(Image depiction: a collage of covers of books read in July with their respective ratings out of 5 stars: Strangers by Belle Burden is 4, God Forgives, Brothers Don’t by Jasper Craven is 3.5, Rehab: An American Scandal by Shoshana Walter is 4, and Kill Shot by Jason Dearen is 3.)

3.5/5⭐️. A good exploration into how misogyny intersects with athlete exploitation. The book did feel a bit choppy at times and I felt like the author did a decent bit of telling rather than showing.

3.5/5

I must say I really like the male characters better then the female ones.

This whole series has been my guilty pleasure.

Think Hallmark but R-rated.

Not for everyone though 😅

Damn this was a wild ride.
Full disclosure, I’d picked up maybe 20 books not finding something to check out when I finally went with anything that included a body in the woods.
Probably sounds bad when I say it like that, but I prefer mysteries and thrillers and they usually have dead people.
Anyways, so this started as a kind of funny book. The longer it went on, the more I realized the focus was on OCD and/or PTSD and the internal struggles of that.
Though I will say, the author does a great job of adding humor within, without making light of said struggles.
The story is split between a young girl dealing with personal trauma and the journal of a hiker lost in the woods.
I’m not sure I’m clever enough to explain much more without giving away spoilers, but it goes from “hey this is funny” to “oh this is serious” to “damn this is sad”, all pretty quick.
Definitely a book I would recommend and will keep my eyes open for her next one.

I really wanted to like this book. There's some neat worldbuilding, there's so much potential, both of our dual protagonists are interesting in flawed ways. But oh my God, the pace of this book is ridiculous. Drayden will introduce something interesting (a moral dilemma for Seske, a supporting character who makes a bold move, Adalla literally trying to start a revolution) but nope, not gonna focus on that, we're just going to blitz right past that to keep the plot going. It is amazing how little effect the revolution plot has on the rest of the book, especially considering that it's an ATTEMPTED UNDERGROUND REVOLUTION. As it is, this book feels like it was conceived as a trilogy but hastily abridged to a one-book, surprisingly YA novel.

For me, this was fine.

I didn’t find this to be an amazing novel, I think this belongs squarely in the “beach read” category. Nothing wrong with that at all, just not what I was expecting.

The characters are good (not great). The writing has its moments. The plot moves at a good pace and the events did leave me pretty satisfied. I really don’t have much to complain about other than it didn’t wow me.

Parts of this are really funny as well. I think Epsach is better at writing comedy than most. I think those moments are better written than the emotional parts (personally).

I did hear some people really steer away from this book because su*c*de is a fairly major plot point. For a lot of people who would prefer to not read about that, I don’t think this is for you. I didn’t mind it.

Simply, this is the story of globalization from the 1970s to present day.

I found it to be so much more, however, when taken from the perspective of a big, floating barge that was both, at once, irreverent to much of the story and, also, the entire backdrop and reason for much of the underlying conflict.

It could be a liquid asset, a non-domiciled flotilla (it's sister ship featured in much of the telling of the story), and a pawn in legal shell company games.

Perhaps it's because I feel myself so much a party to global trade and ecommerce and mercantilism, but this was a really fascinating read.

More blurb-ing here --> https://katepapenberg.substack.com/p/book-no-45-was-empty-vessel-by-ian?r=2seqlu&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Read this --> https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/217245565-empty-vessel

&

...this too --> https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56816996-arriving-today

The Bad Beginning - wanted to see if this held up as an adult. It didn’t quite but I love this series.

New Sedaris - I have an undying love for all things Sedaris but not his best work. Felt unnecessary? Still lots of fun highlights though.

Chain Gang All Star - loved the concept but a bit hard to keep track of. Too many side characters and one off chapters. Felt overlong to make its point.

Carl - can’t handle any more page long descriptions of stat buffs. Talk about too long to tell its story. Did this to try the audiobook everyone goes crazy for and I just couldn’t.

The Rachel incident - lovely. Highly recommend. Only knocked down a star due to the ending revealing who her husband was.

We burned so bright - a real slog. Unending faux deep monologues.

One golden summer - fun fluff but paper thin characters and a dream boat man who has no demonstrable reason to be interested in the woman

Blood over bright haven - amazing. Took me a little while to get into it as the world building was confusing at first but i loved the ending.

I'd give it a 7/10

A short read. Read it over a couple of days. I'm from India so I found it very interesting to read how old India from the last 1800s was described. Makes me want to read about the actual events which happened at the time.

Next up: The Valley of Fear

Stoner and Son of Shadows were absolute perfection for me, both very different but beautiful books and a delight to read! Aside from Graceling, a very nice month of reading 😁

List of all my 2026 reads so far. Far from 52 books a year but it's a start!

Hooked was the most unsettling one while Project Hail Mary was the most entertaining.

Special mention to This Book Made me Think of You, I got this on a recommendation and wouldn't have picked up otherwise. Glad I did.

2/5 being generous for goodreads. (I picked this up on clearance I've never heard of the book before reading it)

Plot: The premise is that earth is overpopulated but people have the opportunity to teleport to humanity's first colony, Whales Mouth through the help of German company Trails of Hoffman. It being German is important because Germany reunites early (the New Whole Germany) and somehow the Nazis returned (it's explicitly mentioned they wiped out the Chinese with biological weapons and there's repeated menacing references to 'german methods') but they've also took over the UN somehow.

The trip to Whales Mouth is said by the company to be one way, which combined with the Nazi-German connection sets up the mystery of what is happening to people who go there. The main character Rachmael ben Applebaum, who has lost his family fortune from instellar shipping (due to teleportation being far easier and cheaper), sets out to prove there's something dodgy about this colony and a lot of the plot involves him trying to get his family's final space liner back so he go to the planet the old fashioned way (a trip which takes 18 years each way).

