What I’ve Read:
Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert – narrated by Scott Brick. This book is just like, an incredible snarky retort to the first book. In case you were wondering if the protagonists of these books were the heroes, nope! This book’s message: ‘These people are bad! They are comparing themselves to dictators of the past and finding them too merciful’ levels of bluntness. It’s a very good visit to a book that is 100% interested in making sure you know that any good people in this world are not working with anyone in power. This book is so weirdly horny that I don’t think I can do it justice, just, let’s be clear, it’s super horny. The running themes of blindness and connection to the desert are interesting but overall, I kept being grossed out by the ‘civilized’ people. The Bene Tleilax are super gross! Paul is awful! The Bene Gesserit are awful! It’s very entertaining.

The Power Broker (Audiobook Part 1) by Robert Caro narrated by Robertson Dean – Look, if a book is so long that the audiobook has to be broken into parts, I am going to count each part as a book. This is not a race, I am making these rules up and I get to decide what’s cheating. This whole book is like 1200+ pages so I feel fine about counting these twice.

This audiobook is great and I’m very happy I got it. The tome of a book is a lot to carry around. The books is a fascinating work of nonfiction and I’ve been recommending it to people as a window into the politics of a century ago and a bit nearer, but I also want to just lean into the ways it covers the history of New York – so much of which becomes the model for the rest of the country. I have been recommending it like mad, and I think you should read it, yes you, whoever you are, it’s fascinating.

What I’m Reading:

Mo Dao Zu Shi - Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation - Part 5  – Mo Xiang Tong Xiu – – 23% - Ok, I restarted this series and I forgot that the last part of thing is just the climactic scene in the temple and a bunch of cute extra stories. It’s very entertaining! I’m also having the similar experience of tonal whiplash – these genres are outside my prior reading and it’s really fun to visit them to see how thing turn out!

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York– Robert Caro – 31% - Here's where I am in the actual whole book.

Saint of Bright Doors – Hugo – Audiobook and paperbook – static - I might need the audiobook back before I can make progress 

The Spear Cuts Through Water – hugos and xing book club, I have technically read about 1 page - static

Running close to the Wind – Alex Rowland – NEW BOOK DAY YAY! – 40% – Ok, this book is hilariously written, the main character is a self-described silly little slut who is entirely free from shame in a way that makes him a delight to watch bounce off people, and it’s clearly written with love for pirate stories and Pratchett. If you enjoyed MDZS and Wei Wuxian’s whiny antics, then you will very much enjoy this book. I like Rowland’s work, and they’ve populated a sprawling shared universe with multiple different countries, so if you read A Taste of Gold and Iron, this draws upon some of the international politics laid out there, and if you’ve read A Conspiracy of Truths or a Choir of Lies, some of the nations and customs and people mentioned in those books will come up and enrich the text. Yes, there are some Our Flag Means Death references, but I think there's probably more Skyjacks podcast stuff. 

What I’ll Read Next

Some Desperate Glory
Space Between Worlds – Neocromancer’s Book Club

Hugo Nominees:
Bea Wolf Saga, Vol. 11 Translation State Starter Villain The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi “Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition” “Ivy, Angelica, Bay” “On the Fox Roads” “One Man’s Treasure” “The Year Without Sunshine” I AM AI Rose/House “Life Does Not Allow Us to Meet” The Mimicking of Known Successes Mammoths at the Gates “Seeds of Mercury” The Culture: The Drawings A City on Mars A Traveller in Time: The Critical Practice of Maureen Kincaid Speller, All These Worlds: Reviews & Essays “Better Living Through Algorithms” by Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld May 2023) “Answerless Journey” / 没有答案的航程, 韩松, “The Sound of Children Screaming” “How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub” “The Mausoleum’s Children”

What I’ve Read:

Not a damn thing.
What I’m Reading:
Romancing Mister Bridgerton- Julia Quinn – 50% Some friends of mine in a reading discord were lamenting the beginning of season 3 and in particular the romantic leads lack of history together. I started the book up to see how it would compare, and it definitely outstrips what the show manages. It looks like the show changed a lot of the story, not just enough to account for the excellent decision to do race blind casting, but also some major timelines of Penelope and Colin’s lives – they are getting entangled nearly a decade earlier than the show, and their friendship makes much more sense as the basis for a romantic turn in the book. The show also leaned into the Whistledown publication to be the avenue of actual scandal that ruins people’s lives, while the book takes great pains to show that Whistledown has a soft heart for people who aren’t in control of their own lives – it was more about fashion and gossip than actually revealing scandalous news.

