Meme: 31 Days of December: Day 5 Books

[escritoireazul]

Day 01: a picture of you taken this year
Day 02: talk about music this year
Day 03: talk about movies this year
Day 04: talk about television this year
Day 05: talk about books this year
Day 06: talk about food this year
Day 07: your week, in great detail
Day 08: your Hanukkah wish list
Day 09: a photo that makes you happy taken this year
Day 10: a photo of you taken over ten years ago
Day 11: your favorite photo this year
Day 12: your favorite website this year
Day 13: new items you’ve added to collections this year
Day 14: What you are proud of from this year
Day 15: something that made you laugh this year
Day 16: something that made you sad this year
Day 17: something that made you happy this year
Day 18: what is on your desk right now
Day 19: what you learned this year
Day 20: talk about hobbies this year
Day 21: what you are most pleased about this year
Day 22: talk about art this year
Day 23: What you did to have fun this year
Day 24: a photo of you and your family
Day 25: Talk about politics this year
Day 26: A list of what you got for Hanukkah
Day 27: A new years resolution
Day 28: Something which caught your interest this year
Day 29: Travel you did this year
Day 30: Your plans for New Years
Day 31: Best moment of the month


Day 5: talk about books this year

I should have known this topic would be next, because it's another long one for me. I've started more than 100 different books this year, and finished the majority of them, some of them more than once. All of this is not counting the ones I read on bad days, but didn't have the energy to track.

Here are some of the ones I enjoyed:

Beware the Wild - Natalie Parker: Really fun teen southern supernatural mystery.

Trust Me, I'm Lying - Mary Elizabeth Summer: Super entertaining teen con artist and friends.

Shutter - Courtney Alameda: Excellent teen horror, though there's a bit of Our Girl is Badass (Other Girls Aren't).

Nearly Gone - Elle Cosimano: Suspenseful teen thrilled with characters I loved.

Little House series (minus Farmer Boy) - Laura Ingalls Wilder: I never read Farmer Boy. I do not care about Almonzo unless he's around Laura. I missed my mother a lot earlier this year, and my first memory is of her reading this series to me, so I read it again, and mourned.

Incryptid series - Seanan McGuire: Supernatural adventures about a family of cryptozoologists. The fourth book came out this year, and it was about werewolves, so pretty much Made For Me in a series that already feels made for me. So I reread the first three in a marathon to celebrate the fourth book. Then, last month, I reread all four again. Even when I'm bothered by things (there's a big thread of White Savior to the universe), I love them so hard.

Uglies series - Scott Westerfeld: I wanted a dose of dystopia, and I love the main characters of this series a lot, so I did a marthon reread over a weekend.

Caszandra series - Andrea K. Host: Sci-fi portal fantasy, and one of my favorite self-published books ever. It is really satisfying, even though I don't normally enjoy the journal format in books. Cassandra is a fantastic narrator, and the world building delightful. I read this series (three books and a Gratuitous Epilogue that is entitled as such) three times this year.

Kilmer Cure - Lynn Schneider: Lynn Schneider is the best, y'all, and her collection of essays about bipolar, framed around Val Kilmer's movies, broke me wide open.

Under the Lights - Dahlia Adler: This was a delightful story about teen friendship and romance with two of my favorite queer girl characters ever.

United States of Asgard series - Tessa Gratton: I keep getting caught up wanting to know where the hell all the Indian tribes have gone, because they are hardly ever mentioned, and the one time a Native American character shows up onscreen, it's a trick. Even with new gods coming in, the native gods, and the people who worshipped them, still fucking exist. That being said, I love this series and its characters so much; fierce, angry teen girls who are strong in different ways and who have such grand adventures. I read this series twice this year.

Parasitology series - Mira Grant: I marathoned the first and second book right before the third came out this year, and ever since have been super annoyed by the fact there is a GIANT CONTINUITY ERROR at the beginning of book two. It keeps bleeding into my overall enjoyment of the series, which is really great zombie fiction with fantastic science behind it.

20-sided Sorceress series - Annie Bellet: The first couple books of this supernatural adventure series is fantastic! The main character is a geeky woman who owns a gaming shop and learned to control her sorcerer powers through D&D references. And then the latest book in the series absolutely fell flat; it felt more like a couple chapters cut off from a much bigger story.

A Trifle Dead, Blackmail Blend, and Drowned Vanilla - Livia Day: Super fun, sweet cozy mysteries set in Hobart about a baker who knows everyone in town and keeps getting pulled into mysteries.

