It’s hard to believe another month has gone by, but it’s already (past) time for my August reading recap! (And I didn’t even read a single Star Wars book!) Each month I write a mini review of every book I read the previous month, whether it was speculative fiction or not. If you missed last month’s mini reviews, you can find July’s reading cap here.
This post contains affiliate links toBookshop.org, an online bookstore that financially supports independent bookstores. If you buy from my links, I will receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.
I first read Murderbot on a family trip to Cape Cod last October (you can see some of the bookstores I visited there in this post), but wanted to reread the first book before continuing the series. As you can see from the lack of other Murderbot novellas on this list, I got a little bit distracted this month. Whoops! My ADHD should not be taken as commentary on the quality of All Systems Red, which is a fantastic book. Murderbot has my whole heart.
A fun, and funny, book about a woman who wants to study dragons but cannot because of her gender. Of course she winds up doing so anyway, and is brilliant at it. A friend recommended this series to me, and I quickly fell in love with Isabella. She’s scrappy, determined, and smart as hell. I can’t wait to read the second book in the series once my Libby hold comes in!
Speculative Comics
Gideon Falls Deluxe Volumes One and Two by Jeff Lemire, Andrea Sorrentino, and Dave Stewart
Jeff Lemire’s Gideon Falls offers nearly 800 pages of mind-bending horror based around a mysterious black barn that appears and disappears seemingly at random. The story takes a few unexpected twists but has a satisfying—if somewhat open—ending. Sorrentino’s art creates the perfect atmosphere for this creepy tale. His use of nontraditional panels, particularly toward the end of the series, draws readers right into the chaos and confusion. (Bookshop.org unfortunately doesn’t carry the deluxe volume one anymore, but they do still carry the trade paperbacks.)
The Hunger and the Dusk offers a fresh take on familiar fantasy tropes with high stakes and compelling, complex characters who are forced again and again to make uncomfortable choices between their own desires and saving the world. Read my full review here.
What a gorgeous novel! Leilani’s prose has teeth. Although the book is light on traditional plot, it reads like a thriller. The relationships in this book are so fraught that I found myself holding my breath more than once, waiting to see what would happen next. If you love beautiful sentences and deep character building, this one’s for you.
This is an accessible and concise book about white supremacy in America. The first two thirds clearly connect the problems facing modern Black Americans to this country’s historical treatment of them. The final third gets a little more self-helpy by offering up advice in key areas of life, and ends with clear calls to action for both Black and white people to work towards the end of white supremacy.
Based on the “we” in the title, I wasn’t expecting this to be a straight-up memoir. While I did relate to many of the reasons why “we” read, some of the chapters fell flat for me. Reed never takes herself too seriously, but her glib tone was a turnoff at times. I did enjoy the chapters that focused on libraries, and appreciated that you could really feel the author’s love for them radiating off the page. I’d still recommend this book, but with the caveat that it focuses on one person’s experience with books and reading, not reading and readers more generally as the title implies.
The Hunger and the Dusk, written by G. Willow Wilson and illustrated by Chris Wildgoose, is a high fantasy comic series tinted with horror. I’ve been reading this one monthly since its debut in July 2023, and it’s been a highlight of my pull list. Clearly, this review is long overdue!
Volume one collects the first six issues, and there’s a lot of ground to cover! The first story arc ended on a cliffhanger, but thankfully the first issue of book two came out last month. I’m not going to cover that in this review, but I’m sure I’ll be yelling about the series as issues come out over on Threads.
This post contains affiliate links to Bookshop.org, an online bookstore that financially supports independent bookstores.
The Hunger and the Dusk: A Spoiler-Free Overview
When vicious, mysterious raiders known as the Vangol return to the dying world they left behind hundreds of years ago, humans and orcs must form an alliance to fight the invaders before it’s too late for both races. Overcoming centuries of fighting and racism is no small task, though. A tenuous treaty is all that keeps orcs and humans from slaughtering each other over increasingly small amounts of fertile land.
As part of the treaty, the orcs send one of their best healers, Gruakhtar Icemane—Tara to her friends—to travel with the mercenary group Last Men Standing. Led by Cal Battlechild, the Last Men set off to face the Vangol with their new member.
Tara and Cal form an uneasy, tentative friendship. When a surprise Vangol attack leaves one of the Last Men dead, both Tara and Cal blame themselves. They begin to open up to each other, hinting at a possible future romance.
But the Last Men don’t have long before they catch a Vangol scout scoping out their camp. The discovery of the scout sets off a chain of events that test Tara and Cal’s burgeoning relationship, along with the entire treaty.
All the while, the Vangol creep further inland, threatening annihilation of humans and orcs alike. . .
If Only Things Were Simple
The Hunger and the Dusk primarily follows Tara’s point of view, with some scenes following her cousin Troth. (Tara and Troth were supposed to marry until he unexpectedly became overlord of the Icemane clan). Stories with orc points of view are becoming more common, and while a greater discussion of the rehabilitation/reclamation of the orc image is beyond the scope of this review, I greatly enjoy the way Wilson and Wildgoose handle it.
