WWW Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Sam at Taking on a World of Words.
The Three Ws are:
What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?
What I Recently Finished Reading:
Love breaks all the rules.
Margo Anderson is sworn off commitment. Alongside her best friend, Jo, she runs a viral podcast featuring rules for hooking up without catching feelings. So when Jo surprises her by deciding to get married and taking up a sponsor’s offer to host an all-expenses-paid wedding trip on Catalina Island, they have the whole internet to answer to.
In a scramble for content to appease their disappointed listeners, Margo cooks up a social experiment: Break all her own dating rules, just to prove that it’s a bad idea. And she’s found the best man for the job in the groom’s best friend and her old high school nemesis, Declan Walsh. He may be easier on the eyes than Margo remembered, but he’s sure to be as smug and annoying as he was before—there is no chance Margo will ever catch feelings for him . . . until she does.
The more time they spend together through cake tastings and wedding party activities, the more Margo can’t ignore their obvious spark, and she may actually be enjoying getting to know Declan. But can she let go of the rules to let him in?
What I am currently reading:
What’s worse than nearly puking in front of a cute guy? Zombies. Definitely zombies.
I’m not feeling so great. I don’t know if it’s something I ate, or if it’s from flipping through one too many teen paranormal romances, trying to find inspiration for an obnoxiously backward creative writing assignment. (Seriously. What kind of teacher asks their students to write a story in their least favourite genre?) But I’m determined not to barf in this stupid vampire book I’m holding, especially not in front of the cute guy who’s checking out the library’s pitiful selection of DVDs. So I make a run for the bathroom… only to have the guy follow me in there. Can you believe it?
But that’s just the first unbelievable thing that happens. When we come out of the bathroom, the library appears to be closed. Weirder still, it’s surrounded by a strange, supernatural storm that definitely wasn’t there a few minutes ago.
Being trapped in a library with a new friend (or enemy—I haven’t decided yet) might not be the worst thing in the world. But it might not be the best thing, either… especially once that weird storm starts spitting out characters that are only supposed to exist in stories, and we find ourselves trying to figure out how to take on a horde of zombies with nothing but our wits, the Dewey Decimal System, and some very strange bookish magic.
Elements of Mind is a metaphysical fantasy quartet that celebrates the power of stories… and the people who create them. Join Sadie on her elemental adventure today!
What books I think I’ll read next:
Reality is evil. While everyone considers it good. That is why reality is actually a fantasy.
“Possible” because one can never know. And that exactly is what creates the wrong reality.
The facts are irrefutable even when false. The truth is secretly abused and only the lies see the light.
Everyone should be able to escape forced fantasies and realize all of it for the sake of true fairness and true justice.
Destroy reality fairly by knowing all its dark secrets before it destroys you unfairly.
When the guilty do anything to be innocent, the innocents believe they are guilty.
The guilty take advantage of that in their unbelievable and unconceivable tactics and strategies to frame the innocents.
Guilt has become a method against the innocents. Innocence has become a pattern in favor of the guilty.
The guilty get away with it for their crimes and are presented as the good example while the innocents pay the price and are presented as the bad example.
Justice has lost its true meaning, its worth, its liability and its reliability. Or it never had any of these?
It has become the norm. The guilty are let free and the innocents are in danger.
They used to say “Better to free the guilty than condemn the innocents”.
The guilty threaten, so the only way to provide secure justice nowadays is to consider all humans as innocents.
All innocent! Until justice is fixed!
Murder, secrets, and folklore now consume this once small, seaside town…
In the town of Rockport, Washington one boy will defy all odds and attempt to uncover the towns most sinister secret. When the new girl at Rockport High is found murdered beneath the iconic, Mermaid Cliff, a group of teenagers must hunt for the killer or become the next victims.
The town of Rockport is thrown into the national spotlight when the towns first ever murder occurs. With his parents telling him to leave it alone, and the law enforcement looking into him as a possible suspect, Mark recruits the help of some friends to uncover the secrets and hunt for the killer. The discoveries they make will put Mark on a journey that will change his life and the world – forever.
Be sure to check out the second book in the series which is available now!
Book 3 to be released soon!
In Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women’s lives and the violence visited upon their bodies.
