GraceCollection Cat Challenge

I wasn't sure about posting a reading list. I've never tracked the books I've read in a public forum; I've only begun tracking my reading at all in the past few months.

Since I have such little experience with tracking my reading, I'm not sure how much reading I'll be able to complete. So I figured I would track month-by-month, and if I drop from trying 4 CATs/KITs down to completing only 1, I won't have a bunch of unused posts, and if I start out trying 4 CATs/KITs and find that I can complete them all, I don't have to worry about how to combine them or adding them at the end.

I'm new to the Category Challenge in general and only joined LT in May or June of this year. I'm hosting CultureCAT this year, and hosting a month each for CultureCAT and NatureKIT, which will be my first priorities for reading in the upcoming year. I'm also planning to try BingoDOG, but will try my best to hit those squares out of books I'm already reading for a CAT/KIT.

January Reading:

CultureCAT: Featuring Migration or Displacement Lost Children Archive
NatureKIT: Sheep & Shepherding Wisdom of Sheep (ebook)
RandomKIT: Eat, Drink, & Be Merry Eats, Shoots & Leaves
SF&FKIT: Cosy Fantasy Mooncakes (ebook)
ScaredyKIT: Diverse Perspectives Harrow the Ninth (ebook)
ColourCAT: Green Green Grass, Running Water
AlphaKIT: O Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD
CoverKIT: Let's Have a Tea Party Mooncakes (ebook)
AlphaKIT: S Wisdom of Sheep (ebook)
MysteryKIT: Winter Mysteries Harrow the Ninth (ebook)

February Reading:

CultureCAT: Finno-Urgic Peoples: More than Mythology
NatureKIT: Forests, Farms & Grasslands: The Girl Who Drank the Moon
RandomKIT: Playing with Time: Blink
ScaredyKIT: Haunted places: Haunting of Hill House
AlphaKIT: L: Brain Hacks
SF&FKIT: The Art of SFF: The Girl Who Drank the Moon
ColourCAT: Gold: Haunting of Hill House
AlphaKIT: G: Blink by Malcolm Gladwell and The Girl Who Drank the Moon
CoverKIT: Tree on Cover: Haunting of Hill House

Did not finish:
MysteryKIT: Vintage Mysteries

March Reading:

CultureCAT: Neurodiverse Voices: Animals in Translation
NatureKIT: Landscapes: This One Summer
RandomKIT: Wishes: What I Wish I'd Known When I Was Young
SF&FKIT: Magical Realism: Welcome to Night Vale
ScaredyKIT: Real life monsters/true crime: Rabbit Hole
ColourCAT: Pink: Welcome to Night Vale
AlphaKIT: A: Animals in Translation, What I Wish I'd Known When I Was Young: The Art and Science of Growing Up,
AlphaKIT: U: Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior & What I Wish I'd Known When I Was Young: The Art and Science of Growing Up
CoverKIT: Farm Animals: Animals in Translation & Rabbit Hole
MysteryKIT: Spies, Lies, & Ciphers: Rabbit Hole

April Reading:

CultureCAT: TTRPG & LARPers: Tabletop Role-Playing Therapy
NatureKIT: Flying Creatures: Bats Sing, Mice Giggle: The Surprising Science of Animals' Inner Lives & The Hopes of Snakes: And Other Tales from the Urban Landscape
RandomKIT: Prime: Because You'll Never Meet Me & Scythe
SF&FKIT: Women Authors: My Diary from the Edge of the World
ScaredyKIT: Spiders, Insects, and Reptilia: The Hopes of Snakes & Spiders: Learning to Love Them & Snakes in Myth, Magic, and History
ColourCAT: Brown: The Girl I Was, Am, and Never Will Be: A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption
AlphaKIT: K: Bats Sing, Mice Giggle: The Surprising Science of Animals' Inner Lives & The Skeptic's Guide to the Paranormal
AlphaKIT: E: Simon Sort of Says & My Diary from the Edge of the World
CoverKIT: Road: My Diary from the Edge of the World
MysteryKIT: Paranormal Mystery: The Skeptic's Guide to the Paranormal

NonCAT BingoDOG: Sun on Cover or in Title: The Sun is Also a Star

May Reading:

CultureCAT: Punk/Metal: Pretty in Punk: Girls' Gender Resistance in a Boys' Subculture
NatureKIT: Plants, Fungi, etc.: Braiding Sweetgrass
RandomKIT: Punctuation: Your Knowledge or Your Life?
SF&FKIT: Authors of Global South: The Three-Body Problem
ScaredyKIT: Out in the Wild: Wilderness Survival: Staying Alive Until Help Arrives
ColourCAT: Red: Postcolonial Love Poem
AlphaKIT: I: Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants
AlphaKIT: D: Postcolonial Love Poem
CoverKIT: More than One Element: The Three-Body Problem
MysteryKIT: Not My Country: The Three-Body Problem

June Reading:

CultureCAT: Aboriginal Australia: Sand Talk
NatureKIT: Oceans and Rivers: The Soul of an Octopus
RandomKIT: Invasion: Ash and Quill
SF&FKIT: Anthologies and Collections: The Moment of Tenderness
ScaredyKIT: Graphic Novels: My Favorite Thing is Monsters
ColourCAT: Yellow: The Soul of an Octopus and Cool Engineering and The Construction of Shadows and The Happiness Project
AlphaKIT: C: Cool Engineering and The Construction of Shadows
AlphaKIT: Q: Ash and Quill
CoverKIT: Something with Wheels: Cool Engineering
MysteryKIT: LGBT+: My Favorite Thing is Monsters

July Reading:

CultureCAT: India: The Immortal King Rao
NatureKIT: Inner Lives of Animals: Beyond Words
RandomKIT: The Hills are Alive: Fun Home
SF&FKIT: Alternative History: The Immortal King Rao
ScaredyKIT: Ghosts: The Haunted Attic
ColourCAT: White: The Immortal King Rao
AlphaKIT: W: Beyond Words
AlphaKIT: T: Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel
CoverKIT: Fruit on the Cover: The Art of Frugal Hedonism
MysteryKIT: Series Sleuths: The Haunted Attic

August Reading:

CultureCAT: Free space: Nona the Ninth
NatureKIT: Weather and Climate: The Lost Art of Reading Nature's Signs
RandomKIT: A Writer: A Hero Returned
SF&FKIT: Space: Nona the Ninth
ScaredyKIT: Female authors: Nona the Ninth
ColourCAT: Grey: The Book of Hope
AlphaKIT: N: Nona the Ninth
AlphaKIT: J: The Book of Hope
CoverKIT: Photography: The Book of Hope

Did not finish:
MysteryKIT: Legal thrillers

September Reading:

CultureCAT: Working Class Cultures: Stone Butch Blues
NatureKIT: Urban Nature: Relevant excerpt from 99% Invisible City
ColourCAT: Silver: No Place Like
AlphaKIT: B: Stone Butch Blues
AlphaKIT: M: Shut Me Up In Prose
CoverKIT: Cats & Dogs: No Place Like