While we do have scenes of the humans of Last Men Standing starting to deal with their own implicit biases (the bard realizes he has to write all new songs because all the ones he knows trash talk the orcs), the story sticks pretty close to Tara’s and Troth’s points of views.
These orcs are not vicious, mindless violence machines as they are often portrayed in high fantasy. Tara, in fact, is quite the opposite with her powerful healing ability. Her cousin Troth is portrayed as a wise, strong leader who is forced to make personal sacrifices for the good of his people. Troth’s new bride, Faran, is whip-smart and invested in peace between humans and orcs.
Some of the best scenes in the book show Troth and Faran getting to know each other. Their interactions are tender and real, even though their marriage begins as a political one. (I also appreciate that we see Faran initiating sex—Troth clearly respects her boundaries.)
The Vangol
I’d be remiss to write a review of The Hunger and the Duskwithout dedicating some time to the villains. The Vangol are quick, sneaky, and deadly. The first scene in issue one establishes that everyone is terrified of them.
Gaunt and pale with elongated torsos and limbs, the Vangol remind me somewhat of the vampires from 30 Days of Night. They carry the same sense of quick-moving, unavoidable dread. Indeed, the book’s title derives from the Vangol’s tendency to attack at dusk.
The first six issues of the comic give us more questions than answers when it comes to these ghoul-like people. All we know is that at some point in the distant past, they lived on the same continent as humans, orcs, dwarves, and elves. The Vangol left, and the dwarves and elves died out (thought not necessarily in that order). No one knows why they’ve returned, but it seems it may have something to do with the land slowly dying.
The sense of mystery surrounding the Vangol, along with their uncanny appearance and demonstrated viciousness, makes them a compelling antagonist. They are an existential threat to both groups in the truest sense of the word. If humans and orcs fail to stop the Vangol, they will join the dwarves and elves in extinction.
The Hunger and the Dusk One-Sentence Review
The Hunger and the Duskoffers a fresh take on familiar fantasy tropes with high stakes and compelling, complex characters who are forced again and again to make uncomfortable choices between their own desires and saving the world.
The Best Book Nook is a new series of brief interviews with booksellers, librarians, publishing professionals, and other cool bookish people about their favorite books, their favorite places to read, and more!
This month’s featured reader is Liv Oszlak (she/they), a bookseller at Science Fiction-Bokhandeln in Gothenburg, Sweden. Be sure to follow them on Instagram and let them know if you read any of their recommendations!
Photo courtesy Liv Oszlak.
This post contains affiliate links toBookshop.org, an online bookstore that financially supports independent bookstores.
What’s your best book nook or favorite place to read, real or imagined?
Liv: This is a hard question for me to answer. Location-wise, broadly, I’m not too picky, but when it comes to particulars, everything needs to be just right. What matters most to me is the ability to truly focus on my reading, which I often find difficult due to the fickle nature of my ADHD brain.
To find that focus, most of the time I need to be able to fully shut out the rest of the world. Wearing noise canceling headphones and listening to a carefully curated playlist of instrumental music helps with that, as well as closing any curtains so the room is not too bright.
The corner of any couch feels safe and calming to me, and I need to have my back against a wall. I sit with my knees pulled up to my chest, with a pillow between my stomach and thighs. I like the feeling of being “boxed in”—sort of reminiscent of being held, I suppose, but not too close. Lately, the break room at work has been perfect for reading during my lunch; it’s sufficiently dimly lit, it has a little alcove with a built-in couch and piles of pillows, and everyone respects the fact that wearing headphones means “don’t approach me, I’m recharging by escaping to another world.”
What snacks or beverages is your best book nook stocked with?
Liv: As a kid and well into my teens, I would make a huge pot of Russian Earl Grey tea first thing when I came home from school, secure it under a tea cozy and then enjoy cup after cup of it for hours while reading.
That is still my favorite way of enjoying tea with a book, but I’m also a hopeless caffeine addict who buys the biggest mugs I can find that will hold as much filter coffee with oat milk as possible, so I tend to alternate between those two. As for snacks, in Sweden, we have a specific brand of corn thins with chia seeds and sea salt which I adore; with a thin spread of butter, they taste like popcorn.
What was the first book of science fiction or fantasy that really had an impact on you?
Liv: I have to say the entire Belgariad universe by David Eddings. Technically, I guess that’s cheating, but I really can’t say which individual book out of the thirteen impacted me the most. I started reading them when I was around ten years old, and the story just grabbed hold of me and refused to let go. I read them over and over to the point of knowing passages by heart. I read them so many times that my copies would literally break apart at the spine if placed in the hands of a careless reader.
