My Month in Reading, December 2019

Sunglasses and The Invisible Library

In the first week of December, we went to Hawaii for a week.

I was so tired on the plane that I mostly watched movies and TV shows, but I had plenty of downtime during the week to sit outside on a balcony and read.

I also finished a Laini Taylor novella collection while visiting my family for Christmas.

I didn’t read anything too heavy this month, and it was a nice way to wrap up the year.

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Romance By Any Other Name

We’ve been watching the Starz adaptation of Outlander recently, and it got me thinking about how I’ve never actually read a “romance” novel, but I’ve read plenty of stealth romance sold as other genres. I’ve actually owned Outlander on Kindle for a while – it was free at one point and I thought I might as well find out what all of the fuss was about – but I never actually got around to reading it.

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Gamification and C-Monkeys: Corporate Double-Talk

Gamification and C-Monkeys by Keith Hollihan Published: October 22nd 2013 Publisher: ChiZine Publications Genre(s): Thriller, Science Fiction Format: eBook Length: 280 pages Gamification and C-Monkeys are a pair of related novellas sold together as a “flip book” with a different cover on each side. The effect is clearly meant as a call-back to days when … Read more

Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares by David Levithan and Rachel Cohn

Published: October 11th, 2011 Publisher: Ember Genre(s): Young Adult, Romance Format: Paperback Length: 272 Pages One day, while browsing in the Strand bookstore in New York City, Dash finds a red Moleskine notebook hidden next to a copy of Franny and Zooey. He opens it and discovers that the owner, a girl named Lily, has … Read more

On Gender and Genre

I’ve been in a book club with some friends from college for a few years now, and a couple of months back we had a discussion about whether or not certain books could be considered “girl books” or “boy books”. The discussion was inspired by The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, which my friend Aaron … Read more

Discount Armageddon by Seanan McGuire

Discount Armageddon is the story of Verity Price, a blonde twenty-something cryptozoologist and recent transplant to New York City. She pays the bills by working as a waitress in a strip club, supports the family business by working to help the local populations of cryptids – monsters to the unenlightened – and secretly dreams of making it big on the ballroom dancing competition circuit. She hates public transportation, instead getting around by running parkour-style across the city rooftops, all while armed to the teeth with every kind of weapon she can hide under her skimpy waitress uniform. Oh, and her roommates are a colony of talking mice that venerate her every act with religious celebrations and feasts.

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Every Day by David Levithan

Published: August 28th, 2012 Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers Genre(s): Young Adult, Fantasy Format: Hardcover Length: 336 pages Note: The narrator of Every Day is essentially genderless, but for simplicity’s sake I use male pronouns throughout this review. David Levithan is an interesting standout in the young adult / fiction world. He seems more … Read more