#AusReads Book Review: “A Kind of Magic” by Anna Spargo-Ryan

Title: A Kind of Magic
Author: Anna Spargo-Ryan
Audio book narrator: Anna Spargo-Ryan
Genre: Memoir
Intended audience: Adult
Date Read: 08/02/2023 – 22/02/2023
Rating: no rating

Review: 

I always feel a bit weird rating and reviewing non-fiction, memoir in particular. Who am I to say “3 stars for baring your soul, Anna.”? Even if it’s four or five, it still feels odd to put a numerical rating on something so personal to someone. So that’s why this review is unrated and more of a chat about my reading experience. Which I guess is basically a review. Ugh.

Ahem. Anyway.

I knew I wanted to read this book because I follow the author on Twitter and she is an excellent human being. She truly does lay herself and her struggles bare in this book, but as the blurb states, throughout it all, there is an unwavering sense of optimism.

Anna goes into detail about her experience of being mentally ill, as well as that of trying to find treatments for her various diagnoses. She also talks about how a diagnosis can impact on your very identity, and what that means when a diagnoses changes over the years. There’s also some medical science talk peppered throughout, explaining a myriad of mental illnesses.

There’s something about listening to a memoir like this read by the author. I like to think you’re hearing it as she intended for it to be heard. When the tone is sarcastic, she is definitely sarcastic. When she is describing the terror of her first psychotic episode, you feel that fear.

I guess if I had any quibbles (again, “who am I to say…”) it would be the way the timeline jumped around a lot and I had to sometimes work out where I was now in Anna’s life story. I suspect this was partially by design, at least. One of the concepts the book delves into is ‘mental time travel’ and how certain mental illnesses can affect a person’s ability to mentally construct past and future times, and she talks a lot about her experiences with this, and the fallibility of human memory.

A finaly word on triggers. This isn’t a book for everyone. It gets pretty harrowing at times. Anna describes some pretty scary experiences, both in terms of mental health episodes, as well a creepy boyfriends and bad experiences with drug use to name a couple. If you’ve had similar ones, you may wish to take stock of whether you’re in the right space for it.

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“In my mind, I am eloquent… but when I open my mouth, everything collapses.” // Review of “Warm Bodies” by Isaac Marion

Title: Warm Bodies (Warm Bodies #1)
Author: Isaac Marion
Genre: Pots-apocalyptic/zombies
Intended audience: Adult
Date Read: 12/02/2022 – 19/02/2022
Rating: ★★★★

Review: 

Not being a huge fan of zombie fiction, it’s likely I wouldn’t have picked up this book if I didn’t have hazy memories of enjoying the movie. Plus it was second-hand and $4, which helped.

The thing about Warm Bodies is that it’s a unique take on the zombie genre (she says from her very uneducated viewpoint). Yes, R, M and their Dead compatriots crave human flesh, but that’s not their sole purpose in life. They’ve created their own society, with rituals and bonds to each other. This was one of the things I found most fascinating about the book.

Warm Bodies is not just the story of a literal zombie apocalypse. There’s also a metaphorical one, and there’s a lot of examination of quality of life, and at what point (if there is one) are you or society as a whole better of just laying down and dying?

The evolution of R and his fellow Fleshies regaining their humanity while the Boneys (zombies that are literally just skeletons at this point) kick and scream as they resist any change is a perfect metaphor for a society rediscovering its soul.

R’s connection to Julie being the catalyst for these changes work well, but I have to admit, when I thought about the romance from Julie’s perspective, it was a bit ick. I mean, she’s talking about kissing him even before his heart starts beating again. Do you really want to kiss a corpse, even if he has expressed affection for you?

I hadn’t realised when I started the book that it’s part of a four-book series. While I am not opposed to continuing on, I have to be honest, this first one wraps up pretty well. I probably wouldn’t seek out the subsequent books, but I would probably check one out if I ran across it in the library. But treated as a standalone, this one holds up pretty well so I’d recommend checking it out if you’re curious.

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Where are all the reviews, Emily?

Image from pexels.com

I suspect this post isn’t really that necessary.

I’m sure everyone knows that people have lives outside their book blogs and that posts may therefore come in ebbs and flows.

But I wanted to say it anyway, and hopefully discourage myself from saying “this month I started regularly reviewing again!” every few months. Because then my motivation invariably dries up again.

