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Year End Reading Meme for 2025

How many books did you read this year? Any trends in genre/length/themes/etc?
102!
Themes - eh, mostly sci fi, fantasy, and history.

What are your Top 3 books that you read this year?
The world is too big and full of books for just three!
Fiction:
Return of the King – yeah, yeah, we know, Tolkien is great, but like, I didn’t realize that this book was going to be so full of the heartfelt need to rest and respite after war and suffering and babe, I loved that. Excellent conclusion of the trilogy.
Lent by Jo Walton – The first half of this novel is a history of Girolamo Savonarola up to his death, and the second half of the book is about what happens after he dies. It’s phenomenal and weird and I loved it.
The Fortunate Fall by Cameron Reed – I’m fresh off this one and I found it a fascinating look at memory from a cyberpunk future that almost and didn’t happen.

Nonfiction:
The Power Broker – yeah, this book was 50 years old last year and I read it and it explained New York and also gives a reasonable look back at how American politics developed. It's also just masterfully written and makes other books look lazy and slow about their level of research.
The Other Olympians – Michael Walters - My god, transphobia is literally just recycled Nazi bullshit. Literally, just, it’s Nazi rhetoric about gender roles! This book makes me so happy for trans people in the past and also women’s athletics and also I hate Nazis with new and enduring facets after I read this book. Why could you not just let people be happy, you fucking fascists.
The Revolutionary Temper – Robert Darnton – Slow history! Watch society slowly build up from thinking of their king as the ultimate source of justice to the ultimate impediment to justice. Love it.

What's a book you enjoyed more than you expected?
Conclave – a very simple thrillers style novel but really pleasant to read and added a lovely depth to the film.

Which books most disappointed you this year?
Into the Drowning Deep – because I had hopes. But the worst book I read and finished this year was Mercenary Librarians.

Did you reread any old faves? If so, which one was your favorite?
Misethere – I seem to be re-reading this one annually! I also re-read The Goblin Emperor and the Murderbot Diaries

What's the oldest book you read?
Persuasion by Jane Austen

What's the newest book you read?
Of Monsters and Mainframes

Did you DNF (= did not finish) any books?
The Familiar – Stupid love interest

What was your predominant format this year?
Audio, at 42% - which makes sense, my eyes are getting tired

What's the longest book you read this year?
The Power Broker – So long that almost all of it was read in 2024

What books from your TBR did you not get to this year, but are excited to read in 2026?
Hm, Pass – Maybe I will return to this question.

Did you reach your reading goal for this year (if you had one)?
Yup, and exceeded.

(Adding this question myself) What author did you read the most?
Dorothy Sayers! I read 8 books by her this year!

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 Fortunate Fall – Cameron Reed – A book worth reading! I really enjoyed the writing style and it felt like it was making interesting observations about life in this future fictional world that mapped onto our own in surprising ways. This book was originally published in 1997 and it feels shockingly modern in the same way that 60s Star Trek does – sometimes a keen eye can just see where things might go and map out options, even if reality did end up in a slightly different direction.

I haven’t seen a summary of the plot anywhere, so I will write a short one: Vague spoilers under the cut!

( Read more... )

I really liked it and I think it will actually unfold better on the re-read!

Into the Drowning Deep – Mira Grant – I think I can call it at this point: I am not for Mira Grant and Mira Grant is not for me. This book contains scenes that have action; it does not convey a feeling of action. It has scenes that contain horror; it does not convey a feeling of horror. The writing problems were on a scene level, as opposed to sentence or book level: Grant kept setting up scenes where vital and life-altering, even life-saving!, information would be almost revealed! But, then we pivot to another topic, interrupting the focus in the middle to add extraneous characterization or shift focus to something completely nonurgent, and never really getting back to the sharp punch she was winding up. The pacing got fucked. There was info-dumping about the wrong things, things that were not really relevant to the present situation! The cumulative effect was to make every character so wooden that even the ones that were deep and heroic slowly drained of all life after delivering extensive sidebars during life-threatening danger. I ended up complaining about this book at some length to a friend. I could have edited this book into something I adored and cut off about 25% of it. Since I had a similar, but not so pointed, set of thoughts about Newsflesh, I think this proves Grant is not for me. I heard good things about October Daye, but I hate the fey as a writing concept, so. Probably done here.

A Contracted Spouse for the Prizefighter by Alice Coldbreath (audiobook) – Audiobook romance by a favorite author. This is the third in a series that focuses on the lives of Victorian working class people in a variety of jobs. Our heroine, Theodora, wants to be on the stage doing the fun, risque musical hall act that she has been working on for years – but her stuffy family wants to be respectable and will not allow that kind of act in their theatre! When her sister elopes and her brother pulls her out of acting entirely to work as the family’s drudge, Theo runs off to a prizefighter turned music act manager as part of a deal – she’ll marry him and give him control over her 25% share of the family theatre so that he can get his foot in the door and expand his music hall to the larger venue, and he has to support her male impersonator career attempt.

