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my bloggoversary!
In late July, I hit a milestone that truly feels mind-boggling once you consider the implications: I started this blog on July 24th of 2010, which means that this year, Playing in the Pages turned 15. Had I decided to pursue teenage pregnancy as a goal, rather than translating my love of oversharing to the Internet, I'd have a high schooler on my hands.
Clearly, this was well worth celebrating.
My brother is my enthusiastic annual partner in these endeavors, so we kicked off the day at 85 Degree Bakery for delicious pastries and stocking up on later-snacks, then hit up Barnes and Noble, Half Price Books, and Value Village to pick out some fresh new reading selections. We grabbed lunch from one of our favorite hometown delis, went home for some chill time, and then munched on homemade burgers while watching The Secret of NIMH (It had to be something adapted from a book, after all, to fit the theme of the day).
Bookstore One: Barnes and Noble
I got a free tote bag because I'm a Premium rewards member - something I genuinely feel is a pretty great move if you spend enough time and money in there - which also gave me an additional 10% off all of my purchases, as well as a $5 credit that I was able to redeem.
- Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism, Amanda Montell
- The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise, Olivia Laing
- The Spellshop, Sarah Beth Durst
- Long Live Evil, Sarah Rees Brennan
- Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie
Bookstore Two: Half Price Books
- What's for Dessert?: Simple Recipes for Dessert People, Claire Saffitz (cookbook)
- The Bright Sword, Lev Grossman
Bookstore Three: Value Village
- The River Has Roots, Amal El-Mohtar
- Selected Stories, Alice Munro
- Pasta & Co. Encore, Marcella Rosene (cookbook)
In total, I spent less than $150 for eight books, two cookbooks, and a tote bag combined... which feels pretty good, for a day that I deliberately try to let myself splurge a little bit. I will say, for all that books are getting "more popular" again and the publishing industry is experiencing a resurgence, these titles feel like they're only getting pricier and pricier... which is why I spent the following day enjoying some library books, as well.
All told, it was one of the best days out of the entire summer. Definitely a great way to ring in 15 years!
(Special thanks to my brother, for spending the whole day with me celebrating, and for paying for our morning pastries. I'm so glad you loved The Secret of NIMH as much as I did!)
Seattle Public Library & Seattle Arts and Lectures' Summer Reading Challenge Book Bingo
Bingo Square: "Intergenerational Friendship"
"It was strange, the idea that this book wasn't just for him. It was for everyone. All these people who had taken it out before him, people who would take it out after him. Every reader, unknowingly connected in some small way."
An older man who has recently lost his wife and a young girl grappling with her mother's mental health struggles inadvertently strike up an unconventional friendship, after she discovers a mysterious list of books left behind in the library.
It's pretty rare that a piece of straightforward, contemporary-set, non-speculative, literary fiction just comes up and gets me good. I very rarely seek out the category, to be honest - at its best, it feels sedate and relatively boring; at it's worst, it's impossible to shield really significant flaws in writing, narrative voice, plot, and more, without any exciting genre-affiliated aesthetics or tropes to hide behind. If I'm going to read something about the real world, I'm much more likely to grab a nonfiction read, to be honest.
But just like it's easy to give Oscars to movies about Hollywood, and it's easy to hand Tonys off to shows about musical theater, it is very, very easy to be someone who loves books, and fall in love with a book about reading.
But it's not actually about the books mentioned at all, but instead, the transformative power they have to relate all kinds of people, the connective tissue that can run through a reading community, and change lives in powerful ways. Books can make you feel less alone, but people can do that, too, and this particular read in as much about forming a relationship with reading, as it is about forming a relationship with - and showing up for - others.
And because of the severity of the mental health struggles discussed therein, this was a hard - but valuable - read. It's one I can see returning to again in the future, for sure. And being that I had only been familiar with a handful of titles on the mysterious list myself, it's actually given me a bit of a TBR to seek out in the future, as well.
five stars!
Bingo Square: "Read in Public"
"And, just as it only takes a moment to die, it only takes a moment to live. You just close your eyes and let every futile fear slip away. And then, in this new state, free from fear, you ask yourself, Who am I? If I could live without doubt, what would I do? If I could be kind without the fear of being fucked over? If I could love without fear of being hurt? If I could taste the sweetness of today without thinking of how I will miss the taste tomorrow? If I could not fear the passing of time and the people it will steal? Yes. What would I do? Who would I care for? What battle would I fight? Which paths would I step down? What joys would I allow myself? What internal mysteries would I solve? How, in short, would I live?"
