#book roundups

[burins]

as promised the separate comics/graphic novels roundup for 2023! this is a normal post until May when I realized I could (as a graphic novel librarian) become an Eisner voter and read 54 comics in a month (and then slightly less so in August when the Harveys came up.) below a cut because it's heinously long. I'll include my little write-ups and some panels right after my faves

JANUARY

Superman: Reign of the Supermen by Dan Jurgens and others

Under the Red Hood by Judd Winick and Doug Mahnke

I read this January second. Begin as you mean to go on! For all its flaws (Dick's Squidward face) the emotional arc of this story puts me right into the pit about Jason Todd.

Batman/Superman: World’s Finest (ongoing) by Mark Waid, Dan Mora, and Travis Moore

First off Dan Mora draws everyone like the most beautiful people in the world, which never hurts to look at. But also this is just a really fun comic! The action is fun the characters are very sweet and we get an honest to god Superbat gem fusion

Young Justice (1998) by Peter David and Todd Nauck

MY CHILDREN! I was finishing up my Tim readthrough and was so delighted to meet Kon and Cassie and Bart and Cissie and Anita (I still don't care for Lobo.) Nauck's art is cartoony in a way that fits the comic really well.

Titans/Young Justice: Graduation Day by Judd Winick and Ale Garza

Red Robin by Christopher Yost, Fabian Nicieza, Ramón Bachs, and Marcus To

THEEEEE ARC for Tim. Everyone says read Red Robin. Yes read Red Robin but also understand this is him at his worst and most scrungly. This is not normal Tim. This is Tim's failgirl era.

MARCH

You and a Bike and a Road by Eleanor Davis

Beautiful little memoir comic about biking across the US, and also about borders and travel and isolation/togetherness.

Superman for All Seasons by Jeph Loeb, Tim Sale, and Bjarne Hansen

I love this comic. Tim Sale draws Clark like the biggest, softest person you've ever seen, and Bjarne Hansen's colors are so gentle. (if you remember the rock metaphor from mission parameters, it's inspired by this scene from Book 1: Spring)

APRIL

Superman: Lost by Christopher Priest and Carlos Parlaguyan (ongoing)

This series cuts right to the horror of being Superman and also the horror of being Lois Lane SO deftly. a few plot points I don't love but overall God it makes me miserable

Birds of Maine by Michael Deforge

A delightful, dreamy collection of comics about birds living in a utopian society on the moon. The art is weird, the story is weird, everything about it is lovely.

MAY

Divinity v1-2 by Matt Kindt and Trevor Hairsine

The City of Belgium by Brecht Evans

This is not a perfect graphic novel but the stuff it does with art and page and rhythm is so so phenomenal.

Lights, Planets, People! by Lizzy Stewart and Molly Naylor

Killadelphia v1-3 by Rodney Barnes, Jason Shawn Alexander, and Christopher Mitten

The Department of Truth v1-4 by James Tynion IV and Martin Simmonds

This is a book about conspiracy theories and it is DEEPLY unsettling. Martin Simmonds' art makes me legitimately queasy to look at. Really really good but also it did send me into a little spiral for a bit.

Supergirl Woman of Tomorrow by Tom King and Bilquis Evely (Mat Lopes' colors also deserve a shoutout)

This book made me cry! Also I have yet to read another Kara comic because this one was so good and I'm afraid the others won't be. She's sharp and angry in all the best ways and also deeply deeply caring and good. Capes meets space fantasy at its best. I would die for Ruthye

Nightwing (2016) v1-2 by Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo

Batman: One Bad Day: The Riddler by Tom King and Mitch Gerads

She-Hulk (2022) v1-2 by Rainbow Rowell, Luca Maresca, Rogê Antônio, and Takeshi Miyazawa

Superman: Space Age by Mike Russell and Michael Allred

Revenge of the Librarians by Tom Gauld

Pinball: A Graphic History of the Silver Ball by Jon Chad

Down to the Bone: A Leukemia Story by Catherine Pioli

So Much for Love: How I Survived a Toxic Relationship by Sophie Lambda

Welcome to St. Hell: My Trans Teen Misadventure by Lewis Hancox 

Chef’s Kiss by Jarrett Melendez and Danica Brine

Wash Day Diaries by Jamila Rowser and Robyn Smith

Animal Castle v1 by Xavier Dorison and Felix Delep

Bungleton Green and the Mystic Commandos by Jay Jackson

Rain by Joe Hill and Zoe Thorogood

Flung Out of Space: Inspired by the Indecent Adventures of Patricia Highsmith by Grace Ellis and Hannah Templer

Masterclass in writing a biopic that doesn't shy away from its subject's being kind of a wretched person while also producing art that is deeply meaningful to many, many people.

Tiki: A Very Ruff Year by David Azencot and Fred Leclerc

Ten Days in a Madhouse by Nellie Bly, adapted by Brad Ricca and Courtney Sieh

Ultrasound by Conor Stechschulte

Tori Amos: Little Earthquakes, The Graphic Album (various)

A Visit to Moscow by Rabbi Rafael Grossman, adapted by Anna Olswanger and Yevgenia Nayberg

Look Back by Tatsuki Fujimoto

Shuna’s Journey by Hayao Miyazaki

Come Over Come Over by Lynda Barry

It’s So Magic by Lynda Barry

Macanudo: Welcome to Elsewhere by Liniers

My Perfect Life by Lynda Barry

What a lovely collection of comics. Barry captures being a teen in all its mess and glory.

Always Never by Jordi Lafebre

The Pass by Espé

Mary Jane and Black Cat Beyond

Moon Knight: Black, White and Blood by Jed Mackay and Carlos Villa

The Nice House on the Lake v1-2 by James Tynion IV and Álvaro Martínez Bueno (Jordie Bellaire colors)

I know Tynion can do horror, but he really really can do horror. This is like Glass Onion meets the worst nightmare you've ever had, and the way it unfolds is masterful. Martínez Bueno's art is dreamy and unsettling, especially combined with Bellaire who colors like she's painting oil slicks.

A Vicious Circle by Mattson Tomlin and Lee Bermejo

The Human Target v1-2 by Tom King and Greg Smallwood

Booster Gold (1986) by Dan Jurgens

Booster my friend Booster. I really didn't expect this to be as FUN as it is! There are occasional storylines that drag but overall a delight.

Heartstopper v2-4 by Alice Oseman

Killer Queens by David Booher and Claudia Balboni

I Hate This Place v1 by Kyle Starks and Artyom Topilin

I really need to read v2 because this was so fun. Queer backwoods horror, sarcastic, delightful, and never heavy-handed. I read this right after Killer Queens, which read like someone fed a bunch of Drag Race episodes and 2012 tumblr posts into a comics generator, and Heartstopper, which was so blandly unobjectionable I actually forgot I'd read it, so I Hate This Place felt refreshing as hell. (actually while looking up screencaps I remember why I didn't read v2 which is that v1 has a LOT of gore and body horror and I gotta be careful with that stuff. however if you like a slasher go forth)

It’s Lonely at the Center of the Earth by Zoe Thorogood

Gut punch on every page. Thorogood's art is weird and wild. It does feel a bit as though she's opened up her ribs for us to peruse.