Children of Time (Xing book club) – 87% The spiders have reconciled with God but are now geared up to face an interplanetary threat.

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York– Robert Caro – 31% - static, but I have followed the podcast ahead of the book.

Saint of Bright Doors – Hugo – Audiobook

The Spear Cuts Through Water – hugos and xing book club, I have technically read about 1 page

Battle Ground, Jim Butcher - sigh.


What I’ll Read Next:
Desperate Glory
Hugo Nominees:
Bea Wolf Saga, Vol. 11 Translation State Starter Villain The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi The Saint of Bright Doors “Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition” “Ivy, Angelica, Bay” “On the Fox Roads” “One Man’s Treasure” “The Year Without Sunshine” I AM AI Rose/House “Life Does Not Allow Us to Meet” The Mimicking of Known Successes Mammoths at the Gates “Seeds of Mercury” The Culture: The Drawings A City on Mars A Traveller in Time: The Critical Practice of Maureen Kincaid Speller, All These Worlds: Reviews & Essays “Better Living Through Algorithms” by Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld May 2023) “Answerless Journey” / 没有答案的航程, 韩松, “The Sound of Children Screaming” “How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub” “The Mausoleum’s Children”

What I’ve Read:
Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher – A re-telling of Sleeping Beauty with a slightly horrorish edge. Very good!

What I’m Reading: Children of Time (Xing book club) – 40% - The uplifted spiders have developed chemical warfare. This is just barely a spoiler for this book.
Soulstar - CL Polk – 22% - Picking it up again from a different mindset. I think that I misjudged the age of one of the side characters who is now our narrator – she’s not college aged after all.

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York– Robert Caro – about 28% - Catching up to the podcast! The audiobook is helping a good deal. The 99% Invisible podcast has special episodes on the chapters along this schedule, which I am trying to keep up with:
Reading schedule to the 99% Invisible Podcast reading schedule under the cut ( Read more... ) What I’ll Read Next:
The Witches of World War II Some Desperate Glory Wonder Woman Historia Hugo Nominees: Bea Wolf Saga, Vol. 11 Translation State Starter Villain The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi The Saint of Bright Doors “Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition” “Ivy, Angelica, Bay” “On the Fox Roads” “One Man’s Treasure” “The Year Without Sunshine” I AM AI Rose/House “Life Does Not Allow Us to Meet” The Mimicking of Known Successes Mammoths at the Gates “Seeds of Mercury” The Culture: The Drawings A City on Mars A Traveller in Time: The Critical Practice of Maureen Kincaid Speller, All These Worlds: Reviews & Essays “Better Living Through Algorithms” by Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld May 2023) “Answerless Journey” / 没有答案的航程, 韩松, “The Sound of Children Screaming” “How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub” “The Mausoleum’s Children”

Personal life stuff: ACL surgery went well! I was on two crutches until earlier this week, when I have been granted license for ONE crutch and a brace.

What I’ve Read:

Shubeik Lubeik by Deena Mohamed – Hugo Nominee for Best Graphic Novel (originally published in Arabic in 2017) – Compassionate and cutting – this book is the stories of four people connected by three wishes, sold from a kiosk on the street of Cairo in 2017. It’s more scifi than magical realism – the wishes are licensed and registered and possessing one gets at least one character in major legal trouble – but the book is very interested in showing us an intimate portrait of the person who holds the wish and what they would use it for. I loved each of these characters – they are given space to show depth and contradictions and to grapple with the potential impact each wish represents to their future. I read it broken up by each person’s story, and it is excellent writing that reinforces the fascinating look the author is showing us of this version of modern Egypt. There’s hard look at wealth inequality, there’s conflict around religious ethics, there’s someone facing the end of their life and making peace with their choices – it’s really good stuff and I really enjoyed it.


