Kate Spofford, author

Category: books

  • February reading round-up

    # of books read: 17 audiobooks listened to: 3 ebooks read: 6 ARCs read: 2 books from the Throne of Glass series: 2 graphic novels: 4 total page count: 3,877 year total page count: 8,253 Well, not so many books read as last month, but a lot of that has to do with February being 3 days shorter…

  • my top 10 werewolf books*

    *that I didn’t write Books about werewolves have a huge advantage over werewolf movies: they don’t have to deal with special effects, which means they can be great without needing a big budget.  That being said, there are a lot of cheesy werewolf books out there (and many of them are in the romance genre…).…

  • January reading round-up

    # of books read: 20 audiobooks listened to: 5 ebooks read: 6 nonfiction read: 2 ARCs read: 1 books from the Experiment in Terror series: 4 books from the White Cat series: 3 vintage YA: 3 total page count: 4,376 I did a ton of reading this month. In newer releases, I finished up Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at…

  • 3 on a theme: brotherly (and sisterly) love

    3 on a theme: brotherly (and sisterly) love

    I am often reading between 3 and 5 books at the same time, and occasionally there’s a theme that might not be remarkable in one book… but when I see it in three books, I take notice. I’ve become accustomed to YA books that heavily rely on romance.  So YA books that do not have…

  • Top 5 Reads of 2016

    The only book I rated 5 stars in 2016 was the last book in the Captive Prince series, Kings Rising, by C.S. Pacat. This is a great series which is as much about the main relationship between two princes as about political intrigue. Another series that I highly enjoyed in 2016 was the Falling Kingdoms…

  • 3 books on a theme: brothers who died in the war

    I am often reading between 3 and 5 books at the same time, and occasionally there’s a theme that might not be remarkable in one book… but when I see it in three books, I take notice. In the Shadow of Blackbirds by Cat Winters included among its characters a set of brothers, one of whom…

  • the YA horror novel aesthetic

    You could say that every genre has its own aesthetic, but lately the YA horror genre has been taking aesthetic to a new level – beyond cover design, or even typeface and chapter headings. The first YA novel that did this really effectively was Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children – a novel which some…

  • reading list April 2016

    This is about a week late, but I’m going to try to make this a monthly column, where I give a brief review of everything I’ve read that month – so here’s April! Series Fiction There are only a handful of series that I’m really into.  The Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs is one…

  • goodreads stars & how i use them

    I see a lot of things about reviewers on Goodreads who give reviews that are either 1 star or 5 stars, with little in-between, and whenever I read about reviewers like that, I always feel a little confused. This is the exact opposite of how I rate books. I like a nice bell curve.  Most…

  • back when YA was an afterschool special

    “Vintage” young adult books fall into only a few genres, and I’ve just had the pleasure (?) of reading a few that fit the “Afterschool Special” genre.  This breed of YA is rarely seen for today’s teens.  Reading these books is like being hit over the head with the book’s Very Special Message. The Wave (1981),…