October 30th-November 5th, 2022

 The Sunday Post

The Sunday Post is a blog news meme hosted here @ Caffeinated Reviewer. It’s a chance to share news~ A post to recap the past week on your blog and showcase books and things we have received. Share news about what is coming up on your blog for the week ahead. Join in weekly, bi-weekly or for a monthly wrap up. See rules here: Sunday Post Meme

#5 Childhood Memories

I sometimes wonder how my six year old son will see his life in the future: will he feel that his childhood was ideal, or will the ideal be simply an illusion that I hope to impart to him? I am sure my parents wished and tried to make sure I remember the good parts of life, and there are fleeting glimpses of fun times such as traveling to a water park or even taking a Disney vacation. But beyond the big gestures, I recall yummy food, videos, music in addition to a whole ton of guilt and anxiety. My son, I hope its safe to say, has probably more of an awesome childhood than I did, and I often hope that when he recalls his childhood, he will remember the fun times he had. 

Unfortunately my son got sick, again. A virus. Apparently I also learned that his top teeth is wiggly (he's been keeping it a secret from me.) and I am not sure if we will end up going trick or treating or not. We did do Trunk or Treat where we went to school and he got a ton of candy, but we have been looking forward to trick or treating quite a bit. He also got an award as Artist of the Month and I am really amazed at the things he is capable of drawing. 

Last Week On The Blog

So no new reviews for this week. perhaps the coming week?

This Week On The Blog

Possible Reviews of The Wizard of Eventide by Jon/Kelley Skovron The Autodidacts By Thomas Kendall, The Bronze Drum By Phong Nguyen; The Bone Flower By Charles Lambert; There Are No Happy Loves By Sergio Olguin. 

New Arrivals At svetlana's reads and views 

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? 

(From The Book Date)

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? a place to meet up and share what you have been, and are about to be reading over the week. It’s a great post to organise yourself. It’s an opportunity to visit and comment and er… add to your groaning TBR pile! So welcome in everyone. This meme started on J Kaye’s blog and then was hosted by Sheila from Book Journey. Sheila then passed it on to Kathryn here at The Book Date.

Jen Vincent, Teach Mentor Texts, and Kellee of Unleashing Readers decided to give It’s Monday! a kidlit focus. If you read and review books in children’s literature – picture books, chapter books, middle grade novels, young adult novels or anything in those genres – join them.

I finished reading The Wizard of Eventide by Jon/Kelley Skovron and have begun reading The Monsters We Defy by Leslye Penelope which might kind of take me time to get used to it. (Its written in African-American vernacular.) But other than that it shows an interesting premise with ghosts and spirits as well as boons and tricks. I hoped to finish reading Summer Lightning and start on Notorious Sorcerer but it didn't happen yet. Maybe in a few days or so. 

Reading:

15/343                                  233/317

Plans: 

Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.

How it works:

I assign each Tuesday a topic and then post my top ten list that fits that topic. You’re more than welcome to join me and create your own top ten (or 2, 5, 20, etc.) list as well. Feel free to put a unique spin on the topic to make it work for you! Please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own post so that others know where to find more information.

You’ll find the schedule of upcoming TTT topics below so you can plan ahead. I’ll post a Linky here on the blog each week so you can link up your post (if you want). If you don’t have a blog, post your picks in the comment section below! Have tons of fun talking books and getting to know your fellow bloggers!

NOTE: If a weekly topic is listed as a “freebie”, you are invited to come up with your own topic. Sometimes I will give your topic a theme, such as “love”, a season, or an upcoming holiday. That just means that you can come up with any topic you want that fits under that umbrella.

You’re more than welcome to use the Top Ten Tuesday image I designed above (or any of my older/seasonal ones), or make your own that fits your site’s theme.

November 1: Unlikable Characters You Can’t Help but Love (These are villains, criminals, jerks, etc. that make you fall in love with them anyway, perhaps because they evolve by the end or they’re secretly wonderful and have been all along.) To be honest this is more of love to hate characters, or both hate and love. Enjoy!

1. Scarlett O'Hara from Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell: Umm yeah, no one should be surprised that she immediately jumped into my head, because truly, she's despicable. So this will be with spoilers, so if you never heard or read of Gone with the Wind, you have been warned. She is vain, cold-hearted and her priorities are messed up. Her sins include attempting to steal husband of a friend, marrying her sister's fiancee, being a horrible mother to her first two children. At the same time though, I cant help but see her actions in bigger context of war and survival. Oh yeah, let's also not forget her unapologetic racism or that people are merely tools. 

