What I've Read
A Restless Truth - Freya Marske - Second in a series and I bring that up because the people I read who started this book did so without KNOWING that it was the second in a series. (It holds its own but a lot of the background does not make sense).

I really enjoyed this book - the main characters got to do some whacky and hilarious stuff in the midst of quite a serious investigation with high stakes. The sapphic love story is a delight but they are far from perfect people, and I think overall, I enjoyed this more than the first book. I found Maud to be a bit more relatable than Robin, the POV character for most of the first book, but I also just adored Violet and all her showy, prickly ways. Third book comes out this fall.

(I think that The Locked Tomb series may have unlocked something in my brain that really enjoys series, and having to wait for another feels like a gift of future pleasure rather than a punishment for not being a single book.)

Fanfic I've read

cacio e pepe by serephemeral - https://archiveofourown.org/works/21845440 - I adored this "Some Like it Hot" continuation. After movie ends with "Well, nobody's perfect!" Daphe, who is still sometimes Jerry, runs off into the sunset with Osgood. And Joe, and Sugar. The future doesn't look anything like they planned but it's amazing none the less. Kudos to schneefink for reccing this, I would never have found it otherwise and it's officially my favorite Some Like It Hot fic.

Polite Company by spicedrobot - https://archiveofourown.org/works/37924555 - Star Wars Prequels and Clone Wars Cartoon. Maul isn't a very good Jedi. Obi-Wan isn't a very good Sith. They make it work, after the kidnapping.

What I'm Reading

Mexican Gothic - Silvia Moreno-Garcia - 23% - A re-read for me for the Discord book club. Super creepy and really readable.

The Gothic: A Very Short Introduction - Nick Groom - 39% - This is my first time reading the "very short introduction" books and it's really interesting! Pulling together some threads about English history and this aesthetic mode that have never quite tied themselves together in my head. 

Also, I had re-watched Crimson Peak this week, and it was a fascinating re-watch! I caught so much more of the symbolism around Edith's clothing and Lucille's cryptic statements about their mother. I liked Thomas a lot less on this re-watch, before the ending, but I think I saw more of his wistful attempt to escape. I also totally did NOT remember how much Edith's writing shapes the early edges of her relationship with Thomas - he first is interested in her because of her writing! When he's trying to break her heart, he attacks her writing 

The Traitor Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson - 19% - A re-read before I get into the rest of the books for fun. I'm listening to the audiobook and the narrator, who I will not name, is pronouncing "duchy" wrong for the entire book. (So that it rhymes with "cootchie") and I'm solidering bravely on. I forgot how much of the book is just "terrified lesbian of color gradually sells people out for safety and the promise of future power" and ooooh, man, it's good.

Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection - Julia Kristeva - This is a very navel-gazing literary theory book that makes me realize all afresh that I have real problems with Freudian framing for everything, BUT, it is cited by every major work on horror that I have read. It's French, it's slow, it's worth a read but it's going to be a slog.

True Colors - Karen Traviss - 23% - static

Too Like The Lightning - Ada Palmer - Static

Underline the Black by not_poignant https://archiveofourown.org/works/41396784 - Probably going to return to this when it's finished.

On Earth as It Is in Heaven by samyazaz https://archiveofourown.org/works/833193 - Soulmate AU of Vikings - You don't need to know anything other than the first season or a vague sense of how history went down


What I'll Read Next

The Calculating Stars - Xing Book Club
Babel - Looks like it will on the Hugos list eventually, I'm trying to get out ahead of things

Owned and need to read: California Bones, Raven Song by IA Ashcroft, Kraken's Sacrifice by Katee Robert, Even Though I Know the End by CL Polk, At The Feet of the Sun by Victoria Goddard, Tamryn Eradani's Enchanting Encounters Books 2 and 3, Like Real People Do by EL Massey, Tom Stoppard, invention of love. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty, "You Just Need to Lose Weight" and Other Myths about Fatness by Aubrey Gordon, Alisha Rai Partners in Crime, the Right Swipe, Aphorisms of Kerishdar

Owned and Read/Reading: Frey Marske's A Restless Truth, Susanna Clarke's Pirenesi, True Colors by Karen Traviss