Book 13: Time to Shine by Rachel Reid

A charming hockey romance about a goalie in the minors who gets called up to the NHL and finds both his confidence and true love! This is a lovely and extremely readable story featuring one taciturn loner and the bubbly yet anxious star player whose love he can't quite trust. However, it's a romance novel, so you know he will eventually! I also enjoyed this one more than others because while we've got a lot of archetypes here, they map less cleanly onto real life players than some hockey romances do, which makes it easier for me to lose myself in the story and not argue with it.

Grade: B

Book 12: Flux by Jinwoo Chong

A book club book! This is a first novel that feels it, in both really positive and slightly tiring ways. It's stuffed to the brim with ideas, and they don't all quite come together to make a cohesive whole. It's very timey-wimey but also has some of the best engagement in what it means to be a person who's deeply connected to a piece of media, and manages to depict that in a way that feels extremely accurate but also not instantly dated - I can't datestamp the author as being on tumblr in precisely 2014-2015 or whatnot. Overall I enjoyed it enough to be very excited about his next book, which is a great landing place for a first novel. 

Grade: B

Book 11: The Bullet that Missed by Richard Osman

Another great entry in this mystery series! I'm really enjoying the way each story builds on the last, and how the friendships deepen through the process of solving various crimes. Elizabeth continues to be the greatest, and I accept my place as the Joyce of a group. I'm taking a break after this one because I know the fourth one is a bit sad, and I'm not quite ready for it yet.

Grade: A

Reread: Sailing to Sarantium by Guy Gavriel Kay

There are some books that I'll always remember where and who I was when I first read it, and this one I read during the summer between my sophomore and junior years of college, while I was on campus for a arts festival. It made me convinced that I was actually going to become a historian, even though I had none of the background or really drive that would make that possible, because this version of the Byzantium empire was so captivating for me that I projected my love of this book onto the idea of studying the time period. I read both this and its sequel (which had just come out) in quick succession, and they've stayed with me on a deep level for the past 24 years. 

Grade: A