This will probably be the world’s shortest wrap-up. Still, I do need to keep tabs on what I’ve read or watched in the past few months, so here it goes.
A Dreadful Splendor by B.R. Myers. Historical with (possibly) SFF elements as it plays with the question of who is a true psychic and who is just a quack. Heroine is rescued from prison to speak to a client’s dead wife, but is she the real deal? The suspense builds up splendidly but the ending felt needlessly convoluted. Works well overall for a Gothic mood read.
Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros. I’ve seen reviews likening this to Hunger Games + Sarah J. Maas. I thought it was a lot like Divergent + Dragonflight, and let’s face it, very very tropey. In any case, it was enjoyable but made me think I’m too old for this.
The Fallen Idol (1948). Old British thriller full of unreliable narrators declaring that “the butler did it” (do you believe them?). There’s this one critical scene that I had to go back and rewatch at least thrice to understand how it changed everything. Seriously, kids say the darnedest things!
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. A neighbor persuaded me into watching this one with her. Despite my I’m-too-old-for-this grumpiness, I managed to laugh my way through this one. If you’ve seen the movie, you know that Wolf is QUITE scary. I particularly loved This is the End song (above).
Also binge-watched a couple of Asian dramas on Netflix: Who Rules the World and Till the End of the Moon. Lots of fantasy martial arts and villainous scheming, a la Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. If you’re new to Asian dramas, probably not the best place to start. But they’re great for stress-busting.
That’s it for May-June ’23! Pretty bad reading stats for this year so far, but I still have hopes for the rest of the year.
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.
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.
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.
In the last week of October, I probably read more books than in the past 3 months. So I’m really hoping that my reading/ blogging blues are finally over. There’s a lot to record and catch-up with, all those blogposts that I missed — still need to get up to speed there! In the meantime, here’s a bunch a mini-reviews / reading wrap-up for October 2021.
May 2021 was a slow reading month for me. I blogged much more than I read, which was unusual, but all thanks to the wonderful Wyrd And Wonder challenge. The link has all the posts for that challenge, most of these being SFF rec lists, but one standout read was Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi.
Aside from that, here’s a wrap-up for the month.
A very short book, with poems of varying length. These are all love/ heartbreak poems, but I think we can view them from a non-romantic lens too. I’m sure we’ve all had friends and loved ones with whom we had a parting, Lang’s poetry would ring true for those relationships as well. Rating: B–
