Well, it has certainly been a strange year! But if nothing else, 2020 has been a fairly good year of reading for me. As always, I participated in the annual Goodreads Reading Challenge, and this was the first time in many years that I easily met my numerical goal well in advance. The pandemic has changed my reading habits significantly, and many of my goals and priorities shifted from what I thought they would be at the beginning of the year. Let’s take a look back at my year in books!
Month: December 2020
Christmas Ghost Stories, Part 2
A couple years ago, I wrote about the tradition of the Christmas ghost story—which became an indispensable part of the festive season after Charles Dickens published A Christmas Carol in 1843. The heyday of the Christmas ghost story overlapped with the Golden Age of the ghost story more generally, and many celebrated spooky authors began incorporating Christmas into their haunting tales. Last time, I highlighted several stories by male authors, but women were equally if not more involved in the festive ghost story game. Check out the stories by women below for a seasonally appropriate scare!
Review of The Only Good Indians—Indigenous Horror
What happens when the hunters become the hunted? The Only Good Indians by renowned indigenous author Stephen Graham Jones was one of the most-talked about horror novels this year and came out back in July. I finally decided to check out for myself whether it lives up to the hype. Continue reading Review of The Only Good Indians—Indigenous Horror
Gideon the Ninth Review—Haunted Necromancers
A skull-faced girl in black slicing her way through an explosion of skeletons—I only needed to see the cover of this book to know that it would be exactly up my alley. Despite the fact that this debut novel was one of the most talked-about fantasy releases of 2019, it took me over a year to finally get my hands on a copy. I am, of course, talking about Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. But if you’re late to the bandwagon like I was, now is the perfect time to hop on—especially since the second book in the series, Harrow the Ninth, just came out this summer. Continue reading Gideon the Ninth Review—Haunted Necromancers