Did not finish:
RandomKIT: Cardinal Direction in Title
SF&FKIT: Back to School SFF
ScaredyKIT: Stephen King and family
MysteryKIT: Silver age mysteries

October Reading:

CultureCAT: Non-Mainstream Religious Subcultures: Educated
NatureKIT: Endangered Species: When Elephants Weep
ScaredyKIT: Gothic: The Turn of the Screw
ColourCAT: Black: Educated
CoverCAT: Will it fit in your pocket?: Educated

Did not finish:
RandomKIT: When I Was a Child
SF&FKIT: Mysterious Artifacts
AlphaKIT: F
AlphaKIT: P
MysteryKIT: Police Procedural

November Reading:

CultureCAT: Indigenous North America: Tending the Wild
NatureKIT: The Effect of Nature on Human Beings: Tending the Wild
RandomKIT: Villains: Fox
SF&FKIT: The Day After: Hollow Kingdom
ScaredyKIT: Psychological Thrillers: The Last House on Needless Street
ColourCAT: Blue: Fox
AlphaKIT: Y: The Origins of You
AlphaKIT: H: Hollow Kingdom and The Last House on Needless Street
CoverKIT: Celestial Objects: The Last House on Needless Street
MysteryKIT: Psychological Thrillers/Mystery: The Last House on Needless Street

December Reading:

CultureCAT: LGBTQ+: Ink Blood Sister Scribe
NatureKIT: Wild Card: Eve
RandomKIT: Beginnings and Endings: Eve
SF&FKIT: Disabled Main Character: Every Heart a Doorway
ScaredyKIT: Your Favourite Trope: Every Heart a Doorway
ColourCAT: Purple: Ink Blood Sister Scribe
AlphaKIT: V: A Room of One's Own
AlphaKIT: R: A Room of One's Own
CoverKIT: Something You'd Like as a Gift: Every Heart a Doorway
MysteryKIT: Cosy Mysteries: Ink Blood Sister Scribe

Year-Long Categories:

Trying to read more female authors overall. (54/68)

I'm hoping to strike a balance, if I can manage, between fiction and non-fiction. (34 v. 34) I've oscillated, in my life, between reading almost exclusively fiction and almost exclusively non-fiction. 2024 was mostly a non-fiction year, but in these last few months I've been working up an appetite for fiction again. With this in mind, I'm going to attempt to read about half non-fiction and half fiction (fiction including poetry, plays, etc in this instance) in any given month. But we will see how that goes.

Did not finish:
CultureCAT Bonus 1: South East Asia/Pacific Islander
CultureCAT Bonus 2: Wrongly Convicted People

BingoDOG:


I'm going to try not to count any book more than once on my card. We'll see how that goes.

1/Place You've Never Been: Green Grass, Running Water
2/'Library' or 'Thing' in Title: My Favorite Thing is Monsters, Books One & Two
3/Writing about Writers: short story 'The Foreign Agent' from The Moment of Tenderness
4/Oldest Book on Your TBR: Eve
6/Long Title: Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD
7/Features Adoption/Non-Traditional Family: The Girl Who Drank the Moon
8/Medical Topic: Tabletop Role-Playing Therapy
9/Sun on Cover/in Title: The Sun is Also a Star
10/Child main character: Simon Sort of Says
11/Newly in Public Domain: A Room of One's Own
12/Author Has Your/Family Member's First/Last Name: More Than Mythology
13/Read a CAT: Fox
15/Features a birth: The Wisdom of Sheep
16/Nonhuman Narrator: Hollow Kingdom
17/Features winged creature(s): Bats Sing, Mice Giggles
18/Profession in title: Blood Ink Sister Scribe
19/Travel: Lost Children Archive
21/Set in your favourite season: Mooncakes
22/Originally published in a language not your own: The Three-Body Problem
23/Hollywood!: Tending the Wild
24/Furniture on Cover: Every Heart a Doorway
25/Features fire: Scythe

Good luck with your challenge! I didn’t track my reading either until I joined LT, but I have found that writing a short recap helps me remember the books a little better.

You really jumped into the deep end! Good for you. Remember all this is for fun and for help in exploring the world of books. If something isn't working for you, dump it. Try something else instead.

All that said, I find monthly tracking by far the easiest way to track reading.

Good luck and enjoy. And Welcome.

Good luck with your challenges. I've done both monthly and categories over the years and as long as I'm reading, it all works out. Looking forward to seeing what you read in 2025.

Good reading in 2025.

The thing I like about the Category Challenge is that you can customize it to be whatever you want! Absolutely drop anything that stops being fun, and there’s no obligation to keep posting if you don’t want to (though I always enjoy seeing what other folks are reading and how they like it).

Enjoy your 2025 reading!

>16 MissWatson: Thanks! I have been doing a private log similar to that for a few months, but not long enough that I think I've got a good handle on how many books I could get through in a month. So we'll find out together!

>17 majkia: Thank you! 'Moderation' is a bit of a dirty word for me. I'll cut back if I have to, but I'm going to start strong and see where I go!

>18 dudes22: Thank you! I am too!

>19 mnleona: Thanks. Good reading to you as well!

>20 Charon07: I'll do well to keep that in mind. Sometimes I keep at stuff out of a sense of obligation even when it stops being fun. Hopefully no reading can stop being fun, though, right? Right??

>21 DeltaQueen50: Thanks, you too.

Welcome to the Challenge. I only listed books my first year and am now totally invested in certain challenges and posting short opinions on my read books.

>23 lowelibrary: Thank you! I hope to become invested in category challenges.

Wishing you a great reading year in 2025, and I hope you will find the category challenge to be both useful and fun!

Welcome, and happy reading in 2025!

Happy New Year and good luck with your reading.

Enjoy your 2025 reading!

I'll be following along. Wishing you a great year of reading.

Thank you all!

1. Lost Children Archive (summary/review crossposted to relevant pages)



This book features a non-traditional family (woman and her daughter, her husband and his son) on their move/road trip from New York City to Apacheria, Arizona. They both do sound documentation, and while she is chasing a story on refugee children and their uncertain futures, he is chasing a story about the surrender, removal, and deaths of the last Apaches to have lived outside the United States government and their erased pasts. A unique feature of this book is that the main four characters' names are never used. Side characters get names, but the main four are 'me,' 'my husband,' 'the boy,' 'the girl,' or later (I consider this minor spoilers; I'm someone who really prefers to go into books 'blind' but this certainly doesn't spoil the end of the book) the boy becomes the narrator and refers to 'Ma' or 'Mama,' 'Pa' or 'Papa,' 'me,' and 'you' or a nickname for the girl.

There were a few moments that got under my skin. At one point, the family all give each other 'warrior names' based on the father's research on the Apache. With a little more research, surely he could have figured out how giving one another 'Indian names' was a racist move. There was also a pervasive idea, unfortunately very common, that the historical dead indigenous people were 'the last of something,' or 'the last of their kind,' as if those indigenous to any area (it doesn't just happen in the States but is a pervasive idea about people indigenous to nearly every place) have all died out or moved away or disappeared into thin air. There are multiple bands of Apache that are not only still alive, but have their own websites which can be found with a simple google search.

