Narnia Bloggin': The Curious Case of the Odd Omnibus

In my previous Narnia Bloggin' post, I talked myself into buying the $75 deluxe edition of The Chronicles of Narnia omnibus (7 books in 1). I had planned on getting it from Barnes & Noble as I had a $5 credit, but then my price comparison browser plugin alerted me that Amazon had it for $50.60! $25 off is nothing to sneeze at, so from Amazon I got it. 

It's beautiful, and looked just like the one I looked at in Barnes & Noble, except... the fore edges are not even. There are two furrows, one deep and one medium, and a few smaller shallow ones as well, instead of just a flat expanse of page edges like with most books. This matters because the page edges are painted, and the furrows make the design look bad! I have never seen a book with those kinds of page furrows. Additionally, the solid red top and bottom page edges have big white scratches or scuffs where the red has been scratched or scuffed off. 

Here is the Instagram video I made of the imperfections. 

 

You cannot tell how uneven this is from this picture. Trust me, you could tell in person.

Profile view of the uneven fore edge/page edges. The deepest furrow is on the right.

scratch, bottom of book

scuff, top of book. note the glued pages

I didn't think much of Amazon's packaging of my book; it was just in a box with a plastic large-bubble (the kind the size of 3x5 cards) sheet for padding and otherwise left loose to bang around inside the box with the other thing that was in there. Maybe that's where the scuffs came from? But there was one on each side (top and bottom) of the book...

Naturally I turned to the Amazon reviews. I did a search in the reviews with the keyword "deluxe". Four reviews turned up about the deluxe omnibus edition. Turns out, I'm not the only one disappointed in the quality of my omnibus. 

"See full review" just takes you to the specific webpage for the review. I promise all text is included

Worth noting that they no longer print books with non-acid-free paper; it's standard

I asked for an exchange, marking the copy I received as damaged. A new one arrived, and while it didn't have the scuffs/scratches my first copy did, this one had, if anything, even more uneven page edges with furrows. Also, the dust jacket had come off at some point and been folded down wrong and had its corners dog-eared. (I did not take any pictures.) Clearly, Amazon is able to sell this deluxe omnibus edition at such a low price (comparatively) because all of the copies are lightly damaged in some way. What a shame. I think I'm going to go back to my local Barnes & Noble and inspect their copy/ies in person, and if it looks ok, buy it for full price. Bookshop.org currently has the deluxe omnibus for $69.90 but I'm too afraid to chance it. Ah well. 

Tentative reading goals

As previously mentioned, my yearly reading goal is 50 books a year. I feel this is achievable as there are 52 weeks in the year, so that allows 2 non-reading weeks for reading slumps and busy times. The vague goal is 4 books a month. This has worked for me for the last several years; the knowledge that I need to be reading books every month in order to reach my goal keeps me going, while being flexible and allowing myself grace. 

I also usually have the goal of reading themed books during the different themed months and what not (queer books for Pride month, latine books during Hispanic/Latine Heritage Month, holiday books during the winter holidays, etc.) which I do sometimes end up doing.  

I am not someone who can set a To Be Read list with specific books and stick to it. (I actually had no idea that's what people were doing when they said TBR list; for ages I thought a TBR list was just a list of books you wanted to read at some point in the future.) I am very much a mood reader, and what with the probably-ADHD-thing, just knowing that I need to read something or should read something, that is enough to take away my desire to read it entirely. See what happened last Hispanic/Latine Heritage Month. My brain's mileage varies. 

That said, I have some tentative, loose reading goals. I really, really need to tackle the amount of unread books I own. At best guess, it is 435 (if I have indeed logged allll the books I physically own in my LibraryThing). I just keep buying books from the thrift store and Barnes & Noble and the dollar store etc. and not reading them. This is also not counting all of the hundreds of ebooks I've bought from/on Nook or Kindle or Apple books or Kobo. Your girl needs help. 

