Sunday Soup - September 4

In The Soup This Week... Book Riot, Kalisha Buckhanon, Kayla Bashe, Sarah MacLean, S.B. Divya, SM Stirling, Jeffe Kennedy, Domino Finn (as you can see, I'm still catching up on reporting out my summer reading!)

Soup Dish:  on my mind/good links

✽Bookish scrapbooking supplies! Woo! OK, they're for planners, I guess that's a thing? But perfect for my book-event scrapbook(s). I am eyeballing these stickers and this washi tape. Thanks to Jessica at Book Riot for the roundup.

✽Found this article on diverse-YA author Kalisha Buckhanon in my alumni magazine: "Fiction can live. The stories can live well past the moment and teach people much later in the future what life was at a certain moment in time for certain people. Nonfiction, besides some of the most powerful treatises or legal decisions that changed the states of the world, or anointed essayists like [James] Baldwin and [Joan] Didion, is ephemeral. It moves with the times, and time moves very fast. So it must be much more aggressive in its address. Fiction can relax, because we have novels like The Bluest Eye and Their Eyes Were Watching God that leap through time."

✽Given the rise of a fascist, racist, xenophobic, scapegoating presidential candidate in the US, Nazi-sympathizing children's books seem particularly insidious. Commentary on "A Year of Borrowed Men" -- and by "borrowed," the author means "forced labor from POWs." Hat tip to @KaylaBashe.

Saved and Sampled:  titles that caught my eye on social media, samples waiting on my Kindle to be, well, sampled. As you can see, I'm not doing my TBR-reduction plan any good.

Samples:
Death Becomes Her (the Kurtherian Gambit), by Michael Anderle
NEXT! The Search for My Last First Date, by Robert James
The Dark Knight's Captive Bride, by Natasha Wild
Surrendering (Regent Vampire Lords Vol 1), by K.L. Krieg

Saved/Marked for Later
Loved by the Dragon by Vivienne Savage
All for a Rose (The Blood Realm Series Book 1), by Jennifer Blackstream
Fish Out of Water, by Hailey Edwards

What I'm reading
Some from the last week or so, some from earlier this summer:

✽A Scot in the Dark, by Sara MacLean. A lovely historical with the most brave, vulnerable heroine and amazing Scottish hero. Look for a full review this week, released last Tuesday.

✽Runtime, by S. B. Divya. Great futuristic novella about an underdog in a cybernetic-enhanced race. The world-building was really fun and layered. There were some bits that didn't seem important for this story but could play into a longer series. The author says a sequel is in the works but not sold yet. Here's hoping the world gets to read it. A little YA, a little post-apocalyptic, but to my mind, basically a classic speculative sci-fi story. Diverse characters & author, if you're tracking that.

✽Prince of Outcasts, by S. M. Stirling. Another installment of a favorite series. In the ongoing re-building of civilization, the new generation of adventurers from Montival face the latest incarnation of the supernatural "Big Bad." Cliffhanger ending. Also will get the full review treatment soon; title releases this Tuesday.

✽Pages of the Mind, by Jeffe Kennedy. I read this quite a bit earlier in the summer.  I always think the Tala books are shorter than they really are; the pages just fly by while I'm immersed in the world and the characters. This story kicks off a possible spinoff series from The Mark of the Tala series (that I loved), starring a familiar character who had the feel of a sidekick for the heroines of the first trilogy. In this book, the sidekick steps up to a starring role, and it's incredibly satisfying. It's the "always the bridesmaid, never a bride" character who gets her own hero -- and wooo, what a hero. Set on an island with an active volcano, language barriers, and very blurry lines between allies and enemies, Dafne the librarian must leave her comfort zone behind the scenes. I loved it.

✽Dead Man, by Domino Finn. I saw this one on a Facebook ad, and I thought the premise was really interesting (great cover, too). I've been looking for some new UF to try, and this was pretty good.  The Latino main character, Cisco Suarez, wakes up in the midst of danger, to an unfamiliar world and an unfamiliar body. It's a bit of a spoiler to tell you that it turns out he's been an undead zombie for 10 years. The story of how he regains his life is pretty interesting. Lots of voodoo-flavored magic paired with gangland violence, set in Miami. Three book series, I need to look into getting the next one. When my TBR permits...

I have a few more in the backlog, but I'll save them for next week...


That's it for this week. Happy reading!