Chivalry by Neil Gaiman and Colleen Doran

Sensory: Life on the Spectrum (various)

Cryptid Club by Sarah Andersen

Public Domain v1 by Chip Zdarsky

Love Everlasting v1 by Tom King and Elsa Charretier

Mazebook by Jeff Lemire

A twisting fable about grief and the paths it takes you down. A lot of the Eisner noms had dead wives or daughters which I began to resent, but I gave this a pass because it was really, really beautiful.

Days of Sand by Aimee DeJongh

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton

Everyone has told you it's good! oh it's good. Beaton's style, which I associate more with her humor work, at first feels somewhat at war with the subject matter, but it ended up really working for me.

Talk to My Back by Yamada Murasaki

This was one of my favorite books of the whole year. Beautiful meditation on the compromises of marriage and motherhood in beautiful, sparse drawings that lingered with me long after I'd finished reading.

Crushing by Sophie Burrows

JUNE

Do a Powerbomb by Daniel Warren Johnson

Do you like wrestling? I don't really care about it, but I do love weird wacky stories about grief and trying to fight your way through the afterlife to get your mom back. Both hilarious and poignant. The art is as bombastic as it needs to be.

The Night Eaters v1 by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda

Liu and Takeda are back! This time with some horror about a pair of siblings and their fucked up parents. Great stuff.

Ripple Effects by Jordan Hart and Bruno Chiroleu

Kingdom Come by Mark Waid and Alex Ross

Superman: Up in the Sky by Tom King and Andy Kubert

Oh the Clark Kent of it all. the panel where Clark is calling home from alien customs because he has flown to the ends of the universe for one little girl is really what got me in this one

Superman: American Alien by Max Landis and various artists

JULY

Superman Red and Blue (anthology)

This is a whole lot of writers and a whole lot of artists and all of them are excellent. Once again the Clark Kent emotion is happening to me.

Superman: Birthright by Mark Waid and Leinil Francis Yu

Superman (2011) v5-6 by Greg Pak and Aaron Kuder

Superman: Warworld by Philip Kennedy Johnson and various artists

AUGUST

Justice League International by Keith Giffen, J. M. DeMatteis, and Kevin Maguire

Booster my friend Booster is here and also so are all of my other new friends. I loved the initial run (though it has its weak spots) but then I had to slog through a lot of very bad later stuff.

Blue and Gold by Dan Jurgens and Ryan Sook

New Teen Titans (various Brother Blood issues) by Marv Wolfman and George Pérez

Acting Class by Nick Drnaso

Follow Me Down: A Reckless Book by Ed Brubaker

Girl Juice by Benji Nate

Little Monsters v1 by Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen

Mimosa by Archie Bongiovanni

Who Will Make the Pancakes by Megan Kelso

Cat + Gamer by Wataru Nadatani

Goodbye, Eri by Tatsuki Fujimoto

Spy x Family v1-2 by Tatsuya Endo

Alice on the Run: One Child’s Journey Through the Rwandan Civil War by Gaspard Talmasse

Ashes by Álvaro Ortiz

The Extraordinary Part: Book One: Orsay’s Hands by Florent Ruppert and Jérôme Mulot

The art and story here are simply so fabulous. A better world is possible and sometimes you have to take direct action to make it!

SEPTEMBER

Batman RIP by Grant Morrison and Tony S. Daniel

Batman Incorporated by Grant Morrison and Chris Burnham

OCTOBER

Batman and Robin (2011) by Peter J. Tomasi and Patrick Gleason

I've talked about this one before but I think it is truly one of my favorite depictions of Bruce as father in all the ways he succeeds and all the ways he fails. John Kalisz's luminous colors also deserve a shoutout.

Batman: Failsafe and Gotham War by literally everyone currently working in DC but especially Zdarsky

DECEMBER

Birds of Prey (1999) by Chuck Dixon and then Gail Simone and a number of other people (this continued into November and December)

This made the worms in my brain wriggle so bad that I wrote a whole yuri zine piece about Dinah and Babs, coming to a PDF (or physical copy!) near you soon!

Dungeon Meshi v1-11 by Ryoko Kui

Is it romantic to devour and be devoured in turn? Ryoko Kui sure thinks so. I was hungry the whole time I was making these my bedtime reading.

When I Arrived at the Castle by Emily Carroll

Through the Woods by Emily Carroll

Emily Carroll is among the best to ever do it. This collection of stories is her at her unsettling best.

Batgirl (2000) v1-3 by Kelley Puckett and Damion Scott

thanks to Mssrs Puckett and Scott I am now fully unhinged about Cass Cain and her quest for immolation. the art in this is so stylized but so well-done, especially given how little text is in much of the series. when the paneling hits it HITS.

and that's everything I read this year!! god there was a lot of it. I liked a lot of the stuff I didn't bold, but also I hated some of it. please feel free to talk to me about any of it!!!

Bruce Wayne Murderer/Fugitive by everyone working at DC in 2002

When a good crossover storyline works, it really really works. I love to see Bruce completely blow up his life because he doesn't see any point in existing outside the cowl anymore. Even more do I love to see the fallout from this on everyone who loves him! delight delight delight.

[deanmarywinchester]

best sf/f/horror I read in 2024

hello esteemed colleagues. here’s stuff I read in 2024 that I liked, in no particular order outside of the ranking tiers. find previous years of this reclist here

top 5

the bright sword by lev grossman: “lev grossman wrote a shockingly melancholy, hopeful, and expansive novel that hurts a little to read, about a young man who dreams of the age of heroes but finds that that age is over” and other unsurprising statements. this one is a take on Arthurian legend that happens after Arthur is dead, and is really interesting to me for how it portrays England as abandoned once by Rome’s great architects and then once more by the magic of Arthur’s court. with the age of legends twice dead, can anyone bring it back for real or can they only try to make it RETVRN?

the traitor baru cormorant + sequels by seth dickinson: there was a version of this post, before I went back and checked my list of what I read this year, where the top 5 was only Seth Dickinson books. these books are about how far you’ll descend into evil (ie how many war crimes you’ll commit as an imperial operative) to save your colonized home. they’re all good but the first one goes CRAZY. the author was a police bias researcher and it shows. portrays lesbian desire really really well. “hard fantasy” isn’t REALLY a thing but it’s this, they’re barely fantasy and more political drama

exordia by seth dickinson also: what if a reality-warping anomaly was hotly pursued by the US military while they were hotly pursued by aliens with planet-killing power? what if you got your whole village killed as a child and now you’re in a romcom with an alien? the Acknowledgements say, nearly word for word, “i wrote this between Barus for fun because those really take it out of me. anyway I’d like to thank the researchers who helped me with astrophysics, nuclear weapon functions, Kurdish feminism and history, and translation into five languages.” read if you like meticulously researched thrillers, Annihilation, and Challengers situations.

everything for everyone by eman adelhadi and m. e. o’brien: told with a framing device whereby the authors mention their own experiences with activism and revolution after the 2020s and compile an oral history of the future anarchist New York Commune, each chapter of this book is an interview with someone about a different aspect of how they contributed to revolution and setting up a new society. my gripe with this book is that I wish it talked more about problems that will still (or newly) exist in utopia, but I still loved it.

we have always lived in the castle by shirley jackson: I finished this book and immediately went to that blog that was running the literary incest tournament earlier this year because I was certain that Merricat and Constance had placed and lo and behold they had. those gothic themes are gothic themeing. read if you want jackson’s theme of small-town distrust and paranoia and isolation taken to the extreme

honorable mentions

the raven tower by ann leckie: what I love about ann leckie is her ability to write non-human protagonists without sci-fi jargon and with totally alien concerns and viewpoints that you can nonetheless buy into. this protagonist is a rock living on a hill that is a local god. read if you like folktales, loners, and twist endings.

