Hello, friends! 2024 is halfway gone, and the time has come for my Mid-Year Book Celebration, in which I check in on my reading goals and round up my favorite reads of the first six months of 2024, along with assorted other notable books and other stories that I enjoyed (or didn't enjoy) in that time. If you just want the short-and-sweet best-of rundown, you can hop over to Light and Shadows to get that list — but if you want that list and more, stay right here and read on!

2024 Mid-Year Book Celebration

There is, of course, no book celebration without statistics and a look at how my goals are going. As of July 1, I've read 58 books and 14,610 pages (or so says Goodreads), which is notably lower than what I'd read around this time last year — but I think I've been reading more slowly, so that makes a difference. I'm still on track for my goal of reading 93 books in 2024. Most of what I've read has been in the 200–400 page range, as per usual, and my average rating is 4.3 stars. Apparently, I've liked my reads a tiny bit less on average this year than I did last year.

Happily, though, some of my specific goals are going well!

• I'm actually doing quite well on my goal of 12 books published (or written) before 1975 (at least nine of which were aimed at adults); I've read ten books in this category, and only four of those were originally aimed at children. As in past years, subscribing to novels via Substack newsletter helps a lot. Notable books I've read towards this goal include the two Sherlock Holmes novels, Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped, Ann McCaffrey's Dragonsong, and Rosalind Goforth's How I Know God Answers Prayer. Of the three more books I need to read to complete this goal, I'm already in the process of reading two — Dracula via Dracula Daily and Moby Dick via Whale Weekly, which I'll finish in September. I have a few ideas of what I might read for a third, but we'll see what ends up catching my interest.
• My goal of reading 15 non-speculative fiction books is going . . . not as well, but not terribly. I've read six books so far towards this goal, so I'm rather behind, but I have ideas of what I could read in order to catch up. I just need to find them at the library when I'm in the mood to read them.
• I have somewhat decreased the number of physical books I own but haven't read — which I mostly accomplished by deciding to part with my Wheel of Time books (I'll get them out from the library if I decide to give the series another try), but progress is progress. I have been making an effort to pick up unread books from my shelves, but I've also been trying to do the Kindle reading challenges on and off, and those two things are kind of mutually exclusive.
• I did catch up with H.L. Burke's SVR-verse, which also helped. I've only read one book towards catching up on the Cosmere and Sanderson Secret Project novels, but I still have several months left, so hopefully I can fix that.

For more statistics or the full list of everything I read in 2024, check out my Goodreads Year in Books or my tracking form results. For now, though, let's get on to the specific categories of books I want to highlight!

1. Best book you've read in the first half of 2024:

This is a slightly easier choice than normal — my favorite new-to-me non-sequel of 2024 so far is absolutely The Erlking's Daughters by Claire Trella Hill! It's epic fantasy with a deep, lore-rich world, a beautiful balance of light and dark, an excellent take on fae, a lovely slowburn romance, and, most importantly, a strong focus on family, especially sibling relationships. With all that together, there's no chance I wouldn't love it.

Of course, just because it was an easy choice doesn't mean there aren't some really good runners-up. Tress of the Emerald Sea is a Princess Bride-esque pirate adventure with fabulous characters and a really cool magic system, and it probably would've tied with The Erlking's Daughter if I hadn't gotten annoyed with the story voice in some sections. Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries features a pair of scholar protagonists (with Howl and Sophie vibes), a very other take on the fae, and themes bound up in stories and how we use them to understand the world. Finally, Game On is a stellar example of how to do next-generation stories right, besides the fact that it's a really fun superhero story in and of itself.

2. Best sequel you've read in the first half of 2024:

Another easy choice here — Dark & Dawn is Book 4 in Suzannah Rowntree's Miss Dark's Apparitions series, and it's the best installment yet. I loved delving into Molly's family history and watching the crew's schemes unfold . . . but what I loved more was seeing Molly learn to trust, seeing Vasily figuring out how to be human, and seeing them both have some difficult, wonderful conversations. And, of course, the ending was absolutely magnificent.

That said, we had some thoroughly delightful runners-up for best sequel. Castle of the Winds continues the Secrets of Ormdale with a cozy adventure through secrets, chases, and twists and some absolutely magnificent dragons. No Man Left Behind wraps up the Worlds Behind series with as twisty and thrilling — and satisfying — a conclusion as you'd expect from one of Gingell's urban fantasies. And Mantles of Oak and Iron is an exciting follow-up to The Orb and the Airship that shows more of the broad scope of the story and world and gives us more of a look into our favorite characters pasts and capabilities.