These books suffer a bit on the male leads – they are kind of big sexy small time businessmen with a surprising amount of self-insight for the period (and for their nationality). The women are FANTASTIC. They are so interestingly weird and trying to find an interesting life for themselves – these are the kind of women who end up the poor relation receiving charity in other books set in these periods, and overall, it’s really nice to see them thriving in unconventional jobs or settings. I am a sucker for people marrying for pragmatic economical historical reasons and then finding out how much they like each other.

A flaw in these books is that they often throw in an epilogue about how the female lead is So! Happy! To be! Pregnant!, and I'm like, thanks, I'll be skipping that, byyyyye.

What I’m Reading

Guillermo del Toro: Cabinet of Curiosities – on hold. (This book is just obnoxiously large.)

Heated Rivalry: Started and promptly abandoned. Thanks, but no, thanks. I have Ovechkin/Crosby RPF fic at home, I will not be accepting the watered down version. The show is cute and distinct enough that I’ll continue watching but the idea of reading hockey fic that filters out the hockey.... not for me.

The Hunger Games – Book club pick! I’m finding that this book stuck in my head surprisingly well. I think I read thru the original series but bailed on the final book.

What I’ll Read Next
Natural History of Dragons

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
Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison – finished this re-read literally today! I had actually re-read this earlier this year, when my book club had finished The Goblin Emperor and I needed more. You can find that review from July 2025 here (https://kitewithfish.dreamwidth.org/486536.html), but what stuck with me was this line “Both books are from the perspective of a person who wants to make the world better and kinder, and is actively working to do that, to the extent of their means.” I stand by that – this is a world with problems recognizable to us and likewise, full of people trying to help make life better. It’s also got a fascinatingly beautiful subtle romance that starts with our main character looking at the second cup for his tea that the waiter brought him and wishing he could share the honeyed spoon with someone -it’s such a sweet longing and it runs thru the book so softly that I only noticed it when I re-read it properly.

Alien Clay – Adrian Tchaikovsky -Oh, I loved this! It’s very alien, and very weird, and yet Tchaikovsky builds the story like an argument, point by point until you’re nodding along and like, oh, of course, what else could this have ended as. It’s weirdly inspiring and wonderful and also could be a body horror movie with great ease. It’s quite decent!

What I’m Reading

Guillermo del Toro Cabinet of Curiosities – with Marc Scott Zicree. I am enjoy this, as it mostly appears to be a person writing with breathless adulation about how much he enjoys being in Guillermo del Toro’s house and looking at the weird stuff he’s got. I’m here for it, mostly!
The Artists Way – Week 6 – Sense of abundance – eh.

What I’ll Read Next
The Fortunate Fall by Cameron Reed - xing book club
Next Earthsea book?
No clear idea, honestly, I would take a suggestion!

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 Nine Tailors by Dorothy Sayers (audiobook, narrator Ian Carmichael)
Ok, this is the kind of book that almost makes me love the English, tho they do not deserve it. Dorothy Sayers wrote this book, and it’s such a careful look at this one small town in this one backwater place with one magnificent church in it with a set of also magnificent bells. Both this and Murder Must Advertise have a reputation in the Sayers fandom (such as I am aware of it) as being The Weird Books – where you just have to follow Sayers into her latest obsession and trust that you’re going to get an exciting story out of it on the way. And you do! It honestly felt like it has some spiritual overlap with Barbara Pym’s Excellent Women, about the women who provide so much support and life to the little parishes around England. This is set thirty years earlier and with a far more rural view, but man, it does have those careful little inside views of an English parish. Do I understand anything more about English style change ringing? Only the barest crumb! Did I enjoy myself? I had a wonderful time!

Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove
I feel I should recant my opinions from last week. I was irked by the audiobook narrator, who, I admit now, had the thankless task of attempting to narrate a book that starts in binary. I have seen a better light. Here’s the story:

I talked to a friend (thank you, bookclub gods, for nerds who read fast) and expressed my woes about how the book was slow and dumb and not scary and I didn’t care about any of the people who were dying and the genre mashup was not working for me because the book couldn’t decide if people know about specific monsters from literature (Dracula is in this book, did I mention?) or not (the space computer did not believe in werewolves) – and she said, “I don’t think it’s trying to be scary. I think it’s camp.”

