Let’s Talk: What I’m Reading This Week

Hello, hello, friends, I hope that you’re all doing well! I’m in that mood where I don’t really want to focus on one book, so I’m jumping back and forth between multiple books, so I thought I’d share a bit about some of the books that I’m reading this week!

Grab a cup of tea or whatever your favorite beverage is, get cozy, and let’s chat!

I’ve been jumping between a few books lately — reading a few chapters at a time, taking a break and then switching to something else and it’s been working pretty well for me actually! I think doing this has been really good for the reading slump I was in towards the end of May and the beginning of this month.

There were a few other books that I finished earlier this week. Including the first two books in the Cambridge Bookstore series by Elizabeth Penny, Chapter and Curse and A Treacherous Tale —- a very fun cozy mystery series that I’ll be continuing. I also read Julieta and the Romeos by Maria E. Andreu and while it wasn’t my favorite, there were some parts of it that I really enjoyed and it definitely gave me some Jane the Virgin vibes!

Now, let’s chat about some of the books I’ve been really focusing on this week!

Foul Heart Huntsman by Chloe Gong (ARC)

My ARC of Foul Heart Huntsman happened to hit my inbox the day that I was leaving for my New York trip, so I read a good amount of this book at the airport/on planes. I don’t want to go too into detail on my thoughts currently, because I will be sharing a review of some sort once I’ve finished the book, but I will say that I’m having a really great time reading it!

I’m really loving the characterization and dynamics that are happening right now. It’s been really intriguing so far, and it’s had some really funny and heartfelt moments. I’m laughing a lot — Chloe Gong really is very witty and funny, which was something that I felt she really showcased in Last Violent Call and I’m really happy to see it continuing here. There are a lot of one liners that are definitely clever and entertaining, then there are really lovely heartwarming moments, moments that make me very emotional and moments where I want to hug these characters.

I’ve been taking my time with this one, it’s taken over a week (which as most of you know is a long time for me usually), but I’m not mad about it. It’s nice to just relax with it and not feel pressured. I may have already finished it by the time this post goes up, since as I write this I’ve got a little over 100 pages left, but once I’m finished I will share a full review, so keep your eyes peeled for that. At the moment, all you really need to know is that I am enjoying this book a lot!

Rules for Vanishing by Kate Alice Marshall

There’s something about Kate Alice Marshall’s writing that really draws me in. I can be totally unclear on what specifically is going on, or just kinda confused — not because the writing isn’t clear, the writing is incredibly descriptive, there’s just so much going on — but I literally don’t care because I’m just so interested in the story. Marshall does such a great job of super atmospheric writing that keeps you on your toes. You’ll think you have something figured out, and then in the next chapter something happens to completely turn the story on its head and I absolutely love that.

This book has me gasping, making the oddest facial expressions, chanting “oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god?” over and over again. It’s a completely wild ride and I am having the best time while reading it. It’s also mixed media — there are interview transcripts, video transcripts, photo and journal descriptions, there are a lot of different elements to this book that I’m really enjoying!

This is my third Kate Alice Marshall book, and I’ll definitely be checking out her backlist. I’m also really excited for her next release, The Narrow, which will be released in August.

Bandstand Book and lyrics by Robert Taylor & Richard Oberacker, Music by Richard Oberacker

My latest annotation project is annotating the script of my favorite musical, Bandstand! I’ve been meaning to annotate it for a long time, and decided to bring it with me when I went to New York at the end of May and I ended up starting it at the airport during a layover. I’ve never annotated a musical script before — marking up everything when I’m directing or stage managing is very different — and I’m having a really great time working on it.

Bandstand is such a beautiful and complex story, so it’s been really great to take a deeper dive into the text and actually write all of the many thoughts that I’ve had over the thousands of times that I’ve listened to this show. On one hand, because I’ve listened to the show so many times (I saw it live twice and then twice in theaters when they released the pro-shot) it’s been easy to annotate in the sense that because of how well I know it, once I start a scene I already know what I want to highlight, underline, and focus on, but that doesn’t seem to make the process any slower considering I wrote an entire post-it about one line of a song. It’s been a chill and somewhat slow annotation process which I’m loving — it’s nice to sit and take my time with it and really savor the experience!

The Three Dahlias by Katy Watson

I picked up The Three Dahlias because Meg from MegWithBooks (my favorite BookTuber) had mentioned it in a video earlier this year and I thought that this sounded so interesting, I just had to get my hands on a copy. Well, of course, every store I searched for didn’t have it, so I had to order a copy online and now I’m finally getting to it.

Besides picking this one up because Meg recommended it, the premise of this book really intrigues me! The story centers around three actresses, Rosalind, Caro, and Posy, all of whom have played (or will be playing, in Posy’s case) the famous 1930s fictional sleuth Dahlia Lively, are gathered together at Aldermere, the ancestral estate of the writer and creator of Dahlia, Lettice Davenport. As with any mystery novel, people start dying and Rosalind, Caro, and Posy are going to have to work together to find the murderer. I love mysteries that take place at an estate because they always lend themselves to locked room mysteries, which is one of my favorite tropes of the genre.

While this has literally no barring on the plot, there are multiple maps of the estate in the book, and I am just a sucker for maps in books, so that made me very excited even before the book started. I’m really excited to read this one and hope that it lives up to my expectations!

And there you have it! That’s what I’m reading this week. Have you read any of these books or are you interested in any of these? Let me know in the comments. Until next time!