Monthly Wrap Up – December 2020

I can’t believe tomorrow is the last day of 2020, it’s insane to think about when how long this year felt back in the Spring! I hope you all managed to enjoy the holiday period despite the pandemic. I haven’t read as much this month which was to be expected with Christmas and New Year, plus I have been working on getting blog content ready for 2021, however I did still manage to read some great novels this month!

Books read this month

This month I read a total of 6 books (6 physical and 0 ebooks)

  1. The Burning God by R.F. Kuang
  2. The Glass Woman by Caroline Lea
  3. The Beast Player by Nahoko Uehashi
  4. Sorry It’s A Girl by A.A. Khan
  5. little scratch by Rebecca Watson
  6. Elantris by Brandon Sanderson

Favourite books read this month

The Burning God by R.F. Kuang
I doubt that this comes as a surprise as all as both of the instalments before this one have made it to this section in previous monthly wrap ups! As you can tell from my previous review, I could talk about this book for a while so I will keep this brief: this is a great end to the series. It was brilliant and bittersweet. I’m genuinely sad that this series is over but it has spurred me to read many more fantasy series in 2021!

The Beast Player by Nahoko Uehashi
This is one fantasy series that I will be continuing in 2021 after loving this first instalment. Although I’ve been reading more fantasy novels this year, I have been slightly disappointed with the lack of fantastical creatures in them (even if the novels were still great) so when I came across this novel all about fantastical beasts and caring for them I was thrilled. I loved the characters in this book and even though it is a title from Pushkin Children, it is one that I would encourage everyone to read no matter how old you are.

little scratch by Rebecca Watson
My full review of this novel will be coming out in a couple of weeks, so you’ll be able to see read my gushing then! Just know that this is a very challenging novel due to its content and the writing style and I loved every page of it. It’s a very raw and refreshing read that I’m still thinking about even now.

Elantris by Brandon Sanderson
In 2020 I rediscovered my love for fantasy novels and my last book of the year became one of my favourites of the year when I read Brandon Sanderson for the first time, after his books have been recommended to me for quite some time. Filled with brilliant characters in an expertly crafted world with such fascinating lore. I’m very excited to read more of his work in 2021.

Did you manage to get much reading in December? Was it a race to meet your reading challenge goal or did you fit in reading time around what festivities you were able to have? Let me know in the comments!

www.blackwells.co.uk

The Glass Woman by Caroline Lea

Publisher: Penguin
Publication Date:
14/11/2019
Length: 392 pages
Genre:
Historical Fiction | Gothic

CW: n/a

Blackwells.co.uk

When Rósa is betrothed to Jón Eiríksson, she is sent to a remote village. There she finds a man who refuses to speak of his recently deceased first wife, and villagers who view her with suspicion. Isolated and disturbed by her husband’s strange behaviour, her fears deepen.

What is making the strange sounds in the attic?
Who does the mysterious glass figure she is given represent?
And why do the villagers talk of the coming winter darkness in hushed tones?

GoodReads
Continue reading “The Glass Woman by Caroline Lea”

Monthly TBR – November 2020

With Christmas looming on the horizon, instead of a full monthly haul this month I’m going to outline what I hope to get through this month instead! As I mentioned in last month’s Thoughtful Thursday post, at this time of year I become a bit of a seasonal reader. This month also sees the next Galleyathon Round (9 November 2020 – 15 November 2020) and I have a few sitting on my shelf that I need to get through! 

The Dragon Republic by R.F. Kuang

In the aftermath of the Third Poppy War, shaman and warrior Rin is on the run: haunted by the atrocity she committed to end the war, addicted to opium, and hiding from the murderous commands of her vengeful god, the fiery Phoenix. Her only reason for living is to get revenge on the traitorous Empress who sold out Nikan to their enemies.

With no other options, Rin joins forces with the powerful Dragon Warlord, who has a plan to conquer Nikan, unseat the Empress, and create a new Republic. Rin throws herself into his war. After all, making war is all she knows how to do.


There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura 

A young woman walks into an employment agency and requests a job that has the following traits: it is close to her home, and it requires no reading, no writing – and ideally, very little thinking.

She is sent to a nondescript office building where she is tasked with watching the hidden-camera feed of an author suspected of storing contraband goods. But observing someone for hours on end can be so inconvenient and tiresome. How will she stay awake? When can she take delivery of her favourite brand of tea? And, perhaps more importantly – how did she find herself in this situation in the first place?