3. Best book you've reread in the first half of 2024:

Fact: rereading The Goblin Emperor is never a bad idea. I don't know if there's such a thing as cozy political intrigue epics, but if there is, this definitely qualifies. It's just delightful to enjoy a story about someone who's been given a great deal of power, who's been pushed into the schemes that dominate any fantasy court, but who chooses to be kind at pretty much every step of the way and who succeeds because of it, y'know?

 4. New release you haven't read yet but want to:

This is a pretty recent release, but technically I've had access to Hearts of Stone and Steel by Jenelle Leanne Schmidt for a bit and not yet gotten around to reading it. (In my defense, I got the ebook from the Kickstarter and then lost the file . . . which isn't a very good defense, but oh well.) I'm excited to see more of Captain Marik, Beren, and the rest and to find out what happens next in this epic series!

5. Most anticipated release for the second half of 2024:

The Splintered Mind Kickstarter wrapped up a couple weeks ago, and backers will likely start receiving their copies in late July and August, and I believe the book will be available for wide purchase sometime after that. I'm so excited to discover a new aspect of the worlds Behind and Between and to meet a new set of characters!

I'm also very much looking forward to the final two Secrets of Ormdale novles, City of Serpents (releasing July 14; technically I just finished my ARC of this, but I'm looking forward to getting to talk about it with other people) and Valley of Dragons (coming in October). I've loved the first three books, and they've regularly made my best-of lists, so I have high hopes for the back half of the series as well.

And, of course, I'm looking forward to Wind and Truth, the fifth Stormlight Archive novel, releasing this December . . . though I really need to catch up on the Cosmere before I can be properly hyped. Hopefully, by the time it arrives, I'll be back in the habit of reading really long books more regularly.

6. Biggest disappointment:

I decided to give the Detective Conan manga series a try because I have a friend who really enjoys them. Unfortunately, I did not love the first book — while the concept is cool, some of the characters annoy me, and there's a fair bit of cartoony violence that bugs me as well (more because of who it's directed at than because of the violence itself). I still may try to forge on with more of the series, just so I can give it a fair chance, but the start, at least, did not wow me.

7. Biggest surprise:

I wasn't really surprised by any books this year, in the sense of liking them more than I expected — there were plenty that surprised me with twists, but of course I can't list those here, as that would be a spoiler. Apparently, most of my reads this year have met my expectations, and if they surpassed them, I was already expecting to really like them.

8. A book that made you cry:

Tears is a stretch, but Power Up and Engaged to a Supervillain both gave me all the feels, so I think that sort of counts?

9. A book that made you happy:

Wishing on a Supervillain and Accidentally a Supervillain were both super fun reads, pun very much intended. I enjoy all of H.L. Burke's SVR-verse books, but these two were especially fun.

10. Favorite post you've done this half of the year:

My favorite post this year was actually a guest post on Jenelle Leanne Schmidt's blog: Stories Behind the Scenes: How to Research for Worldbuilding! In this post, I broke down my approach for how I figure out what to research when I'm building a world and where to do that research.

On my own blog, I had a lot of fun with my Favorite Fantasy Subgenres and Favorite Romance Tropes posts that I did for February is Fantasy Month, in which I both shared the titular favorites and provided book recommendations for each subgenre or trope.

11. Most beautiful book you've bought/received this half of the year:

I mean, Hearts of Stone and Steel is very cool-looking, so probably that.

That wraps things up for me — but what about for you? What are the best books you've read in the first half of 2024? Also, what's the best book or series you've reread? Tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!

May 2024 Doings!

Hello, everyone! I'm happy to say that May has been a better month than April (and far superior to May 2023), though it did start out with a certain amount of drama. I am very relieved that it's effectively summer now and I can have some time to not stress about grad school. But I'm getting ahead of myself; before I talk about general life stuff, let's see how my writing is going.

Writing!