What I’m Reading:
The Darkness Outside Us – about 30% - slightly horror? gay! Maybe some romance? 

City of Miracles – Robert Jackson Bennett - Xing Book Club - I’ll probably technically finish this before midnight, but I didn’t finish it in time for book club.

Soulstar - CL Polk -static

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York– Robert Caro – about 23% - No movement

The 99% Invisible podcast has special episodes on the chapters along this schedule, which I am trying to keep up with:
Reading schedule under the cut


Fellowship of the Ring – JRR Tolkien – 17% -static

What I’ll Read Next:
Children of Time (Xing book club)

Hugo Nominees:

Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons
Bea Wolf
Saga, Vol. 11
The Witches of World War II

Translation State
Some Desperate Glory
Starter Villain
The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi
The Saint of Bright Doors

“Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition”
“Ivy, Angelica, Bay”
“On the Fox Roads”
“One Man’s Treasure”
“The Year Without Sunshine”
I AM AI

Rose/House
“Life Does Not Allow Us to Meet”
The Mimicking of Known Successes
Mammoths at the Gates
Thornhedge

“Seeds of Mercury”
The Culture: The Drawings
A City on Mars
A Traveller in Time: The Critical Practice of Maureen Kincaid Speller,
All These Worlds: Reviews & Essays

“Better Living Through Algorithms” by Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld May 2023)
“Answerless Journey” / 没有答案的航程, 韩松,
“The Sound of Children Screaming”
“How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub”
“The Mausoleum’s Children”

Personal life stuff: I am getting surgery tomorrow to fix my knee. yay?? aaaah??

What I’ve Read:

Dune – Frank Herbert – Dude, I drank a magic death potion and all I got was space complementarianism. I think Frank Herbert was extremely weird about gender. Also, there seems to be some concern that people would read the book and think Paul is good person?? Wild.

What I’m Reading:
City of Miracles – Robert Jackon Bennett - Up to the end of chapter 9. It’s good! I am irked with some plot points but enjoying the characters.

Soulstar - CL Polk -static

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York– Robert Caro – about 23% - No movement

The 99% Invisible podcast has special episodes on the chapters along this schedule, which I am trying to keep up with:
Reading schedule under the cut
( Read more... )

Fellowship of the Ring – JRR Tolkien – 17% -static

What I’ll Read Next:
Silver Nitrate
Gunslingers Paean #3
Dune Messiah

Hugo Finalists are out! Things to read! When I am less overwhelmed! 

What I’ve Read:
Exit Strategy – Murderbot Diaries #4 – Martha Wells – (Re-read #4) Crossing Book Club – Still a great story, and a solid conclusion to the first four books of this series.

Witchmark – CL Polk – Fun with Necromancy Book club – A Re-read from 2019 – my god, this was readable. Just a lovely book with engaging writing and worldbuilding that details likes a chef adds spice. There’s never a whole paragraph of just info-dumping – it’s seeded gently thru-out. CL Polk writes good banter but also just interesting people who feel real enough to make the world feel grounded. This story comes from the POV of Miles, a profoundly compassionate man who escaped an awful and powerful family only discover that his current medical mystery connects to a conspiracy that his family is hiding. He’s joined by an…. An elf? A fae? An angel? Who is pulling the same threads from another world. They fight crime! The crime is a murder of a reporter that ties nicely back into a larger conspiracy that implicates the awful family that Miles escaped from.

It’s honestly great, and while I am entirely certain that it started life as a Supernatural fanfic, I didn’t catch that the first time I read it and I don’t think the finished story actually maps onto SPN all that well.

