A Probably Incomplete List of Books Read in the Last Six-ish Months

Loads of blogs 'n shit do these "Books read in 201x", where they either review everything they've read in December/January, or make a graphic/artwork every time they finish a book, and post them all in December/January.

What I'm saying is that that I know this is neither December nor January, but I wanted to do one anyway. And so I held onto the idea until now, because I figured, see, most people have more free time in their summer than at other times, and make "summer reading lists". À la, this is still useful/relevant/excusable on my behalf at least. Who knows, maybe I'll do another one in like November so that everyone can get their Christmas wishlists ready (which they will all be adding Sylvestus Vol. I to obviously).

It's basically just a list with comments. It's not fancy. But if you're considering books and you've already bought mine... Whelp. You might enjoy. And it means I get to advertise my website like a bookblr. All about expanding that audience 👈😉👈

Okay. This is based on my Kindle history, staring at my bookshelf, and occasionally scrolling through the tags on Tumblr to check if I missed anything.

I definitely did miss stuff but idk what, which is unfortunately the point.

Not a Pygmy Owl's Probably Incomplete List of Books Read in the Last Six-ish Months:

• Look Who's Back - Timur Vermes - Hitler wakes up in 2011 Berlin. Political satire. Enjoyable to read, some tiresome parts and ambiguous ending but I'm pretty sure that was the point. Relevant af with current political climate. Very clever book. Unfortunately, was awkward to read in public because the cover is a minimalist picture of Hitler's face and I didn't want people to think that it was Mein Kampf or something. Overall would def recommend tho if ur not a fascist (if u are a fascist u would probs miss the point and think Hitler was an unironically great guy)
• The Gender Game - Bella Forrest - oh my gooossshhh oh my gosh it was so shit omggg just don't bother seriously it's not worth it I'm sorry
• The Silver Wolf - Alice Borchardt - actually like my third or fourth time reading this. Weird book, to the extent that I definitely missed out on some things before; every time I read it I'm a few years older, and it makes more sense/the symbolism is more recognisable/I know more about the historical context and understand the plot better. A good book if you have the patience for purplish prose, plots where everything goes wrong for the good people constantly, and a fairly unlikeable protagonist. The fact that I've read it 3-4 times should say a lot about how much I still enjoy it, tho
• The Unremarkable Heart - Karin Slaughter - turns out it's a fifty-page short story and it cost about the same as a full novel so feel ripped-off af, otherwise still a fair good story, adult themes. Would provide trigger warnings but the whole point of the story is the build-up to the Big Reveal so check out the warnings if you want to read it and you're worried
• The Body Reader - Anne Frasier - not what I was expecting, very enjoyable. TWs for sexual abuse and abortion, never graphic; a police officer is kidnapped and kept in a basement for several years, and long after giving up hope of escape suddenly sees an opportunity. Walks back into her old office years after going missing severely traumatised and malnourished - does not go down well with police department. Eventually gets back into her old job and attempts to solve multiple murders along with finding out about her own kidnap, but is an extremely different person to who she was before; realistic approach to recovery of a victim of severe trauma, compelling, also extremely thrilling and clever plotting. Overall, def recommendation
• Nevernight - Jay Kristoff - man I recommend this so hard I feel like it shouldn't even come directly after The Body Reader because it's gonna' undermine it. This is the epitome of awesome YA fantasy, too complex to try and summarise but there's some magic and assassins and bisexuality and just the way it's written is incredibly unique. Some clumsy points but they don't take away too much, especially enjoyable because it goes out of its way to subvert a few YA tropes. Recommended to anyone who likes this kind of thing, and who wants to be pissed off because the next one doesn't come out for like six more f*cking months