Sometimes reading is hard! It’s much easier to just play on my phone on the tram to work.

Sometimes it just takes me forever to get through a book, even if I’m picking it up regularly.

Sometimes I’m reading too many books at once and not finishing any of them.

Sometimes I just don’t have enough to say about a book to warrant a review. I’ve been feeling that a lot lately. Give me another five star read, please, universe!

But I think you can always rely on my coming back to this blog at various times through each year. The next few weeks are one of those times. I can confirm that there will be three or four reviews before the end of March.

After that? Who knows!

February 2023 Reading Wrap-up

February is one of those months where I tell myself the format of the books I read doesn’t matter (graphic novel, audio book, etc.) I read six books! That’s what matters!

Also apparently WordPress has a bug which means I can’t do my cute pile-of-books bullet points in the list below, which is sad. But my experience has apparently been passed onto the developers, so here’s hoping it will be back soon!

PAST MONTH’S READING:

• Heartstopper Volume 2 by Alice Oseman (YA romance/graphic novel – 3 stars)
• Heartstopper Volume 3 by Alice Oseman (YA romance/graphic novel – 3 stars)
• Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion (dystopian/zombie fiction – 4 stars – review forthcoming)
• The Killing Code by Ellie Marney (YA historical fiction/thriller – review)
• The Clocks by Agatha Christie (mystery – 3 stars)
• Heartstopper Volume 4 by Alice Oseman (YA romance/graphic novel – 4 stars)

BOOKTUBE:

I’ve started making booktube videos again! Here’s the latest:

• Sims Readathon Mid-Month Update

INSTAGRAM:

After spending some time being pretty broke,

You can see all my bookish photos and reels (plus some RL as well) on my Instagram.

CURRENTLY READING:

Physical book: I’ve just picked up Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia again, after putting it aside last October when I was sick and exhausted (right before going travelling for 3 months). Ugh, it is exactly the vibe I’ve been wanting. I wish I’d picked it back up sooner! The only is that the print is really small but I’m coping!

Ebook: Nothing at the moment.

Audio book: I’m listening to A Kind of Magic by Anna Spargo-Ryan. This is a memoir in which the author documents her lifelong struggles with mental illness. It can be harrowing at times but she approaches the subject with a lot of humour. Anna narrates the audio book and hearing her describe her own experiences adds another special layer to it.

PLANNING TO READ NEXT:

I’m not sure yet, but it might be Tussaud by Belinda Lyons-Lee. I picked this up earlier in the month and wasn’t getting into it, but maybe it’s time to try again.

What are you reading? 🙂

#AusReads #LoveOzYA Book Review: “The Killing Code” by Ellie Marney

Title: The Killing Code
Author: Ellie Marney
Audio book narrator: Natalie Naudus, Kelsey Navarro
Genre: Historical/mystery
Intended audience: YA
Date Read: 08/02/2023 – 22/02/2023
Rating: ★★★★

Review: 

Ellie Marney is my favourite Australian YA author, so I was of course very keen to check out her latest offering (even if the book had been out six months by the time I got to it!).

I have to admit this didn’t feel like an Ellie Marney book in the way her others have to me. This may be partially because it’s the first time I’ve listened to one of her books. And hearing American accents for 9 hours made it easy to forget it was by an Australian author. It’s also set in the 1940s and while it’s not Marney’s first historical fiction. None Shall Sleep was set in the 1980s, so this was a different feel again.

That said, a codebreaking facility during the Second World War is an excellent setting for a YA crime novel, and Marney definitely makes the most of it. I love a good serial killer novel and I really enjoyed the parallels between the girls’ codebreaking jobs and cracking the code of the killer.

The mystery did seem a bit slow at times, though for the most part that was offset by the characters’ personal stories. As the blurb mentions, Kit has a secret she’s hiding from everyone (though the reader knows what it is from the end of the first chapter). I didn’t feel like Kit and Moya had quite as much chemistry as some of Marney’s other romantic pairings, but seeing their relationship blossom was lovely and I loved how it was resolved at the end of the book.

This may not be my favourite Ellie Marney book (that would be White Night), this is a well-researched and engaging addition to her repertoire.

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January 2023 Reading Wrap-up

We have been back on home turf for a week now, and it’s been such a relief! I’m heading back to work tomorrow and it will be good to really settle back into routines. Quantitatively, it’s been an excellent reading month, but Heartstopper was the only book that I gave more than three stars to. The rest of my reads have all been fine down to okay. Fingers crossed for some 4 and 5 star reads in February!

