catalog so I thought I should finally read it since it’s been on my TBR long enough!
The Quotes
“We don’t like checklists. They can be painstaking. They’re not much fun. But I don’t think the issue here is mere laziness. There’s something deeper, more visceral going on when people walk away not only from saving lives but from making money. It somehow feels beneath us to use a checklist, an embarrassment. It runs counter to deeply held beliefs about how the truly great among us—those we aspire to be—handle situations of high stakes and complexity. The truly great are daring. They improvise. They do not have protocols and checklists. Maybe our idea of heroism needs updating.”
“One essential characteristic of modern life is that we all depend on systems—on assemblages of people or technologies or both—and among our most profound difficulties is making them work.”
“There are good checklists and bad, Boorman explained. Bad checklists are vague and imprecise. They are too long; they are hard to use; they are impractical. They are made by desk jockeys with no awareness of the situations in which they are to be deployed. They treat the people using the tools as dumb and try to spell out every single step. They turn people’s brains off rather than turn them on. Good checklists, on the other hand, are precise. They are efficient, to the point, and easy to use even in the most difficult situations. They do not try to spell out everything—a checklist cannot fly a plane. Instead, they provide reminders of only the most critical and important steps—the ones that even the highly skilled professionals using them could miss. Good checklists are, above all, practical.
The Narrator(s)
John Bedford Lloyd. It was great! He was clear and precise, and easy to follow.
My Thoughts
I thought it was cool that a whole book was dedicated to the importance of having checklists. For the regular layperson like me, checklists are usually just part of the tools I use for convenience and keeping myself organized, and it has also saved me some stress many times, but in aviation, construction, and medicine, it can be the difference between life and death. I think checklists are worth implementing in any situation you can think of though, and I think the book is definitely worth reading.
My Feels
You’d think that reading about checklists as a subject matter could get boring, but it’s surprisingly fascinating. I loved listening to the studies, the examples, and anecdotes of all the times checklists made a difference. In some of these cases, it feels infuriating to me that people refuse to use checklists just because of ego or hubris. If I could, I’d have a checklist for everything in my life to make things so much easier, but absent of that, I think I’ll just do my best to implement it where I can.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
It’s Time Travel Thursday! Hosted by Emily @ Budget Tales Book Blog, this is where you get to take a look back at what you were reading this time last year (or the year before or the year before that…) and get to relive those bookish memories!
This time last year I was reading:
The Ex Talk by Rachel Lynn Solomon
Shay Goldstein has been a producer at her Seattle public radio station for nearly a decade, and she can’t imagine working anywhere else. But lately it’s been a constant clash between her and her newest colleague, Dominic Yun, who’s fresh off a journalism master’s program and convinced he knows everything about public radio.
When the struggling station needs a new concept, Shay proposes a show that her boss green-lights with excitement. On The Ex Talk, two exes will deliver relationship advice live, on air. Their boss decides Shay and Dominic are the perfect co-hosts, given how much they already despise each other. Neither loves the idea of lying to listeners, but it’s this or unemployment. Their audience gets invested fast, and it’s not long before The Ex Talk becomes a must-listen in Seattle and climbs podcast charts.
As the show gets bigger, so does their deception, especially when Shay and Dominic start to fall for each other. In an industry that values truth, getting caught could mean the end of more than just their careers.
My thoughts: I really enjoyed this one. It was just the right amount of funny, serious, and sexy. I love the funny scenes – not just the banter between Dominic and Shay, but Steve being cute and adorable, and I also love the awkward and self-deprecating stuff. The serious stuff were handled really well too – the grief and loss talk, not just on the radio but when the characters talk to each other. I love how Shay and her mom communicates about their feelings, and yes, the vulnerable conversations between Dominic and Shay gave me feelings. The sexy scenes were hot and steamy too, and I love that because it seems like sometimes you either get a fluffy love story with lots of sexy scenes, or a more serious romance without anything steamy. I really love the balance here. Definitely checking out the author’s other books!
My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
Have you read this book? What did you think of it? What were you reading this time last year?
Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett
When mysterious faeries from other realms appear at her university, curmudgeonly professor Emily Wilde must uncover their secrets before it’s too late in this heartwarming, enchanting second installment of the Emily Wilde series.
Emily Wilde is a genius scholar of faerie folklore—she just wrote the world’s first comprehensive of encylopaedia of faeries. She’s learned many of the secrets of the Hidden Folk on her adventures . . . and also from her fellow scholar and former rival, Wendell Bambleby.
Because Bambleby is more than infuriatingly charming. He’s an exiled faerie king on the run from his murderous mother, and in search of a door back to his realm. So despite Emily’s feelings for Bambleby, she’s not ready to accept his proposal of marriage. Loving one of the Fair Folk comes with secrets and danger.
And she also has a new project to focus a map of the realms of faerie. While she is preparing her research, Bambleby lands her in trouble yet again, when assassins sent by Bambleby’s mother invade Cambridge. Now Bambleby and Emily are on another adventure, this time to the picturesque Austrian Alps, where Emily believes they may find the door to Bambley’s realm, and the key to freeing him from his family’s dark plans.
