What am I reading?

I love books. Maybe more than I love makeup. If I ever had to choose between the two I’d be distraught.

I’d occasionally like to talk about what I’m reading here, partly to break up the constant barrage of makeup madness, but also because I’m not part of a book club or anything and rarely have an opportunity to discuss the myriad books I read. I typically have several in progress simultaneously, and I don’t have much shame about the occasional garbage book I read. I’m not a snob by any means; YA fiction is awesome, as are cheesy sci-fi novels and graphic novels. You won’t see much romance here though, so if you’re into that, I apologize in advance.

Unless it’s Outlander. You bet your ass you’ll see that here.

I just started From Here to Eternity by Caitlin Doughty. I know this sounds a bit macabre, but I love this woman. She’s a licensed mortician, went to mortuary school, worked in a crematorium… death is her life. She also has a YouTube channel called Ask a Mortician that’s all about death positivity, history, famous corpses, the funeral industry, all manner of things related to dying. She has a lot of advice for coming to terms with and preparing for our inevitable demise, and watching her be so frank about death was actually really helpful in confronting my own mortality. Now I just find her fascinating. I devoured her previous book, Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, and can’t wait to get more into the new one.

I’m about halfway through Empire of Storms by Sarah J. Maas. I’m very “meh” about this book. It’s the fifth in her Throne of Glass series and at this point, I feel like I’m only reading it to complete the story. I’m mildly interested in what happens to the characters but the books are so long that when I’m not really into what’s happening they feel like a slog. I’m just not attached to the characters; generally in a series this long I have some kind of emotional connection to at least one of the characters, and I don’t know why I don’t with this series. But, I’m determined to finish it.

And finally, Fairest of All: A Tale of the Wicked Queen by Serena Valentino. This is part of the (relatively) new YA series about the Disney Villains. I’m able to read it for free because I pay for Kindle Unlimited so I’m not out anything by reading this objectively terrible book. I don’t know why I chose it; to be fair, I was mildly interested in the subject matter, given that I love basically all of the Disney villains. This just isn’t written for an adult. I’ll likely read the other books in the series though. There’s one about Ursula. I have to try.

Advertisement