And lo, in retrospect, it was pretty clearly camp. Not serious, and not scary, and one of the monsters is a mummy named Steve and the creature called Frankenstein is an art project gone wrong and the werewolf is gay. It’s fucking camp. I’m glad my friend reeled me back in, because I actually had a wonderful time reading this book and I feel moderately unstoppable riding that high.

What I’m Reading

The Artists Way – Week 4 – AKA, the week where you are supposed to not read anything and see how you fill the empty space that you had previously taken up in your life by reading and generally distracting yourself with things. It’s been a day. I hate it. I hate it so much. I walked up to a little free library with delight and said, “FUCK, I can’t read any of these!” to the delight of my amused spouse. I have also had three very meaningful conversations, taken a nice walk with my spouse in the windy fall day with deliciously crunchy leaves, cleaned and refilled several of my fountain pens, changed out the annoying keycaps on my work keyboard for better ones from my stash, bought replacement HVAC filters, and wrote a long tantrumy letter to a friend. So. Uh. It might be working.

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

I have been having a very joyful and messy and self-centered couple of days! I had a day off on Monday, so I rearranged my office to better suit my incoming winter needs and to provide a lot more organized space for my craft materials. It felt just really wonderful and kind to myself to do all of that, and put the effort into my own space and happiness (even if it did make a mess and take up space and involve some sweat and dust.)

What I’ve Read
The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould – Man, this is such a good book. Gould is just looking over several situations of learned and respected men being wildly motivated by social biases and clinging hard to the idea that science proves their biases right. It’s a fascinating case where it can be nearly fucking impossible for someone to notice their own bigotry and expectations pushing them to confirm that in their work. This is from the 1990s but addresses much earlier cases and I think should be read as a really valuable historical launching point for a more robust interest in how people actually DO science at a basic level. (This edition also contains some good essays on The Bell Curve, a very bigoty book about using science to confirm your existing racist beliefs. Those are good on their own but I skipped them because I was already pretty riled up.) Highly recommend if you like Michael Hobbes’s work.

What I’m Reading
The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club – Dorothy Sayers – 67% 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? Oh, and maybe one of these three potential heirs killed him! I really do wish there was an audiobook of this one available to me, but I am unwilling to pay money for it as a one off. I should look into a collection of Sayers novels as a single audiobook to see if there's a bargain to be had.

The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars and Caliphs by Marc David Baer – I am 2% into this audiobook that came from the library yesterday and pushed me to finish Mismeasure to the end in a burst. So far, really interesting – I seem to be on a history kick. (Not strictly related to this book, but, I hate to say it: Our times are heartbreakingly precedented. )

Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin – A bit slow for me? Honestly, the best parts are in fact the culture and world building – Ged is hitting the Just Some Guy button for me a lot.

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

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

I am v tired so my descriptions are a bit thin tonight.

What I’ve Read
Strong Poison – Dorothy Sayers – Our heroine is finally introduced! It’s so good, but it’s also meaningfully unfinished in terms of their relationship.
The Left Hand of Darkness – Ursula K. Le Guin – This book moved me – I had read it last in high school and what stayed with me was etched deep. But, there was a lot that I honestly forgot and the ending hit me like a truck.

What I’m Reading

The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club – Dorothy Sayers
The Mismeasure of Man – Stephen Jay Gould
Mimesis – Erich Auerbach

What I’ll Read Next
Witness for the Dead Katherine Addison

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.

( Read more... )

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’ve Read
My Happy Marriage Vol 1 & 2 – Akumi Agitogi
A manga in a slightly fantastical Taisho-era Japan setting. Our beautiful humble kind and gentle main character has been send to the garden by her family to eat worms -aka, she’s been displaced from her place of comfort to the role of a servant by an evil step mother and half sister. She is relieved to discover that the arranged marriage she was set to is, in fact, perfectly arranged-- the self-contained and stoic male lead is actually soft and squishy, adores her, and wants to take care of her. It’s very much an id-fic style indulgence, and I enjoyed it a good deal. It was a bit slow. I started it because I found the anime and was a bit curious, but on review, I think the anime might be a better go.

Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert – Bob the Drag Queen – I really enjoyed this book and it was also a very strange book. It’s technically a fantasy, in that it involves an impossible conceit: Harriet Tubman (among other historical notables) returning to the modern world, and in Miss Tubman’s case, wanting to engage with the modern Black American through music and performance. But, it’s literally just a conceit – the main appeal of this book is a personal exploration of the Underground Railroad’s most famous members, in their own voices. The characters are personal and the meaning of freedom is both pragmatic and spiritual. They are all conversations with a modern viewpoint character, who is not actually Bob the Drag Queen. He’s a gay Black music producer who had some rough patches in his journey, but achieved enough success that Harriet Tubman asked to work with him.

