Tag: topfive

Top Five Favorites of 2023

~ EMM

Time for a top five list! Seems weird to be finally getting to this halfway through January, but I did want to wait until 2023 was fully over before declaring my favorite reads of the year.

My five favorites of all the (fiction) books I read in 2023 (listed in the order I read them).

I also want to give an honorary mention to one of the non-fiction books I read and loved. That was Good for a Girl by Lauren Fleshmen.

And, in case you (like me) are excited about Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherworlds coming out tomorrow, and you enjoy books with a connection to Celtic folklore and mythology, you don’t want to miss this book fair!

Happy reading!

Top Five: New Release Book Covers

~ EMM ~ 1 Comment

We’re almost there! It’s the day before the Solstice! Let’s do a top five to celebrate…

I was scrolling through my blog reader and saw that Zezee did a top five post recently, and I followed her credit in that post to a Top 5 Tuesday series that is being organized by Meeghan.

Yesterday’s prompt was “Top 5 covers of 2023.” Love it! Let’s go.

Here are my top 5 favorite book covers released this year:

It’s probably no surprise that the majority of my favorites are from my Fairyloot hardcover special editions. I especially love their covers for The Hurricane Wars, Shanghai Immortal, and The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi. Unfortunately, the picture above does not do these beautiful covers justice.

Here are a few photos to give you a better idea how beautiful these books are in person.

Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries also made my top five favorites from this year. However, I actually prefer the original hardcover edition (which is not the one pictured here). When I saw the regular hardcover at my local bookstore, I really loved the fact that it has no dust jacket. I also like the darker background.

The only non-Fairyloot hardcover to make this list is Consort of Fire by Kit Rocha. I saw this cover online and it immediately caught my eye. Then I read the blurb and had to add it to my Kindle right away (even though, as I’ve discussed already, my end of year TBR is already too full). Just for making me one-click, I’d say that is an effective (and really nice) cover.

Top Five 2024 Releases I’m Excited For

~ EMM

It’s Wednesday! A long time ago, I used to participate in “Top 5 Wednesday” posts on my blog. I don’t know if anyone is still doing that or not, but if you’ve been here a while, you’ll know that I love a top five list. So, I decided to bring back my own top five lists for this Countdown to Winter Solstice Blogmas. And what better day to do that than on Wednesdays?

Today, I thought I’d share the top five new releases I’m looking forward to in 2024. I haven’t really gone looking at ALL the books that are going to be released next year, so this top five list is based mostly on new books by authors whose books I’ve already read and liked.

Books:

  • Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett — The first book in this series was one of my FairyLoot hardcovers from 2023, and I loved it. I’m hoping they offer a special edition of this book as well, but if they don’t I’ll definitely be buying a hardcover edition to add to my shelf.
  • Those Beyond the Wall by Micaiah Johnson — I loved this author’s first book (The Space Between Worlds) and am SO EXCITED that we are getting another book set in this world.
  • A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna — The first book in this series (The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches) was the very first book I finished reading in 2023, and I loved it so much that it is probably going to end up on my top five books read in 2023 list. Basically, what I’m saying is, I am definitely here for more in this series/world.
  • The Dead Cat Tail Assassins by P. Djèlí Clark — There’s not much of a blurb for this one, but I don’t really care. I trust the author and the premise sounds excellent, so I’m in.
  • The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst — I really like Sarah Beth Durst’s fantasy books, but her recent releases have all been either horror or middle grade. I don’t usually read those genres, so I skipped those. When I saw that she was releasing a fantasy romance book for Tor’s new romantasy imprint, Bramble, I nearly jumped out of my chair with joy.

What new release(s) are you most excited to read in 2024? Any that you think I should add to my list?

Top 5 Reads of 2022

~ EMM ~ 3 Comments

We’re a few days into the new year, and it’s time to talk about which of the books I read in 2022 were my favorites. In my last post, I narrowed my list down to twelve. After much consideration and one late addition, I’ve narrowed that list down to my top five.