For the physical books: I'm thinking if I stick to one shelf from one of my bookcases, that will help make it feel manageable. Or possibly reading one book from each shelf so I don't feel constrained? There's a "10 Oldest TBR" reading challenge on StoryGraph (I joined StoryGraph! My username is mialro; friend me) that seems feasible; you just read the 10 oldest books you bought but haven't read.  The goal is to read through the unread books and get rid of the ones I don't love. At least two shelves from two of my bookcases are double-stacked. It's a problem. 

Getting rid of books I've decided not to keep: I'm going to create a google sheet to keep track of books I no longer want and am getting rid of, their titles and authors and conditions, etc., and reach out to my friends who own a bookstore to see if they'll be interested in buying them. If they are interested in  them, great; if not, I'll sell my unwanted books at my local Book Off. I really should have done that last year with the several boxes of books I unloaded at my work's library book sale, but oh well. 

For ebooks, I think it will be more manageable to tackle my smallest ebook library: Apple books. I think I only have about 20-30 ebooks on there; once I read them, I can delete them. My Nook and Kindle libraries are in the hundreds if not thousands. Maybe I'll organize my ebook libraries by genre etc. so I can find what I want to read more easily. 

Book purchases: I really should do a book buying ban, but let's be real: I'm not going to keep to that. I am going to try to stop buying books from big box stores and stick to just thrift stores, indie bookstores, and Dollar Tree. 

In terms of my loose but specific reading goals, I hope to read at least one of each of the following each month:

• a physical unread book that is sitting on my shelves
• reread an old favorite book or series
• read something by a BIPOC author
• read an ebook from Apple
• read something thematic (seasonal, themed day/week/month etc.)
• read a library book
• something that is not prose or a usual genre I read: poetry, comics/graphic novels, essays, short stories, etc.  

This list allows for double-dipping (or more) and is broad enough that I should be able to find something that applies. 

Other bookish goals: 

--be more active on Bookstagram. I did ok (it was a tough year) but could be doing more. I have some ideas for posts and should try doing more reels. I also need to interact more with the bookstagrammers I follow and who follow me and try to make more friends there.  

--I kind of want to join a bookclub. There's a Silent Book Club in my area that I might actually start going to one of these days. God knows I need to get out of the house more and make friends.

--I want to make the bottom bookshelf of my center rainbow bookshelf be rainbow as well. This will involve removing the larger books from the bottom shelves in order to make another rainbow of book spines on that shelf. I'm confident it can be done. Otherwise, my shelves don't need to be reorganized; I'm happy with them. 

Will I be able to stick to these goals? We'll see! 

2025 Reading Stats

Yet another year is over! Here are my reading stats for 2025.

Total books read during this year: 55

Total books that I started to read but didn't finish: 1

physical books read: 19

digital/ebooks read: 36

physical books started but unfinished: 1

ebooks started but unfinished: 0

Library books read: 7

physical library books read: 3

library ebooks read: 4

Library books started but unfinished: 0

Total books that were rereads: 13 

Star ratings given to books

Books given 5 stars: 1

Books given 4 ½ stars: 8

Books given 4 stars: 32

Books given 3 ½ stars: 7

Books given 3 stars: 3

Books given 2 ½ stars: 1 (my first in ages)

Authors I've read the most this year: 

Sarah Wallace - 10 books

Martha Wells - 7 books 

S.O. Callahan, K.J. Charles, Agatha Christie - tied with 4 books each

#1 most loved book this year (not counting my rereads): 

most loved general fiction: Too Bright to See 

most loved fantasy: I read so many great fantasy books this year but the Legendborn series blew my freaking mind

most loved science fiction: the Murderbot Diaries 

most loved mystery: Murder By Memory

most loved romance: Get a Life, Chloe Brown 

most loved young adult book/s: the Legendborn series again

most loved children's book/s: Too Bright to See again

most loved nonfiction: Handbags: The Power of the Purse or Go Forth and Tell: The Life of Augusta Baker, Librarian and Master Storyteller  (per usual, I can't choose)

