sketches & ghosts

More December prompts answered, eventually they'll be on the right days!

( Your thoughts on or reactions to a few specific foods: )

( If you could RP any Mariana Zapata character, who would you choose? (Alternatively, favorite romance book (Zapata or otherwise) you've read recently?) )

And also, if you like dogs, or dog sports, or really cold things, or ever entertained being remotely interested in dog sledding, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube: Chasing Fear and Finding Home in the Great White North by Blair Braverman is currently $1.99 on Kindle. I don't know Ms. Braverman but I did really enjoy her book and I love her Twitter, so I can confidently say that I think people who might like memoirs about dog sledding should check it out or at least try a sample. I don't know how long it's on sale for!

Relatedly, if you like dogs talking about sports, you should follow sportssled on Twitter. They're the dogs in the book. They talk about sportsball. :)

The 3 question book survey a good proportion of my reading list does. With links! Now updated with shortened links that aren't going to cause issues like my original links did.

What are you reading right now?
Two things, which is very rare for me -- and still, only sort of. I'm proofing the audiobook of Thorn Fall, which means having to go through and slowly read along to the audio to check for errors. There have been a few, so I'm glad the time is being taken to do it. LB is also paying me to do it, which she didn't really have to do, but I won't complain! I'm not really an audiobook person because I tend to zone out, so it's definitely some good practice for my attention span considering I'm going back to school at the end of August.

And in terms of actual text-reading, I'm about halfway through Shattered Palms.

What did you just finish reading?
An advance review/copy proofing version of Star Nomad, and that one isn't an Amazon link because it doesn't have a preorder. Within the last two weeks, I also read Twisted Vine and The Bloodless Assassin. You can assume I recommend them all, because I wouldn't link something I didn't like. Or mention something I didn't enjoy.

The Bloodless Assassin is also hitting lots of "diverse books" points, and I even made a rec post on tumblr: none of the characters are white, one of the two mains is clearly coded as dark-toned Black, the monarch has a same-sex lover and nobody regards this as anything more than normal, etc. (There are basically no white people in the Lei Texeira series either, but there is one who is a major character.)

What do you think you'll read next?
Either the Kalayna Price book that T got me (though it has a love triangle so I'm a little wary), the sequel to Star Nomad whose title I am unaware of, or the seventh Lei Texeira book. I'm trying to make the Lei series last and not massively binge them, but it's hard, because they're good and my 1-Click goes to a credit card so it takes me a month to notice how much I'm spending on ebooks.

I also really want to get the sequel to Bloodless Assassin, but I do have to be careful with the money. And it's tempting to go back to Thorn Fall's first book, Torrent, but I distinctly recall that that was one where it's a rusty start and I definitely tell people that if Rust & Relics' weirdness is the kind of cross-genre weirdness they enjoy, the books get better and stronger as the series goes on.