Here are my top five reads of 2022:

  • Legendborn by Tracy Deonn — This one took me a bit by surprise, but I really love this modern twist on the Arthurian legend. I just got Bloodmarked on my Kindle, and I am very excited to continue with this series.
  • Son of the Storm by Suyi Davies Okungbowa — I was expecting to like this one because I know the author, and I got to read an early version of the first chapter in a workshop we were in together. But this really blew me away. Seriously, adult epic fantasy at its best. I am SO excited to get Warrior of the Wind when it comes out next year.
  • She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan — I hadn’t even heard of this until I pulled the list of Hugo nominees for that reading project I did in the first half of 2022. I don’t think I ever did a follow-up post on that, but this was my favorite of all the novels I read.
  • The Misfit Soldier by Michael Mammay — I feel like this is the book I most frequently recommended in 2022. Mammay has become an auto-buy author for me. I love his military sci-fi, and in addition to featuring a really fun and funny main character, this one had the added bonus of having a romantic sub-plot which was really well done. I need more books set in this world with these characters.
  • Ocean’s Echo by Everina Maxwell — This was the last book I read in 2022, and I LOVED it. I loved it even more than Winter’s Orbit, which made it into my top five books read last year. It features a chaos muppet and an order muppet who are forced to work together (twist on forced proximity trope). This is a main character and trope combo that I forgot is one of my absolute favorites.

I think the common theme with these was that I went into reading them with neutral to high expectations, and they all exceeded those expectations and left me wanting more. So yeah. Good thing there will be more to read from almost all of these authors in 2023! I am ready for it.

What was the best book you read in 2022?

Top 5 Books I Read in 2020

~ EMM ~ 6 Comments

I’m working on my December reading wrap up, and calculating my 2020 reading stats. While I do that, I thought I’d share my top five favorite books I read in 2020.

My favorite books read in 2020 were (in no particular order):

I’ve already gushed about all of these in previous blog posts, so if you haven’t read those, go check out my monthly reading recaps.

Genre-wise, these books represent a little bit of everything that I like to read: contemporary (Such a Fun Age), contemporary fantasy (Sweep of the Blade), secondary world fantasy (Return of the Thief and Race the Sands), and sci-fi (Network Effect), but I think it’s a little unusual that they are all adult fiction. I have to go back and look, but I feel like previous years’ lists must have included at least one or two young adult books.

Another odd thing they have in common is that all but one of these books were published in 2020 (Sweep of the Blade was published in mid-2019). Technically, Such a Fun Age was published on the last day of 2019, but I’m counting it as a 2020 book. This was a little surprising, because I don’t usually read so many new releases.

And finally (and possibly most unusual for me), all of these books feature parent-child and/or caregiver-child relationships that play very important roles in these stories. Sweep of the Blade and Race the Sands both have badass mothers as main characters. The main character in Such a Fun Age is a nanny. Murderbot is put in charge of protecting a surly teen (Dr. Mensa’s daughter) in Network Effect. And The King of Attolia takes on a new, very young attendant in Return of the Thief.

Did any of these make it onto your favorites list? If not, what was your favorite read from 2020?

Top Five Surprise Favorite Reads of 2019

~ EMM ~ 2 Comments

I was going to make this my top five favorite reads of 2019, but as I looked through my five star reads from 2019, trying to narrow them down to a top five, I noticed a few things. One is that I need a new rating system. The generic star rating system sucks at helping me decide on which were actually favorites.

So, I started thinking about which books stuck with me the most. Which were the ones I was still thinking about and recommending to others? That’s when I started to realize that the books I’d given five stars to fell almost neatly into two stacks: five star books that I expected to be five stars, and five star books that I had not expected to love as much as I did.

Since the previous post was about disappointing reads, I thought it made sense to make this one about the opposite. These are the books that I didn’t think I was going to love, but ended up raving about to anyone who will listen.

  1. Clean Sweep by Ilona Andrews — By far the most surprising hit of 2019. I was expecting a book about magic, witches, vampires, and werewolves with a romance. What I got was that with a sci-fi twist and some staggeringly creative world-building. I can’t wait to catch up on the rest of this series.
  2. The Queen of Blood by Sarah Beth Durst — A common complaint about YA fantasy is that authors pull punches so there are wars and somehow no one dies or even gets badly injured. The world in this book is dangerous. The heroine isn’t the best, she’s merely the most determined, and there’s a real reason for that title. Beloved characters die. More than just a few. It’s brutal, and I loved it. That may be why I’m starting this year by reading book two in this series.
  3. Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente — I’ve talked about this book a lot. I did not expect to like it because it was being compared to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which I didn’t like. I know. But where the Hitchhiker’s humor didn’t really work for me, the humor in this book was calibrated perfectly to my taste. The audiobook narration made it even better. Surprise hit!
  4. Dryland by Sara Jaffe — Books that feature swimmers or swimming as a sport are very hit or miss for me. I was not expecting this one to be a hit, but it was. It may have been the added bonus of being “historical fiction” that takes place in Portland in the 1990s. It could also be the unique structure and narrative voice. I liked this way more than I thought I would.
  5. The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern — I kept my expectations really low for this one, which may contribute to the “surprise hit” factor. But, I wasn’t expecting the story within a story structure of this book, and it really worked for me.

