Then and Now #47 (31/7/23-5/8/23)

Happy Sunday and welcome to July!  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

Happy August! How are we already in August, like... seriously. For me the semester has officially ended so I thought this week I'd be able to get down to thesis-writing. Instead I spent most of it trying to read a Cultural Studies book in order to understand a concept I might use in an article I'm writing. Not to brag, but I'm usually pretty good at understanding and using theory, but it took me way longer to read this book than I had expected and I'm still not sure I've fully grasped the concept I was hoping to understand xD But oh well! I also got some other admin things out of the way so hopefully, from Monday onwards, I can shit down the admin side and fully focus on writing and research. Fingers crossed!

I also didn't have as much time for pleasure reading as I had hoped. I even had to record my podcast episode on Carmilla last minute, which was a bit stressful but I think it turned into a fun episode nonetheless. I did reread She Who Became The Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan so I could go into the second book, He Who Drowned the World, with a fresh feeling. I forgot just how much I loved this book and now I can't wait to get into the sequel! I also went to visit my granddad this weekend. He had another pretty bad fall a month or two ago, when I rushed over to help out, but now he's doing a lot better. I brought over some cake and we had a stroll in the park. I even explained what an Internet browser was. I love that he still wants to understand all these things, but sometimes we run into the issue that I don't actually have the answer xD like, I don't know how the internet gets from a router into your laptop... I just know it does and trust the process from there. Afterwards I went out for dinner with my mum and step-dad, as they had just come back from a summer holiday, and currently I'm on the train back home :)

Posted this week:

• Book Central #5 - 'Carmilla' by Sheridan Le Fanu
• Friday Friyay: The Wonder State by Sara Flannery Murphy

Recommendation

How could I not, with it being the start of August share August by Taylor Swift?

Mailbox Monday

I broke my promise to myself to not request more books, so here we are *hides face in shame but clings onto the books regardless*

The Water Outlaws by S.L. Huang (8/22/23; Tordotcom)

Inspired by a classic of martial arts literature, S. L. Huang's The Water Outlaws are bandits of devastating ruthlessness, unseemly femininity, dangerous philosophies, and ungovernable gender who are ready to make history—or tear it apart.

In the jianghu, you break the law to make it your own.

Lin Chong is an expert arms instructor, training the Emperor's soldiers in sword and truncheon, battle axe and spear, lance and crossbow. Unlike bolder friends who flirt with challenging the unequal hierarchies and values of Imperial society, she believes in keeping her head down and doing her job.

Until a powerful man with a vendetta rips that carefully-built life away.

Disgraced, tattooed as a criminal, and on the run from an Imperial Marshall who will stop at nothing to see her dead, Lin Chong is recruited by the Bandits of Liangshan. Mountain outlaws on the margins of society, the Liangshan Bandits proclaim a belief in justice—for women, for the downtrodden, for progressive thinkers a corrupt Empire would imprison or destroy. They’re also murderers, thieves, smugglers, and cutthroats.

Apart, they love like demons and fight like tigers. Together, they could bring down an empire.

I requested this book on NetGalley ages ago and had honestly given up hope on getting a chance to read it so I was very happily surprised when I was approved this week! With Shelley Parker-Chan's book and The Water Outlaws both coming out this month I very much have a wuxia-inspired reading-vibe going on and I'm absolutely not complaining about it!

The Collector by Laura Kat Young (9/12/23; Titan Books)

A frightening dystopian horror novel where grief is forbidden and purged from the mind – a nightmarish mix of 1984 and Never Let Me Go

Sorrow is inefficient. It’s also inescapable.

Lieutenant Dev Singh dutifully spends his days recording the memories of people who, struck with incurable depression, will soon have their minds erased in order to be more productive members of society. After all, the Bureau knows what's best for you.

At night though, hidden in the dark, Dev remembers and writes in his secret journal the special moments shared with him – the small laugh of a toddler, the stillness of a late afternoon. The first flutter of love. But when the Bureau finds out he's been recounting the memories – and that the depression is in him, too – he’s sent to a sanatorium to heal. 

A nightmarish descent from sadness to madness, THE COLLECTOR is a dystopian horror novel where grief is forbidden and purged from the mind.

This book comes out on my birthday! Yay for me turning 30 and for dystopian horrors! But I was very intrigued by this concept, of Dev creating almost like an archive of memory and grief. The Cultural Studies book I was reading was called The Promise of Happiness and a lot of it focused on our right to be unhappy and even the need to sometimes be unhappy with the world around you because it allows you to recognise injustice. So I feel like Young's book will really inform my understanding of those thoughts.

That's it for me this week! How was yours? And what's new in your mailbox?