PAST MONTH’S READING:

1. Cupcakes, Trinkets and Other Deadly Magic (Dowsers #1) by Meghan Ciana Doidge (cozy mystery/urban fantasy – 2 stars – review)
2. The Ghostly Grounds: Murder and Breakfast by Sophie Love (cozy mystery – 3 stars – review)
3. Miss Percy’s Guide to the Care and Feeding of British Dragons (historical fantasy – 3 stars)
4. A Study in Time by Maureen Flynn (sci-fi – 3 stars)
5. Behind the Veil by E. J. Dawson (historical fantasy/horror – 3 stars – review forthcoming)
6. Mrs Rochester’s Ghost by Lindsa Marcott (thriller – 2 stars)
7. The Mightnight Library by Matt Haig (magical realism – 3 stars)
8. Heartstopper by Alice Oseman (YA romance/graphic novel – 4 stars)

BOOKTUBE:

I’ve started making booktube videos again! Here’s the latest:

1. Sims Readathon February TBR

INSTAGRAM:

Not exactly a bookish photo but book-adjacent! I only used my British Library card for one day and I won’t get back there before it expires, but I was pretty chuffed to get it!

You can see all my bookish photos and reels (plus some RL as well) on my Instagram.

CURRENTLY READING:

I don’t actually have anything on the go at the moment. I finished Heartstopper earlier this afternoon.

PLANNING TO READ NEXT:

It’s very likely it will be Heartstopper Volume 2. Being very simple graphic novels, these do not take long to get through at all and my partner has bought the whole series. I’m doing the Sims Readathon in February and one of the prompts is to read a book with a school setting, for which this series works perfectly.

What are you reading? 🙂

Book Review: “The Ghostly Grounds: Murder and Breakfast” by Sophie Love

Title: The Ghostly Grounds: Murder and Breakfast (Canine Casper Cozy Mystery #1)
Author: Sophie Love
Genre: Urban fantasy/cosy mystery
Intended audience: Adult
Date Read: 03/01/2022 – 04/01/2022
Rating: ★★★

Review: 

I have to admit, I went into this because it looked spooky and paranormal. Having now read it, I would have to say that is the books’ weakest feature. While there is definitely something ghostly going on, it really had no impact on the story itself.

I did enjoy the cast of characters. It was particularly nice having a lead character, Marie, who is nearing 40, rather than the usual mid-20s protagonists. I did have to suspend my disbelief a little with how easily she set up the B&B – less than $11k in savings to fix the place up and no building inspections or approvals in sight. Just set up a website!

Sometimes the writing felt a little bit repetitive, especially as different characters kept asking Marie about the rumours that her aunt’s manor might be haunted, and she gave the same answer every time. There was also a lot of hand-wringing over whether she could afford to keep the B&B running, which got a bit tiresome after a while, even if it is realistic.

But the idea of a paranormal investigator being in town at the same time as a noted sceptic and the latter ending up dead… that’s an excellent premise for a cozy mystery, and I did enjoy that side of the book. The investigation moves along at a good pace, and it doesn’t feel like there’s any padding while the story waited for Marie to find more clues.

While I enjoyed this instalment well enough, I did pick this up as a freebie. I am not sure I am necessarily invested enough to continue the series. It might remain at the back of my mind, but I have so many other books to read, it’s unlikely I’m going to return to these ones.

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Book Review: “Cupcakes, Trinkets and Other Deadly Magic” by Meghan Ciana Doidge

Title: Cupcakes, Trinkets and Other Deadly Magic (Dowsers #1)
Author: Meghan Ciana Doidge
Genre: Urban fantasy/cosy mystery
Intended audience: Adult
Date Read: 01/01/2022 – 02/01/2022
Rating: ★★

Review: 

I’m not having a lot of luck with urban fantasies lately. Anyone who knows me I will snap up anything that features both baking and magic, but this one really needed a good edit to make it stand out.

There were a lot of things that weren’t really explained very well, and other times where the main character explains too much at a bad time, halting the plot and making the reader forget what was actually happening. Several times, the narration would say something like “Now that I knew how to…” or “so that was why…” and I had no idea where the revelation had come from.

