literature.cafe chat

I am feeling so freaking better and am ready to read and post cats endlessly on here. I am on spinning silver still, but getting farther and having so much more energy than I did.

I recently started reading Mort by Terry Pratchett and I’m loving it so far! I’ve read most of the other Discworld books, but somehow missed this one. I’m really enjoying the focus on Death as a character and the humor is -----ing good, as always. I’m excited to see where the story goes from here!

I enjoy this weekly chat, allows me to get a glimpse of other people’s interests and approaches to reading. I am particularly fascinated by the people having a full stack of books they will soon be reading. That’s so different from how I usually choose my books. For me, it’s mostly a spur if the moment decision which new book to start, depending on my mood and my reading list. As an aside, this is for me one of the biggest pros of a kindle: I can download my next book as soon as I decide what it will be.

Anyway, I’m reading Stolen Focus, interesting and entertaining enough, but nothing much to write home about.

I just got and finished Bookshops and Bonedust by Travis Baldree very quickly and thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s a fitting prequel to Legends and Lattes.

I am going to be starting Tessa Miyata Is No Hero by Julie Abe since it seems pretty quick and then on to The Olympian Affair by Jim Butcher since that also just came out.

Just started reading Our Share of Night. It’s a delight so far.

Here’s a gift link to the NYT review

I'm reading The Changeling by Victor Lavalle, due to a suggestion last week from here! I really like this writer- he seems to have such compassion for his characters.

I have not been in a bookish mood recently, so... does playing a visual novel somewhat count? These things are basically overgrown choose your own adventure books, after all. The one I've been playing is Slay the Princess - it's a horror game (disturbing/somewhat graphic rather than actually scary - check out the content warnings if you're concerned) where you have to go into a cabin in the woods and, well, slay the princess who is trapped in the basement. If you don't, the world will end.

It's quite cleverly written - I've had many little moments when I was following a conversation and thinking about what I, as a player, would like to say under the circumstances, and then the game would offer me exactly that as one of the dialogue options. The voice acting is on point, the art is beautiful, about the only issue I have is that I didn't enjoy the final resolution all that much (idk why - I think that it's at least partially a pacing issue and spreading the last infodump out a bit more would have helped). I encourage anyone not violently allergic to the concept of a visual novel to give it a look.

Oh, and you get to bully the narrator and it's beautiful.

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

Using Audible’s plus catalog to try out The Destroyer series by Michael-Scott Earle. No idea, but the whole series is on Plus. I’ll swap between that and Starsight from the Skyward series (by Sanderson) in preparation for Defiant later this month. I’ll also finish off the Greenbone Saga with Jade Legacy later this week.

Maybe not all of that this week, but that’s my roadmap and I’ll get to a lot of it.

Edit: I feel compelled to follow up my “The Destroyer” comment with a DO NOT FOLLOW notice. The book is as horny and poorly written as though a 15 year old boy was writing his own “fan fiction” and kept getting “distracted”.

The description says “contains mature themes”, but I’d love more notice on just how prevalent (and immature) those themes are.