• First of all, an update on the DOSA Files anthology. The Kickstarter was successfully backed to the second stretch goal, so paperbacks will be shipping sometime mid-June, and the audiobook is officially in the works! If you missed the Kickstarter but still want a copy, no worries — you can preorder the ebook on Amazon, and the paperback will be available for purchase June 27. We'll be doing a blog tour to celebrate the wide release of the anthology, so if you want to help spread the word, please click here and sign up.
• As for Daughters of Atirse #2, I am still not quite finished, despite my best intentions, but I am closing in on the climax and the end of the book! Just a few chapters left! My wordcounts weren't quite where I wanted them to be — I was hitting somewhere around a thousand most days, but not much higher, and there were more than a few days with counts in the 400–600-word range. Still, I made very good progress, and I'm trying to focus on that rather than berating myself for not having been done with this a month ago.
• In more exciting news, as you might have heard earlier in the month, Song of the Selkies is a Realm Awards finalist! I'm very excited to have made it to the top five (especially considering what other books SotS was competing against — there were some big names and amazing stories on the Long List!), and I look forward to finding out who the ultimate winner will be at Realm Makers in July.
• Finally, an update on my spare-time projects — which, to be clear, I work on when I either can't work on Daughters of Atirse or I'm already done with my Atirse writing for the day. I finished the Travel Interlude for my D&D group, but I have not gotten back to working on the next adventure. I'll be honest; the fact that this group hasn't met at all in May kind of tanked my motivation for doing D&D writing.
• I'm also poking at another project that's still in the fun planning/ideating/worldbuilding stage, referenced in my Taleweaver's Desk update as the Secret Star Book. Normally, I wouldn't be doing even this much on a new project when I still have Onora's story and D&D writing to focus on, but I'm allowing myself to work on it here and there as I have time as a reward for surviving my most recent grad school class. I don't know exactly where that's going to go, so I won't say more about it for now, but I am having fun with it, as it's very different from most of my other projects.

Reading!

• April may have been my month of highly-anticipated releases, but May was still a pretty good reading month. The highlights of the month were H.L. Burke's new release, Game On, Brandon Sanderson's Tress of the Emerald Sea, and my (terribly self-indulgent) reread of The Goblin Emperor. I already reviewed Game On, and my love for The Goblin Emperor is well-established (it's a cozy epic fantasy about a forgotten young man, barely out of boyhood, who gets put in the midst of court intrigue and politics and who chooses to not play the games and instead be kind and I love it, I love it, I love it), so I'll focus mostly on Tress. I am so behind on reading it, but I do see why people raved about it so much (far more than they seem to have raved about the other Secret Projects). I enjoyed the characters — Tress herself is a delight, and I really liked most of the supporting cast as well — and had fun spotting the various Cosmere connections. The magic system with the spore-seas and the abilities of the different spores was also fascinating and really cool both visually and conceptually. Oddly, though, the one thing I didn't love was the storytelling voice in some sections; even though I think it's cool that the story is narrated by Hoid, and while I liked most of his asides and flavor commentary, some sections just didn't hit right for me.
• The other highlight of the month, of course, is the return of Dracula Daily, a Substack newsletter allowing readers to read Dracula in real-time as a series of letters, diary entries, telegram entries, and other similar types of installments that land in your inbox on the appropriate day. This is the third time I've read the book this way, and I enjoy it every time.
• I also continue to enjoy my reread of the Chronicles of Prydain, especially since I read my two favorites in the series this month. The Black Cauldron features one of my top three favorite characters in the series (Adaon, the only one of the three who isn't part of the main band), while The Castle of Llyr is more generally a favorite because I like the story.
• Mistress of Wardwood is an anthology of stories related to The Erlking's Daughters, and it was also really fun. My favorite of the collection was "Inheritance," which focuses on Enzella and Micah, but all the books were really good. If you read The Erlking's Daughters and you want the anthology, you can get it by signing up for the author's newsletter! (That will also get you Aeronwy's Stolen Child, which is a reverse changeling story that I think sounds really fun and have pretty high on my TBR list.)
• As for the last two books pictured, The Song of the Rose and The King's Captive were both good stories, though they didn't wow me. To be clear, I can see other people really enjoying them, but neither was quite what I wanted from their respective concepts. I may still read some of the other installments in the two series, though, as there was enough I liked to get me curious.
• I'm wrapping up the month by being thoroughly self-indulgent once again and rereading Howl's Moving Castle (not pictured, because I'm in the middle of it just now), because it's May and I was tired and vaguely grumpy the last time I needed to pick a new book to read, and either of those on their own would normally be a good reason for me to reread this, and so both together managed to overpower all the should-reads. It is, as ever, delightful.

 Watching & Playing!

