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Wednesday Reading Meme for June 3 2026
Jun. 3rd, 2026 04:35 pmWhat I’ve Read
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (Imperial Radch #1)
A re-read for Necromancy Book Club, and man, I am glad I re-read this instead of relying on memory. I had felt rather unmoored while reading it last time, but having the general scope of the plot in my head meant that I could really sit back and enjoy the writing and little character moments. It does such an interesting job of working with the viewpoint of a character who is thinking in first person, but functionally has limited omniscience for segments of the book. I first read this in, I think, 2020, and that overall might have shaped my capacity to really sink into a book – I don’t think I read very well that year. Breq as a character has an incredible drive, and her experiences are both deeply human and deeply inhuman. She loved someone and lost them, she loved her life and lost it, she loved her empire and became disillusioned about it – all of these are very human experiences. And, when you have a character like Breq, for whom a multiplicity of experience is normal, you are getting all of that from multiple angles, sometimes at once. Really tightly written.
Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie (Imperial Radch #2) – I liked Justice so much that I just picked this This book picks up immediately after Justice, and the focus of the book is a case study of the cold war that Breq revealed in the last book, now out in the open. There’s questions about policing and justice and empire and how to move forward when you can’t change the past. It also does some wonderful montage work of building scenes around music that Breq and her crew are singing.
What I’m Reading
Out of the Dead Land by orphan_account - https://archiveofourown.org/works/1871955 - A Winter Soldier -focused fic. Catnip – this fic focuses on Bucky’s alienation from himself via the metaphor of murderous robots pretending to be real people. The point of view is Bucky’s and the internal conflict as he pieces together what has been done to him, and who he is in the aftermath? Excellently done. (If you like this, worth looking at Some Desperate Glory or Incandescent.)
The Raven Scholar – Static, I should get back to this
Inventing the Renaissance – Ada Palmer – about 75% - This book remains great and really interesting. Her running thread about HOW you first read or teach about the Renaissance shapes how you approach it – honestly great centering point of the book. She talks in the section I read this week about building a syllabus around Machiavelli’s The Prince that gave her students Machiavelli’s letters as well as other historical reference points so that when they finally read The Prince, they have a wealth of context for his writings style and what his references meant to him at the time. I am inspired to try and do something similar myself.
I also found something really interesting in her discussion of Scholasticism as a philosophical movement – the stakes! Her discussion of how Scholastics were trying to reconcile Christian works that were, on the face, diametrical opposite, but endorsed with equal weight by the church – so if you understood them wrong, your literal immortal soul was on the line! And the souls of all your readers! Palmer does a lot of work to help me get to understand the actual weight that this carried for the people living at the time.
What I’ll Read Next
Tomb of Dragons Katherine Addison - reread for Xing Book club
Hugo nominations still to read:
Novels
Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor
Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Novellas
Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz (Tordotcom)
Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite (Tordotcom)
The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (Tordotcom; Arcadia UK)
The Summer War by Naomi Novik (Del Rey US; Del Rey UK)
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (Imperial Radch #1)
A re-read for Necromancy Book Club, and man, I am glad I re-read this instead of relying on memory. I had felt rather unmoored while reading it last time, but having the general scope of the plot in my head meant that I could really sit back and enjoy the writing and little character moments. It does such an interesting job of working with the viewpoint of a character who is thinking in first person, but functionally has limited omniscience for segments of the book. I first read this in, I think, 2020, and that overall might have shaped my capacity to really sink into a book – I don’t think I read very well that year. Breq as a character has an incredible drive, and her experiences are both deeply human and deeply inhuman. She loved someone and lost them, she loved her life and lost it, she loved her empire and became disillusioned about it – all of these are very human experiences. And, when you have a character like Breq, for whom a multiplicity of experience is normal, you are getting all of that from multiple angles, sometimes at once. Really tightly written.
Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie (Imperial Radch #2) – I liked Justice so much that I just picked this This book picks up immediately after Justice, and the focus of the book is a case study of the cold war that Breq revealed in the last book, now out in the open. There’s questions about policing and justice and empire and how to move forward when you can’t change the past. It also does some wonderful montage work of building scenes around music that Breq and her crew are singing.
What I’m Reading
Out of the Dead Land by orphan_account - https://archiveofourown.org/works/1871955 - A Winter Soldier -focused fic. Catnip – this fic focuses on Bucky’s alienation from himself via the metaphor of murderous robots pretending to be real people. The point of view is Bucky’s and the internal conflict as he pieces together what has been done to him, and who he is in the aftermath? Excellently done. (If you like this, worth looking at Some Desperate Glory or Incandescent.)
The Raven Scholar – Static, I should get back to this
Inventing the Renaissance – Ada Palmer – about 75% - This book remains great and really interesting. Her running thread about HOW you first read or teach about the Renaissance shapes how you approach it – honestly great centering point of the book. She talks in the section I read this week about building a syllabus around Machiavelli’s The Prince that gave her students Machiavelli’s letters as well as other historical reference points so that when they finally read The Prince, they have a wealth of context for his writings style and what his references meant to him at the time. I am inspired to try and do something similar myself.
I also found something really interesting in her discussion of Scholasticism as a philosophical movement – the stakes! Her discussion of how Scholastics were trying to reconcile Christian works that were, on the face, diametrical opposite, but endorsed with equal weight by the church – so if you understood them wrong, your literal immortal soul was on the line! And the souls of all your readers! Palmer does a lot of work to help me get to understand the actual weight that this carried for the people living at the time.
What I’ll Read Next
Tomb of Dragons Katherine Addison - reread for Xing Book club
Hugo nominations still to read:
Novels
Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor
Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Novellas
Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz (Tordotcom)
Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite (Tordotcom)
The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (Tordotcom; Arcadia UK)
The Summer War by Naomi Novik (Del Rey US; Del Rey UK)
Wednesday Reading Meme for May 27 2026
May. 27th, 2026 04:48 pmReading journal for Wed May 27 2026
What I’ve Read
Marae by Anonymous - https://archiveofourown.org/works/31072724 – A fascinating Star Wars prequel AU with Maul/Rex and Blade Runner influences. I recommend! The premise is that the close are not quite replicants of Blade Runner, but not unlike them – organic droids anchored to physical form with a set of memories that come from … well, spoilers. It’s great, it’s weird, it’s got a work skin that I didn’t really get to enjoy. This author was prolific but opted to leave fandom, so tho I know their name, I’m going to avoid sharing it here. Their works remain on AO3 and collected here - https://archiveofourown.org/collections/001100_00
Indexicality by Therrae aka DashaMTE - https://archiveofourown.org/works/27580219 – The final addition to the long and delightful Xenoethnography series - I should have read this when it came out about 4 years ago, and I don’t think I finished it. But by god, it was amazing and a fitting conclusion to a very long and emotionally complex series. If the word count feels daunting on this series, just start with the first one and see if it you like it – pleasures like this, you can savor.
Honorable mention for a shorter fic: Rites series by soulshrapnel – Darth Maul/Qi’ra (from the Han Solo prequel movie) https://archiveofourown.org/series/1978516 – After the new Maul: Shadow Lord cartoon, I have been interested in some fic about Maul – poking randomly thru the tags found this gem. Focusing on the new character, Qi’ra, this fic series is a fascinating look at Maul from an external perspective of a crime lord who is interested in manipulating him via sex – and, well, it works pretty well, in the short term, and has some consequences she did not expect and does not like. I felt like this fic really nailed the ways that these two extremely damaged people would create intimacy without trust via manipulation and exploitation. (I adore a touch-starved Maul, and a situation where people exploit the limited power they have.)
Isle in the Silver Sea – Tasha Suri – Sigh. I loved the elevator pitch of this book! I think it might work for others!
The story focuses on the idea that the Isle (which is explicitly a magical England) ontologically depends on the re-enactment of stories to maintain the physical reality of the nation. Our main characters, Simran and Vina, are stuck in a story that will lead to their murder-suicide. Both magical and political power constrains them to this end, unless they try to fight it.
The idea is interesting! But, the actual story lacked focus enough to be a standalone novel, and lacked space enough to be a trilogy. The end result was characters that felt, not shallow, but rushed, and a book that wasted time giving grace notes to side characters who were barely there to begin with. It vacillates between overexplaining some concepts and ignoring the mechanics of others – so the balance of setup and payoff was skewed and inconsistent.
Petty gripe: if you are going to show me a magical chalice and a guy who is definitely King Arthur with the serial numbers filed off and talk about the power of stories, at some point, you do have to address Jesus. If your story is set in a magical England and you have THE HOLY GRAIL, you do have to deal with the underlying myth of why the grail is holy. Because if Wales and Punjab exist as they do in reality, then so must Christianity!
What I’m Reading
The Raven Scholar – Static
Inventing the Renaissance – Ada Palmer – about 30% - Actually fascinating look at the Renaissance with historical details and a fun bouncy tempo. The thing I am caught up on is how foreign and insane the past was, and how well Ada Palmer explains it.
The chapter on how political patronage and the religious concept of grace both overlap in the justice system and in the religious system is fascinating – like a seeing a puzzle come together. It makes so much more sense out of things in history that felt absurd and insane when I heard about them. In a snippet, the idea of a judicial being fair and consistent was simply not a goal for these people. The idea of justice was to impose harsh penalties as a lesson about hierarchy, from which the guilty sinner/convict would be saved by the grace of their patron (human or saintly) as a display of God’s mercy. So, while many more crimes had the legal penalty of death than do today, the expectation was that a criminal would be saved from the full force of the law and given a lesser punishment as a show of their patron’s holy mercy.
What I’ll Read Next
Tomb of Dragons Katherine Addison - reread for Xing Book club
Ancillary Justice Ann Leckie for Necromancy Book Club
Hugo nominations still to read:
Novels
Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor
Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Novellas
Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz (Tordotcom)
Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite (Tordotcom)
The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (Tordotcom; Arcadia UK)
The Summer War by Naomi Novik (Del Rey US; Del Rey UK)
Wednesday Reading Meme for May 20 2026
May. 22nd, 2026 10:32 pmWeekly reading Journal for Wednesday May 20 2026
(Updated now that I am back from my most recent travels and in a position to actually say something useful)
What I’ve Read
Xenoethnography Series by Therrae aka DashaMTE– I have been giving this series a well deserved re-read - https://archiveofourown.org/series/913458 I don’t think you actually need to know anything about the Transformers cartoons or movies to enjoy these – as I certainly didn’t. I suspect from the footnotes that it is actually full of little easter eggs that I didn’t fully appreciate at the time, and I’m looking them up this go-round. The main character is an anthropologist who is helping the Autobots explain themselves to humanity. (Edited 5/22/26) - I didn’t realize how much I had read of Therrae/DashaMTE in a previous fandom, The Sentinel, and how long she’s been actively writing some of the most tender and thoughtful characterization I know of. Please, go give her stuff a read.
Ancient Magus Bride vol 4 - Kore Yamazaki – nice to revisit the dragons. I think I am getting manga saturation.
Falling - Humani Nihil – Rengyuo by narayana – Maul/Amidala Phantom Menace fic, from 2001ish. I managed to find a copy of the series from the Darth Maul Estrogen Brigade 2.0, before it was taken down. It is written with some of the (now noncanonical) Expanded Universe novels but before the general shape of the prequel trilogy was known, so there is a lot of extrapolation and fun experiments. Maul, never sent to Naboo and never bisected, is sent by Sidious to seduce Amidala and pull her to the Dark Side. It works reasonably well. I have apparently memorized some sections of this and forgotten others, which is about what I would expect for a fic I remembered from 20+ years ago but hadn’t gotten to read in the interim.
Bonus: I really enjoyed Maul: Shadow Lord, in the recent Star Wars cartoon expansion - has some great elements of characterization and really lovely animation.