Books purchased this year: 66  (I am cheating by not counting the books I just bought a few days ago from Barnes & Noble's half-off books sale, since I bought them this year and they're not arriving until next year. Loophole! bwahahaha 😈)

physical books purchased: 59

ebooks purchased: 7 

Books purchased this year that I actually read: 16, or roughly a quarter (if we're not counting books I bought that I have read in the past but not this year after I bought them, 12)

Books I got rid of: probably about 30 (I donated them to my library's book sale) 

I read more books than last year (that is, 2024), which I'm happy about.  My reading goal is always 50 books a year, so that hasn't changed, and I don't see that changing. Unsurprisingly, the one book I didn't finish reading this year was a nonfiction book, and a religious one at that. Very par for the course there. That's only 1 DNF, though, compared to last year's 3.

In terms of books bought, I again counted only the books I bought for myself that cost money. I fucked up by shopping B&N's half-off-hardcovers sales a couple of times. Oh well. Here's the chart my reading spreadsheet from BookRiot calculated for me of where my books purchases came from.

Speaking of my BookRiot reading log spreadsheet, I've been searching for next year's in their website, and I don't see it! Are they not making one for 2026??? I mean I have reading journals I'm planning on using, but I really love their reading spreadsheets :(  Maybe it's because the reading log sheet was originally made by Tirzah Pierce, and she no longer works for BookRiot? But they still made one for 2025...

Anyway, here are the statistics, charts and graphs from my 2025 reading log spreadsheet:

click to embiggen

 

Genres: Fantasy is still my largest percentage, although it dropped from nearly 50 percent last year. A lot of the books I read fit into multiple genres, but the sheet only let me put one, so keep that in mind in terms of genre count. Science fiction has surpassed Romance to become my second-most-read genre for 2025! Last year it was only 3.6%, so it more than quadrupled! This is clearly due to my reading the Murderbot Diaries. Romance is my third-most-read genre at 11.1%; it was 16.4% last year. I read at least 1 more genre category this year than I did last year (9 vs. 8 in 2024). 

Form: 89.3% of the books I read were prose, while novellas, short stories, and picture books shared equal pie slices at 3.6% each (I read 2 books from each of those categories). 

 

Books read by month: I had two high-reads months instead of one like last year, reading 11 books in both February and October! I read zero books in August (my reading slump) but read pretty consistently throughout the other months (2-4 books a month). 

click to enlarge

 

Author/artist gender: The amount of female authors I read went up this year compared to last, with nonbinary authors and male authors tying for second!! Other refers to group authors and authors duos. I'm not sure why the sheet doesn't create an M/F category and an Other category instead of lumping them together, but whatever. 

Nation of origin: A big jump in US books (going from about half last year to about ¾ths this year), while UK books consequently were halved. Canadian books also almost halved. I read 1 book set in Nigeria (Until the Last Petal Falls) and put Ireland as Carmilla's nation of origin since the author was Irish (according to Wikipedia the book seems to have been first published in London though... oh well). 

Protagonists of color (erroneously put as POC Protagonists in the sheet) vs. white protagonists: I nearly doubled the amount of books with protagonists of color that I read (17.3% to 33.3%)! That still leaves two-thirds of the protagonists I read as white or I couldn't tell what they were. (e.g. Murderbot's race is never given, although a white actor plays it in the show and some official? illustrations show it with dark skin and hair. Its appearance is barely described at all.) If I make my own spreadsheet for next year, I'm including a n/a or unknown categories for the rep stats. 

Authors of color (erroneously put as POC Authors) vs. white authors: (not in the above image) The amount of authors of color I read tripled compared to last year, but as that's going from 5.8% to 16.7%, it's not something to hugely celebrate. I need to do better. 

Queer authors: This stat stayed basically exactly the same as last year, with only a 0.5% change! How funny. Insert my usual spiel about how you can't always tell if an author is queer just by looking at their author bio. 

Books with queer protagonists: Remember how last year I had exactly a 50/50 split? This year 68.5% of the books I read had queer protagonists!

