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I keep lots of statistics on my reading, not because I think there is an inherent value in reading a lot or reading specific titles, but more so that I immensely enjoy data and pattern-seeking—it’s infinitely fascinating to me to see how my habits ebb and flow across the span of a single year and the span of years at a time. I’ve been a prolific reader my entire life. I grew up in a household where storytelling was emphasized, and though we had television and cable access my entire life (which was not the case for most of my age group), my younger brother and I were kept to one hour of television per week. We chose our hour with care.

While I’m marking the statistics for my reading in 2023 Quarter One, I thought I’d share some of my statistics and highlights:

I use an app that gives me many statistical breakdowns, which is great because I don’t want to make the categories on my own. The first category is “Moods” and refers to the emotional response the author wishes to evoke in the reader. In other words, what feelings did you have while reading a book? Adventurous is my top mood, which I attribute to my love of fantasy. Fantasy often defaults to tales of quests and accomplishments, and adventure is baked into the genre.

Dark and mysterious are also usually in my second and third positions. I find this funny because one of my least-chosen genres, in my own opinion, is mystery. Clearly, it’s not that I’m turned off by the mysterious or the unknown, but rather the construction of the mystery genre itself tells stories in a different way, and I’m not as called in that direction.

But give me a story about a space salvage crew who finds a decades-lost luxury space liner (think Titanic, but for space) just outside communications range? Oh yeah, I’ll eat up that kind of mystery. In fact, welcome to the first book of my 2023 Quarter One Reads: Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes.

SUMMARY

EYAN’S REVIEW

I am a fan of the ambiguous ending, as in, we never get a true answer about why our protagonist is different. It adds to the creepy appeal without undoing what the reveal risks ruining. The reveal was set up along the way if you’ve read similar style mysteries before but it was done smoothly and cleverly so that even though I guessed what was going on, I didn’t feel upset that I figured it out.

The world likewise feels developed without having to spend too much time giving background details, which is a credit to the author’s creative control of her world.

I wish the implied romantic angle wasn’t present, is the only thing. I’m not sure why healing from CPTSD looks like, “Hey, now I know how to romantically love” instead of literally any other kind of love or human connection, but that’s really my only major gripe. I don’t think anything was gained with the inclusion, and the removal of the subtext wouldn’t change the story or outcome in any major way.

This book had been a departure from my norm—I knew it was more aligned with the horror genre than I typically venture. While I like the element of the unknown and having a mystery to solve, true horror often leaves me far too unsettled to be getting on with in an average week, so I tend to avoid the genre. However, Dead Silence was horror because it was psychological and it was clever, not because something in the plot was super scary on its own. It’s the kind of ethereal horror Jeff VanderMeer is known for.

However, I apparently have read a handful of titles so far this year that gained the horror tag, including Dead Silence (a comic adaptation of The Last of Us: American Dreams) and a Vampire novel called The Passage.

Clearly, my preferences fall LARGELY into fantasy, with some sci-fi, romance and queer studies thrown in for good measure. I could write a whole post about “LGTBQIA+” as a “genre” (and probably will for Pride month in June), but a good portion of every genre could fall into that category, for me. I intentionally attempt to diversify what I read, which means reading not only LGBTQIA+ authors and characters but authors and characters from other countries, races, religions and any other different life experiences from myself.

The bulk of the fantasy read this year fell into the re-read category: I went through Seanan McGuire’s Toby Daye series again (I already wrote about book one, Rosemary and Rue), as well as most of Anne Bishop’s Black Jewels series (but this is because I’m using her in my Ph.D. dissertation). However, I found a stand-alone novella based loosely on the Japanese myth of “The Crane Wife.” Its most common version tells the story of a poor sailmaker who one day finds a wounded crane and nurses it back to health. After he releases the crane, a beautiful woman appears on his doorstep. He falls in love with her and they marry. The Crane Husband by Kelly Barnhill twists the myth upside-down:

SUMMARY

“Mothers fly away like migrating birds. This is why farmers have daughters.”

A fifteen-year-old teenager is the backbone of her small Midwestern family, budgeting the household finances and raising her younger brother while her mom, a talented artist, weaves beautiful tapestries. For six years, it’s been just the three of them―her mom has brought home guests at times, but none have ever stayed.

Yet when her mom brings home a six-foot-tall crane with a menacing air, the girl is powerless to prevent her mom from letting the intruder into her heart and her children’s lives. Utterly enchanted and numb to his sharp edges, her mom abandons the world around her to weave the masterpiece the crane demands.

In this stunning contemporary retelling of “The Crane Wife” by the Newbery Medal-winning author of The Girl Who Drank the Moon, one fiercely pragmatic teen forced to grow up faster than was fair will do whatever it takes to protect her family―and change the story.

EYAN’S REVIEW

I found this to be an incredibly well-crafted story. Taking into account its short length, novellas pack a major punch in far less time than an average-length book. Yet Barnhill fleshes out an entire world—despite the element of the fantastic in the crane husband, there is very little that is magical or unreal in the lives of these characters. Instead, we see the generational trauma placed on eldest daughters—and the heavy price that must be paid to break the cycle.

Finally, I use StoryGraph to track my reading in part because it will track audio separately. I don’t listen to audiobooks at nearly the pace I read text, but I do listen to enough books over the course of the year that I find it useful to track the data separately. For me, listening to an audiobook is an intensely different experience from reading the text of a book. The narrator and pacing account for a large portion of my enjoyment. I’ve been unable to listen to great books because of the narrator. That said, finding a narrator I enjoy can take my enjoyment of a book to another level. When you can hear the tone and inflection of a character, especially in first person POV, I think you can really immerse yourself into that story. I found a new author by searching for a specific narrator, something I do fairly often when I find myself in a slump. This time around, I started with a book I had read last year, The Bone Orchard and thought I’d try to listen to it. The narrator is an actor by the name of Ell Potter, and I liked their voice enough to seek out their other offerings. Luckily for me, we have Half Sick of Shadows by Laura Sebastian as an audiobook through Libby.

