I didn't have this updated by the end of June due to my sister's family being in town so I figured I would just add July to it since August is generally pretty sparse for me reading due to so many weekends and so much time claimed by Irish fests and all my Celtic music friends being around. (And this year, The Coronas will be in the midpart of the states right between Iowa and the La Corss/MN irishfests, so I'll be in Chi that Weds to see them and up in Minne on Thurs for them right before La Crosse and MN weekend so not entirely certain how I will get all my hours in and my plants watered..... That's an August problem though. So I'll lump Aug in with Sept/Oct and then we will be good.
Mostly in May and June and the first half of July, I read/re-read a lot of Cassandra Clare whenever I was reading at home and didn't really finish up purse books at home, just worked on them when not at home. Because I was deep binge reading Cassandra Clare Shadowhunters novels that I started in on reading/re-read ING back in April. A LOT of Cassandra Clare.... All of it except for the Golden Hours trilogy were re-read, those were the ones I hadn't yet read was waiting for them all to come out in paperback and then time to commit to the massive reread that they are because I like immersing myself into worlds and when I'm reading series I always need to reread the others before reading the newest to make sure I haven't forgotten important details/layers which can often be a MASSIVE page/time commitment if I'm doing rereads with every new book as it's released. So I had decided to wait til I had all three of the followup historical trilogy (in paperback to match the others on the shelves) before reading any of them and then I waited some more til I had enough unclaimed time to be able to devour binge read through them all and was in a head/heart space to want a comfort reread with stoic edged "we do what we must" live stories with fantasy world building magic woven to hold it together. It may seem like a very niche mental/emotional space, but I often reread books/series I have loved especially when I feel like I might lose myself in grieving or in hurt or in precogs of what is coming or all the different ways a person can lose themselves. I have lots of things I reread either for emotional comfort or to help me remember myself, my truest self, and also sometimes the self I have been who I don't want to lose who also held those books and loved them and read the same words into eh same pages connect to her across the years. Life is messy, love is messy, the world and the larger human framework of socio-politics is messy, and the larger cycles of soul growth lesson learning ia messy -- but the soul song of our truest self across our lifetimes is always a melody we can come back to no matter the messiest. We just need to remember how it goes and not lose it. Love that reflecta us back to ourselves and literature that reminds us everyone is doing their best in whatever chaotic messiness their life is and the things that tie us to our past and future selves are the things that I find best anchor me back into my own soul song when I might lose the thread if it. And they way I grieve and how deep into the hollows I go over the end of finite embodied mortal love (even though the bond is infinite and souls can interweave across finite stories if and when they choose or must) makes it hard for any other love to reach me while deep in the hollows -- so I know of myself in this life that if I return to books and songs that a past version of me has read/heard and loved, I can use them to help me hold onto my own soul song melody and not lose the thread while I'm in the hollows and in hearing myself I can process my way through the hollows more easily to get back to the place I can feel again the love and loss of finite mortal incarnations. And there are also books that I hang onto own as reminders/warnings but will never reread because I don't like the versions of me they surfaced or who I was when I read them and I wanted to be reminded they are in me but not summon them up because they are not who I currently choose to be unless I had to be them. (What I said several posts ago about water signs was as much a warning about me and my own emotional depths as it was a statement about anyone else -- all water signs feel everything deeply and truly for as long as they feel it but once their feelings shift they will then feel whatever the new emotion is completely and truly. I am a Pisces rising with a Scorpio stellium in my eighth house, as well as a Sagittarius stellium, and so while my chart is surprisingly balanced across the signs and modalities it is ever so slightly tilted toward water due to my rising sign -- my emotions are oceanic in scope and it's easy to drown in them when they get intense, even if I can only communicate them when I can reduce them and freeze them into a word form.) For me, Cassandra Clare's Shadowhunters world is actually a great mirror of my own ethics/values and the version of me that I strive to be and the ideals I hold even when things are messy and nothing seems like it will work out and maybe you do have to sacrifice let go of what you love deepest just to save it so you don't destroy it by trying to hold onto it too tightly.... It is an ideal series, as massive as the page count, for bringing me back to myself when I'm dealing with grief/loss to make sure when I come back from the hollows I am one of my better versions of me not a bitter nihilistic stoic version of me that has to relearn the importance of loving mortal incarnations even knowing the time you have to share will always be finite no matter how long or short it is but that's part of what makes it shine so brightly while you do have it.
If you recall, the last time I reread them all the read Dark Artifices for the first time was when Audrey was dying and eight after she died. It's fitting this is what I intuitively turned to started reading the historical ones to read the newest trilogy as Spock's life force weakened and then the modern ones right as he was dying and then following his death. (I was actually in the midst of City of Glass, at a really emotionally hard part where someone dies and everyone grieves it at the time of Spock's passing. As in he died right at the chapter break between when you learn the death is going to happen and when the characters discover it happened.)