Books with trans rep: I don't trust the stats on this because they're collected weirdly, but according to the log I read 11 books with a trans protagonist (again thanks to the Murderbot Diaries as it's agender), and 20 with a trans author/artist. This is no doubt due to all the Sarah Wallace books I read, as the log counts them each time. I read 6 individual trans authors this year, which is down from last year's 7.

Books with disability rep: 46.3% of the books I read this year had disability rep, nearly twice as much as last year's 25%!

My sole translated book was Frida Kahlo y Sus Animalitos, which was originally in English but I bought in Spanish ostensibly for my sobrines (it's at my house and they have yet to see it lol).

An increase in nonfiction books read, at 12.5% (last year was 9.1%). 

Also an increase in the amount of books for adults that I read, 83.9%, and consequent decreases for YA (7.1%, less than half of last year's!) and children's (8.9%). Last year the breakdown was 72.7% adult, 18.2% YA, and 9.1% children. 

16.7% of the books I read were published this year, down from last year's 20.5%.  

Wow, I really made some gains in diverse reading. Overall, a great reading year! Happy new year. 

Rest of the year reads

November and December were pretty decent reading months. I don't feel like writing proper reviews so here we are.

November 

3 Agatha Christie books, all excellent mysteries that kept me guessing per usual:

• The Mystery of the Blue Train (Hercule Poirot) - classic murder on a train, locked room mystery. Murderer/s ended up being something out of left field that I feel was not set up well enough for the readers to have guessed it; it felt like cheating a bit. ★★★½

• The Seven Dials Mystery (Superintendent Battle, a new guy to me. He's a police super and looks big and wooden and dumb but is actually very smart.) Young people keep getting murdered, and a secret society called the Seven Dials might be behind it... The biggest twist ending of all of them! Some Jeeves books vibes with the Bright Young Things friend group. Very exciting. ★★★★

• Cards on the Table (both Hercule Poirot AND Superintendent Battle! glad I read T7DM first) A dinner party that is half murderers, half detectives/police results in a murder, naturally. Still is very twisty. Got wlw vibes from the two roommate bestie girls, but sadly no (not that I actually thought AC would go there). ★★★★

These were all ebooks. I usually try to stick to reading AC books in physical form since that fits the books' vibes better, but B&N did this weird thing where they had a ton of excellent legit ebooks (rather than the usual self-published stuff) for free, so I downloaded a bunch (including the above 3) before they changed their minds. 

I also read an excellent and relevant nonfiction book suggested by my therapist, but I overshare enough on this blog as it is, so I'm not telling you what it is. :P

December

I usually go ham on SimonTeen's 25 free reads of December, but this year I was very busy in December and/or wasn't feeling most of the books. There were some great ones I definitely was interested in and would have read under different circumstances, but alas. The only one I managed to read was Love at Second Sight by F.T. Lukens, whose book Otherwordly I read last year as it was part of SimonTeen's offerings for the 2024 25 free reads of December. This one is also a gay YA fantasy book, but this one is set in a world where witches and vampires and werewolves, etc. exist and live alongside humans. 15-year-old human Cam's plans for a normal sophomore year with his nonbinary witch bestie Al are derailed when he has a very scary premonition about the violent death of a young woman, and it turns out he's a clairvoyant with rare abilities whose alliance is desired by every supernatural group in town. Cam has to deal with the sudden popularity, the supernatural society politics he hasn't grown up with, his parents' anti-supernatural bigotry, and his popular werewolf crush noticing him. Oh, and he has to figure out how to stop the murder from happening.  I liked this book and found the mystery most compelling; the romance was cute but felt a bit underdeveloped. There was a lot going on in this book, though. I'd recommend it to anyone who likes this sort of thing (urban fantasy, I guess?). ★★★★

I had plans to finally read some of my Christmas romance ebooks I've downloaded over the years during this holiday season, but for some reason instead I reread The Pilgrim's Regress by C.S. Lewis because I found the copy I had left at my parents' house (I have one at mine, obvs). It's basically CSL doing a take on The Pilgrim's Progress (a heavily Christian allegory about conversion and the Christian walk, etc.) but with his own spiritual life and conversion. This was not particularly easy to read, despite the chapters being fairly short; it's very philosophical and uses lots of academic language and quotes in Greek, Latin, and French that are not translated. I can kind of suss out the latter two depending on how similar the words are to Spanish, but this is not ideal. It's one of CSL's weirdest and weakest, I feel. Also it's racist and sexist ("brown girls" are a metaphor for lust 🤮). Not recommended unless you're studying him and his works academically or something. ★★★

I reread Christmas with Anne and Other Holiday Stories by L.M. Montgomery, as I do every holiday season. The Christmas stories are much better and generally happier than the New Year's stories.  

