I found the Bear and the Nightingale slow and probably needed to pay better attention to the characters as sometimes they would use nicknames that were close to names. I'm sure its some people's cup of tea but it wasn't for me. I found Uprooted to be everything I wanted it to be. Bear is based on Russian folklore and Uprooted on Polish. So there were some similarities in styles but I found it just moved quicker and I found myself liking the characters more.

Lattes was fun. Nothing over the top but since it's supposed to be a story that takes place AFTER the sword is hung up it makes sense. It was enjoyable and it helped me completely understand the "cozy fantasy" sub genre that spawned from it.

"Between the world and me" was one of my 3-6 non-fiction reads of the year. I try to grab some that push me outside my norm/comfort zone (Swords, wizards, space lasers, etc). As a white man, not from the USA, it was interesting to read his perspective. On the flip side, I'm not sure why a teacher was almost fired over it (or at least that's why it was in the news)

I'm a dad for 3 littles so I have lots of down time to knock off books. Before them I had way less time for reading because I wasn't home bound everyday by 7:30pm haha