Stormsong by CL Polk – For myself, because the first book in the trilogy was so good. I’ll highly recommend that you move thru the books in this series swiftly – there’s maybe two or three days in-world between the events of each book and the next, and the plots are pacey, so you don’t really a lead-in chapter. This book focuses on a character introduced in the last book, Grace, who is facing both political and personal changes on a grand scale at the same time, with absolutely no room to breathe. Where Miles had made his choice for his own independence years ago, Grace is just starting to make hers, and there are some times where you just want to shake her a bit, but it’s all very rooted in good character development.

This book also is fascinating to read as a piece of fiction that loves politics – Grace and Miles take actions that have real impact on people in their country and they get to actually see some of that impact. Grace’s change of heart came at the end of book one, but it’s playing out here and you can really see the slower transformation of her character as she chooses the kind of person she wants to be, and rejects the path set out for her of consolidating power without worrying about the morality of using it.


What I’m Reading:
Soulstar - CL Polk What can I say, I’m on a kick. Like the first two books of the trilogy, this takes off basically a day after the previous book (if even that) and changes the POV character to someone who was introduced back in book one. Are some elements of this series predictable? Yup – but in a good way, where the author has laid out breadcrumbs for us.

Dune – Frank Herbert – started as an audiobook, we’ll see if I finish it that way. I thought the “full cast” style would not work for me, and I’m not entirely wrong – I would prefer something other than this. There is a narrator for everything but the character’s spoken words, and voice actor for each character. Anyone who has opened Dune will see the issue – the book has a wealth of internal monologue for each character, often in the same scenes as the character’s dialogue. So you end with functionally a character that speaks with two voices, one of them an actor giving a performance and the other is just the narrator doing a little intonation. It’s very weird and more than a little confusing.

However, given that I picked the audiobook as the means to power thru these books and see if I could ignore the elements of the writing that ignore me, I will give this a solid try.

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York– Robert Caro – about 23% - Got to listen to the podcast ep, it was great.

The 99% Invisible podcast has special episodes on the chapters along this schedule, which I am trying to keep up with:
Reading schedule under the cut
( Read more... )

Fellowship of the Ring – JRR Tolkien – 17%

What I’ll Read Next:
Silver Nitrate
Gunslingers Paean #3
Murderbot #3

What I’ve Read:
A Court of Thorns and Roses – Sarah J Maas – Audiobook read by Jennifer Ikeda – Ok, actually, I was expecting this to be like Fourth Wing (aka my expectations were subterranean but I picked it up so I could have an informed opinion) and this turns out to have interesting characterization and some cleverness with the plot, tho the writing style is… kind of middle grade and the language choice is sometimes jarringly modern.

So, chiefly my irritation at our main character, Feyre (Fay-rah) is that she’s in a book with “faeries” and therefore her name is doubly irksome, being both easy to misread and annoying to spell. Her characterization is moderately discontiguous at the beginning of the series – her internal narration informs us she is afraid, but her interactions with others do not really portray that effectively, and that works much less well at the beginning of book one than it does later. It's a bit of a blank canvas at the start but she improves towards the end.

The writing is nothing special, but the story structure is interesting and pulled off something pretty sneaky in a way that I admired once I got there. None of the sentences were particular worthy of attention, nor any paragraph, but much of the structure of the story was innovative enough that I think it's worth taking a look at it. 

Spoilers- I have some thoughts that will contain spoilers – oddly, this is where I’m most complementary? 

Honestly, it’s surprising how much I was spoiled for WITHOUT being spoiled for the main twist of the book.
In short, I was expecting this to be Fourth Wing but I begin to realize that (based on a number of shared tropes) probably Fourth Wing was trying to be ACOTAR.

His Forsaken Bride by Alice Coldbreath – audiobook by Anne Flosnik – This was fun and shameless. Didn’t realize it was 500+ pages while I was reading it, and that’s telling you something. A conniving bastard seeking to make his life easier accidentally falls in love with the woman who was supposed to be convenient, and is just kind of not. Coldbreath has a particular element to her romances that works for me because it’s fictional and historical and therefore pleasantly removed from real life, but yeah, this male leader is not a paragon of virtue and I'm here for that. 