the sapling cage by margaret killjoy: even though this is middle grade, all you had to say to me was “Margaret From Podcasts does transfem anarchist Song of the Lioness” and I was in. in a medieval fantasy world without a concept of transness, a trans girl swaps places with her friend so her friend can become a knight and she can become a witch and discover who is leaching the life from the forests for their own gain. the witch politics/interpersonal drama is done with the eye of someone who’s lived in communes most of her life and the way it straddles lingering love of knight tales and distrust of armed people with the legal right to kill you is refreshing

do you dream of terra two by temi oh: the most elite graduates of a cutthroat boarding school are selected for a mission to explore a potentially habitable planet in this character-driven meditation on what it takes to believe in something you can’t see and may have to give up your whole life for

monstrilio: a piece of flesh from a woman’s dead son grows into a person of its own, initially shaped like a monster but molded by his parents into a more-or-less normal-looking young man with a taste for human flesh. cringe moment but this is what Jack Supernatural could have been. to me. litfic with themes of monstrousness/normality, grief, and the various meanings of consuming flesh.

long live evil by sarah rees brennan: listen I know how it sounds but I’m putting this book so high up this list because I had a blast. a teenage cancer patient gets isekai’d into a book series that her sister loves but that she only half remembers, and has to use her vague memory of the plot to avoid execution long enough to obtain a magic item that’ll cure her in the real world. it has something to say about how it feels to live in a body that’s healthy after being desperately sick but it’s also just catnip for your inner teen fangirl daydreaming about getting your first kiss from a tortured prince

the terraformers by annalee newitz: in three different stories of people at different times in the planet’s political development, the story of a privately-owned planet terraformed to be habitable is told. this is for you if you like future politics about privatization and the rights of non-human persons a la Murderbot

silver under nightfall by rin chupeco: this book was selected for me by my friend and favorite bookseller @literally-irreverent because i like romance IN things but I don’t usually like when romance is the whole plot. anyway this is about solving a dangerous strain of vampirism while having a vampire/vampire/vampire-hunter romance that is. mwah. chef’s kiss. read if you like politically disastrous polyamory and The Witcher

the adventures of amina al-sirafi by s. a. chakraborty: i read the daevabad trilogy and I liked it but didn’t love it, but I liked this book a lot. mostly I think it’s really fun to have a seagoing adventurer who’s a mom, and it was done with a lot of care for her perspective.

runners up

to shape a dragon’s breath by monquill blackgoose: in an alternate history New England, an indigenous teenager finds a dragon egg and must become the first non-European to attend a school for dragon riders near her island. YA with prose that skews young and easy to read but with a good story. themes of colonialism and resistance.

things have gotten worse since we last spoke by eric larocca: I don’t love larocca’s prose but I felt like this book succeeded because it’s written in internet dialogue + therefore hid larocca’s tendency to get purple prose with it. horror about the quick rabbithole that is getting socialized/groomed mostly online.

the lion will slaughter the lamb & the barrow will send what it may by margaret killjoy: novellas where a group of wandering punk-house dwellers find out what’s raising supernatural horrors and how to stop them from killing again

running close to the wind by alex rowland: this felt like an attempt to bottle the Our Flag-type chaos and comedy pirate romance vibes without feeling like straight-up fanfiction. a pathetic meow meow of an ex-intelligence agent tries to sell state secrets without getting caught aboard his ex’s ship, while the two of them bet on who can break a hot monk’s vow of chastity first

the gone world by tom sweterlitch: this felt like christopher nolan writing a detective novel, as government agents travel to parallel realities to solve a murder

autonomous by annalee newitz: in a future society, this follows a scientist on the run from the governments and pharma companies that are out to get her for her work to make patented medications available on the black market, as she tries to fix a mistake she made in making an addictive treatment available to the public. this book is broadly about intellectual property and about the concept of property at all

the deep sky by yume kitasei: weirdly this book is a very different take on the same concept as another book on this list, do you dream of terra-two, where graduates of an elite school are sent on a generation ship to start a new colony. the twist is that all the characters are expected to bear two children to carry on the generation ship, which leads to some wild mostly-unexplored gender dynamics. this one is much more sci-fi/mystery to Terra-Two’s character-driven drama.

the atlas six by olivie blake: well-written dark-academia thriller that is obvious booktok fodder. with the vibes of the mortal instruments (everyone is so hot and powerful and tortured!) meets the secret history, a group of young magicians is recruited to learn the secrets of the library of alexandria

Ursula, kill this clown: dishonorable mentions

I don’t have enough dishonorable mentions for their own post this year but HOLY FUCK. THE FIVE BOOKS OF ROBERT MOSES. this book is FOURTEEN hundred pages of absolute dogshit that I should have DNFed but I liked the concept so much that I wanted to find something to like in the execution. Nope! the pitch is “a dirty bomb turns NYC into a wasteland and the city is picked up and moved wholesale, with the maps of the five boroughs remaining more or less the same, into a Nevada desert refugee camp guarded by the army, and a major character is Robert Moses’ disaffected younger brother.” on a petty level, this is the New Yorkiest pitch possible for someone who absolutely doesn’t give a shit about developing the new desert New York with any interest or fidelity. on an unpetty level, this is a slop “political” “thriller” that doesn’t develop a strong political perspective and moves at a sloth pace. skip.

[bookish-bogwitch]

2024 Fandom in Review

Look I know it's been 2025 for five days now but has it, really? In the few days before NYD I saw all your wonderful retrospective posts while feverishly finishing the last chapter of Basil Pitch's Diary and thinking "wow that looks so fun must keep writing," so here we are. Also, are the earth's rotations not a construct of capitalism? Think about it.

I'm not sure how to calculate words written, because I posted a lot of stuff that I wrote before 2024. If you include everything I *posted* in 2024, it's 4 fics, totaling 56k:

Simon Snow and the Selkies Four (3k, T, for the Carry On Picture Book, featuring gorgeous art by @ionlydrinkhotwater and @technetiumai)

Basil Pitch's Diary (WIP, 11/14, 56k, T).

The Stag Party (WIP, 1/4, 1k, T, for @facewithoutheart's birthday.)

Into Her Arms (7k, T, for @ivelovedhimthroughworse's birthday, co-written with the fabulous @cutestkilla)

The entire picture book fic was written in 2022, though, and the first seven chapters of BPD were written in 2022-2023, so if you look only at what I wrote this year, it's more like 3 fics totaling 33k.

I feel like these numbers are very low compared with most people who posted these kinds of roundups--I see you out there beating yourselves with "only" 100k--but I'm honestly feeling pretty chuffed about it. And chuffed about feeling chuffed, if that makes any sense, because historically, going easy on myself has not been a strong suit.

It would be a lie to pretend I'm any less thirsty for external validation than ever. Part of why I'm feeling content about my word count is because I've been showered in love and support, by readers in general and especially in the form of Bunbaz art by Skee, Ashton, Dalia, Monica (and Monica, and Monica). Oh, and there was also @rimeswithpurple getting him tattooed on her fuckin' body. (He now has gray fur and black ears, btw, but I don't think that version is on tumblr dot com yet.) Whenever I feel imposter syndrome creeping up I look at and/or squeeze the Bunbazzes, and feel better. Thank you all for being such a supportive, steadfast, loving community.

