Well hi. I’m doing a tag today! I was pseudo-tagged by Zezee @Zezeewithbooks, who said mango lovers are tagged. I mean it was peer pressure at the most extreme, I felt like I would be crushed into nothing if I refused.
Also I gotta tell ya: I had never heard of many of these mango things going into this tag. I looked them all up and learned about them a bit. This is a neato tag.
Anyways here some mango stuff about books:
Raw Mango: Your most anticipated release
The Tyrant Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson – This is the third book in the Masquerade series, and I’ve been pining for it for a year. It comes out on August 11th and while I plan on picking it up release day or very shortly after I do need to reread the second book so my memory is fresh. I’m gonna pick it up right after my current read.
Goodreads synopsis of book 1: Tomorrow, on the beach, Baru Cormorant will look up from the sand of her home and see red sails on the horizon.
The Empire of Masks is coming, armed with coin and ink, doctrine and compass, soap and lies. They’ll conquer Baru’s island, rewrite her culture, criminalize her customs, and dispose of one of her fathers. But Baru is patient. She’ll swallow her hate, prove her talent, and join the Masquerade. She will learn the secrets of empire. She’ll be exactly what they need. And she’ll claw her way high enough up the rungs of power to set her people free.
In a final test of her loyalty, the Masquerade will send Baru to bring order to distant Aurdwynn, a snakepit of rebels, informants, and seditious dukes. Aurdwynn kills everyone who tries to rule it. To survive, Baru will need to untangle this land’s intricate web of treachery – and conceal her attraction to the dangerously fascinating Duchess Tain Hu.
But Baru is a savant in games of power, as ruthless in her tactics as she is fixated on her goals. In the calculus of her schemes, all ledgers must be balanced, and the price of liberation paid in full.
Banganapalli: Longest book on your TBR
According to Goodreads, it’s Jerusalem by Alan Moore, coming in at 1266 pages. This is the guy who wrote V For Vendetta and The Watchmen, and from what I heard this is apparently his Magnum Opus. It’s a novel too, as opposed to the graphic novels he’s famous for. Eventually I’ll pick it up. Honestly it’ll probably have to be as a buddy read, I’m rather intimidated.
Goodreads synopsis: Fierce in its imagining and stupefying in its scope, Jerusalem is the tale of everything, told from a vanished gutter.
In the epic novel Jerusalem, Alan Moore channels both the ecstatic visions of William Blake and the theoretical physics of Albert Einstein through the hardscrabble streets and alleys of his hometown of Northampton, UK. In the half a square mile of decay and demolition that was England’s Saxon capital, eternity is loitering between the firetrap housing projects. Embedded in the grubby amber of the district’s narrative among its saints, kings, prostitutes, and derelicts, a different kind of human time is happening, a soiled simultaneity that does not differentiate between the petrol-colored puddles and the fractured dreams of those who navigate them.
Employing, a kaleidoscope of literary forms and styles that ranges from brutal social realism to extravagant children’s fantasy, from the modern stage drama to the extremes of science fiction, Jerusalem’s dizzyingly rich cast of characters includes the living, the dead, the celestial, and the infernal in an intricately woven tapestry that presents a vision of an absolute and timeless human reality in all of its exquisite, comical, and heartbreaking splendor.
In these pages lurk demons from the second-century Book of Tobit and angels with golden blood who reduce fate to a snooker tournament. Vagrants, prostitutes, and ghosts rub shoulders with Oliver Cromwell, Samuel Beckett, James Joyce’s tragic daughter Lucia, and Buffalo Bill, among many others. There is a conversation in the thunderstruck dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral, childbirth on the cobblestones of Lambeth Walk, an estranged couple sitting all night on the cold steps of a Gothic church front, and an infant choking on a cough drop for eleven chapters. An art exhibition is in preparation, and above the world a naked old man and a beautiful dead baby race along the Attics of the Breath toward the heat death of the universe.
An opulent mythology for those without a pot to piss in, through the labyrinthine streets and pages of Jerusalem tread ghosts that sing of wealth, poverty, and our threadbare millennium. They discuss English as a visionary language from John Bunyan to James Joyce, hold forth on the illusion of mortality post-Einstein, and insist upon the meanest slum as Blake’s eternal holy city.
Alphonso: A hyped book you love
A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J Maas – It’s specifically this one I love. The first and third in the series are nowhere near as good. Fight me. :p
Goodreads synopsis of book 1: Feyre’s survival rests upon her ability to hunt and kill – the forest where she lives is a cold, bleak place in the long winter months. So when she spots a deer in the forest being pursued by a wolf, she cannot resist fighting it for the flesh. But to do so, she must kill the predator and killing something so precious comes at a price …
Dragged to a magical kingdom for the murder of a faerie, Feyre discovers that her captor, his face obscured by a jewelled mask, is hiding far more than his piercing green eyes would suggest. Feyre’s presence at the court is closely guarded, and as she begins to learn why, her feelings for him turn from hostility to passion and the faerie lands become an even more dangerous place. Feyre must fight to break an ancient curse, or she will lose him forever.
Totapuri: A book with a green or yellow cover
Shaman’s Crossing by Robin Hobb – A recent read that I really enjoyed! I buddy read this with Zezee @Zezeewithbooks and man, we both really liked it. We’ll be picking up the second one next week and this first one just won’t leave my head. I think of it multiple times a day!
