What 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. 

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.

Annual thoughts: Traditionally, I have used the first Wednesday of the year as a bit of a place to reflect on the reading I have been doing. I had had a few goals in the last few years – read 100 books a year, read more nonfiction, read more broadly – and I think those goals have been pretty good for my reading habits!

This year, I want to focus this year on reading more complex books, and so I’m lowering the “total number of books” goal to down from 100 to 80 books. I also hope this will help with the nonfiction reading and the vague goal of reading more older books. I read just a few nonfiction books this year, only 6, but I really think they were fantastic choices, and I’m going to try and lean into that more this year. I think there’s good context out in the world that I need to get into.

I also had a number of books suggested over the course of Arisia 2025 that I would like to actually sit down and read! They are here, if you are curious: https://kitewithfish.dreamwidth.org/479961.html


What I’ve Read­
Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett – I have been slowly reading thru the Night Watch thread of Terry Pratchett, and this was very good. I know this was a re-read, but god knows how long ago it was. I liked this one, and the general message of (non) human decency and bonds among fellow watchmen was emotionally fulfilling while the book itself was very funny. Recommend!

I skipped the Wednesday Reading Meme posts for the last few weeks, so if you are interested in what I read that last two weeks, it’s in a round up post here! https://kitewithfish.dreamwidth.org/492482.html

What I’m Reading
Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins – The second Hunger Games book. About 30% in, and, well, recent evens make this feel like a good book to be reading about empires and power and violence and effective resistance not being something a sixteen year old girl can manage on her own. I think there’s a bit of a fashion of expressing annoyance at love triangles, but I think Katniss being torn between these particular two boys makes perfect sense. They are each decent and good people working in very different molds, and honestly, I can see how awful it is that Peeta’s earnest kindness is made into a snare against Katniss’s rebellion by the Capitol. This book is simply written but it never thinks the reader is stupid, and I respect the hell out that.

One Corpse Too Many by Ellis Peters – Book two of the Brother Cadfael medieval mysteries. Great so far – I do not know a lot about the civil wars of the 12th century, so I am likely missing some details but I generally trust the book to actually get me what I need to know. Ellis Peters, who is actually Edith Pargeter, has a deft had for women characters even if Cadfael is the lead, and I think that I will continue to enjoy these books for some time!

What I’ll Read Next
Playing it by ear.

Not quite the Wrap Up for 2025 – I got busy the last few Wednesdays so I am making an effort to post about the books I finished before the end of the year!

What I’ve Read
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins – Xing Book Club – This was blast from the past, and one that held up amazingly. The beginning was every so slightly slow but also set up the world very well. I felt like Katniss is weirdly charming – she has so little concept of the world as a trustworthy place or people as kind, and that calculation serves to save her life in the Hunger Games. The ending of this book, with her beginning to understand what her approach has cost Peeta, is wonderfully sensitive and ambiguous.

A Morbid Taste for Bones by Ellis Peters (Edith Pargeter) – A very pleasant medieval murder mystery that is solved by a clever protagonist in favor of a humanist and quite funny resolution. Brother Cadfael is a well traveled Welsh brother in an English Benedictine abbey in 1138, when one of leaders of the order takes it into his head that they need the bones of a saint to make their abbey a really hopping spot. This book was published in 1977, and features a fairly liberal mindset towards the medieval caste system and a deeply humorous Welsh disrespect for the English. I picked this up as a break on the recommendation of oldshrewsburyian (over at tumblr, but I see there’s a DW name and I think it’s the same person!)

A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan – Oh, I really felt excited about the book that this wasn’t! ­I really thought there would be natural history in it! To be fair, the author’s interviews make it clear that she’s going for an Indiana Jones-inspired plot, and she’s very much accomplished that!

However, it’s not as funny or charming as Indiana Jones, and I would not pick up an Indiana Jones novel. The structure of the book impeded my enjoyment – the narrator is an elderly version of the main character writing her memoirs, but the main plot is a rollicking adventure where the younger character is doing field research in a rural foreign country and uncovering black market dragon schemes. This results in the author functionally interrupting the interesting plot and deflating the narrative tension to offer Her Humble Opinion on her younger self’s actions. If I needed distance from an unlikeable younger version of the character, this would be a good break. However, the older version of the character is snide, bigoted, defensive, and Not Like Other Girls. The effect is charmless and kludgey, and makes me lament that the young promising character we meet in the past grows up into this unpleasant arrogant person.

