Then and Now #39 (5/6/23 - 11/6/23)

 

Happy Sunday and welcome to the new year!  The Sunday Post is a blog news meme hosted @ Caffeinated Reviewer. See rules here: Sunday Post Meme. Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week.  It is hosted weekly over at Mailbox Monday and every Friday they do a round-up of some of their favourite, shared reads!

Last Week

First and foremost, hallo everyone! It's been ages since I joined either of these two memes. I checked, the last time was literally February. Where has the time gone? It's insane how quickly I fell out of part of the blogging rhythm, although thankfully I have been reviewing kind of steadily. Thanks to everyone who stuck around while I went mildly MIA, hopefully I'll stay on top of it now!

I've had a pretty good week. The week before was a lecture-free week, so I had a whole week to work on some articles, shape up sections of my thesis I've written, and turn to the blessed, annoying admin work. It was nice to be back in the classroom this week though! I had an amazing discussion with my students about gender roles and gender expectations, about what we expect to see in our female characters and how this may differ from what we expect (or think we know) about women in the Middle Ages. I'm so grateful to my students for how they participated and shared their own experiences! Thursday was a national holiday, so I spent that day immersed in thrillers. Friday was  abit hectic because my mum rang me saying my granddad needed help after a night in the hospital while she was unfortunately too far away. So I spent hours working in a train rather than in my office. It was good I went though, my granddad needed to see a friendly face and have someone look in on him for a few hours. It did make for quite a stressful day though, which wasn't helped by the fact that it was like 28 degrees Celsius and I didn't have my Kindle or water with me xD

Posted lately: (Just a few reviews of books I really enjoyed since February!)

• Review: The Snake Pit by Mary Jane Ward
• An amazing and affecting book from the 1930s about the author's stay at a mental health asylum.
• Review: The Harpy by Megan Hunter
• A marriage breaks down, and so does a woman. "Woman breaks down" is one of my favourite genres.
• Review: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A 21st Century Modernization by Ochse Weston
• A really intriguing and accessible edition of a great medieval poem!
• Review: People Like Her by Ellery Lloyd
• Instagram influencers and crime, what more could you want!
• Review: Miyazakiworld: A Life in Art by Susan Napier
• I love Studio Ghibli films, so this was very much an interesting read for me.
• Review: The First Girl Child by Amy Harmon
• Old Norse mythology + great female characters + a curse = a great read!
• Update: Review: Mountains Made of Glass by Scarlett St. Clair
• Didn't realise it was a novella and raced through it yesterday. Haven't read a book with explicit spicy scenes in a while; good fun!

Recommendation

Two amazing songs I have been listening to the last few days. First, Francesca by Hozier. This man writes the most beautiful and tragic love songs. Warning: video has flashing lights!

I also loveee the recent Janelle Monae album, and Phenomenal is just a great song! I guess warning for cursing in this one....

Mailbox Monday

In my everlasting desire to clear up my backlog I am trying to slow down on my requesting but something I just can't help myself, like with the books below. I can't wait to read them.

The Devil's Flute Murders by Seishi Yokomizo (7/4/2023; Pushkin Press)

An ingenious classic locked-room murder mystery about the feuding family of a composer that’s perfect for fans of Lucy Foley, Ruth Ware, and Anthony Horowitz

This standalone novel features the scruffy sleuth Kosuke Kindaichi—the most famous Japanese detective—created by one of Japan's greatest crime writers: Seishi Yokomizo, the “Japanese Agatha Christie”

Locked room mysteries are hot again, and this classic from the golden age of crime presents a mind-bending Japanese mystery from the great Seishi Yokomizo, whose fictional detective Kosuke Kindaichi is a pop culture phenomenon akin to Sherlock Holmes.

This time the beloved scruffy sleuth Kosuke Kindaichi investigates a series of gruesome murders within the feuding family of a brooding, troubled composer, whose most famous work chills the blood of all who hear it.