Despite this, I still found the story very engaging. At times I was hanging onto every word. It raised interesting questions about the idea of documenting or archiving anything, about what gets put into the finished product and what is cut, who gets to tell the stories and how, and what happens when no one knows the answers. It also felt (to me at least, who has never been to these locations) like an exploration of small-town Americana through a family that is navigating a rocky point in their interpersonal relationships.

I counted this book for BingoDOG Travel.

2. The Wisdom of Sheep



I suppose the subtitle should have clued me in that this wasn't a scientific enquiry on the psychology of sheep. It was a collection of observations, quotes, and sometimes political rants from a family farmer, and probably less than half the book was about sheep. I was rather disappointed by the lack of cohesion in the book overall; many of the anecdotes seemed to end abruptly, mention details that seemed irrelevant, or veer into non-sequitur, and I couldn't figure out the logic in the order of the entries, which skipped around in chronology, tone, and subject. The politics, when they were brought up, were sometimes contradictory, and often so heavy-handed I could barely get through them, even when I agreed with the author, and the pseudoscience that occasionally graced the pages, such as sending unpasteurised milk to a recipient who had serious autoimmune conditions because 'she needs stress-free foods,' shocked and disquieted me.

However, the prose of the author was incredibly vivid and evocative, at times even poetic. Most, though certainly not all, of the entries were about cosy, down-to-earth, honest farm living. I did learn some things about sheep (and cows). The book is divided into very short 'chapters,' the longest of which, in my edition, were perhaps four pages long, which made for perfect bite-sized reading, and the book overall was just a little over 200 pages, made considerably shorter by quotes, poems, or short entries which took up only half a page and were formatted with ample blank space.

I counted this book for BingoDOG Features a birth, as it feature many livestock births.

>32 GraceCollection: I’m still reading my sheep book for the NatureKIT. I hadn’t even thought about the birth of lambs for the BingoDOG. I may count mine for this square as well, and leave folks who look at the BingoDOG wiki in the future to wonder why there are so many sheep books for that square!

>33 Charon07: I think that's a wonderful idea! I hope you're enjoying your sheep read more than I enjoyed mine.

3. Mooncakes



This is a cute little graphic novel about a witch and a werewolf who were childhood friends and meet up again after some years apart, solve a mystery, foster a romance, etc. Despite the title and cover there was very little baking involved. This isn't a genre I'm familiar with so I don't have a huge vocabulary to describe it, but it was an adorable, cosy, autumnal magic adventure and I really loved it. I wish it had been longer, and there were some threads that I felt would have benefitted from being explored deeper, but overall I am very pleased with this read.

I counted this book for favourite season because it is very autumnal. I don't actually have a favourite season, but I do have a least favourite, and autumn follows that one immediately.

>35 GraceCollection: Oh, I love this one, too! And I think your vocabulary is perfectly chosen to describe it.

>35 GraceCollection: You got me with this one - unto The List it goes!

Me too. "Very Autumnal" gets my attention.

I'm glad that resonated with some people! I will have to look more into cosy fantasy. I enjoyed that book a lot.

Thank you for visiting my thread!

>32 GraceCollection: I think the author has also written a similar book about cows.
>35 GraceCollection: Mooncakes sounds adorable! I'm not a big fiction reader, but I do find myself drawn towards 'cosy' at the moment.

Figured I would hop on this trend, not sure where it started but have been seeing it on other people's CAT pages.

End-of-Year Meme - based on books I read in 2024

Describe yourself: Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses

Describe how you feel: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

Describe where you currently live: If I Stay

If you could go anywhere, where would you go: Island of the Blue Dolphins

Your favourite form of transportation is: The Raven: Soaring Through History, Legend, & Lore

Your favourite food is: Youngblood

Your favourite time of day is: The Midnight Library

Your best friend is: Side-Tracked Home Executives

You and your friends are: Ghost Cats

What’s the weather like: Inkspell

You fear: What Every Body is Saying

What is the best advice you have to give: How Your Child is Smart

Thought for the day: When Women Were Dragons

What is life for you: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

How you would like to die: Gideon the Ninth

Your soul’s present condition: Fledgling

What was 2024 like for you? The Art of Doing Nothing

What do you want from 2025? The Power

I think the weather question was hardest from the books I have read, but so was describing 2024!

>41 GraceCollection: Fun answers! I especially like the lycanthropy choice. :)

>42 christina_reads: Thank you! When I saw the first question I just knew I had to go with that one.

4. Eats, Shoots & Leaves



This was a nifty and witty little volume with a brief introduction to the history and correct usage of punctuation, filled with humour and cringe-inducing examples of what happens when punctuation is used incorrectly, left out, or added erroneously. As a certified stickler of grammar and punctuation, I rather enjoyed this delightful little book.

There was some interesting conjecture at the end of the book: it was published in 2003, when the internet was clearly starting to change our habits of grammar and punctuation, and the author laments what texts and emails have done to our literacy, and the tragedy that the internet has no editor. While I can agree on the last point, I have noticed that some of the trends she bemoans, such as using ellipses to excess... and to end thoughts... in emails... have already (mostly) faded out of fashion. Of course, I see cringe-inducing grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors on the internet daily, but in professional correspondence, I have been lucky enough to observe an acceptable level of literacy in the past decade or so.

Nonetheless, I really enjoyed this little book.

I considered counting this for 'writing about writers,' but it isn't really about writers, it's just about writing, so no bingo hits for this book.

5. Harrow the Ninth



Wow. I LOVED this book. What to say about it that doesn't spoil the ending of the last one? There was necromancy, bone magic, space travel, ghosts, action, horror, mystery (although this is not a 'traditional' mystery series where it opens on a murder or discovery of a body and then progresses as the detective(s) try to solve the murder, there still very much is mystery in this series to be had!), and very intriguing characters & character interactions. The main characters of this series are lesbians, if that sweetens the pot for anyone. If this description interests you, check out the first book (Gideon the Ninth) and be careful for spoilers!

I may go back and count this one as a BingoDOG if I feel I can't get the square otherwise, but it really is a major spoiler, so for now at least I'm not counting it as anything!

6. Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD



I had glanced through this one a few times but never sat down to read it all the way. This was a good book with lots of helpful tips, and I would definitely recommend it, although there were a few things I know I'd never do.

For example, the author reiterates a lot about getting rid of anything you aren't sure you'll need, never buying things in bulk, etc. I have always been someone who would 'rather have it and not need it, than need it and not have it', and while I recognise the need to tone that back in general, I'm never going to do exactly what she has prescribed here.

She also recommended going through your child's toys, clothing, etc and getting rid of things you don't think they'll miss, because they simply can't be asked to hold the attention required to determine for themselves if they need something or not. For anyone who wants to control their child's clutter, I would recommend purging after birthdays and holidays, and then storing those items somewhere kids can't see (top of your own closet, maybe) to see if they ask 'have you seen my...?' and if they don't miss it after six months or so, then I would take it to the charity shop or sell at a rummage sale. I'm a firm supporter of allowing children, even really little ones, at least some autonomy over their possessions.