Rereading them as an adult, it’s obvious why they captured me so entirely: It’s a simple story with pretty simple, likable, and relatable characters. The series follows a very typical fantasy arc, with not much room for interpretation when it comes to the separation between good and evil. That world was a predictably safe place for me to flee to when I couldn’t find safety in real life.
I was also deeply in love with Polgara the Sorceress, and to this day envision myself impossibly aging into sprouting raven black hair with a fashionable white streak through it, but that particular obsession is also something that young Liv didn’t reflect on; it was for adult Liv to unpack later, along with other female fictional crushes.
What have you read recently and loved?
Liv: I’m actually currently in the middle of my best reading experience in. . . ages? I can’t remember the last time a book utterly entranced me like this. I’m at the point where I’m making playlists of songs that remind me of its characters, which hasn’t happened since my teens. When I’m not reading, I think about these characters constantly and worry about them as though they were my real life friends whom I’m watching make terrible, awful, self-destructive, but fully understandable decisions.
The Archive Undying by Emma Mieko Candon has it all: fascinatingly complex people with hidden motivations, corrupted AI gods, deep themes of religious trauma and reforming one’s identity in the face of leaving religion behind, broad and wonderfully done representation. . . It’s queer, introspective, poetic, and incredibly romantic. It’s also the kind of book where the reader is unceremoniously thrown into its vast, weird new world with no safety net; in that way (and in others), it reminds me a lot of another favorite series of mine, The Locked Tomb by Tamsyn Muir.
You will spend a good amount of time trying to find your footing and figuring out what the hell is even going on and why. Then, piece by piece, as you get to know the characters and see the world through their eyes, the story puzzle is laid out before you, and it’s this beautifully heartbreaking, intrinsically human portrayal of damaged individuals crashing into each other’s lives while you’re constantly just hoping with all your heart that they will somehow heal each other and find happiness.
Oh, and also, it has giant robots. “Love” doesn’t cover half of what I feel for this book, and while I know it won’t be for everyone, it absolutely is for me.
What are you excited to read next?
Liv: At about 75% through The Archive Undying, I’m dreading leaving it behind, because I fear nothing I read immediately after will measure up to it. However, I have a good pile of books that I’m deciding between, and which all excite me: Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle, Brainwyrms by Alison Rumfitt, I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman, Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang and Cuckoo by Gretchen Felker-Martin are at the top of that pile.
I have been trying to read some less depressing books after the brutal—and brilliant—gut punch of Tell Me I’m Worthless (also by Alison Rumfitt), but as I write this and consider my choices, I’m failing spectacularly. Well, it is what it is. . . I tend to gravitate towards darker narratives, and often find them cathartic. Hopefully my current read doesn’t end up breaking my heart completely (although who doesn’t like to have a good plot-induced cry, now and again? . . . Damn, I will probably regret saying that).
More About Liv Oszlak
I live in Gothenburg, Sweden, with my partner, and I’m currently studying full-stack Web Development at a vocational university. When I’m not reading, I like engaging in any one of my numerous hobbies, which include cosplaying for charity with the 501st Legion, arts and crafts (everything in every medium under the sun, truly), creating or listening to music, creative writing, escaping into vast open world RPGs, thinking perhaps a bit too deeply about media . . . and info-dumping to my partner and friends about my latest hyperfixation.
What’s your best book nook? I’d love to hear about it on Instagram, Threads, or Bluesky! And please give Liv a follow over on Instagram, too!
The main reason I started this blog was to have another outlet to talk about the books I’m reading. As much as I’d love to write a full review for every book I read, it’s not logistically possible for me. But that doesn’t mean those books aren’t worth reading or talking about!
That’s where these monthly recap posts will come in. Each month, I’m going to briefly talk about every book I read the previous month, whether they’re speculative fiction or not!
This post contains affiliate links toBookshop.org, an online bookstore that financially supports independent bookstores. If you buy from my links, I will receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.
A beautifully written, intricate love story that unfolds across time and space. The conceit of the “time war” is complex, and the authors are economical with their worldbuilding. While I don’t think that’s a negative, it certainly invites a second reading.
The publisher describes this book as a “feminist fairy tale,” and in many ways it does feel like the spiritual offspring of Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber. I loved the Persia-inspired setting and mythology. The main character’s story arc felt fresh even as it drew on familiar symbols and tropes.
Although this book only came out in June, I’ve already read it twice. It’s a manifesto on love of all kinds: romantic, platonic, familial. If you like Star Wars but aren’t yet reading The High Republic, I encourage you to pick up the first book in the series: Light of the Jedi by Charles Soule. Thank me later!
I run a Star Wars book club, and this was our pick for July. It’s an audio drama that provides some backstory on why Count Dooku left the Jedi Order and eventually turned to the dark side. My favorite parts of this one were Asajj Ventress sleuthing to learn more about her new master and the interesting Force lore Scott adds to the canon (some of which shows up in The High Republic!).
