Hey booklovers,
First up I decided to point out the changes here on the blog. I decided to change my persona to the Thrifty Geek instead of just having it as a section on the blog. I also changed the blog name to Once Upon a Backwoods day cause I live in the backwoods, and years of eating bologna sandwiches cause that's the cheap option we have to get us through the month has made me sick of them, but alas their still necessary. Now that that bit is done let's move on to the blog.
I know it's been a while, but It's time to talk books I've read this year, which hasn't been a lot, I'm only about halfway through my yearly challenge according to Goodreads which I set at 30 books which has been my average since I started on that site. It took me some months to read one book and I DNF'd a couple, current one I've got checked out I might DNF I haven't decided, and one I keep checking out and am interested in reading, but I seem to keep not finishing. But I have read this year, I won't write about all of them cause a. it's been so long I can't remember, and b. many were romances cause I had a hankering for romances. But toy can check out everything I've read on my Goodreads page, which you can get to by clicking the widget on the right side of the page here.
The theme for this post is the dark side of fantasy. It's books that deal with the dark places and beings of the fantasy realm. So let's head into the darkness.
In Eden's Shadow: Twisted Trilogy Book Three by Amanda Churi
This is the final book in the trilogy I started three years ago? Each book I've bought from the author herself at this con I go to AARC. Well I started this one in December of 2019, cause I tend to read these books in December, I do it as a way to offset the Christmas season, we watch a lot of Christmas movies, usually, and it's Christmas everywhere so these books give me a break. Well I started this with the intent to finish it for the 2019 year to round me off at 30 books, but when I realized it wasn't going to happen I decided to take a break and read a new to me Buffy the Vampire Slayer book I had yet to read to get in my average thirty books in for the year on Goodreads.
I did start again after I finished Buffy, but I had a hard time reading this one. I think my anxiety played some part in it cause I took it with me too the laundromat and I'd read a little then put it back down, then pick it up again, read a bit, and put it back down. Another thing that hurt me is how dark and gory it was. I mean this is a dark fantasy and all the books in this trilogy have been dark, but this one was the most dark and gory. I can handle such things to a degree, but I prefer some comic or uplifting relief to the darkness, but this book offers not a lot if any of that.
I thought things were tied up nicely in the end. Though I'm also like they and we went through all of that just to have what happens at the end to happen. I seriously put the death toll up there with a Game of Thrones novel, maybe more. I like that Churi added a section at the end that had inside tidbits and art for all three novels. I'd say it frightens me she started writing this in high school, but me and my friends could be morbid too so I can't say much.
I wanna give thanks to Amanda Churi cause her book actually helped me in my writing. I have a Non Binary character and wasn't 100% sure of pronouns at that time. I'd looked in one of my fantasy novels that I remember had a gender neutral character, but they'd still went with male pronouns. So imagine my excitement to find a gender neutral character in this cook, actually my favorite in this book, so now I know how the pronouns are done. Actually because I've included a gender neutral character in my stories I've had to do research for gender neutral terms for them and I have to say it's been eye opening.
Dating the Undead and Drop Dead Gorgeous (Bite Nites 1 and 2) by Juliet Lyons
As I've said I've read a lot of romance novels lately, but I've also read a lot of books with vampires, vampires are my favorite monsters (not so much the sparkly ones though I did like Alice). But I won't be filling the Library posts with those but I will do these books.
In this world an actress has outed the vampire world, and now everyone is kinda cool with them. There's even now a dating service featuring vampires called V-Date which plays a part in both of the books I've read in this series. But for each book's main character the site changes their lives, and love lives.
Both books deal with the London vampire community. Some characters are mentioned or in both books. I like there's a mix of decent and dark vampires like people in the world. I find it interesting only certain Vampires can turn people, actually that's probably a good thing, only downside is if a human wants to become a vampire to be with their vampire love it'd take and act of congress to do it probably. Not that's really been the case so far with these books.
I like a world where people exist with Vampires, downside you have to deal with the evil ones, but hey be kinda cool to date a good vampire once.
Unrelated to the topic's book news
So I found myself in Walmart's book section as I was wandering around. Despite loving books I'm not in that section of the store a lot, mostly they don't have a big selection, but I was in there and I found something surprising seems they are re-releasing a book series I read the crap out of as a kid The Baby-Sitter's Club. Apparently they are putting two books into one volume at a time. This might make shopping for them hard for me. See I still have a few in my library, cause it was a special series to me, but due to either the fact some got damaged or lost over the years, or the fact some of my favorites I'd only read because I'd check them out from my school library, I don't have them, but want to get them. Now here's where we have trouble. There's a couple books I want to get the versions of the cover I had, but when I was probably in middle school they changed the format of the covers for all the new ones and went back and re-released the old books with the new format. I think there was graphic novel versions released as well and now these, but given I did an Amazon search for one of my ruined books and found the original version easily I don't think it's gonna be a a big problem, though the version I found of this particular volume isn't exactly like the version I had, yes my version had the original cover, but there was a special thing on the cover announcing something special in the book, but as long as I can get the original cover, I can live with that. I don't know if it was something special related to the fact I got it out of the Scholastic catalogue or just those editions released. You know they have Kindle editions of them now, but I want the physical copy for my library.
Well that's this post of the Library. I may be back with some more Library post I know at least two to catch up on what I've read. I hope you have a good weekend. Fangirl and I are gonna venture out into the world, safely with masks, hand sanitizer, and social distancing. Have a good weekend, read lots, and God bless you!
*Thrifty Geek*
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