WWW Wednesday!

WWW Wednesday is a weekly feature hosted by Sam at Taking on a World of Words. 

My September reading is starting out strong! Let’s see if I can keep up this momentum.

What are you currently reading?

My currently reading pile is a bit of an eclectic mix, which is exactly how I like it. At the moment I’m so absorbed in my audiobook (I also have a physical copy that I might switch to at some point), which is The Last One by Alexandra Oliva. I’d really never considered listening to this one on audio, but while I was picking out potential books for the R.i.P. XII reading challenge, this arose as a book I’d really love to check out. The Last One focuses on Zoo (not her real name), a contestant on a wilderness-survival-themed reality show, and what happens when the structure of the show appears to start breaking down and there may or may not have been some sort of pandemic event while she was isolated in the woods. She has no way of knowing, however, whether this actually happened or if it’s just a part of the show. It’s SO absorbing; the perspective shifts from Zoo later on in the course of the show (she’s called that by producers because she works with animals at a nature preserve) and a third person account of the earlier days of the show and its fan response. It’s also a great read for R.i.P. XII, which I didn’t actually intend to really begin until October, but hey, I’ll take my library audio holds when I can get them.

Speaking of starting my fall reading challenge early, I started Vampire Girl by Karpov Kinrade on a whim when I needed something to read for a few minutes on my phone during my lunch break at work. I noticed this book because it was a Goodreads Choice Awards nominee last year (I LOVE following the GRCAs) and it contained the word “vampire,” so I figured I should at least check it out. I’m about halfway done and I will say that the quality of the writing is…not good. I would also say that the word “vampire” is used very loosely here and I would not at all classify it as a vampire book. That being said, it’s so fast-paced that I basically read half the book without even thinking about it, and it’s sort of a fun silly book that I do intend to finish. It just won’t be a good rating from me, unfortunately.

And! I’m still only about 40 pages into The Brides of Rollrock Island by Margo Lanagan, but I really love it. Lanagan’s writing is very lyrical, and I love anything that is sort of a dark retelling of some kind of myth/legend/fairy tale. In this case, Lanagan is tackling the myth of selkies, which I think will also provide a lot of commentary on misogyny, which should be interesting. It’s a slower-paced read, but I never feel like I’m lost when I put it down and pick it back up.

What did you recently finish reading?

The first book I finished in September was Blue Nights by Joan Didion. This is my second Didion; I previously read The Year of Magical Thinking in 2015, and Blue Nights is very similar in topic, tone, and structure. Both are memoirs of grief; Magical Thinking focuses on the loss of Didion’s husband, John, and Blue Nights focuses on her daughter, Quintana. They both sort of drift from topic to topic, mimicking Didion’s patterns of thinking and memory; both are very sad and very well-written.

I then finished an ARC I picked up from the publisher at BookCon, An Enchantment of Ravens, and thoroughly enjoyed it. An Enchantment of Ravens is a YA fantasy by Margaret Rogerson, and it takes place in a town called Whimsy which is stranded in perpetual summer due to its connection to the world of the fae, or Fair Ones. The fae in Rogerson’s book are very far removed from emotions and their general humanity, but they covet human artwork and creations more than anything. Our main character, Isobel, finds herself sucked into the fae lands when Rook, the autumn prince of the fae, is furious at his portrayal in a portrait she painted. It’s well-written, self-contained, and in my opinion a perfect YA fairy-related read. It’s set to be released on September 26th.

 

What do you think you’ll read next?

Gather the Daughters by Jennie Melamed! I’ve nearly started this book about four or five times already in the past few days, but it just hasn’t quite felt like the right time and I’ve been waiting until I cut down my currently reading pile a bit. I actually won this book in a giveaway during the 24 in 48 readathon, which was such a wonderful surprise because it’s been at the top of my 2017 releases TBR. Gather the Daughters is focused on a cult and its misogynistic tendencies and has drawn Margaret Atwood comparisons, so it sounds right up my alley. After Gather the Daughters, I have absolutely no idea what I’ll pick up next. I do hope that my library hold on the audio of The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls becomes available soon, because I think I’ll be in the mood for another memoir by the time I finish my current audio.

 

Have you read any of these? Feel free to link me to your WWW Wednesday post as well!