Some of her more prudent tips, at least to me, include: open shelving, especially in closets, to reduce 'use it/wash it/buy it and then don't put it away' syndrome; storing things as close to the spot where they're used as possible, including buying duplicates if necessary of items like cleaning products, so that they're more likely to be put away; getting multiple laundry, recycling, and garbage bins, and putting them in every spot where those things begin to pile up; and creating 'staging areas' where the complex art project can sit for months without being in anyone's way, where things can sit while they await being moved to the correct location, and where stuff like purses and keys can be easily dumped without interrupting anyone else. She puts emphasis on systems that might work and look a little ugly (open shelving with towels and toiletries in the washroom) over systems that look perfect but which can't be maintained, and on reducing the amount of steps it takes to perform tasks and clean up afterwards.

I counted this one for BingoDOG Long Title.

7. Green Grass, Running Water



This was a wonderful book. In a non-linear style, King masterfully weaves indigenous oral tradition, Western canon, and the lives of five realistic, dynamic Blackfoot characters with his own wry brand of humour. The book sort of hits the ground running, so at times I got some characters mixed up, but I was sad to see this book end. The unique narrative structure really pulled at me: we would have a scene in the present, which would remind a character of something in the past, and at the end of the scene from the past, we would get an echo of the action happening back in the present. My description doesn't do it much justice; it isn't as confusing as it seems when you actually read the book. Catching cultural references or references to small details from earlier in the book, and seeing them all 'pay off' eventually, made this book a real treasure. I may have to revisit it another time.

I counted this one for BingoDOG Place You've Never Been, as most of the story takes place in Alberta, Canada.

January Review:

Books read: 7
CATs read: 9/9
CultureCAT: Featuring Migration or Displacement
NatureKIT: Sheep & Shepherding
RandomKIT: Eat, Drink, & Be Merry
SF&FKIT: Cosy Fantasy
ScaredyKIT: Diverse Perspectives
ColourCAT: Green
AlphaKIT: S & O
CoverKIT: Let's Have a Tea Party
MysteryKIT: Winter Mysteries
BingoDOGS: 5
Female authors: 6/7
Fiction vs. Non-Fiction: 4 vs. 3

>48 GraceCollection: Nice list. You were busy.

>49 mnleona: Thank you! Unfortunately, my work around here is ramping up. We'll see how many books I get to read this month.

Finally finished my last read for January (>47 GraceCollection:)! It was a pleasure, but I struggled to find the time to read. I hope I'm not this busy for all of February, or else I might not hit all my CATS/KITS.

I found one perfect book on my shelf that hit almost everything: City of Gold and Lead
(check out THIS cover: https://pics.cdn.librarything.com/picsizes/12/27/12272507-b-h635-w450-pv25_596e7... )
But alas, it was not to be. It's the second in a series, and with so many books on the TBR already, I didn't want to commit to two books from a new series in one month.

>51 GraceCollection: Oh my goodness, I remember a TV adaptation of The Tripods when I was a child and although I never watched it, even the trailers were terrifying! As it was the 1970s I'm sure watching it now would be all about looking out for the wobbly sets and daft special effects, but as a gold-plated wimp I'm not going to risk it! :D

>52 Jackie_K: Oh! I'd never heard of a TV show! I didn't realise the series was so popular. Have you ever read it?

8. More Than Mythology



This was actually a collection of articles adapted from an academic conference on the same topic, so each chapter was written by a different person about something different. Some of the articles talked about the Finnish and the Saami or the Finnish and the Karelian, but some were just about your everyday Norse mythology (Oðinn, Þor, & co.) Perspectives included Finnish linguistics/literature, Viking grave archeology, and early Christian proselytism, so there really was a little bit of everything.

It wasn't quite what I had expected from the description, but it was interesting and I did learn a lot. I skipped the last two chapters as, at a glance, they didn't seem to address Finno-Urgic culture/mythology. My favourite chapter was 'Gender, Sexuality, and the Supranormal', which discussed, in part, magic that women were believed to possess to protect their families and livestock and to curse others.

That chapter was written by a Laura Stark, and one of my favourite aunts is named Laura, so I'm counting it for the 'same first/last name as you or a family member' BingoDOG.

Seeing as each chapter had a different author, and not all of them were women (though some were, and so was one of 2 editors), I'm going to be counting this as half a book on my 'read more female authors' yearlong goal.

All that said, the language was very academic, so I'm switching to a much easier book for forests, farms, and fields. Like taking a little biscuit after you've had a large, rich meal when everyone else is going for the decadent chocolate cake. I need something light and small. Previously I was planning to read Prodigal Summer; I'm switching to the juvenile fiction The Girl Who Drank the Moon, which I have heard only good things about since it won that Newbery.

9. The Girl Who Drank the Moon



I really enjoyed this fun children's fantasy adventure about the power of love, stories, and the moon. The traditional 'witch demands a baby as sacrifice' gets a sort of twist here — the witch picking up these babies has no idea why they are winding up in the woods, only when they are abandoned so that she can save them and usher them into new, loving families on the other side of the forest. The journey is treacherous, so she feeds the babies starlight when she runs out of milk. Only, one night, she accidentally feeds a baby moonlight, and the magic of that moonlight turns Luna into a witch herself.

Without offering a cheap summary of the rest of the book, this was an engaging fantasy even for an adult to read, and taught some moving and important lessons — about grief as love, about love as magic, about evil not as an inborn trait but as misplaced sorrow, about what it means to grow up — but all of it without the kind of condescension you see in a book that is trying too hard to teach children lessons.

One thing I really loved about this book was the way it portrayed adoption. Adoption in fiction, especially in fiction that isn't really trying to make a point about adoption but simply features it as a byproduct of other tropes (especially in fantasy as a genre), often has a point about 'real parents'/'real family', such as 'we are your real family because we're the ones who took you in and raised you,' or the alternative but no less hurtful 'you're magic because your real parent(s) were the most powerful wizards the galaxy has ever seen/gods/superhuman/etc.' Even conversations in real life about adoption often hedge, implicitly or explicitly, on the adoptee 'choosing a side' to love and be a part of at the exclusion of the other. I didn't find that in this book. Over and over again, the main character affirms that being reunited with her mother gives her additional family, not alternative family — 'My love isn't divided. It is multiplied.'

Although this book could have fit in many BingoDOG spaces (child main character, features a winged creature, features fire), because of this, I'm counting it firmly in 'features adoption/non-traditional family'.

>56 GraceCollection: I *adore* this book and I'm always happy to see when others love it, too! All of Barnhill's books are amazing.

>56 GraceCollection: This book sounds like something I would enjoy a lot. Taking a BB for it.

>57 scaifea: I may have to read more of her work, then. This is the kind of book I wish I could have read as a little girl, but I'm glad I found it eventually nonetheless!