What I’m Reading
Isle in the Silver Sea – Read a lot of this on a recent journey – I feel like we are sloooowly getting to parts I find more interesting.
The Raven Scholar – Static
Inventing the Renaissance -About 8 hours in. I will almost certainly not get a chance to finish this before the Hugos, but it is a great piece of approachable writing about how historians work.
What I’ll Read Next
Tbd!
Busy season at work - had to come into my remote job for the first of two weekends doing semi-useful gruntwork for our annual constituent conferences. It's a long ass drive, plus overnights, on the weekend - I felt like a squeezed lemon slice by the end of it.
I do get time off to compensate, but I have not used much of it since most of next week is also quite busy for work and personal travel reasons.
All this is really to say, I got to sit at a desk and be asked repetitive questions and answer them, and was unbothered the majority of the time, so I got some reading time!
I do get time off to compensate, but I have not used much of it since most of next week is also quite busy for work and personal travel reasons.
All this is really to say, I got to sit at a desk and be asked repetitive questions and answer them, and was unbothered the majority of the time, so I got some reading time!
Wednesday Reading Meme for May 13 2026
May. 13th, 2026 07:56 pmWhat I’ve Read
Dracula by Bram Stoker – I cannot believe I failed to mention that I finished Dracula in my last post! I enjoyed it and I could absolutely see why it’s a classic, but I am gonna say – I don’t see it as being nearly as dear to me as Frankenstein. Stoker’s writing is engaging and I love that he’s so devoted to the documents and journals and letters so we can get each character’s voice. I cared, quite deeply, about each of these people. However, Stoker is so into doing each character voice that it gets honestly kind of obnoxious to read Van Helsing’s speech and writing – he’s given a Funny Foreigner Accent and it’s conveyed phonetically, so it carries into his writing in a way that undercuts his authority as a scholar. Also, the book got aggressively religious in the last third as Mina gets progressively more vampirized, and it feels repetitious. Jonathan’s fierce love of her redeems a great deal! Not all. But, overall, compared to the beginning, the ending of the book felt rushed and nowhere near as loved. Dracula, the character, had completely disappeared from the novel, in pursuit of Dracula the monster, and the death blow felt like a fizzle. If you want to have a fun little side quest, look up all the phrenologists that Stoker lists in here by name.
Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu – I read this after Dracula because a friend pointed out that Carmilla predates Dracula, and it seemed like a short read. Highly recommend – no one is kidding about the lesbian subtext; the book burns with it! The commonalities between Carmilla and Dracula are already subject of better minds than mine, but I do feel like Stoker improved on one element – grafted on the historical Vlad Tepes Dracula makes for a far more engaging fake aristocratic background than the one created whole cloth for Carmilla. I also see the same element of the Character of Carmilla disappearing inside the Monster Carmilla once the vampiric nature is revealed. It’s quaint and charming and worth a read!
The Everlasting by Alix E Harrow – Adored this book. Told from the first person, the main character is absolutely the kind of specific voice that renders the particular themes of the book most clear – when the author makes this kind of structural choice for their book, they are already working from such a point of strength! The main voice of the book is a soldier whose complicated relationship with patriotism and fealty wend their way into his scholarship of his country’s founding myth, and what it means for the warrior heroine of his country’s darkest hour to have been a real person who bled and wept and wanted nothing more than to stop killing people. Excellent book, go in spoiler free if you can. This book was so good and so specifically *for me* that it is actually making it challenging to read books that are too similar because I keep wishing I were re-reading this.
Platform Decay by Martha Wells – Murderbot Diaries #8 – Hm. I liked this fine. I think there was an element of emotional growth for Murderbot that felt…. A bit too on the nose. A bit too close to home. I often love narratives where an imperfect victim of neglect is allowed to be a bit rough and a bit messy and make some mistakes, and this is not NOT that. But it’s possible that Murderbot is perhaps becoming more mentally healthy than me, and I feel weird about that. The plot is solid, if nothing particularly new for Murderbot. I really liked Three getting some sidequests and fucking them up in new and delightful ways.
What I’m Reading
The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgeson – I’m trying to not compare everything that is vaguely magical and monarchical to The Everlasting, but, well, it was a good book, and good books have a long hangover! I am also trying to not compare this to the Tensorate Series by Neon Yang. But. Well. I don’t dislike it, either on a sentence or paragraph or chapter level- I am waiting to see how the book comes together before I finally judge it. But – I am trying to NOT read into the book more Asian-coding than it actually calls for, and I’m failing? It feels like a Pan-Asian restaurant, rather than a specific era and time with a specific understanding of itself, and that’s not necessarily a flaw! Good characters so far, and I’m not even a third in.
The Isle in the Silver Sea by Tasha Suri – This, unfortunately, I really did have to set aside for when I’m in a more charitable mood. I found myself quibbling with sentences and pacing and paragraphs and that no way to read a book. It’s working on some themes similar to The Everlasting, and I loved that book immediately and this one deserves a fair shake on its own terms.
Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer - Audiobook – Excellent! Hugo nominated. Funny and informative and charming. I am even getting over the unexpectedly English narrator. (Seriously, why.)
Ancient Magus’s Bride Vol 4 – On hold for now, I have lost some oomph but I will come back to it.
Code Switching by Therrae – I picked this up to re-read because the series is the most unlike the Everlasting I could think of while still fitting my current mood.
What I’ll Read Next
Tomb of Dragons Katherine Addison - reread for Xing Book club
Ancillary Justice Ann Leckie for Necromancy Book Club
Hugo nominations still to read:
Novels
Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor
Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Novellas
Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz (Tordotcom)
Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite (Tordotcom)
The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (Tordotcom; Arcadia UK)
The Summer War by Naomi Novik (Del Rey US; Del Rey UK)
Dracula by Bram Stoker – I cannot believe I failed to mention that I finished Dracula in my last post! I enjoyed it and I could absolutely see why it’s a classic, but I am gonna say – I don’t see it as being nearly as dear to me as Frankenstein. Stoker’s writing is engaging and I love that he’s so devoted to the documents and journals and letters so we can get each character’s voice. I cared, quite deeply, about each of these people. However, Stoker is so into doing each character voice that it gets honestly kind of obnoxious to read Van Helsing’s speech and writing – he’s given a Funny Foreigner Accent and it’s conveyed phonetically, so it carries into his writing in a way that undercuts his authority as a scholar. Also, the book got aggressively religious in the last third as Mina gets progressively more vampirized, and it feels repetitious. Jonathan’s fierce love of her redeems a great deal! Not all. But, overall, compared to the beginning, the ending of the book felt rushed and nowhere near as loved. Dracula, the character, had completely disappeared from the novel, in pursuit of Dracula the monster, and the death blow felt like a fizzle. If you want to have a fun little side quest, look up all the phrenologists that Stoker lists in here by name.
Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu – I read this after Dracula because a friend pointed out that Carmilla predates Dracula, and it seemed like a short read. Highly recommend – no one is kidding about the lesbian subtext; the book burns with it! The commonalities between Carmilla and Dracula are already subject of better minds than mine, but I do feel like Stoker improved on one element – grafted on the historical Vlad Tepes Dracula makes for a far more engaging fake aristocratic background than the one created whole cloth for Carmilla. I also see the same element of the Character of Carmilla disappearing inside the Monster Carmilla once the vampiric nature is revealed. It’s quaint and charming and worth a read!
The Everlasting by Alix E Harrow – Adored this book. Told from the first person, the main character is absolutely the kind of specific voice that renders the particular themes of the book most clear – when the author makes this kind of structural choice for their book, they are already working from such a point of strength! The main voice of the book is a soldier whose complicated relationship with patriotism and fealty wend their way into his scholarship of his country’s founding myth, and what it means for the warrior heroine of his country’s darkest hour to have been a real person who bled and wept and wanted nothing more than to stop killing people. Excellent book, go in spoiler free if you can. This book was so good and so specifically *for me* that it is actually making it challenging to read books that are too similar because I keep wishing I were re-reading this.
Platform Decay by Martha Wells – Murderbot Diaries #8 – Hm. I liked this fine. I think there was an element of emotional growth for Murderbot that felt…. A bit too on the nose. A bit too close to home. I often love narratives where an imperfect victim of neglect is allowed to be a bit rough and a bit messy and make some mistakes, and this is not NOT that. But it’s possible that Murderbot is perhaps becoming more mentally healthy than me, and I feel weird about that. The plot is solid, if nothing particularly new for Murderbot. I really liked Three getting some sidequests and fucking them up in new and delightful ways.
What I’m Reading
The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgeson – I’m trying to not compare everything that is vaguely magical and monarchical to The Everlasting, but, well, it was a good book, and good books have a long hangover! I am also trying to not compare this to the Tensorate Series by Neon Yang. But. Well. I don’t dislike it, either on a sentence or paragraph or chapter level- I am waiting to see how the book comes together before I finally judge it. But – I am trying to NOT read into the book more Asian-coding than it actually calls for, and I’m failing? It feels like a Pan-Asian restaurant, rather than a specific era and time with a specific understanding of itself, and that’s not necessarily a flaw! Good characters so far, and I’m not even a third in.
The Isle in the Silver Sea by Tasha Suri – This, unfortunately, I really did have to set aside for when I’m in a more charitable mood. I found myself quibbling with sentences and pacing and paragraphs and that no way to read a book. It’s working on some themes similar to The Everlasting, and I loved that book immediately and this one deserves a fair shake on its own terms.
Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer - Audiobook – Excellent! Hugo nominated. Funny and informative and charming. I am even getting over the unexpectedly English narrator. (Seriously, why.)
Ancient Magus’s Bride Vol 4 – On hold for now, I have lost some oomph but I will come back to it.
Code Switching by Therrae – I picked this up to re-read because the series is the most unlike the Everlasting I could think of while still fitting my current mood.
What I’ll Read Next
Tomb of Dragons Katherine Addison - reread for Xing Book club
Ancillary Justice Ann Leckie for Necromancy Book Club
Hugo nominations still to read:
Novels
Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor
Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Novellas
Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz (Tordotcom)
Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite (Tordotcom)
The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (Tordotcom; Arcadia UK)
The Summer War by Naomi Novik (Del Rey US; Del Rey UK)
I am getting this done ! I am completing the task!
What I Read
The Other Bennet Sister – Janice Hadlow – What an excellent book! Really well constructed story and deeply enjoyable arc. I think the romance was nicely done, but the center of the book was reflection – Mary the least loved Bennet sister gets to really take her time and observe the people in her life and know them deeply. It felt slightly self-indulgent (Mary is indeed going to the garden to eat worms) and yet I am here as the self and I am being indulged.
The Ancient Magus’ Bride Vols 1, 2, 3 – Kore Yamazaki – A fun read! Interesting world building and a slow burn romance between Chise and Elias Ainswroth, a horse/deer-skulled maybe human magus who bought her (not from One Direction!) in order to save her life and also marry her, maybe, at some point? It’s also deeply indulgent to the exact kind of big symbolic magic that I love, and gives a lot of time to the slow unfolding of their connection and what Chise’s magical powers will do. The story with the cats has been my favorite so far, but the Succubus in love with the random farmer who can’t see her at all is also a sweet tragedy. Really enjoying it.
I will say, I feel some conflict about one of the villains (so far) being revealed as the folkloric character of The Wandering Jew. Particularly because he’s a villain, and secondarily because I have no concept of how this character is understood by the author or by a Japanese audience, who are largely not dealing with the kind of hegemonic pressures to be Christian that shaped the folklore around that character. I weirdly adored the way that character trope was used in A Canticle for Leibowitz, because he was so very much Just Some Guy, and in particular, still identifiably, cantankerously Jewish in the face of being immortal, in a world where we only otherwise see Christians. So. I'm putting in a pin in that character for now.
