Tag: 10-rated

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Mid-Year Check In: Best of 2024 So Far

I am ready to write bad angsty poetry on my never-ending reading/ blogging slump! Still, somehow, pushing myself to do this mid-year 2024 blogpost on stuff I have liked till now.

Let’s all pledge to move out of Slump Valley! And just in case these recs reach you, hope you’ll like some of these.

1 / The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo

    I have not been a great fan or follower of the Grishaverse, so was hesitant in picking this up. But what a marvelous story this turned out to be. We peer into the ages of 16th century when anti-semitism was rife. Luzia is desperately trying to escape her confined pitiful life with her displays of magical craft… but soon ends up getting embroiled in a larger political net. Everything in this book was so impressive – the Spanish Golden Age/ Renaissance feel, the worldbuilding, the writing, the prose, the characterizations. Aaaaand, it is a standalone. If you’ve liked Mistress of the Art of Death, you’ll love this one too.

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    Best of List Books Memes Starred Recommendations

    Favorite Books of 2023

    Gifts from Santa

    Happy New Year ’24, everyone! And at last, my favorite topic for the yearly wrap-up to Top 10 Tuesday: favorite books of 2023. We save the best for the end, and it is so much fun adding those best to Mount TBR. Here’s my list too.

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    Books Starred Recommendations

    December Wrap-Up

    Three great December reads — all mysteries, all within this month, and all pretty good! I am already adding some of them to my Best of 2023 list.

    Night Will Find You by Julia Heaberlin

    Rating: 4 out of 5.

    Phenomenally well-written, terse suspense. Astronomer Vivvy Bouchet also has unsettling psychic insight and gets pulled into looking for a missing girl by cops. Is she a quack or is it real – nobody can make up their mind about it. As a narrator, Vivvy is unusually talkative but also just a bit unreliable, and this makes her a supremely interesting character. Equally interesting is her public fight with a cult-ish conspiracy podcaster Bubba Guns.
    The tense pacing of the first half dwindles later, but Heaberlin still manages a very decent wrap-up at the end. I hear  the book’s already up for TV adaptation. And with a title like that, how can you possibly ignore this book? Highly recommended!

    Wherever She Goes by Kelley Armstrong

    Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

    Another solid thriller from Armstrong. Recently divorced single mother Aubrey Finch believes she has spotted a kidnapping, but nobody wants to believe her. But Finch has other ghosts from her past, which compel her to pursue the case and in the process, reveal her own ghosts to the public eye. The pacing is excellent. If you can ignore the fact that most of Armstrong’s heroines seem very alike, you will like this one — not as much as the Rockton series, but still quite engrossing.

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    Best of List Books Memes Starred Recommendations

    Top 10 Underrated Books

    This week’s Top 10 Tuesday has us looking at top 10 books that we recommend often to fellow bloggers and friends. Since May is also the month for Wyrd & Wonder, I’m going to stick to some underrated books from fantasy fiction that I do like to clobber people with.

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    Best of List Books Memes Starred Recommendations

    Wyrd & Wonder: Favorite Magical Systems

    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!

    (Credits: Portal by Tithi Luadthong)

    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.

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    Books Music & Poetry Recommendations Watchlist

    Tri-Monthly Wrap-Up/ Mini Reviews

    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

    Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

    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?

    Rating: 4 out of 5.

    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.

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    Best of List Books Memes

    Old, Old Favorites

    This week’s Top 10 Tuesday prompt asks us to look at “Books I Love That Were Written Over Ten Years Ago“. Well, pretty much all the books I love were written over ten years ago. So this was easy, but I did try my best to mix up the genres as much as I could.

    Do we share any favorites from here?

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    The Throme of the Erril of Sherill

    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.”

    Rating: 10 of 10. Highly recommended.

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    Best of List Books Memes Starred Recommendations

    The Woods Are Lovely, Dark & Deep #Wyrd&Wonder 2022

    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.

    Wyrd and Wonder 2022
    IMAGE CREDITS: tree wolf image by chic2view on 123RF.com

    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!

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    Best of List Books Memes

    Favorite Books of 2021

    Here we are, my favorite entry from the Top Ten Tuesday meme hosted by Jana over at That Artsy Reader Girl — favorite books of 2021. This was one post I wasn’t going to miss. I swear I turned my back for a minute to fix up my new house, and lo the whole year has gone by. My 2021 had serious reading blues in the second half, but I still managed to identify top 10 (or more) reads. All to add to your TBR, of course!

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