I’m charmed by the book – it’s history as personal story, and I enjoyed the main character’s emotional roller coaster of awe, humiliation, and self respect. The book does not shy away from difficult self reflection, and I think the audiobook was pretty fantastic.

Unnatural Death by Dorothy Sayers – A Lord Peter Wimsey mystery from 1927 - Sayers is great, the characters are well sketched out, the mystery is plausibly tricky! I think the main heroine of the book is the newly introduced Miss Climpson – she channels her natural nosiness for justice and seems to have a wonderful time doing it. (There’s a wonderful passage where Lord Wimsey laments that the England’s greatest investigative resource - nosy older women - is being squandered and divided amongst the populace. He’d have a crack set of smart women ferreting out murderers as a public service, if he could just persuade the police to hire them!)

I’ve read Sayers out of order, so I do miss Harriet Vane, even if she wasn’t written into the book yet. I did find that this book, like Strong Poison and Have His Carcase, focus a good deal on the cleverness of the means of murder, and how medical knowledge shapes the understanding of the crime. However, I know about hemophilia and I about air bubbles in injections killing people, so I feel a bit cheated when the first thing I think of is meant to be a big revelation. However, these stories are so fun to read, and Sayers is so generous with the intelligence and dedication of her side characters, that I don’t mind going for the ride even if the destination is no surprise.

This one had a some real marks of 1927 on it, tho. Sayers has a certain respect for the cleverness of her murderers that makes you almost root for them, but this one leans hard into the stereotype of “doing gender wrong makes you dangerous.” The murderer, a tall commanding and “mannish” nurse who uses her medical knowledge to kill and her strong personality to isolate other victims by manipulation, reads as lesbian. (Hard to tell how much is deliberate with these things – patterns of thought reveal bigotry you didn’t know you harbored.) The point is driven home when she isolates a younger woman to be her particular friend, to move out to a remote farm and do all her housekeeping, and to eschew the company of any other person, but particularly men. It’s obviously a bad relationship whether they are lovers or not, but it’s structured so all the evils of it are attached to the characters’ deviation from their gender’s expected role in society. To a reader unfamiliar with gay tropes of the era, it might fly under the radar; but I’m not and it hit and I feel a bit queasy about that section of the book. Caveat lector.

My friend has a term called “the shot dog factor” – whatever you post on the internet, there’s always a chance that someone will come into your comments acting like you shot their dog. The risk is never zero. But you can shave off the worst likelihood with placating asides about what you really actually mean. Sayers, writing for herself, in a different century, has no fear of her dog getting shot. Sometimes I think that’s all the difference.

What I’m Reading
Whose Body -Dorothy Sayers – I appear to be in a mood. This is the first one and hinges on joint mysteries of a body found in bathtub and the disappearance of an upper crust Jewish financier. Since it’s also from the 1920s, it’s got some… choice language about Jewish people, tho the characters are all generally about as non-antisemetic as one could hope from upper crust English people in the 1920s.

Worn – Sofi Thanhauser. I feel bad, because I held out such hope for this audiobook, but the narrator is mournful throughout. Lots of the work of modern fabric creation is, in fact, worth of mourning – we depend on the exploiting the labor of underpaid people across the globe who deserve fair compensation; fabric creation depletes natural resources at a devastating clip – HOWEVER, not all of it needs to be talked about in sepulchral tones! I’ve heard Gregorian chant that was less of a downer. Slow going.

Lent by Jo Walton – continues beautifully and complexly and sadly. The book club enjoyed the first half and the Big Twist in the middle.

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
Monsters and Mainframes?
I feel due for a Pratchett.

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.

We are all mortals. Sometimes the Wednesday Reading Meme comes on a Thursday.

What I Have Read

Deal with the Devil - Mercenary Librarians #1 by Kit Rocha

So this book is bad. Some reasons – it’s the first in an intended series, so the set up is dense and the payoff is lean.

The authors (Donna Herren and Bree Bridges) met while writing X-Men fanfic and this book reads like fanfic* - it is uninterested in establishing the characters as unique people; it takes as granted that the reader will find the romance between them compelling. At one point, the female romantic lead turns to the male romantic lead and asks that they end the conflict between them. Reader, it was maybe 10% into the book - there had been no conflict yet! They were already collaborating very well!

The dystopian worldbuilding is frustrating when it’s not intensely boring: Both of our main characters are modified supersoldiers and have run from their eeevil technological overlords. Their new goal? To find community in the vast network of free information they maintain as the Mercenary Librarians. Which should be fascinating, except none of it happens on the page. It’s shorthand to explain why they have lots of tech and food and live comfortably in a post-apocalyptic world.