In other ways it's been a bumper year for fandom. I got to meet many of you at SSCONe, and otherwise visited with fandom friends in four cities and two countries. I brought Tiny Baz to Sicily to learn about his roots (and to keep me company when I got COVID and had to cross a lot off my itinerary). I also got my hands on a full-size Baz standee who is still folded up in my closet (I KNOW) but who I vow will be out and proud by this time next year.

Anyway, 2024 was pretty good for me personally even though American democracy, such as it is, is in free-fall, and no matter what 2025 brings, you'll be the best part of it.

A tardy thank you to for tagging me to @emeryhall @monbons @forabeatofadrum @rimeswithpurple @nausikaaa

@ileadacharmedlife @prettygoododds @artsyunderstudy @alexalexinii @best--dress

@j-nipper-95 @stitchyqueer @roomwithanopenfire @you-remind-me-of-the-babe @skeedelvee

@mooncello @whatevertheweather @aristocratic-otter @thewholelemon

It's so not New Years anymore so I'm not like, tagging tagging you, but if @cutestkilla @facewithoutheart @shrekgogurt @ebbpettier or @ic3que3n, or you reading this would like to toot your own 2024 horn, I beg you to toot away.

[ginaraemitchell]

Fun Friday Finds | 02-07-2025 | #Books #Crafts #Recipes #IndieAuthors #Superbowl

It’s Friday again, and you know what that means—another round of Friday Finds! This week is packed with fantastic books, exciting author news, and a little extra fun sprinkled in. Whether you’re looking for your next great read, a creative project, or just some Super Bowl Sunday snack inspiration, you’ll find it all right here. Fun Friday Finds | 02-07-2025 | #Books #Crafts #Recipes #IndieAuthors #Superbowl https://ginaraemitchell.com/friday-finds-02-07-2025/

Friday Finds | 02-07-2025 | Welcome It’s Friday again, and you know what that means—another round of Friday Finds! This week is packed with fantastic books, exciting author news, and a little extra fun sprinkled in. Whether you’re looking for your next great read, a creative project, or just some Super Bowl Sunday snack inspiration, you’ll find it all right here. Speaking of the big game, even if…

[sleepnoises]

The wedding was nice

[pasta-pardner]

Reading Roundup: "Partners"

Written by Robert Wayne, 1987. Read January 2025.

Hey y'all! My goal for the year is to read more often, so I think I'm gonna start posting book reviews in addition to the other fannish stuff on my blog. My review for this novel is under the cut!

I picked up this novel while on a trip with my husband in Tombstone, Arizona. I haven't seen much info about it online yet, probably because it's a few decades old and it appears to be self and/or indie published.

Apparently, the author of "Partners" cowboyed professionally for years, and his main goal with the novel was to tell an authentic story in a contemporary western setting that resonated with his own experience. Wayne lists his work as a combination adventure and romance novel, but I would argue that the romance elements were very back-seat. I'm willing to bet that far more pages were devoted to the bounty hunt plot and the platonic friendship dynamic than any of the romances.

I read the first edition from 1987 (not the newer edition from 2005). This version of "Partners" came with a sticker referencing old western bootleg laws. Neat! I feel lucky to have found a copy, seeing as I doubt this book ever got widespread release-- and I don't live in the west.

Anyways ! Here are my thoughts on Mr. Wanye's novel:

Firstly, the easy-going chemistry between the two leads is definitely the soul of this novel. I really, really enjoyed RC and Curtis-- in pretty much all of the strange situations they got caught up in.

The novel's prose is pretty good too. This may be a strangely specific compliment to give, but I think "Partners" is at its strongest when it comes to describing old people. Scenes at the nursing home and at the grandparents house were incredibly vivid. Every elderly character in this novel pops off the page like a real flesh-and-blood person.

The descriptions of the natural landscapes and the horse care & tack procedures were also quite vivid, but sometimes to the point of feeling a bit formulaic. As much as I love detailed descriptions of locations, sometimes just listing the species of shubbery felt too face-value.

But the weakest part of this novel is definitely the plot. It feels kind of aimless and meandering, like a strange amalgamation of western subgenres thrown together. It's hard to explain, but this feels like a story that was written without an outline. I figure the author sat down at a typewriter, week after week, writing the chapters piecemeal-- without an overarching idea of why or how they were going where they were going.

Lots of elements (like RC's dad, wanda, the fixed up shack, gold panning, etc) have almost zero payoff by the end of the book. Removing these characters/locations wouldn't affect the plot in the much, so they end up feeling extraneous. The chapters are fun to read while they're happening, but the big-picture plot certainly could've been stronger. Though I was invested in the characters and the prose regardless of what was happening, everything outside of the bounty hunt plotline felt like an episodic event with not much of a resolution.

Tldr; character-driven, likeable leads, multiple sections with colorful prose... but a meandering, low-payoff plot. I definitely recommend "Partners" if you'd like to read some cowboy slice-of-life, though.

[heybiji]

dandelion and clover (the weeds)

[bright-and-burning]

january books

masters of death by olivie blake

a fun time!! read this in 3 hours straight right after deciding to get off tumblr for a while. a really fun ensemble cast whose various connections constantly had me gasping (at one of the reveals i gasped so loud my dad thought something was wrong), an interesting enough mystery that was fed to the audience in bite sized chunks. gay people! which i genuinely missed the lgbtq tag on storygraph; what a joy to be surprised with. honestly almost cried at the end... which is less of a book thing and more of a me thing.

the city & the city by china miéville

picked this up on my dad's recommendation, since it's one of his favorite books ever. i kind of got confused by his explanation (and by the fact that he had watched a sci fi tv show w a similar premise except involving two cities occupying the same space in a like. pocket universe sense) so i went in thinking it was going to be like, two cities with dimensional borders. so it took me a minute to pick up what was going on. FASCINATING spec fic. much chewier than masters of death lol. it's two cities that occupy the same Physical space. and all the people in one city Unsee the people and architecture and cars in the other. and then there's a MURDER! that seems to involve illegal border crossing between cities! extreme reread potential. has anyone read this? please somebody have read this i dont even have anything intelligent to say i just want to shout incoherently with someone.

organizing solutions for people with adhd by susan c pinsky

ok this one shouldn't count lol. but . whatever. lots of interesting ideas; the ones i've started putting into practice have in fact been game changers, so. the whole philosophy of like, maximizing efficiency and kind of lubricating your life makes a lot of sense!! im about to reorganize my whole kitchen bc of this lol

the department of rare books and special collections by eva jurczyk (DNF)

i was promised a mystery. this was not a mystery. a very expensive very very very rare book is stolen from her library, and the main character is getting drunk with her ex (and current employee/colleague) from 30 years ago in the stacks instead of paying attention to idk the employee who has disappeared or suspicious behavior or ANYTHING! that would lead to finding the book!!! got about a third of the way through and was so fucking frustrated like 'when the hell does this become a mystery' and then i googled it and apparently it was originally marketed as a "women's book" (whatever the fuck that means) not a mystery. and honestly yeah if i wasn't reading it explicitly bc i thought it was a mystery set in a special collections library it would probably be a fine book. maybe even a great one! but it was a bad mystery. and i was not willing to read 200 more pages just to get to SOME attempt at investigation. much less 400 more to get to the answers. so... DNF. :/

the da vinci code by dan brown

haven’t finished this yet (please don’t spoil anything for me… i have escaped any kind of knowledge abt the contents of it and i’d like to continue that way) since it’s my train book and i have slowed waaaay down. need to be more deliberate abt reading bc i really do hate reading on the train when i can’t finish it in one sitting. anyways potentially controversial opinion i like it so far!!! i love a mystery. love a mystery soooo much. and i love art (and bonkers art history). and im squicked out by catholicism. so perfect for me. realized like idk 70 pages in that it was a sequel and was like well fuck but i think i can go back to the first one without being terribly spoiled on anything. also only just discovered there’s a MOVIE??? with fucking TOM HANKS??????? what the hell.

january overall summary: read three books in four days and then fell way the fuck off once i got back to my own place. but i do now have a library card for libraries not several states away. and i know im currently capable of reading like crazy if i just sit down and do it. so february we work on that…

[a-typical]

Probability figures in everyday decisions we make. Consider the public’s sentiment toward genetically modified organisms—GMOs. Reactions tend to be bimodal, depending on your politics, itself a warning flag. The truth and efficacy of science should never correlate with your political views.