AMB is interesting to read in context of My Happy Marriage, which also features a young woman with hidden magical powers escaping an uncaring/abusive family to a Perfectly Arranged Marriage. In the context of what Spouse is reading, this led to a discussion about the nature of isekai (a favorite Spousal genre) and the idea of different kinds of escape. Romance the genre often has an element of escapism baked in, and it’s sort of odd to think that some people in these novels are getting a Person to whisk them away to another magical world where they are treasured and important as a bride, and other people are getting hit by a bus.
What I’m Reading
The Everlasting by Alix E Harrow – A romantic and Romantic story. I love Sir Una Everlasting and I love Owen Mallory and the loving depiction of his flaws and how he becomes a useful idiot to a certain kind of patriotism that he also clearly sees thru and yet and yet and yet.
Platform Decay – Martha Wells – New Murderbot! No spoilers! I’m having a good and also bad time!
What I’ll Read Next
SciFi/Fantasy Book Club
Tomb of Dragons Katherine Addison - reread
Necromancy Book Club
The Everlasting Alix E. Harrow
The Isle in the Silver Sea Tasha Suri
Platform Decay (murderbot 8) Martha Wells
Ancillary Justice Ann Leckie
Hugo nominations!
Novels
A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey; Hodderscape) - read, it was great
Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor (William Morrow; Gollancz) - know the author, know nothing about this
Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor UK; Orbit US) - haven't read this, looking forward to it
The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow (Tor US; Tor UK) - already on the to-read list
The Incandescent by Emily Tesh (Tor US; Orbit UK) - read, it was great (tho a bit obvious)
The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson (Orbit US; Hodderscape)- never even heard of this one
Novellas
Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz (Tordotcom)
Cinder House by Freya Marske (Tordotcom; Tor UK) - read it, very interesting
Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite (Tordotcom)
The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (Tordotcom; Arcadia UK)
The Summer War by Naomi Novik (Del Rey US; Del Rey UK)
What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher (Nightfire; Titan UK) -read it, solid, not a standalone without the first two novellas
The other categories also merit attention but the funny thing is just the movies - I have already seen all of them except Mickey 17.
What I Read
The Other Bennet Sister – Janice Hadlow – What an excellent book! Really well constructed story and deeply enjoyable arc. I think the romance was nicely done, but the center of the book was reflection – Mary the least loved Bennet sister gets to really take her time and observe the people in her life and know them deeply. It felt slightly self-indulgent (Mary is indeed going to the garden to eat worms) and yet I am here as the self and I am being indulged.
The Ancient Magus’ Bride Vols 1, 2, 3 – Kore Yamazaki – A fun read! Interesting world building and a slow burn romance between Chise and Elias Ainswroth, a horse/deer-skulled maybe human magus who bought her (not from One Direction!) in order to save her life and also marry her, maybe, at some point? It’s also deeply indulgent to the exact kind of big symbolic magic that I love, and gives a lot of time to the slow unfolding of their connection and what Chise’s magical powers will do. The story with the cats has been my favorite so far, but the Succubus in love with the random farmer who can’t see her at all is also a sweet tragedy. Really enjoying it.
I will say, I feel some conflict about one of the villains (so far) being revealed as the folkloric character of The Wandering Jew. Particularly because he’s a villain, and secondarily because I have no concept of how this character is understood by the author or by a Japanese audience, who are largely not dealing with the kind of hegemonic pressures to be Christian that shaped the folklore around that character. I weirdly adored the way that character trope was used in A Canticle for Leibowitz, because he was so very much Just Some Guy, and in particular, still identifiably, cantankerously Jewish in the face of being immortal, in a world where we only otherwise see Christians. So. I'm putting in a pin in that character for now.
AMB is interesting to read in context of My Happy Marriage, which also features a young woman with hidden magical powers escaping an uncaring/abusive family to a Perfectly Arranged Marriage. In the context of what Spouse is reading, this led to a discussion about the nature of isekai (a favorite Spousal genre) and the idea of different kinds of escape. Romance the genre often has an element of escapism baked in, and it’s sort of odd to think that some people in these novels are getting a Person to whisk them away to another magical world where they are treasured and important as a bride, and other people are getting hit by a bus.
What I’m Reading
The Everlasting by Alix E Harrow – A romantic and Romantic story. I love Sir Una Everlasting and I love Owen Mallory and the loving depiction of his flaws and how he becomes a useful idiot to a certain kind of patriotism that he also clearly sees thru and yet and yet and yet.
Platform Decay – Martha Wells – New Murderbot! No spoilers! I’m having a good and also bad time!
What I’ll Read Next
SciFi/Fantasy Book Club
Tomb of Dragons Katherine Addison - reread
Necromancy Book Club
The Everlasting Alix E. Harrow
The Isle in the Silver Sea Tasha Suri
Platform Decay (murderbot 8) Martha Wells
Ancillary Justice Ann Leckie
Hugo nominations!
Novels
A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey; Hodderscape) - read, it was great
Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor (William Morrow; Gollancz) - know the author, know nothing about this
Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor UK; Orbit US) - haven't read this, looking forward to it
The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow (Tor US; Tor UK) - already on the to-read list
The Incandescent by Emily Tesh (Tor US; Orbit UK) - read, it was great (tho a bit obvious)
The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson (Orbit US; Hodderscape)- never even heard of this one
Novellas
Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz (Tordotcom)
Cinder House by Freya Marske (Tordotcom; Tor UK) - read it, very interesting
Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite (Tordotcom)
The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (Tordotcom; Arcadia UK)
The Summer War by Naomi Novik (Del Rey US; Del Rey UK)
What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher (Nightfire; Titan UK) -read it, solid, not a standalone without the first two novellas
The other categories also merit attention but the funny thing is just the movies - I have already seen all of them except Mickey 17.
Wednesday Reading Meme for April 29 2026
Apr. 29th, 2026 10:43 pmWhat I've Read
The Visitor - KA Applegate - This was one of my most favorite Animorphs and it really drives home that the book is going to look at the cost of this war on an individual level. Rachel has to infiltrate the home of a Yeerk leader who is also the father of Rachel's old friend. Losing a parent is awful - but this child has lost her parents while they are still present and alive because the brain controlling aliens running her parents' bodies do not love her like he parents did.
My Happy Marriage Vol 2 & 3 - This is a self indulgent manga with good art and some main character whump.
The Other Bennet Sister - Janice Hadlow - Audiobook, this ruled. The conceit is obvious- take a side character from Pride and Prejudice and look at them closer, it's been done before, it so often works! Because Austen's side characters can stand up to scrutiny, but they have enough space to dig into who they are. The choice to look at Mary, starting before the events of P&P, when she's a plain little girl who cannot understand why she can't please her mother or connect with her father or break into the pairs that her four sisters have fallen into - was there ever such an ugly duckly, such a middle child? It's an excellent story of someone trying to be special to others somehow, and the main story comes together quite sweetly. Hadlow manages a book with a similar sense of interest in character as Austen but without trying to ape her style so closely that I felt it veered into pastiche.
What I'm Reading
The Ancient Magus Bride (vol 1 manga ) So far so good, weird world building and a dude with a horse skull for a face bought our main character from her shitty family.
Dracula - Continues to be a banger.
What I'll Read Next
SciFi/Fantasy Book Club
Tomb of Dragons Katherine Addison - reread
Necromancy Book Club
The Everlasting Alix E. Harrow
The Isle in the Silver Sea Tasha Suri
Platform Decay (murderbot 8) Martha Wells
Ancillary Justice Ann Leckie
Hugo nominations came out!
I think the voter packet hasn't come out yet, so I have not gotten the freebies of some of these books yet but I am hopeful.
Novels
A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey; Hodderscape) - read, it was great
Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor (William Morrow; Gollancz) - know the author, know nothing about this
Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor UK; Orbit US) - haven't read this, looking forward to it
The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow (Tor US; Tor UK) - already on the to-read list
The Incandescent by Emily Tesh (Tor US; Orbit UK) - read, it was great (tho a bit obvious)
The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson (Orbit US; Hodderscape)- never even heard of this one
Novellas
Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz (Tordotcom)
Cinder House by Freya Marske (Tordotcom; Tor UK) - read it, very interesting
Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite (Tordotcom)
The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (Tordotcom; Arcadia UK)
The Summer War by Naomi Novik (Del Rey US; Del Rey UK)
What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher (Nightfire; Titan UK) -read it, solid, not a standalone without the first two novellas
The other categories also merit attention but the funny thing is just the movies - I have already seen all of them except Mickey 17.
The Visitor - KA Applegate - This was one of my most favorite Animorphs and it really drives home that the book is going to look at the cost of this war on an individual level. Rachel has to infiltrate the home of a Yeerk leader who is also the father of Rachel's old friend. Losing a parent is awful - but this child has lost her parents while they are still present and alive because the brain controlling aliens running her parents' bodies do not love her like he parents did.
My Happy Marriage Vol 2 & 3 - This is a self indulgent manga with good art and some main character whump.
The Other Bennet Sister - Janice Hadlow - Audiobook, this ruled. The conceit is obvious- take a side character from Pride and Prejudice and look at them closer, it's been done before, it so often works! Because Austen's side characters can stand up to scrutiny, but they have enough space to dig into who they are. The choice to look at Mary, starting before the events of P&P, when she's a plain little girl who cannot understand why she can't please her mother or connect with her father or break into the pairs that her four sisters have fallen into - was there ever such an ugly duckly, such a middle child? It's an excellent story of someone trying to be special to others somehow, and the main story comes together quite sweetly. Hadlow manages a book with a similar sense of interest in character as Austen but without trying to ape her style so closely that I felt it veered into pastiche.
What I'm Reading
The Ancient Magus Bride (vol 1 manga ) So far so good, weird world building and a dude with a horse skull for a face bought our main character from her shitty family.
Dracula - Continues to be a banger.
What I'll Read Next
SciFi/Fantasy Book Club
Tomb of Dragons Katherine Addison - reread
Necromancy Book Club
The Everlasting Alix E. Harrow
The Isle in the Silver Sea Tasha Suri
Platform Decay (murderbot 8) Martha Wells
Ancillary Justice Ann Leckie
Hugo nominations came out!
I think the voter packet hasn't come out yet, so I have not gotten the freebies of some of these books yet but I am hopeful.
Novels
A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey; Hodderscape) - read, it was great
Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor (William Morrow; Gollancz) - know the author, know nothing about this
Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor UK; Orbit US) - haven't read this, looking forward to it
The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow (Tor US; Tor UK) - already on the to-read list
The Incandescent by Emily Tesh (Tor US; Orbit UK) - read, it was great (tho a bit obvious)
The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson (Orbit US; Hodderscape)- never even heard of this one
Novellas
Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz (Tordotcom)
Cinder House by Freya Marske (Tordotcom; Tor UK) - read it, very interesting
Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite (Tordotcom)
The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (Tordotcom; Arcadia UK)
The Summer War by Naomi Novik (Del Rey US; Del Rey UK)
What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher (Nightfire; Titan UK) -read it, solid, not a standalone without the first two novellas
The other categories also merit attention but the funny thing is just the movies - I have already seen all of them except Mickey 17.
Wednesday Reading Meme for April 22, 2026
Apr. 22nd, 2026 10:28 amGeneral life of a reader update: I have finally purchased an e-reader outside the Amazon environment, just in time for Amazon to stop supporting my oldest living Kindle. (RIP, first Kindle, we hardly knew ye.) So, I get to try out the wonderful world of Kindle jailbreaking (so far, so good) and then I get to try to put KOReader on it! I have two Paperwhites currently – only one is getting nuked in Amazon’s upcoming changes – But if the process works on the older one, I might do the second. What a luxurious thought, to have multiple functional e-readers at once!