• This Savage Song - VE Schwab - I am a massive Schwab fan and her other books (on this list) are among my favourites like... Ever - sadly, this one was so-so. If you're obsessed with VE Schwab and have read all the others, it will tide you over - on its own, it's pretty good. The worldbuilding was incredible and intriguing, and I loved the characters and basic plot, but compared to her other books this was a little clumsy almost? Will read the sequel, but wouldn't put it at the top of your to-read list unless the synopsis really intrigues you (it is a super-cool synopsis tbf. Cities and monsters and all kinds of violence)
• I am Not a Serial Killer - Dan Wells - meh. Good idea, interesting character, and as a massive fan of Dexter I was really excited, but... Meh. I guess it's unique and it works well to subvert tropes and create an interesting character, but it just wasn't all that enjoyable to read, the protagonist wasn't likeable even if he's not supposed to be, and... Idk. It dragged
• Nightblade - Ryan Kirk - poop. Sorry Mr. Kirk; parts of it were good and there's definitely, like, room to build a good story, but it just was too long and windy and there were like six people who had PoV chapters but half of them seemed pointless and no-one was particularly likeable and... Hh. Yeah, it's not up there
• Vicious - VE Scwhab - all right hoes listen up these here is one of my FAVOURITE books in the world and here's fuckin' why. Victor and Eli are top students, roommates, and best friends in their ivy league college and they're both damaged people with a little streak of crazy. They become obsessed with the idea of ExtraOrdinaries, people with "super powers", and their investigations for Eli's dissertation go from theoretical - trying to quantify how an EO is made - to... A more applied approach. Things go very wrong, very suddenly, when they manage to succeed in making themselves both EOs. Ten years later, Eli is hunting down other EOs to eliminate their threat - and Victor has just broken out of the max-security prison he's been in since it happened. Okay, so, why I love it. The idea is that both of them are super-villains; where a normal story starts off with equally damaged people and can turn one into a hero, Vicious doesn't try. Even when you realise who you want to win, he is still doing very bad things - the book asks you to let go of black-and-white good-and-bad, and you cringe at what they do even when you know they had to do it. I'm gonna put it out there: I love Victor Vale from the bottom of my broken heart even when you can't deny he's 3/4 of a super-villain. Next, the other characters. Mitch is Victor's prison cell-mate, a cinnamon roll, too good for this world, too pure. Every time something's about to happen to him you want to die. Sydney is the eleven year-old EO they picked up off the side of the road (don't ask), and putting her in makes the story extremely clever because suddenly Victor and Mitch are in charge of an innocent life, and it raises even more questions about being good or bad. The Victor-Sydney and Mitch-Sydney relationships are very unique to this genre. Victor justifying his decisions with "Because you don't think I'm a bad person, and I don't want to prove you wrong"? HEARTBROKEN. Then they pick up Dol, an undead dog, and man it just raises the stakes 'cos who isn't gonna' be scared 100% of the time that the dog's about to (re-)die? Right at the end they also get Dominic, and even though he's barely in it I love him too. Basically Victor's side is made up of this broken disjointed family of three gay dads (sshhh they basically are), their zombie-dog, and an eleven y/o they p much kidnapped. Eli's ally, Serena, is also interesting, and it's one of those things where you can't really hate her for what she does when you put into context what Victor does, kind of thing. And yet?? You do. Conflicted emotions. Okay, yeah, so I talked a lot about it. I just really fucking love this book. It's fairly short so u can get through it easily, very readable, cannot wait for the sequel. VE Schwab advertises this and the Shades of Magic series as adult (compared to This Savage Song, which is YA) and I can see why because like, neither Victor nor Eli is remotely a role model, but a fairly mature kid would enjoy the shit out of this as presumably would an adult. Edge-of-your-seat action, moral questioning, very funny parts - please fam. Just add Vicious to your list
• As the Crow Flies - Damien Boyd - hah, how am I even supposed to follow Vicious... I feel sorry for the next few books. Overshadowed af. Okay tho, this was a reasonable crime fiction. I think after The Body Reader I decided to add more crime fiction to my library, I've enjoyed the obvious ones in the past (Christie, Slaughter, Wingfield). It was fairly good, as they go, but the climax was disappointing and the book was clunky with a lot of topic-relevant jargon. The plot twist was clever but not delivered in the best way