This book knew things that good stories do and tried to do them? But it didn’t actually do them.

Drop of Corruption - Robert Jackson Bennett - The audiobook came and oooh, it's good, so I jumped in. The narrator, Andrew Fallaize, is very good at giving characters distinct pacing and intonation. (However, he is English, so he keeps saying “Ana” like he’s saying “Honor” and it’s jarring. Not offputting! But jarring.) Bennett excels at mysteries, and at complicated political situations, and this book is him rolling it both like a Labrador in a mud puddle. Highly recommend.

The Afterword was also very good. He takes a critical eye to fantasy’s fascination with monarchy, with kings as a trope of goodness and wholeness for a people. This books makes very plain what he thinks of them – slavers in fancy hats. Lest it seems didactic, it was not - obvious in hindsight, like a well-laid clue, but not grating.

What I'm Reading
Space Opera by Catherynne Valente – I have started this book before- it always hits me as charming but a high demand read. Since it’s now up for a book club choice, I have the motivation. Already everything about this book is a masterclass in setup and payoff. I love Mr. Looney of the Tunes, point to Nani.

Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky - static from last week
The Revolutionary Temper — Robert Darnton – like 10% in? It’s a cultural and literary look at the French Revolution. Many characters are old friends, but with a more detailed look and a specific timeline leading up to the actual Revolution. The book has scope and pace. Jo Walton talked about this in her July reading round up and I'm enjoying the audiobook.

Lent by Jo Walton - Re-reading this for a book club. I think this hits me in a particular place - I adore a character who is in a one-sided fight with a neglectful God (gee, wonder if I have mommy issues much) and I love fantasy lets you come at the same problem from a bunch of different angles. I often use the image of a gem and facets as a metaphor for my favorite kinds of fiction - the author picks up a topic and shows it to the reader, giving us views of the many shapes of a single thing by skillfully directing our attention. This book absolutely shows Walton as a similar kind of thinker.

What I'll Read Next
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison
The Fortunate Fall Cameron Reed - this book came up at Arisia AND in the note about ReaderCon 2025, so I am intrigued that my book club has picked it. We are a ways out.
Monsters and Mainframes?

*I hope that, since you are reading this blog, you have enough context to know that I adore fanfic. I use the comparison to point out a structural element that, in fanfic, is not a flaw. But in an original work, your characters deserve a decent introduction.

What I've Read

Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley - Audiobook with Katie Leung and George Weightman - Interesting vignettes but as a whole story, functionally kind of incomplete. Bradley talked about this book's origin as a piece of fanfic based on AMC's The Terror, which covers a fictionalization of the end of the doomed Franklin Expedition. (Fun Fact: I tried to read the book that the AMC series was based on, but truly hated it! Do not bother!) Bradley wrote pieces for her herself and her friends about how Graham Gore, time traveler scooped from death on the unforgiving arctic ice, would feel about modern UK life - and those bits shine. They feel fun and interesting and cared for. The main character of the novel, an unnamed government official who is strikingly similar to Bradley herself , is also a compelling look at a kind of person who might, in extremis, work at an amoral government agency that scoops people out of time to bolster Britain's fading national security.

The problem is, well, everything else. In a book that started with a thought experiment about how a particular man out of time might react to the modern day world, Bradley has plopped a fairly opaque government apparatus into the story to cover the whys and hows, and added time travel mechanics to make it all fit. But that's a lot of worldbuilding to commit to to just fill in the gaps of the story, and it feels like Bradley kind of just doesn't care too much about it.

Fanfic is all abou asking "What if...?" about a completed work, and I find myself thinking this book would also be great for fanfic - someone one would have fun filling in these gaps!

And Never Been Kissed by thehoyden, Twentysomething - Hockey RPF - I said last time I posted about this, it's a magnificently horny fic. I re-read this as part of my TheHoyden Renaisance where I was just diving back into fics from ten+ years ago , and this merits a re-read. My god, we were all so young and dumb and horny. Wonderful slow burn fic with truly the most desparately horny hockey loving teens I can imagine.

The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports by Michael Waters - I want to buy Waters a beer. This book tells a humanizing story of so many athletes in the 1930s, about how they were all just living their lives and working their hardest at their sports and then, wham! Fucking Nazis. Every time I thought, wow, I have hated the Nazis so much for so long, I cannot hate them more! Then this book showed me new gleaming heights of hating Nazis - distant beautiful peaks of hating Nazis that I have yet to climb. Because hating Nazis is based in loving that which they threaten, and Waters truly shows you people and a world that is worth loving. It's a wonderful book for showing you that the world is complex and weird and the past I took for granted was never the black and white of photographs. It really drove home just how much Nazis and fascism *took* from the world. I loved this book and burned thru it in about two days.