They mystery itself was actually decent enough. I didn’t mind reading the ins and outs of the characters pursuing their leads. The villain was fairly obvious but when it came down to it, I couldn’t quite understand their reasoning, and I’m still not sure what actually transpired at the end. Maybe that’s explained in later books, but I’m not interested enough to continue the series.

I think my favourite character was the vampire Kett. He was the one who seemed to have the most interesting personality, and who seemed like the most fully-formed of the side characters. While there were more werewolves on the scene than vampires, the most interesting one of them ends up dead early on and I never particularly warmed to any of the others.

One more thing to note: a key element of the story is that Jade thought she was half-human, half-witch, but the human aspect may not be correct (she never knew her father). When she finally does get her mother and grandmother to open up at the end of the book, they tell her her father was someone her mother hooked up with while backpacking through Australia and taking part in an “aboriginal fertility ceremony”. Yikes. I’m not an Indigenous Australian, but I would still encourage this Canadian author to not throw around terms like that in the name of humour or a quirky plot point.

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December 2022 Reading Wrap-up

Hello from Rome, and Happy New Year! December started off strong in the reading department, but it fell down in the second half of the month. Obviously that’s going to happen while travelling. Honestly, it’s 19 days until we return to Australia and as much as we still have some great places to visit, I am looking forward to being home again.

PAST MONTHS’ READING HIGHLIGHTS:

1. Planting Pearls by Virginia King (suspense/paranormal – 5 stars – review)
2. A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Bakin g by T. Kingfisher (MG fantasy – 4 stars – review)
3. The War of the Fae: the Changelings (YA fantasy – 1 star – review)
4. The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne by Jonathan Stroud (YA fantasy/dystopia – 3 stars – review)

Once again, I’m skipping the usual Booktube and Bookstagram sections on this post. From February, I’m hoping to be more active in both those spaces again and then I’ll re-incorporate them into the blog.

CURRENTLY READING:

Physical book: Nothing at the moment. I will admit that I am looking forward to being home with my bookcases.

Ebook: Cupcakes, Trinkets and Other Deadly Magic by Meghan Ciana Doidge. This was a Kindle freebie and it’s… fine. It’s a light-hearted paranormal mystery but it’s nothing mind-blowing.

Audio book: Nothing on the go at the moment. Maybe I should download something for the plane home…

PLANNING TO READ NEXT:

Genuinely no idea! It’s harder to determine that when you’re confined to ebooks and can’t cast your eyes over the bookshelves to see what you fancy. I am sure I’ll find something, though.

Well, this post has been short and sweet! I’ll finish it up here.

What are you reading? 🙂

Book Review: “The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne” by Jonathan Stroud

Title: The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne
Author: Jonathan Stroud
Genre: Fantasy/Dystopia
Intended audience: YA
Date Read: 10/12/2022 – 09/12/2022
Rating: ★★★

Review: 

Jonathan Stroud is one of my few insta-buy authors. I loved the Bartimaeus trilogy and I loved Lockwood and Co. (looking forward to the Netflix series in January!). But this book… I don’t know. I think I liked it? Hence the three stars. But it took so long to get through and I did feel a bit dissatisfied at the end.

I think the main problem was that Stroud didn’t give us enough of… anything, really.

We know that there was a “Cataclysm” and that it has broken up the UK into a series of walled “Surviving Towns”, but we don’t know what caused it. We know that it caused wild animals to turn into giant mutations of themselves, and created a race of cannibalistic sub-humans known as The Tainted, but that’s about the extent of our knowledge.

We know a bit about how various religious faiths throughout the world have sort of amalgamated into one big Faith and religious authoritarianism is huge. We know that Scarlett lost someone, possibly to one of these Faith Houses but we don’t know anything about who it was, or the circumstances.

Being a closed book is a huge part of Scarlett’s character, but it does make it hard to get invested in her. All we really see is the bravado she puts on. As she starts to warm towards Albert, we get past the exterior a little bit, but I think a bit more was needed.

Albert, tbough, is an open book and such an interesting character. He’s been raised in an abusive environment, and up until the events of the book, has never been outside the walls of that environment. He is so naïve but so genuine, though his upbringing has taught him to be sneaky in some ways. I really loved his development throughout the story.

I am intrigued enough to read the second book. I do wonder if the first book was a whole lot of set-up and the next book will be more interesting. But I’m going to get it from the library.

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