Comments

[isis]

I have pretty much heard of none of these (except for the Little House series) and a lot of them sound interesting - I like your straight-up reviews. (I know I bounced hard off a couple of the Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant series but not those same ones, though I think I might have read a short story set in Incryptid universe.)

[escritoireazul]

I really enjoyed them, and I'm glad my little reviews were useful. I'm hit or miss with Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant; I don't read the main SM series (the one about fairies that started with Rosemary & Rue), but I really love the cryptozoology series a lot. For MG, I'm not a huge fan of the first zombie trilogy (the Newsflesh world) (I liked it well enough, I guess, but I've never actually made it to the third book, so not well enough to finish it), but I liked the first book in the Parasitology book a lot (the other two not as much, but I'm glad I finished the trilogy).

[dhampyresa]

United States of Asgard sounds like something I could be interested in. tell me more?

[escritoireazul]

Happily! The United States of Asgard is a three book and some novellas series by Tessa Gratton. The basic premise is that gods are real and the Norse gods came with their worshippers to settle what would become the USA.

Blurb: Welcome to the United States of Asgard! Please watch for troll sign!

The United States of Asgard is a nation of poets and warriors, of rock bands and evangelical preachers, of gods and their children. The media tracks troll sightings and reality TV is about dragon slaying and teen prophets. The president rules the country alongside a council of Valkyrie, and the military has a special battalion dedicated to eradicating the threat of Greater Mountain Trolls.

Each book is about a teen protagonist's adventures and relationship with their chosen god. Book one is about Soren Bearstar, a biracial berserker who does not want to be a berserker, who are all men and all sworn to Odin. Soren and teen prophet Astrid Glyn go on an adventure when Baldur the Beautiful, the god of light, disappears, and it is absolutely wonderful. Book two is about Signy Valborn who is trying to solve a riddle set for her by Odin in order to take her place as the final Valkyrie. Where Soren tries hard to control his strength and his anger and his berserker-ness and hates Odin, Signy embraces her power and her rage and her love for her god. Book three is about Astrid, but to say anything about it would be a spoiler.

There's also a book that collects three of the novellas; the stories focus on one of Thor's illegitimate sons, who is biracial and bisexual and possibly my favorite male character ever, a girl who is introduced in book one and anything else about her would be a spoiler, and Glory, who is actually Fenris Wolf, bound to girl form so she won't eat Baldur and swallow the world and bring about Ragnarok.

Glory was my introduction into this world; back when Tessa Gratton was still regularly posting short stories as a part of the Merry Fates, she wrote Blood Like Apples, which is a story about Glory and how she has been bound and what is the only thing saving the world, and it is absolutely wonderful.

(I think there are a handful of other USAsgard stories in the Merry Fates archive, but I haven't looked yet to be sure.)

I love this series a lot. I'm not super knowledgeable about the Norse gods, but Sister K is a big fan and one of my bffs took this excellent blood feuds class in law school that included a lot of references, and so I've picked up things by osmosis. I love the world building, the way girls and women are so strong and so smart and so important in the world, but there is still sexism to be faced, and racism to overcome, and homophobia. I love the adventures, the way the three main books loop together to tell a long, rollicking adventure, the layers the short stories and novellas add. I love it so, so much.

And each time I reread it, I get frustrated by the fact that for all the great things it does, Gratton basically wiped the Indian tribes and their gods out of the world. That's not even what happen with actually colonization. They are still people, still living, still a part of this world and this country. She handled so many difficult things well, only to absolutely fuck up this part, and it is so frustrating.

I highly recommend the books, though. These characters, this world, it is great. Odds are high I'll reread it again soon, possibly even before the end of the year, but if not, definitely early next year.

[isis]

I was interested in this, too, so thanks for the more detailed description.

[escritoireazul]

You're welcome. I hope you do read them; they're really great.

[dhampyresa]

That does sound great!

[escritoireazul]

They are! I hope, if you read them, you enjoy them too.

[everbright]

Do you know that like NO libraries have the 20-sided sorceress books? There's 7 in all of the worldcat.

[escritoireazul]

That's unfortunate, because the first couple are a lot of fun. I'm not a huge library user; do they usually carry self-published books? That might be why there are so few copies.

[everbright]

Not normally! I didn't realize the series was self-pub though, her website is really professional.

[escritoireazul]

Oh, interesting. I hadn't looked at her website before, but you're right, that's nicely done.