General 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.... 

Personal 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

I 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
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
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?