• In addition to being the start of Dracula Daily, May also features the return of Re: Dracula, a podcast audio drama form of Dracula following the same real-time format as Dracula Daily. This is my second year listening, and this time around, I'm doing a bit better at actually listening to the episodes as they release (though I still tend to get behind on weekends). We're still pretty early in the season, so if you're looking for a new podcast, I highly recommend checking it out!
• I'm also continuing to enjoy playing Honkai Star Rail; as I've said before, it's a pretty good motivation to buckle down and get my writing done earlier in the day or evening instead of getting distracted by YouTube videos. (I may have complained about lower-than-ideal wordcounts, but trust me, the fact that those counts still mostly average around 1K is thanks to Star Rail motivation, not in spite of the game.) I did finally start the third main quest line and met one of the characters I've been most looking forward to meeting (Jing Yuan, to be specific). I actually got into the game after two different friends both raved about him. As both friends tend to have excellent taste in favorite characters, I figured I needed to find out more about him for myself, and so far, my impression is that he is indeed the Actual Best.
• My sister and I also took advantage of Memorial Day weekend time off to play more of Portal 2 Co-Op. We've done everything now except the secret sixth stage and had a grand time of it . . . though it did take us forever to get through the last two levels, one because we kept dying and one because we couldn't get the stupid portal where we needed it. Still, we finished the main game, and it was fun to spend time with her that way!
• I did actually watch a few things this month — well, rewatched, anyway. We watched Romancing the Stone back around Mother's Day while my sister was here, as we haven't seen it in a while and my sister wanted an adventure-type movie. Then I watched Charade (aka probably my favorite non-fantasy movie in existence) with my parents on Memorial Day weekend. Both were fun; I don't have much to say about them that I haven't already said.

 Life!

• Praise God from whom all blessings flow, my editing and publishing grad school class is done. The last couple weeks of the class were more frustrating than I expected or than they needed to be (mostly due to communication issues and disagreements about how to interpret the final project instructions), but I got through them with a good grade, so I am grateful.
• And right after my class ended, my sister came down to visit over Mother's Day weekend! She arrived in time to meet us at Bible study, then stayed until Monday morning. Getting to see her was lovely, and we had a really nice time with her.
• Work was also generally quiet, as we're still in the lull between Easter and summer and people were out of the office a lot for either travel or training. The one exception was that our associate pastor had her last Sunday on May 19, so the week leading up to that date was pretty busy. We're all sad she's gone, but her role is being filled by another member of the programs staff, so I think the transition should at least go pretty smoothly. And we didn't have any tech issues on her last Sunday, despite a near miss with the livestream sound! (This might not seem significant, but our tech has a tendency to malfunction on or around significant Sundays, plus we had a substitute running slides and sound, so I was more than a little nervous and was praying very hard against any issues.)
• Work being chill and grad school being done has given me a little bit of extra free time and energy. Some of that has gone towards resting, and some of it has gone towards weeding and reorganizing my bookshelves. My scheme of having all my nonfiction and classics on one bookshelf and all my fantasy and speculative fiction on the other two was foiled by the fact that my textbooks are too tall for the shelf where I wanted to put them, but at least I won't have random stacks of books in front of other books. I'm not quite finished, but I'm nearly there, and I'm still holding out hope of having a free shelf where I can put owned-but-unread books so they're easier to find and prioritize.
• On the baking front, I made up for missing my Baking Yesteryear recipe in April by making two things this month. First, I made dream bars, which . . . well, people said they tasted good. The recipe didn't say to put parchment in the pan, but I should've done so anyway because I couldn't get my spatula under the crust to get the bars out in one piece, and I also think I chopped my nuts way too finely because my bars looked nothing like the picture. Then I made peanut butter styrofoams, essentially peanut butter meringues. These also didn't look like the picture, but they tasted good! And given that it was my first time making any cookie in that family, I'm counting them as a definite success!
• I've also been doing some fun stuff with crafting. Early in the month, I learned that one of the local librarians is into weaving and has a few small looms for weaving bands/straps. She was willing to bring them to the library so I could see them and try them to decide if I wanted to get into the hobby myself (and also for story research purposes). So, a few weeks after that, I got to try an inkle loom and a card loom! As I said, both are band looms, so they're making narrow straps rather than a full piece of cloth, but the inkle loom is larger, and you raise and lower the threads by hand, while the card loom is smaller and uses stiff cards with holes in them to raise and lower the threads. Neither is the kind of thing I could carry around and do wherever I happened to be, so I don't think this will turn into a major hobby, but I'm still toying with trying to make my own card loom so I can do that as an on-and-off thing . . .
• Aside from that, I crocheted my mom an African violet for Mother's Day, and I'm really pleased with how it turned out. I've since made the pieces for two or three more of them, but haven't gotten around to assembling them yet. Now I'm back to embroidery, working on a pin hoop for my Cosmere pins. (Fun fact: embroidering through a double layer of fabric is really hard on your hands, especially when one of those layers is felt! But I am managing.)

