WWW Wednesday #6

I have holidays this week, so I have all the time to relax. I spend my time reading books, watching movies on Netflix, finally playing some games on the PS4 that I got at the beginning of the lockdown, and – if the weather allows – some walks. I feel my stress levels are gradually dropping (yay!) so I don’t want to force myself too much with reading this week, and I will see where I end up with the reads. WWW Wednesday is a bookish meme which is currently hosted by Taking On A World Of Books. Its idea is very simple, answer the three following questions:

Based on my poll of last weekend, I have started Frankenstein – the book was on my TBR since before I started GoodReads in 2011 so it was definitely time to finally read it. And it is a perfect autumn read, which will hopefully fit the Gothic square for Halloween Bingo. I am about 30 pages in and so far, so good. The story seems to be about to start.

Yesterday I was looking for a quick comfort read, and as such I started Darius the Great is Not Okay. It is a very nice read so far and I think I will finish it soon.

False Value has multiple timelines running at the same time – at first I believed I had forgotten more from Lies Sleeping than I was willing to admit, but it turns out it was intentional. As always, this is a very nice read so far, I can’t wait to get back to it.

I am also listening to These Vengeful Hearts. The story has not completely captivated me yet, and I am still figuring out which is the best way to listen to the story, but I quite like the audiobook format (although it says 9 more hours, which is a little be demotivating).

Since I have the week off I was trying to lower the TBR a little bit by reading some (shorter) books, as well as finishing some books which I had been carrying over already for a couple of weeks.

Carnivalesque was the first read I started for the Halloween Bingo and it immediately set the tone for a not so successful edition of the bingo, unfortunately. The writing was very awkward in the beginning, and while I sort of got used to it as the story progressed, I never really connected with the story or the characters, so I am mainly glad for it to be over.

The Black Cat is a short story from Edgar Allen Poe, and a an obvious choice for the black cat square. Very atmospheric, but also (unnecessarily) cruel.

I also read Lysistrata, the titular play from the Aristophanes collection and the last one I still had to read in this book. It is one of the more ones with the women declaring: “make love not war” – quite literally.

The Straw King and The Mask of One Thousand Tears were two graphic novels that I still had to read but which, with the pandemic, had somehow gotten lost in all the other books I wanted to read. What I was a little bit disappointed in for both books was that apparently these were both just the first parts in a two book story. For me, it could have perfectly been just the one book and a complete story.

Snapdragon Alley was one of the (short) books which has been forever on my TBR. I think I once got it during a Smashwords sale. I have the entire series, but I found that it was all a little convenient and that everything moved too smoothly, so I don’t think I will continue the series.

Finally, I read I Forced A Bot To Write This Book, and while it was never entirely clear to me whether it was actually written by an AI or not, it was nice. For the first couple of chapters at least. Because it gets old very quickly, and I think it best digested in small portions only. Nicest part for me was the horoscope, which could not be distinguished from the ‘real’ ones.

Same as previous weeks. I’ll try to get the number of books I am reading down a little bit, and maybe some Halloween Bingo reads, but currently, there really is no telling what I will end up with.

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How was your reading week? Read anything you would recommend? Let me know in the comments!