What I'm Reading
Drop of Corruption - Robert Jackson Bennett - The audiobook came and oooh , it's good, so I jumped in.
Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky - static from last week
Deal with the Devil by Kit Roch - static - I need to read it for next Wed.

What I'll Read Next
Book Club books planned
Lent by Jo Walton
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison
Space Opera ?
Monsters and Mainframes?
The Revolutionary Temper — Robert Darnton - Jo Walton talked about this in her July reading round up and I'm down

Personal life: I am back from my travels - family was seen, babies were hoisted, toddlers were obeyed, much delicious cheese was eaten! Pokemon Go was a definite add to the experience - I even decided it was worth it to me to throw $5 at it to get myself some more game functions, and I had a fun time using it on walks, and making friends with it was an unexpected plus!

It was not much of a reading holiday, tho, as you'll see.

What I Reading
Marrying Efficiency to Ideals by thehoyden -
Untamed/ Mo Dao Zu Shi - https://archiveofourown.org/works/66224968 - Have I sung the praises of thehoyden's writing? If not, I should. A really good author in a lot of fandoms, this piece of Untamed/ Mo Dao Zu Shi fanfic is self indulgent in the best ways - taking Meng Yao from canon, making a few minor circumstantial twists, and highlighting all the ways he could have been happy and wonderfully effective as the treasured spouse of a sect leader. I heartily enjoyed it.

King and Lionheart by the hoyden - Hockey RPF - https://archiveofourown.org/works/1010348#main - In fact, I liked the Untamed fic enough that I have been going back thru thehoyden's past work and re-reading my faves! This one is basically my gold standard for the Perfectly Arranged Marriage fic - Sidney Crosby, alleged hockey robot, agrees to marry Evgeni Malkin so that he can come and play hockey in the NHL and bounce on his Russian contract. It's sweet and slow and kind to both of them, showing Sid as the kind of focused person who would, in fact, marry someone for hockey and never regret it, and Geno as the kind of brave idiot who would do it and then feel just a bit bad about it. It's charming and long and full of smut and deeply sweet.

I have read some shorter works by thehoyden, but since I usually limit my reviews to the novel-length stuff I have read, I will simply mention Letters from the Northern Continent (DS9, Garak/Bashir post-canon epistolary fic) is wonderful and takes the canon and just... gently tips it to a better direction.

A Hat Full of Sky by Terry Pratchett - I have not read all of Pratchett's work, and that is on purpose. I am rationing it. This is the second in the Tiffany Aching books, and involves compassion towards you enemies, even the teenage girls who are dicks, even the deathless monsters that want to devour you and leave only your worst parts. Solid work.

What I'm Reading
And Never Been Kissed by thehoyden and twentysomething - this is the horniest piece of work I have ever read. It's simply staggeringly horny, monumentally horny - this fic's horniness is magnificent and impressive, sublte and illuminating. I am blessed and comforted by the horniness in this fic.

Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky - reminds me that I never finished Derin Edala's Perfectly Normal Spaceship book. Nominee for a hugo, but I'm not far enough in to determine if it should win.

Deal with the Devil by Kit Roch - I can't put this book down fast enough. Book clubs sometimes must face that members have different tastes - this was suggested by a dear friend who likes to read books where the main characters are stalwartly good people who never hurt each other or do morally wrong things, even if they have a history that says they *absolutely should consider doing wrong things* because that is their ENTIRE career. But alas, this is an adventure without conflict. I will finish this book, I will allow it to pass over me, and in the end, only my 2 star review will remain.

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley - this book seems to have started from the very fanficy idea of, what if one of the crew of the lost Arctic expedition on The Terror was found and brought to modern London? And that's a good premise for a short story! But the book is not fleshed out quite enough around it. I'm only 40% in, I'm having a reasoanble amount of fun, I might be swayed! Nominee for a Hugo, should not win.

What I'll Read Next
I'm coming to the end of this year's Hugos push, so I will try and read some of those books but I'm not going to push myself that much about it.

Book Club books planned
Lent by Jo Walton
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison
Space Opera ?
Monsters and Mainframes?

What I've Read

Immortal Dark by Tigest Girma - There's some interesting elements of this book - Girma is an Ethiopian Australian author and the culture and language are woven into the story with more nuance than I can unravel without help. It came recommended by a friend who could do some of that for me, so I can pass along her recommendation. For myself, I find YA dark academia a hard sell unless the school setting feels very central to the story. The main character is deeply wrathful over the disappearance of her sister, and as she wrangles her position of heir to her family in a social structure built around controlling vampires.