Also a great update for e-reader users: Jo Walton has a fun article about using her e-reader to keep up with her insanely prolific reading habits. https://reactormag.com/how-to-read-sixteen-books-at-once-at-all-times/
And I also found this very pleasant discussion from 2014 about how her e-reader changed her reading habits overall. - https://reactormag.com/how-having-an-e-reader-has-changed-my-reading-habits/
What I’ve Read
Chalice by Robin McKinley – This reads like the literary version of a fairy tale that I had just never heard of. But it’s entirely original and I think this is the pure distilled form of McKinley’s charm – a thoughtful and intelligent woman who becomes powerful thru her devotion to others, and a magically untouchable man who is worth her devotion, made touchable. This is a pure example of the trope of “the virtue of the king is the virtue of the land” except, you know, made a bit more modern and it’s more focused on women. It’s honestly great.
The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World by Virginia Postrel – This is a great book for just about anyone – I read it knowing a fair bit about certain kinds of textiles (both from a New England elementary education and because of Elizabeth Gaskill) and that got expanded on and refined. I adored the discussions about how trade in textiles shaped so much of global commerce. Postrel does not shy away from how awful that can be (chattel slavery and cotton go hand in hand for a reason), nor does she allow it to dehumanize the people engaged in it. It’s honestly a great work that covers a vast span of time and culture – I would be glad to read more from her.
The Invasion (Animorphs #1) by KA Applegate – I picked this up after one more Tumblr post talking about the book series’ respect for the reader and attention to the cost of war. It turns out to be just as good as I remembered, and written simply enough for the age I was when I first read them. (I picked up the first book at the Scholastic Book Fair because it has a lizard on it. On such small wheels our destinies turn.) This book has to do a fair bit of the scifi heavy lifting, introducing the human cast, the aliens, setting the stakes of the intergalactic espionage that is the main conflict, and establishing how the key technology (morphing an animal based on a DNA sample) works. The writing is clear and respects the audience – when people die, they die, but the characters also feel the age of the middle schoolers they are. I’m planning on doing a re-read/read thru and finishing the whole series, which I had bored of as a child as I grew out of the age group. I think that I’d like to see if the resolution is as interesting as the Tumblr Animorphs fans make it out to be.
Cultural Exchange and Comparative Semiotics (Xenoethnography #1 & #2) by Therrae (Dasha_mte) A re-read. Anthropologist works with Transformers, lovely.
Concubine by Kaasknot – Technically an MCU fic, in that it’s an AU of the version of Thor and Loki from those movies, but mostly unrelated and pulls more from the Poetic Edda. Arranged marriage between Loki, who grew up a runt prince on Jotunheim, and Thor, the spoiled prince of Asgard who has no love for his new concubine, leads to Loki isolated as the unofficial ambassador to Asgard. I wanted to like this more than I did. In short, this is doing court intrigue and politics and war, but like, in a boring way that makes Loki look dumb. Things work out in his favor when it would be more interesting to see them blow up in his face. The balance of self-indulgence v. complexity wavers too wildly for me to have sunk my emotional investment into either pole. Bah. 140K words and I kept waiting for it to get really good, and since I waited like ten years to actually read this, I feel a bit meh about it.
What I’m Reading
The Stars are Legion – Kameron Hurley. Picked up an audiobook based on a Tumblr post where someone had pointed our that it was amazing that this book’s reputation had managed to avoid controversy, given that it has zero male characters. Which, given that its about space wars and technology based on biological ships with squishy organs and vehicles that are also animals, I am so here for.
The Visitor (Animorphs #2) KA Applegate – This book’s got a Rachel POV and she’s not as confident as she seems. The book is also doing the kind of fatphobia of the 90s where they don’t even notice the fatphobia, but, well, I lived thru it once – it can hardly do more damage now.
What I’ll Read Next
My book clubs are on books I have not read! (Amazing work, y’all.)
SciFi/Fantasy Book Club
Sunshine Robin McKinley
Tomb of Dragons Katherine Addison
Necromancy Book Club
The Everlasting Alix E. Harrow
The Isle in the Silver Sea Tasha Suri
Platform Decay (murderbot 8) Martha Wells
Ancillary Justice Ann Leckie
I mentally still have a pin in my planned read thru of LeGuin's Earthsea books, and a friend was interested in doing a read thru of the Baru Cormorant Trilogy....
Also a great update for e-reader users: Jo Walton has a fun article about using her e-reader to keep up with her insanely prolific reading habits. https://reactormag.com/how-to-read-sixteen-books-at-once-at-all-times/
And I also found this very pleasant discussion from 2014 about how her e-reader changed her reading habits overall. - https://reactormag.com/how-having-an-e-reader-has-changed-my-reading-habits/
What I’ve Read
Chalice by Robin McKinley – This reads like the literary version of a fairy tale that I had just never heard of. But it’s entirely original and I think this is the pure distilled form of McKinley’s charm – a thoughtful and intelligent woman who becomes powerful thru her devotion to others, and a magically untouchable man who is worth her devotion, made touchable. This is a pure example of the trope of “the virtue of the king is the virtue of the land” except, you know, made a bit more modern and it’s more focused on women. It’s honestly great.
The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World by Virginia Postrel – This is a great book for just about anyone – I read it knowing a fair bit about certain kinds of textiles (both from a New England elementary education and because of Elizabeth Gaskill) and that got expanded on and refined. I adored the discussions about how trade in textiles shaped so much of global commerce. Postrel does not shy away from how awful that can be (chattel slavery and cotton go hand in hand for a reason), nor does she allow it to dehumanize the people engaged in it. It’s honestly a great work that covers a vast span of time and culture – I would be glad to read more from her.
The Invasion (Animorphs #1) by KA Applegate – I picked this up after one more Tumblr post talking about the book series’ respect for the reader and attention to the cost of war. It turns out to be just as good as I remembered, and written simply enough for the age I was when I first read them. (I picked up the first book at the Scholastic Book Fair because it has a lizard on it. On such small wheels our destinies turn.) This book has to do a fair bit of the scifi heavy lifting, introducing the human cast, the aliens, setting the stakes of the intergalactic espionage that is the main conflict, and establishing how the key technology (morphing an animal based on a DNA sample) works. The writing is clear and respects the audience – when people die, they die, but the characters also feel the age of the middle schoolers they are. I’m planning on doing a re-read/read thru and finishing the whole series, which I had bored of as a child as I grew out of the age group. I think that I’d like to see if the resolution is as interesting as the Tumblr Animorphs fans make it out to be.
Cultural Exchange and Comparative Semiotics (Xenoethnography #1 & #2) by Therrae (Dasha_mte) A re-read. Anthropologist works with Transformers, lovely.
Concubine by Kaasknot – Technically an MCU fic, in that it’s an AU of the version of Thor and Loki from those movies, but mostly unrelated and pulls more from the Poetic Edda. Arranged marriage between Loki, who grew up a runt prince on Jotunheim, and Thor, the spoiled prince of Asgard who has no love for his new concubine, leads to Loki isolated as the unofficial ambassador to Asgard. I wanted to like this more than I did. In short, this is doing court intrigue and politics and war, but like, in a boring way that makes Loki look dumb. Things work out in his favor when it would be more interesting to see them blow up in his face. The balance of self-indulgence v. complexity wavers too wildly for me to have sunk my emotional investment into either pole. Bah. 140K words and I kept waiting for it to get really good, and since I waited like ten years to actually read this, I feel a bit meh about it.
What I’m Reading
The Stars are Legion – Kameron Hurley. Picked up an audiobook based on a Tumblr post where someone had pointed our that it was amazing that this book’s reputation had managed to avoid controversy, given that it has zero male characters. Which, given that its about space wars and technology based on biological ships with squishy organs and vehicles that are also animals, I am so here for.
The Visitor (Animorphs #2) KA Applegate – This book’s got a Rachel POV and she’s not as confident as she seems. The book is also doing the kind of fatphobia of the 90s where they don’t even notice the fatphobia, but, well, I lived thru it once – it can hardly do more damage now.
What I’ll Read Next
My book clubs are on books I have not read! (Amazing work, y’all.)
SciFi/Fantasy Book Club
Sunshine Robin McKinley
Tomb of Dragons Katherine Addison
Necromancy Book Club
The Everlasting Alix E. Harrow
The Isle in the Silver Sea Tasha Suri
Platform Decay (murderbot 8) Martha Wells
Ancillary Justice Ann Leckie
I mentally still have a pin in my planned read thru of LeGuin's Earthsea books, and a friend was interested in doing a read thru of the Baru Cormorant Trilogy....
Wednesday Reading Meme for April 15, 2026
Apr. 15th, 2026 10:04 pmWhat I’ve Read
The Wimsey Papers by Dorothy L. Sayers – A great look at Sayers’s wartime thoughts in 1935. It’s a loose collection of “letters” between Wimsey relatives that give the impression being Sayers’s soapbox. It’s honestly fairly touching but I’m biased.
Fire on the Mountain by Terry Bisson – Fascinating alternate history novel, told in several timelines. The older timeline is an alternate history of John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, where it actually went off as planned with Harriet Tubman’s help. The younger timeline is about the survivors of a dead astronaut coping with the new Mars mission. It’s great and weird and hopeful and antiracist in a wrathful and constructive way.
Earthlings by Sayaka Murata – Mixed bag. The first section is from the perspective of an abused and neglected child with a single friend – she’s so alienated from humanity she grows to actually believe she’s an alien. It depicts the abuse and violence with the character disassociating thru it all in a very convincing and harrowing way. She thinks of herself and society as The Factory – they make babies and enforce that role on everyone around them – she’ll grow up into the role eventually. The second half of the book didn’t work for me so well – we meet up with the same character in a much calmer time of her life, but the forces of The Factory are more distant until they are radically not. The second half of the book feels ... like a parody of alienation? She’s not feeling her own emotions anymore and so the more shocking actions of the later book didn’t land as closely. It’s an interesting attempt, but I think that Tender is the Flesh did the “cannibalism as dehumanization” thread more justice.
Sunshine by Robin McKinley – Re-Read. A strange and inconsistent creature – McKinley’s one urban fantasy experiment did not actually land the logistics and plot of an urban fantasy, but the vibes are dreamy and weird and I love that.
What I’m Reading
Fabric of Civilization – no movement
Chalice by Robin McKinley – Sunshine made me crave more.
What I’ll Read Next
Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins (eventually)
Animorphs – I enjoyed these books and recently tumblr has tempted me into finishing the series.
The Wimsey Papers by Dorothy L. Sayers – A great look at Sayers’s wartime thoughts in 1935. It’s a loose collection of “letters” between Wimsey relatives that give the impression being Sayers’s soapbox. It’s honestly fairly touching but I’m biased.
Fire on the Mountain by Terry Bisson – Fascinating alternate history novel, told in several timelines. The older timeline is an alternate history of John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, where it actually went off as planned with Harriet Tubman’s help. The younger timeline is about the survivors of a dead astronaut coping with the new Mars mission. It’s great and weird and hopeful and antiracist in a wrathful and constructive way.
Earthlings by Sayaka Murata – Mixed bag. The first section is from the perspective of an abused and neglected child with a single friend – she’s so alienated from humanity she grows to actually believe she’s an alien. It depicts the abuse and violence with the character disassociating thru it all in a very convincing and harrowing way. She thinks of herself and society as The Factory – they make babies and enforce that role on everyone around them – she’ll grow up into the role eventually. The second half of the book didn’t work for me so well – we meet up with the same character in a much calmer time of her life, but the forces of The Factory are more distant until they are radically not. The second half of the book feels ... like a parody of alienation? She’s not feeling her own emotions anymore and so the more shocking actions of the later book didn’t land as closely. It’s an interesting attempt, but I think that Tender is the Flesh did the “cannibalism as dehumanization” thread more justice.