Anyone who reads my book ramblings on the regular will have picked up that I am vastly irritated when authors deflate their carefully constructed tension or have unsatisfying pacing. So, please feel free to try this book and see if it works for you.

Misethere by Astolat – I had to do a lot of rather stressful family socializing the last few weeks, so re-reading a past favorite! A wonderful story about someone too clever by half and the Witcher that loves him. 

What I’ve Read

The Invention of Love – Tom Stoppard – I read this along with a bookleg recording of the 2000s Broadway production, which is amazing. It’s a deeply compassionate and reserved play that I deeply enjoyed. A friend of mine said this was a foundational work for them, and I absolutely see how. It’s the story of AE Hausman, particularly thru his relationship to the Classics, and the story weaves past and future together thru the Young Housman having conversations with his Old Housman self. I really enjoyed the unexpected appearance of Oscar Wilde, whose trial happened during Hausman’s post-university years.

What I’m Reading

The Fortunate Fall – Cameron Reed – The 1996 cyberpunk book is just deliciously weird. Like, so much weirder than I expected. Also, gay! The book was recently re-issued under the author’s new name.

Into the Drowning Deep – Mira Grant – Ten years ago spooky deep sea mermaids killed everyone on a research mission sponsored by Not The Discovery Channel. Our main character’s sister died, and now she’s going to be able to use her research to figure out what happened for herself. I am slowly working thru all the tentpoles from Be the Serpent, a finished podcast that I deeply enjoyed, and this is one of them! I find Mira Grant to be rather like Michael Crichton in her commitment to Doing the Research on how various elements of her characters’ scientific work remains. I feel like this should be scarier but that might be just the beginning of the book. Grant, like Crichton, has a very visual and cinematic style, and sometimes that works for me and sometimes it does not.

Guillermo del Toro: Cabinet of Curiosities – on hold.

What I’ll Read Next
Natural History of Dragons
The Hunger Games
The Grief of Stones

What I’ve Read
Literally nothing!
Which was kind of an interesting experience. I did this as sort of a “see what bubbles up when you’re not filling your head with words” and some stuff did! Can’t call it unmixed, but not without merit.

I found the experience a bit like going to the abstract wing of an art museum. At first it's all, Why are there no landscapes? Where are the people? Who is an allegory in these blobs of color? What does the vague square here Mean? But you go and you gaze slowly into the washes of color and the suggestions of a shape and it seeps into your brain that that’s sufficient to be Art. You float on a formless tide, dreaming without concrete shapes, synthesizing the Art inside of you. It stabilizes and you stop wanting someone else's allegory.  You know what that blob means, what that vague square is saying to you and you alone. 

Then you step out and go out into the portraits gallery. You are assaulted by the grounded, constructed, firm, Realness of all the other Art. It overwhelms you. Why can I see this man's actual nose. Whose horse is that. 

In the space I was not filling with words by other people, I did a lot of Feeling My Feelings (exhausting but do recommend) and writing (exhausting but exhilarating) and also puttered very productively around the house, accomplishing many a small and valuable task (comforting and rather nice).

What I’m Reading

The Artists Way – Week 5 – Sense of Possibility
Alien Clay – very early on – We are getting into the big scifi questions.

What I’ll Read Next
Witness for the Dead Katherine Addison
The Fortunate Fall by Cameron Reed
Next Earthsea book?

What I’ve Read

The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club – Dorothy Sayers – I have been liberated from the library waitlist on the Wimsey audiobooks! (Thank you, kind person who may remain anonymous at their own discretion!)

Really enjoyed this one – several plots interacting with each other until mistakes get made. As I mentioned last week, the inciting incident is an elderly man found dead (!) of seemingly natural causes (?!) at his gentleman’s club. The time of his death has specific import because his wealthy sister has also died today. If he died after her, her will passes her money to him, and thru him, to his two sons; if the old man died before his sister, then her money passes nearly totally to her companion, a Miss Ann Dorland.

Sayers does such fantastic character work that the real pleasure of the novel is visiting with all of the people impacted in the death and investigation: one of his sons is impoverished by his PTSD and ashamed that his wife is earning their keep, so he’s an absolute ass to everyone around him. The older son is an unmarried old soldier who is utterly unflappable but deeply hurt that he can’t help his family more, and so driven to foolish ideas.

