@bookstodon Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern is probably my favorite book this year. It didn’t always make sense, but it also didn’t have to.
This book has some of the best setups and payoffs I have read in a very long time! Something innocuous mentioned in the first half can have a massive result in the second. 
@ClaymoreII
I agree about the coziness! That book was like a warm blanket. I think I'd like to read it again just to see if I can piece it together better the second time through. @bookstodon
"Crook Manifesto" is Colson Whitehead's second book about Harlem. In the 1970s it's a sordid world full of crime and racism. But still, both books are a kind of love song to the city and its crooked people. But even crooks have their own sense of honesty, their crook manifesto.
I am blown away by Whitehead's writing. The language is both tough and beautiful, in a mesmerising mix. My favourite line: "Crime is just how folks talk to each other sometimes".
I realised that most of the books or stories I really enjoyed this year could be categorised with the #Cozy hashtag , but I don't (didn't?) see myself as a cozy #genre reader (one of my fave book is Gravity's Rainbow). So I wondered what is going on and started to read up on the definition of cozy #genre. This blog post I found especially helpful, because of the nuanced discussion of the low/high stakes dynamics. #Fantasy#aesthetics @bookstodon
What Is Cozy Fantasy? https://wp.me/p6AA9k-7R5
@IzzyChambers@Jennifer@bookstodon oh yes, and in a way it's really the absolute opposite to cozy fiction. It's about World War 2, and Nazi crimes, and very very dark.
Ran out of listening time for spotify audio books, so starting one on Audible called Pucking Wrong Number. Getting into audio books lately, which is surprising. Normally I read only kindle books. @bookstodon@readinglightsout@romancelandia#bookstodon#amreading
@alexisbushnell@bookstodon@readinglightsout@romancelandia It's a 15 hour a month limit. So I suppose you could listen to maybe 2 or 3 books at 3 or 4 hours, because they give you 15 hours of listening time for audio books a month.
What are you reading this evening? I’m still reading David Copperfield and also in the middle of Little Monsters by Adrienne Brodeur. #amreading#photography#fediverse@bookstodon
Apologies for the problematic title of the latest book reviewed. It is not my book, and I'm sure the author was aware of the controversy. The story is very good regardless.
@bookstodon Just out of curiosity, how close are you to your reading goal for the year? I need to read 12 more books to meet the goal I set for myself. 📚📚📚📚
Not everyone works the same way, of course. We've discussed before that reading goals are counterproductive for many. Having a goal really helps me, but it doesn't work for everyone. Just like reading for pleasure and reading to write a review are very different processes.
@kimlockhartga@bookstodon Totally agree, I don’t set a goal and have only been writing down what I read for 3 years but this year Ive read 15 more books than last year so I’m very happy with that
We talk about achievement. About goals. Setting them. Reaching them. About getting somewhere, becoming something. But what happens the morning after? What happens the next day? After the parade, the party. After they sweep the confetti away. What happens when the big moment fades? Maybe it's never been greatness we were after, but a baseline standard of enoughness brought to our days.
I enjoyed Jackie Wullschlager's new biography of #Monet so much I wrote this (glowing) review of it for @NWBylines, which extends the micro-review that appeared here a couple of weeks ago.
@ChrisMayLA6@bookstodon Thanks for the Review Chris. I’ll buy it for my Christmas Holiday lectures. After a Visit at Musee d’Orsay in Paris I need to know a little bit more about Monet and the Impressionism movement. I have a big deficit culture there.
I'm asking non-Americans: Are your libraries full of armed thugs in bulletproof vests? A pair of thugs just strolled behind me, keeping the pressure on.
Like, I was a privileged kid and I never suffered much, but I was literally running around with downtown street kids in the late 80s. Lots of violent talk happened but actual acts of violence were very rare.
The drugs sold at the known spots were cannabis, LSD, shrooms, and in the bad part of downtown you could get heroin or else people were into mixing tolluin and ritalin for a similar effect. ODs were not a big thing.
@Da_Gut@poloniousmonk@bookstodon
I don't know if it's my favorite, but I read The Green Futures of Tycho as a kid and it was probably the first book that made me consider "change the future" time travel stories might actually be kind of a horror genre. William Sleator's stuff tended to be a mildly unsettling for the tween audience it seemed aimed at. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Green_Futures_of_Tycho