Currently Reading
What Happened to Lucy Vale?
5%. A girl and her mother move into a house where sixteen years ago another girl disappeared and her mother was found hanged in the house. The story will be told in alternating timelines, but I haven't gotten that far yet, so it's just present day. Sounds interesting. I read another book by this author and liked it, though I blank out on what book it was literally seconds after looking it up each time, so I don't think it was that memorable.

Our Hideous Progeny
41%. A sort of Frankenstein fanfic. Victor Frankenstein's grand niece decides to follow in his footsteps and try to create life, but this time since she and her husband are paleontologists, they decide to create a dinosaur rather than a human. That said, while that is the main plot, it's only a small part of the book, which is more about the MC's struggles to be taken seriously as a woman who is interested in science. I'm really liking this so far. I'm listening to the audiobook and the narrator is great.

Suddenly a Murder
9%. A group of friends from a ritzy high school go to a 1920s themed party and there's a murder. I decided to pick this up because the 1920s themed party aspect sounded interesting, but I have quickly (within the first few paragraphs) become annoyed by rich teens being obnoxious (though the MC is a scholarship student and not rich herself). I'll finish it because I dislike not finishing things, but I doubt I'll really like it that much.

The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State
No progress.

Recently Finished
How to Survive a Horror Story
This was an interesting premise but I never felt like it really got good and I didn't think the twist was all that. It was fine, but doesn't make me want to run out and check out more by the author. Also, this didn't really have an impact on my enjoyment of the book, but I could not believe that the author couldn't take two seconds to google to see if a store they are mentioning by name exists in the place they are saying it does. No one in LA is going to the Piggly Wiggly, because it is very famously a southern grocery store chain. She could have just said grocery store, or she could have checked to see what stores exist, but nah. (The same character also lives in his parents' basement, which is not quite as unbelievable as the Piggly Wiggly, because I'm sure there are at least a couple houses here that have basements, but it just added to the general vibe of carelessness.)

Newcomer
I found the format a little tedious at first, but ended up enjoying this.

Shady Hollow
This was definitely a miss for me. Too much focus on describing the animals and their town compared to the rest of the story.

DeadEndia vol. 1-3
I reread the first two books because the third is finally out! Apparently it came out last year, but I just realized it was out a week or so ago. It's been too long since I read the others, so I had to refresh my memory, and I'm glad I did, because I would have been struggling to keep up if I'd just jumped right in to volume three. This was a good conclusion and I really love this series.

Skip to Loafer vol. 12

Hen na E vol. 3

It's officially the start of Halloweentime at Disneyland. It was also in the mid-nineties today, so crowds and heat, not a great combination, but we still wanted to go, and we had a great time despite the heat (crowds weren't actually too bad once we were actually in the park).

( Halloween! )

1. We got dinner from Shake Shack tonight and they have a really good banana shake right now.

2. I finally got all our lego sets catalogued, so now we can keep track of what we have. (You know you have too many when you need a site to keep track of them.)

3. Molly looks so sweet here! (It's because she is sweet.)

1. The area manager who has been out on maternity leave for three months is back to work today. I'm glad to have her back, but wow there was a lot to catch her up on while she's been gone. I feel like I did so much talking today lol.

2. Tomorrow I have a meeting in the afternoon, but can have a leisurely morning, which I am looking forward to, as today was spent almost entirely with the aforementioned catching up and then an afternoon meeting, and I got home lateish and didn't really have much time to do other stuff, either work or personal.

3. Tuxie loves curling up under these plants.

We made sure to get to the park right when they opened today because the Kuzco sipper goes on sale today and based on how fast the glow cubes sold out last year, we knew we had to act fast.

( Read more... )

Currently Reading
How to Survive a Horror Story
16%. A group of people are invited to the reading of a will for a famous horror author at his family mansion, only to find it's haunted. Interesting so far.

Newcomer
52%. Second (in the English translation order) Detective Kaga mystery. This is told in an interesting manner, not with the detective as the POV character, but with each section being from the POV of a possible suspect, but with each section wrapping up by clearing that person. I liked the first book better, but I'm enjoying this one, too.

