It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is a place to meet up and share what you have been, are and about to be reading over the week.  It’s a great post to organise yourself. It’s an opportunity to visit and comment, and er… add to that ever growing TBR pile! So welcome in everyone. This meme started with J Kaye’s Blog   and then was taken up by Sheila from Book Journey. Sheila then passed it on to Kathryn at the Book Date.

Thankfully, I’ve been doing a LOT better with my reading in September compared to August, so I’ve been inspired to do more currently reading-type updates.

What am I currently reading?

I’m in the middle of of a book that I think will become one of my favorite books of the year, if not ever. I’m hesitant to say something like that too soon, because what if something happens and I start hating the book, but I just get such a wonderful feeling every time I pick it up and I’m already thinking about how this will be a great one to revisit and re-read in the future. That book is Among Others by Jo Walton, which won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards in 2012 and is about a Welsh teenager who survived a tragedy and is now making it through her time at an English boarding school through a combination of SFF literature and communicating with fairies.

Audio-wise, I’m listening to The Girls by Emma Cline, which has been on my TBR since before its release. I’m very much at the beginning, but so far it’s intriguing. I’m also reading The Unearthly by Laura Thalassa, which is a YA paranormal fantasy set at a boarding school also where all of the students are supernatural creatures. Again, I’m very much at the beginning but liking it so far.

What did I recently finish reading?

My most recent physical read was The Brides of Rollrock Island by Margo Lanagan, which was a dark retelling of the selkie myth that was quite good. I also recently finished listening to The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls on audio, and it was very well-written and compelling but also extremely disturbing and hard to listen to due to its content. If it had been fiction, I might not have been able to finish it, but since it was nonfiction and I at least knew that Walls survived and became successful, I did.

What books might be up next?

After I finish The Girls, I’m going to need a new audiobook. If the timing works out (I get audiobooks through my library’s Overdrive app), I’m hoping to be able to start listening to Sourdough by Robin Sloan. And once I finish Among Others, I’d like to pick up a book on my list of 5-star predictions; I’m thinking it will probably be Gather the Daughters by Jennie Melamed or The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood, but I’m a mood reader, so you never know.

It’s Monday! What are you reading? is a weekly feature hosted by The Book Date.

I’m not going to lie, my reading this Monday is looking pretty darn awesome. As is my Monday in general, because even though it is Monday, I have a shorter week at work since I’m taking some time off to road trip to a friend’s wedding this weekend.

So, what am I even reading?

This week, I’m reading two of the books I was most excited for in 2017: Hunger by Roxane Gay, which is already amazing and devastating and incisive, like everything Roxane Gay writes, and A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas, which is the last book in my current favorite guilty pleasure series. I’m also listening to Smoke Gets In Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty on audiobook; I prefer nonfiction on audio, and I’ve been really interested to check out this memoir from a young mortician. So far it’s keeping my interest, but the real test is whether it’ll work during my 7-8 hour drive this weekend. And then today I just started a new classic on my Serial Reader app, Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman; I’d previously started A Room With a View by E.M. Forster, but then I realized that I’d meant to only read books by women writers this month, so I switched.

I recently finished reading:

This weekend, I finished The Seafarer’s Kiss by Julia Ember, which was one of the books that I got at BookCon. I picked this up at the booth for Interlude Press, which publishes LGBTQIA+-focused books, and everyone I spoke to at this booth was so wonderful and friendly. I was sold on picking up this book when one of the Interlude authors told me that it features Slytherin-esque characters.  It’s a really lovely Norse mythology-inspired YA fairytale retelling of The Little Mermaid with a love story between a rebellious mermaid and a tough Viking Girl. I’d definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys mermaids and fairy tale retellings.

I’m planning on reading next:

I needed to line up some attention-holding audiobooks for this weekend, as I’ll be driving for about 15-16 hours total, so I currently have library holds on The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas and The Girls by Emma Cline. I’ve heard good things about both of these but haven’t actually heard anything about the audio versions, so fingers crossed. I also have some bookish podcasts saved up to listen to if I need a break from audiobooking!