Like all good stories about robots, this is really a story about humanity—and what happens when we lose sight of what binds us together. Ngyugen’s watercolor art on these two books is breathtakingly gorgeous, and I love the mix of science fiction and fantasy elements.
In a post-apocalyptic world where a deadly sickness is killing humans, an animal-human hybrid named Gus may hold the key to a cure. As Gus’s story unfolds, he gathers a motley crew of humans and hybrids around him, including the gruff and abrasive former NHL player Jepperd. This found family has to overcome their past traumas and survive long enough to reclaim some slice of happiness.
This graphic novel feels closer in tone to Lemire’s breakout book Essex County than his more overtly speculative books like Descender or Sweet Tooth. Like Essex County, it does a deep dive into one character’s emotional state using elements of magical realism to explore the pressure of impending fatherhood and the many ways the past hangs over us.
A fun, breezy book that has a lot to say about writing and why we do it, and lots to say about love, too. My favorite parts were when the two main characters discussed their respective novel genres and why they felt drawn to writing them. I also enjoyed how writing in each other’s genres helped them understand each other better—as a writer myself, I felt seen in these scenes.
A funny, irreverent romp of a mystery set in Palm Beach, Florida, during the Trump presidency. I had no idea this was part of a series, though you don’t need to have read any previous books to enjoy this one. If you happen to be a Warren Zevon fan like I am, you’ll find two Zevon lyrics sprinkled in. I’ll leave you to discover what and where they are.
Overall, an interesting look at the role public health organizations play in our lives. The middle felt too much like a political campaign message in parts, but the first and final thirds of the book were fascinating. Before reading this, I never thought much about the role of my city’s public health department in keeping residents healthy and happy. Now I have a whole new appreciation for them!
Octavia Butler changed speculative fiction with her path-breaking novels, including the best-selling novel Kindred, which has been adapted for television and as a graphic novel. She was born on June 22, 1947, and would be 77 today if she were still with us.
This post contains affiliate links to Bookshop.org, an online bookstore that financially supports independent bookstores, and if you buy from my links, I will receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.
Throughout her career, Butler won multiple Hugo and Nebula awards, taught regularly at the Clarion Writers Workshop, received a MacArthur Fellowship, and even has an asteroid named after her.
While I can’t tell you when I first learned of Octavia Butler, I first read one of her books in the 2010s. I was on a mission to read classic science fiction. After working my way through some Asimov, Heinlein, and Bradbury, I found a digital audio copy of Fledgling through my library.
I’ve consumed a lot of vampire stories in my life, both written and visual, but Fledglingremains one of my absolute favorites. Rather than being evil villains, Butler’s vampires live symbiotically with humans. I love the way she reimagines vampire mythology and humanizes these creatures we normally see as monsters.
Kindred, Butler’s only other standalone novel, is her most well-known book. It is a haunting portrayal of what people will do to survive and an ode to the resilience of Black Americans. I rarely feel that a book should be required reading for everyone. But Kindred is one of the few that I strongly believe every adult in America should read at least once.
I still have a lot of Octavia Butler to read. My next novel will be Parable of the Sower, the first book in the duology pictured above. I picked up the box set from 7 Stories Press back in January, and today is the perfect day to start reading it.
Interested in picking up one of Octavia Butler’s novels? I’ve put together a list of her novels:
I know a million people post Illumicrate unboxing videos and photos, but I recently got my first box, so I couldn’t resist. Especially because a spot for the monthly Illumicrate box opened up for me on the same day my federal student loans were discharged through the PSLF program!
(In case you’re not familiar with Illumicrate, it’s a monthly subscription box that includes a speculative novel and other book-themed items.)
The theme for March is “Fantasea.” I’ll cut right to the chase: I love everything that came in this box! I haven’t had a chance to read the book (Fathomfolk by Eliza Chan), but it has kelpies and sea dragons, so I’m sold.
This gorgeous edition of Fathomfolk absolutely blew me away. Beautiful books is a big part of the reason I joined the Illumicrate waiting list, but the photos I saw didn’t prepare me for how exquisite this book is.
From the endpapers to the case art to the foiled dust jacket to the sprayed edges, this book is a work of art. It’s so pretty I can hardly stand it. The case art shown in the photo above is by Danlin Zhang.
Other Bookish Items
The Fantasea box came with four additional items: a mythical sea creatures book pot, a Fathomfolk-themed plant pot, and a kraken-themed book jacket, and transparent sticky notes.
All four items are pretty spectacular, but the two pots are my favorite. I love house plants, and have about a dozen cuttings waiting for pots right now. The plant pot has a kelpie on it, and will definitely get a place of honor somewhere among my other house plants.
Apparently there’s a whole series of ceramic book-shaped pots. I can easily see this becoming my next obsession. Prices on the secondary market seem high, but honestly, these things are so cool it’s kind of understandable.
The book jacket will be useful for keeping the corners of hardcovers nice and crisp while traveling (or even just carrying books around the house). And one can never have enough sticky notes! Never! I was surprised at how easy it is to write on these with a regular old ball point pen. I can definitely see myself using them to take notes while I read.