2. Raistlin Majere from The Legends Trilogy by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman: This is another character that I both loved and hated for multiple reasons, but primarily from Legends Trilogy. He is cold hearted, ambitious, incredibly knowledgeable, and manipulates and uses people. Yet when one looks at his history, one cant' help but feel compassion and understanding for him. Like Scarlett he is a character that made his mark in a lot of readers' brains. 

3. Edward Noone from Only Killers and Thieves and Dust off the Bones by Paul Howarth: Definitely another character I hate. So basically he's an Englishman who works for Native Police in Australia from late 19th century. He is very thorough at his job and has no qualms about killing or murdering or raping people to achieve his ends. One scene I always remember from first book is when he speaks he sounds like a decent human being, but unfortunately, its an illusion. In the sequel, he does a lot of ugly and hideous things. 

4. First Queen Gamwone Tamuron from Hostage of Empire by S.C. Emmett: Oh boy, how many rumors are attached to her are just unbelievable! Everything from murder to poison to possible forced abortion. But of course others got their hands dirty, not her. She is extremely vain, judgmental, and cares more for image than human beings. 

5. Wang Lung from The Good Earth by Pearl Buck: I got introduced to Wang Lung by an ex friend I'd rather recall as little as possible, but she kept going on and on about Wang Lung and how despicable he was. About a few years later I took a chance to read the trilogy (Yes, its a trilogy titled House of Earth: The Good Earth, Sons, A House Divided.) While I can see and understand how Wang Lung is despicable, one has to look at a bigger picture of the circumstances and time he was born in. Did he do a lot of bad stuff? Yes. Was he taught to see differently or something from early 2000s? No. 

6. Rose Gold Watts from Darling Rose Gold by Stephanie Wroebel: This is loosely based on Gypsy Rose story but there are plenty of twists. Rose Gold has always believed she was sick, but then she learned it was because of her mother, thus she begins to plot for revenge. Rose Gold, its safe to say, is someone that I doubt many will want to end up as, but at the same time she possesses a realness to her which probably asks the audience to not be as judgmental. 

7. Millicent from My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing: Oh boy, where do I begin with this one? In the rare instance, I have pure hate for her. There is nothing to feel sorry or to understand when it comes to Millicent. I mean the husband is no better than she, but at least the husband isn't actively trying to poison his family and he always was following the wife's lead? 

8. Maya Scott from You Will Remember Me by Hannah Mary McKinnon: I can definitely understand and identify with Maya Scott a lot, but that doesn't really excuse her actions and what she does to different characters which includes murder, hiding the murder and whatnot. 

9. Yukiho Nishimoto/Karasawa or Ryo(ji) Kirihara by Keigo Higashino: The goby and the shrimp. I honestly can't decide which one I dislike more, although I'm definitely leaning towards Yukiho. Yukiho is a dangerous woman who often uses her past as an excuse to be evil and mean to others. Yet Ryoji (In original book his name is Ryoji) often follows her blindly but unwillingly and often wants to escape the life he has chosen. (I also would advice to watch the Japanese Drama titled Byakuyakō). 

10. Paul Bertram from Secrets and Shadows by Roberta Silman: One can definitely blame Holocaust trauma for Paul's actions. One thing that I found frustrating about his character is the unwillingness to open up to people close to him, and I didn't like the betrayal he inflicted on a certain woman. He also took advantage of his Aryan appearance (he's Jewish.) 

Shelf Control

Welcome to Shelf Control — an original feature created and hosted by Bookshelf Fantasies.

Shelf Control is a weekly celebration of the unread books on our shelves. Pick a book you own but haven’t read, write a post about it (suggestions: include what it’s about, why you want to read it, and when you got it), and link up! For more info on what Shelf Control is all about, check out my introductory post, here.

Want to join in? Shelf Control posts go up every Wednesday. See the guidelines at the bottom of the post, and jump on board!

Title:  She's Come Undone 

Author: Wally Lamb 

Published: 1992

Length: 465 pages 

What it’s about (synopsis via Goodreads):

In this extraordinary coming-of-age odyssey, Wally Lamb invites us to hitch a wild ride on a journey of love, pain, and renewal with the most heartbreakingly comical heroine to come along in years.

