Last month I overdid it a bit and participated in lots of challenges which left me kinda tired. I need to pace myself better. On top of the r/fantasy bingo (only one translated book left to go on my second card!), the BLM bingo (3 books left to start, 1 to finish), I read 3 book club picks. I also did #BlackSFFathon because they had a bingo board, read Ring Shout, Raybearer, The Jumbies, and a short story. The Things I Miss the Most. I would’ve gotten the full board if today had been the 31st, months should end on a Sunday smh. I wanted to do more spooky shit for Spooktastic Reads but I ended up just putting together a list of not so scary monster books. And for the OctTBRchallenge I counted up all I read totally 13 books (not all completed), 2975 pages and 20 audio hours.

Books Read

• Heart of Stone by Johannes T. Evans – HEA pick, loved it and binged it in a day, the slowest of burn m/m romances that ever burned

• A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow – a YA contemporary books about sisters and sirens, engaging with the BLM movement, hit very close to reality. My review here

• Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson – I loved the Caribbean folklore and gods in this modern story, but the overall tone ended up much darker and gorier than what I prefer.My review here

• Lady Griffith’s Second Chance by Quenby Olson – historical romance about a widow being thirsty and getting a second chance at love, pure comfort sweetness

• The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez – a very thoughtful space-travel scifi with found family and critiquing capitalism

• A Princess in Theory by Alyssa Cole – super fun contemporary romance that starts off with an African prince stuck in the spam folder, I laughed a lot.

• The Bone Witch by Rin Chupeco – FIF bookclub, I really liked the necromantic worldbuilding, it’s got a frame narrative of her a few years later telling her story to a bard that really makes me want to keep going with the series.

• Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko – YA epic fantasy with awesome found family goodness and great worldbuilding based on West African mythology and with a huge multicultural empire. Very glad there will be a sequel because this felt a bit short and I want more time in this world.

• Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee – our mod book club pick, I was super confused half the book by the technobabble, until I learned to embrace it as a magic system. The main characters are really great and they’re what kept me interested

• Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett – part of my slow Discworld reread, I’m just reading a few pages here and there between other books, Gaspode rocks, the golems also rock

• Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord – very much enjoying how it’s like a storyteller telling me the story out loud, audiobook helps too, also like the magic, only got a bit of it left and I’m kinda putting off finishing it.

• Ring Shout by P. Djeli Clark – amazing horror novella, the characters are great and so much fun to be around, the monsters are so horrifying the plot was super tight, I loved it, even though I’m still far too much of a scaredy-cat for such books

• The Jumbies by Tracey Baptiste – a middle-grade monster based on Caribbean folklore, it was great and I loved how believably the kids acted like children. I’m also very much loving all the books with Caribbean and African myths and monsters I’ve been reading.

So in light of that I want to take it easier in November, but I don’t think I’m fooling anyone, not even myself. It’s sci fi month on twitter and there’s a cute even called Clear Your Shit: A Readathon. I’ve already made a TBR:

• finish Moving Pictures and Redemption in Indigo

• BLM books: Maya and the Rising Dark by Rena Barron, Black Girl Unlimited by Echo Brown, The Galaxy Game by Karen Lord

• Bingo: either Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation or The Ghost in the Shell (ghost would be something I already own, grandmaster sounds more fun)

• For bookclubs on fantasy.reddit.com: Monstress (FIF) I’ve already read, Greenhollow (HEA) – I read Silver in the Wood so reading Drowned Country seems a no brainer, don’t think I’ll get Conspiracy of Truths (GR), but might get My Soul to Keep (mod), and if Classics? picks The Oathbound I’ll read that. RAB is reading Chasing Graves that’s marked as dark and horror so that’s a nope.

On the blog last month

I made a real push to catch up with my review folder, and posted 17 reviews! Most of them mini-reviews, but some got pretty long

• Legendborn by Tracy Deonn – review
• Mini-reviews of fantasy books: The Fifth Season, The City of Stairs, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August and Turning Darkness into Light
• BLM Bingo reviews(2): Mem, A Song Below Water, The City We Became, Brown Girl in the Ring
• Novella mini reviews (2): The Haunting of Tram Car 015, Silver in the Wood, The Deep, Riot Baby, Penric’s Demon
• Lodestar award mini-reviews: Catfishing on Catnet, Dragon Pearl, Riverland

I’ve also learned that 4 posts per week is more than I can handle, it’s not sustainable for me and I’ve really fallen behind on blog hoping and replying to all your lovely comments

• Black Speculative Fiction Month: Some of my favorite recs and TBR
• Black Lives Matter book bingo – update
• Spooktastic Recs for scaredy-cats: 17 Not-so-scary monster books
• Top Ten Tuesday – Books With Super Long Titles
• Can’t Wait Wednesday: Black Speculative Fiction Month edition
• Book Beginnings and Friday 56 – October 9 2020
• The Sunday Post 10 October 2020
• Stacking the Shelves and Sunday post: #BlackSFFathon edition
• Stacking the Shelves and Sunday post: Bookish events abound

I’m linking up with The Monthly Wrap-Up Round-Up, hosted by Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction and Shannon @ It Starts at Midnight.