Then and Now #63 (25/3 - 31/3)

Happy Sunday!  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 Easter, Pesach and Ramadan everybody! I always enjoy the fact that these line up the way they do. Admittedly it has been Ramadan for a while and admittedly Pesach finished yesterday, but hey! I have four days off for Easter, which is amazing because I really needed some time to decompress, catch up on reading and reviewing, etc. I'm doing a buddy read of Bride by Ali Hazelwood with a friend, am knee-deep in a book about Persia, and am getting ready to dive into Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros. And we've reached The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien with my book club, so I have that to look forward to as well. I'm honestly thrilled to just have nothing else to do.

I did have a relatively good work week, definitely made some progress with some of my thesis writing. The second chapter is finished and I'm 25 pages into the third. I'm going to have to bin some of those pages, but I needed to get them out to get to the good stuff, if that makes sense. I also did what I jokingly refer to as "data mining", by which I mean diving into my Old Norse texts, my primary material, and just mine it for the relevant quotes, characters, scenes, motifs. It is a bit mind-numbing at times, as I'm just scanning, copying, translating, repeat, but it does also keep me alert and gives me plenty of material to then use in my analysis. I do also have to prepare for a conference which is next week. I'll have to get up at like 5am to catch my train, but I'm looking forward to it as well!

Posted this week:

• Review: The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty
• Review: The Watkins Book of English Folktales by Neil Philip
• Friday Friyay: Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

Recommendation

It's Easter and Pesach has just finished, so how could I not share my two favourite timely songs with you?

'Heaven on their Minds' from Jesus Christ Superstar:

and 'Through Heaven's Eyes' from The Prince of Egypt:

Mailbox Monday

Dreadful by Caitlin Rozakis (Titan Books; 5/28/2024)

It’s bad enough waking up in a half-destroyed evil wizard’s workshop with no eyebrows, no memories, and no idea how long you have before the Dread Lord Whomever shows up to murder you horribly and then turn your skull into a goblet or something.

It’s a lot worse when you realize that Dread Lord Whomever is… you.

Gav isn’t really sure how he ended up with a castle full of goblins, or why he has a princess locked in a cell. All he can do is play along with his own evil plan in hopes of getting his memories back before he gets himself killed. 

But as he realizes that nothing – from the incredibly tasteless cloak adorned with flames to the aforementioned princess – is quite what it seems, Gav must face up to all the things the Dread Lord Gavrax has done. And he’ll have to answer the hardest question of all – who does he want to be?

A high fantasy farce featuring killer moat squid, toxic masculinity, an evil wizard convocation, and a garlic festival. All at once. All in all, Dread Lord Gavrax has had better weeks.

How delightful does this sound? Can't wait to dive into this soon to contrast with the heavy Fantasy I'm reading lately!

The In Crowd by Charlotte Vassell (Faber and Faber; 04/04/2024)

SOME PEOPLE ARE IN

On the last Saturday in August, politicos and socialites trade tidbits of gossip and sips of Pimm’s under the tasteful bunting of a Richmond garden party. They’d never guess that the police are just a stone’s throw away, pulling a body out of the river Thames.

SOME PEOPLE WISH THEY WERE

The drowning appears to be a tragic accident – until Detective Caius Beauchamp gets an unexpected tip. The victim, it seems, had enemies in high places. Did being on the wrong side of them get her killed?

EITHER WAY, BEING OUT IS ABSOLUTE MURDER

This sounds like the perfect thriller to read this weekend, it sounds delightfully twisted. Also, sue me, but I love books and films that have rich people getting what they're due.

Practice by Rosalind Brown (Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 6/25/2024)

Rosalind Brown's Practice shows us just one day. Annabel, sitting in her small student room, attempts to write an essay about Shakespeare. She follows a meticulous, solitary routine but finds it repeatedly thrown off course as the day progresses: by family and friends who demand her attention and time, by thoughts of her much older boyfriend and his impending visit, by wild sexual fantasies and stories of her own invented characters—and by darker crises, obliquely glimpsed but capable of derailing Annabel's carefully laid plans.

Something about this cover, in combination with the blurb just really drew me in. Like, in a way it is the book for me because I too have sat in my small student room, attempting to write essays about Shakespeare, contemplating my entire life. 

So that's it for me this Sunday! Still got another day off tomorrow, yaay! How you doin'?