Overall, I think I could have enjoyed it more if the writing were not so slow. Emotions snarl or boil or lash, which should be exciting but instead manages to make a paragraph a slog - It slows the pace and makes the actual action harder to parse. More than once I really wondered if a character had struck at another, but it was always eyes lashing out with rage, in the middle of a paragraph and then the conversation just goes on. I lost the thread of the plot pretty dramatically, and I found the main pairing dull. I really don't think YA is for me.

Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky - I loved this book after five pages and I never stopped loving it. Charles is the consummate valet, the gentleman's gentlerobot, trying to maintain standards as he is thrust outside the civilized atmosphere of the high tech manor where he takes care of his master. Each section of his adventures alluded to famous writers' works, taking ideas sideways and upside down like Tchaikovsky does so well, and reworking them into something fresh. The book is post apocalyptic in the sense that the world has fallen apart but not in the sense that the story of humanity is over. I feel like this is in conversation with Remains of the Day, as Charles really does believe in the value or service to his master, and later, extends that to humans. This book asks clearly, who matters? Who gets to decide? It answers both with a resounding: YOU.

Reading Currently
A Hat Full of Sky by Terry Pratchett - also a resounding demand that we treat people seriously and with care. I would love to do a book club that holds Excellent Women up to some of Pratchett's witches. I think it would bear examining.

My Favorite Thing is Monsters Vol 2 – Emil Ferris

What I'll Read Next

Trying to get my Hugo nominees done, at least the novels. So Alien Clay and Ministry of Time

In personal news, I have a personal trip planned, and one thing led to another, so I am back on Pokemon Go! I haven’t touched it since basically 2016, but I just went on a walk and fought Team Rocket – I think I’m sold. Once I figured out how to turn off All The Sounds so that I can fling Pokeballs while listening to my audiobook, it was real hit.

What I’ve Read

The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison (narrated by Liam Gerrard) – This book is like a bento box – you get a few bites of everything, all complementary. Some murder investigation, some magic rituals, some family strife, some opera, some queer people … all delightful. This is easily the third time I have read this and while I went for the audiobook and was not paying strict attention, there were so many points where I had to stop and let the words hit me. The Goblin Emperor is a great introduction to the life of the court of this world’s nobility – this is a fantastic examination of the world of the working class people who live and make their lives here. Both books are from the perspective of a person who wants to make the world better and kinder, and is actively working to do that, to the extent of their means.

Oddbodies by Toffeecape - https://archiveofourown.org/works/5209922 – Hannibal TV AU with Sentinels! Will Graham is not quite a Sentinel, Hannibal Lector is not actually his guide…. But! It’s one of those stories that I really enjoy, where Will figures out that Hannibal is, ya know, eating people, and just has to sit on that knowledge for a while. The plot of things proceeds differently that the show and probably for the best – these people are having more sex and more fun over all. A happy ending!

What I’m Reading

Moon Blooded Breeding Clinic - C M Nacosta -audiobook.- 25%- Sigh. I needed an audiobook that I didn't care much about to fall asleep to. But I forgot that the real reason I bounced off Nacosta's work is that these romances have more than a little touch of racist tropes, retooled with fantasy species. Not an unknown issue for me with this genre but like, play it off a little better, please. Also, one of the voice actors is annoyingly rough - reading each sentence like it's the first time thru, with very bland intonation. I think I'm bailing on it.

Style: Toward Clarity and Grace by Joseph Williams – 1981 book on writing clearly. 20% - No movement but not because I didn’t like it, just have been on audiobooks.

Immortal Dark by Tigest Girma – 50% - Audiobook - A habesha-focused YA vampire novel. I will admit, I am finding some of this writing style a bit grating.

My Favorite Thing is Monsters Vol 2 – Emil Ferris – 50ish% - Oh, this book is hard. Each of the two volumes has a prolonged section in the voice of a dead woman, talking about how she survived the Holocaust and what it cost her, and by god, the sections set in 1960s Chicago somehow are not that much easier. It’s definitely profound, I am just not sure if it coheres.

Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky – 5% - I have known robot valet Charles for 5 minutes but if anything bad happens to him, I will fly to England and beat Tchaikovsky’s mailbox with a bat.