Sunshine by Robin McKinley – Re-Read. A strange and inconsistent creature – McKinley’s one urban fantasy experiment did not actually land the logistics and plot of an urban fantasy, but the vibes are dreamy and weird and I love that.
What I’m Reading
Fabric of Civilization – no movement
Chalice by Robin McKinley – Sunshine made me crave more.
What I’ll Read Next
Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins (eventually)
Animorphs – I enjoyed these books and recently tumblr has tempted me into finishing the series.
Wednesday Reading Meme for April 8 2026
Apr. 8th, 2026 08:40 pmPersonal update: I have indulged – I got a Kobo ereader to replace my somewhat elderly Kindle Paperwhite. It has BUTTONS - actual, physical buttons! It’s so nice and the lighting is good, and I am at last free from the Amazon ecosystem. On the downside, a good deal of the fic that I have saved for myself the last few years in ebook form was transmitted to the Kindle as emailed attachments, and so I have a new part time job of saving and converting all of those and sending them to the Kobo.
What I’ve Read
Gaudy Night – Dorothy Sayers – I finished this slowly, in writing, and I am glad I took the time. This book is a wonderful summation of the series, giving space for Harriet’s introspection and allowing her to slowly come to terms with her own growing trust in her own judgment. It’s full of allusion, jokes, and self-reflection. I often fall back on the metaphor of fiction as light striking a jewel – a skilled writer can draw out subtle meanings and highlight contrast by what facets are lit by the writer’s attention. By the end of this book both Harriet and Peter are illuminated. Wonderful book, glad I decided to give the series a proper and slow read-thru rather than just goof around.
Sidebar: I have an exacting requirement about English writers, which is that I want them to show their work – I want to see them thinking about what it means To Be English in their works, rather than taking their Englishness for a universal and inevitable norm, like gravity or light. In the case of Sayers, it often takes the form of thinking about time, about changes, about class, about academics, about social roles, about dignity and decency and what is or is not “done.” This book makes me see a vision of Oxford as Harriet Vane loved it, and I think that’s very worthwhile.
Busman’s Honeymoon – Dorothy Sayers – I am glad I picked this up so soon after Gaudy Night! They are very close in time. This book is fascinating because the beginning frame is an epistolary section from Peter and Harriet’s friends and family about how happy they are to see them married, the middle of the book starts as a sort of cozy “murder in a locked cottage” mystery, and then the ending is a gradual examination of what it costs Peter, as a human being, to send another person to be tried and executed for their crimes. It’s book about marriage, and figuring out how to be in a life together with someone else, with all their scars and foibles, and how to do it honorably, without pulling them into being your plaything. It’s moderately incredible and also tonally complex in a way that Sayers’s earlier detective novels just wasn’t. Honestly, great and nothing like I was expecting.
The Orb of Cairado by Katherine Addison – I didn’t know this was a murder mystery, and I think that works because the main character didn’t know either, until he was well into it. It’s short and sweet and mostly complete, and delves into a bit of the social reaction to the reign of Emperor Edrehasivar VII aka, Maia the protagonist of the first novel in this series. Orb does not stand up on its own without that book, and I suspect it does not stand up without the Witness for the Dead novels, and since I have read all of those multiple times, I don’t mind. I am not sure if this book is a cash grab from Addison or an attempt at a palette cleanser, but I can't tell if its successful because I can't tell why she wanted to write it. I also don’t think it holds up well against Sayers (unfair comparison, who could??) and I would not have read them so close together if I had known it was a murder mystery.
Sidebar: This is the third time Addison/Monette has linked being a gay man with murder, that I know of. I rather wish she were a little inclined to ponder if there’s something there, there.
Honorable mention – not a novel, but this excellent fic based in Much Ado About Nothing made me very happy – Reprise by Perennial - https://archiveofourown.org/works/26980378
What I’m Reading
The Fabric of Civilization – Virginia Postrel. The deeper we get into this book, the more interested and niche the information gets. I had some background in textile history – New England children all get a visit to a fabric mill and a maple sugar shack as mandatory field trips, and we also got a background in the Bread and Roses textile workers' strikes in school – so I think I am perhaps unusually versed for the average person on the history of textiles up to and immediately into the 1800s. That said, this was the first time someone really explained the mechanism that punch cards looms DO to make the punch cards impact the cloth, and that alone was worth the price of admission. I was listening to the audiobook but switched to the digital text when I realized I was missing the PICTURES.
What I’ll Read Next
Sunshine (Robin McKinley, a re-read)
Catching Fire
Knitting reflections – I just got the notice that the next Sock Madness pattern is a heel-up pattern, not unlike the Hyrde Sokker I recently did for fun. https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/hyrde-sokker I really enjoy this style of heel-up, in the round sock, as I find it has a comfy padded heel and a high instep without too much fussing. My first pair were these Nordwand socks, one of the few times I am pleased I was briefly on TikTok. https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/nordwand-socksI’m kicking doing this round just because I do actually want these socks for my own. https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/whisky-ahoi
Wednesday Reading Meme for March 25 2026
Mar. 25th, 2026 09:12 pmWhat I’ve Read
The Historian By Elizabeth Kostova – This Dracula novel has a fantastic trick which is telling an epistolary story that nails the fun of reading a story thru someone else’s voice and then returning to the main character’s narrative to go “Oh, my god, they had no idea of the danger they were in!” And that trick is a trick I enjoy a great deal! I don’t know that I enjoy 700 pages of it! Overall, while the narrative is the journey we take with the characters, this journey felt extended beyond the needs of the story or my personal pleasure, and ended in a kind of disappointing splat. I can see why it made a splash – It’s not badly written, and the layered epistolary vibe is pretty great for the first half of the book! But that’s not how you kill Dracula, Frank.
My Real Children by Jo Walton – Ok, I just read this in a fever dream on a plane but I really liked it. The story is a well-told life of a woman named Patricia- specifically, two different lives that branch off from each other in 1949, when she makes a single important personal choice. But, as an elderly woman with dementia, in a nursing home, she remembers both lives and both worlds and both sets of children that she has, different as they are from each other. In one, she lives a life of joy and love in a private oasis from a world gradually falling into violence and instability. In the other, she’s snatching tiny moments of personal peace inside a miserable life, but the world is gradually getting brighter, kinder, and more peaceful. It’s a carefully composed book and I enjoyed both stories really well! I will probably have to re-read it to talk about cogently for book club. Jo Walton has always done a great of seeding her world building naturally throughout the stories she writes, so I think this story will reward re-reading.
The Scales and the Sword by foolish_mortal (Restricted link - https://archiveofourown.org/works/773326) – The Hitcher (1986) fic – So, getting into Talamasca fic led to me finding this extremely homoerotic and murdery film, and then the fic about it has been very interesting. The movie is basically “nice heterosexual boy with a car is stalked by hot murderous stranger with a fixation on him.” It’s great, if you like murderous strangers with a fascination that leads them to toy with their food. The film shows the nice boys slow slide into feral violence, which seems to the murderous stranger’s aim – making this nice boy more like himself. The movie would be much more dull if it were more straight. This story is an AU where our nice boy is… less heterosexual, and the murderous stranger is introduced to him under different circumstances. They dance around each other for a loooong time in a flirtation that gradually becomes more explicitly sexual as the story goes on. Think Hannibal.
What I’m Reading
Hemlock and Silver by T Kingfisher – Kingfisher loves an older lady with an area of expertise, and in Anja’s case, that’s poison! It’s Kingfisher, I know it will be good.
What I’ll Read Next
The Fabric of Civilization – audiobook, the library will pull it back soon.
The Historian By Elizabeth Kostova – This Dracula novel has a fantastic trick which is telling an epistolary story that nails the fun of reading a story thru someone else’s voice and then returning to the main character’s narrative to go “Oh, my god, they had no idea of the danger they were in!” And that trick is a trick I enjoy a great deal! I don’t know that I enjoy 700 pages of it! Overall, while the narrative is the journey we take with the characters, this journey felt extended beyond the needs of the story or my personal pleasure, and ended in a kind of disappointing splat. I can see why it made a splash – It’s not badly written, and the layered epistolary vibe is pretty great for the first half of the book! But that’s not how you kill Dracula, Frank.
My Real Children by Jo Walton – Ok, I just read this in a fever dream on a plane but I really liked it. The story is a well-told life of a woman named Patricia- specifically, two different lives that branch off from each other in 1949, when she makes a single important personal choice. But, as an elderly woman with dementia, in a nursing home, she remembers both lives and both worlds and both sets of children that she has, different as they are from each other. In one, she lives a life of joy and love in a private oasis from a world gradually falling into violence and instability. In the other, she’s snatching tiny moments of personal peace inside a miserable life, but the world is gradually getting brighter, kinder, and more peaceful. It’s a carefully composed book and I enjoyed both stories really well! I will probably have to re-read it to talk about cogently for book club. Jo Walton has always done a great of seeding her world building naturally throughout the stories she writes, so I think this story will reward re-reading.
The Scales and the Sword by foolish_mortal (Restricted link - https://archiveofourown.org/works/773326) – The Hitcher (1986) fic – So, getting into Talamasca fic led to me finding this extremely homoerotic and murdery film, and then the fic about it has been very interesting. The movie is basically “nice heterosexual boy with a car is stalked by hot murderous stranger with a fixation on him.” It’s great, if you like murderous strangers with a fascination that leads them to toy with their food. The film shows the nice boys slow slide into feral violence, which seems to the murderous stranger’s aim – making this nice boy more like himself. The movie would be much more dull if it were more straight. This story is an AU where our nice boy is… less heterosexual, and the murderous stranger is introduced to him under different circumstances. They dance around each other for a loooong time in a flirtation that gradually becomes more explicitly sexual as the story goes on. Think Hannibal.
What I’m Reading
Hemlock and Silver by T Kingfisher – Kingfisher loves an older lady with an area of expertise, and in Anja’s case, that’s poison! It’s Kingfisher, I know it will be good.
What I’ll Read Next
The Fabric of Civilization – audiobook, the library will pull it back soon.
Weekly reading meme for March 18 2026
Mar. 18th, 2026 08:06 pmI am keyboardless, forgive my brevity.
What I've Read
After the Storm by perennial - This beautiful fic is Don John and Hero from Much Ado About Nothing, in an alternate universe where John revenges himself on Claudio by marrying Hero. Long and slow, this fic look at who John might be if given enough rope, and who Hero might be if she didn't have to marry that credulous shithead.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/31038242
Swordheart by T. Kingfisher A sweet romance, a little too long. Doing some lifting to set up the following books in the series.
The Grief of Stones by Katherine Addison - A reread for me for xing bookclub!
What I'm Reading Now
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova - This is fine? Not sure if I am reaching for the orientalism or if the book is just doing that, but the key problems are repetition and repetition. 700 pages of, Dracula is around still and he's a dick.
What I'll Read Next
My Real Children Jo walton
What I've Read
After the Storm by perennial - This beautiful fic is Don John and Hero from Much Ado About Nothing, in an alternate universe where John revenges himself on Claudio by marrying Hero. Long and slow, this fic look at who John might be if given enough rope, and who Hero might be if she didn't have to marry that credulous shithead.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/31038242
Swordheart by T. Kingfisher A sweet romance, a little too long. Doing some lifting to set up the following books in the series.
The Grief of Stones by Katherine Addison - A reread for me for xing bookclub!
What I'm Reading Now
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova - This is fine? Not sure if I am reaching for the orientalism or if the book is just doing that, but the key problems are repetition and repetition. 700 pages of, Dracula is around still and he's a dick.
What I'll Read Next
My Real Children Jo walton
Wednesday Reading Meme for March 11 2026
Mar. 11th, 2026 06:41 pmWeekly reading journal for march 11 2025
I am! On! Vacation! Muahahahahaha.
