#2023 Books

[mayasynth]

My beautiful unhinged daughter, Mary Elizabeth Frankenstein <3 I know this was not at all how the scene actually went, but humour me

(Pssssst everyone please read Our Hideous Progeny, pleaseee 🙏)

[purplebass]

2023 books a darker shade of magic by v.e. schwab (reread)

Magic was a living thing---that, everyone knew---but to Kell it felt like more, like a friend, like family. It was, after all, a part of him (much more than it was a part of most) and he couldn't help feeling like it knew what he was saying, what he was feeling, not only when he summoned it, but always, in every heartbeat and every breath. He was, after all, Antari.

[somerabbitholes]

2023 in books, minus e-books, audiobooks, and borrowed and lent ones. a crisper list of favourites is on the rabbit hole

[elizmanderson]

free shipping with BookShop.Org this Prime Day

on July 11 & 12, 2023, BookShop.Org will offer free shipping to entice book buyers to buy from them rather than Amazon. BookShop is an independent seller owned by a small group of investors, the American Booksellers Association, and employees, and they donate to and partner with independent bookstores around the U.S. to benefit brick-and-mortar indies.

(you can read their "about" here.)

unfortunately, BookShop only ships within the U.S., although they do have a UK branch. (I'm not sure whether the UK branch is offering free shipping for Prime Day, but if you're UK-based it's worth checking!) but if you're U.S.-based and would like to buy The Remarkable Retirement of Edna Fisher (or any other books) with free shipping and WITHOUT supporting Amazon this Prime Day, you can order through BookShop!

additionally, Edna's fantastical journey canonically begins on July 11 - the same day the free shipping starts. what better time to buy the book than the very day it begins?

orders over $100 will also receive a BookShop branded tote bag, which according to the email I received about this whole thing is their first-ever merch.

(I am not associated with BookShop. although I did sign up as an affiliate and do get a small commission when people buy through my affiliate links, which the buy links in this post are. but they didn't ask me to advertise. I'm just an author whose book starts on July 11, just like the free shipping.)

anyway, this Prime Day please consider buying The Remarkable Retirement of Edna Fisher through not-Amazon. the book is an adult contemporary fantasy about an 83-year-old who leaves the nursing home for fantastical adventure and gets oodles of found family.

hardcover | paperback

[sardinesinthegarden]

My fave reads of 2023 in a collage zine :•)

[hsincerely]

BOOKS READ IN 2023: the raven boys by maggie stiefvater

“The road isn’t awake.” “The … ley line?” Blue suggested. A little wistfully, she added, “But that doesn’t explain why only you and Noah can hear it.” The trees murmured, Si expergefacere via, erimus in debitum. “If you wake the line, they’ll be in your debt.”

[terrypratchettestate]

✨ A magical guide ✨

Tiffany Aching's Guide to Being a Witch by Rhianna Pratchett and Gabrielle Kent, illustrated by Paul Kidby, is out now!

Read more.

[apolline-lucy]

marketing my book is so hard because I don’t wanna be like ‘hey I wrote this cute but kinda spooky sapphic fantasy with witches and monsters and mystery, please add it to your tbr on Goodreads and buy it next month when it comes out’ but at the same time that’s exactly what I should be doing lol oh to be a writer in this economy

[c-e-mcgill]

It's UK paperback day!

Hi all! Briefly breaking my self-imposed social media ban (it's Deadline City, over here :') ) to tell you that the paperback of Our Hideous Progeny is out!* 🥳

* If you're in the UK/Europe/commonwealth! Sorry, rest-of-the-world, you'll have to wait 'til May! 😅

Also, it's time for soooooome:

✨ Giveaways! ✨

(UK only) - My publisher is giving away copies of OHP, plus an ammonite-shaped lamp(?!!) (I want one too, now 😂) on Instagram - ends Feb 4th at midnight!

(UK only) - My lovely publicist Izzie also has 10 copies of OHP to give away - if you're a book reviewer or blogger, DM her about receiving a copy!

Open to everyone: I'll be doing a free online reading Feb 2nd at 12pm EST with six other authors as part of 'Strong Women, Strange Worlds,' a group which highlights the work of authors of marginalized genders in SFF. I'll be doing a giveaway at the end for one copy of OHP, plus a bookmark and sticker!

✨ ...and an eBook sale! ✨

If you're an eBook fan (and based in the UK - sorry again, rest-of-the-world 🥲) you can grab OHP this month on Kindle, Kobo, or Google Play for just £0.99! A steal, I say, a steal!!

That's all for now - happy February!

[fellamarsh]

The fate of the world is at stake... but nobody is listening.

✨Read the book readers are comparing to Priory of the Orange Tree and The Left Hand of Darkness✨

Hierarchy of the Unseen is a queer fantasy novel about a shiftless demon named Kor and a devout demon hunter named Mitzli who must team up to avert a wave of demonic violence.