The food chemical company Monsanto, now owned by Bayer, developed a genetically modified variant of corn that was completely resistant to glyphosate, a weed-killing herbicide marketed under the name Roundup, which they also developed. Monsanto scientists genetically removed their corn’s susceptibility to the chemical. This potent combo—Monsanto’s GMO corn coupled with Monsanto’s weed killer—enabled farmers to spray their entire crops and have the herbicide kill everything but the corn. The Vermont ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s uses corn syrup as a sweetener for some of their products. (Yes, I too was surprised to learn this.) News that some of their ice creams had trace amounts of glyphosate from the corn used in their syrup created a media dust-up. In response, Ben & Jerry’s decided to stop using GMO corn syrup altogether, even though the one-part-per-billion detection levels of glyphosate were far below US and European standards. Since many people who buy Ben & Jerry’s ice cream lean left—aligned with the company’s generally progressive views on all things—Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Holdings Inc. judged this ban to be a wise business decision.

Let’s look closer at what happened there. Every substance you could possibly ingest, food and otherwise, has a calculated lethal dose associated with it, measured by what’s called LD50. That’s the dose per kilogram of body weight where 50 percent of the people who consume that amount will die quickly. These data often come from tests on laboratory mammals such as mice. There’s another metric, called no-observed-adverse-effect level (NOAEL), which addresses the long-term influence of a substance on your health and is more sensible when thinking about food safety. LD50 helps to make a different point. The smaller its value for a substance, the more lethal it is. As such, tables of LD50s can be quite illuminating. Here’s a sampling:

Sucrose (table sugar) | 30 grams per kilogram

Ethanol (common alcohol) | 7 grams per kilogram

Glyphosate (Roundup) | 5 grams per kilogram

Table Salt | 3 grams per kilogram

Caffeine | 0.2 grams per kilogram

Nicotine | 0.0065 grams per kilogram

The most lethal substance on this hand-picked list is nicotine. Caffeine looks quite potent too. Just drink about eighty demitasse cups of espresso if you want to die from it. Next comes salt.

The least deadly on the list is sugar, as you might expect. Notice further that glyphosate is less lethal than table salt, but not by much. Actually none of this concerns us here. What matters is what happens to a 150 lb. (70 kg) person who eats Ben & Jerry’s ice cream—a fact I calculated but relegated to my Forbidden Twitter file, where it remains, simply for how disturbing it would be. In social media, I never intend to be disturbing:

You would need to consume four hundred million pints of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream for its trace amounts of glyphosate to kill you. But after only 20 pints you will die from its sugar content.

Ben & Jerry’s made the right corporate decision if it protected their profits. Although they could have also used the occasion as a teaching moment—a mind-blowing lesson on comparative risk. But that works only if people are open to learning. In modern times, many of us don’t satisfy that criterion, perhaps because, according to the nineteenth-century British essayist Walter Bagehot,

One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.

It is, as common people say, so “upsetting;” it makes you think that, after all, your favourite notions may be wrong, your firmest beliefs ill-founded.… Naturally, therefore, common men hate a new idea, and are disposed more or less to ill-treat the original man who brings it.

— Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization - Neil deGrasse Tyson (2022)

[bigbrotherlouis]

top books of 2024!

i’ve been doing a lot more reading and i love talking about it so here are my faves. i tried to narrow it down to 5 and then went “well, i can’t leave THAT one off the list!” so ten fiction and five nonfiction recs for you:

fiction:

1. nettle and bone by t. kingfisher - i’m a sucker for a fairytale and this was a good one. felt very familiar and still very new all at the same time. t. kingfisher was a new to me author this year and her horror didn’t hit but all her fairytales did. this one was very good, and a princess nun on a witchy endeavor was a fun time.

2. burial rites by hannah kent - i read this in one sitting because i couldn’t put it down, and i’m still thinking about it almost a year later. the way kent changes your opinion on the characters is so skillfully done and i liked it a lot.

3. the library at mount char by scott hawkins - this is not a book for everyone but i do love a plot that makes me go “HOW did you even THINK of that?!” what WOULD you do if god went missing?? massive trigger warnings but oh so good.

4. the alice network by kate quinn - kate is my holiday read author of choice and i read this in poland in the summer and it was perfect. the rose code is still my favourite book of hers but this one ranked up there. love a good spy network.

5. beartown by fredrick backman - i loved this one but i think i would’ve loved it more if i had not read the other two. good, but after three books of that length it does drag. masterful control of perspective and of plot weaving, plus some great ruminations on hockey.

6. the six deaths of the saint by alix e. harrow - i am overjoyed that harrow is (allegedly) making this into a longer novel because i LOVED IT. the visceralness of it. the cyclical nature. the horror when you realise what’s happening. perfect.

7. when among crows by veronica roth - i’m a slut for slavic folklore and this has such a sense of both history and place that really draws you in. i cannot stop thinking about the spine sword. i wish it had been longer just to stay in the world more.

8. the english understand wool by helen dewitt- i know it’s three novellas in a row but they were GOOD!! this one was an amazing length and just a fascinating almost oceans eleven-esque unraveling of a story. i gasped.

9. normal people by sally rooney - i know I KNOW. but i went to school on the emerald isle and it just resonated in lots of ways. i fell in love with the characters and honestly? might reread this winter bc i loved the atmosphere.

10. penance by eliza clark - god. this book. brutal in the worst ways and such an insightful commentary on, well, a lot of things. true crime culture, online communities, parasocial relationships, the weirdness of girl friendships as teens. also a potential reread!

nonfiction:

1. red valkyries by kristen ghodsee - probably my favourite book i’ve read this year, just because i learned SO much!! i read it in one sitting because i was just so fascinated by these amazing women, and i walked away with a more nuanced, more positive view of lenin than before.

2. the quiet damage by jesselyn cook - possibly the best nonfiction book i have ever read? i couldn’t put it down. heartbreaking and tough to read but i think very necessary in these days.

3. war is a force that gives us meaning by chris hedges - this is very good with a disclaimer. i agreed with a lot of his overarching philosophies but i didn’t agree with his examples. it has some pitfalls, but! parts of it are essential reading for peacebuilders. if anyone wants to chat abt this one please text

4. in the dream house by carmen maria machado - this was a very good memoir and very innovative in form. i liked that part a lot but i couldn’t quite shake the feeling that this was not written for me. that’s okay! i could still see how it might be impactful and, again, i liked the playing with tropes, but didn’t hit me the way i expected after seeing other people’s reactions.