I’m already looking forward to next month’s box. In the meantime, I’ll be curled up on my couch with a mug of tea and this gorgeous copy of Fathomfolk!
Throughout 2023, I visited eight new-to-me indie bookstores, one new-to-me chain, and several old favorites. While I always try to visit new bookstores when I’m out and about, last year I happened to travel more than I normally would—which translated to getting to visit more indie bookstores than usual!
I traveled to London, Seattle, Florida (twice), Cape Cod, and to visit family in three different towns in Pennsylvania. On most of these trips, I was able to visit at least one bookstore, usually an indie. One even had a bookstore cat (keep reading for photos). I spent plenty of time in local indies, too, but I think they deserve their own post. Stay tuned for that closer to Independent Bookstore day in April.
This post contains affiliate links to Bookshop.org, an online bookstore that financially supports independent bookstores. If you buy from my links, I will receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. If you have a local indie bookstore, consider supporting them instead!
Indie Bookstores in Seattle, Washington
In March, I traveled to Seattle for the annual Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference. The AWP book fair is quite the sight to behold—a book lover’s paradise for sure. Since this was a work trip, I didn’t have too much time to explore the city, but I made a point to visit a few bookstores and a comic shop.
Elliott Bay Book Company
Elliott Bay is one of the largest indie bookstores I’ve visited. Maybe not quite as big as a typical Barnes and Noble, but close! They have a substantive science fiction and fantasy section, and an LGBTQ section in a prominent location. I was there too late to enjoy the cafe, but the space was beautiful.
Left Bank Books
Left Bank Books is a small anarchist bookstore in Pike Place Market. But don’t let the size fool you—there are a lot of books packed into that space! It’s a really charming little bookstore, and they even have a cozy reading nook on the second floor.
Golden Age Collectibles
Another small but mighty shop! Beyond comics, Golden Age has a great selection of collectibles and board games in Pike Place Market. They don’t have a huge selection of back issues, but I was able to find a few variant covers on my wishlist, and the staff was amazingly friendly and helpful.
London, England
This year the seminal Star Wars fan event, Star Wars Celebration, was held in London. Yes, I flew to the UK to attend a con celebrating fictional space wizards. Outside the convention, our sightseeing schedule was pretty packed. We did manage to make a brief visit to the British Library (awe-inspiring) and the prevalent UK chain Waterstones. I would have loved to visit Forbidden Planet beyond their convention, but it just wasn’t in the cards—next time!
Waterstones
Despite being a chain (whose parent company also now owns Barnes and Noble), Waterstones is still a pretty charming bookstore. It reminded me a lot of Borders with how cozy it felt and the breadth of selection.
Indie Bookstores in Cape Code, Massachusetts
My mother had been wanting a family vacation for awhile, so she organized this trip to Cape Cod. The Cape is gorgeous, and there are so many bookstores there, I could have spent the entire week bookstore hopping. I would have, if I’d had a car while there!
Provincetown Bookshop
Although small, I was impressed with Provincetown Bookshop‘s selection of speculative fiction. The store felt highly curated in the best way, making excellent use of the limited space. I imagine it must be difficult in a tourist town to cultivate a selection the appeals to both locals and travelers, but there’s something for everyone here.
Bunch of Grapes Bookstore
My mother dragged me to Martha’s Vineyard, but I ran away to this delightful bookstore and hung out all day with the bookstore cat, Bookmark. It was amazing. Bunch of Grapes is a bright and cheerful shop with two floors of books and bookish gifts. And a cat, in case I didn’t mention that. Bookmark is quite the charmer, and I watched him wander from patron to patron, getting all the scritches he could possible want, and then a nap under a display table.
Indie Bookstores in Eastern Pennsylvania
Although I make my home in Pittsburgh now, I’m originally from Coatesville, a little steel town outside of Philly. My spouse is from an even smaller coal town near Hazelton, so we find ourselves out that way quite a bit to visit our families. And a few of our favorite local bookstores!
Pocket Books (Lancaster)
Located in an old house with an expansive porch, Pocket Books is a welcoming, homey store with a great selection. Once you’re done browsing and have purchased your new paper treasures, you can find a spot on the porch and read as long as you’d like. This store also gets bonus points from me for stocking Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin, my favorite book of all time. (Yes, I bought another copy, because it’s a new edition!)
Pressed Coffee and Books (Pottsville)
More coffee shop than bookstore, Pressed Coffee and Books is nevertheless a charming space with beautiful decor and a back room full of used books. We visited in November, so it was the perfect weather for a hot chai latte. I’m very picky about my masala chai (make it spicy please), and this one lived up to all my expectations. The shop’s focus on community really comes through in the atmosphere and the staff’s friendliness.