• And I Darken - Kiersten White - fictionalised biography of Vlad the Impaler if Vlad the Impaler was a woman. Fairly enjoyable but not great. Not really any other comments than that. It's just... A pretty good book. Shelf-filler. Not amazing nor terrible
• New Pompeii - Daniel Godfrey - aaaaAAA so this book drove me a LITTLE bit insane with its plot twists and stuff. Essentially a company has discovered how to bring things from the past into the present due to how particle physics works (??), and have brought all of the occupants of Pompeii forward just before they die (excluding those whose bodies remain to make casts - no fucking with the timeline, that's the law). What starts as a fairly standard historical morality and action novel turns into a super-complex mystery thriller... Thing. I got one massive plot twist and was really pleased and like two pages later it was literally completely undone by another one - it's that kind of book. At the end I was still like ??? *squints* but it turns out there's a sequel which probably explains more and I might have to read it just to understand. Clever af
• Crooked Kingdom - Leigh Bardugo - do I even have to... Okay. For those who don't know, this is the much-anticipated sequel to Six of Crows. Given how acclaimed they are, I don't even feel like I need to say shit about it, but... So good. So good. You will love all of your sinful crow children (they're not actually crows). Your mind will be blown by the plot twists. You will laugh, you will definitely cry, you will try to have a favourite and end up gathering them all towards you, sobbing softly. If you're part of the YA fantasy general fandom who's heard loads about it but hasn't read it, please just read Six of Crows, even if you didn't like the Grisha trilogy (most people I know who read SoC and the Grisha novels said they hated the latter and still loved SoC). If you have no interest in YA fantasy, even if it's super-clever and heartbreaking and funny and diverse... Well, don't bother then, I guess. Just read Vicious instead. Or Dying Ember. That's good too
• Daughter of Smoke and Bone - Laini Taylor - this is one of those things I'd seen was a massive trend for a while, and should have been my kind of novel, but I just never got round to reading it. I decided to add it to my library for a bored day, and... Well, I can understand the hype. It's one of those books that about halfway through just flips its own universe on its head - like, you could split the book in half and the plot and genre of the two halves would be completely different. Again, if YA fantasy with really good worldbuilding and characters is your thing, this is definitely for you. If not, well, I don't know what to tell you fam
• An Ember in the Ashes - Sabaa Tahir - not brilliant, quite long, generally just one of those books that sits in the realm of Pretty Good YA Fantasy without standing out as great or terrible
• Hemlock Grove - Brian McGreevy - holey fuck dude. So I had the Netflix series recommended to me, and you know what? Season one, so good. Clever, horrific, fascinating. Season two? What... the fuck? Too weird. 100 to 0 real quick. Have not yet finished season three. Decided to read the book - just as good as season one. Even more horrific and fascinating. Transports all the classic monster villains into one modern-day US town, and is written in the traditional Gothic style, which makes it an interesting read. One major grievance with both book and TV show (TW rape), but overall recommended
• The Tiger and the Wolf - Adrian Tchaikovsky - I mean, in very few books are you ever likely to get shapeshifters, medieval kingdoms, and velociraptors all in one, and somehow it not be a complete shit-show. Genuinely I enjoyed a lot of this book, especially some side characters/plots, and the world-building was great. However, probably won't read the sequel, and not at the top of my recommendations list
• A Conjuring of Light - VE Schwab - I should probably just get VE Scwhab to pay me for this list tbf. It's been a VE Scwhab kind of six months. So, I read the first book in this series, A Darker Shade of Magic, maybe two or three years ago. It was fairly good; I enjoyed it enough to want to read Vicious, but I only read the next book in its series because of Vicious (which is unrelated). However, by book two, I was freakin' hooked. By the time ACoL (book three) came out I was losing my mind in desperation to find out what happened. Pretty much every character, villains included, is unique and faceted and likeable in some way (putting it out there: Holland is my trash child and I will defend him until the day I die), and as the books go on the world-building gets better. If you're not looking for a big commitment this may not be for you because you can't take one of the books on its own - it's the series that's so good. But if you are in the market for a new fantasy series, A Darker Shade of Magic is your pal
