august reading wrap-up
Hey, so as you can see last month’s reading wrap-up is a week late, because last week I was both sick (I’m still coughing a lot actually) and on vacation.
BOOKS READ IN AUGUST 2022
Novels
- A Strange and Stubborn Endurance by Foz Meadows
- The Grief of Stones by Katherine Addison
- A Restless Truth by Freya Marske
- Well, That Was Unexpected by Jesse Q. Sutanto
Comics
- Amazing Spider-Man: Beyond Vol. 4 by Patrick Gleason, et al.
- Sandman Vol. 1: Preludes and Nocturnes by Neil Gaiman, et al. (reread)
- Magical Boy Vol. 1 by The Kao
- Sandman Vol. 2: The Doll’s House by Neil Gaiman, et al. (reread)
- Grace Needs Space! by Benjamin A. Wilgus & Rii Abrego
- Housecat Trouble: Lost and Found by Mason Dickerson
- Sweet Valley Twins: Best Friends by Francine Pascal, Claudia Aguirre & Nicole Andelfinger
- Marvel Masterworks: The Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1 by Chris Claremont, et al.
Picture Book
- Hana’s Hundreds of Hijabs by Razeena Omar Gutta
Not a lot of books read last month over all, but all of the novels and three of the comics I read were ARCs so I did put a tiny dent into my ARC-TBR. I’ve also added so many new titles to the ARC-TBR that I think I need to accept that I will never finish reading all of it. I really just want to be more disciplined and finish off the older ones before picking up the newer, shinier ones! Like, I still haven’t got to T.J. Klune’s Heat Wave - which is already out, even - but I’m not in a YA mood so I’m reading The Bruising of Qilwa by Naseem Jamnia now (which is also already out), which I was only just approved for. I have no discipline.
Anyway, books!
I requested A Strange and Stubborn Endurance by Foz Meadows when the algorithm gods put it in my recs a few times, probably because I loved Alexandra Rowland’s A Taste of Gold and Iron. It reminds me a bit more of Everina Maxwell’s Winter’s Orbit (except this is fantasy rather than sci-fi) because of the arranged marriage and political intrigue.
Katherine Addison’s The Grief of Stones would’ve ended in my TBR no matter what, of course, but I requested it so that I can read it sooner, knowing that it’ll take forever for my ordered copies to arrive. Yes, copies, plural, because I ordered extra for some friends too. Like Witness for the Dead, this book can easily be a standalone book, even though it follows directly after Witness. I hope there will be more.
Also in the list of only-requested-to-read-it-faster is Freya Marske’s A Restless Truth. I absolutely loved A Marvellous Light and thought this would be more of the same. It isn’t, quite. It also doesn’t follow the same characters, Edwin and Robin - instead, the MC is Maud, Robin’s sister, and Violet, the blonde woman from Robin’s visions. (This isn’t a spoiler as it’s pretty obvious from the start.) Maud is helping her brother secure the second piece of the Last Contract, and traveled to America in search of its keeper. However, on their journey back, the guardian of the contract was killed, and being completely unmagical, Maud has to recruit Violet’s (and Lord Hawthorne’s) help to find the contract piece and the killer. The whole story is set on the ship heading back to England, and it unfolds so very neatly and Maud is just so… I love her okay. I don’t relate to her or Violet the way I related to Robin and Edwin in the first book, but it’s okay, I adore this pair and will ship them forever. I mean this book is a mystery (kind of) and historical and I love it anyway, that should say something.
The last novel I read was Jesse Q. Sutanto’s Well, That Was Unexpected which is a straight, cis, contemporary YA which I LOVED despite it being all those things (okay la, contemporary might be a plus because these days I prefer them to fantasy/sf YA). And it’s because this book is so HILARIOUS and unapologetically Southeast Asian (Indonesian) and there’s like at least a page dedicated to the awesomeness of soda gembira, which may be my favourite drink in the whole world so reading about it made me happy? Also this novel does broach the subject of homophobia in Indonesia which, <333
I don’t have time to write much about the comics, but with the exception of Amazing Spider-Man: Beyond which is a solid 2.5 stars out of 5, and Uncanny X-Men which I’d 3 stars out of 5 (this was everything Claremont did up to before the Phoenix Saga, so it was good but not great), everything was 4 stars and up. Y’all know my love for Sandman, I won’t say more, but I need to give a special mention to Magical Boy by The Kao (which is also a webtoon on Tapas but I bought the physical ed.) which I love oh so much and is so perfect to read back to back with Sailor Moon (which I read this month.)
And… that’s it for my August reads, see you next time~