 

I decided to read a couple of children's books I had bought and hadn't read yet. It's my reading log and I'll count picture books if I want to :P 

Frida Kahlo y Sus Animalitos by Monica Brown, translated into Spanish by F. Isabel Campoy, and illustrated by John Parra, is a biographical nonfiction picture book about Frida and her pets. I didn't add it to my LibraryThing and there's no record of it in my order emails, so I must have bought it in person at a local indie bookstore, probably Cellar Door Books. The art style is very colorful, bold, and naive, which suits the subject matter. The book makes it sound like Frida had a lot of these pets as a child, when she actually had them as an adult (I'm pretty sure; I'm also sure she did have pets as a kid but don't remember having read about them). It's a cute book that's worth buying if you're a big a fan of Frida Kahlo as I am. ★★★★ 

 

Go Forth and Tell: The Life of Augusta Baker, Librarian and Master Storyteller by Breanna J. McDaniel, illustrated by April Harrison, is a picture book biography of a very important Black librarian who knew the power of stories to let people know what is possible and how to rise up. Ms. Baker curated book lists of books with good African American representation (as well as writing her own) and went on to be the coordinator of children's services for the entire New York Public Library system (the first Black person to do so) and was hugely influential. This was an excellent book with bright, vivid, interesting mixed-media art, and I highly recommend it. I also enjoyed the author's story about the impact of her own childhood librarian. ★★★★½

Narnia Bloggin': the new Chronicles of Narnia covers I've seen in person

Previously: more cover art for The Chronicles of Narnia books

I've been to my local Barnes & Noble a couple of times this year (I try to stay away because it's such a temptation), and naturally I looked at the new individual covers of The Chronicles of Narnia when I was there. I was able to look at The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (LWW), Prince Caspian (PC), The Horse and His Boy (HHB), The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (VotDT), and The Magician's Nephew (MN). Sadly my B&N didn't have The Silver Chair (SC) or The Last Battle (LB), so I was unable to see those in person. 

The new book covers (art by Owen Richardson) look basically just like what you see online. I'm glad I took pictures of the back covers, as the seller websites I looked at don't seem to post them at all. Obviously you can see the full wraparound cover images here. 

LWW back cover

 

PC back cover

 

VotDT back cover

 

HHB back cover

 

 

MN back cover

Remember the planetary symbols that Richardson sneaked into the cover illustrations? The one for LWW is covered up due to how the back of the book is formatted. PC, VotDT, and MN's planetary symbols are on the front covers, so you can still see them if you know what to look for. HHB's is on the back cover, but it escapes being covered up by the other back cover elements. I spent way too long looking for the planetary symbol in LB's cover art before looking at NarniaWeb's answer key (at the link above) and realizing that Richardson just put the literal planet Saturn. 🙄 You can read what I think about the whole Planet Narnia thing here. 

Earlier this month I went back to B&N to look at the super expensive deluxe slipcase edition of the TCON omnibus, only to find they don't carry it in-store. I did find the deluxe edition (still hardcover, no fancy slipcover) and was able to hold it in my hot little hands. I like how it looks, especially the holographic-y cover and painted edges. I didn't think to take the slipcover off (I think it does come off), so I wasn't able to look at the pretty wardrobe design under the slipcover. 

hopefully the video comes out ok. I took it to show the cover's holographic effect

