And with next year's reading challenge starting shortly, I decided I'd take a little break to read the first deluxe edition volume of Berserk that I got for Christmas! I had intended to just check it out from the library, since they have the first twelve deluxe edition volumes, but it's... REALLY popular and I've only seen the first volume on the shelf once or twice in the past year or so.

First proper novel of the year for me is Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett. I've already read the follow-up witches novel (Witches Abroad), but one of the categories of my reading challenge seemed like a good excuse to backtrack and read this one! Not, of course, that I need an excuse to read a Pratchett novel, but I might as well take advantage of being able to use one for this purpose. Of course, I'll have to backtrack again at some point to read the first witches novel Equal Rites, but who needs chronological order, anyway, right?

Next up is Demon in the Wood, written by Leigh Bardugo and illustrated by Dani Pendergast. I've had my eye on this graphic novel for a while, but wanted to finish all the main Grishaverse titles first before getting into it. Now that I've done that, its time has finally come!

EDIT (1/9): Demon in the Wood was a quick read, but the artist did such lovely work on it! I also really enjoyed this little slice of backstory for the Darkling. I'm a bit of a sucker for characters who can't exactly be considered good, but aren't actually bad, either.

I'll be starting The Language of Thorns by Leigh Bardugo soon. I'm obviously a huge fan of the Grishaverse and was going to read this at some point regardless, but it'll also fill one of the spaces for my reading challenge, and I'm not one to pass up an opportunity to put a book I really want to read anyway to use like this.

I'll be starting Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy today. I don't really know anything about it even though I've checked the shelves every time I have been at the library for months to see if it was in. I know it's an incredibly popular series in the YA section, but that's about the extent of my knowledge. If I'm being honest, it's mostly the name that drew me in, but the skeleton character from whom the series gets its name seems interesting, too. Here's hoping its popularity turns out to have been deserved!

EDIT (1/17): The popularity of Skulduggery Pleasant is well earned. The characters are FANTASTIC. Skulduggery is so sassy and clever and I love him. Stephanie, the human protagonist, is exactly the kind of girl I always sought in books when I was younger (well, okay, am still seeking in books even now, but that's beside the point). She's intelligent, strong, won't take guff from anyone, and will blaze her own path when she has to. The book was dramatic, adventurous, cute, and funny in near perfect measures. I may have vague regrets about adding ANOTHER series to my list of in progress reads (the list is getting long at this point), but I don't regret the book at all.

I'll be starting A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas shortly. Quite excited to get into this one and see where the story goes next.

Shadow Speaker by Nnedi Okorafor is my next read. I'm a huge fan of the other works of hers that I've read, she hasn't disappointed yet, so I have high expectations for this one.

EDIT (2/24): Before She Ignites was SO. GOOD. It essentially boils down to a story about learning what friends are, how to make them, and how to stand up for yourself and make your own choices. All on a lovely fantasy backdrop with dragons! I did have to make myself take a few short breaks, especially toward the end, the plot gets intense in places.

Next book is The Long War by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter. It's the sequel to The Long Earth, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

I'm reading "The Secret History" by Donna Tartt:
A campus novel, it tells the story of a closely knit group of six Classics students at Hampden College, a small, elite liberal arts college in Vermont. The Secret History is an inverted detective story narrated by one of the six students, Richard Papen, who reflects years later upon the situation that led to the murder of their friend Edmund "Bunny" Corcoran.

I'm halfway through and so far, it's kind of dark academia thriller vibes.

Some excerpts of the writing style if anyone is curious:

“Being the only female in what was basically a boys’ club must have been difficult for her. Miraculously, she didn’t compensate by becoming hard or quarrelsome. She was still a girl, a slight lovely girl who lay in bed and ate chocolates, a girl whose hair smelled like hyacinth and whose scarves fluttered jauntily in the breeze. But strange and marvellous as she was, a wisp of silk in a forest of black wool, she was not the fragile creature one would have her seem. In many ways she was as cool and competent as Henry; tough-minded and solitary in her habits, and in many ways as aloof [...]. if I found the twins so fascinating, I think it was because there was something a tiny bit inexplicable about them, something I was often on the verge of grasping but never quite did. Charles, the kind and slightly ethereal soul that he was, was something of an enigma but Camilla was the real mystery, the safe I could never crack. I was never sure what she thought about anything.”

"I honestly can’t remember much else about those years except a certain mood that permeated most of them, a melancholy feeling that I associate with watching “The Wonderful World of Disney” on Sunday nights. Sunday was a sad day—early to bed, school the next morning, I was constantly worried my homework was wrong—but as I watched the fireworks go off in the night sky, over the floodlit castles of Disneyland, I was consumed by a more general sense of dread, of imprisonment within the dreary round of school and home: circumstances which, to me at least, presented sound empirical argument for gloom. My father was mean, and our house ugly, and my mother didn’t pay much attention to me; my clothes were cheap and my haircut too short and no one at school seemed to like me that much; and since all this had been true for as long as I could remember, I felt things would doubtless continue in this depressing vein as far as I could foresee. In short: I felt my existence was tainted, in some subtle but essential way. "