First Lines Fridays: June 9, 2023

In a somewhat late and chaotic fashion, here is another First Lines Friday post! This book is my next buddy read. I’ve been busy preparing my house for a lowkey event, so scheduling blog posts was not a priority. This is also the reason my blog hopping continues to be lower than usual. But after today I’ll hopefully be back at it!

First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?  The rules are as follows:

  • Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
  • Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
  • Finally… reveal the book!

If you’re using Twitter, don’t forget to use #FirstLinesFridays!

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June 2023 TBR List

When I make TBR lists I tend to treat them as a list of “hopeful reads.” I’m easily swayed from a TBR list I create for myself, usually because of mood reading or the arrival of a library hold. However, this time I want to stick to my June 2023 TBR list. I don’t know if I’ll be able to read all of these books. But I want to stay as close to this June 2023 TBR list as possible for several reasons.

The first is to read the first book of a series or two to decide whether I want to purchase the inevitable special edition of their sequels. Second, I want to focus more on my own physical backlog, which was one of my bookish goals this year. And third, August is an ARC-heavy month and I need to start prioritizing because July will be incredibly busy for me.

With all that in mind, here is my June 2023 TBR list. It seems I gave myself a lot of chonkers for this month. The book titles link to either Bookshop.org or Amazon.

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Wyrd and Wonder: Bite-Size Fantasies

Todays’s Wyrd and Wonder prompt is “bite-size fantasies.” While this sounds delightfully fun, it is meant to focus on short story or novella-length fantasy stories. Since last year’s Wyrd and Wonder I have read quite a bit more fantasy books (obviously), some of which were on the shorter side. Here is a list of some bite-size fantasies that might be of interest. I loosely interpreted novellas as 200 pages in under, though I believe technically they are typically shorer than that.

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Arthurian Retellings Reading List

Initially created for Wyrd and Wonder 2023, I decided to pull together an Arthurian retellings list. I have always been low key interested in Arthurian legend. Like many things in life, we all have many interests but not enough time in which to truly delve deep into them. So I satisfy my interest with reading Arthurian retellings. And there are some great ones out there to read.

Since there are many works on Arthurian legend, this list is not comprehensive. Instead, this Arthurian retellings list contains books I have read. It also has some which I have not yet read, but would like to in the long term. My intention is to create a working list. That is, I plan to update it as I read my way through more Arthurian tales. I am always open to recommendations, so if you have any that fall under this topic, please let me know in the comment section.

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Book Review: Spear by Nicola Griffith

Today’s book review is SPEAR by Nicola Griffith, a queer retelling of one aspect of Arthurian legend. This ethereal read is about identity and brims with beautiful, lyrical writing.

Author: Nicola Griffith
Series: None
Age Category: Adult
Publisher: Tordotcom
Publish Date: April 19, 2022
Print Length: 192

Want to support local bookstores? Buy a copy of Spear on Bookshop.org!*

*These are not affiliate links and I do not make a commission from any purchase made using these links.

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