Goodreads synopsis: Nevare Burvelle is the second son of a second son, destined from birth to carry a sword. The wealthy young noble will follow his father—newly made a lord by the King of Gernia—into the cavalry, training in the military arts at the elite King’s Cavella Academy in the capital city of Old Thares. Bright and well-educated, an excellent horseman with an advantageous engagement, Nevare’s future appears golden.
But as his Academy instruction progresses, Nevare begins to realize that the road before him is far from straight. The old aristocracy looks down on him as the son of a “new noble” and, unprepared for the political and social maneuvering of the deeply competitive school and city, the young man finds himself entangled in a web of injustice, discrimination, and foul play. In addition, he is disquieted by his unconventional girl-cousin Epiny—who challenges his heretofore unwavering world view—and by the bizarre dreams that haunt his nights.
For twenty years the King’s cavalry has pushed across the grasslands, subduing and settling its nomads and claiming the territory in Gernia’s name. Now they have driven as far as the Barrier Mountains, home to the Speck people, a quiet, forest-dwelling folk who retain the last vestiges of magic in a world that is rapidly becoming modernized. From childhood Nevare has been taught that the Specks are a primitive people to be pitied for their backward ways—and feared for their indigenous diseases, including the deadly Speck plague, which has ravaged the frontier towns and military outposts.
The Dark Evening brings the carnival to Old Thares, and with it an unknown magic, and the first Specks Nevare has ever seen
Neelam: A rainy day book recommendation
Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb – Another Hobb book! I still haven’t quite decided my ultimate favorites list in all the Elderlings books but this series is probably up there. And the best part is it’s really long, which is perfect for a rainy day book.
Goodreads synopsis: Not far from the Six Duchies lies Bingtown, hub of exotic trade and home to a merchant nobility famed for its liveships–rare vessels carved from wizardwood, which ripens magically into sentient awareness. Bingtown’s Old Traders, their wealth eroded by northern wars and the rapacity of southern pirates, now face an influx of upstart merchants who bring change to a complex society.
The Vestrit family’s only hope of renewed prosperity is the Vivacia, a liveship they have nurtured for three generations. Now, as old Captain Vestrit lies dying in Bingtown, the Vivacia cuts homeward through the waves, about to quicken into a living being. The ship carries Vestrit’s daughter Althea and the conniving son-in-law he has named as the Vivacia‘s next captain.
But lovely, wild-spirited Althea, sailing the Vivacia with her father since childhood and sharing its half-awakened memories and ocean secrets, has bonded with the ship in her deepest soul. Joined by Brashen–her father’s first mate, now demoted by the Vivacia‘s new commander–she will stop at nothing in a bitter quest to claim its captaincy.
Meanwhile, in the rocky cays known as the Pirate Isles, a ruthless man lusts after his own kind of power. The pirate captain Kennit, in his scheme to be king of this outlaw realm, has vowed that he will wrest a liveship from its owners and turn it to his own use. His twisted ambition will bring him into a strange partnership with a boy-priest turned seaman–and into violent conflict with the wizardwood magic of Althea and Brashen.
Mango Pickle: A book that makes you feel nostalgic
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak – I read this book for a college class back in 2011 or so. It makes me nostalgic just for being in college, particularly back when I was getting my first degree. The atmosphere was just different, and when I went back to the same place for my second degree it just wasn’t the same man. I’ll forever pine for those two years, and this book makes me think of them.
Goodreads synopsis: It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will be busier still.
By her brother’s graveside, Liesel’s life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger’s Handbook, left behind there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordian-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor’s wife’s library, wherever there are books to be found.
But these are dangerous times. When Liesel’s foster family hides a Jew in their basement, Liesel’s world is both opened up, and closed down.
Mango Kulfi: A feel-good book recommendation
A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan – This is another recent read from April or so. This book is just so wholesome and wonderful and adventurous and I was very happy reading it.
Goodreads synopsis: You, dear reader, continue at your own risk. It is not for the faint of heart—no more so than the study of dragons itself. But such study offers rewards beyond compare: to stand in a dragon’s presence, even for the briefest of moments—even at the risk of one’s life—is a delight that, once experienced, can never be forgotten. . . .
All the world, from Scirland to the farthest reaches of Eriga, know Isabella, Lady Trent, to be the world’s preeminent dragon naturalist. She is the remarkable woman who brought the study of dragons out of the misty shadows of myth and misunderstanding into the clear light of modern science. But before she became the illustrious figure we know today, there was a bookish young woman whose passion for learning, natural history, and, yes, dragons defied the stifling conventions of her day.
Here at last, in her own words, is the true story of a pioneering spirit who risked her reputation, her prospects, and her fragile flesh and bone to satisfy her scientific curiosity; of how she sought true love and happiness despite her lamentable eccentricities; and of her thrilling expedition to the perilous mountains of Vystrana, where she made the first of many historic discoveries that would change the world forever.
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And that’s it! If you’re reading this, consider yourself tagged. Embrace the mango, peer pressure.
It’s been a while since I read a book that wasn’t a manga in a day. I think the last time it happened was around early 2017, when I was working the dayshift at the technology help desk is my college’s campus library – like January or so. Meaning that classes weren’t really happening and I literally either binged X-Files for 8 hours or read an entire book. There were three books I believe I read in one sitting during that, but the most recent of those is
Assassin’s Fate
Embuhleeliest 
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