(Happy 11th of March to the few, the happy few, Due South fans out there!)
What I Have Read
Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die by Greer Stothers - I finished this is a fevered rush on a plane, so take my review with a grain of salt. This was fun, it was sincere, it was unpretentious, it was a good time! I wish there had been a little more substance to the ending as the emotional core of Cameron's journey, but I am not upset by it! I did call the main revelation but not all of it! And I'm not sure what I would recommend this book for, exactly, but I had fun.
Chivalric Academia by OldShrewsburyian This fic! Is a delight! The writing is just a pleasure to read - funny and clear, gently ironic and sincere by turns. It's a Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth modern day academic AU where they are both new faculty at a small college. She hates him, he gets his handcut off, they fall in love. Brienne is written with such absolute conviction and commitment, Jaime is always dancing between hiding in the shadows and baring his soul in stupified awe of her. Wonderful, go read it especially if you like Dorothy Sayers. https://archiveofourown.org/works/57674458
Daniel Molloy's Incredible Showstopping World-Famous Model Train Extravaganza for Children and Easily-Awed Vampires (Please Knock) by
Ariaste - I read this bc Ariaste is now posting the sequel as a weekly fic. Its wonderful and porny and like Chivalric Academia, involves people who want to be together figuring out how to make it work.
What I'm Reading
Sword Heart is still slow because it is so so sweet and tender.
What I Will Read Next
The grief of stones
My real children
I am! On! Vacation! Muahahahahaha.
(Happy 11th of March to the few, the happy few, Due South fans out there!)
What I Have Read
Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die by Greer Stothers - I finished this is a fevered rush on a plane, so take my review with a grain of salt. This was fun, it was sincere, it was unpretentious, it was a good time! I wish there had been a little more substance to the ending as the emotional core of Cameron's journey, but I am not upset by it! I did call the main revelation but not all of it! And I'm not sure what I would recommend this book for, exactly, but I had fun.
Chivalric Academia by OldShrewsburyian This fic! Is a delight! The writing is just a pleasure to read - funny and clear, gently ironic and sincere by turns. It's a Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth modern day academic AU where they are both new faculty at a small college. She hates him, he gets his handcut off, they fall in love. Brienne is written with such absolute conviction and commitment, Jaime is always dancing between hiding in the shadows and baring his soul in stupified awe of her. Wonderful, go read it especially if you like Dorothy Sayers. https://archiveofourown.org/works/57674458
Daniel Molloy's Incredible Showstopping World-Famous Model Train Extravaganza for Children and Easily-Awed Vampires (Please Knock) by
Ariaste - I read this bc Ariaste is now posting the sequel as a weekly fic. Its wonderful and porny and like Chivalric Academia, involves people who want to be together figuring out how to make it work.
What I'm Reading
Sword Heart is still slow because it is so so sweet and tender.
What I Will Read Next
The grief of stones
My real children
Wednesday Reading Meme for March 11 2026
Mar. 11th, 2026 01:38 pmWeekly reading journal for march 11 2025
I am! On! Vacation! Muahahahahaha.
(Happy 11th of March to the few, the happy few, Due South fans out there!)
What I Have Read
Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die by Greer Stothers - I finished this is a fevered rush on a plane, so take my review with a grain of salt. This was fun, it was sincere, it was unpretentious, it was a good time! I wish there had been a little more substance to the ending as the emotional core of Cameron's journey, but I am not upset by it! I did call the main revelation but not all of it! And I'm not sure what I would recommend this book for, exactly, but I had fun.
Chivalric Academia by OldShrewsburyian This fic! Is a delight! The writing is just a pleasure to read - funny and clear, gently ironic and sincere by turns. It's a Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth modern day academic AU where they are both new faculty at a small college. She hates him, he gets his handcut off, they fall in love. Brienne is written with such absolute conviction and commitment, Jaime is always dancing between hiding in the shadows and baring his soul in stupified awe of her. Wonderful, go read it especially if you like Dorothy Sayers. https://archiveofourown.org/works/57674458
Daniel Molloy's Incredible Showstopping World-Famous Model Train Extravaganza for Children and Easily-Awed Vampires (Please Knock) by
Ariaste - I read this bc Ariaste is now posting the sequel as a weekly fic. Its wonderful and porny and like Chivalric Academia, involves people who want to be together figuring out how to make it work.
What I'm Reading
Sword Heart is still slow because it is so so sweet and tender.
What I Will Read Next
The grief of stones
My real children
I am! On! Vacation! Muahahahahaha.
(Happy 11th of March to the few, the happy few, Due South fans out there!)
What I Have Read
Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die by Greer Stothers - I finished this is a fevered rush on a plane, so take my review with a grain of salt. This was fun, it was sincere, it was unpretentious, it was a good time! I wish there had been a little more substance to the ending as the emotional core of Cameron's journey, but I am not upset by it! I did call the main revelation but not all of it! And I'm not sure what I would recommend this book for, exactly, but I had fun.
Chivalric Academia by OldShrewsburyian This fic! Is a delight! The writing is just a pleasure to read - funny and clear, gently ironic and sincere by turns. It's a Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth modern day academic AU where they are both new faculty at a small college. She hates him, he gets his handcut off, they fall in love. Brienne is written with such absolute conviction and commitment, Jaime is always dancing between hiding in the shadows and baring his soul in stupified awe of her. Wonderful, go read it especially if you like Dorothy Sayers. https://archiveofourown.org/works/57674458
Daniel Molloy's Incredible Showstopping World-Famous Model Train Extravaganza for Children and Easily-Awed Vampires (Please Knock) by
Ariaste - I read this bc Ariaste is now posting the sequel as a weekly fic. Its wonderful and porny and like Chivalric Academia, involves people who want to be together figuring out how to make it work.
What I'm Reading
Sword Heart is still slow because it is so so sweet and tender.
What I Will Read Next
The grief of stones
My real children
Reading Journal for March 6 2026
What I’ve Read
And Other Poison Devils by Twig (https://archiveofourown.org/works/77727411) This one requires a little explanation.
So, last October, AMC did a new show in the Anne Rice cinematic universe that they’ve been building with Interview with the Vampire and The Mayfair Witches called, in full, Anne Rice's Talamasca: The Secret Order. I don’t recommend it – the show is weirdly heterosexual for a Rice-inspired tale, and for a spy story. They really do not delve deeply into the implication of having an untrained telepath as our main character. The show is so generic they literally named the main character Guy.
But! To you, dear reader, I am kinder than to myseI am a completionist and also a Bill Fichtner fan, so I watched Anne Rice's Talamasca: The Secret Order. It’s not great. It spends a great deal of time setting up Guy, and then all the payoff is for other characters who were introduced somewhat haphazardly. However, the extremely specific Guy has some great slashy scenes with The Vampire Jasper – it’s classic handsy male actors making intense eye contact from four inches apart, and it appealed to enough people that there is a little fandom built up about it, myself included. THIS FIC is fantastic – it picks up a number of threads the show dropped and weaves them into a compelling personal narrative of a young vulnerable man who falls into the hands of a powerful older man and dedicates himself to his cause – and of course, unlike the canon, it’s well written and they fuck. Great work, Highly recommend as well Twig’s shorter work, The Hunter and the Gun (https://archiveofourown.org/works/75005866) which is closer to canon and also deeply fun.
The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik – The final book in the Scholomance series, about how the main character takes down magic capitalism from the inside. It’s wonderful payoff on the world building of the series, and good character work, and my god, Maw Mouths are just so much more horrible on the re-read than they are the first
What I’m Reading
Sword Heart by T Kingfisher - an excellent fantasy romance. What if Geralt of Rivia was assigned to protect a busty older woman with shitty relatives?
Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die by Greer Stothers -Static
What I’ll Read Next
My Real Children Jo Walton
Sunshine Robin McKinley
Work in Progress
I finished my Sock Madness qualifier socks after the deadline, but with enough done to be a cheerleader. I think I'll call it a win!
What I’ve Read
And Other Poison Devils by Twig (https://archiveofourown.org/works/77727411) This one requires a little explanation.
So, last October, AMC did a new show in the Anne Rice cinematic universe that they’ve been building with Interview with the Vampire and The Mayfair Witches called, in full, Anne Rice's Talamasca: The Secret Order. I don’t recommend it – the show is weirdly heterosexual for a Rice-inspired tale, and for a spy story. They really do not delve deeply into the implication of having an untrained telepath as our main character. The show is so generic they literally named the main character Guy.
But! To you, dear reader, I am kinder than to myseI am a completionist and also a Bill Fichtner fan, so I watched Anne Rice's Talamasca: The Secret Order. It’s not great. It spends a great deal of time setting up Guy, and then all the payoff is for other characters who were introduced somewhat haphazardly. However, the extremely specific Guy has some great slashy scenes with The Vampire Jasper – it’s classic handsy male actors making intense eye contact from four inches apart, and it appealed to enough people that there is a little fandom built up about it, myself included. THIS FIC is fantastic – it picks up a number of threads the show dropped and weaves them into a compelling personal narrative of a young vulnerable man who falls into the hands of a powerful older man and dedicates himself to his cause – and of course, unlike the canon, it’s well written and they fuck. Great work, Highly recommend as well Twig’s shorter work, The Hunter and the Gun (https://archiveofourown.org/works/75005866) which is closer to canon and also deeply fun.
The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik – The final book in the Scholomance series, about how the main character takes down magic capitalism from the inside. It’s wonderful payoff on the world building of the series, and good character work, and my god, Maw Mouths are just so much more horrible on the re-read than they are the first
What I’m Reading
Sword Heart by T Kingfisher - an excellent fantasy romance. What if Geralt of Rivia was assigned to protect a busty older woman with shitty relatives?
Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die by Greer Stothers -Static
What I’ll Read Next
My Real Children Jo Walton
Sunshine Robin McKinley
Work in Progress
I finished my Sock Madness qualifier socks after the deadline, but with enough done to be a cheerleader. I think I'll call it a win!
Wednesday Reading Meme for Feb 25 2026
Feb. 25th, 2026 08:40 pmWhat I’ve Read
The Last Graduate – Naomi Novik – Book 2 of the Scholomance – This series rules. In some ways, total wish fulfillment (of the Superman, “What if you had the power to save everyone*?” variety) and yet the execution really works for me. And, as all good series do, it delivers on promises made in the first book that you didn’t even know were being set up. I have only read this series once, each book as it was published, and I am happily reporting that they are even better read in quick succession. I love El Higgins and would go to war for her.
What I’m Reading
Apparently Sir Cameron Needs to Die – Static.
The Golden Enclaves – Naomi Novik – Scholomance 3 – Stuff gets objectively better and also subjectively so much worse. Fascinating expansion from the microcosm of the Scholomance itself and its limited borders to the actual whole world of magical people all fucking about and being human. Great stuff.
What I’ll Read Next
My Real Children Jo Walton
Sunshine Robin McKinley
Work in Progress Wednesday
Sock Madness 20 ! Nearly done with Sock 1, have worked out enough of the difficulties that I think sock 2 will be a great improvement! The rough part of Sock Madness is that I don’t usually have time to fit the sock to my own foot very well, so I’m probably going to have to play Cinderella with someone else’s feet.
The Last Graduate – Naomi Novik – Book 2 of the Scholomance – This series rules. In some ways, total wish fulfillment (of the Superman, “What if you had the power to save everyone*?” variety) and yet the execution really works for me. And, as all good series do, it delivers on promises made in the first book that you didn’t even know were being set up. I have only read this series once, each book as it was published, and I am happily reporting that they are even better read in quick succession. I love El Higgins and would go to war for her.
What I’m Reading
Apparently Sir Cameron Needs to Die – Static.