 

omnibus back cover

omnibus sprayed edges

The question is: do I buy the deluxe omnibus ($60-75) since it has the sprayed edges and the pretty wardrobe cover design under the slipcover, which is what I like the most, or do I buy the deluxe slipcase edition omnibus ($150) as it has the nice red velvet slipcover with gold illustrations of Lucy & Tumnus, Aslan's head, and Digory and Polly on pegasus!Fledge, plus the aforementioned painted edges? Do I really want to pay an extra $75 or whatever for a book I'll be hesitant to touch (the spine and slipcover are in red velvet and I cannot touch velvet due to sensory ick)? It's probably not worth it to drop $150 on something I can get most of for $75. If only my Barnes & Noble carried it in person... I would dearly like to look at and touch the deluxe slipcover version. To be quite honest, I don't need another omnibus; I already have 2 paperback ones. I know that if I don't buy one of these, I'll regret it like I regret not getting the Barnes & Noble leatherbound edition omnibus... Ah well, money is made to be spent.

Anyway, you can look at all the current Narnia versions out this year for the 75th anniversary of LWW here: www.narniaweb.com/2025/10/harper-collins-completes-full-catalogue-refresh-for-narnias-75th-anniversary

To read my other Narnia Bloggin' posts, click on the Narnia label at the bottom of this blog post. 

How I rate a book

If I don't finish a book, I generally don't rate it; it feels unfair to do so since I haven't read the whole thing. 

I have never rated a book 1 star, that I can remember. Presumably any book I'd rate one star would be too badly-written, and I would hate it too much, to finish reading. 

Two stars ★★ : I disliked or hated this book and it was badly written. The last time I rated a book 2 stars was in 2016, and from my note it doesn't sound like I disliked it that much, just that it was "silly" and had writing that wasn't very good.

Two and a half stars ★★½ : I disliked or hated this book and it was not very well written. The last time I rated a book 2.5 stars was also in 2016, and I was surprisingly more vocal (as it were) about my dislike for the book: I called it junk. (Interestingly enough, I rated it even though I DNF'd it; I guess I felt I had read enough to give it a rating.)

Three stars ★★★ : I didn't really like this book, or liked it well enough but found aspects of the plot or writing lacking.

Three and a half stars ★★★½ : I liked this book well enough; it was fine. This is probably the most common rating.

Four stars ★★★★ : I really liked this book! Maybe I even loved it.

Four and a half stars ★★★★½ : I loved this book! It's not quite worthy of five stars though.

Five stars (the rarest) ★★★★★ : I LOVED this book and it blew my freaking mind!!!

Things that cost book ratings a half star: 

• not being very well-written 
• having a stupid plot point, such as an issue that would have been cleared up in five minutes had the characters had an actual conversation about it
• something happens that makes me angry
• being too sad
• being too scary 
• being too confusing 
• the villain/s do(es)n't get a (good enough) comeuppance
• the problem/s was solved too neatly/easily
• having typos or errors
• being wrong about something factually
• being wrong about something in my opinion (may or may not be factual)
• flat, boring, and/or unlikable characters, especially two-dimensional female characters
• a character being too perfect, a Mary Sue or Gary Stu (what's the nonbinary version of this? Ary Slu?)
• a shoehorned/unnecessary romance 
• a flat and/or boring romance 
• the ending is not happy (enough)
• the ending is happy(ish) but not enough to make up for all the horrors the characters went through 
• the author made characters zany or snarky or sad or grumpy etc. instead of actually giving them a personality
• specific things or concepts that annoy me (sexism, ableism, meddling, etc.)
• being too violent (without cause or just to be edgy)
• being too gory or gross 
• the author didn't do (enough) research into something in the book that I know about
• overuse of verbs and phrases (we've all read a book where somebody smirked a million times)
• a character complains too much, especially if it's the exact same complaint over and over 
• falling into tropes and/or stereotypes
• the book was too short and should have been longer/explored things more in depth 

Depending on how serious the offenses (lol) are, several can add up to cost the rating a half star, or one or more stars. A lot of this depends on my mood and how annoyed it made me. Like a lot of readers, my star ratings are based on vibes.

