misericordiae

I've seen the adaptation of The City & The City, but while I remember liking it, the concept seemed pretty gimmicky. Does it feel more natural/realistic in the book?

I've started No One Will Come Back for Us by Premee Mohamed, a collection of cosmic horror stories. I do love me some cosmic/eldritch horror, and The Butcher of the Forest was one of my favorite reads from last year, so I'm hoping I'll enjoy this, too.

Despite not really being a short story person, I tentatively picked out 2 or 3 collections for bingo this year. My plan is to read them in pieces, between other things. We'll see how it goes!

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Finished Golden Terrace, Vol. 1 by Cang Wu Bin Bai. I found this okay: the translation was pretty dry, the pacing was a bit rough, and I never got invested in the romance. I am interested in how all the political intrigue plays out, but I doubt I'll get around to reading the second volume (nothing gets wrapped up at the end of Vol. 1). This is probably a good pick if you like romance-focused historical C-dramas (it's got the vibes), but I don't think I'd recommend it otherwise.

Bingo squares: different continent (HM), minority author, LGBTQIA+ (HM), political, jerk (HM)

Agreed! Although, I drop a ton of books within a few pages, and still end up with a lot of "okay" reads. I don't super mind that; if I only read things I happily breezed through or couldn't put down, I'd only end up finishing one or two books a year. Maybe I'm just hard to please?

I like Temple more than I thought I would, but the metronome mechanic is annoying. You don't have to hit everything on beat, but ofc it's better if you do. It'd be nice if there was an option either to always have the ticking on, or to have the beat reset to match the first cast in a chain.

Shout out to the visual designer, though: it's hard to give them a bad color scheme, and the glitter on one of the color channels is a nice touch.

You might look up 'linked stories'/'novel in stories': they're single-author collections that have all the stories set in the same world, often with shared characters, sometimes with an overarching or background narrative. Might be a good middle ground?

Currently reading Golden Terrace: Volume 1 by Cang Wu Bin Bai. Not my normal fare, but I was lured in by the description: historical Chinese PG-13 M/M arranged marriage romance with lots of court politics. I'm not super convinced by the romance so far, but the political aspect seems solid. I am getting a little lost with how many characters have already been introduced to the plot, but hopefully that'll settle down once all the important stuff's been established.

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Finished London Rules by Mick Herron. Basically more of the same as far as the Slough House series goes, and fun enough. Herron's bad guys are never really fleshed out or nuanced, which is fine, but I found the ones in London Rules to be especially one-dimensional stereotypes, to the point it was a little off-putting.

PocketBook Reader lets you change the background color to whatever you want. You can also change the line spacing/font size/etc, and it's possible to add fonts as well, if you need something specific. It can be a little convoluted to make it do what you want, though, and there's not much documentation. (I'm happy enough with it, but YMMV.) Also, no automatic line highlighting that I can find.

It did: they gave Drummer Michio Pa's story in the last couple seasons.

I had an idea last year for a challenge mode that was basically "how few books can you read to cover every category?", but it didn't really fit the goal of reading more lol. Might still be a fun side thing to try, though!

Just like last year, we've pre-seeded the Storygraph challenge with ~500 (mostly fiction) books from various genres, if you're looking for ideas (no account required to browse!).

ETA: The returning categories have different book suggestions from last year, so for even more ideas for those squares, check last year's Storygraph, too.

Thank you both. :)

My first thought is maybe a magnolia flower bud? Not sure it's the right fuzzy though. You might see if you can identify the park trees.