The Golden Enclaves – Naomi Novik – Scholomance 3 – Stuff gets objectively better and also subjectively so much worse. Fascinating expansion from the microcosm of the Scholomance itself and its limited borders to the actual whole world of magical people all fucking about and being human. Great stuff.
What I’ll Read Next
My Real Children Jo Walton
Sunshine Robin McKinley
Work in Progress Wednesday
Sock Madness 20 ! Nearly done with Sock 1, have worked out enough of the difficulties that I think sock 2 will be a great improvement! The rough part of Sock Madness is that I don’t usually have time to fit the sock to my own foot very well, so I’m probably going to have to play Cinderella with someone else’s feet.
What I’ve Read
What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher – Another Sworn Soldier spooky mystery with a creepy cave and inhuman intelligences. I liked it, but I don’t think it’s as interesting as the first two. I’ll probably re-read to see if I continue to hold that opinion later. Kingfisher is always a good re-read.
Latchkey by Goldkirk – Long and self-indulgent Batfam fic focus on a young Tim Drake. None of the bad things have happened yet – Jason Todd makes friends with Tim, and Tim’s parents are awful and he’s rescued. The writing is good and there’s probably more I can say, but it just makes me feel content to see someone recovering from a bad situation.
The Incandescent by Emily Tesh – A magical school story (NOT my thing) where the main character is an intelligent administrator and instructor who’s also a 38 year old woman in a slow rolling life crisis (TOTALLY my thing.) Honestly, this is a great book and the only failure of the work is mine – I have no tolerance for the kind of Potterstalgic Anglophilia that permeates some magical school stories, and so I would have never read this book if my book club hadn’t suggested it. I am not immune to foolish choices. It’s legitimately good and puts enough work into showing the foulness of English hierarchical society that I could actually trust Tesh to not brush over it. I really enjoyed the main character’s sheer unrelenting busy-ness and the complexities of running a larger school appealed, and the way the school kind of eats her until something breaks.
A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik (Scholomance Book 1) – Also an author I trust to look at a magical school and then take a hatchet to the hierarchical bullshit built into it! This is a re-read and I enjoyed it a great deal. This book is about capitalism and hierarchy and aristocracy and all the ways El Higgins grows to realize that she’s rather build something new than choose a safe path. Book club picked this series, and the Incandescent, because we tend to do better with a quarterly book club meeting and we need something meaty and complex. These books are going to make a fascinating set of comparisons. This book has zero teachers in it.
What I’m Reading
The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik (Scholomance 2) – This book is doing numbers on my head in the scarcity mindset compared to the last book. El finally gets her hands on some RESOURCES and it changes the whole game and also I fully related to how resentful she is of the past ages she spent scraping by. One of the best elements of this book series is El going from an outsider with no leverage and a deep fear of incurring debts she can’t repay, to the linchpin of a vast network of people willingly supporting each other for the good of it. She’s not there yet, but she’s laying down the foundations. It’s wonderful.
Apparently Sir Cameron Needs to Die – so far, so good. Cute and funny, more horny than I realized. Do people like sprayed edges on a book? I find them oddly smelly, and it’s a glue-bound paperback, so it feels a bit like putting your money on a nice paint job for a beater car.
What I’ll Read Next
Viriconium
Wednesday Work in Progress – Happy Sock Madness to all who observe! I have one third of a sock done and I am starting the other before I settle down and do the colorwork heel that is currently intimidating me. The qualifier pattern is called Newspaper - - and while it’s not actually that hard to knit if you’ve got good colorwork technique (and I do) the heel style (flap and gusset) is not my preferred mode and I have to secure myself a few hours to really dig into it. Hopefully I can get far enough that get a substantial amount done over the weekend.
What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher – Another Sworn Soldier spooky mystery with a creepy cave and inhuman intelligences. I liked it, but I don’t think it’s as interesting as the first two. I’ll probably re-read to see if I continue to hold that opinion later. Kingfisher is always a good re-read.
Latchkey by Goldkirk – Long and self-indulgent Batfam fic focus on a young Tim Drake. None of the bad things have happened yet – Jason Todd makes friends with Tim, and Tim’s parents are awful and he’s rescued. The writing is good and there’s probably more I can say, but it just makes me feel content to see someone recovering from a bad situation.
The Incandescent by Emily Tesh – A magical school story (NOT my thing) where the main character is an intelligent administrator and instructor who’s also a 38 year old woman in a slow rolling life crisis (TOTALLY my thing.) Honestly, this is a great book and the only failure of the work is mine – I have no tolerance for the kind of Potterstalgic Anglophilia that permeates some magical school stories, and so I would have never read this book if my book club hadn’t suggested it. I am not immune to foolish choices. It’s legitimately good and puts enough work into showing the foulness of English hierarchical society that I could actually trust Tesh to not brush over it. I really enjoyed the main character’s sheer unrelenting busy-ness and the complexities of running a larger school appealed, and the way the school kind of eats her until something breaks.
A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik (Scholomance Book 1) – Also an author I trust to look at a magical school and then take a hatchet to the hierarchical bullshit built into it! This is a re-read and I enjoyed it a great deal. This book is about capitalism and hierarchy and aristocracy and all the ways El Higgins grows to realize that she’s rather build something new than choose a safe path. Book club picked this series, and the Incandescent, because we tend to do better with a quarterly book club meeting and we need something meaty and complex. These books are going to make a fascinating set of comparisons. This book has zero teachers in it.
What I’m Reading
The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik (Scholomance 2) – This book is doing numbers on my head in the scarcity mindset compared to the last book. El finally gets her hands on some RESOURCES and it changes the whole game and also I fully related to how resentful she is of the past ages she spent scraping by. One of the best elements of this book series is El going from an outsider with no leverage and a deep fear of incurring debts she can’t repay, to the linchpin of a vast network of people willingly supporting each other for the good of it. She’s not there yet, but she’s laying down the foundations. It’s wonderful.
Apparently Sir Cameron Needs to Die – so far, so good. Cute and funny, more horny than I realized. Do people like sprayed edges on a book? I find them oddly smelly, and it’s a glue-bound paperback, so it feels a bit like putting your money on a nice paint job for a beater car.
What I’ll Read Next
Viriconium
Wednesday Work in Progress – Happy Sock Madness to all who observe! I have one third of a sock done and I am starting the other before I settle down and do the colorwork heel that is currently intimidating me. The qualifier pattern is called Newspaper - - and while it’s not actually that hard to knit if you’ve got good colorwork technique (and I do) the heel style (flap and gusset) is not my preferred mode and I have to secure myself a few hours to really dig into it. Hopefully I can get far enough that get a substantial amount done over the weekend.
Wednesday Reading Meme for Feb 11 2026
Feb. 11th, 2026 08:30 pmWhat I’ve Read
The Steerswoman by Rosemary Kirstein – I think I get why people love this book so much. Rowan the steerswoman feels like a very centered and clear kind of person. Her calling has a purity to it – to find and share knowledge – and that seems like the kind of philosophical and moral outlook that could be catnip to the right reader. And here I am! Just, the final chapters of this book are just a conversation where she tells someone the truth, and it changes the world. Moral dilemmas, sneakiness, and a rising suspicion that we are living not in a fantasy world, but a science fiction one where some people are keeping secrets.
Her books are a bit hard to get a hold of but you can buy them via the links on her website, here https://www.rosemarykirstein.com/
Fanfic round up - Cover of Knight by ErinPtah is just part of an ongoing story of the Disney/Marvel Moon Knight tv show spinning off to cover how our superhero community would handle someone who has multiple personalities. This is part of a long and ongoing series of fics that cover Marc Spector figuring himself and his alters out. It's fun and charming and I think I will read more.
What I’m Reading Now
City by Clifford Simak – This is a book that came up in last year’s Arisia’s discussion about old classics. The short stories in this ‘fixup’ novel are linked together by interstitial reflections from an academic dog, who is reflecting on the stories as the surviving literature of a post-human earth where dogs are served by self-building robots, but no one can confirm that humans ever existed except as a literary trope. The stories are weirdly prophetic and some are didactic, but, they are making interesting points about the knock-on effects of future technology in small bites, which charmed me. The first story posits a world where the trend towards suburban living, already changing cities in Simak's lifetime, pushed to the point where everyone in the US lives on 20 acre private wilderness retreats and commutes to work by private plane.
(I have a habit of starting a book on vacation, loving it, and then immediately forgetting I started it when I get home. Trying to break that cycle.)
Latchkey by goldkirk – Tim Drake is semi adopted by the Bats pre-death of Jason Todd, and it’s episodic and charming and indulgent.
What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfish – The library had this, and so far, I am enjoying the oddness of the thing greatly. It is however a little too spooky for bedtime reading. It was on my To Read list for last week, tho, so we are trending in the correct direction.
What I’ll Read Next
Monks Hood – Ellis Peters
Master of Poisons – Andrea Hairston
Frankenstein
The Brightness Between Us -Eliot Screfer
The Husky and His White Cat Shizun – Rou Bao Bu Chi Rou (I picked this up after seeing that it was beloved by a fic author whose work I recently enjoyed but I have no idea what I am looking at here)
The Craft of Lace Knitting by Barbara Walker
Silver in the Wood and Drowned Country by Emily Tesh
Viriconium by John M Harrison
I also bought some books!
The Incandescent by Emily Tesh
Apparently Sir Cameron Needs to Die by Greer Stothers (who I follow on Tumblr)
The Glass Pearls
To Ride a Rising Storm
Elisha Barber
Necromancy book club picked The Scholomance Series to read - Naomi Novik
Other things!
I have decided to try Sock Madness year 20 with a friend. It's a speed knitting competition - you get free patterns for socks, and you must knit two socks according to spec. It's a good balance of technical challenge and friendly competition - I'm nowhere fast enough to get in the running for the actual prize, but merely participating gets you access to all the patterns for free after the actual race is over. It's been a good stretch of my skills in the past - I had viewed it as leveling up! And maybe I don't actually use the socks that much, but I can give them out to people who are sock worthy.
https://www.ravelry.com/groups/sock-madness-forever
I watched If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, which is a anxiety-inducing character study of a woman who is figuring out, under fairly harrowing conditions, that she is really fucking things up in her life. It's like watching a coyote decide to chew its leg off to get out of a trap, only the trap is a child with complex medical needs and also your own personality flaws. Really good - Rose Byrne deserves the Oscar but I know she won't get it.
The Steerswoman by Rosemary Kirstein – I think I get why people love this book so much. Rowan the steerswoman feels like a very centered and clear kind of person. Her calling has a purity to it – to find and share knowledge – and that seems like the kind of philosophical and moral outlook that could be catnip to the right reader. And here I am! Just, the final chapters of this book are just a conversation where she tells someone the truth, and it changes the world. Moral dilemmas, sneakiness, and a rising suspicion that we are living not in a fantasy world, but a science fiction one where some people are keeping secrets.
Her books are a bit hard to get a hold of but you can buy them via the links on her website, here https://www.rosemarykirstein.com/
Fanfic round up - Cover of Knight by ErinPtah is just part of an ongoing story of the Disney/Marvel Moon Knight tv show spinning off to cover how our superhero community would handle someone who has multiple personalities. This is part of a long and ongoing series of fics that cover Marc Spector figuring himself and his alters out. It's fun and charming and I think I will read more.
What I’m Reading Now
City by Clifford Simak – This is a book that came up in last year’s Arisia’s discussion about old classics. The short stories in this ‘fixup’ novel are linked together by interstitial reflections from an academic dog, who is reflecting on the stories as the surviving literature of a post-human earth where dogs are served by self-building robots, but no one can confirm that humans ever existed except as a literary trope. The stories are weirdly prophetic and some are didactic, but, they are making interesting points about the knock-on effects of future technology in small bites, which charmed me. The first story posits a world where the trend towards suburban living, already changing cities in Simak's lifetime, pushed to the point where everyone in the US lives on 20 acre private wilderness retreats and commutes to work by private plane.