So, what are the books you read in 2019 and raved about? Let me know in the comments if you have one that you think I should check out based on this list.

Most disappointing reads of 2019

~ EMM

All right. Let’s get this post out of the way. I hate talking about things I didn’t like because writing books is hard work. Publishing books is hard work. Truly bad books are just not that common. Problematic books are much more common, but that’s a different topic. Every year I argue with myself over whether or not to do this post. But, after looking through the books that received the lowest ratings on my spreadsheet, I decided to put this out there because the books that made my list really had very little to do with the quality of the writing and everything to do with my expectations going in.

Before I get into my list, I wanted to mention (in light of the ongoing drama with RWA which is in itself a hugely disappointing read after all the progress I thought we were making and further erodes my faith in humanity), my most disappointing reads of 2019 were all books I read as a judge for the RITA awards. They were all traditionally published books, and at least five of the seven contained at least one, if not more than one, problematic element that had me cringe reading and made me have to rethink how far the romance genre has actually come in recent years. Then again, I may have way too optimistic a view on how far we’ve come due to the fact that almost all the romance books I read are written by authors of color and/or queer authors.

With that said, let’s focus on books that were objectively fine books, just ones that I found disappointing. This is a truer representation of “disappointing reads” for me because I chose to read these books, they weren’t assigned to me.

  1. Vengeful by V. E. Schwab — My most disappointing read of 2019 because of how much I loved Vicious (still my favorite book by V. E. Schwab) and how much I was looking forward to reading this sequel. I didn’t even rate it that low. It was good. It just wasn’t the book I wanted. As I wrote in my recap, I would have preferred it if the book focused on the newly introduced (mostly female) E.O.s and if Victor and Eli were just side characters.
  2. Mercenary Instinct by Ruby Lionsdrake — I really wanted to like this one, but… nope. I’ve been searching for a sci-fi romance to love and a sci-fi romance author to follow to the ends of time, but this was not it. As I wrote in my recap post, all the men were constantly threatening to rape the women (because mercenaries, I guess?), and the plot was a convoluted mess. Still looking for a great sci-fi romance if you want to recommend one.
  3. Radio Silence by Alyssa Cole — My second most disappointing read because I LOVE her Reluctant Royals series which is contemporary fiction and this is sci-fi, which is much more in line with what I usually read. But I think this would have been better if it had been written as a YA book. Instead, we’re supposed to believe the main characters are adults when they keep behaving like teens. That disconnect really took me out of the story. If they’d all been aged down to high school students, this book probably wouldn’t have made it onto this list.
  4. I Am Not A Serial Killer by Dan Wells — I’m a huge fan of the podcast Writing Excuses and have grown to really like the author of this book through his work on that podcast. This was the first book I’d read by him, and I anticipated great things. While I enjoyed the paranormal and thriller aspects of this book, this one had the opposite problem from Radio Silence. The main character in this book is supposed to be a teen but read like an adult. Some of that might have to do with the fact he is supposed to be a sociopath, but still, his narrative voice (it’s written in first person) made it hard for me to get immersed in the story.
  5. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by Newt Scamander, J.K. Rowling — All right, so this one had less to do with my expectations and more to do with the content. We’ve cancelled JKR, right? I mean, I have a warm place in my heart for the original Harry Potter series, and I always will, while still acknowledging it as a problematic fave. But the stuff that’s been published outside of the original series seems to just double down on all the issues, if not create new ones. Many of the descriptions of creatures and even the clarification of what made one a “beast” just didn’t sit right with me. I cringed while listening to this on audiobook, repeatedly. Ugh.

I always feel dirty after writing posts where I talk about things I didn’t like. Do people even enjoy reading this sort of thing? Is it worth doing it? I just don’t know. If you have thoughts on this, let me know in the comments. Meanwhile, I’m going to go write my “favorite books read in 2019” post so I can enjoy raving about things I loved.