But with new relationships for the prickly Emily to navigate and dangerous Folk lurking in every forest and hollow, Emily must unravel the mysterious workings of faerie doors, and of her own heart.
“Assassins are a monstrous breed. Either they attack when you are at your worst, or they are having a go at you on your birthday. I have never known a more dishonourable profession.”
“I’m afraid I have not gotten over my resentment of him for saving me from the snow king’s court in Ljosland earlier this year, and have made a solemn vow to myself that I shall be the one to rescue him from whatever faerie trouble we next find ourselves in. Yes, I realize this is illogical, given that it requires Wendell to end up in some dire circumstance, which would ideally best be avoided, but there it is. I’m quite determined.”
“The problem is not the packing, I admit; I simply dislike travelling. Why people wish to wander to and fro when they could simply remain at home is something I will never understand. Everything is the way I like it here.”
“One of the guiding principles of dryadology,” I said, “is this: do not cross the sort of Folk who make collections of human body parts.”
The Characters
I still love Emily and Wendell, and of course Shadow too. I was very happy to see more of Poe as well. Other than that, I didn’t connect with the characters in this book as much as the ones in the first book. Professor Rose grew on me, but I didn’t love him. Ariadne seemed like an afterthought, and the rest of the cast were mostly forgettable.
My Thoughts
Despite the characters not being as memorable as the ones in the first book, I still very much enjoyed this book. I love the way the relationship between Emily and Wendell is progressing. I feel like they know each other and are very comfortable with each other, and that’s everything. The story itself is interesting and I think my favorite part was discovering the doors. I also love the journey into Wendell’s kingdom and getting a glimpse of it. I’m excited to see more of it in the next book.
My Feels
I love this book because it’s a continuation from the first book and features characters I fell in love with, but I didn’t love it as much as the first book and I’m a little dissatisfied with how the rest of the characters were written. The characters in the first book were so vivid and alive, but the ones in this book felt like cardboard cutouts.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars. Still good, but I need better written characters!
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
It’s Time Travel Thursday! Hosted by Emily @ Budget Tales Book Blog, this is where you get to take a look back at what you were reading this time last year (or the year before or the year before that…) and get to relive those bookish memories!
This time last year I was reading:
How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell
When the technologies we use every day collapse our experiences into 24/7 availability, platforms for personal branding, and products to be monetized, nothing can be quite so radical as… doing nothing. Here, Jenny Odell sends up a flare from the heart of Silicon Valley, delivering an action plan to resist capitalist narratives of productivity and techno-determinism, and to become more meaningfully connected in the process.
My thoughts: To be honest, I missed a lot of the details, but I get the gist, and it’s better to retain 10% than to never read it at all, so. My takeaways: I want to be more mindful, try to replace more social media activities with some real life activities,. Otherwise, just making time for doing nothing and scheduling “doing nothing” in my calendar and actually sticking to it.
My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
Have you read this book? What did you think of it? What were you reading this time last year?
It’s Time Travel Thursday! Hosted by Emily @ Budget Tales Book Blog, this is where you get to take a look back at what you were reading this time last year (or the year before or the year before that…) and get to relive those bookish memories!
This time last year I was reading:
The Last Mile by David Baldacci (Amos Decker #2)
Convicted murderer Melvin Mars is counting down the last hours before his execution–for the violent killing of his parents twenty years earlier–when he’s granted an unexpected reprieve. Another man has confessed to the crime.
Amos Decker, newly hired on an FBI special task force, takes an interest in Mars’s case after discovering the striking similarities to his own life: Both men were talented football players with promising careers cut short by tragedy. Both men’s families were brutally murdered. And in both cases, another suspect came forward, years after the killing, to confess to the crime. A suspect who may or may not have been telling the truth.
The confession has the potential to make Melvin Mars–guilty or not–a free man. Who wants Mars out of prison? And why now?
But when a member of Decker’s team disappears, it becomes clear that something much larger–and more sinister–than just one convicted criminal’s life hangs in the balance. Decker will need all of his extraordinary brainpower to stop an innocent man from being executed.
My thoughts: There are a lot of problems with the story, but they don’t matter too much because of its incredible readability. The feeling I get when I read this book is almost like I’m on a white water rapids ride and honestly the ride just takes you and it’s thrilling and exciting and there’s no time to stop and wonder if it makes sense. You have no time to take in the scenery, or enjoy the company, or really do anything except hang on for the ride. At the end of the book, I’m left wondering what happened because the only thing I remember is the thrill of the ride.
Which isn’t to say the story isn’t good, it’s actually a pretty good story, just with a lot of implausibility and loose ends, but that’s another part of my awe – the storytelling skill it takes to make an okay story sound amazing. It’s also just what I need at this time; books that are easy to read and easy to get lost in.
My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
Have you read this book? What did you think of it? What were you reading this time last year?