June Plans

• First of all, a housekeeping note: I will be taking June and July as a semi-hiatus from blogging. I'll still do my main yearly/monthly posts like Doings, my summer releases list, and my Mid-Year Book Celebration, and I'll do some kind of post for the DOSA Files release, but I won't be posting regular Friday 5s. This is partially for practical reasons — July is going to be super busy for me — and partially because I want to take a bit of a break. If all goes well, I should return to my regular posting schedule in August, hopefully with a bit of a buffer built up.
• My primary project for the month is finishing up Daughters of Atirse #2 and getting it out to beta readers. I am optimistically hoping to have it drafted by sometime in the vicinity of June 8 or 9, then take a week off to rest before doing fairly light edits and sending it on to beta readers. Sending the story out at an earlier stage actually worked well for Song of the Selkies, and I'm hoping it'll work better still if I get the book out further in advance of when it needs to be release-ready. As far as other projects go, I should make progress on my next D&D adventure, and I hope to continue poking at the Secret Star Project when I have spare time for it.
• At work, we're starting summer programming, but we're also in a transition period between the previous associate pastor leaving and the new one moving into that position, so we're a little less busy than we normally would be around this time. Not that I'm complaining; after this winter and spring, I'm still appreciating any quiet seasons I can get.
• As for the rest of my month outside of what I've already said, my main plans involve seeing family, continuing with my crafting, baking, and reading goals, and finding opportunities to rest and recharge (and also attempting to hide from my allergies, which seem to be worse than normal this year).

How was your May? Any plans for June? Are you reading Dracula Daily or listening to Re: Dracula? Is this a busy season or a quiet one for you? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!

 

Mid-Year Book Celebration 2022

Hey'a, all! As a reminder, I will be on blogging hiatus for most of July . . . but! I can't have a July without a Mid-Year Book Celebration, even if that would make my life much easier. So, here we are! As per the usual, I'll post the short-and-sweet Best of 2022 (so far) over on Light and Shadows. But if you want all the different categories . . . read on!

Of course, we can't have a book celebration without statistics. I've read 63 books (or 64, depending if you count my copy of both Alice books in one volume as one book or two) and 16,267 pages so far in 2022, which means I'm well over halfway to my goal of 99 books. Interestingly, while this is almost 20 more books than I'd read at this time last year, but it's only about 700 more pages. My average rating is about the same as it was this time last year: 4.3 stars. While every book hasn't been a winner, most have been, plus I've been rereading a lot.

Now for some more specific reading goals . . .

• I have successfully tracked my reads beyond just using Goodreads. I switched over to using a Google form based on the one Kendra E. Ardnek uses (literally; she let me copy hers, and then I modified some questions). It's much easier than the spreadsheet, though there are still some things I want to adjust. (For instance, my decision to track particular tropes was . . . frankly unnecessary. I'll finish it this year, but I don't think I'll do it again next year.)
• Towards 12 books published before 1975, I have read seven books. Three of them are Narnia; two are Lewis Carroll. But the other two are Chesterton and medieval poetry, so it's not all rereads. Plus, I'm in the progress of reading Dracula via email subscription.
• Of my goal of 15 non-speculative fiction books, I've read either seven or nine, depending on whether or not you count books of poetry. That puts me at either halfway through or a bit over halfway through, so I think that's pretty solid.
• As far as catching up with the Tor.com Wheel of Time reading series . . . I have managed maybe two chapters of The Great Hunt? It's a very frustrating book. I can probably still meet my goal if I really get with it, but honestly? I will be pretty pleased with myself if I just finish this one book by the end of the year.
• And finally, we have my effort to read more poetry. This has had mixed results? I haven't quite managed once a week like I originally intended, but I've made up the weeks I've missed with some weeks in which I read a whole book of poetry. Most of what I've read has been out of a book of George Herbert's poems that I got for a class at Cedarville, but I've also read one of the Ticket to Write anthologies, Tolkien's translation of Gawain the Green Knight, and some miscellaneous poems by Poe, thanks to another email subscription.