As she moves from job to job, writing bus adverts for shops that mysteriously disappear, and composing advice for rice cracker wrappers that generate thousands of devoted followers, it becomes increasingly apparent that she’s not searching for the easiest job at all, but something altogether more meaningful… 


The Smallest Man by Frances Quinn

When should my story begin? Not when I was born, a butcher’s son, in a tiny cottage just like all the other tiny cottages in Oakham. Who’d have thought then that I’d ever have much of a story to tell? Perhaps it starts when people began to nudge each other and stare as I walked with my mother to market, or the first time someone whispered that we were cursed. But I didn’t know then. No, I think my story begins on the day of the Oakham Fair, in the year of 1625. 

When I was ten years old and I found out what I was. Nat Davy is a dwarf. He is 10 years old, and all he wants is to be normal. After narrowly escaping being sold to the circus by his father, Nat is presented to Queen Henrietta Maria – in a pie. She’s 15, trapped in a loveless marriage to King Charles I, and desperately homesick. Nat becomes a friend to the woman who’ll become the power behind the throne and trigger the Civil War, but in the eyes of the world he’s still a pet, a doll to be dressed up and shown off. Nat longs to ride and hunt like the other boys at court. The real boys. But he will never be accepted. 

Loosely based on a true story, this epic tale spans 20 years; during which the war begins, Nat and the queen go on the run, Nat saves the queen’s life, falls in love with the most beautiful girl at court, kills a man, is left in exile. Told from his unique perspective as the smallest man in England, with the clever and engaging voice of a boy turned man yearning for acceptance, this story takes us on an unforgettable journey. He’s England’s smallest man, but his story is anything but small.


The Fathers, The Sons and the Anxious Ghost by Jamie Adams

Three guys in their thirties have something in common. Their children all go to the same school. One day a tragic event leads to them having to deal with a lurking aftermath which draws them into each other’s lives and causes them to rethink their attitudes to just about everything.

The children tell the second part of this story, ten years after the initial events. The dust seems to have settled until one of them uncovers information that throws everything back into chaos.

The third part… well that will have to wait.


The Inugami Curse by Seishi Yokomizo

A fiendish classic murder mystery, from one of Japan’s greatest crime writers

In 1940s Japan, the wealthy head of the Inugami Clan dies, and his family eagerly await the reading of the will. But no sooner are its strange details revealed than a series of bizarre, gruesome murders begins. Detective Kindaichi must unravel the clan’s terrible secrets of forbidden liaisons, monstrous cruelty, and hidden identities to find the murderer, and lift the curse wreaking its bloody revenge on the Inugamis.


The Glass Woman by Caroline Lea

1686, ICELAND. AN ISOLATED, WINDSWEPT LAND HAUNTED BY WITCH TRIALS AND STEEPED IN THE ANCIENT SAGAS.

Betrothed unexpectedly to Jón Eiríksson, Rósa is sent to join her new husband in the remote village of Stykkishólmur. Here, the villagers are wary of outsiders.

But Rósa harbours her own suspicions. Her husband buried his first wife alone in the dead of night. He will not talk of it. Instead he gives her a small glass figurine. She does not know what it signifies.

The villagers mistrust them both. Dark threats are whispered. There is an evil here – Rósa can feel it. Is it her husband, the villagers – or the land itself?

Alone and far from home, Rósa sees the darkness coming. She fears she will be its next victim…


A Burning by Megha Majumdar 

For readers of Tommy Orange, Yaa Gyasi, and Jhumpa Lahiri, an electrifying debut novel about three unforgettable characters who seek to rise—to the middle class, to political power, to fame in the movies—and find their lives entangled in the wake of a catastrophe in contemporary India.

Jivan is a Muslim girl from the slums, determined to move up in life, who is accused of executing a terrorist attack on a train because of a careless comment on Facebook. PT Sir is an opportunistic gym teacher who hitches his aspirations to a right-wing political party, and finds that his own ascent becomes linked to Jivan’s fall. Lovely–an irresistible outcast whose exuberant voice and dreams of glory fill the novel with warmth and hope and humor–has the alibi that can set Jivan free, but it will cost her everything she holds dear.


This is just a glimpse of my general TBR which is growing by the day! I’m hoping that I will get through more books than the one listed, however I’m currently having a slow start to the month and haven’t managed to finish one book yet! 