5. the sunflower by simon wiesenthal - i tell everyone to read this book if they are interested in peacebuilding at all. it’s a good commentary on forgiveness. not much else to say except it’s fascinating.

and that’s all for now! i read 62 books and am trying to read 100 in the upcoming year (about 8 a month). my personal goal is at least one nonfiction a month, but my secret goal is two with one being more memoir and one being more informative. it was fun rediscovering how to read again and i’m hoping to continue that in 2025 :)

also for the record the worst book i read this year is the idea of you which is the one that anne hathaway starred in an adaptation of. absolutely terrible.

[jadelotusflower]

2024 Roundup - books read

Fiction

Stone Blind: Medusa's Story - Natalie Haynes

Atonement - Ian McKeown (re-read)

A Gentleman in Moscow - Amor Towles

Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries - Heather Fawcett

Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands - Heather Fawcett

Coraline - Neil Gaiman

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz - L. Frank Baum (re-read)

The Marvelous Land of Oz - L. Frank Baum

Ozma of Oz - L. Frank Baum

Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz - L. Frank Baum

The Road to Oz - L. Frank Baum

The Emerald City of Oz - L. Frank Baum

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West - Gregory Maguire (re-read)

Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Woolf

Orlando: A biography- Virginia Woolf

Sappo: Poems & Fragments - Sappo (translated by Josephine Balmer)

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea - Jules Verne (translated by Henry Frith)

The Mysterious Island - Jules Verne (translated by Jordan Stump)

Piranesi - Susanna Clarke

Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude)

Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë

Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus - Mary Shelley (re-read)

The Scarlet Pimpernel - Baroness Emmuska Orczy (re-read)

Sir Percy Leads the Band - Baroness Emmuska Orczy

The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel - Baroness Emmuska Orczy

The Elusive Pimpernel - Baroness Emmuska Orczy (re-read)

A Court of Thorns and Roses - Sarah J Mass

Best Fairy Tales - Hans Christian Andersen (translated by Jean Hersholt)

A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (re-read)

Non-Fiction

A year in the life of Ancient Egypt and the real lives of the people who lived there - Donald P Ryan

Persians: The Age of the Great Kings - Lloyd LLewellyn-Jones

American Prometheus: The Tragedy and Triumph of J Robert Oppenheimer- Kai Bird and Martin J Sherwin

Divine Might: Goddesses in Greek Myth - Natalie Haynes

The Splendid and the Vile: Churchill, Family, and Defiance during the bombing of London - Erik Larson

The History of the World: From the Dawn of Humanity to the Modern Age - Frank Welsh

Pagan Britain - Ronald Hutton

Unruly: A History of England’s Kings and Queens - David Mitchell

Burn it Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood - Maureen Ryan

Montaigne: A Very Short Introduction - William H Hamlin

Essays: A Selection - Michel de Montaigne (translated and edited by M.A. Screech)

Hey Honey, I’m Homo: Sitcoms, Specials, and the Queering of American Culture - Matt Baume

Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent - Judi Dench (with Brendan O’Hea)

What I Ate in One Year (and related thoughts) - Stanley Tucci

What I liked

I enjoyed most of what I read this year, including revisiting some older books with new eyes, finally getting around to some classics from my TBR list (with a few detours), and general mix of history and biography/memoir.

My favourite book of the year, and now up there with my favourite books of all time, is Piranesi, something that has been on the list a while and yet something I have successfully avoided spoilers for. I went in completely blind and so glad I did because the way this story washed over me is one of those very rare things and I loved loved loved reading this book.

I also really enjoyed A Gentleman in Moscow (the tv adaptation was sadly a bit of a disappointment). There’s a fine line between whimsical and twee and while that line likely differs for everyone, for me it successfully kept just on the side of whimsy - or maybe I just love a literary reference and this was full of them. It also inspired me to check out the works of Montaigne which I found interesting in context.

On the non-fiction front, American Prometheus is a good companion to the Oppenheimer film, and Burn it Down was an excellent but rage-inducing peak behind the Hollywood curtain, but The Man Who Pays the Rent was my other favourite read this year. Rather than ghostwritten, this takes the format of question and answer between Judi Dench and actor/director Brendan O’Hea, each chapter focussing on a different Shakespeare play and the characters Dench performed. It’s a beautiful insight into the acting process, theatre history, and Shakespeare’s female characters. Dench is so compelling and charming and the format allows her voice to leap off the page (more memoirs should take this approach tbh). I love Shakespeare but hardly consider myself an expert, so her perspective on the works and the characters was insightful - one of those books you look forward to returning to at the end of the day.

What I didn’t

When I tell people I’m writing a fantasy novel they often ask if I’ve read A Court of Thorns and Roses and I’m kind of sick of seeming uninformed about this faeriecore juggernaut, so finally gave it a go. It’s…not for me, really, despite it being generally keyed into my interests. I just found it…kind of boring? Feyre is dumb as rocks difficult to care about, and Tamlin, despite the cute nod with the name, is stock beast archetype with no other discernible personality.

Most of the book was an absolute slog until it finally got semi-interesting 3/4 in, but we’re stuck in Feyre’s pov and therefore unable to explore anything approaching compelling or nuanced. I’ve been told it actually gets good in the second book (and have been spoiled about the whole Rhysand thing), but I’m not really inspired to give it any more effort.

I also had mixed feelings about Emily Wilde - while of better quality than ACOTAR and I really loved the worldbuilding and some of the fae characters (Poe my beloved!) the central romance fell completely flat for me (maybe I’m just immune to the charms of faerie lords?) and I find the narrative is limited by the epistolary style. However I enjoy the fae plotline enough that I will likely get around to the third book at some stage.

On the point of mixed feelings, it’s interesting how much I enjoy Natalie Haynes’ non-fiction work on Greek myth while finding that her fiction completely misses the mark. Essentially a collection of essays, Divine Might is engaging and thought-provoking on the various depictions of Greek goddesses and their place within the mythos both then and now. On the other side of the coin, Stone Blind is ostensibly Medusa’s story, but mostly told through other perspectives and (much like with her previous effort A Thousand Ships) Haynes is preoccupied with recreating the whole of the myth which ultimately subsumes women, and therefore fails in its premise to showcase the female perspective. It’s just so odd that she can’t bring any of her insights from her compelling analysis to an actual narrative.