All right! Overall, I think most of my numbers are looking shiny . . . but not as shiny as the books, so let's get on with it.

1. Best book you've read so far in 2022:

 

A lot of my reads this year have been rereads . . . but even if they weren't, the answer to this category would probably still be a tie between Cinderella Must Die (W.R. Gingell) and The Goblin Emperor (Katherine Addison). These books are vastly different; one is a Cinderella retelling featuring a villainous Cinderella, a very clever pair of stepsisters, an indomitable aunt, and some very clever magic. The other is one part epic, one part political intrigue, one part mystery, one part character drama, and, inexplicably, one part feel-good fantasy even though it should not, by all rights, be as heartening as it is. But they're both excellent, and I love them immensely.

2. Best sequel you've read so far in 2022:

We have another tie here, this time between My Soul to Take (Bryan Davis) and Crown and Cinder (Kendra E. Ardnek). Again, these are vastly different books, but both very good. My Soul to Take is a worldhopping post-apocalyptic fantasy that leans a bit dark, but also has some wonderful family themes and an uncrushable hope. And Crown and Cinder is what happens when Pride and Prejudice and Cinderella mutually derail each other, plus fire magic and Kendra E. Ardnek's signature humor and style — I would argue that it's one of her best books yet.

3. New release you haven't read yet but want to:

There are so many that could fit this category. I am doing terribly at keeping up with new releases. But the specific ones I'll call out are Of Fire and Ash by Gillian Bronte Adams (which I did buy in hardcover earlier this year, so there's that!), The Untold Story by Genevieve Cogman (which I've kept getting distracted from reading), and The Dream Runners by Shveta Thakrar (which just came out, so I think I have an excuse.

4. Most anticipated release for the second half of the year:

I mean, I'm hoping to get Through a Shattered Glass out this year . . . and I hear Wyn Estelle Owens is working on another book . . .

 

 

But if we want a book with an actual cover? The Lost Metal by Brandon Sanderson. I'm super excited to return to Scadrial and the adventures of Wax and Wayne. Plus, it sounds like we're getting a lot more Cosmere connections with Marasi! So much to look forward to!

5. Biggest disappointment:

I don't know why I finished A Wild Winter Swan (Gregory Maguire). Probably because I was procrastinating on something. But it was deeply frustrating. Not as much so as some other books I can think of, but still . . . not great.

6. Biggest surprise:

 

I picked up Stolen Mayfly Bride (Sarah K. L. Wilson) with low, low expectations. The other book in the collection I'd read was, to be frank, a candidate for the last question I answered. But once I got into the book, I was entranced. Wilson knows how to write fae, she knows how to write romance, and the writing style was marvelous and poetic. This was a KU read, but honestly, I think I'm probably going to end up buying a copy.

7. Newest favorite character:

While I've met a lot of great characters so far this year, there's no question who my new top favorite is: Maia Drazhar (The Goblin Emperor). I love him so much, y'all. He starts out the book awkward and anxious, a cast-off, half-foreign emperor's son who's grown up far from the court and without many people to love him, who wants only to avoid offending or causing trouble for anyone and who's so genuinely and helplessly kind and caring. And he grows into an emperor who truly wants to serve his subjects, who learns to stand up for himself and others, who uses his position and power to help those he can (even those who would be overlooked). He's just wonderful.

 

And on the topic of The Goblin Emperor . . . while I don't love them quite as much as Maia, several other characters also make the favorites list, specifically Csevet, Cala, Beschelar, and Csethiro.

8. A book that made you cry:

I don't think there were any actual tears, but The Goblin Emperor did produce a lot of Emotions, so . . . there's that?

9. A book that made you happy:

 

 

Search for the Astral Dragon (Bryan Davis) didn't quite make my "favorite book" choice . . . but it felt a lot like Davis's Dragons in Our Midst series, which meant that, in a way, it also felt like coming home.

10. Favorite post you've done so far this year:

I am very pleased with my "Writing Tips and Tricks (That Shouldn't Work as Well as They Do)" post that I put up back in March. (I'm toying with the idea of doing more posts about writing craft . . . thoughts, anyone?)

11. What books do you need to read by the end of the year?

All of them, haha. But specifically . . . several Wheel of Time novels, The Untold Story, The Lost Metal, and Bryan Davis's Song of the Ovulum series (as a reread). Will I get to any of them? Who knows. I certainly don't.

 

Well, that's my celebration! How about you? What were the highs and lows of your last six months, reading-wise? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!