Finished reading Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree, a short fantasy novel about an orc who retires from the adventuring life to open a coffee shop in a city where nobody has ever heard of coffee. This was completely ridiculous and cozy and charming, and the kids would probably describe it as “so gay (affectionate)”.
Finished reading Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett, followup to Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries. I guess I didn’t mention that the first book was a romance novel in addition to all the other stuff it had going on. This book continues right along the same path, and was equally charming.
Finished reading The Eighth Detective by Alex Pavesi. Several short murder mysteries linked by an explicit exploration of the form, the overarching story doesn’t play fair but nevertheless is clever and ends on a satisfying note.
I’m now in the rare-for-me situation of reading two books at once: The first gets me so mad that I can’t read it at bedtime, so I had to start a second.
Finished reading Kafka on the Shore (海辺のカフカ) by Haruki Murakami. I’m not quite certain what I’ve read, and it’ll take me a bit to digest. There were parts I really loved and parts which let’s say I found problematic; I don’t know if the problematic parts are a Murakami theme or unique to this book.