Tag: Year of the Griffin

WWW Wednesday – December 3, 2025

Ryan1 Comment
www_wednesdays

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

Nothing! I’m between books.

Recently Finished

Over the last couple of weeks I read through Year of the Griffin by Dianna Wynne Jones, the sequel novel to Dark Lord of Derkholm. I didn’t end up writing a WWW post about it last week because I did the lion’s share of my reading of this book since then. In many ways it’s very different from the first book, set a number of years after the adventure tours from our world were ended with the denizens of this fantasy land still working toward mending their world. The story mostly takes place at the premiere magical university, where the lingering impacts of the tours are perhaps felt the most, with standards having fallen sharply. The story follows a motley crew of new students, including Elda, one of Wizard Derk’s griffin daughters, as they try to navigate learning magic from a faculty that isn’t at all qualified. I quite enjoyed this book, though I didn’t quite love it. I’m going to try to review this one soon.

Reading Next

Admittedly, I’ve been feeling in need of a break from reading, but I’ve got a number I still want to get through before year’s end, so I’m going to have to wait until January, I think. The next two books I’m planning to read are both from the library. The first is a graphic novel called House of Women by Sophie Goldstein. I don’t know much about it, I just grabbed it off the shelf because it looked interesting, so we’ll see. After that, I intend to start reading Why I Love Horror, a collection of essays about horror literature, including essays by authors such as Paul Tremblay and Josh Malerman. Seems I’m still in the mood for horror.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

WWW Wednesday – November 19, 2025

Ryan1 Comment
www_wednesdays

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

I’m between books at the moment. Also, I’ve finished my reading challenge for this year! Everything until the end of the year is a bonus addition.

Recently Finished

Yesterday I finished reading Once Upon a Time in Hollywood by Quentin Tarantino, a novel adapting the director/author’s film of the same name. I’m really feeling an itch to review this book, as it made for a fascinating reading experience, especially after rewatching the film as a primer. Overall, I wouldn’t actually rate the book all that high, though it certainly isn’t a bad novel, but it’s a really interesting companion to the film, especially in how it fleshes out and recontextualizes certain characters. My early observation proved correct: this is not a novelization of the film, it is a novel adaptation, and weirdly, it only kind of tells the same story. I’ll probably write the review for next week, as I feel like I need to chew on this a little longer.

Reading Next

I’ve decided that the next book I’m going to read is Year of the Griffin by Dianna Wynne Jones, the sequel to The Dark Lord of Derkholm. It’s looking like this novel will be the last in my endeavours this year to finish up book pairs/trilogies I started years ago. I still have a few outstanding cases, but with this one done I’ll be happy to have wrapped up so much unfinished business this year. Despite clearly having some recurring characters from the first book, it’s looking like this novel will be fairly standalone. The cast was quite big in the first one, so I’m hoping this means it won’t be a big deal that I read it over three years ago, though it’s not as if I remember nothing about it. Time will tell.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.