10. Blink



If you're not someone who already reads non-fiction for fun, I highly recommend giving Gladwell a try sometime. I still think Outliers is my favourite of his. His are a light read, highly approachable, and don't require any high level knowledge of any particular field. Blink was no exception. This book mostly discusses 'thin-slicing', the way our unconscious mind breaks down information in the 'blink of an eye' and reaches conclusions so fast that our conscious mind doesn't know how we got there — often we can only describe a 'gut feeling' or a 'sudden insight'. There are ways these impressions can help us, such as when we can tell how someone really feels about us, or when an art critic can spot a fake, but there are also times these impressions hurt us, such as the U.S. electing a political figure because he 'looks like a president' or conductors not hiring women for orchestras until a screen prevents them from seeing who's playing.

I found the overall book very interesting and enjoyable, although I would warn that the last chapter (before the conclusion) features a very detailed account of a police killing of an unarmed Black man. I thought this chapter came down a little too much on the side of police officers who executed an unarmed citizen, but I did find important the points brought up about how unconscious racial bias proliferates (and how it can be countered!) as well as methods that (some) U.S. police departments are using to reduce police brutality overall.

Most of one chapter (and some of the afterword) was about war and 'war games', and I have to admit that I found these parts pretty hard to get through. War, generally speaking, bores me to tears. There were descriptions of battles and strategies that were just a slough for me. It wasn't bad enough that I skipped those parts, or stopped reading, but I was glad when they were over.

The other part that bugged me: In one chapter, Gladwell discusses some research on an autistic man, and how his brain doesn't process emotions on faces the same way a non-autistic brain does. This is fair enough. He mentions how, under extreme stress, there are parts of a situation that any brain ignores; it's in survival mode. One of the things the brain ignores, is processing emotions on people's faces. Makes sense. So, for the rest of the book, he calls this high-stress mode on the brain 'temporary autism', including in reference to the police officers who killed an unarmed citizen. This is what I had a problem with, and it happened so many times over the rest of the book. It left a bad taste in my mouth.

Other than those things, I really enjoyed this book, I'm glad I read it, and I learned a lot. I still need to read his first book, The Tipping Point, and I think he has a new one out as well.

>60 GraceCollection: Thanks for this review! Malcolm Gladwell is on my list to try eventually, but I'm not a big nonfiction reader, so I'll have to really motivate myself!

>61 christina_reads: Do let me know what you think when you get around to reading him!

>57 scaifea: I realised going through the fantasy section that Kelly Barnhill wrote When Women Were Dragons, which I loved reading last year! I just hadn't remembered her name. I definitely need to look into her other stuff.

>63 GraceCollection: And that's one of hers I *haven't* read yet - something to look forward to!

11. Haunting of Hill House



I have to disclose something: while I love horror as a genre, it doesn't scare me. Since I was maybe 12 or so, I have been unable to turn off that voice in my head that tells me, 'This isn't real; it's only a book/film/video game; it's all fictional and you're not in any danger.' While I certainly would enjoy being scared, this doesn't stop me from enjoying horror, although I cannot use as a factor in rating horror whether or not it scared me, as the answer is always, 'no'. So, no, Haunting of Hill House did not frighten me.

But, oh! the characters! I loved Eleanor and Theodora most of all, but how compelling I found the characters in general! The shifting dynamics and witty dialogue, in turns affectionate and pointed, really endeared me to this story. Poor Eleanor, such a lonely thing, so self-critical and insecure. In a way, the house giving her a sense of belonging was almost a relief instead of a tragedy. The slow, subtle march towards the inevitable conclusion had me on the edge of my seat to the end of the book.

I have seen the stage play adaptation of the book, which did not do the story justice but which I might appreciate more now, having known the source material. I have also seen the Netflix adaptation; there are elements of the series which reference the book, and echoes of the story within, (I may revisit it now, having read the book,) but it isn't truly an adaptation of the story. That isn't bad, necessarily, as from what I hear the films which did adapt the story ended up terribly, but it really is more of an original work that pays homage to Hill House rather than an adaptation of Jackson's book.

I can see why this book is a classic, but don't let that put you off — it is a very approachable work for a modern audience. I may have to reread this one.

A thumb-worthy review!

>66 mstrust: Thank you!!

12. Brain Hacks: Life-Changing Strategies to Improve Executive Functioning



Although I would definitely recommend this book to those with ADHD, the author makes a point to mention that executive functions are skills everybody has and that anybody can struggle with them or benefit from improving them. She groups executive functions into 5 categories:
• focus & attention
• planning & organization
• cognitive flexibility
• emotional regulation
• impulse control

She emphasizes that these are all skills which can be improved with practice, and gives a little quiz to help narrow down which skills you struggle most with and which may be your strengths, then breaks down each category, describing the skill and how it affects someone's daily life and giving exercises and journal prompts to help improve each individual skill. Some of these tips might be common sense for some (it's harder to focus on your work if you're on your phone so maybe leave it in the next room) but, as the saying goes, 'common sense isn't all that common,' and sometimes we need an external source to point out things we can't see ourselves, and what's more, there were plenty of great tips and tricks I wasn't familiar with already.

The book was a quick read, and I think I'll be going back over some of these tips for a long time.

February Review:

Books read: 5
CATs read: 8/9
CultureCAT: Finno-Urgic Peoples
NatureKIT: Forests, Farms & Grasslands
RandomKIT: Playing with Time
SF&FKIT: The Art of SFF
ScaredyKIT: Haunted Places
ColourCAT: Gold
AlphaKIT: L & G
CoverKIT: Tree on Cover
Did not finish:
MysteryKIT: Vintage Mysteries
BingoDOGS: 2
Female authors: 3.5/5
Fiction vs. Non-Fiction: 2 vs. 3

13. This One Summer



This coming-of-age graphic novel follows a young teen on her family's annual vacation to a summer beach cabin, as she deals with family arguments, disagreements with a childhood friend, and witnessing the very public drama of the older teens who live in the area. It was a very fast read, and it was such a realistic depiction of being that age — trying desperately to be mature and be seen as mature whilst even those a few years older view you as a kid, having such a temper for no apparent reason, shifting your view on your parents — it would have been a nice book to read when I was 14 or so, to know that what I was going through was normal. The language the characters use was realistic, but at times so course I was very surprised it won so many awards. I expected the committees for these awards to be more judgemental of that sort of thing, I guess.

I'm not sure it would hold the attention of someone with more mature tastes, but I thought it was a very good coming-of-age book.

14. Animals in Translation



Overall, I really enjoyed this book. There was a nice balance between scientific study, personal experience, and educated conjecture that went into it, and I don't use the term conjecture negatively — when she is theorizing, Grandin is explicit about that fact, and uses her professional experience, scientific studies, or both to back up her theories, which are always interesting even if I don't always think they're true.

I do want to mention that some of the book predicates on the idea that autistic brains are closer to animal brains than 'normal human' brains are. The continued use of 'normal' to mean 'non-autistic' was a little grating to me, but might be more of a barrier to reading to some, so I want to mention that upfront. Furthermore, the idea that autistic brains are more animalistic than non-autistic brains has been used for a long time to dehumanize autistic people and justify abuse, so this book as a whole might be triggering to some on that basis, although it strongly advocates for treating even animals as complex individuals with social and emotional needs, so I don't think someone from the justifying-abuse-against-autistic-people crowd would enjoy this book.

