This Mary is kind of breaking my heart 😢. Also, monstrous eh?

Some things never change, even if Frankenstein and his monster come to town 😂🤧

I didn't think modern dialogue in fantasy books bothered me that much but yikes, this paragraph is hard to read

A sudden thunderstorm seems like the perfect time to start a Macbeth retelling

It's so weird to me to see Bernie Sanders described in a pre-this-election-cycle book.

So today is incredibly depressing, and finishing Out of Darkness, arguably the most depressing novel ever and the worst one to finish last night, didn't help. I feel like I'm in dire need of escapism. Unfortunately, an absurd amount of my TBR pile won't do. Litsy people, help me! Romance novels, non-depressing and non-rapey fantasy novels, funny books, books where the dog doesn't die! Please and thank you

I'm a big nerd who is picking out a pantsuit to wear for Election Day. I'm leaning towards the light one, even though it's out of season, because I read that Hillary wore a white pantsuit at the third debate as a nod to the suffragettes who wore white. And now I'm off to iron a white blouse...for feminism 🤓

This is a YA book based on a Baba Yaga story. It's set in the modern day, where "Babs" runs a mysterious convenience store notorious for beheading shoplifters. It was surprisingly bloody for YA, but I enjoyed the book, especially the assorted magical creatures (Erg the talking doll, Dex and Sinister the disembodied hands, Picnic and Pangolin the magical lawyers). A good pick from my second ever uppercase box!

This week's library haul. I might have gone a little overboard...

I thought Abbott was a no go for me after my disappointment in The Fever, but I'm glad I gave her another shot because this one was more my speed. I thought the sort of destructive devotion required to make a top gymnast was really fascinating to read about, and made the aspects of Abbott's writing I'm not so into more palatable.

I finished this before bed on Halloween 👻. I've never read Lovecraft before (although of course I've heard of Cthulhu), but I quickly read Horror at Red Hook to get the most out of this book, which is a retelling of Red Hook. I thought this book was great. Legitimately scary, and it subverted the problematic parts of the original in the way that truly excellent fanfic can.

This was a very good Halloween graphic novel. There were a lot of subtle unsettling things going on with the art, and she did these gorgeous pages with a lot of negative space that really worked for me. Plus, it was wonderfully creepy.

For Halloween reading I'm easing in with a funny story about a ghost who finds he has bitten off more than he can chew (haunt?) when a new family moves into his house. I thought it was a fun, quick read that gives me a plan of attack if I'm ever haunted 😜 👻

So how great would it be to be Princess Leia's intern? SPACE INTERNS!

I've read a lot of Philippa Gregory in my day, and I know her female POV characters can sometimes be unsympathetic, but I think Margaret in this book takes the cake. I'm about a quarter of the way through and if she doesn't grow up and start thinking about something other than whether she has more than her sisters I might bail.

I thought that this was so cute and endearing. It also made me feel a little bad about bailing on the line to get into a HP & the Cursed Child release party. I was clearly not in the spirit of The Line.

Oh look, my slow re-read has finally brought me to my favorite quote in the whole book! ❤️❤️❤️

I'm trying out the #recommendsday tag on this fascinating nonfiction book by a woman who taught English at a school for the elite in North Korea.

I can't decide if Stalin or Mussolini is the worse father-in-law (Mussolini may have had his son in law killed). So far Stalin is definitely the worst father, but it's still early in the book.

This is the second Mata Hari historical fiction I haven't cared for. Maybe her story just isn't for me. The present tense narration bothered me this time around, and Mata Hari never made sense to me.

It was a library day today! The only downside of library visits is that there are so many books to read I don't know where to start.

This was a very interesting look at the effects of the one child system in China. It's very critical of the system, so be forewarned if you're looking for something that puts it in a neutral light you might want to look elsewhere. I thought the discussion of the pressures put on these single children, and the ways in which some circumvented the system were really fascinating.