Meet Dolores Price. She's 13, wise-mouthed but wounded, having bid her childhood goodbye. Stranded in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with the Mallomars, potato chips, and Pepsi her anxious mother supplies. When she finally orbits into young womanhood at 257 pounds, Dolores is no stronger and life is no kinder. But this time she's determined to rise to the occasion and give herself one more chance before she really goes under.

How and when I got it: I am pretty sure I got it in the library on May 1st, 2019

Why I want to read it: mainly because it was Oprah's book and I thought I could do a one year book challenge one day where I read some of Oprah's picks books for a whole year. (Any chance a kind and generous can send me over Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver? It can be an ARC)

What do you think? Would you read this book? And if you’ve read it, do you recommend it?

Please share your thoughts!

Books from Backlog

Books from the Backlog is a fun way to feature some of those neglected books sitting on your bookshelf unread.  If you are anything like me, you might be surprised by some of the unread books hiding in your stacks.

If you would like to join in, please feel free to enter your link, link back to this post, and then spend some time visiting some of the other posts.

This week’s neglected book 

Book Title: The Furies 

Series: N/A

Publisher: St. martin's Press 

Genres: Coming-of-age, mystery, contemporary, thriller, Witches, school, friends 

Pages: 358 pages 

Format: ARC, print 

Source: straight from publisher. I won a copy of the novel. Got it on May 6th, 2019

Summary:

This page-turning, harrowing debut is the story of a girl trying to fit in, whose obsessive new friends and desperation to belong leads her to places she'd never imagined...dark, dangerous, and possibly even violent.

In 1998, a sixteen-year-old girl is found dead.

She's posed on a swing on her boarding school's property, dressed all in white, with no known cause of death. Whispers and rumors swirl, with no answers. But there are a few who know what happened; there is one girl who will never forget.

One year earlier: a new student, Violet, steps on the campus of Elm Hollow Academy, an all-girl's boarding school on the outskirts of a sleepy coastal town. This is her fresh start, her chance to begin again in the wake of tragedy, leave her demons behind. Bright but a little strange, uncertain and desperate to fit in, she soon finds herself invited to an advanced study group, led by her alluring and mysterious art teacher, Annabel.

There, with three other girls--Alex, Grace, and Robin--the five of them delve into the school's long-buried grim history: of Greek and Celtic legends; of the school founder's "academic" interest in the occult; of gruesome 17th century witch trials. Annabel does her best to convince the girls that her classes aren't related to ancient rites and rituals, and that they are just history and mythology. But the more she tries to warn the girls off the topic, the more they drawn to it, and the possibility that they can harness magic for themselves.

Violet quickly finds herself wrapped up in this heady new world of lawless power--except she is needled by the disappearance of a former member of the group, one with whom Violet shares an uncanny resemblance. As her friends' actions take a turn for the darker and spiral out of control, she begins to wonder who she can trust, all the while becoming more deeply entangled. How far will these young girls go to protect one another...or to destroy one another?

Why did I add The Furies to my bookshelf? I won this book from the publisher. 

What are your thoughts? Have you read this book?  Would you recommend it?

Let's Talk Bookish 

November 4: How Do You Define Your Personal Reading Tastes? (Jillian @ Jillian the Bookish Butterfly)

Prompts: How would you define your personal reading tastes? 

I would define my personal reading tastes by the books I read and enjoy. I have pretty broad reading tastes in my opinions, and when it comes to books, there are more that I love than hate. 

What kinds of books do you like to read? 

I enjoy reading historical fiction as well as literary fiction, women's fiction, contemporary fiction, fantasy, mysteries as well as domestic thrillers and suspense. I enjoy reading print format and I also love translated stories from different parts of the world. 

How do you pick what books to read next? 

I think it depends on the due date and what books are waiting for me to pick up. Right now I'm asking my son to pick books using covers. I used to ask my mom to do that a few times. 

Do your reading preferences change often?

Oddly enough I don't think so. I read pretty eclectically but I definitely find it interesting how I often end up trying out genres that I wouldn't have tried in the past. 

Stacking the Shelves 

Book Titles I got this week: (if available)

Planned Reviews: (If available. Use pictures)

The Wizard of Eventide by Jon/Kelley Skovron

The Autodidacts by Thomas Kendall

Bronze Drum by Phong Nguyen

The Bone Flower by Charles Lambert

There are no happy loves by Sergio Olguin