What I’m Reading:
A Court of Mist and Fury – Audiobook read by Jennifer Ikeda – book 2 of ACOTAR series – Reading is fun! The second book has characters suffering right from the start! I do love to watch fictional people suffer.

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York – Robert Caro – about 23% This section covers the first few years of Moses’s work in the newly created Park Commission and how he immediately began to use his power to bulldoze people to make parks in the image of his vision Some delightful takeaways: blackmailing public officials by promising them a project would take only $1 million and getting jusssst far enough into the project that they have to pour much more money into it or risk being seen to be corrupt or incompetent; starting projects in the middle of lawsuits arguing if he even had a right to build on the land and betting that the judges would not demand the completed buildings be pulled down; and outright lying to his allies on local park commissions that his new job at the state level commission would just be an advisory position. This also disregards the number of people who lived in the way of his parks that he just completely disregarded and forced to move. I was worried I would not get it read before the next 99% Invisible episode and so I bought the audiobook and I'm very happy with that choice.

The 99% Invisible podcast has special episodes on the chapters along this schedule, which I am trying to keep up with:
Reading schedule -

Fellowship of the Ring – JRR Tolkien – 17% - Haven't touched this is a bit, maybe switch to audiobook? 

The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation – Vol 4 (Mo Dao Zu Shi) – 65% I slowed down a lot with this and I’m not sure why – probably the audiobook reading has been easier the last few days.

What I’ll Read Next:
Witchmark
Silver Nitrate
Gunslingers Paean #3
City of Miracles
Children of Time

Owned and need to read: Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology, California Bones, Raven Song by IA Ashcroft, At The Feet of the Sun by Victoria Goddard, Tamryn Eradani's Enchanting Encounters Books 2 and 3, Tom Stoppard, Invention of love, "You Just Need to Lose Weight" and Other Myths about Fatness by Aubrey Gordon

What I’ve Read:
Thursday Night Murder Club – Richard Osman – Picked this up as an audiobook and it has some charm in terms of interesting plot but good god do they lean into some stereotypes. Are the English capable of writing an Irish person who is not defined by their relationship to Catholicism? Eastern Europeans who are not in some way criminal?

What I’m Reading:
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York– Robert Caro – like 14% Just listened to the second episode of the 99% Invisible book club on this and it was really fun.
Reading schedule -
Episode 3 — March 15 — Chapters 11 through 15
Episode 4 — April 19 — Chapters 16 through 20
Episode 5 — May 17 — Chapters 21 through 24
Episode 6 — June 21 — Chapters 25 through 26
Episode 7 — July 19 — Chapters 27 through 32
Episode 8 — August 16 — Chapters 33 through 34
Episode 9 — September 20 — Chapters 35 through 38
Episode 10 — October 18 — Chapters 39 through 41
Episode 11 — November 15 — Chapters 42 through 46
Episode 12 — December 20 — Chapters 47 through 50

Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat by Bee Wilson – Robo Book Club – An interesting and light look at the history of culinary tools. I think it’s a fun read! I am so far finding that her focus is on European history and that her cursory addition of non-European cultures foodways and history is quite cursory. Also, she claimed in a single passing line that maple syrup is made darker by the Maillard reaction, which is a marginal claim at best, and makes me suspicious about other passing claims she makes.. (Maple syrup is 99% sugar and is slowly boiled from a thin sap to a thick syrup and the more simple sugars in the sap, the darker the color, so its color is almost certainly due to caramelization. Citation: I am a New Englander and I have gotten educational presentations on maple syrup at fairs annually since I was a small child. There are other amino acids and microbes in the syrup, but like, 99% sugar is a pretty good indication that it’s probably a sugar-based reaction.) But so far, so good, and her interest is more pointedly in tools, so I can give the fact that she’s British gentry fooling around with history a bit of a pass.

Fellowship of the Ring – JRR Tolkien – 17%

The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation – Vol 4 (Mo Dao Zu Shi) – On the Wei Wuxian conga line of suffering!