(I have a habit of starting a book on vacation, loving it, and then immediately forgetting I started it when I get home. Trying to break that cycle.)
Latchkey by goldkirk – Tim Drake is semi adopted by the Bats pre-death of Jason Todd, and it’s episodic and charming and indulgent.
What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfish – The library had this, and so far, I am enjoying the oddness of the thing greatly. It is however a little too spooky for bedtime reading. It was on my To Read list for last week, tho, so we are trending in the correct direction.
What I’ll Read Next
Monks Hood – Ellis Peters
Master of Poisons – Andrea Hairston
Frankenstein
The Brightness Between Us -Eliot Screfer
The Husky and His White Cat Shizun – Rou Bao Bu Chi Rou (I picked this up after seeing that it was beloved by a fic author whose work I recently enjoyed but I have no idea what I am looking at here)
The Craft of Lace Knitting by Barbara Walker
Silver in the Wood and Drowned Country by Emily Tesh
Viriconium by John M Harrison
I also bought some books!
The Incandescent by Emily Tesh
Apparently Sir Cameron Needs to Die by Greer Stothers (who I follow on Tumblr)
The Glass Pearls
To Ride a Rising Storm
Elisha Barber
Necromancy book club picked The Scholomance Series to read - Naomi Novik
Other things!
I have decided to try Sock Madness year 20 with a friend. It's a speed knitting competition - you get free patterns for socks, and you must knit two socks according to spec. It's a good balance of technical challenge and friendly competition - I'm nowhere fast enough to get in the running for the actual prize, but merely participating gets you access to all the patterns for free after the actual race is over. It's been a good stretch of my skills in the past - I had viewed it as leveling up! And maybe I don't actually use the socks that much, but I can give them out to people who are sock worthy.
https://www.ravelry.com/groups/sock-madness-forever
I watched If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, which is a anxiety-inducing character study of a woman who is figuring out, under fairly harrowing conditions, that she is really fucking things up in her life. It's like watching a coyote decide to chew its leg off to get out of a trap, only the trap is a child with complex medical needs and also your own personality flaws. Really good - Rose Byrne deserves the Oscar but I know she won't get it.
Wednesday Reading Meme for Feb 4 2026
Feb. 4th, 2026 08:41 pmWhat I’ve Read
Cinder House by Freya Marske – Oh, this is a very satisfying novel. I love a book that starts with the protagonist dying and ends with her happy ever after. I don’t want to spoil too much – not because it’s a mystery, even tho there is a mystery solved inside it – but also because I think the unfolding story is very good on its on merits and different enough from the folk talk and most tellings of it to be worth a fresh approach. Marske does a fantastic job of making the haunted house’s relationship with sensation, from the point of view of the house, feel actually sensuous and alluring. I admit that the resolution is a little clever, but so satisfying that I wasn’t upset to see that I’d called the ending.
Unrelated – I watched The Ugly Stepsister (Emilie Blichfeldt, 2025) which is a body horror take on how the Cinderella myth works for the step sister who cuts off parts of her feet to try and fit the glass slipper. Yes, they absolutely do that, it’s gory as fuck – and it’s absolutely merited because this film is about showing a vulnerable girl destroying herself for patriarchal approval. It’s utterly beautiful in every scene, using a dreamy filter for much of the film, including the scenes where our ugly young woman dreams of infecting herself with a tapeworm so that she loses weight. I cannot recommend this film enough, and it was fascinating to watch with Cinder House so recently in my mind.
Incandescence by serpentinerose - https://archiveofourown.org/series/5440201 – A Guillermo del Toro Frankenstein (2025) fic with Victor/Creature teased out for all the wildly unhealthy possibilities. The prose is lush, the references are classical, and my id is well-fed.
What I’m Reading
The Steerswoman by Rosemary Kirstein – I’m about 80% thru and it’s really great work. I am finding the prose just perfect – it gets out of its own way and still manages to give me a great line every now and again. Really enjoying this! I am surprised that I didn’t hear of it before, because literally every time I have posted about it, someone NEW comes to tell me how much they enjoyed the book. Another point in favor of going to cons – people will evangelize about their favorite little known books
What I’ll Read Next
Oh, god, I have so many library books out
Monks Hood – Ellis Peters
Master of Poisons – Andrea Hairston
Frankenstein
The Brightness Between Us -Eliot Screfer
The Husky and His White Cat Shizun – Rou Bao Bu Chi Rou (I picked this up after seeing that it was beloved by a fic author whose work I recently enjoyed but I have no idea what I am looking at here)
The Craft of Lace Knitting by Barbara Walker
Silver in the Wood and Drowned Country by Emily Tesh
Viriconium by John M Harrison
What Stalks the Deep by T Kingfisher
Cinder House by Freya Marske – Oh, this is a very satisfying novel. I love a book that starts with the protagonist dying and ends with her happy ever after. I don’t want to spoil too much – not because it’s a mystery, even tho there is a mystery solved inside it – but also because I think the unfolding story is very good on its on merits and different enough from the folk talk and most tellings of it to be worth a fresh approach. Marske does a fantastic job of making the haunted house’s relationship with sensation, from the point of view of the house, feel actually sensuous and alluring. I admit that the resolution is a little clever, but so satisfying that I wasn’t upset to see that I’d called the ending.
Unrelated – I watched The Ugly Stepsister (Emilie Blichfeldt, 2025) which is a body horror take on how the Cinderella myth works for the step sister who cuts off parts of her feet to try and fit the glass slipper. Yes, they absolutely do that, it’s gory as fuck – and it’s absolutely merited because this film is about showing a vulnerable girl destroying herself for patriarchal approval. It’s utterly beautiful in every scene, using a dreamy filter for much of the film, including the scenes where our ugly young woman dreams of infecting herself with a tapeworm so that she loses weight. I cannot recommend this film enough, and it was fascinating to watch with Cinder House so recently in my mind.
Incandescence by serpentinerose - https://archiveofourown.org/series/5440201 – A Guillermo del Toro Frankenstein (2025) fic with Victor/Creature teased out for all the wildly unhealthy possibilities. The prose is lush, the references are classical, and my id is well-fed.
What I’m Reading
The Steerswoman by Rosemary Kirstein – I’m about 80% thru and it’s really great work. I am finding the prose just perfect – it gets out of its own way and still manages to give me a great line every now and again. Really enjoying this! I am surprised that I didn’t hear of it before, because literally every time I have posted about it, someone NEW comes to tell me how much they enjoyed the book. Another point in favor of going to cons – people will evangelize about their favorite little known books
What I’ll Read Next
Oh, god, I have so many library books out
Monks Hood – Ellis Peters
Master of Poisons – Andrea Hairston
Frankenstein
The Brightness Between Us -Eliot Screfer
The Husky and His White Cat Shizun – Rou Bao Bu Chi Rou (I picked this up after seeing that it was beloved by a fic author whose work I recently enjoyed but I have no idea what I am looking at here)
The Craft of Lace Knitting by Barbara Walker
Silver in the Wood and Drowned Country by Emily Tesh
Viriconium by John M Harrison
What Stalks the Deep by T Kingfisher
I was on a train when I would normally have posted this, but I am now happily in a hotel with time and wifi!
What I've Read
Untamed – Anna Cowan –A romance I picked up because a friend got the arc for another upcoming book, The Duke, and she loved it. Untamed is doing some very queer het - there's a lot of crossdressing and playing with the intimacy that is allowed by presenting as two women. The writing really works for me - it's quite firmly in favor of respecting the reader's intelligence to put together how someone feels from their actions and context. Also I truly believe these two leads are devastatingly horny for real intimacy with each other. Really interesting, not super realistic re sexual mores of the times, and I'd recommend it.
A Strange and Stubborn Endurance – Foz Meadows. A re-read of a favorite. I really enjoy how this book simply lets a bad situation get worse and worse until one character reaches a breaking point.
The relationship builds from seeing someone at an absolute low point. I should follow up with the sequel - I read it befire but too far apart.
Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins - Second Hunger Games book, and really invested in showing the damage that the victors survived and then making them suffer again! Things fall apart. Ends in an unclear cliffhanger - I never read the third book so I will be soon moving into the realms of the new.
Attempting the impossible - ariaste A kidfic! https://archiveofourown.org/works/24707737 I think this works because canon already gave Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian an adopted son, so this just extends that to the point of absurdity. I love the Jiang Cheng POV as he tries to figure out how to have a relationship with his brother.
What I'm Reading
The Steerswoman by Rosemary Kirstein - This is dancing on the edge between scifi and fantasy and I'm fascinated to see where it will land. Good writing, interesting characters, someone has set fire to the inn and the moon is a fairy tale. The hell is going on here.
The Alpha's Warlock by Eliot Grayson - A very formulaic marriage of inconvenience werewolf/warlock romance. I'm finding the writing extremely blunt, to the point of exhaustion - I simply don't buy that THIS character is THIS aware of his own emotions and can put them into words. I may stick with it in case something shakes out?
The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper - I fear I may be too old to appreciate this story about a Chosen One Who Is Literally Eleven. It is a lovely period piece about how much freedom a boy that age had in England in the 70s, tho. The audiobook will certainly be recalled before I finish it but I may continue in paperback.
What I'll Read Next
Cinder House by Freya Marske - i own this?? How did i forget to read it??
I try to read more Black American authors for February (Black History month) so I think Andrea Hairston will be on my list - her reading at Arisia was clear and bright and funny and good good writing.
What I've Read
Untamed – Anna Cowan –A romance I picked up because a friend got the arc for another upcoming book, The Duke, and she loved it. Untamed is doing some very queer het - there's a lot of crossdressing and playing with the intimacy that is allowed by presenting as two women. The writing really works for me - it's quite firmly in favor of respecting the reader's intelligence to put together how someone feels from their actions and context. Also I truly believe these two leads are devastatingly horny for real intimacy with each other. Really interesting, not super realistic re sexual mores of the times, and I'd recommend it.
A Strange and Stubborn Endurance – Foz Meadows. A re-read of a favorite. I really enjoy how this book simply lets a bad situation get worse and worse until one character reaches a breaking point.
The relationship builds from seeing someone at an absolute low point. I should follow up with the sequel - I read it befire but too far apart.
Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins - Second Hunger Games book, and really invested in showing the damage that the victors survived and then making them suffer again! Things fall apart. Ends in an unclear cliffhanger - I never read the third book so I will be soon moving into the realms of the new.
Attempting the impossible - ariaste A kidfic! https://archiveofourown.org/works/24707737 I think this works because canon already gave Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian an adopted son, so this just extends that to the point of absurdity. I love the Jiang Cheng POV as he tries to figure out how to have a relationship with his brother.
What I'm Reading
The Steerswoman by Rosemary Kirstein - This is dancing on the edge between scifi and fantasy and I'm fascinated to see where it will land. Good writing, interesting characters, someone has set fire to the inn and the moon is a fairy tale. The hell is going on here.
The Alpha's Warlock by Eliot Grayson - A very formulaic marriage of inconvenience werewolf/warlock romance. I'm finding the writing extremely blunt, to the point of exhaustion - I simply don't buy that THIS character is THIS aware of his own emotions and can put them into words. I may stick with it in case something shakes out?
The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper - I fear I may be too old to appreciate this story about a Chosen One Who Is Literally Eleven. It is a lovely period piece about how much freedom a boy that age had in England in the 70s, tho. The audiobook will certainly be recalled before I finish it but I may continue in paperback.
What I'll Read Next
Cinder House by Freya Marske - i own this?? How did i forget to read it??
I try to read more Black American authors for February (Black History month) so I think Andrea Hairston will be on my list - her reading at Arisia was clear and bright and funny and good good writing.