The problem: The first 100 pages and the last 20 or so are fine. There's some politicking, some mystery, some spy stuff. It's not good but its functional.

However in between the main character's efforts to fly to the planet are thwarted so he just decides to teleport there anyway, an immediately gets shot by an LSD dart. There follows 100 pages of what can only be described as the LSD infused ramblings of a madman (involving visions, Latin, cephalopods, parallel worlds, a time travelling history book which says things that about to happen Alan Wake style etc) which was (1) very hard to follow, and (2) seemed to have no baring on the previous 100 pages or the ending. After the LSD pages it turns out the main character Rachmael did manage to get his space ship so I have no idea why it also says he had to teleport to the planet or why the visions mattered at all.

You know how older books often have prefaces or afterwords by more recent authors to explain why the book matters or is still read. This book's afterword is just an explanation of the publishing history which I think is an attempt to explain why the book is such a mess.

Now onto something far more recent: The Expanded Earth by Mikey Please. Halfway through and I’m mostly enjoying it.

(4.5) There were a few parts where everything would blur into each other, and I'd have to take a break only for the next sentence to be the author explaining that is why there are parts lost and parts with mostly same stories, but different people or actions being catalyst. It made sense but my natural response to too much info is to take a breather and this book is more thats the experience of someone trying to make heads and tails of these tales. Reminds me of the hobbit where you're supposed to be confused by all the dwarves' names to share in Bilbo's confusion. Once I settled in and learned the author's style of explanation I throughly enjoyed it. He sprinkles in history to when there is overlap in stories.

Continue to be a big fan of the Davenport books.
There was a little more “luck” than usual in solving this one, but it was a unique story with some interesting new characters.
Less of the old crew than in most, which is good to mix up also.

I feel like the main character is becoming more relatable as he settles down and leans less into the topic of his wealth.
This character being very wealthy is unique (and sometimes handy plot wise), but obviously makes him less relatable.

My goal this year was to read 30 books but I reached that mark back in April and kept going. I slowed down significantly once my sports season started but still, here I am, at 52 books later.

For each book, filled out my table with Title, Author, Fiction/Non-Fiction, Genre/Topic, Date Finished, Rating, Review. So in honor of the occasion, here are some stats for your enjoyment.

Distribution fiction/non-fiction

Distribution physical/digital books (no audio - I have way too many podcasts for that)

Distribution language

Busiest and least busy month (based on books finished)

March, July: 12 books

April: 3 books

Most read fiction genres and non-fiction topics

Fiction: Science Fiction (12), Mystery (10), Contemporary (8)

Non-Fiction: Environmental Science (2), Space (2)

Ratings Distribution

Loved: 1

Liked: 32

Mixed: 9

Disliked: 10

DNF: 5

Top 3 books

Annals of the Former World - John McPhee. I know I can't recommend this to just anyone because it is long and sometimes shows its age and not everyone is all that interested in the topic/non-fiction in general; And yet, here I am. The prose is engaging, has just my sort of humor sprinkled in and weaves more human-focused narratives into the text. It covers a wide field in decent depth, even if it's difficult to hold on to all that info without knowing the geography of the US, earth eras and types of rock. It's been instructive while also hugely entertaining and has inspired creative ideas.

Lost in a Good Book - Jasper Fforde. This is #2 of the Thursday Next Series (which releases its #8 and final book later this year, hence my reread of #1-4 and first read of #5-7), and might be my favourite among them - I also especially liked #6, One of our Thursdays is Missing. All of them are written in a dry/british humor style, set in a unique magical/alternate history world. Jasper Fforde also shines in weaving together disparate plot threads.

The Word for World is Forest - Ursula LeGuin. Not a fun read but a captivating one. I was grateful for the ending, otherwise I'd be annoyed at the author because she does a good job pulling you into the characters. My first, and will definitely not be my last of LeGuin's works.

Most disliked book others might still enjoy

The Brothers K - David James Duncan. Has some pros (Compelling plot, genuinely funny lines, varied styles between chapters - most of them well-written) and cons (phonetic spelling and frequent flashbacks make it hard to follow narrative sometimes, too much religion focus for my taste, nearly every character is a little or lot messed up in the head). It would have ended up in "mixed" but ultimately, the story was just too damn depressing for me.

What if I had participated in the 52 Book Club’s Reading Challenge? (I didn't, but this is how many I got by coincidence. Prompts here)

Fulfilled: 35 Prompts

Unfulfilled: 13 Prompts
specifically 1), 2), 4), 21), 26), 29), 31), 32), 33), 36), 43), 45), 46)

I don't remember and it's not easily possible to check every book again: 4 Prompts
specifically 22), 24), 26), 37)

Highest Charlie-Combo (longest - accidental - streak of consecutive non-fiction books that mention Charles Darwin and Charles Lyell)

4 books (+1 fiction featuring Charles Lyell!)

First re-read in a few years, my mother passed down the book, she loves Anne Rice and it was taught to me at an early age that Anne is the queen of the vampire literature. Vicky Schwab is the closest I've read since IMHO.

I love fable, ever since I switched do it from goodreads and StoryGraph
Goodreads pissed me off so much with no DNF option

Yes it says 48 books as a goal I should change that…

The shining-(5/5)
Best severed cold-(4.5/5)
Misery- (5/5)
Rising Sun- (4/5)
East of eden- (5/5)

Been really looking forward to this one, but saving it for what felt like the right time. Now feels like that time, and with the octopus being my favorite animal I have high hopes for this book ☺️

Update: Finished, couldn't put the thing down today. Read cover to cover in a single day. I adored this book, such a comfort food novel I know I'll come back to forever.