Well, it’s been more than a quarter, but it’s just easier to sum up that way! I’m still not getting much reading done, but at least I managed to find some really good movies. Here’s a wrap-up for the first quarter.
Category: Recommendations
All recommendations, of whatsoever nature, are tagged thus.
This week we have a genre freebie for Top 10 Tuesday, and I am going with Top 10 Mythological Fantasy Books. I really do like a plot where the gods get interested in mortal affairs, leading to much chaos — and great world-building.
1 / The Chalion Series / World of the Five Gods series by Lois McMaster Bujold
2 / Inheritance Trilogy by N. K. Jemisin
3 / Paternus Trilogy by Dyrk Ashton
4 / Malazan Book of the Fallen Series by Steven Erikson
5 / Edda of Burdens trilogy by Elizabeth Bear
6 / The Queen’s Thief Series by Megan Whalen Turner
7 / Tales of the Magatama Series by Noriko Ogiwara
8 / Indulgence Series by Erin Kellison
9 / The Wicked + The Divine saga by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie
10 / The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
Have you read or are you interested any of these mythological fantasy books? Please feel free to leave as many recs as possible too!
Categories
Top 10 Cozy Reads
This week’s Top 10 Tuesday meme has us looking at books that give us cozy vibes. Here’s a list to to keep us warm!
1/ Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
Everything sounds hopeful and cozy when Anne says it.
2/ James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
Because there’s so much happiness in finding your own tribe.
The Inugami Family (Japanese Movie)
Year of Release: 1976
Director: Kon Ichikawa
Based on the Book: The Inugami Curse by Seishi Yokomizo
Recommended for fans of: Gothic, Foreign Period Dramas, Eerie Mysteries, A touch of Horror, Brilliant Plot, Golden Age of Detective Fiction
Some time back, Words & Peace had recommended The Inugami Curse and I’d wanted to read the book ever since. I decided to take the shortcut when I accidentally discovered there was a subtitled movie adaptation too.
It’s a superb plot. The patriarch of the Inugami family clan dies, leaving behind several competing successors and a really crazy will. I don’t think it’s giving away spoilers to say that the will goes along the lines of “If A dies, B gets the property. If B dies, C gets the property….” It’s like the dreadful old man was setting them all up to murder, starting with A! Along the way there are some red herrings – the challenge is to identify which ones are red herrings and which ones are not.
Is “tri-monthly” the right word? June, July, August — loads of books and shows that I discovered and even liked (wonder of wonders)! Interestingly, in pretty much all of these, I also found that the blurb or the trailer had been misleading. Here’s a (long post) wrap up.
Castle Barebane by Joan Aiken
A rather strange and underrated historical fantasy work set in the 1880s involving a “road trip” from New York to Scotland. The journalist heroine sets out to help her odd brother (and also escape her marriage). Then she finds herself embroiled in a blackmail plot and with her young nephew and niece in tow. This book really defies genre and age groupings. The suspense is slow to build-up, the “fantasy” part is very, very subtle. I even thought there was some LGBTQ representation in this 1976 book. Also historically accurate, as can be expected from Aiken.
Why didn’t they ask Evans?
A very quirky new adaptation of one of Agatha Christie’s more complex mysteries. This cryptic question changes every time: Why didn’t they ask Evans? Why didn’t they ask Evans? Why didn’t they ask Evans? Wait at least till Episode 2 for the show to really get going.
Work in the past 3 months was like Godzilla. I read very little, and got nowhere on the 10 Million Reading Challenges that I had over-ambitiously planned. But I binged on mystery and detective stuff a lot, and here are a few things that kept me going.
Categories
If you like Time Travel
Here we are, combining Top 10 Tuesday with… time travel! The first time I came across time travel was A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, in which miserly Scrooge is visited by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come.
Since then, I’ve become something of a time travel fan. I’ve also discovered that there are two schools of thought. One school believes that through time travel you can change the future. The other school believes that the future is inescapable, through time travel you can only change the paths to that future.
Let’s take a look at 10 (or more) books that use innovative devices for time travel.
It’s time for Top Ten Tuesday meme hosted at That Artsy Reader Girl. This week, we are looking at books on our favorite trope, and the first one I could think of was: amnesia. Somehow, I find the loss of memory to be very closely linked to the loss of identity, and reclaiming both seems like a major victory.