Wellington Square Bookshop (Eagle)
Wellington Square is quickly becoming one of my favorite indies. I wrote about my first visit two years ago in more detail, but I had just as much fun browsing this time. I picked up the 7 Stories Press box set of Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, and could have easily spent another hundred dollars (oh how I wanted to).
Did you visit any new indie bookstores in 2023? I’d love to hear about your bookish travels on Instagram or Threads!
A neon sign in the window at Elliott Bay Books in Seattle, WA. I should have asked them where they got it when I was there, because I want one.
The traditional number-of-books-read-based reading goal is meaningless as a measure of how much you actually read in a year. There. I said it.
On the surface, this kind of reading goal seems like a useful way to encourage more reading. And for some people, it does. For others, it’s nothing but a source of stress. The Goodreads Challenge isn’t supposed to be a competition. But far too many people turn it into one and make others feel bad about how many books they did or did not read.
And what counts as a book, anyway? A novel like War and Peace, certainly. What about a picture book? Does that count? What about an issue of a literary magazine? A graphic novel? A poetry chapbook? What about an omnibus that collects several novels together in one volume? Is that one book, or multiple?
Most people would agree that picture books, poetry collections, and graphic novels are books, but these books are likely to be significantly shorter than many novels. Something like a literary magazine is technically not a “book” because it’s a periodical, but many issues of lit mags are just as long as many novels.
Is it “cheating” to read ten Dr. Seuss books on December 31 because you’re ten books short of your goal? If you read and track single issues of comics, is counting those toward “books read” a cop out? Should you just log the collected edition instead?
It was these questions, along with my growing concerns over the way Amazon uses Goodreads data and the way the site has “enabled the weaponization of displeasure,”* that led me to stop using Goodreads partway into 2021.
Goodbye, Goodreads
Tracking my reading had become a chore that I didn’t look forward to. More than that, the reading challenge made reading itself feel like a chore—something I had to do instead of something I enjoyed doing.
I’m far from the first person who’s felt like this. In an article for Book Riot from 2019, Stacey Megally describes how the Goodreads Reading Challenge stressed her out and sucked the joy out of reading. She asked, “When did I start prioritizing hitting a number over blissfully wandering inside a story—new or old—that I love?”
When I made the decision to abandon my reading challenge in 2021, I felt relieved. I felt free. Suddenly it didn’t matter how I tracked my comic reading or whether I read Narwhal and Jelly for the fifth time.
Only, it had never mattered. I only thought it did because of an arbitrary, ill-defined goal I set for myself out of some misguided notion that I should because I am a Book Person, and that’s what Book People do.
A sidewalk painting is in front of a Barnes & Noble in Pittsburgh, PA.
Goals can be motivating as long as they are achievable and realistic. Most people I know who set reading goals do so because they want to read more, or maintain their current level of reading. Others set goals to expand their horizons or learn more about a certain topic. Basing your reading goals on the number of books you read doesn’t necessarily translate into reading more or expanding your reading horizons.
That doesn’t mean we have to abandon reading goals altogether. Here are some alternatives that may help you get the results you want.
Alternate Reading Goal #1: Habit Tracking
This sounds so simple, but if you aren’t satisfied with how often you read, the only way to read more is to, well, make the time to read more. So ff you want to read more, set a time-based goal or a habit goal.
Two options for this are to read for a certain amount of time each day or week (one of those timer bookmarks they make for kids might be useful here) or to create a habit goal where you aim to read on a certain number of days every week (or month, or year).
I have both a habit goal and a time based goal. I strive to read for at least twenty minutes every day. Most days, I exceed that. Some days, I barely hit it. Other days, the only reading I do is listening to an audiobook while I fall asleep.
I don’t use a timer, because for me the point is not to be perfect or exact. The point is to encourage myself to carve out a little time each day for my favorite leisure activity. I do use the Finch self care app to track my reading days.
This hybrid habit/time-based goal helps me reduce mindless scrolling and keep reading as a focus in my life.
Alternate Reading Goal #2: Read Outside Your Comfort Zone
If you want to read outside your comfort zone, try joining a prompt-based reading challenge.
Prompt-based reading challenges ask you to read books that meet certain criteria. “Read a book by a trans author” is one example of a prompt. Book Riot’s Read Harder challenge is the most popular prompt-based challenge, but there are many, many more.
General challenges like Book Riot’s and Popsugar’s will ask you to read books from many different genres, different formats, and with a wide range of criteria. Seasonal challenges and book bingo challenges also abound.
These smaller, more focused options may be a better fit if you have more time during some seasons than others or want to focus on a specific genre. Instagram is a great place to find these. I also detailed a few challenges that work well for speculative fiction in this post.
If you can’t find a challenge that meets your needs, you can always create one yourself from scratch or cobble together a list of prompts from multiple challenges. Don’t forget to check in with your local library; many public libraries also host their own reading challenges beyond the traditional summer reading!
Alternate Reading Goal #3: A TBR Goal
If you want to focus on reading books you already own or have wanted to read forever but never get around to, set a TBR-based goal.