What I’ll Read Next

The Deep Dark
Track Changes
Alien Clay
Service Model
Monstress, Vol. 9: The Possessed
Navigational Entanglements
The Butcher of the Forest
The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain
Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right
The Brides of High Hill
The Tusks of Extinction
“Charting the Cliff: An Investigation into the 2023 Hugo Nomination Statistics”
“Signs of Life”
“By Salt, By Sea, By Light of Stars”
“The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video”
“Loneliness Universe”
“The 2023 Hugo Awards: A Report on Censorship and Exclusion”
“The Four Sisters Overlooking the Sea”
“Lake of Souls”

What I’ve Read

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison – easily my fifth time thru this book. Love how this just unfolds slowly. Maia is such an isolated character but with a deeply firm sense of justice and care for his actual subjects – it’s a bit nonsense as a political system (an emperor from fucking nowhere with no real power base getting the throne and it not turning into a bloody mess? Unlikely!) but as personal journey, it was great. Read it with a book group for the first time and lovely to talk about it with a group.

Someone You Can Build a Nest In – (2024) by John Wiswell – This is a good book! Experimentally gooey and weird first person monster narration, solid set of social and romantic conundrums, solid emotional base, and the story unfolds at a good pace. Overall, a great first novel! At one point, the gooey monster uses the word “allosexual” in their mental narration and I had to put the book down for a minute, but, well, it’s otherwise a pretty good romance and a pretty good adventure. I think I’ll read John Wiswell again. He’s doing interesting things with body horror that is also just… a nonhuman person navigating disability in a convincing way. Some rosemary slander.

Excellent Women by Barbara Pym – (1952) I picked this up at the suggestion of a friend whose favorite writer is Max Beerbohm, which I think tells you something about her general reading – usually she’s reading much earlier books than me! This book is one of those English novels of manners that feels like a comedy poised on the knife edge of tragedy – if the author were any less adept at navigating social folly, it could veer into a giant mess, but she keeps dancing on that edge, and I kept laughing! Our main character is Mildred Lathbury, shabby and respectable and a reliable help to her community, observing the world of the more dramatic and more careless married neighbors who somehow keep involving her in their nonsense. Mildred is too sensible and too English to let herself get totally swept up in their drama, but is nevertheless too kind and too accustomed to ‘being useful’ for other people to totally divorce herself from the awkwardness of it all. The end of the novel reads as a bit wistful to me – Mildred seems to be veering towards an existential crisis, wondering if there’s every going to be more to her life than being one of the ‘excellent women’ whose time is at the disposal of every social need but their own happiness. I *think* from context that the end of the novel, where she agrees to help a pushy academic edits his papers, is meant to be a step towards romance and a more fulfilling life, but it’s 1952 and it’s England and Mildred is too smart to not see the trap she’s in and too accustomed to it to balk and run. It’s not quite Austen but it’s not not Austen.

What I’m Reading

Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison – 50% - Audiobook – A Re-read inspired by the Goblin Emperor. This novel follows an investigator introduced in Goblin Emperor in his life after that case. It’s a great example of mystery plots and worldbuilding working in tandem – not every petitioner who comes to Thara Celehar for help asks for help with a mystery that is mysterious to them. Sometimes the case is an opportunity for Addison to show the reader something about the world that is totally everyday for them and wildly strange to us – allowing the story to unfold the world as a mystery itself!

Style: Toward Clarity and Grace by Joseph Williams – 1981 book on writing clearly. 20%

Immortal Dark by Tigest Girma – 25% - Audiobook - A habesha-focused YA vampire novel. I’m having a little trouble squaring the idea that vampires formed a pact with humans to limit their predation and the end result was… a university? But the book comes highly recommended and I do like the main character, Kidane Adane (whose name is roughly Amharic for “hero protagonist”). She’s a bit stressful at this point in the narrative, vengeful and grieving by turns.

My Favorite Thing is Monsters Vol 2 – Emil Ferris – 30% - I gave up on the hard copy of this book because it’s a behemoth and I simply cannot hold it comfortably.

Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky – 5% - I have known robot valet Charles for 5 minutes but if anything bad happens to him, I will fly to England and beat Tchaikovsky’s mailbox with a bat. This is, oddly, a nice companion to Excellent Woman by providing a POV character who is actually completely devoted to taking care of a single man, as a programmed robot, instead of a coerced woman. Charles is having a bit of a crisis.

What I’ll Read Next

The Deep Dark
Track Changes
Alien Clay
Monstress, Vol. 9: The Possessed
Navigational Entanglements
The Butcher of the Forest
The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain
Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right
The Brides of High Hill
The Tusks of Extinction
“Charting the Cliff: An Investigation into the 2023 Hugo Nomination Statistics”
“Signs of Life”
“By Salt, By Sea, By Light of Stars”
“The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video”
“Loneliness Universe”
“The 2023 Hugo Awards: A Report on Censorship and Exclusion”
“The Four Sisters Overlooking the Sea”
“Lake of Souls”