🌊☀️ Second Sundays - July 2023 ☀️🌊

Happy Second Sunday!

We have officially passed the 1 year anniversary of this newsletter 🥳 and I've decided for this next year to try something new with Second Sundays. 👀 I haven't had much new to share in the ways of art and writing, and I've been feeling a bit stretched thin on trying to keep up with "in progress reports" as well as finding new and interesting things to share every month, so I'm going to retreat back a bit to give my creative mind a break.

Rather than a somewhat lackluster overall newsletter that's being dominated by book reviews anyway 😅 I'm going to try this as a books-only blog with the normal reviews but also book hauls, TBR lists, and any other bookish content and some other tidbits occasionally thrown in. I think this is the direction Second Sundays really wants to go in, so we'll see how it goes. 🤗

As always, thank you for joining me on this adventure. I hope you enjoy!

Last month was a very intentional sojourn into reading more LGBTQUIA+ stories, not only to celebrate Pride Month 🌈 and for my own self-growth, but to be more intentional and inclusive with my picks so that I have a diverse list of recommendations to pull from. I read a lot of books, so let's go through these!

The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler is a philosophical sci-fi novel about a marine biologist investigating the intelligence of octopi and asking what sentience and consciousness actually mean. The book is set in the not-too-distant future when a lot of earth's ecosystems have been pushed to the brink and AI technology is both commonplace and making a huge leap forward in the form of androids.

The science and somewhat mystery/thriller themes in the form of rival companies are similar in vein to Jurassic Park, except the octopi have evolved on their own rather than being biologically engineered. The book is also peppered throughout with genuine octopus science and questions about what it means to be human, and what it could mean for another creature to share our sentience. Philosophically it's similar to the questions posed in I, Robot and the Monk and Robot series.

Overall I really enjoyed this book. It fed my growing obsession with octopi and their intelligence, and the author referenced several non-fiction titles that I've actually had on my nature tbr for a while, such as The Soul of an Octopus and How Forests Think. If you enjoyed the documentary My Octopus Teacher and/or sci-fi books with some AI and a philosophical lens, you'll probably like this one.

This Is How You Lose the Time War co-authored by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone blew up on social media recently because of an influential voice from the Trigun and Trigun Stampede anime fandom. (Which if you love anime and haven't watched either of those yet, go do it!) I serendipitously happened to be doing a Trigun marathon when the frenzy happened, so I immediately knew I had to read it. It also just happened to fit in with my Pride Month tbr, so I moved it to the top!

This is a sapphic (meaning "attraction or relationships between women") sci-fi short novel about two time-traveling agents on opposite sides of a war sending secret letters to each other. Beginning as the banter between rivals, their relationship develops in a way that reminded me a little of The Lake House. The time-traveling universe setup reminded me a bit of Marvel's Loki in the sense that there are multiple timelines and alternate histories that time agencies attempt to influence and control.

I enjoyed the unique worlds and alternate histories with name drops, and there are also quite a few book drops as well which are fun easter eggs for those familiar with those historical figures and books. The prose has a poetic feel to it with lots of metaphors. There's also a lot of humor with some serious and not-so-serious philosophical questions mixed in as the characters get to know each other. My particular favorite was "Which egg preceded which platypus?" But the main drive is definitely the letters and the whimsically unique ways they are sent. The ending was satisfying, but also a wee bit of a cliffhanger that leaves the reader to fill in the rest with their imagination. If you like time-travel plots and long-distance, Romeo and Juliet-themed stories, you'll very likely enjoy this one.

Spear by Nicola Griffith is a gender-bent retelling of the story of the Arthurian knight Percival and his quest for the Holy Grail. I read it in one sitting, and now I want to go down a rabbit hole of rereading my favorite Arthurian stories and the new retellings. Eventually, I'll embrace that rabbit hole, but for now, I'll content myself with the knowledge that I can go back and reread this book whenever I want.

The prose is beautiful - "old-fashioned" in a classic fantasy way in the veins of traditional fairy tales and mythology stories. This book also leans heavily on the Welsh roots of the Arthur stories, particularly with the names of characters and places, which completes the full immersion into the world. The story is also intentionally diverse, including characters of a variety of nationalities, a knight with a physical disability, and another sapphic relationship (I'm noticing an unintentional trend here with the books I picked... but I love female heroes!) as well as the mention of some bisexual relationships.

My favorite part of this story was seeing how the author took well-known characters, places, and objects of the Arthur legends and turned them into something fresh that also felt older - like she was getting at the real truth behind the stories. Spear is perfect for anyone who loves Arthurian stories, but especially for women who dreamt of being the knight as a little girl and not the damsel in distress.

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan is a historical, gender-bent retelling of the rise to power of the Ming Dynasty's first emperor. While it's classified as a fantasy novel, there are only a few glimpses of magic, so it does read more like general historical fiction. This is an epic story of a girl who rises from poverty to power by "stealing" the fate her brother was mandated by Heaven. Narratively this story felt a bit like a blend of the novel Memoirs of a Geisha and the story of Mulan. We also occasionally dip into other points of view, notably the eunuch general of the opposing army. This book explores gender identity in a plethora of ways from fighting against traditional gender roles to self-identity and relationships. It's also heavy on battles, politics, and betrayals.

What I appreciate most about this story is the author didn't shy away at all from putting her characters, especially her main character, through hell, while putting in enough humor and hope to keep it from being a grim dark story. The sequel comes out in a few months, and I'm definitely anticipating how this one is going to end! If you love Chinese history, or any Asian-themed stories really, and strong female characters who come into their own power through immense struggle, you would probably enjoy this book.

I want to end with another something new - a ranking graph! As I get more in-depth into doing book reviews, I'm taking note of things other reviewers do that look fun and helpful, including monthly and yearly wrap-ups. So here are all of the books I've read so far this year ranked by my level of enjoyment!

It's been a pretty good year for the books I've been picking!

For the next few months, I will be going on a Rick Riordan binge by re-reading the Percy Jackson & The Olympians and Heroes of Olympus series, as well as reading The Trials of Apollo series and The Sun and the Star for the first time - all to gear up for the newest Percy Jackson book, The Chalice of the Gods, that will be coming out on September 26!

If you've never read any of the Percy Jackson books, or if you have and would like to revisit the world of Camp Halfblood, I invite you to join me! I will also likely be peppering in other titles in between each set of the series, but I haven't quite decided which books yet.

That's everything!