On the surface, this kind of goal may seem similar to the type of number-based challenges I wrote this post to push back against. But it doesn’t have to be!
The bottom two shelves in this photo are my TBR shelves. The top shelf holds my writing books, some of which I have also not yet read. I won’t get through all of these this year, but I’ll get through some of them!
There are a number of ways to approach a TBR-based goal that don’t involve setting yourself an arbitrary number of books to read in a given time period. For example, you could set aside three months where you commit to only reading books on your TBR shelf (whether that is a physical or digital shelf is irrelevant).
Or, you could commit to reading three books (or two, or one) from your list for every book you pick up that wasn’t on your list. You could write down the names of all the books on your TBR shelf on pieces of paper and put them in a jar, then pull one to determine your next read.
Bribery Works, Too
A goal (or rule, I suppose) I’ve used in the past is that if I want to buy a new book, I have to read two books I already own but haven’t read yet. I do set some exceptions for this rule, mostly for new books in series I want to snag first printings of. It’s been a few years since I’ve done this, but it’s worked well to motivate me to finally read books that have been sitting unread for years.
It’s also a nice way to curb excessive book spending and a great time to assess whether or not I’m ever actually going to read the Umberto Eco book I’ve been lugging around since high school and still haven’t read (maybe this is the year?).
This year, my TBR-based goal is to read at least one book from my physical TBR pile each month. Small or large doesn’t matter, and reading two books from the TBR pile in January doesn’t excuse me from having to read one in February! If I manage to stick to this, I should be able to knock off at least twelve books from my TBR while still allowing myself freedom to read other things that interest me.
Conclusion
Reading you do for pleasure and leisure should never be a chore. It should enrich your life, give you an escape from actual chores, and teach you more about yourself and the world. Your reading goal should help you with that, not make you feel bad about yourself.
Perhaps setting a number-based reading goal works for you. If you find yourself dreading opening Goodreads so you don’t see how far behind you are in your reading challenge, maybe it’s time to try something different.
I’ve only listed three alternative options here, but there are so many more—number of pages, spine widths all measured together, colors that appear on the cover. I’m sure you can find something that inspires you to read more and read further without stressing you out.
* From “Let’s Rescue Book Lovers From This Online Hellscape” by Maris Kreizman in the New York Times
What are your reading goals for 2024? Share them with me on Instagram and Bluesky!
Happy Independent Bookstore Day! I’m celebrating by supporting two stores that focus on speculative fiction: Sistah SciFi and Mysterious Galaxy.
In recent years, my local stores have grown their SFF sections, but there’s nothing quite like the depth and breadth of a store that focuses only on spec fic. Unfortunately for me, both of these shops are located on the west coast (I’m on the east). But fortunately for all of us, both offer many virtual events and ways to be involved from both near and far.
Sistah SciFi
Sistah SciFi is an online bookstore that promotes speculative fiction by Black and Indigenous women authors. I found their fantastic Instagram account while bopping around one day, and was impressed by their selection. Both their Instagram account and website are great resources for discovering new and classic books by Black and Indigenous women. Watch out, because your TBR pile might topple over with all the added books you’re going to stack on top!
The store also hosts a number of events and virtual book clubs, including one for comics and graphic novels! And did I mention they also have a book vending machine?! Located in the Oaklandia Cafe x Bakery in Oakland, California, the book vending machine carries a rotating selection of titles for children and adults.
Support Sistah SciFi on Indie Bookstore Day by making a purchase, following them on social media, and/or telling your friends about them!
Mysterious Galaxy
While I’ve never had the pleasure of visiting Mysterious Galaxy in person at their San Diego shop, I have been to their booth in at least one convention (Star Wars Celebration Anaheim 2022, to be precise). I’ve also attended a few of their virtual events and purchased signed books from them.
Each month, they offer a book subscription box for SFF and cozy mystery books that includes titles, bookmarks, and other goodies curated by or made by their booksellers! I think including art from their booksellers in the form of bookmarks is a really nice touch.
But if you, like me, have an ever-growing pile of books to read and the thought of a new mystery book each month triggers your existential dread over the fact that you will never be able to read all the books—and what if you miss a really, really good one?—be sure to peruse the store’s robust staff picks page. It might still contain more books than you can read in a year, but at least you can more purposefully prioritize your next read that way.
Support Mysterious Galaxy on Indie Bookstore Day by making a purchase, following them on social media, and/or telling your friends about them!
Do you have a favorite independent bookstore that focuses on speculative fiction? I’d love to hear about it! Send me a tweet (and tag the bookstore!) or Instagram comment or DM so I can feature your fave in a future post.
This week I have a review of Ava Reid’s The Wolf and the Woodsman, a fantasy novel out from Harper Voyager (who was kind enough to provide me with a review copy). This post contains affiliate links to Bookshop.org, an online bookstore that financially supports independent bookstores, and if you buy from my links, I will receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.