The book saves Miss Dorland’s interview with Wimsey for the end - simply a wonderful and sensitive examination of how trapped a feeling but strong willed woman could be in this era. In keeping her character and her intentions a blank until nearly the end of the book, Sayers keeps tension in the story in a way that I really enjoyed. It allowed Miss Dorland to feel real and wounded - I really enjoyed meeting the character like this. Loved the revelation of the mystery, honestly kind of loved the ending? It’s not unlike Clouds of Witness or Strong Poison, in that Sayers loves a woman being liberated from a horrible and immoral man, but it feels like its own thing.

Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin – Last week, I thought this would be a bit slow for me, and it’s not a speedy book. But it grew on me – Ged goes from a callow youth to a brave and cautious man. Le Guin throws enough ideas at this book to make a whole series, if she chose to focus on any one of them. Again, her strongest suite here is the capacity to think of both individuals and their communities as characters – Ged’s movement thru different islands and their different social levels and cultures take us on a journey with him, and provided subtle ways for him to grow as a person. Also, I do love that the best way to fight a dark spirit is to hunt it down and make it face you on your own terms. 

The Five Red Herrings (Dramatized) by Dorothy Sayers – I cannot say I followed this with an exacting focus. The performances by the voice cast were all quite good (to my un-Scottish ear) and I felt like a fair shake was made at really explaining a complicated murder plot. That said, it did feel so far the most like a whodunit, and I was less intrigued by the characters than I have been by Sayers novels. I enjoyed myself but I will put an asterisk by this book and read it properly later before I render a judgment on it. Someone who knows more about trains, art, or Scottish culture of the 1920s might be a better judge than me, in any case. Fun tho, and it kept me company on a rough cleaning day.

What I’m Reading

The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars and Caliphs by Marc David Baer – about 79% as of time of writing. Baer’s thesis is that the Ottoman Empire is part of European history and neglecting it leaves the story of European development incomplete. I was largely on his side already, and man, he’s really done a good job of convincing me on the particulars! 

Baer's book is brisk and covering a lot of topics and figures– I feel like I’m getting a detailed thematic sketch of each major historical figure rather than full biography, as the focus is much more on how the Ottoman politics developed over the course of the empire's six centuries, rather than a biography. It’s broad strokes about internal groups – Baer tends to do a quick summary of the historical context around a group (including deviant dervishes, apocalyptic Sufi movements, Shia factions that opposed the Osman family, warrior castes, tax farmers) and then gets into the specifics of the chronological conflicts and how they impacted the Empire and its connection to European Christian powers and other Muslim countries. It’s fascinating just how weird the Ottoman Empire was and how quickly it became a military power.

Baer also has done a good job anchoring the details of this history to people and topics that I already knew about. For example, Martin Luther’s 95 Theses or “Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences” was published in 1517 because the Catholic Church was selling indulgences – specifically, to raise money to fund wars against the Ottomans! This kind of makes the Ottomans fairly crucial to the creation of Protestantism, one might argue! That seems important! Baer points out several other things Luther wrote about the Turks as a divine judgment on the sins of the Catholic Church. 

Sidebar: For context, I had a standard-to-good US public school history education, so I got a nice chunk of European history. Thematically, it focused on the nations with the most connection to US history -- so the UK, France, and Spain, the Dutch as an economic force, and the rise of Protestantism in the German states. I learned more about the Ottomans in passing when I studied in Vienna, and a bit more when I married an ex-Yugoslav, and honestly, through Dracula. So, I had a sense I wish missing a lot - this fills in a lot of the gaps nicely, and may suggest some more avenues for investigation.

This book probably doesn’t have enough detail for a real history buff, but if you’re looking for a broad overview on a brisk pace, you might well enjoy this.

Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy Sayers narrated by Ian Carmichaels – 40% ish – Started this and then realized I would have to push on the Ottoman audiobook to get it done before the library recalls it, so I am putting Sayers gently on hold for now.  (A minor note for some language that is pretty racist, in brief passing, even for the 1920s).

I supposed I am technically reading The Artist's Way? It feels a bit more like a user guide than a reviewable book, but I am doing it, and finding some of it useful. It came up online as a tool for ADHDers attempting to get in touch with their own artistic selves. Which, not quite what I am doing, but I am trying to be more attentive to my own metacognition, so here we are. 

What I’ll Read Next
Witness for the Dead Katherine Addison - xing book club
The Fortunate Fall by Cameron Reed -xing book club
Of Monsters and Mainframes -Barbara Truelove - necromancy book club

What I’ve Read
Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance – Lois McMaster Bujold – You can really feel the Penric and Desdemona style books coming around in Bujold’s later work. Bujold built a great character in Ivan Vorpatril – he’s too close to the throne of an empire to avoid knowing about politics, so instead he has developed a perfectly tuned sense of political ramifications for every move he could potential make – and manages to build a life where he’s known for being a lady’s man and a bit vapid, instead of a good figurehead for a coup! He’s adorable and he’s got a good match in Tej. In some ways, this felt like Bujold having a good time with her own books and not being too serious about it.


