Happy Saturday morning, my mates! I wholeheartedly hope that you all have been doing good and that life is treating you well. 😊

I will be honest, I have been struggling quite a bit with my apathy again these past one to two weeks. If humans had the ability to stock up on sleep and whip it out whenever they needed, I probably would be stocked for the rest of 2019. However, on the plus side, I realised that I was struggling far sooner this time around than my initial and previous engagement with this struggle. In an effort to combat the Apathy Monster of Doom and Gloom, I am going to spend the rest of my Saturday in the outdoors taking photographs, sketching, and reading while sipping some beer. Self-care is the best care… sometimes.

In terms of reading, I have been reading one book at a time to prevent burnout and reading ruts during my apathetic state of mind, and you know, it’s been working wonders for me! I usually just cut out all reading instead of decreasing the amount of shite that I read. Why is that the simplest solutions are the ones that tend to elude us?

This weekend I shall be keeping my reading to genre classics! I’ve a science-fiction novel that is the final (I believe) instalment in a trilogy, a stand-alone fantasy, and a seinen, historical manga that led to an anime film I’m hoping to watch later in the week. Having fewer books also means that it’s easier to carry them around in my pack. Yup, I’m lazy without shame. ✌🏾

Only Human (Themis Files #3) by Sylvain Neuvel

Only Human is the third and final instalment in a science-fiction series that I honestly wasn’t expecting to like but ended up loving and becoming quite obsessed with. It’s amazing how that works, right?

I won’t be providing a snippet for this book to avoid serial spoilers for previous instalments. I also don’t want to look one up so I can be fucking surprised off my feet, like I was with books one and two (there’s a pun there for readers who are familiar with the reference). Click the pink title in the first paragraph if you’d like to visit the GoodReads page for the series. If you’ve been on the fence about this trilogy, like I had been, I can guarantee that the hype is pretty close to being worth it. Just keep an open mind with regard to the format as it’s different than typical novels.

Guns of the Dawn by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Guns of the Dawn is a steampunk fantasy novel that also happens to be a stand-alone. Since that seems to be an uncommon trend with the genre, I felt appreciative that I didn’t have to hunt down other volumes and snagged it on that premise alone.

At its most basic level, the story is about a country that became very ambitious, gunning down their own king and then moving on to decimate or conquer neighbouring nations, which was all done with war machines. In the process, this country ends up destroying their own people and citizens while constantly demanding more from them, either by asking for more and more soldiers to join, or by asking them to help maintain the army in various forms. All of these leads to a small faction of women being conscripted into the army due to the severe lack of men, and one of these women will be the individual who can bring a change that’s desperately needed.

In this Corner of the World by Fumiyo Kōno

In this Corner of the World is a seinen, historical fiction manga that spawned an anime film adaptation a couple of years ago. I have been very interested in checking out the film, however when I saw the manga at the library, I figured it couldn’t hurt to read the story first. I know that it’s an emotionally riveting one, so I’m hoping that by engaging with the narrative beforehand, it will help alleviate the tears that I am confident shall coming pouring out of me.

The tale follows a young girl named Suzu in 1940s Hiroshima. After getting married, she joins her husband’s family in the ship-building city of Kure. When Hiroshima is decimated by the ferocity of war and vengeance, she must face these challenges and learn to manoeuvre through an incredibly difficult time period and era of great sadness and loss.

What do y’all think? Do these books sound interesting to you? Would you read them? Please, come chat with me in the comments. I’d love to hear from you.

Have a lovely weekend, my friends.

Thank you so much for visiting me today. I appreciate the support! Until next time, keep reading and keep otakuing. 🌸

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