Strictly for favorites, irrespective of rating. May be biased, you have been warned.
The wonderful Wyrd & Wonder has started off again, hosted by Annemieke (A Dance With Books), Ariane (The Book Nook), Jorie (Jorie Loves A Story), Lisa (Dear Geek Place) and Imyril (There’s Always Room For One More). Thanks so much to them for all the effort that goes into this!
This Sunday, the prompt is top 5 magical systems (or spells) that we have come across in books. Obviously, world-building plays a huge role, but my picks are based on certain really striking book scenes.
How did 2022 fly by so quickly? I barely got any reading done (especially in the second half) and DNF’ed more books than ever (my watchlist fared way better!). For better or for worse, here they are, the few books that stood out as my “favorite books of 2022”.
Book: The Throme of the Erril of Sherill by Patricia A. McKillip
Published: 1973
Tropes: Short Story/ Novella, Knight quests, Riddles, Puns, Folktales
Readalikes: Alice in Wonderland, The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, Edward Lear
The mad King Magnus sends his knight Caerles on a quest, to look for the Throme of the Erril of Sherill. (A tongue twister, if ever there was one — and it’s not a throne, by the way). If Caerles succeeds, he gets to marry the king’s daughter, who has been locked up in the castle and has never ever laughed. The problem is: the Throme doesn’t exist. Or does it?
“You are cruel and loveless, you and your wanting.”
“I know,” Magnus Thrall whispered. “I know. The Throme is my hope. Find it for me, Caerles.”
It seems like a wild goose chase from the beginning. And poor Caerles seems to be the only sane person in the book. I was chuckling at all his dry witticisms throughout.
“… I do not know what use it is to hurry when I do not know where I am going, and when there will be nothing to find when I get there.”
The whole novella is actually poetry in the form of prose. Does that make sense? Seriously, I’m in awe of McKillip. To pack such a riddle in such lovely words, and to then blend it with humor and pun and brilliant character sketches? This was beautiful. Mesmerizing.
“The house of the King was a tall thing of great, thick stones and high towers and tiny slits of windows that gleamed at night when the King paced his hearth stones longing for the Throme. He had a daughter who sat with him and wept and embroidered pictures of the green world beyond the walls, and listened to her father think aloud to the pale sunlight or the wisps of candle-flame.”
This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic is summer-y book covers. Instead, I am just going with some fantastic book cover art that recently caught my eye. It’s great to discover new artists and the unique ways in which they portray their subject matter.
Full heads-up: this is an image heavy post (and none of the art is mine)!
All of May 2022, the fantastic #Wyrd and Wonder 2022 meme is in play. Pick your very cool prompt, pick your matching SFF books. It’s all up to you whether you want to do the weekly posts, the book bingo, the readalong, or make a book tag of it all.
This year, the theme is all things forest and woodlands — and here’s a list of some of those forest setting books that I’ve found memorable. Here’s to Mother Nature, who is fascinating both on and outside of page!
Dynamic duos in books: What a fun topic for this week’s Top Ten Tuesday meme hosted at That Artsy Reader Girl. Thanks to Elley the Book Otter for the great suggestion. And now, onwards, with the list!
Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by Jana over at That Artsy Reader Girl. Every Tuesday, you pick ten books on that week’s topic. This week, we are looking at favorite book settings.
Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by Jana over at That Artsy Reader Girl. Every Tuesday, you pick ten books on that week’s topic. This week, we are looking at books guaranteed to make you smile, aka feel-good books.
Honestly, I think this is my favorite sort of books, irrespective of the genre. I could go on piling books here but will try to restrict it to just ten — for your sake!
It’s time for The Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge, hosted by Long and Short Reviews. The topic for August 4, 2021 is Meet My Pets.
It’s a lifelong desire for me to bring home a pet dog. Perhaps some day I shall! So, I have no images to share for now, but I do have some fabulous links about pets that steal the show.
First, look up the YouTube channel by MochaMilk. This YouTuber has two wonderful dogs, though I’m partial towards the Samoyed named Wooyoo (meaning milk in Korean). I just adore this dog, and the videos are always shot so well.
Another YouTube channel is Life with Malamutes. They are giant fuzzballs, so close to their wolfish ancestors. I love Phil the most, and here’s a video of them doing some food-tasting.
I’d recommend the movie Hachiko, on the off chance that you’ve not seen it. It’s a moving tale about a dog that waited for his best friend, years after even his family had moved on. The dog here is the Japanese Akita, and he’s beautiful.
For fictional animal sidekicks, I have a full post here. There’s no scarcity of those in my life, thankfully.
Who are your pets? Let’s go meet them!
//Who drew the patterns of the stars, if not a god? Who designed the marvellous cycle of cloud and rain and river, if not a god? Who made you— and you— and you too— if not some god whose name we have forgotten?//
The Alleluia Files by Sharon Shinn is the third book in her Samaria series. It can be read as a standalone, as long as you have some background information of the past centuries on Samaria (which I am happy to provide below).
We find ourselves on a different planet, where the Samarians, Edori and Jacobites co-exist. Samarians worship the God known as Jovah. When they ‘sing’ to Jovah, Jovah instantly (and I do mean instantly) sends help within the hour, in the form of rain, medicines and grain.
The Edori are nomads and sailors who believe that somewhere out there is a supreme universal being, but they’re not sure whether that being is Jovah or not. And then there are the Jacobites, bitter agnostics, who claim that Jovah is not a God — instead, Jovah is a machine!
