By: Revanche

The fun we had: Winter 2020

April 20, 2020

If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?

Current total: Lakota, $640.74; Rural libraries, $321.62.

The fun we had in Winter 2020

Winter! December 21 through March 19
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What I read

Terry Pratchett
Unseen Academicals (Amazon, IndieBound). When the world is too much, you just need Pratchett.

All the RWA nonsense (in Reno in 2005) and over the 2019 Christmas holidays made me have a look into romances to support the decent writers. I’ve mostly avoided the romance genre through the years because I wasn’t interested in books with HEA built in but you know what? With the world being what it is right now, that’s now something I appreciate! Clearly everyone had the same thought in my town because all of Courtney Milan’s books were checked out 🙂 Also Jeannette Ng interrogated something about romances of more than ten years ago that makes a lot of sense to me now – basically, the older romances defined love in a narrowly Western way that I didn’t recognize or didn’t resonate with me. Today’s are more varied and nuanced. So fittingly, I had a whirlwind romance with romances.

Sherry Thomas
The Luckiest Lady in London (Amazon, IndieBound)
The One in My Heart (Amazon, IndieBound)
The Hidden Blade (Amazon, IndieBound)

Jade Lee
What the Groom Wants (Amazon, IndieBound)
What the Bride Wore (Amazon, IndieBound)

Tessa Dare
The Duchess Deal (Amazon)
The Wallflower Wager (Amazon, IndieBound)
The Governess Game (Amazon)

Courtney Milan
The Duchess War (Amazon)
The Countess Conspiracy (Amazon)
The Heiress Effect (Amazon)
The Suffragette Scandal (Amazon, IndieBound)
Talk Sweetly to Me (Amazon)

Christine Feehan
I liked the nuances of the women in these series but the men were … a bit much? There was way too much emphasis on the dominance of the men within the romance. Which was a shame because I liked the women’s stories and I think in the hands of someone else, perhaps these stories would have felt more balanced.
Earth Bound (Amazon)
Fire Bound (Amazon)
Bound Together (Amazon)
Judgment Road (Amazon)

I got that out of my system after a while and went back to my usual fare.

V. E. Schwab
The Near Witch (Amazon)

Sam Sykes
Seven Blades in Black (Amazon)

Brandon Sanderson
The Way of Kings (Amazon)

Neil Gaiman
Unnatural Creatures (Amazon)

Ann Leckie
Ancillary Justice (Amazon)
Ancillary Sword (Amazon)
Ancillary Mercy (Amazon)

Helen Hoang
The Bride Test (Amazon)

Where we went

Bit of a missed opportunity here. We didn’t go anywhere this quarter because we had a busy summer ahead of us. Welp.

What I watched

Captain Marvel LOVED it!!

Aladdin, the live action version. Surprisingly entertaining.

Kiki’s Delivery Service. I dove headfirst into this one but JB was meh about it. I guess it’s too soon.

The Princess Bride. Turns out this was a little too soon for JB too. Ze ran away yelling “they’re hurting Westley!” when I warned zir about the torture scene.

The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, live action. I really didn’t like this one overall but I did appreciate the Grinch’s line about out of control consumerism. I felt much the same about how Christmas revolves around, basically, wrapping up future trash (goods that aren’t truly needed) in trash (gift wrap that gets discarded). Our family is moving towards reducing our gift wrapping waste.

The Emperor’s New Groove. JB didn’t like this at first but still wanted to watch the whole thing. Pretty soon after that first viewing, they wanted to watch it every day. If only to declare how much they dislike Kuzco. Apparently there’s no such thing as redemption in a five year old’s world.