This book is from 2005, so some of the science that a discussion or two relies on is outdated, notably the idea of an 'alpha wolf' or 'alpha dog' (based originally on research in unrelated adult wolves who were thrown in captivity together; more recent research shows natural wolf packs are family groups who occasionally adopt an outsider or two. There would be no reason to call a father or mother an 'alpha human', so current scientists in the field tend to refer to 'parent wolves' or 'breeding pairs' where they used to say 'alpha male and female').

Nonetheless, there is a large amount of the book I found new and interesting, like research into the connection between curiosity and fear, the difference between prey chase drive and aggression, and Grandin's theory that, since music is processed in the area of the brain previously thought to only deal with language, music may actually be a precursor to language in humans — and may be a form of language in some species of animals.

Perhaps most intriguing to me was the idea that the impact of the domestication of wolves into dogs had much more influence on our evolution as a species than previously thought. Many behaviours that separate us as a species from other primates, such as complex social hierarchies, group hunting, territorialism, and cooperative relationships with others that go beyond parent-child relationships, are all behaviours that we may have picked up from wolves. Furthermore, when animals are domesticated, they lose 10-30% of their brain matter, in the frontal lobes and similar areas, responsible for things like future planning and abstract thought — functions that humans take control over for domestic animals. However, around the time when humans first gave formal burials to their dogs, the human brain shrank about ten percent — primarily in the midbrain, in areas like the olfactory bulbs, or scent centers of the brain, which dogs may have taken over for us. Maybe dogs domesticated us into what we are just as much as we domesticated them.

15. Rabbit Hole



This story starts on the ten-year anniversary of the disappearance of our main character's sister, Angie, when Teddy was 16 and Angie was 18. On this anniversary, Teddy's father commits suicide. As she cleans out her father's office, which used to be Teddy and Angie's shared bedroom, Teddy finds the notes her father left behind as he continued to investigate Angie's disappearance — and stumbles upon 'true crime' communities on places like Reddit, and all the comments they have made about her, her sister, and their family.

I read for a while in the evenings, as the last thing I do before bed. This way I can get some progress done on my books, even when I'm very busy during the day. Usually this works out very well for me, but for this book I think it was a mistake. I did not find myself relaxed at all after reading this particular book. Generally, my heart was thumping and my mind was racing and I would stay awake for an additional hour or more.

I'm not a huge mystery reader, so others may have different experiences, but I found the reveals satisfying. Sometimes I would put the pieces together a few paragraphs before Teddy did, and sometimes I was totally surprised but could see all the clues in hindsight. I did cry a few times during this book!

Teddy is the kind of main character who is in a really tough situation and doesn't handle it perfectly. At times I felt that I might have done the same things she did, but at other times I felt her actions were completely unjustifiable and made her less sympathetic. If that is the sort of book that can't hold your interest, I would recommend skipping this one. I also want to note that it had a lot more graphic sex scenes than is to my taste.

However, overall this was a very gripping mystery, investigating ideas like who our family really are and who a tragedy belongs to.

I've gotten to where I reserve my horror/true crime for daytime reads because of what you described. But this one sounds good, so I'll add it to my wishlist!

>73 mstrust: The thing is, I don't usually have this issue with horror! I read Haunting of Hill House just fine in the evenings. But I'm not a huge mystery/suspense reader, so I guess now I know better! I hope you enjoy it, if/when you get around to it.

16. What I Wish I'd Known When I Was Young



This book was written by the hosts of the Times podcast 'What I Wish I'd Known', which I admit I haven't listened to, but from what I can gather, their podcast is very similar to this book.

Drawing on interviews from a huge amount of successful people, from sports stars to musicians to CEOs to spies and politicians from every side and all over the world, the authors discuss the traits that have helped these people succeed, and how they were forged by adversity in their early lives, such as deaths of parents and siblings, abuse, poverty, and disability. The authors do acknowledge that for every child who is made more empathetic, more ambitious, more creative by trauma and tragedy, there are more who are broken by these same experiences. However, this book is a message of hope for those who have been through adversity, and the parents, teachers, and carers of children who may face or already have gone through adversity.

This book ends with a chapter discussing the 'COVID generation', and how a worldwide pandemic may become the fuel for a new generation of great movers and shakers. While I did appreciate that hopeful note, I felt this chapter overall (in great contrast to the rest of the book, I might add) was very derisive and contemptuous, mentioning how great this new generation would be compared to 'generation snowflake' (yes, that is a quote directly from the book) and how no millennial could accomplish anything because they crumbled into sand at any hint of a challenge, due, of course, to the way they were raised without any sort of challenge or hardship (no mention or blame towards who was doing the raising, of course) as if millennials weren't coming of age just when 9/11 shook the world or during terrible economic hardships.

If you can read this book without the ending souring it for you (or skipping that chapter entirely, if you need), I would still recommend this book, as without that bit at the end it was very inspiring, not to mention interesting.

17. Welcome to Night Vale



The genre of this book was much the same as that of the podcast with the same title — which is difficult for me to describe. It's a sort of existential horror world setting, with an everything-is-normal, absurdist humour tone. I recommend checking out the first episode, or the most recent, to see what I mean and if this is the kind of tone that would appeal to you. I very much enjoy the narrative style and elements of Welcome to Night Vale, but if you don't, you probably won't be able to get through this book.

The subject of the book, however, is very different from the podcast. There are a few recurring characters from the podcast that feature in the plot, but this is a story about Jackie, a 19-year-old who has been 19 years old, running the pawn shop, exactly the same routine each day, for decades, and Diane, the single mother of a 15-year-old shapeshifter who pretty much never takes the same form twice. On the same day that Diane's missing coworker suddenly reappears, and no one but Diane seems to know who he is or that he ever worked there, a man (who Jackie can't seem to remember after he leaves) hands Jackie a slip of paper which she literally cannot put down — every time she tries to put it down, throw it away, or destroy it, it reappears in her hand. Thus, both women independently begin seeking the answers to their individual mysteries. Of course, they begin to run into each other, and of course, their mysteries are connected, and of course, they both change as people over the course of this story.

I think this is a great read for teenagers, parents of teenagers, or people who work with teenagers, as well as anyone who likes the specific genre/tone blend of Night Vale. It's an engaging story, and if you can't spot the metaphor from my summary, it's also about feeling stuck in the age between a teenager and an adult, the complicated relationship between teens and their parent(s), and the ever-shifting identities of teenagers as they try to determine who they are and who they want to be. The metaphors aren't heavy-handed, and as absurdist as the genre itself is, the characters and their growth feel real. I highly recommend this read.