[dhrmonth]

Dramione Month Daily Roundup

Here is the Day 17 roundup of Dramione Month works! ⏳✨ 

AO3 Links:

The star we couldn’t keep by Marijoshi: G, 713 words, 1/1 Chapters

The Tenuous Threads of Friendship and Desire by Tippilo: E, 4,007 words, 1/1 Chapters

Day 12: Fake Dating by Brittles_06: M, 1,629 words, 1/1 Chapters

Day 11: War Opposites by Brittles_06: T, 275 words, 1/1 Chapters

Day 17 - The Hunger Games by Peaches_on_Waffles: G, 426 words, 1/1 Chapters

Day 10: Idiots in Love by Brittles_06: T, 258 words, 1/1 Chapters

Only the Ribs Remain by goldengirlwrites, paigetopage: NR, 8,850 words, 2/? Chapters

12 Fail- Safe Ways to Woo a Witch by Hyemi_28: M, 2,664 words, 1/1 Chapters

The White Rose by Serpent_Sortia: E, 1,825 words, 1/? Chapters

Hold You Through the Night by galaxy_skies: T, 1,205 words, 1/1 Chapters

Day Sixteen - 12 Fail-Safe Ways To Woo A Witch by Peaches_on_Waffles: M, 1,177 words, 1/1 Chapters

Drips and Drabs by augustaoctavia: NR, 8,846 words, 8/? Chapters

Day Fifteen - Advanced Rune Translation by Peaches_on_Waffles: M, 749 words, 1/1 Chapters

Day Fourteen - Romance Tropes Free Day by Peaches_on_Waffles: T, 387 words, 1/1 Chapters

Downfall by Diffindo by dramionelover1997: E, 2,047 words, 1/1 Chapters

Tumblr Posts:

Art by omniluci-estumbra (Also on Twitter and Instagram)

Art by arfisrar (Also on Instagram and Twitter)

Art by sophiesstreet (Also on Twitter and Instagram)

Twitter Posts:

Art by softkombuchart (Also on Instagram and Tumblr)

SocMed by nissasxnotes

Fic by brittan50044144

Fic by helleonore1

Ficlet by brittan50044144

Ficlet by PeachesnWaffles

Art by efaidyiel

Ficlet by Bookish_clf (Also on Instagram)

Ficlet by nottkaro

Ficlet by nothing_devils

Art by aplthree (Also on Instagram and Tumblr)

Drabble by UnaOrion

Ficlet by arborlibrary27

Ficlet by phiasabanana

Fic by MissusBWrites (Also on Instagram)

Ficlet by missmuwrites

Drabble by TheOther_Lore

Ficlet by magicalsydney

Fic by thisisntdd

Ficlet by mspolapotter

Ficlet by grangermalfoy07 (Also on Instagram)

Instagram Posts:

Art by elliemess.art

Art by sisiwako

SocMed by nox.malfoy

Fic by catmintandthyme

Art by mira.sool_art

Fic by hyemi28_fanfictions Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Art by rubleroo

Art by saintmlfy

Art and ficlet by papercranesandapples

Art by sisiwako

Fic by galaxy__skies (x-posted to AO3)

[deanmarywinchester]

previous years: 2022, 2021 / list of worst sf/f/horror

the bangers were BANGING this year, I kept mentally readjusting my top 5 list every time I read something good so the honorable mentions are extremely honorable this year. I hope you read anything that sounds good from this list and tell me about it!

top 5:

chain gang all stars by nana kwame adjei-brenyah: when I say that this book is like the hunger games for adults, I’m not making a glib comparison between two books about fighting to the death, I’m saying that I haven’t felt so intensely about a book since I stayed up late to tear through the hunger games and sob about it when I was thirteen. this book is satire as real and devastating as I’ve ever read, with action scenes that feel like they’re being dripped directly into my hindbrain and a unique and believable love story. put it on hold at your library literally RIGHT now.

the actual star by monica byrne: about a post-climate catastrophe utopian society built around a religion started by a teenage girl in 2012 based on mayan traditions, and also about the teenage girl, and also about the maya. this book made me crazy because the future society felt real enough to touch, with its radical openness and collectivity solving problems that exist today but causing new ones that are totally novel and meaty and interesting to dig into. read it if you’re interested in different ways of being.

the spear cuts through water by simon jiménez: really, REALLY good, fresh, original epic fantasy. jimenez picks a few perspectives to stick to but hops fluidly into bystanders’ brains to give you their perspectives, so even background characters feel fleshed-out and no one’s pain is dismissed as a side effect of heroic battles or whatever. highly recommended if you like framing narratives and stories about stories, and like epic fantasy but wish it wasn’t mostly about finding acceptable enemies to slaughter with cool swords

the dispossessed by ursula k. le guin: I love how much this book is about hope as clear-eyed commitment to the boring and difficult work of a brighter and necessary future. sometimes the work of the glorious anarcho-communist revolution is leaving your university post and romantic partner for months at a time to dig irrigation ditches so nobody starves when there’s a drought. read this book for diplomatic conniving, a clash of values between a capitalist planet and its dissident moon, and hope.

imperial radch trilogy and its spinoffs by ann leckie: what if you were built to be a weapon of the empire, a serene sentient battleship with thousands of human bodies all containing your consciousness, and you lost all bodies but one and had to figure out how to be a person, singular and alone? what if you were a 19th century british military officer and you slept for a thousand years into the decline of the empire? what if you were grown in a vat to be a facsimile of human and then told off for eating all your siblings even though eating them was SO interesting? what then. leckie’s prose is incisive and funny, her unreliable narrators are wonderful, and her stories are intimate even though the backdrops are insanely huge. 👍.

honorable mentions:

house of leaves by mark z. danielewski: guys? anyone hearda this one? anyway. Something Is Wrong With This House horror with themes of storytelling and grief. recommending that you slam this book as fast as possible like I did so you can hold all its layers in your head at once.

the lathe of heaven by ursula k le guin: i thought I didn’t like ursula k le guin, and then I read this book, went OH and immediately devoured the hainish cycle. im so sorry miss ursula. this book about a hapless pacific northwesterner whose therapist is making him dream different realities into being is so sharp and sly and funny. themes of choices, ends and means.

he who drowned the world by shelley parker-chan: I liked the prequel to this addition to the radiant emperor duology. I LOVED this book. parker-chan has invented new and exciting modes of fucked-up codependency and im obsessed. historical light-fantasy with themes of ideals vs what it takes to reach them, gender, and regret.

babel by r. f. kuang: found the didacticism of this book annoying, but i really loved the concept of this novel and the way it slowly ratchets up the stakes. this novel is for people who want to smash the fun of the magic school genre against the reality of universities’ complicity in the imperial machine.

piranesi by susannah clarke: im late to this book but it’s such a weird little gem. peaceful yet unsettling. a man takes care of an endless house with an ocean inside it until he realizes the house is stealing his memories. themes of memory and devotion.

hell follows with us by andrew joseph white: I can only read YA these days if it’s a reread or if it’s genuinely good and really really strange. this is that. weird gory fantasy about a trans teen who escapes his militarized post-apocalyptic christian cult and finds himself turning into something Different. my only gripe is that he uses 2023-perfect language to describe transness and I think he should be inventing genders weve never even thought of. such is YA.

some desperate glory by emily tesch: a rolickin’ good space opera time with terrible women <3. a thriller about how the golden child of her isolated human-supremacist space station cult deprograms and the consequences of it. this feels like a grown-up SPOP until the theoretical physics gets involved. big fan

the library of mount char by scott hawkins: this book is harrow the ninth in suburbia until it becomes a more macabre version of the absurdity of the gomens apocalypse. God raises his children, sometimes brutally, to hone their powers in a neighborhood that mysteriously keeps out outsiders. came for the dysfunctional mess of the god-children and now I can never look at a grill the same way

runners up:

bunny by mona awad: books that make you WISH you were in mona awad’s MFA program where she must have been having a terrible time. the weird one out in an MFA program accepts overtures into the unbearable rich-girls’ clique to find out what they’re Up To. themes of aimlessness and the intersection of class with the art world

camp damascus by chuck tingle: have you ever wished that you were simply too autistic to be successfully demonically brainwashed into not having gay thoughts? horror-flavored thriller that was just fun

light from uncommon stars by ryka aoki: this author put a bunch of genres in a blender and came up with something fun and surprisingly cozy. an immortal woman must sell violinists’ souls to the devil in exchange for their fame, or he’ll drag her to damnation instead. there might be aliens and coffeeshop romance involved. definitely a blender.