What I’m Reading
The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club – Dorothy Sayers – 25% - An elderly man is found dead at his gentleman’s club, and establishing the time of his death becomes crucial for executing his will when it’s revealed he died the same day as his sister. Did he die just before her, so that all her wealth passes to her lady companion? Or just after, so that her wealth joins his estate and passes nearly entirely to his eldest son? It’s also got lovely worldbuilding around the WWI veterans in the background of Peter Wimsey’s world – their comfort with death and soldiering draws a line between the young men and the older crowd of the club.

The Mismeasure of Man – Stephen Jay Gould – Feisty and interesting! I’m re-reading this after reading it as a teenager – it definitely informed my skepticism towards science that “proves” an existing social bias is grounded in hard scientific fact. Really good and clear writing, it does feel like it’s from 1981 at times. (Remember when we were just fighting fundamentalists about teaching evolution in public schools? And not about the continued existence of public schools??)

What I’ll Read Next
Witness for the Dead Katherine Addison
The Fortunate Fall by Cameron Reed

What I’ve Read
Lent by Jo Walton – “A novel of many returns” – I read this for the first time about three months ago and avoided spoilers – I recommend this book and I also recommend going in without an idea of you’re getting into it. That said, I think some spoilers would help people make up their minds, so I will put them under a cut.

After I finished the book, I went looking for any interview where Jo Walton talked about the book, and found nothing – But! She did have this to say in an interview, about the pleasures of re-reading - ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAbUmD3Xs2c )

Whose Body by Dorothy Sayers – # 1 in series - Fun to read, really gives Lord Peter’s backstory some oomph, but it’s also a bit convoluted and very very English. I can see the promise of the future but if this were the first book I’d read, I am not sure I would have bothered with the rest of the series .

Clouds of Witness by Dorothy Sayers - #2 in Series – Wow, this book is just a careful examination, via murder mystery, of all the ways women are trapped in this society in this era. It introduces Peter Wimsey’s noble family, and his brother and sister are both moderately miserable to be caught in a murder investigation. It’s very 1920s England but also does a great job of characterizing a lot of ways a person could be flawed, and how women end up having to make the best of some fairly awful situations.

In news unrelated to reading, I’ve been trying for some time to get off the short form video content sites (mostly TikTok) and spend more time with people whose work feels thoughtful and interesting – so, here’s Technology Connections - https://www.youtube.com/@TechnologyConnections Go learn about how pinball machines do math.

The Revolutionary Temper: Paris, 1748-1789 by Robert Darnton – The library has returned this lovely audiobook to me! I am really enjoying, as a counterpoint to Lent, the ways the book really looks at how the specific circumstances and personalities impact the decisions leading up to the breakdown of the French monarchy. I am sure this is all old hat to people who studied this period of French history in any detail, but I was not among them. Even my interest in the History of Napoleon podcast didn’t cover this period in such a pragmatic, on-the-ground, “who knew what when” approach. The little details matter – I had not know that, as the Estates General was meeting to try and figure out how France was to go on, King Louis XVI left for a day to go sit with his dying seven year old son. Like, it’s not the most important detail of the book, but it just sticks with me that all this uproar and confusion and politics, his kid was dying. I finished the book late last night – highly recommend.


What I’m Reading
Strong Poison by Dorothy Sayers
Mimesis – Auerbach -Just started this while I was trapped in a long meeting and it was available. Said’s forward is good!

What I’ll Read Next
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin for book club 
Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison

What I Read
Nothing to completion.

What I'm Reading
Space Opera by Catherynne Valente – 48% I think this is a book about hope and about regret and about really excellent coats and having sex with the first alien you meet and using Looney Tunes to understand the galaxy. It makes me want to re-read Douglas Adams.

The Revolutionary Temper — Robert Darnton – like 35% in? It’s a cultural and literary look at the French Revolution. Really enjoying it - compared to my recent nonfiction, it’s a bit less focused on The Story of One Person.

Lent by Jo Walton – A re-read for a book club – only about 4% in. Still love it. 

What I'll Read Next
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison
Monsters and Mainframes?
I feel due for a Pratchett.