SUMMARY

The Lady of Shalott reclaims her story in this bold feminist reimagining of the Arthurian myth. Everyone knows the legend of Arthur, destined to be a king. Of the beautiful Guinevere, who will betray him with his most loyal knight, Lancelot. Of the bitter sorceress, Morgana, who will turn against them all. But Elaine alone carries the burden of knowing what is to come—for Elaine of Shalott is cursed to see the future. On the mystical isle of Avalon, Elaine runs free and learns of the ancient prophecies surrounding her and her friends—countless possibilities, almost all of them tragic. When their future comes to claim them, Elaine, Guinevere, Lancelot and Morgana accompany Arthur to take his throne in stifling Camelot. Magic is outlawed there—the rules of society chain them—and enemies are everywhere, yet the most dangerous threats may come from within their own circle. As visions are fulfilled and an inevitable fate closes in, Elaine must decide how far she will go to change fate—and what she is willing to sacrifice along the way.

EYAN’S REVIEW

Elaine of Astolot, sometimes the Lady of Shallot, gets a raw deal in Arthurian literature. There are many Elaines that pop up through the years and in various stories, but none of them have a cohesive storyline, and none of them have agency in their own lives. Enter Laura Sebastian’s fairytale meets Arthurian literature-themed novel Half Sick of Shadows, a title lifted from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s 1832 poem The Lady of Shallot, which you can read at the Poetry Foundation online. In short, the poem tells of a Lady trapped in a tower, cursed to sit at her loom forever. She can see, through the use of a mirror set in front of her, the world passing her by outside her tower, but only through the reflection of the glass. If she looks behind her or stops her weaving, she will die. Of course, witnessing life through reversed images is not living at all, and ultimately she decides to leave her tower and float down the river to Camelot, where her body is found by Arthur and his knights.

Laura Sebastian’s Elaine is not a maiden trapped in a tower, but her story is heavily influenced by this literary foremother. If you knew nothing of Arthur, I think you’d still enjoy this story, as the way Sebastian melds Arthurian myths with Celtic fairy tales adds a different dimension to the tale. It’s not wholly unique—the tie between Arthur and the world of fairy is strong and established (and a chunk of the discussion in my dissertation)—but the use of warring factions, human and fae, keeps the story a timeless entry into Arthurian lore, a fairy tale and fantasy, rather than more historical fiction or a militant version as you might find with authors such as Bernard Cornwall. Enjoyable as an Arthurian scholar AND as a reader, I do recommend the book for anyone looking to take charge of their own life.

FORTHCOMING

I like to take a moment when I post round-ups to think about what’s coming. I have a few titles on my radar that, as yet, do not have expected publications. However, there are a handful of titles releasing later this year that I’m going semi-feral for. Allow me to share them with you, as I believe the library will have access to most, if not all, titles after their release:

Cassiel’s Servant by Jacqueline Carey

A re-launch in June of the original Kushiel’s Legacy series, which launched author Jacqueline Carey to fame in the early 2000s, will precede a long-awaited new entry into the world. Cassiel’s Servant covers the same ground, so to speak, as Kushiel’s Dart, the first entry into the world of Terre d’Ange. This is one of my favorite series of all time, as the series is a medieval-inspired political drama filled with magic and intrigue, and is led by an incredibly strong, yet intensely feminine, heroine in Phedre. I’m using the main trilogy in my dissertation, and while there are aspects of the world that don’t hold up fantastically in the 20 years since their inception, I’m excited to return to the world through the eyes of a different character. Here is the publisher’s summary of Cassiel’s Servant, set to release on August 1:

In Kushiel’s Dart, a daring young courtesan uncovered a plot to destroy her beloved homeland. But hers is only half the tale. Now see the other half of the heart that lived it.

Cassiel’s Servant is a retelling of cult favorite Kushiel’s Dart from the point of view of Joscelin, Cassiline warrior-priest and protector of Phèdre nó Delaunay. He’s sworn to celibacy and the blade as surely as she’s pledged to pleasure, but the gods they serve have bound them together. When both are betrayed, they must rely on each other to survive.

From his earliest training to captivity amongst their enemies, his journey with Phèdre to avert the conquest of Terre D’Ange shatters body and mind… and brings him an impossible love that he will do anything to keep.

Even if it means breaking all vows and losing his soul.

The Innocent Sleep by Seanan McGuire

My obsession with Seanan McGuire, and specifically her Toby Daye series, is a little unhinged. I just re-read the first 16 novels in the series and even tracked down the handful of short stories and novellas that aren’t technically part of the series but are part of the world and characters. Because I’m convinced McGuire is a cryptid who doesn’t need to sleep, she is releasing two books in the Toby Daye series this year, book 17 in September, and book 18 in October. The Innocent Sleep also marks the first full-length novel from a non-Toby point of view. This time, we will see through Tybalt’s eyes. There are a couple of short stories told through Tybalt’s perspective and I quite enjoyed them, so I’m not as peeved as I would normally be by a switch in perspective so far into a series.

Making It So: A Memoir by Patrick Stewart

I’m also incredibly excited about the forthcoming memoir from prolific actor, Sir Patrick Stewart. I’ve been a fan of his for as long as I can remember, and his contributions to theater, film, television and activism, cannot be overstated. His memoir is scheduled to release on October 3 this year.