• The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists - Gideon Defoe - right. So I'm on Netflix and I see this film, right, and immediately I lose my mind. Like five years ago there was this Aardman film (the Wallace & Gromit people) about incompetent pirates who kidnap Charles Darwin and then help him to win the Scientist of the Year award while avoiding the evil Queen Victoria. Classic kids' comedy. The thing is, it was actually incredibly funny. So I watched it again and laughed a lot, and then I saw "Adapted from the novel..." and I was like WHAT. So I figure it's a kids' book and I Google it and... Yeah, the blurb is pretty much the same. But then I'm scrolling through the Amazon page considering buying it for the memes, and underneath is: The Pirates! in an Adventure with Communists and I'm like W H A T. Further investigation leads me to a review calling it "an adult comedy disguised as a kids' book" and I was like a'ight fam I gotta' read this shit. So I did. And it was actually really funny. It's just... So insane. There's historical facts in footnotes everywhere that I checked and are true? And yet the book also has 16th century pirates visiting Las Vegas casinos and hunting the Moby Dick whale? None of the characters actually have names, they're all called Pirate With a Scarf On and The Pirate Captain and Pirate With Gout?? And the best part was that all the fuckin'... Jokes, and some of the actual lines, had been taken directly into the film. A children's film. Someone looked at this strange adult satire and made it into a kids' film, and yet on literally the first page of the book is the line "Some pirates claim they are married to the sea because they are too lame to get a girlfriend, or because they are gay." I'm just shook. I'm sorry I talked about this for so long but... I'm genuinely shook
• The Pirates! in an Adventure with Moby Dick - Gideon Defoe - sssssshhhhhh I'm working my way up to Communists
• The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents - Terry Pratchett - please don't get me started on this book holey fuck I used to listen to the audiobook when I was about seven and I first read it when I was twelve and I've read it almost once a year since then I've read it so many times and now I've read it again. Every time it hurts me. This book formed my view of literature and the world I swear. Yes I've read all of the Discworld novels and you know what? This is my favourite even more than Monstrous Regiment and even more than Night Watch and even more than Going Postal just leave me alone it's about talking rats and a talking cat and it's so important and weird and UGH
• Across the Formidable Sea - Claire Laminen - oooooh okay so this isn't normally my genre but it was advertised as "Downton Abbey meets Peaky Blinders" and I was like "anything Peaky Blinders is a friend of mine and also Downton Abbey is good" and I read it and oooOOOOOOH. You may notice that this stands out on the list, like this is a varied list from political satire to crime fiction to YA fantasy, but historical romance?? Come on what have you turned into? But hear me out. No other historical romance has ever managed to have the kind of action and edge-of-seat suspense as AtFS. No action book has ever managed to have such genuine painful romance? It's like something for everyone, Downton Abbey meets Peaky Blinders. Normally in a book with two possible love interests you have Safe Option Who is Good for Me but Doesn't Set My Loins on Fire, and Exciting Daredevil Bad Guy My Family Disapproves of but Whom I Must be With. AtFS doesn't even bother with that bullshit. There's two love interests, yes, but they are both exciting and loveable and you genuinely don't know what Laura should or will do. And Laura - aaaahh as a protagonist she's just so... AAH. You don't know what you want her to do but you're there for her every step of the way and you genuinely care about her happiness. And she's so much more faceted than a classic "leading lady". Very rarely have I come out of a book so satisfied with pretty much every part of it. It's not a life-changing book, you won't cry for weeks (I cried because that is who I am as a person), but it will definitely give you emotions and is worth the read
• Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut - have never read Vonnegut before, gave this one a go on recommendation of a friend. Very weird, but genuinely loved it (see reference in an earlier post) - I can understand how someone who isn't a fan of weird books wouldn't enjoy it, but as someone who went through their pretentious literature phase and read all the classics (Lord of the Flies, Treasure Island, Of Mice and Men, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Outsiders, and so on) when they were fourteen, and loved most of them, I really enjoyed it. I highlighted about fifty quotes on my Kindle and it's difficult not to lovingly copy them all out here tbh. So ya, if u want to be cultured n stuff I'd definitely recommend this book; u might enjoy it, u might not, but either way it's somethin to talk about at dinner parties (I have never been at a dinner party where classic literature was actually discussed, much to the disappointment of 14 y/o me, but I feel like I'll be prepared when it one day happens)
• Deathless - Catherynne M Valente - hm. I feel like, as someone who just raved about Slaughterhouse Five, I can't slag off this book for being "too weird". Like Hemlock Grove, it's written in a way that mimics another genre/style - it's about fairy tales that cross over with real life, so it's written with the cyclic repetition of fairy tales but with all the drama of a contemporary YA novel. I think my issue with it came almost completely from the protagonist and her love interests; as someone who hates any implication that love is about obsession or hatred or pain, I found the way love was treated in the book as difficult. But it is supposed to be about fairy tales and demons, not about people, so as long as young girls out there don't actually start to think it's only true love if you take turns chaining each other to the wall and beating each other (not even in the BDSM way, just in the "fuck you I hate you also I love you" way), I guess it works out. Recommended if you're into Russian fairy tales and weird shit. Some quite traumatic parts emotionally and vivid descriptions of genocide
• SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome - Mary Beard - ummm I'm not sure about why anyone else would read this book because if you're interested in Ancient Rome you probably know a lot about it and if you're not then you won't want to read it? I read it because until Sylvestus I had no interest in Ancient Rome so I didn't know anything about it and for draft one I alternately bullshitted and Googled as I went along, and then I figured I should probably do proper research. It took a long time to read and was more of a pre-bedtime ritual thing, a few pages every night, but it was actually interesting and really enjoyable. But, then, as someone who hates learning about history, it might just be because I was fascinated the whole way through about how all of the historical context and such fit into Sylvestus. Undeniably good if you want to read a book about Ancient Rome, though, I guess. Might make Sylvestus more interesting because I'm gonna' end up as one of those people who fills it to the brim with contextual jokes and references probably

SO THERE YOU GO. Six-ish months, 26 books. Moderately disturbing, actually. That's, like, a book every six days. Damn. I did not used to read that much (it's probably all of the uni work and Sylvestus that I'm not doing).

If you (understandably) skimmed that, I'm high-key recommending Vicious, Nevernight, Across the Formidable Sea, The Body Reader, and Six of Crows. Everything else ranges from "pretty good" to "really good but not incredibly amazing", apart from three or four which fall into "so terrible I'm not even going to mention them again do not waste your money or your time".

Enjoy your summer reading, let me know what u read and enjoy/don't. Feel free to hmu with recommendations or comments about items from the above list you've also read (and when you finish Dying Ember, remember to review on Amazon, Lulu, Goodreads, and/or your own blog or bookblr eyyy).

I spent ages looking for a gif to fit on the end because I seem to have started a gif/photo post-finishing tradition and I didn't want to do a terrible importance-of-books quote but I genuinely couldn't find one that fit the mood exactly - then I was going to add one of my favourite reaction gifs that my friends are probably sick of by now but when I was searching I realised they were all just incredibly nihilistic and concerning. So instead, have a reflection of my current mood regarding how to finish this post:

i love and relate to dirk gently far, far too much