If you like character-driven fantasy with immersive worldbuilding, trans protagonists whose stories aren't centered around transphobia, and fresh takes on demons and vampires, then this is the book for you!

Reviewers are calling it "addictive, immersive," "fresh, and engaging," with a "richly realized, exciting world and interesting central dilemma," whose protagonists "feel distinct and real" and "make a great comedic duo."

You can pick up a copy here (to support two queer, trans authors during Pride month!) or read the full blurb and check out reviews on Goodreads or Storygraph.

[millylouedward]

Spotify Wrapped, but for my books <3

[purplebass]

2023 books - a gathering of shadows by v.e. schwab (reread)

Magic is tangled, so you must be smooth. Magic is wild, so you must be tame. Magic is chaos, so you must be calm. Are you calm, Kell?

[elizmanderson]

queerness in The Remarkable Retirement of Edna Fisher

book description

when you’re an old woman armed with nothing but gumption and knitting needles, stopping a sorcerer from wiping out an entire dragon-fighting organization is a tall order. no one understands why 83-year-old Edna Fisher is the Chosen One, destined to save the Knights from a dragon-riding sorcerer bent on their destruction. after all, Edna has never handled a magical weapon, faced down a dragon, or cast a spell. and everyone knows the Council of Wizards always chooses a teenager—like the vengeful girl ready to snatch Edna’s destiny from under her nose.

still, Edna leaps at the chance to leave the nursing home. with a son long dead in the Knights’ service, she’s determined to save dragon-fighters like him & ensure other mothers don’t suffer the same loss she did. but as Edna learns about the abuse in the ranks & the sorcerer’s history, she questions if it’s really the sorcerer that needs stopping—or the Knights she’s trying to save.

find it here

okay let's talk about queerness in this book

did a thread on twitter in which I said "cishet" five hundred thousand times so will probably get banned lmao but anyway I wanted to share it here too

especially since it's late in Pride Month and I have yet to post anything anywhere about it BEING Pride Month and me being queer and my books being queer, bc I've been burnt out af. so what energy I've had has gone toward planning and writing

anyway

I say "queerness in" rather than "queer characters in" because I want to talk about queerness in the book more broadly, not least bc I'm a queer creator & this is a queer book, but I've had a lot of impostor syndrome about both those things.

I figured out I was queer later in life & am a woman-presenting person w/a male-presenting partner. I've questioned my gender & sexuality repeatedly & ID'd differently over time, which is why I like "queer." I don't have to re-explain myself a dozen times. I'm queer. that's that.

but having figured out my queerness later, and having a relationship that presents as cishet, it took a long time for me to overcome feelings of ~not being queer enough~ (and sometimes I still struggle with them).

similarly, my MC is an apparently* cishet woman, unlike the MCs of many books that appear on queer book lists at this time of year. just like I took a long time to start really engaging with my community bc I worried I wasn't ~queer enough,~ for a long time, I didn't call this a queer book bc I worried it wasn't ~queer enough~. if people asked if the book was queer, I'd reply with a laundry list of explicitly queer characters rather than saying yes

fuck that though lmao. this is a queer book. let me count the ways

1. found family

as found family is so important to many queer people - by connecting us to our community, by welcoming us when bio family casts us off - found family is central to REMARKABLE RETIREMENT. while there are queer romantic arcs, the found family is the most important relationship in the book.

2. queer labels

some characters get explicit labels. Benjamin is gay. Clem is ace. queer labels are important bc they give us the ability to describe our identities and experiences! however...

3. undefined queerness

while labels are important, queerness isn't about fitting into new boxes. it's about smashing the boxes apart.

even if characters don't have specific labels applied on-page, they're queer. they don't need to claim a specific label for that to be true.*

*caveat that some media avoids using labels to pander to queer audiences w/implied queerness without ~alienating~ cishets by stating "this character is Not Cishet"**

that's not what I mean

I mean e.g. in OFMD queerness is inherent even if WORDS like queer/ace/etc aren't used. OMitB is another example (specifically Mabel) and Good Omens is yet another.

**caveat to my caveat that some media is queer-coded & avoids queer labels rather than being explicitly queer because network execs or whoever won't allow explicit queerness.

this is not the fault of the creators. sometimes it can be hard to tell the difference.

but anyway.

in REMARKABLE RETIREMENT, several queer characters are queer without using specific labels.

in some cases this is bc it doesn't come up or isn't important to them to express in the moment. like Clem is bi, but she's not worried about being bi. she's worried about being ace, because she's still kind of questioning that about herself, and she's worried it might cause problems down the road if her crush is >:[ about her not wanting to have sex. so she uses the word "ace" to describe herself in this scene but not "bi," even though she's both.

in other cases it's bc they don't have the language. Kiernan's sense of attraction and desire is described in a way that seems graysexual or demisexual (or both), and Red's sense of desire is described in a way that seems ace-spec, but neither of them use those terms, because neither of them know those terms. despite the lack of terminology, many ace readers have identified multiple ace characters based on description or experience. the lack of a specific label doesn't make those characters less queer.

similarly, some characters have not yet had this realization about themselves. which leads us to...