A man with a perplexing medical diagnosis - that his body ages at a fractional rate of a normal human, allowing him to live for centuries - finds himself reflecting on all that he has lost, when faced with the potential for new love. Meanwhile, the shadowy organization that allows him to live covertly has a request he's not sure he can fulfill.
This was the choice of our Book Club at work, and was, in fact, supplied by one of my work besties. Which made it incredibly awkward when everyone else in Book Club disliked it so much, that all I heard from other people around the office was how getting through it was a dull, hard slog. I actually didn't even fully commit to taking part in actually reading it until about a week and a half before our scheduled meeting.
And... listen. It was actually pretty easy to get through. Haig has a really straightforward, unadorned style of writing that makes zipping along relatively painless. And on top of that, for about 80% of the book, I would argue that very little of importance happens, and you can kind of just... skim.
The pacing, I think, was one of the issues that a few of my fellow Book Club members a little bogged down... nothing happens for entire stretches, and the flashback scenes are oddly placed and not all intrinsic to the plot beyond a semi-explanation of our main character's emotional responses. The central plot, also, is only half there, and barely given more shading beyond flat characterizations, which makes character decisions utterly baffling and occasionally - especially for female characters - so lackluster and devoid of life that it felt like they were there more as objects for the male characters to rotate around.
And then, in the final chapter, quite a lot happens. Not a whole lot of those previous issues are resolved, mind you, but at least it makes it feel like the rest of the book meant something, for all that everything clashes together in the space of mere minutes like planets colliding, without much time at all for de-escalation or falling action.
While some of the lines were kind of pretty, it didn't help how disjointed and confused the rest of the book felt.
two-and-a-half stars
Bingo Square: "Hope"
"We all know the story of Abraham and Isaac. Abraham is ordered by God to offer up his only son, and without argument, he takes Isaac to the mountaintop, binds him to an altar, and raises his knife, prepared to act as God had commanded.
Of course, in the end, God sends down an angel to intercede at the very last minute, and Abraham passes God's test of devotion.
But it's fair to say that if any of us saw Abraham on the roof of his apartment building raising his knife, we would, at the very least, call the police, and expect the Department of Children and Family Services to take Isaac away from Abraham. We would do so because we do not hear what Abraham hears, do not see what Abraham sees, true as those experiences may be. So the best we can do is act in accordance with those things that we all see, and that we all hear, be it common laws or basic reason."
Written in 2006, Barack Obama grounds his political philosophy in bipartisanship, respect, and belief in the innate power of democracy, with the hopes of uniting the country towards positive, meaningful change.
I was really in a bind when it came to selecting a read to fill this Bingo Square. On one hand, it was such a loosely defined category, that I was struggling to understand what the actual parameters were, and on the other, the world around me seemed to be full of so much chaos and division, that reading anything hopeful felt like a futile effort from jump. So I decided to just get as literal as possible, and picked out a book with the word "Hope" in the title.
The Audacity of Hope was the book Obama wrote while still a senator, two years after firing up the Democratic National Convention with his tremendous speaking abilities, hoping to build steam towards his first bid at the presidency. He talked about representation, the political machine, opposition leaders he respected, and the various personalities who formed integral aspects of his understanding in Washington DC. He talked about how his faith informed his politics, how his family stood at the core of his greatest motivations, and how he believed that Americans deserved more from their civic leaders.
It was, in short, one of the least hopeful things I could have read this year.
The world was a different place when this book was written, in a lot of important ways, and listening to the audiobook - which he also narrated, mind you, and was therefore spoken with his thoughtful cadence and meaningful intonation - felt like watching the world of yesteryear through a funhouse mirror. It made me nostalgic for a simpler time, one that I'm not sure ever actually existed, but might have just been a symptom of the fact that I was in middle school, and didn't yet have access to an machine that lives in my pocket and alerts me, multiple times an hour, to the worst that humanity has to offer itself. Plus, maybe everything just feels a little more hopeful when you're twelve.
Beautiful book, well written, well spoken. Completely, totally depressing in 2025.
four stars
Ripped Bodice Bookstore Romance Book Bingo
Bingo Square: "Fairy Tale Retelling"
" 'Tis fortunate that you've become such an expert on women, is it not? A less able man might have bungled that entire situation.' "
After being cast aside by her father's new wife in favor of her own demanding brats, Willow takes up the opportunity to be married off to a neighboring lord in search of a bride. Unfortunately, she's also looking to get away from taking care of so many children, which is exactly what he needs her for... and he's trying not to make any more of them, which makes her beauty and charm a very unwelcome distraction.