This won't be the last time I reread through them all -- still waiting on the last book of the Alec-Magnus side trilogy and she has one last massive trilogy she is writing for the modern portion of it but none of them are out yet but the first should come out in hardcover next Spring. If the world doesn't end, I'll pick them up in paperbacks and hold onto them until the next time it's the comfort series and world I need to turn to again to help me hold onto my own soul song melody and the brightest thread of it.
There are other series I reread for other versions of me, but the world is a decisive hard edged line in the sands ethics test right now, not in a time I can soften into delighting in the goodness of the world's gifts to a quiet life as I am when I reread L. M. Montgomery or as black and white more child like simplistic a view of good vs evil as Lloyd Alexander or Patricia C. Wrede or Tamora Pierce. I need a warrior version of me to be resurfacing from the hollows that won't step back from a fight and remembers I chose incarnating because "if not me then who? is hard edged knows the finite nature of mortal things and the messiness of the world and people in it and how's sometimes none of our choices are good but we have to pick what's best of the not great options -- but also knows to cherish be grateful for the brightness that flashes through it whether it's passing moments or shared life paths. The Shadowhunters world building helps me hold to that version of me through the time of feeling nothing much at all and everything dry and sere and dead as I'm in the hollows of grief. It's a good choice for past me to have set me back into at this time, even with how MASSIVE the page commitment is with it.
Books Read:
~Cassandra Clare, Chain of Gold (582 pgs)
~Cassandra Clare, Chain of Iron (645 pgs)
~Cassandra Clare, Chain of Thorns (768 pgs)
~Melanie Magidow (translator), The Tale of Princess Fatima, Warrior Woman: the Arabic Epic of Dhat Al-Himma (167 pgs) [this was a purse book, chosen because it was a slim and interesting Penguin edition but short section breaks ways to set aside come back to it -- it went to a lot of shows across April and start of May before I finished it. For never having read any of the Golden Hours books, it wove beautifully with meeting Cordelia Carstairs for the first time and her as a heroine protagonist -- and it actually ties into a reference central to that series.]
~Cassandra Clare, City of Bones (485 pgs)
~Cassandra Clare, City of Ashes (453 pgs)
~Cassandra Clare, City of Glass (541 pgs)
~Cassandra Clare, City of Fallen Angels (424 pgs)
~Cassandra Clare, City of Lost Souls (534 pgs)
~Cassandra Clare, City of Heavenly Fire (725 pgs)
~Cassandra Clare, Lady Midnight (668 pgs)
~Cassandra Clare, Lord of Shadows (699 pgs)
~Cassandra Clare, Queen of Air and Darkness (870 pgs)
~Susan Fletcher & Rebecca Green, A Bear Far From Home (children's book; I don't put in every time I reread from my children's collection, only the first time I read newly acquired to my collection children's books; I had been holding off reading the newly acquired ones while in the midst of long series but I chose to used them as palette cleansers between the longer short stories/novellas in Ghosts of the Shadow Market and then put them away on their shelves.)
~Joy Harbor & Michaela Goade, Remember (children's book)
~Hollie Hughes & Sarah Massini, The Girls and the Mermaid (children's book)
~Rhiannon Goddess & Briana Mukodiri Uchendu, We Could Fly (children's book)
~Meredith Dillman, Inkwork Led By Mothlight (thin art book, so rather like a children's book as far as page counts not meaning much)
~Jon Klassen, The Skull (children's book; though this one is a longer children's book retelling of the folktale at 105 pgs, it's still short sentences and pictures)
~Cassandra Clare with: Sarah Rees Brennan, Maureen Johnson, Kelly Link, & Robin Wasserman, Ghosts of the Shadow Market (607 pgs) [this is one of the short story collections and while I didn't reread all of the short story collections set in the Shadowhunters world, I decided to re-read this one because at the time it was published, I had read neither Dark Artifices nor Lost Hours trilogies as neither had been fully released at that point. Thus when I read it, I didn't know the characters in many of them or understand where in the larger arc the Jem short stories were meant to fit. So figured this was a good capstone at this point to tie things together until my next reread of them all -- which likely will not be until after the as yet unpublished concluding trilogy is fully released in paperback. Which will likely be several years from now -- presuming the politicians in charge making terrible decisions don't destroy the world as we have known it or kill us all before then.]
~Noel Coward, Fallen Angels (67 pgs)
~Diana Wynne Jones, The Merlin Conspiracy (468 pgs)
~James Fenimore Cooper, The Pathfinder (441 pgs) [This book took me FOREVER as a purse book... It picked up pace in the last 100-150 pgs, but it was a slog getting through the first 3/4 of the book! And of the three (of five) I've read in the series, this is by far my LEAST favorite and the worst imho....]
~Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin, Three Cups of Tea (349 pgs) [This was repetitive in parts at the start retelling the same things, but it was actually quite an enjoyable read. Very much a "good hearted people can overcome seemly impossible barriers in the most hostile places if they're just willing to try and not give up" type memori. It was also a quick read once you started it but could easily be set aside for a while between chapters making it a good purse book choice.]
~Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here (384 pgs) [I picked this up ages ago because it wasn't assigned reading in my future dystopia/fascism assignments in school but I had never read it. Someone mentioned it to me again during the first cheeto regime as being the most American descent pathway and how little things have changed since 1933 (when it was written) other than the names. Reading it now is like a Project 2025 playbook, like somebody read it and said, 'o I could absolutely make that real with Americans as they are." It's very interesting to read a take on it before WWII but after the power takeovers in Germany and Italy. It also has some language (especially racist) that is VERY not acceptable any longer so I definitely understand the decision not to teach it in high school even while reading 1984 and brave New World as assigned books. It was honestly more depressing than the Hannah Arendt chapters so far (I'm doing a re-read of Origins of Totalitarianism but I'm reading it slowly while reading other novels and things) because it so clearly still the way Americans are and their easy succumbing to certain types of demagoguery. Basic plot: instead of FDR getting a second term, he was primaried out by a demagogue promising everything to everybody and having the church behind him and creating his own armed militia groups loyal to him. It's all a little too close to home right now living in this regime's 'Murika tbh]
Books Acquired:
~Leigh Bardugo, The Familiar
~Patrick Barlow, The 39 Steps
~A. S. Byatt, Little Black Book of Stories
~Noel Coward, Fallen Angels
~Nilo Cruz, Anna In the Tropics
~Meredith Dillman, Inkwork Led by Mothlight
~Sarah Beth Durst, The Spellshop
~Andrea Eames, A Harvest of Hearts
~William Faulkner, Light In August
~Rhiannon Giddens, We Could Fly
~Nicola Griffith, Menewood
~Deborah Harkness, The Black Bird Oracle
~Emilia Hart, Weyward
~edited by Shane Hawk & Theodore C. Van Last Jr, Never Whistle At Night
~William Inge, Picnic
~Jon Klassen, The Skull
~Bill Nevins, Light Bending: Collected Poems
~Celeste Ng, Everything I Never Told You
~Sally O'Reilly, Dark Amelia
~Sarah Penner, The London Séance Society
~Nina Raine, Tribes
~Ava Reid, A Study in Drowning
~Yasmina Reza (translated by Christopher Hampton), ART
~Oliver Sacks, The Island of the Color Blind
~May Sarton, The Fur Person
~Timothy Schafer, The Titanic Survivors Book Club
~Zoë Schlanger, The Light Eaters
~Sit Walter Scott, Supernatural Short Stories
~Sofía Segovia, The Murmur of Bees
~William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream (Pelican Shakespeare. This is now published by Penguin, but it is my favorite version to have the plays singly for readability/size/use as a script. It's not as scholarly as my Complete Norton or as the Arden editions are for single plays, but for a good useable/easy to carry around with you functional single play script version, they're my favorite. It's also the version of the plays they used for this season at APT and I didn't happen to have this one yet in my collection of Pelican Shakespeare editions.)
~~William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale (Pelican Shakespeare. This is now published by Penguin, but it is my favorite version to have the plays singly for readability/size/use as a script. It's not as scholarly as my Complete Norton or as the Arden editions are for single plays, but for a good useable/easy to carry around with you functional single play script version, they're my favorite. It's also the version of the plays they used for this season at APT and I didn't happen to have this one yet in my collection of Pelican Shakespeare edition.)
~Sue Lynn Tan, Daughter of the Moon Goddess (Mikaela bought this duology in hardcover as they were released and loved them, so I promised her I would buy them first thing when I found them in paperback.)
~Sue Lynn Tan, Heart of the Sun Warrior (Mikaela bought this duology in hardcover as they were released and loved them, so I promised her I would buy them first thing when I found them in paperback.)
~Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe
~D. E. Weingand, Crystal Saga Series 4: Books 7 & 8: New Directions & The Four Twins
~Phillis Wheatley, Complete Writings
~Ellen Zachos, Mythic Plants: Potions and Poisons from the Gardens of the Gods (VERY excited about this one! It's GORGEOUS hard cover with full color illustrations and it combined two things I love very much: Greek myth/religion/history and medicinal plants. I squee-ed and hugged it when I found it at Lake City Books!)