This lovely cover was illustrated by Russell Cobb at Debut Art.
The Book Witch’s One Sentence Review
The Wolf and The Woodsman by Ava Reid is a lovely debut with an Eastern European flavor, a rich world, vibrant characters, and a multi-faceted plot that explores religion, identity, friendship, family loyalty and disloyalty, tolerance, and bigotry.
Introduction
The plot of The Wolf and The Woodsman is fairly simple: A young woman is forced to leave home against her will, and finds herself making what amounts to a deal with the devil to save not just herself, but her people.
Describing Reid’s debut in this way does it no justice, however. This book has layers of complexity that reveal themselves slowly as the two main characters—Évike and Gáspár—march northward through the snow-covered country in search of a mystical creature that has the power to save what they each hold dear—or so they think.
Drawing heavily on Hungarian and Jewish folklore, The Wolf and The Woodsman has a distinct Eastern European flavor with a universal message. Although it can be read as an allegory for the spread of Christianity throughout Europe, to the detriment of pagans, Jews, and Muslims, it’s much more than that.
The novel tackles issues of religion, identity, friendship, family loyalty and disloyalty, tolerance, and bigotry. It forces Évike to determine how far she’ll go to save her village and the people in it, who often treated her poorly and were willing to essentially throw her away to save someone else. It also forces Gáspár to question his own faith, family, loyalty, the nature of love, and even his humanity, in fundamental ways.
The setting felt both incredibly grounded and delightfully unfamiliar. One of my favorite details was the fearful trees the villagers had to tie down so they didn’t run away when the Woodsman came.
But before all of that, the beginning.
The typesetting in this book is as beautiful as the cover. I love the decorations and the chapter heading font!
When the Woodsman Met the Wolf
Évike lives in an isolated forest town inhabited by pagans. Unlike her fellow female villagers who wield various types of magic, Évike’s “only” skill is hunting. Because she is a woman who lacks magic, she is treated poorly by the other young women and girls in her village.
The village is part of a kingdom that has become increasingly intolerant to the pagans living on its outskirts who don’t follow the Patrifath (a loose equivalent to Christianity). In exchange for leaving the village to its own devices most of the time, every now and then the King sends his Woodsmen out to collect a magic-wielding “Wolf Girl.”
No one in the village knows what happens to the Wolf Girls who are taken, but they are never seen again. The novel opens on a tense day: The Woodsmen are on their way to collect a seer, which is a particularly rare gift among the pagan magic users. The village elder forces Évike to take the place of Katarina, the true seer.
After the Woodsmen take Évike, clothed in Katarina’s wolf cloak, a series of unfortunate (for the Woodsman) events leads to the revelation that the head Woodsman, Gáspár, is actually the king’s son, and that he desperately wants to prevent his zealously religious younger half-brother from ascending to the throne. This event, which would be bad for Gáspár because of his late mother’s status as an outsider, would also spell doom for the pagans and other minority groups living in the kingdom.
So, Gáspár and Évike forge an uneasy alliance and agree to search for a mythical creature that would give Gáspár the power to gain favor with his father and ascend the throne. They start off hating each other, but come to have grudging respect for each other as their journey goes on.
Although the novel is told from Évike’s perspective, we spend a lot of time with both characters. There’s lots of romantic and sexual tension between Évike and Gáspár, but the novel never turns him into Évike’s savior like many YA fantasy novels tend to do. She saves his life as much as he saves her (his inability to use a bow and arrow with any accuracy is also something Évike, an expert marksman, uses to her advantage).
I’ll stop my summary there to avoid any spoilers, but I will say this: At one point, there is a pet bear. He’s pretty cool.
I’m a sucker for fantasy books with maps!
Final Thoughts
With the long history of fantasy novels based on wildly inaccurate assumptions about medieval England, it’s always refreshing to see fantasy settings based on other areas and cultures. Books like this have become more plentiful in recent years, but it’s going to take quite awhile for me to get sick of them (I read a lot of medieval-England-fantasy in high school). There also seems to be a recent surge in speculative fiction inspired in part by Jewish history and folklore, written by Jewish authors, and I can only hope we see this trend continue as well.
The Wolf and The Woodsman does read like a debut novel at times—certain sections meander a bit, or we get overly lost in Évike’s thoughts, and the overall structure could have been streamlined a bit more. But these are all quibbles, and didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the story.
At the end of the day, Reid’s prose is as sharp as one of Évike’s arrows, and she knows how to hit a bullseye.
If you’d like to pick up a copy of The Wolf and The Woodsman, please consider buying from your local indie bookstore, or online from Bookshop.org, which supports indies! While you’re at it, you can preorder Ava Reid’s new book, Juniper and Thorn, out May 22!
Have you read The Wolf and The Woodsman? Want to add it to your TBR? I’d love to hear what you think in the comments or on Instagram or Twitter @bookwitchblog!