I was in a real difficult spot to try and pick a favorite quote out of this one. Here's another one I almost chose:
"Perhaps you should consider a vow of celibacy. I've no doubt God would find it a most impressive sacrifice, much more pleasing in His eyes than if you had wed some stout fishwife with a mustache."
This whole book is chock full of sarcastic quips, unexpected one-liners, and witty conversations, making it probably one of the more hilarious Historical Romances I've ever read.
Teresa Medeiros is one of those names that pops up frequently in conversations about what names one might include when constructing a comprehensive Historical Romance canon of work, as she serves as such a formative and relevant voice within the genre, and I can totally see why. And as someone who has had her fair share of frustration with reading Romances from before feminism was apparently discovered in the mid-'2000s - if that - this one was not too bad for its perspectives on women (if you deliberately choose to overlook the somewhat starting age gap implications).
I will say, for something that professes to be a fairy tale retelling, it's pretty damn difficult to get the shades of it. Beyond the initial starting point of "My Dad's evil wife makes me dress shabbily and do chores and cater to the whims of my bratty stepsiblings" thing, you can't really see this one as being Cinderella beyond page 20.
three-and-a-half stars
Bingo Square: "Kissing in the Rain"
"I did what any reasonable adult woman would do when confronted with her college rival turned next-door neighbor. I dove behind the nearest bookshelf."
A romance novel author - left reeling from a sudden revelation at her father's funeral - flees to a surprise beachfront inheritance. Unfortunately, her new neighbor is not only a fellow author, but the literary fiction elitist she thought she left behind. As it turns out, there's something they have in common: insurmountable writer's block. But maybe they can fix it together?
I have stayed off the Emily Henry hype train for quite a while longer than probably anticipated, for someone who has three of her books currently sitting on her TBR shelves ($1 for the trio at my local library, purchased back in January). Of course what made me finally cave was a Bingo prompt... and then the book I ended up reading wasn't even one I owned.
It was, however, the title that put Henry on the map. And I can see why: the novel is so funny that I laughed out loud, its main characters feel specific and unique and interesting, the ways the two are eventually brought together are compelling and fun to read, and the beachfront location - plus some of the various dates the two went on together - felt like summer.
I will also say: it's a bit of a weird one.
Our main hero isn't just a pretentious dweeb, but also a bit of an eccentric (half of their journey together involves following the harrowing story of a cult that ended in tremendous violence, which he's been researching), and our heroine's primary actions are motivated by a concept so bleak and anti-romantic that I spent the entire story waiting for there to be a twisty "gotcha" that would explain it all away, that never came... if anything, it gets bolstered, reinforced, and weirdly validated by the main character by the end of the book (Kind of a spoiler, even though you learn basically all of it in the first chapter: her father cheated on her mother twice, WHILE SHE HAD CANCER, going as far as SECRETLY PURCHASING THE BEACH HOUSE OUR CHARACTER STAYS IN during the course of the novel, all of which our heroine finds out about when the mistress hands her keys and a letter at her father's funeral).
So you can maybe get why - even though I enjoyed it - this one was a three star read for me.
three stars
Bingo Square: "Medieval"
" 'Needing and wanting are two different things, you know. You can want something and not need it.' "
Sending a child off to college means prepping your too-big house for sale, right? At least that's what mom April tells herself when she enlists hunky Mitch to help with some final touch-ups before she calls her realtor. When Mitch asks for a favor of his own, the two grow closer than previously anticipated. But can April get over their gap in age and life experience? And is she distracting Mitch too much from his job at their local Ren Faire?
I wasn't originally planning on reading multiple Jen DeLuca romance novels in 2025, but when the category calls for something "Medieval," sometimes it's just easier to shoot for something "Renaissance" instead... even when it's not actually set during the Renaissance, but in contemporary times, and simply features a Ren Faire as a part of the central plot. Much like a visit to the actual Ren Faire, we're playing fast and loose with time period accuracy here.
Unfortunately, this read was a little bit of a dud for me - while I greatly enjoyed Well Met, the first in the series, I actually DNF'd Well Played quite a while ago, because I could not get into it. Haunted Ever After was a pretty fun return to DeLuca's writing. I had a little bit more faith going into Well Matched, but just from the central couple alone - both of whom we'd met in the previous installments - I didn't think I'd have a great time.