It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections in Horror - Joe Vallese (Editor) – SPN Seminar – 38%
The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson – 41%

What I’ll Read Next:
Witchmark - Necromancy Book Club
Silver Nitrate
Gunslingers Paean #3

Owned and need to read: Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology, California Bones, Raven Song by IA Ashcroft, At The Feet of the Sun by Victoria Goddard, Tamryn Eradani's Enchanting Encounters Books 2 and 3, Tom Stoppard, Invention of love, "You Just Need to Lose Weight" and Other Myths about Fatness by Aubrey Gordon

What I’ve Read:
Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation Vol 3 – I am now officially past the halfway point of this series! I’m kind of thinking that I would like to watch the show again. This volume was the first one that had a flashback inside a flashback. I appreciate the efforts to flesh out Yanli, the older sister, and give her romance a bit more oomph. I’m now a little impressed with the show’s ability to lay all the flashbacks in a single timeline.

Speculation by Wunderlass - A North and South (2004) fanfic where Thornton and Margaret get married to save her reputation after she gets caught out late at night with a man. It's tender and a bit slow.

What I’m Reading:
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York– Robert Caro – like 7% - I jumped on the 99% Invisible bandwagon where they are “Breaking Down the Power Broker” by reading Robert Caro’s book slowly over the course of a year.

Reading schedule -
Episode 2 — February 16 — Chapters 6 through 10
Episode 3 — March 15 — Chapters 11 through 15
Episode 4 — April 19 — Chapters 16 through 20
Episode 5 — May 17 — Chapters 21 through 24
Episode 6 — June 21 — Chapters 25 through 26
Episode 7 — July 19 — Chapters 27 through 32
Episode 8 — August 16 — Chapters 33 through 34
Episode 9 — September 20 — Chapters 35 through 38
Episode 10 — October 18 — Chapters 39 through 41
Episode 11 — November 15 — Chapters 42 through 46
Episode 12 — December 20 — Chapters 47 through 50

When Women Were Dragons - Xing Book Club – 46% - Good, a bit of a companion piece to the Lady Astronaut series. The central premise hasn’t quite landed for me yet but I’ll have to see how it all shakes out in the end.

Sabriel – Garth Nix – 65% - Necromancer book club – really good book to re-read, enjoying the technical skill that Nix brings to the book quite a lot.


It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections in Horror - Joe Vallese (Editor) – SPN Seminar – 38%
The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson – 41%

What I’ll Read Next:
Lord of The Rings – in keeping with my vague sense that I should actually read the big books that everyone talks about!

Owned and need to read: Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology, California Bones, Raven Song by IA Ashcroft, At The Feet of the Sun by Victoria Goddard, Tamryn Eradani's Enchanting Encounters Books 2 and 3, Tom Stoppard, Invention of love, "You Just Need to Lose Weight" and Other Myths about Fatness by Aubrey Gordon
I’ve had a kind of a rough couple of weeks – my knee is getting better but it’s been confirmed to be a sprain and I am trying to take a careful approach so that I don’t re-injure it. We’ll see about further imaging to see if there’s anything else going on. There has been some other nonsense – all of which has been enough of a trickle that we could handle it piece by piece, but also annoying enough to mean it’s hard to manage without a bit of extra stress.

Since I’ve been laid low by physical nonsense, I have been leaning into the comfort re-watches. I finished the 1995 Pride and Prejudice, the 1995 Persuasion, and the 2004 North and South, all of which I have seen before and read the books and they really just take my whole stressed out vibe to a much calmer level.

What I’ve Read:

Tender is the Flesh -Agustina Bazterrica
This book is a very detailed story of a man who works in a meat factory for industrialized cannibalism. It’s not shy or a surprise – it’s a story very much about what deciding to eat people has done to this man and his society, in minute and careful detail. The flesh is tender because society has decided to raise human beings for meat, and he works in a slaughterhouse. It’s absolutely as graphic as any PETA ad, but with the significant addition of being much more grounded. The story is absolutely brutal and told from a third person perspective very focused on the main character as he moves thru this world where everyone has made their peace with the fact that they are using real human beings for food.