Shady Hollow
74%. A typical small village murder mystery, but they're all woodland creatures. I got this on an audible sale when I was looking for a second book to buy on a buy one get one free sale, so I took a chance on something I was not wholly sold on and without having finished this book I can say I definitely will not be continuing the series. I have often struggled to figure out what makes something a "cozy mystery", and it seems that a lot of times things are declared to be cozies just because the person solving the mystery is a woman, or they're not a professional, but then I started this book and I'm like, that's definitely a cozy mystery. Way more time is spent on describing in detail the various animals and their town and all that than on the mystery, especially in the first third of the book. It's not what I'm interested in, and for me this would have worked much better as a comic, where you can just show all the cute animals and stuff through illustration, without going on and on about it forever. The mystery is fine, though, so it's not a bad book, just not a good fit for me.

The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State
13%.

Recently Finished
Isle of Ever
I was not expecting this book to end without wrapping anything up. There is a sequel, and this really feels like what should be one book split into two, which is not my preference.

A Death at the Dionysus Club
I guess these books are from a small publisher, but that doesn't excuse the lack of professionalism in the audiobooks. The first one had a narrator with a lozenge in his mouth the whole time, and this second one has a different narrator who did the whole first chapter in a wildly different voice than he did the rest of the book, like he was trying it out and decided not to continue with it, but rather than rerecord the first chapter, just left it at that. The voice used for the first chapter was terrible, so I'm glad he switched, but why on earth leave it like that?

Drop Dead Sisters
This was fun. Not sure if I will read the sequel or not, though.

Abscond
Coming of age short story set in the 1960s about an Indian American boy dealing with his father's sudden death. I enjoyed it.

We went down to Disneyland for dinner last night. It's that in-between season when we've pretty much exhausted all the new menu items and seen all the summer stuff, but while they're getting ready for Halloween, it's not quite there yet. It was very busy, though, because the two lower tiers of passholders have been blocked out for most of the summer and can finally come back, plus there are two special magic key promos right now (a free shopping bag and 50% off lightning lane passes), so people were after those.

( Mostly Halloween )

1. We got Indian food from the same place as we did a couple weeks ago and this time both our main focus was the batter fried paneer sticks lol. I just ordered them on a whim last time (they're called paneer pakora so I was expecting more of something filled with cheese rather than what it was) but they were so good. (The other food we got was good, too, but these would be hard to top.)

2. I am so glad I spotted Ollie like this and was able to get some photos. Truly a sight to brighten any day.

1. Tomorrow a local news station is going to be filming short segments at the new store all morning, so today I went down there in the afternoon to help stock and tidy up. The filming is starting super early (even before the store opens) so most of the tidying up has to be done today. Thankfully, while it was busy today, it wasn't nearly as hectic as it has been the past couple weeks, so it was easier to keep things in decent shape.

2. This morning I had a meeting with the Japan IT team who is here for the month helping with the inventory system project that is now my main focus, and I finally got some more clarity on what exactly will be expected of me, so that's good.

3. Jasper is so handsome.

Currently Reading
Isle of Ever
23%. A young girl learns she will inherit a family fortune if she can follow her ancestor's clues and find a mysterious island before the deadline. It's only just getting started but seems interesting so far.

A Death at the Dionysus Club
81%.

Drop Dead Sisters
53%.

The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State
No progress.

Recently Finished
The God of the Woods
I really liked this a lot. When I got it from the library and saw how huge it was, I wasn't sure I could finish it in time (no renewals because there are still a bunch of people with holds) but it was a fast read and I zipped through it.

Detective Aunty
First in a new mystery series featuring a recently widowed middle-aged Indian woman as the detective. In this first one, she gets a call from her daughter that she's a murder suspect after finding her landlord's dead body in her shop. I really liked this a lot. Reminded me of the Aunty Lee mystery series.

Decelerate Blue
Graphic novel about a near future dystopia where everything has to be fast and brief. Movies are under twenty minutes. Books are turned into cliff's notes versions. It's also extremely capitalistic and the mall is more important than school. The teenage MC is unhappy with the state of things, and after reading a forbidden book and stumbling (literally) across a group of revolutionaries, decides to run away from home and join them and "decelerate". This has some interesting ideas, but the world-building is very thin and often nonsensical (if they're supposed to be super efficient in their speech, why add "go" to the end of every thought? What is the "guarantee" and why do they repeat the catchphrase "go, guarantee, go"?), and the world seems to have turned into this in just one generation (the grandfather remembers the before times). It was okay. Wouldn't particularly recommend it.

Awajima Hyakkei vol. 1-5
I read the first three books so long ago that I had to reread them before reading the final two. Not one of my favorite Shimura Takako series, but it's cute. If you like her stuff, it's worth checking out. But even reading all five volumes together I had trouble keeping track of all the characters. I did like seeing the cameo by the characters from Aoi Hana, all grown up (and still a couple).