And I was pretty much right: I think DeLuca's strengths really lie within her main characters' chemistry and relatability, which means that if you don't click with the main characters or find them a bit unlikeable or unreasonable, you're probably not going to have a great time. I liked the grumpy, no-nonsense vibes of elder sister April in Well Met, but found her a little too obstinate and angry in Well Matched. Similarly, I loved Mitch's happy-go-lucky, golden retriever energy in the earlier novel, but found him to be a little underdeveloped and shallow in this one. I didn't buy into their romance very much - if only in part because I didn't feel like April did, either, as she spends quite a lot of the book playing it down or trying to minimize it.
The tropes involved - fake dating, friends with benefits, overstepping family members, the surprise return of a deadbeat parent into a child's life - were also not some of my favorites. (Which made it incredibly annoying when they started popping up in other romances I read this year, too.)
three-and-a-half stars
Bingo Square: "Punny Title"
" 'I don't think our purpose is to prevent all the bad things in the world,' he says. 'I think our purpose is to help people endure those things.' "
The Crown Prince of Christmas - already on thin ice with his domineering Dad, Santa Claus - gets an unwelcome gift in his stocking on his return to the North Pole for the holiday season: for starters, he's been made central in a marriage plot to consolidate Easter's power by allying it with Christmas. And for another, Halloween heard the news, and immediately sent their own Prince to try and win the Easter Princess' hand, instead. Worst of all, it turns out that the Crown Prince of Halloween is the guy he made out with in an alleyway years before, on the worst day of his life...
So, just in case you couldn't tell from that description, you need to understand that this is not a serious book.
Not to spoil anything for you that you couldn't already surmise from the preceding blurb, but the Crown Prince of Christmas ends up making the Yuletide real gay by falling for the Prince of Halloween. The world-building that would allow for this sort of circumstance to arise is similarly bonkers.
The holidays are affiliated with specific locations, which map over with real-life locations in the world (for instance, Halloween's general location falls in New England). There are full-time residents of the holidays; these ruling royal families involve subjects and everything that monarchies entail, including other lords and ladies, and active factions that also have bearing into the operations of a given holiday. There are tabloids specifically for these holiday-states, that interfere notably with the lives of the holiday representatives and their children. And the economic balance of these holiday-states plays a major part in both the first and second books of the series, as it is measured in magic, but it manifests in their world differently based on the state with which it is affiliated.
I could go on. I will go on.
Because honestly, some of the implications of all of these big swings are SO messy: the dominant holiday regime supersedes affiliated seasonal holidays - meaning Christmas holds rank over not just something like the Feast of St. Lucia, but also the other Winter Holidays, like Solstice, Diwali, Hanukkah, etc. because it generates the most magic, or is practiced by the most people - which all goes to say that the Christian colonization structure is firmly in effect here, only, wait! The holidays are still held as secular: even though there super for sure is a Santa Claus, Virginia, there is definitely no affiliation with the real story of Saint Nicholas - nor Mary, Joseph, or Jesus Christ - to speak of. (There's only the sheerest reference, in an attempt to semi-explain the absence, but it's barely a sentence long and doesn't do much by way of contextualization.)
Plus this still raises questions about how the rest of things are going here on Earth. Does China just not exist? Because according to a quick Google search, the numbers of people on a global scale who celebrate Christmas and Lunar New Year are remarkably similar. Shouldn't we have gotten a reference to Lunar New Year being a major player in the holiday realm at some point? (Furthermore, in 2026, Lunar New Year will be celebrated on Tuesday, February 17th... does that mean that they grapple with the likes of Mardi Gras and Valentine's Day for power??)
And on top of all of this, there was a LOT of talk about corset vests.
Here's the thing, though: I absolutely loved it. I did. It was SO bonkers, wholly relied on you taking every single thing that happened at face value, and was unrepentant about how bananas the entire formation of the world was, that it really did require you to turn off great big chunks of your brain in the most cozily lobotomizing of ways. Every once in a while, you'd get a paragraph that was beautifully written or demonstrated such a care of characterization that it genuinely felt like came from a different story, like a line of gold running through quartz, and it would flash beautifully in the sun until you'd go sailing right over the end of another paragraph into something dazzlingly unhinged again.
I loved the sequel, too - though you'll have to wait to hear about that - and on top of that, I have a hold on the author's next work at the library. Haha.
four stars
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