Reading List: Powell’s Books staff’s best books of 2019

~ EMM

It’s up! Powell’s just posted their Staff Top 5 Picks of 2019! Since it has become an annual tradition of mine to crunch the numbers* on the staff picks, I couldn’t resist doing it again this year. (Click any of these to see previous years’ posts: 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015.)

The results are in. Below is the consensus top ten list of the books most mentioned in individual lists. Presented in order of most to least total points, the top ten highest rated books of 2019 according to the staff at Powell’s Books (in Portland, Oregon) are:

(Links below take you to Powell’s, because that seemed appropriate.)

  1. In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado (memoir)
  2. Lanny by Max Porter (lit fic)
  3. Cosmoknights by Hannah Templer (sci-fi graphic novel)
  4. Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson (fantasy)
  5. The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead (lit fic)
  6. Mother Winter by Sophia Shalmiyev (memoir)
  7. Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me by Mariko Tamaki (contemporary fiction graphic novel)
  8. Three Women by Lisa Taddeo (non-fiction)
  9. The Topeka School by Ben Lerner (lit fic)
  10. Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls by T Kira Madden (memoir)

The thing that surprised me most about this year’s list is that Sorcery of Thorns landed on it, and ended up in the #4 spot. I’ve been hearing a lot of mixed reviews about this one from BookTubers and elsewhere online. Now I’m even more curious to read this for myself. It is the only one on this list that was already on my TBR.

Least surprising were the number of memoirs on the list. I’ve come to expect interesting memoirs to be top picks from the staff at Powell’s. But, after last year, I’ve really started trusting their taste in memoirs. Some of my favorite non-fiction books I read in 2019 were memoirs recommended by Powell’s staff.

If you want to add these books to your TBR, I’ve added them to a Goodreads shelf called PowellsBestof2019. If you do add any to your TBR, let me know in the comments which you plan to read. Alternatively, if you have already read any of these, let me know what you think/recommend in the comments.

* In case you’re interested, here’s how I came up with the total points… I did some good old “copying and pasting” of all the lists into a spreadsheet. Then I assigned points to each mention of each book based on where it appeared in each list (5 points for first place, 4 points for second place, etc.). Then I made a pivot table and sorted the results by total number of points in descending order. There was an obvious cut-off after the first ten books. So I capped the list at ten books.

Disclaimer: I don’t work at Powell’s Bookstore. I have no financial affiliation to Powell’s Bookstore. I get no money from doing this post. I only do this because I have a tendency to like the books their staff recommends and because I like top five lists and crunching numbers. Enjoy! 🙂

Bookish Things I’ve Changed My Mind About (#Top5Wednesday)

~ EMM

It’s been a while since I’ve done a Top 5 Wednesday post, and the topic this week works pretty well with something I’ve got on my mind. So, let’s do this!

This week’s topic is: “Bookish Things I’ve Changed My Mind About.” I’m going to get pretty specific here because I just finished reading a sci-fi romance book that disappointed me and got me thinking about how I’ve changed as a reader over the last 10+ years, specifically since I started writing books.

I like romance in my sci-fi and fantasy stories. It doesn’t have to be a major plot point, it could be a sub-plot. But I’ve struggled to find a sci-fi / fantasy romance book or series or author that I love. That got me thinking about why. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that there are just some things that didn’t really matter much to me as a younger reader that will completely turn me off on a book now.

Here are the top five things that I’ve changed my mind about when it comes to reading sci-fi and fantasy romance:

