RIP (Read In Progress) Wednesday

[quillpunk]

It is once more time. What are you reading? 👀

Comments

[yhlee]

fiction
- Elva Birch. Stallion's Instinct. Shifter romance: stallion shifter and former con artist / lady he conned. I'm only a couple chapters in, but oh, my heart! ♥ ♥

- Rachel Rosen. Cascade. Nibbling at this cli-fi magic thriller and enjoying the sharp language.

- Julie Dean Smith. Call of Madness. I continue this 1990s medievaloid fantasy that I read and liked in HS, although I remember nothing of the plot beyond the starting premise. It's reasonably well-written. The heroine, Athaya, is a princess who would come off as an irresponsible brat EXCEPT it's clear that she has massive family problems and she's using drug addiction and gambling/carousing to cope (badly) with both the massive family problems and the fact that she's manifesting mage powers in a country where mage powers are usually considered to be the mark of the devil; her father, with whom she radioactively does not get along, has magic given to him by a mage advisor, and is attempting to reform the church on the small matter of automatic death-by-burning for mages. There's a lot of intriguing high-tension setup so I'm curious if the Suck Fairy has visited the rest of the book; among other things, there are three more in the series that were not in my HS library.

nonfiction
- Dirk Lieseman. Phantom Islands: In Search of Mythical Lands. Call this early research/inspiration reading for dark academia nonsense down the line. (In real life, I'm working on YA mecha space opera so I can wrap up this trilogy! But I want to prep for what's next.) Really beautifully written so far.

- Ray Robinson, compiled by. Famous Last Words: Fond Farewells, Deathbed Diatribes, and Exclamations Upon Expiration. The compiler acknowledges some of these are apocryphal or otherwise poorly attested, but I don't pick up something like this for airtight scholarship but fun/inspirational reading. He also includes some notes on each personality. I think so much of my innocence has been destroyed about how, uh, libertine various people were; but there are stories here, in capsule, accurate or not, that are genuinely heartbreaking or that are genuinely moving and hopeful.

comics
- Layla Lawlor. Freebird. ♥ ♥ Slice of life set in Alaska, beautifully drawn, quirky, and full of heart.

(I also did a bunch of reading in games - TTRPGs, solo journaling games, etc. - which I normally do count as reading and sometimes work-related reading at that, but will omit here.)

[quillpunk]

So many interesting books! <3