“No Present Like Time” by Steph Swainston. Even the act of typing it before starting to read it caused anxiety. At the same time, it’s really forced me to apply some stringent plot to my Persephone story. But I got past chapter 5 and it was really hard to put down. I’m having a hard time adulting here!
I think it’s Jant’s pure presence in his body that works for me so much. Sometimes I’m reading something that’s a wee bit of a romance and the whole plot I’m yelling at the MC, “Tell him god damn it!” Well, here I’m yelling at Jant to not do the cat, and I know he can’t stop because he’s an addict and… well, it’s just so much for me.
But I got to the end, and I don’t know. I wasn’t satisfied? In order to calm down I watched four episodes of Avatar: the last airbender.
LHC #24: “The God of Small Things” by Arundhati Roy. I was just setting this to active on my library account when my sister mentioned she was reading it! Weird synchronicity. Then I was carrying it around and a karate person went on a long spiel about how AR’s second book has just come out, and she wrote this one and that one, with a huge gap in between, and I said “How is it?” because I was probably on page 15 at the time, and he said “I don’t know. I haven’t read it, but I talk a good line.” He’s a high school English teacher. Then I pulled it out in a store while fishing for change, and the cashier said “Oh my god I loved that book!” and I said oh, it seemed kind of rambling but I was only on page 60, and she told me that it does focus and has a satisfying ending.
“All the Crooked Saints” by Maggie Stiefvater. The boy didn’t know he wanted this for Christmas, but since he got it for him I got to read it first. It went by quickly.
"The Piano Tuner" by Daniel Mason. My sister asked for it for Christmas, and in true family tradition, I read it first. DM did some neat things with dialog, but the ending seemed like a cop-out to me. For my Persephone novel, I might need to do with drums what DM did with pianos.