Books

Book 1,059: Most Ardently: A Pride & Prejudice Remix – Gabe Cole Novoa

When my local yarn store announced they were doing a book club with this AND having a skein of yarn dyed inspired by the cover, there was no question I was going to read it. I already have plans to re-read Austen’s six novels in her 250th birthday year. No guarantees, but maybe I’ll also read one fan-fiction/adaptation/inspired by of each as well!

This book is 100% inspired by and definitely not an adaption of, and if I’m honest it could’ve been a little less inspired by the original work. Novoa, probably could’ve done a better job if they let a few more characters or sub-plots go. Seriously, it could’ve stood on it’s own as an adorable historical queer romance, but the constraints of the adaptation made him wedge too much in giving discredit to some amazing aspects of the orginal and some potential to this remix.

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Updates

Q3 & Q4 Recap 2024

This is a VERY quick post to say that I’m slowly on my way back to book blogging. I doubt I’ll ever be as prolific as I was before, but I am slowly getting back into the habit after an almost 6 month break after completing my degree. I didn’t plan to take the break, but I did and now I’m slowly catching up on posts from last year and trying to figure out the future of this blog.

The biggest thing book wise is I’m slowly transitioning from Goodreads to Storygraph! So go add me as I figure it out 🙂

With over 1,000 reviews to clean up, it’s going to be a while. I also have no idea what I’m doing over there, so it’ll be interesting. Along with this I deleted my Twitter/X and Tumblr accounts, I’m streamlining.

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Updates

Q1 & Q2 Recap 2024

Barnaby's Best Day EverI had every intention of doing a real update this month reflecting on the first two quarters of 2024, but life got in the way, and this wasn’t even published last week like it should’ve been. I’m back dating it though. So, this is the short update that you get which includes:

  • The adorably hilarious photo of Barnaby from January when we were on vacation in the Caribbean. Because he’s a doodle, we generally have him in boots and a jacket/snowsuit so that his hair doesn’t get super matted, so seeing the excitement and freedom of him running in the snow was just such a heartwarming thing for us on vacation.
  • A screen shot of some lovely feedback on a piece of writing from a course I took wrapping up my degree. I graduated in May, and we then went on a two week cruise in Scandinavia, which was fantastic and I loved it and bought so much yarn. But this feedback on a piece gave me the life I needed to get through February-May and graduation!
  • And list of books that I’ve read since my last monthly update. I am VERY slowly making my way through these responses. I was on track to catch up but had to demonetize the blog because WordPress/Jetpack got super greedy and wanted to charge for stats access and the cost of that was significantly more than any kickback I got from being an affiliate. As well as even more ARC’s I should never have said yes to.

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ARC, Books

Book 1,051: Excavations – Hannah Michell

If there is one book that I regret not getting my review pushed out as soon as I finished it to tell everyone about it, it is this one! Seriously, this book has stuck with me and I’ve thought of it off and on since I read it. And even when I read it, it was a year later than I should have because the publisher reached out in July of 2023!* OMG I didn’t even realize that which is a shock to me—I guess 2022-2024 were even more blurred than I thought.

This isn’t as hauntingly powerful as Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go or Murakami’s 1Q84, but it could hold its own. Interesting those are both also author’s of Asian descent, as is Hannah Michell. Michell has the British connection also to Ishiguro, but that is tangential to this review and this probably says more about me than it does those three authors.

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Books

Book 1,049: Unrivaled (#3) & 1,050: Crushed Ice (#4) (Hockey Ever After) – Ashlyn Kane & Morgan James

And I’m done with the series—or at least done with what I’m planning to read.

Although, I just found the fifth book and it has a librarian in it! The one thing that I thought was missing from the series was a hockey player falling for someone who WASN’T A HOCKEY PLAYER. It was all too neatly tied up with everyone being hockey players and mostly understanding each other. We’ll see, maybe I’ll come back for that fifth one at some point.

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