March Review:

Books read: 5
CATs read: 9/9
CultureCAT: Neurodiverse Voices
NatureKIT: Landscapes
RandomKIT: Wishes
SF&FKIT: Magical Realism
ScaredyKIT: Real life monsters/true crime
ColourCAT: Pink
AlphaKIT: A & U
CoverKIT: Farm Animals
MysteryKIT: Spies, Lies, & Ciphers
BingoDOGS: 0
Female authors: 4/5
Fiction vs. Non-Fiction: 3 vs. 2

18. Bats Sing, Mice Giggle: The Surprising Science of Animals' Inner Lives



This book was divided into three main sections: Sensing, Surviving, and Socializing, and discusses the different senses, abilities, and social interactions that animals have. I found this book intensely interesting. There was a large amount of information on marine animals, from catfish covered in tastebuds to dolphins creating bubble rings to play with, but the book also discussed the monogamy of prairie voles, the adaptivity of coyotes and cockroaches, parrots that deceive, honeybees that count, long-distance elephant communication, and, of course, singing bats and giggling mice.

There were quite a few times that I wished the authors had discussed a topic more, but I think this is a great book for getting bite-sized pieces of interesting animal information!

>78 GraceCollection: I love books full of animal tidbits. Taking a BB.

>79 lowelibrary: Hope you enjoy! Can't wait to hear your thoughts.

19. Simon Sort of Says



Simon went viral. He was the only survivor of a school shooting. So, his family does the only thing they can do: move to the only place in the country with no television, no internet, no radio — the National Quiet Zone, where scientists are listening for signs of alien life. Simon gets a chance to start over in the only town that doesn't know his name.

This was a wonderful book with the perfect amount of humour, a lively cast of characters, and touching moments of growth. It treats Simon's PTSD with the gravity it deserves without wallowing in it — overall, it's actually a quite lighthearted book. I appreciated the clear research that into the representation — not only the main character's PTSD but also the representation of autism and of Filipine culture. This was a great, quick read.

Book bullet from @susanna.fraser

20. Tabletop Role-Playing Therapy: A Guide for the Clinician Game Master



The subtitle almost put me off, but I'm glad it didn't. I'm no clinician; I took Intro to Psych a million years ago and read a lot of non-fiction, but that's it. Nonetheless, I was interested in the topic so I took the plunge. On one side, this book covers what a TTRPG is in easy-to-understand terms, discusses a history of diversity concerns in the TTRPG world, some basics of set-up, and safety tools for interacting with potentially triggering topics in a trauma-informed, consent-based way. On the other side, the book briefly explains relevant procedure for a (US-based) therapy group: HIPPA, informed consent for treatment, documentation of progress (for those, like me, who are not clinicians, it is written easily enough to understand with no formal experience, and briefly enough to skip if you are not interested). In combining the two, this book really covers it all: relevant research (unfortunately, there hasn't been much), a list of some diagnoses that may seek TTRPG therapy and how it may help them, setting and achieving therapy goals through TTRPGs, a fictional example of how a TTRPG therapy session may go, and a step-by-step guide for a clinician on how to plan, set up, and carry out a TTRPG therapy session.

Overall, I found this very interesting and approachable, although I have to admit the section on specific diagnoses felt a little reductive. ADHD was summarized as poor impulse control, struggling with paying attention, and trouble sitting still. Those who have followed my reading may already know that I have ADHD, and 'utilizing sustained attention', sometimes to the detriment of other tasks like remembering to eat meals, is actually something I excel at. I would describe my primary challenge as executive dysfunction, which for some people can include impulse control, but is far more complex than that. I can't speak as to whether I have trouble sitting still, because that does not affect my quality of life the way other symptoms do, so I haven't noticed. I get that this isn't meant to replace the DSM-V, but I expected something a little more from a mental health practitioner than Trouble Sitting Still Disorder. Despite that, I recommend this book overall to anyone who would be interested in learning more about this interesting topic.

21. Because You'll Never Meet Me



Ollie lives in an isolated rural cabin because of his allergy to electricity, while Mortiz, who has a pacemaker, is bullied at school because he was born with no eyes. Although they could never meet in person, they begin exchanging letters.

Pretty much from the moment I started reading the first letter, I feel in love with these characters. They have such strong voices, and they are both funny and charming in their own ways. I would say the main focus of this heartwarming novel is the characters' growth, especially in the way they prompt each other to become better versions of themselves, but there is some action and intrigue (and a little teen romance) as well. The book does get a little sci-fi at parts, but I would describe it as very very light sci-fi; no laser blasters or spaceships. I was a big fan of this one.

22. The Skeptic's Guide to the Paranormal



Okay, I kind of cheated. I don't think MysteryKIT is really supposed to be non-fiction, but I needed more non-fiction reads for this month, so I sought out a non-fiction paranormal mystery. This book addressed many, from seances to UFOs to Nessie.

It was refreshing to hear from an actual skeptic and not just a denier. A denier will dismiss any claim out of hand which seems unbelievable or challenges a pre-existing worldview. A skeptic is curious and wants to know the truth, even if a bit doubtful about the veracity of a claim. A denier, upon hearing for the first time about the discovery of a live Coelacanth, a species thought to be 70 million years extinct, would cry hoax. A skeptic would investigate the claim — and discover that yes, that really did happen. The primary refrain of this book is, 'here are the things we know are hoaxes/observable scientific phenomena/misunderstandings, but wouldn't it be cool if...?' which is much more enjoyable to read, not to mention interesting, than a lot of so-called skeptics who lean heavily into the 'you are an idiot if you thought this might be true for even a second' tone.

Kelly has a refreshing amount of empathy for, for example, people who seek the services of those who claim to contact their dead loved ones or have answers about their futures, or people who have honestly convinced themselves they can use divining rods to find water or astrology to know themselves and others. Of course, this doesn't mean that she spares the facts and evidence regarding these beliefs. She uses historical records, documented magician tricks, optical physics, statistics, psychology, and more to come to about the same conclusion on each topic: so far, we are yet to find convincing evidence that this is true (although if it is, the amount of hoaxers and fraudsters are certainly making the search more difficult). She (correctly) points out that it's pretty much impossible in any circumstance to prove that something doesn't exist, although that doesn't mean it does.

I'll leave off with a quote I very much enjoyed: "Some believers accuse skeptics of having nothing left but a dull, cold, scientific world. I am left only with art, music, literature, theatre, the magnificence of nature, mathematics, the human spirit, sex, the cosmos, friendship, history, science, imagination, dreams, oceans, mountains, love and the wonder of birth. That'll do me."

23. The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be: A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption



When I saw this book's title, I knew I had to find a copy. I'm not sure what I expected, but I was a little surprised to find it in the fiction section. I suppose just a thread of speculation tilts truth into fiction, and further on in the book there are some sci-fi elements, but at its core this book is a memoir looking at the author's life as a Black adoptee, who was adopted and raised by white parents, reconnected with her white birthmother in her late teens, and discovered around that time that her Black father had died when she was a child; and at the same time, it is also a 'speculative memoir' of how her life may have been different if her birthmother had kept and raised her. In both iterations, there is a profound loneliness as the only Black person at the dinner table and as her white family (both adopted and birth) deny her identity and lived reality again and again.