A wife refuses her husband’s entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store’s prom dresses. One woman’s surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. And in the bravura novella Especially Heinous, Machado reimagines every episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a show we naively assumed had shown it all, generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelgangers, ghosts, and girls with bells for eyes.
Earthy and otherworldly, antic and sexy, queer and caustic, comic and deadly serious, Her Body and Other Parties swings from horrific violence to the most exquisite sentiment. In their explosive originality, these stories enlarge the possibilities of contemporary fiction.
The husband stitch —
Inventory —
Mothers —
Especially heinous —
Real women have bodies —
Eight bites —
The resident —
Difficult at parties
Tade Thompson’s Rosewater is the start of an award-winning, cutting edge trilogy set in Nigeria, by one of science fiction’s most engaging new voices.
Rosewater is a town on the edge. A community formed around the edges of a mysterious alien biodome, its residents comprise the hopeful, the hungry and the helpless—people eager for a glimpse inside the dome or a taste of its rumored healing powers.
Kaaro is a government agent with a criminal past. He has seen inside the biodome, and doesn’t care to again—but when something begins killing off others like himself, Kaaro must defy his masters to search for an answer, facing his dark history and coming to a realization about a horrifying future.
A riveting tale of revenge, survival and redemption, wrapped around an unlikely love story and set against an urban backdrop corrupted by bigotry and misogyny.
Following a racially motivated rape by three Ku Klux Klansmen, 12-year-old Desiree Devine vows revenge. After eight years of training, now a strikingly beautiful assassin, she accomplishes her mission.
Her campaign continues with solitary walks through dark city streets, hoping to be assaulted by men with bad intentions. Those entrapped by her spider’s web pay dearly for their efforts.
Surrounded by three white men one night, she’s rescued by Tony Marino, an Italian-American passerby. A stormy, up-and-down relationship ensues. Ultimately, as her rage matures into purposeful action, and as he begins to see the world through her eyes, they become a team.
Along the way, they encounter serial killers, wife-beaters, actual and would-be rapists, gangsters, crooked cops, a kidnapper and a pedophile priest, as well as numerous women in desperate need of their help. Beneath all the action, though, is the blossoming of a most unusual love story.
An immortal Knight of the Round Table faces his greatest challenge yet—saving the politically polarized, rapidly warming world from itself—in this slyly funny contemporary take on Arthurian legend.
Being reborn as an immortal defender of the realm gets awfully damn tiring over the years—or at least that’s what Sir Kay’s thinking as he claws his way up from beneath the earth, yet again.
Kay fought at Hastings, and at Waterloo, and in both World Wars. After a thousand years, he thought he was used to dealing with a crisis. But now he finds himself in a strange new world where oceans have risen, armies have been privatized, and half of Britain’s been sold to the Chinese. The dragon that’s running amok, that he can handle. The rest? He’s not so sure.
Mariam’s devoted her life to fighting what’s wrong with her country. But she’s just one ordinary person, up against a hopelessly broken system. So when she meets Kay, a figure straight out of legend, she dares to hope that the world’s finally found the savior it needs.
As the two quest through this strange land swarming with gangs, mercenaries, and talking squirrels, they realize that other ancient evils are afoot. Lancelot is back too–at the beck and call of immortal beings with a sinister agenda. And if their plans can’t be stopped, a dragon will be the least of the planet’s worries.
In perilous times like these, the realm doesn’t just need a knight. It needs a true leader.
Luckily, Excalibur lies within reach–and Kay’s starting to suspect that the hero fit to carry it is close at hand.
The nation of Trylia believes that the gift, a force that can alter the world through the intent of the person who wields it, is a myth. The stuff of children’s tales, brought to life only in the imagination.
For Lila, separated from a life she was too young to remember, it’s a confusing power that has set her apart from the family she found. And she is only just beginning to understand it when her home and family are destroyed, and she is captured.
To escape, she unleashes the gift in a destructive wave that also forces a man she doesn’t trust to keep them alive. Bryn won’t survive unless Lila does, and they must flee the wrath of the captors still pursuing her. If they can’t find a way to work together, Lila won’t live long enough to learn more about the gift.
As Lila finds her strength, the gift inside her grows. Unless she can control it, she may be a greater danger than the one at her heels.