  1. Diversity — I never used to notice when a future / fantasy world was homogeneously straight and white, but this has become one of those things that immediately pulls me out of a story. Once you recognize that the real-world population isn’t homogeneous, you realize that if a future and/or fantasy world is homogeneous, there better be a damn good reason for it. Ideally, I want to see positive representation on every axis, but at the very least with regards to race and sexual orientation.
  2. Consent — Sci-fi and fantasy romance can be pretty negligent when it comes to showing consensual romance. Again, this is not something I noticed as a teen, or even in my twenties. This was never okay, but my tolerance for it has definitely changed. If a modern hero is “taking” a heroine (or another hero), there better be a verbal “yes” in there before things get steamy. And power dynamics complicate things. If one character is another’s prisoner or subordinate, you better put them on an even playing field if you want me to get on board with the romance.
  3. Plausible Science — I don’t think I ever considered this until I started writing novels. Sci-fi and fantasy are full of crazy creative ideas that are not possible in our contemporary reality, and I love it. Give me all the magic and FTL space travel. Space ships and colonies on planets in distant galaxies are cool. Aliens and magical creatures are awesome. But these days I lose my ability to suspend disbelief when there aren’t consistent rules and limits to a magic system, or when the science fiction elements demonstrate no understanding of basic science and technology and don’t even offer a hand-wavey explanation as to how/why it works.
  4. The Smurfette Principle and/or the Strong Female Character Trope — This is a big one that I used to take for granted because I was a boy-crazy teen / young-adult and was just happy there were *any* point-of-view female characters in my SFF books. But now these tropes make me so angry I want to scream. If the leading lady is the only female character in the book, or if she spends the whole book trashing other women and has no female friends, I’m probably going to DNF the book. If she’s determined to show how “different” she is from “other girls” by being super tough and never wearing dresses, I’m done. And, if the heroine does have a female crew and immediately drops them to get with the hero, I may throw the book across the room.
  5. Plot is Linked to the Speculative Elements — I’m sure that I never even considered this before I started taking my writing seriously. I love plot, I always have, and it’s really hard for me to get into a book without a solid one, regardless of how much I like the characters or the world. But, if I can take the plot of a book, change the setting, and have the story still work, then I’m probably not going to want to finish reading the book. Plot and world and characters all need to be linked. This is the most frequent thing that fails to win me over when I’m reading a sci-fi and/or fantasy romance book. It’s a bummer, but I can’t turn off my writing brain when I’m reading.

If you have book recommendations for me that avoid these pitfalls, please PLEASE let me know in the comments. And if you’re curious what book set me off on this topic, stay tuned for my April reading recap post tomorrow.

Top Five Wednesday: Favorite SFF Creatures (#T5W)

~ EMM ~ 3 Comments

This week’s Top 5 Wednesday blog post prompt is: favorite creatures from science fiction and fantasy books!

Here are my top five:

  1. Dragons— I really like dragons. Dragon shifters are okay, but they’re not my favorite. I prefer stories where dragons are sentient creatures who bond with humans. I don’t really think dragons should talk, but I’m cool with them communicating telepathically. I don’t have any favorite dragon books, at the moment. Lately, I’ve been really digging the idea of tiny dragons, like the adorable dragons in The Tea Dragon Society (which I got for my niece for Christmas).
  2. Elves / Fae–I suppose I should clarify that I mean elves like Lord of the Rings elves, not like Santa’s little helpers. I’m lumping elves and fae together here because I’d be hard pressed to draw a line defining the difference between elves and fae. The way that most authors handle them, the two types of creatures usually end up seeming very similar. As for favorite books featuring fae or elves, I really like some of the stories in Robots vs. Fairies, and I liked the world-building in An Enchantment of Ravens and The Cruel Prince. And, I also really like my own books. 😉
  3. Robots (like Murderbot)— The other half of Robots vs. Fairies also make my top five list. That’s another reason I like that collection of short stories. I especially like robots when they’re done like Murderbot in All Systems Red. I suppose the droids from the Star Wars movies would also fall into this category. I love it when an author can manage to pull off cool autonomous, sentient robots who have personalities, but still have some real-world, logical science behind them.
  4. Mutants (like X-Men)–I love humans with superpowers. I love all the freaky and cool ways that mutant superpowers manifest in the X-Men comics.I also like stories that include humans with mutant-like super powers, like in Anne McCaffrey’s Talents series. (Side note: I’m planning to do a re-read of that series at some point because I want to see if it lives up to my memories of how much I loved those books, starting with To Ride Pegasus and going all the way through the spin-off series featuring The Rowan and her children and their children.) I’d also lump the Bene Gesserit (from the Dune series) and the Jedi (from Star Wars) into this category as well. Basically any time you have a human who is able to do super-human stuff, but not including alien superheroes like Superman and (some of) the Avengers. They have to be (essentially) Earth-humans that have mutated or evolved to do things “normal” humans can’t do. I also like this because these stories can play with that whole “what is normal and who gets to decide what’s ‘normal’ anyway” theme that I love.
  5. The Stone Eaters— This one is pretty specific because it’s only been done in one series (that I know of), but N. K. Jemisin’s creatures who look like humans but are made of stone are super cool. I love how they can move through the earth’s crust and communicate with the obelisks. The back-story that you get about these creatures in book three makes them even more interesting. They’re so unique that I think they’re probably my favorite, at the moment.

What do you think? Which creatures are your favorites? Let me know in the comments what I missed, or if you also like any of the ones I listed!