Ideally I would be able to use a half star symbol, but when I try it's just a weird box. Bring back the half star, Blogger! >:( 

Halloween reads from my work library

When looking up books with "ghost stories" in the title in my work's library catalog, I stumbled on this book called Too Bright to See by Kyle Lukoff, which I had remembered one of my Bookstagram friends having read and mentioned on Instagram. It's a middle grade book that won or was nominated for a whole bunch of book awards, such as the Newbery and Stonewall Book Award, so I knew it would be good. The story is about a kid named Bug who lives in a haunted house (not the attraction; their house is literally haunted) and is struggling with trying to fit in with their girly-girl friends, the looming specter of middle school (it's the summer before they start; also, pun intended), and, most of all, the loss of their beloved uncle, who may or may not be haunting them... Poor Bug goes through so much in this book, but there's a happy ending, thankfully. I was genuinely freaked out by all the ghost stuff (I'm a wuss when it comes to horror) and was rooting for them the whole way. I highly recommend this book, as long as the reader can handle a little scary stuff. You don't have to be questioning your gender to enjoy this book or get anything out of it; Bug's feelings about not being a girl the right way and struggling to fit in with the boy-crazy girls in their friend group reminded me of my similar experiences at that age (ah, neurodivergence). ★★★★

I also decided to reread Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (last read and reviewed here) during yesterday's evening ref desk shift. Carmilla predates Dracula, believe it or not. JSLF does a good job of setting the tone and building atmosphere in this Gothic story. [Spoilers for a book from 1872 I guess]  I had forgotten a lot of the details (all the young women in a like 30 mile radius kept dying off-screen, obviously because Carmilla was killing them) but remembered the gist (like how gay it was). What Carmilla does to get victims is basically a scam that she runs over and over again: her "mother" (possibly also a vampire, since she's described as pale and good-looking) gets some nobleman with a young adult/late teens daughter to agree to take her invalid daughter (Carmilla, under an anagram of her name such as Mircalla or Millarca) into their home while she, the mother, has to run off on an important/emergency trip that she can't bring her daughter on or tell them about. The nobleman and his daughter agree (him, because of chivalry and gentlemen being bound to assist ladies who ask for their help, and her, because she's lonely and wants a friend), and Carmilla/Mircalla/Millarca befriends/seduces the daughter and slowly drains her of life, while finishing off all the other young women in the surrounding area. She's gone by the time the daughter dies and people realize what has happened. Carmilla and her mother run this scam for Laura (the protagonist/narrator/victim) and her father by actually staging a carriage crash right in front of them! That's commitment, I guess, although vampires can only be killed in a specific way, so. Carmilla is killed in this book because the previous victim's father is a friend of Laura's father and goes and tells him about it, and they find Carmilla's grave and kill her before she can kill Laura. Too bad Carmilla can't lez out without killing the object of her affections, although probably for her the two pleasures are bound up together or something. The way the bloodthirsty vampire only preys on women when there's just as many men around (and let's be real, they're easier targets) suggests she gets pleasure from drinking blood and therefore only wants to experience that from/with women. My library's copy had a few scholarly essays about the book that I skimmed; they were about the usual "fear of the other" stuff that academics like to discuss about vampire books, but with an Irish focus as I guess the book was put together for Irish studies (I was confused about this until I realized that). I think the author of Carmilla was Irish. ★★★.5, not really spicy enough to earn a chili pepper

Reading slump + reading update

I've been on a reading slump lately that lasted over a month. I think it started because I wanted to read one of my many unread books with latine protagonists for Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month, and I think just the concept of "having to" read a specific type of book triggered my brain's ADHD* mental block against reading in general.