4. questioning

okay, back to my first asterisk of the post.

Edna is by all appearances an old cishet woman.

for most of the story, that's how she seems. that's what SHE thinks, even. she's a cishet old grandma adopting every queer young person she can find.

BUT THEN

Clem explains aceness to her

and Edna has a brief crisis bc wait a minute this sounds like her??

ultimately, Edna has too much to worry about right now to spend time questioning whether, at the age of 83, she might be somewhere on the ace spectrum

so it doesn't come up again

but that moment of crisis is THERE, & that too is queer

5. queernormativity*

I write queernorm worlds, largely bc I viscerally hate coming out lmao

it doesn't mean everyone's a queer scholar

like Clem has to explain "ace" to Edna, bc Edna thinks blankly of a deck of cards & doesn't understand what that has to do with sex

but it DOES mean queer folks get to just be and do

*caveat that this is not remotely to imply that a story is less queer if its world ISN'T queernorm

it's just a way in which MY story is queer

6. all the queer characters

not gonna do a list (even though my original idea for Pride Month when I was young and optimistic and thought I'd have energy to do it way back when was a list of queer characters), but virtually every character in this book is queer in one way or another

on twitter this is where I ended because 6 seemed like a good number for Pride since June is the sixth month, but tumblr gets a bonus

7. the author is queer

happy pride, buy my queer book

[very-grownup]

Book 85, 2023

In my second year of university, all I took was English courses, because a full course load of nothing but reading seemed like a good idea after a stressful, somewhat traumatic first year. It was a long time ago and over the course of my time at uni I read a lot, only some of it multiple versions of Beowulf, and doodled my way through hundreds of hours of lectures, but some things have stuck with me.

I think a lot about my short story (later science fiction) professor and his frustration with the colloquialising and simplification of the word 'awesome', how it had become synonymous with 'impressive' and 'cool', stripped of the nuance where it is something so impressive it frightens you. 'Awesome' is a regular part of my casual vocabulary and language evolves, but I feel for Professor Matheson; sometimes the word you need is the awesome with the deeper connotation, and it's frustrating to think a reader is going to miss the nuance of the word because of the way it's popularly used.

Which brings us to Rebecca Chambers' "A Psalm for the Wild-Built"; every word I want to use to describe it feels like it's been muddled or neutered by a combination of internet hot take discourse and marketing speak. I've settled on 'gentle', which isn't the same as 'cozy' or 'soft', 'safe' or 'unproblematic'. Gentle is mint tea, warm, hydrating, a caffeine-free invigorating that's also relaxing, but it can still burn your tongue. It's a loving cat resting in your lap, soft paws massaging your thighs with pressure that can turn to pain and blood. Gentle feels good, comforting, but there's a choice, a restraint; the capacity to hurt is still there.

A distant future, another planet, an age of robotics leading to sentient artificial intelligence, and not a conflict of man versus machine but the quiet aftermath of an agreement between humans and robots, a separation of their societies, a pact of no contact, and humans moving forward to create a post-robot society, striving always to exist fully but conscientiously.

A young monk sets off on a vague pilgrimage in response to a vague inner malaise and becomes the first human being to encounter a robot since the robots vanished into the greater wilderness. They talk and continue the pilgrimage together.

That's it.

It's a novella, not a novel, a bite-sized road tale, and Chambers builds a world with rising and falling technological ages and environmental awareness, shifting human philosophies and ways of life to support this bite with the structural soundness and visibility of a spiderweb. It manages to be a very far flung future piece of science fiction, acknowledging the mistakes and damage of human society, while envisioning something better, and also acknowledging that this is an ongoing process. There's no goalpost for a 'good' version of humanity, there's just humanity, constantly evolving and growing and learning about the world and itself and changing in response to that; that involves hard truths and hope in equal measure.

It's a smart, thoughtful, sincere book, charming and funny and cathartic. It's not a reading experience that coddles you, but it refreshes you like walking in a downpour.

If you've ever felt lost in life or lost in the woods, "A Psalm for the Wild-Built" is the book about robots you need.

[hsincerely]

BOOKS READ IN 2023: aristotle and dante discover the secrets of the universe by benjamin alire sáenz

“Why would you risk your own life to save Dante if you didn’t love him?” “Because he’s my friend.” “And why would you go and beat the holy crap out of a guy who hurt him? Why would you do that? All of your instincts, Ari, all of them, tell me something. You love that boy.” I kept staring down at the table. “I think you love him more than you can bear.”

[terrypratchettestate]

Happy publication day to A Stroke of the Pen: The Lost Stories, featuring 20 rediscovered tales from decades ago by Terry Pratchett, complete with a foreword by Neil Gaiman.

Read more here.