I had very low expectations (it's a play, not a book! JKR didn't even write it!) but once I started I was almost overwhelmed by how much I missed this world, and how glad I was to be back. At the end of the day this book gave me the same feeling as the originals, and that's what is most important to me. If JKR wants to put her stamp on a whole extended universe of wizarding books, I'm here for it.

So it turns out this book is the first in a small series, but seventh in a bigger series, so I was weighed down by a ton of backstory I wasn't familiar with. I liked it enough to keep reading in spite of that. I guess I can't resist a princess swapping places with her maid.

Although I love the premise (ambitious Gilded Age lady stockbroker!), the execution not so much. The hero was too high on the overbearing asshole romance hero scale for me, the heroine was literally referred to as his reward, & there was a random sexual assault solely to raise the dramatic stakes.

I'm liking this book overall (Gilded Age romance inspired by the life of Victoria Woodhull!) but this part...ugh😓. 1) maybe it's my hatred of fish, but that's more gross than sexy imo, and 2) come on, she's a high society heiress! Surely her table manners are better than this! Use a napkin!

This book is a really interesting insight into an aspect of the Jim Crow South I've been curious about - the place of people who are neither black nor white. While the story seemed more complicated than the we shall overcome vibe the author was pushing for, I liked the book overall.

So I knew Rochester was older than Jane and all, but I didn't realize he was 20 YEARS older, jeez! 😰 This reread is making everything less romantic haha

This is an interesting book to read so soon after In the Country We Love. I know that xenophobia is cyclical, but the extent to which a lot of the crap Latino/a immigrants deal with today is the exact same crap my grandfather and people like him dealt with when they immigrated is still worth noting.

I need to take all the books out to move my bookshelf, and thought I might re-shelve according to color, like I've seen some people on the internet do. I ran into a problem when I realized that the distribution of colors is so uneven that it's pointless. The books are in an impossible state. 😎

Sometimes I'm really in the mood for a family drama, and this book really hit that spot for me. I enjoyed the perspective hopping as well.

Her writing voice took some getting used to, but I admire DG for using her platform as an actress to speak out on issues that are important to her & highlight the human effects of immigration policy, even when it means sharing vulnerable parts of herself (TW for self harm & suicidal ideation).

I love this series, and am sorry it's over, even though I know it went on for a very long time as it is. I love the world building and the characters. Also, I want a dragon! 🐉

Jane Eyre is weird in that it sometimes walks the line between cloying/sanctimonious morality instruction (vengeance is poison!) and sentiment that rings really true. Or at least it does for me. Which I suppose is why I keep coming back.

It's weird how a book so action packed can somehow still feel boring. I think this one just isn't for me.

I always like a good Slytherin protagonist and Baru definitely fits the bill. I kind of loved her using her immense power as...an accountant of the colonizing empire. I did have some trouble with all the fantasy names and titles, but the book was still very good.

This book was so interesting! She draws parallels between historical pandemics and recent ones, talks about ways our biology may be altered by pandemics, and brings up things I never thought would have been related to disease.

Slowly rereading Jane Eyre with the Serial Reader app so I won't rush through to my favorite parts. I want an alternate version of the book where Jane is replaced by a changeling when she passes out in the Red Room. Make Rochester's weird nicknames true!

I found the part dealing with young Mira in the world of ballet to be really interesting, but the part where she is an adult didn't work for me personally. I felt this weird disconnect between what I thought the book wanted me to feel and what I actually felt. Pretty great passage near the end tho.

Apparently people used to think you got cholera from eating too many vegetables.

I love it when I get an ARC I actually like! I was in from the first chapter. There were two things that didn't work for me (one romance, one twist) but overall I loved the sense of place and was really into the family mystery.

"My husband grows fatter every year and I thinner."

“I am done with things happening to me. From here on out, I am going to happen to things.”

Excerpt From: Milan, Courtney. “The Governess Affair.” Milan, Courtney. iBooks.