 

I did actually read one book (very slowly) during this time: this cute little book about historical and designer purses, which was actually very interesting and informative. I've always loved purses and fashion history, so this was a fun and interesting book to read. It was originally published in 2001, so the book only has purses up to that point, and has kind of a gap for the 1990s (too soon ago at the time to be considered historical). The writing is very similar to fashion editorials like they have in Vogue; lots of glowing praise for the fashion designers' creativity. My only quibble is that I wish she'd put the prices for the designer handbags. I don't remember if she put a works referenced list in the back of the book (another usual quibble of mine when it comes to nonfiction books). I'd recommend this book to anyone who likes purses and fashion history. ★★★★

 

In desperation, I decided to actually bring a physical book with me (safe in its padded book sleeve) to work, where surely the boredom of working the Thursday night shift would force me to reach for the book and read it, thereby breaking my reading slump. It didn't, but it did make me start reading an ebook on my Nook app (my second, sneakier reason for bringing a physical book to read)!

That book was A Nobleman's Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel by K.J. Charles, a sequel to The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen (flash-reviewed here). This book is about brand new earl Rufus d'Aumnesty, whose hostile formerly-estranged family is fighting tooth and nail against this "interloper", taking any and every reason to question his legitimacy as earl, which brings us to the other lead, Luke Doomsday, whose mother may or may not have married Rufus' ho dad before he married Rufus' mom. Luke was a very young teenager during the events of TSLoCG (he's the smuggler chief's nephew), and he grew up to be a secretary (Gareth the baronet from the first book gave him an education). Rufus needs help sorting out the truth, his office, and the family books (which are all as fucked up as the estates and the family), so he hires Luke as his secretary. They're both super attracted to each other, fight it a bit due to the whole boss/employee thing, and fall in love. Luke helps Rufus with being an earl and dealing with his family, but he has secrets of his own, and his own agenda for being at the estate... This book was excellent, with a bit of a Gothic flair towards the end, and actually settled a mystery that began in the first book. ANG2SaS has the same themes of healing from childhood trauma as its predecessor. Luke has a facial disfigurement (scar from an attack), and Rufus is demisexual and dyslexic. ★★★★ 🌶🌶🌶  DM me for trigger warnings

As is usually the case, this broke me out of my reading slump and I started reading again like it was going out of style. As it was still Ace Week (my reason for picking the above book), I decided to finally start on the Murderbot Diaries, which I had bought (along with several other Martha Wells ebooks) during a charity bundle purchase thing. I'd been wanting to read the Murderbot Diaries ever since I first heard about them, and I'd really been looking forward to reading them ever since the trailer for the Murderbot Apple TV+ series came out (it looks so good. I need to get a free month of Apple TV+ code or get someone I know who has Apple TV+ to let me watch it). I love stories about sentient robots making friends. I was going to start reading them through Libby, but my public library doesn't have them on ebook :((( I started reading these books on Friday afternoon, and as of writing this (Sunday evening), I've read the first six books in the series plus a short story, and that's that I couldn't read for most of Saturday. I lied when I told you I was reading like it's going out of style; it's more than that: I've INHALED them. I am obsessed. They are so freaking good, and I love Murderbot (it/its pronouns). It's anxious and depressed and autistic (hates eye contact etc.) and aroace and nonbinary (duh, it's a robot) and deeply funny and sarcastic. Murderbot (Murderbot is its private name; to others it goes by SecUnit, which is somewhere between a human being going by "Human" and going by their occupation title instead of a name) dislikes humans but also can't stop caring about them. It'll be deeply annoyed by them then be like, "Is anyone else gonna protect these stupid humans and keep them alive?" and not wait for an answer. When its friends make it experience an emotion, it has to turn and face a wall. I love it so much. I need eleventy thousand more books in this series; I'm preemptively mourning running out of them. I recommend this series to anyone who likes sci fi action stories with a touch of mystery, and stories about robots gaining sentience and friends and dealing with what it means to be a person.  ★★★★ DM me for trigger warnings 

I'm writing this blog post instead of reading them because the epub ebooks are all on my computer, and Apple Books didn't transfer them over to my Apple Books app on my iPhone. Ugh. I'm counting down the minutes of this ref shift until I can go home and keep reading the series. This is basically me right now:

 Update: I made some Murderbot memes and posted them to my Instagram (I forgot to include the one above tho). My IG handle is in my Social Media note. 

*undiagnosed, but like let's be real