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