What are you guys planning to read this month? Do you have an idea of what you’re going to read or do you just pick a book off your shelf at random after finishing one? Let me know in the comments!

www.blackwells.co.uk

Book Haul – October 2020

This month I managed to stick to my budget and bought reads that I thought was perfect for this season! Some cozy reads mixed in with some darker, gothic, reads as for the shorter, colder, days. Check out the GoodReads description for each title below!

Before the Coffee Gets Cold: Tales from the Cafe by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

From the author of Before the Coffee Gets Cold comes a story of four new customers each of whom is hoping to take advantage of Cafe Funiculi Funicula’s time-travelling offer.

Among some faces that will be familiar to readers of Kawaguchi’s previous novel, we will be introduced to:

The man who goes back to see his best friend who died 22 years ago
The son who was unable to attend his own mother’s funeral
The man who travelled to see the girl who he could not marry
The old detective who never gave his wife that gift…


The Little House by Kyoko Nakajima

The Little House is set in the early years of the Showa era (1926-89), when Japan’s situation is becoming increasingly tense but has not yet fully immersed in a wartime footing. On the outskirts of Tokyo, near a station on a private train line, stands a modest European style house with a red, triangular shaped roof. There, a woman named Taki has worked as a maidservant in the house and lived with its owners, the Hirai family. Now, near the end of her life, Taki is writing down in a notebook her nostalgic memories of the time spent living in the house. Her journal captures the refined middle-class life of the time from her gentle perspective. At the end of the novel, however, a startling final chapter is added.


Dracula’s Child by J.S. Barnes

Dracula returns…

It has been some years since Jonathan and Mina Harker survived their ordeal in Transylvania and, vanquishing Count Dracula, returned to England to try and live ordinary lives. But shadows linger long in this world of blood feud and superstition – and, the older their son Quincy gets, the deeper the shadows that lengthen at the heart of the Harkers’ marriage. Jonathan has turned back to drink; Mina finds herself isolated inside the confines of her own family; Quincy himself struggles to live up to a family of such high renown. And when a gathering of old friends leads to unexpected tragedy, the very particular wounds in the heart of the Harkers’ marriage are about to be exposed…


The Ghost Tree by Christina Henry

When the bodies of two girls are found torn apart in her hometown, Lauren is surprised, but she also expects that the police won’t find the killer. After all, the year before her father’s body was found with his heart missing, and since then everyone has moved on. Even her best friend, Miranda, has become more interested in boys than in spending time at the old ghost tree, the way they used to when they were kids. So when Lauren has a vision of a monster dragging the remains of the girls through the woods, she knows she can’t just do nothing. Not like the rest of her town. But as she draws closer to answers, she realises that the foundation of her seemingly normal town might be rotten at the centre. And that if nobody else stands for the missing, she will.


The Glass Woman by Caroline Lea

1686, Iceland. A cold, windswept land where they talk of witches and fear strangers . . .

When Rósa is betrothed to Jón Eiríksson, she is sent to a remote village.

There she finds a man who refuses to speak of his recently deceased first wife, and villagers who view her with suspicion.

Isolated and disturbed by her husband’s strange behaviour, her fears deepen.

What is making the strange sounds in the attic?
Who does the mysterious glass figure she is given represent?
And why do the villagers talk of the coming winter darkness in hushed tones?


Nevernight by Jay Kristoff

Mia Corvere is only ten years old when she is given her first lesson in death.
Destined to destroy empires, the child raised in shadows made a promise on the day she lost everything: to avenge herself on those that shattered her world.
But the chance to strike against such powerful enemies will be fleeting, and Mia must become a weapon without equal. Before she seeks vengeance, she must seek training among the infamous assassins of the Red Church of Itreya.
Inside the Church’s halls, Mia must prove herself against the deadliest of opponents and survive the tutelage of murderers, liars and daemons at the heart of a murder cult.
The Church is no ordinary school. But Mia is no ordinary student.
The Red Church is no ordinary school, but Mia is no ordinary student.
The shadows love her.
And they drink her fear.


Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

Olive Kitteridge: indomitable, compassionate and often unpredictable. A retired schoolteacher in a small coastal town in Maine, as she grows older she struggles to make sense of the changes in her life. She is a woman who sees into the hearts of those around her, their triumphs and tragedies.

We meet her stoic husband, bound to her in a marriage both broken and strong, and a young man who aches for the mother he lost – and whom Olive comforts by her mere presence, while her own son feels overwhelmed by her complex sensitivities.

Have you read any of these books? Are any on your own TBR? Let me know in the comments!

www.blackwells.co.uk