This is not a redemption story – this reality slowly destroys the soul. And the character’s perspective is a great element because you watch this character’s disgust and dis-ease in all of these situations where this way this violence against other people has been legitimized – I swear one character in this book is just Dracula with the serial numbers filed off – and you think, from his internal narration, that you’re in the mind of someone who will *do* something, who will push back, and the whole book makes so clear that it is so impossible to stop this. There is no way out. It is DEEPLY upsetting and extremely well done. A skillful book making a really good point in the most upsetting way possible.  I am glad it was as short as it was. 


We Have Always Lived in the Castle – Shirley Jackson – A great novel, I am glad I read it. I would say this book has an ‘untwist’ in that, yes, information is revealed to the reader that might well be a surprise, but it doesn’t actually change how the story or characters are going to act. In some ways, it feels like a wish fulfillment in comparison Jackson’s stories. In the one I have been reading, often, a character with an anxious disposition is maneuvered into an uncomfortable and unjust position and must quietly endure unkindness from people with more social power. In this book, the bully from those stories thinks that he has the upperhand – and oh sweet goodness, is he out of his league! Pleasure to read.

What I’m Reading:
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York– Robert Caro – like 7% - I jumped on the 99% Invisible bandwagon where they are “Breaking Down the Power Broker” by reading Robert Caro’s book slowly over the course of a year. It’s really well written and the interview with the author for the first episode was a pleasure.

Reading schedule -
Episode 1 — January 19 — Introduction through Chapter 5
Episode 2 — February 16 — Chapters 6 through 10
Episode 3 — March 15 — Chapters 11 through 15
Episode 4 — April 19 — Chapters 16 through 20
Episode 5 — May 17 — Chapters 21 through 24
Episode 6 — June 21 — Chapters 25 through 26
Episode 7 — July 19 — Chapters 27 through 32
Episode 8 — August 16 — Chapters 33 through 34
Episode 9 — September 20 — Chapters 35 through 38
Episode 10 — October 18 — Chapters 39 through 41
Episode 11 — November 15 — Chapters 42 through 46
Episode 12 — December 20 — Chapters 47 through 50

Sabriel – Garth Nix – 27% - Necromancer book club – really good book to re-read, enjoying the technical skill that Nix brings to the book quite a lot.

Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation Vol 3 – 35% God, this part is a bit brutal. The books leaves out a lot of the details about the attack on Lotus Pier that end up getting a fuller treatment in The Untamed, so I have some images in my head about how to handle this. I feel a bit torn about Madame Yu - the narrative is so clearly taking a social position of, 'This woman is bad because she is aggressive and won't be secondary to her husband and resents her lack of power in this patriarchal situation' so I am deeply annoyed that Madam Yu doesn't get much respect from the narrative. But those traits of frustration at her own powerlessness do turn out to mean that she is deeply cruel to a child in her care. It's a very Catelyn Stark situation. 

The Game of Kings – Dorothy Dunnett – Dense – recommended by the Be the Serpent kids. I started this and I am honestly not sure I am going to continue because this is one of those dense reads that, I think, would be really fun to read with the Dunnett Companion, and I don't know I have the spare brain right now to wallow in it. 

It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections in Horror - Joe Vallese (Editor) – SPN Seminar – 38% -On hold during Oscars season 

The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson – 41%

What I’ll Read Next:

When Women Were Dragons - Xing Book Club
Lord of The Rings – in keeping with my vague sense that I should actually read the big books that everyone talks about!

Owned and need to read: Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology, California Bones, Raven Song by IA Ashcroft, At The Feet of the Sun by Victoria Goddard, Tamryn Eradani's Enchanting Encounters Books 2 and 3, Tom Stoppard, Invention of love, "You Just Need to Lose Weight" and Other Myths about Fatness by Aubrey Gordon