Recent reads & reading setup
Content Warning: In this post I discuss romance novels. Nothing explicit is mentioned though, but be warned there might be links to external web pages that delve into such topics. Click responsibly.
Some romance
For the first time in my 37 years of life, I'm reading romance novels. Up until recently, my interaction with smut/erotica had been restricted to fanfics, in moments of despair (mostly TXF). Well... not on my teens—on my teens I was reading fanfic like I drank water, but they weren't all smut (tho lemon fics are what taught me Spanish, but let's not get into that just now).
But yeah, in the past weeks I started picking up original fiction to read. I was facing a pretty long reading slump, had gone over all the fics that were available on AO3 for my rare pair (all 2 whole pages), and so... Off to the romance sub I went (thankfully, bc it did help me to understand acronyms and terms to sift through tags).
I'll say, despite how popular the genre is, it was pretty hard to find something actually interesting to me. I was directed to romance.io, where I could filter stuff by tags but even then, just a handful of books would show up. I can't believe it's that hard to find a romance book where the male love interest isn't built like The Rock but also isn't plus size. But I digress. I read five books, finished 3, liked 1... which also happens to be a novelette aka the shortest of the four. * sigh *
Romance books so far
- That Bubbling Feeling, Ali Hidalgo [contemporary, college romance, friends-to-lovers] (DNF'd)
- For The Plot, Emily B. Rose [contemporary, lgbtq+, plus-size MCs, roommates-to-lovers]
1/2 - His Secret Illuminations, Scarlett Gale [fantasy, strong woman-weak man dynamic, fem dom, strangers-to-lovers] 1/2
- The Feast of Dead Man's Hollow [contemporary, supernatural, strong woman-weak man dynamic]1
- Signal Lost, Onyx Sullivan [sci-fi, space, alien-human romance, forbidden love] (Reading)
Fair warning: if you're interested in any of them, remember to check their tags and content warnings on their respective romance.io pages so you don't get caught off guard by anything.
Other fiction
After years of resisting, I finally caved and started reading Mia Couto. He's an extremely popular and highly regarded author in the lusophone literary community. I say lusophone bc the guy is from Mozambique and is read across different Portuguese-speaking countries.
I thought he'd be just some overhyped white guy but oh boy was I was wrong. A month or so ago I let a friend's girlfriend crash at my place for a few days and she recommended the short story collection O fio das missangas (The String of Beads, loosely translated) and goddamnit, his shit's GOOD. Every story is a punch in the gut that leave me reeling. I love it.
They're super super short stories. I guess Americans would call a few of them 'magical realism'. So far my favorite is definitely O homem cadente (The Falling Man), where a man takes days (weeks?) to fall off a building while the city watches his descent (and ponders if it was a purposeful fall or not).
I also got back to Terry Pratchett, which was the last author I read before my reading slump. I'm almost finished with the Witches/Tiffany Aching books. I'm thinking of finally getting around to read the City Guard or continue with the Death books.
Next on my reading list are Buried Deep and Other Stories, a short story collection by Naomi Novik (one of my favorite anglophone authors) and Jade City by Fonda Lee. I might give Strange Buildings a try... I'm a really wary of the hype around it, but oh well, I did eat my words with Mia Couto didn't I.
'Literary' Fiction & SFF
- O fio das missangas, Mia Couto (reading)
- Carpe Jugulum, Terry Pratchett (reading)
- Jade City, Fonda Lee (TBR)
- Buried Deep and Other Stories, Naomi Novik (TBR)
In other (bookish) news
I've started using Readest as my main reading app.
Up until like two weeks ago I was oscillating between Koreader and Moon Reader+ Pro on my Boox Palma, the latter only because I had bought it all the way back in 2016, but I still wasn't satisfied with my reading experience.
Readest has been great though, and to my surprise it syncs up with Hardcover, a reading tracker app I had recently started using. So it's a pretty sweet set up for me: it syncs across multiple devices, it's lightweight and open source, syncs with Hardcover, it has a pretty decent free tier and a lifetime plan if I decide to upgrade.
I'm done paying subscriptions, folks. If I want to purchase a piece of software, it better be a one-time payment.
As for Hardcover, it's a pretty cool app to navigate and—best of all—it does have a normal website you can use on your computer, it's not app-only. Including books that aren't listed on the platform is super easy (just grab the ISBN and paste it), and it's nice to look at. Not overly cluttered like Goodreads, not coldly blank like The StoryGraph. I really like it.
If you wanna give it a try, feel free to add me. I'd love to see what other ppl around the blogosphere are reading. Gentle reminder I also have a LibraryThing account tho, you can add me there as well. :)
This one also has the funnest trope to me: cis man disregards his own safety bc horny. It's a supernatural story made very believable because of that.↩