the fragile threads of power by v. e. schwab: if you haven’t read a darker shade of magic and you like tightly paced high fantasy and historical fantasy elements, political intrigue, and pirates, read that first. if you have, there’s more now! lila bard are you free on thursday when I am free

the library of the dead & our lady of mysterious ailments by t. l. huchu: a teenage girl provides for her family in soft-apocalypse magic edinburgh with a job carrying messages from ghosts to their living relatives. an ongoing mystery series about the intrigues she uncovers among the dead.

severance by ling ma: this books is on the list of media that is the terror to me: it's about an apocalyptic disease that makes people reenact their routines mindlessly until they collapse. intimate apocalypse novel with themes of late capitalist malaise.

ocean’s echo by everina maxwell: i didn't really like winter's orbit because i'm just not a romance guy, but this second novel stands alone and the romance is more insane and less of the entire point of the novel. (also it's between essentially Discworld's Carrot and Moist Von Lipwig, which is. really something.) in the Space Military, a buttoned-up mind controller must pretend to bend a socialite with illegal mind-reading powers to his will. what if fake relationship but the relationship they have to fake is "brain linked master/servant pair."

the murderbot diaries by martha wells: novellas about a misanthropic security android who jailbroke itself in order to watch tv. the name "murderbot" is a joke but it very much did kill people <3 themes of paranoia and outsiderhood, corporate wrongdoing, repentance, and trust

black water sister by zen cho: zen cho is good at any kind of fantasy she writes, including this, her first modern fantasy novel. a closeted lesbian has to move in with her family in malaysia after college in the US, only to discover that her dead grandmother has some unfinished business involving a local goddess and a conniving real estate developer. themes of family, gender, and place.

the way inn by will wiles: a man who’s paid to pretend he’s other people to attend conferences in their place gets trapped in an endless Marriott. has the sharp humor of a colson whitehead corporate satire until it becomes more straightforwardly horror-flavored.

[dsudis]

May reading roundup

Books:

Derring-Do for Beginners - Victoria Goddard (reread)

The Nine Tailors - Dorothy L. Sayers (reread)

Gaudy Night - Dorothy L. Sayers (reread)

Busman's Honeymoon - Dorothy L. Sayers (reread)

Clouds of Witness - Dorothy L. Sayers (reread)

Over My Dead Body - Rex Stout

Wilding - Isabella Tree

The Book of Wilding - Isabella Tree & Charlie Burrell

Fic (a sampling):

The Accidental Warlord and His Pack by @inexplicifics (yes all of it) (yes in under a week) (look it was that kind of week) (reread) (mostly)

Fingers Crossed That I'm Something You'll Keep by @thefourthvine (IT Movies, Eddie/Richie)

the fourth dimension by @the-apocrypha (Dreamling) (for meeee!!!)

[ginaraemitchell]

Fun Friday Finds | 01-17-2025 | #Books #Crafts #Recipes #IndieAuthors

Happy Friday! It’s time for another edition of the Friday Finds, where we dive into the latest book reviews, author spotlights, and creative gems to brighten our week. Whether you're here for your next great read, a delicious recipe, or just some fun, cozy vibes, you’ve come to the right place. So, grab your favorite drink (coffee for me on these cold winter days!), get comfy, and let’s jump right in. Warmly, Gina *If you enjoy the post, please share it and maybe click a link or two!  Fun Friday Finds | 01-17-2025 | #Books #Crafts #Recipes #IndieAuthors https://ginaraemitchell.com/friday-finds-01-17-2025/

Friday Finds | 01-17-2025 | Welcome Happy Friday! It’s time for another edition of the Friday Finds, where we dive into the latest book reviews, author spotlights, and creative gems to brighten our week. Whether you’re here for your next great read, a delicious recipe, or just some fun, cozy vibes, you’ve come to the right place. So, grab your favorite drink (coffee for me on these cold winter…

[blysse-and-blunder]

in lieu of a coffee shop

found out this week that the days of my long-time favorite café for working in my neighborhood are officially numbered, before they bust through the exposed brickwall and fireplace and connect it to the irish pub next door. rip to a real one, guess i have a lot of hours to clock in there before it's too late-- which is also good because i have. a dissertation to finish.

reading pleasantly surprised this week by the first hundred pages or so of lev grossman's the bright sword, which is an arthurian novel that manages to do something creative and original (at least in the dialogue) while also clearly clearly being informed by / engaged with / delighted by the tropes and canon. palomides likens the round table to a zero, in the days of its post-grail quest decline, and someone else asks "what the fuck is a zero?" 10/10 joke. lovely. excited to see where this one goes, i think. also continued listening to the memory of souls audiobook while fighting for my life in hollow knight (see below), and to dip in and out of kaikeyi, which i must say i have a new appreciation for now that i think i understand what story it's retelling. i have so far not been spoiled for classic piece of ancient literature the ramayana, but there's enough foreshadowing in the book itself that i am assuming everything goes very very wrong sometime soon. the dialogue and honestly protagonist's narration here not as much to my liking, but i'm curious.

listening many a podcast, tom scott's lateral, qi's no such thing as a fish, just wrapped up the first season of friends at the table (autumn in hieron), dimension 20 (crown of candy), the adventure zone (currently abnimals). musically, shout-out to tumblr user calliopeprelude for this post which alerted me to the new lucy dacus singles, music video, and forthcoming album, which happens to drop on my self-imposed dissertation deadline-- so that countdown in spotify has a cool double-meaning!

watching discovered over christmas break that i've been sleeping on only murders in the building, so i'm enjoying that as a solo watch when i can. love the tone of this show. love the podcast in-jokes (you may be able to tell that i am, while not a true-crime fan, a real podcast aficionado. as they say), love the flavor of new york which is somehow both today and yesteryear, love the three main cast and especially love that it is willing to get surreal! and atmospheric! while also being imo extremely 'cozy' murder, in a way that you usually have to go to the bbc for.

i just think they're neat!

playing

i have mentioned before (i think) that i've made it to the white palace in hollow knight, which is a real lesson in humility rn. did i mention i finished pentiment at last? i had saved it for the end of the semester, after literally teaching a course on medieval books, and it seemed super fitting to be playing it during the christmas break since the ending chapter is conducted in winter, and there's a big christmas feast to bring the town together at the end. the garlands of greenery and cookies and special spiced drinks? what symmetry. i had. some thoughts about the resolution to the mystery, some of which have to do with the representation of medieval faith in modern media, but overall three big thumbs up and much love to everyone who put so much into this game.

and i love that they found a way to work in this song, which is another one of those details that resonated. [link to the game's version of in dulce jubilo, the christmas carol]

making

fallow week. mulling over ideas for a creative outing to celebrate my b-day? they're all expensive or badly timed or i don't love the image, but i haven't given up on finding one of those paint night things that might be fun. i've also meal prepped decently this week and last.

as an aside, this week was the first in which i didn't have the tumblr app on my phone, having removed it to try and decrease the amount of time i spend mindlessly scrolling while not getting out of bed. i then replaced it with the self-care app + game finch, which, so far so good. mixed-success on the reduced scrolling (turns out i will scroll any random site, from clothing sales to facebook cinema history clickbait, to avoid getting out of bed), but it's early days yet. my finch is very cute, if you'd like to be friends hmu.