Readers will be totally engrossed by one of Yokomizo’s most clever guessing games, in which everyone has something to hide…

I really liked the last locked room mystery I read by Yokomizo so I'm frantically checking with Pushkin Press every few weeks to see if they're bringing out another one of his. And yay, they are! Can't wait to get into this one!

Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (7/18/2023; Quercus Books)

Montserrat has always been overlooked. She's a talented sound editor, but she's left out of the boys' club running the film industry in '90s Mexico City. And she's all but invisible to her best friend Tristán, a charming if faded soap opera star, even though she's been in love with him since childhood.

Then Tristán discovers his new neighbour is the cult horror director Abel Urueta, and the legendary auteur claims he has a way to change their lives - even if his tales of a Nazi occultist imbuing magic into highly volatile silver nitrate stock sounds like sheer fantasy. The magic film was never finished, which is why, Urueta swears, his career vanished overnight. He is cursed.

Now the director wants Montserrat and Tristán to help him shoot the missing scene and lift the curse . . . but Montserrat soon notices a dark presence following her.

As they work together to unravel the mystery of the film and the obscure occultist who once roamed their city, Montserrat and Tristán might just find out that sorcerers and magic are not only the stuff of movies . . 

Mexican Gothic was really intriguing to me, but it was The Daughter of Doctor Moreau which brought me fully onboard. So I'm very curious to get into this newest book by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan (8/22/2023; Tor Books)

How much would you give to win the world?

Zhu Yuanzhang, the Radiant King, is riding high after her victory that tore southern China from its Mongol masters. Now she burns with a new desire: to seize the throne and crown herself emperor.

But Zhu isn’t the only one with imperial ambitions. Her neighbor in the south, the courtesan Madam Zhang, wants the throne for her husband—and she’s strong enough to wipe Zhu off the map. To stay in the game, Zhu will have to gamble everything on a risky alliance with an old enemy: the talented but unstable eunuch general Ouyang, who has already sacrificed everything for a chance at revenge on his father’s killer, the Great Khan.

Unbeknownst to the southerners, a new contender is even closer to the throne. The scorned scholar Wang Baoxiang has maneuvered his way into the capital, and his lethal court games threaten to bring the empire to its knees. For Baoxiang also desires revenge: to become the most degenerate Great Khan in history—and in so doing, make a mockery of every value his Mongol warrior family loved more than him.

All the contenders are determined to do whatever it takes to win. But when desire is the size of the world, the price could be too much for even the most ruthless heart to bear…

The way I was obsessed with She Who Became the Sun is not even funny, so I am just waiting for the semester to be over so I can, without feeling bad, dive straaaiighhtt into this one and revel in it. Am already slightly heartbroken this is "only" a duology and is now finished, but I'm hoping for more from Parker-Chan!

Mountains Made of Glass by Scarlett St. Clair (3/7/2023; Sourcebooks/Bloom Books)

"Could you love me?" he whispered. The question stole my breath and burned my lungs in the silence that followed. 

I wanted to answer, to whisper yes into the space between us, but I was afraid.

All Gesela's life, her home village of Elk has been cursed. And it isn't a single curse—it is one after another, each to be broken by a villager, each with devastating consequences. When Elk's well goes dry, it is Gesela's turn to save her town by killing the toad that lives at the bottom. Except...the toad is not a toad at all. He is an Elven prince under a curse of his own, and upon his death, his brothers come for Gesela, seeking retribution.

As punishment, the princes banish Gesela to live with their seventh brother, the one they call the beast. Gesela expects to be the prisoner of a hideous monster, but the beast turns out to be exquisitely beautiful, and rather than lock her in a cell, he offers Gesela a deal. If she can guess his true name in seven days, she can go free.

Gesela agrees, but there is a hidden catch—she must speak his name with love in order to free him, too.

But can either of them learn to love in time?

I'm about to get into this one this weekend, so perhaps by the time this post goes live I'll have some opinions already. But I can't wait to read this seeming mash-up of different fairy tales. Edit: I did indeed read it and finished it this morning xD

So that's it from me! How has your week been, and what are you reading?