Those following my reading may already know that adoption is a topic close to me. This book was very emotional and moving. Despite how I describe it, the story isn't entirely depressing; her family all loves her. The love just doesn't mean that they don't ever cause harm. It ends on a love-filled and hopeful note about her children connecting with her birthfather's family (mother and younger stepbrother) and contains a lot of resources in the back about adoption, and transracial adoption specifically, from an adoptee's point-of-view.

Of particular interest to me where the ephemera throughout the book: letters her birthmother wrote to her and her adoptive parents, photos of her and members of her family; correspondence with government agencies and hospitals, all photocopied into the book and then transcribed in the following pages.

24. The Hopes of Snakes: And Other Tales from the Urban Landscape



Only one out of this collection was about snakes, but oh well. If I have time in the next few days, I plan to read another book just about snakes.

This was a cosy and enjoyable collection of essays about nature, and our relationship to it, and occasionally about our relationship to each other and to religion. The essays were mostly about the animals that are generally most reviled; snakes, crows, vultures, coyotes, and the like. I didn't agree with the author on some things, but I suppose that's how essay collections go, and nonetheless I found the collection thought-provoking.

One thing I just didn't enjoy was the author's clear disgust and disapproval for human hunters. For an author who has done ecological research and has so much empathy for non-human hunters, the level of anger towards the idea of a (human) animal that kills a (non-human) animal for meat, at the same time often helping balance ecosystems where apex predators have been greatly reduced or even eliminated (and in some places controlling the populations of animals that are invasive and fundamentally unhealthy for the ecosystem), was baffling to me.

Nonetheless, I did enjoy this atmospheric collection of nature essays.

25. Scythe



Every problem humanity has ever had has been solved once we reach near-infinite computing power and a benevolent AI called the "Thunderhead" (instead of the Cloud — get it?) has taken over the concept of government. But now humanity has a new problem — having conquered natural (and unnatural) death, something has to be done about a growing population that can never die. The Scythes, who operate under no laws or authority but their own, remain the only true source of fear. And two teenagers who encounter this fear, are chosen to become apprentices. But who wants to take lives for a living?

I always enjoy the worlds Shusterman creates, and he always raises a lot of interesting and thought-provoking questions, even when I don't always agree with his premises. This book was no exception, and often had me on the edge of my seat. Although I enjoyed it overall, there were a few descriptions of fat people in the book that were weird and bordering on dehumanizing. I felt the ending was satisfying, but I'm actually discovering there are sequels, so I will have to keep an eye out.

>86 GraceCollection: I have added this one to my wishlist, it sounds like just my sort of book!

>86 GraceCollection: I’m noting this one as a possibility for the September NatureKIT on urban nature.

>88 Jackie_K: >89 Charon07:

I hope you both enjoy when/if you get around to it! Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

26. Spiders: Learning to Love Them



Okay, I didn't actually intend to read two books by Lynne Kelly this month. I was just searching out nonfiction books about paranormal mysteries and spiders, and when I got through all the books written for children, hers were the ones that most intrigued me. Having now read two of her books back-to-back, she is now on my list of authors to watch.

After waking her family screaming from spider-related nightmares, Lynne Kelly decided to tackle her arachnophobia. She starts by naming and watching little, less intimidating spiders from the other side of her kitchen window, and ends up becoming obsessed with the life-or-death dramas unfolding in her own backyard. She approaches spiders with empathy, curiosity, and a little humour, which makes for a fascinating book. Go into your own backyard, and you may see something no one else has — archnologists estimate we've only classified 10-20% of the world's spiders, and even those we know mostly about their anatomy and little of their behaviour.

There are many spider pictures in this book, as a warning. But I would highly recommend it, even — or perhaps especially — to the strongest of arachnophobes!

27. The Sun is Also a Star



I don't read a whole lot of romance, and I have to admit when I picked this book up I didn't realise it was a romance. That being said, I did still really enjoy this one.

Natasha is being deported from America to Jamaica, a country she hardly remembers. Her father has his head in the clouds, but she has her feet firmly on the ground. She doesn't believe in fate, or love, or anything science can't prove. Daniel's parents immigrated to America from South Korea before he and his brother were born. They want the best for their sons, which means an ivy league education to become doctors. Daniel's not really sure that's what he wants to do, he's kind of more into poetry, but he can't bear to disappoint his parents like his older brother Charlie, who was suspended from Harvard for poor grades. One chance encounter will change both their lives forever.

There was a lot of character development in the story, especially considering that everything but the epilogue happens in one day. I'm kind of a sucker for opposites attract, and I liked that this book was topical to current events, not just a love story. I really liked this one and I can see why it won so many awards.

BINGO!!!

28. Snakes in Myth, Magic, and History



I'm glad I read this one, but I can't in good conscience recommend it. The overall tone of the book was very glib and sarcastic, and while I'm sure the author meant it to come across as witty and entertaining, it came across more derisive and patronising. There were lots of interesting scientific facts about snakes, but the history was mostly pointing fun at incorrect beliefs about snakes and at snake-related injuries and deaths. The cultural/mythological facts... did not live up to my expectations, were usually dismissive and sometimes outright racist, like saying 'the Chinese, who are well known for eating anything, munch their way through 10,000 tons of snake meat every year' or perpetuating the idea that the pre-columbian Americas were a monoculture, and more specifically one where 'the agricultural side of things was controlled by women, leaving the men with little to do but devise ceremonies to regain a sense of power.' I'm glad to have learned so many new facts about snakes, but I am also glad to be done with this book.

29. My Diary from the Edge of the World



In a world where our myths, from genies and sasquatches to a literal edge of the world, are fact, spunky twelve-year-old Gracie and her family begin a road trip to try to escape the Dark Cloud following them — because a Dark Cloud takes souls away when they die.

This was a wonderful book. The characters were charming, the world was fascinating, and the messages about grief and love were heartwarming. I did cry reading this book, and I would definitely recommend it. Many thanks to @RosetheReader for the recommendation!

>91 GraceCollection: Taking a BB for this one. I love adorable looking spiders.

>95 lowelibrary: I look forward to hearing your thoughts!

April Review:

Books read: 12
CATs read: 9/9
CultureCAT: TTRPG/LARP
NatureKIT: Flying Creatures
RandomKIT: Prime
SF&FKIT: Women Authors
ScaredyKIT: Spiders, Insects, and Reptilia
ColourCAT: Brown
AlphaKIT: K & E
CoverKIT: Road
MysteryKIT: Paranormal Mystery
NonCATs: 1
BingoDOGS: 3
Female authors: 10.5/12
Fiction vs. Non-Fiction: 6 vs. 6

And now, finally, I can begin May's reads!

30. Braiding Sweetgrass



Kimmerer is a poet, a botanist, and a member of the Potawatomi Indigenous Americans. She blends her gift of language with indigenous philosophy and ecological science to create a series of beautiful essays, filled with love, gratitude, and hope for the Earth and our relationship to it. Although she doesn't suffer delusions about the current state of our planet, she argues that we owe it to the Earth, to ourselves, and to each other not to give into despair, which ultimately helps no one. These essays are great on their own but I feel like I got a greater effect from reading the entire book altogether.

I had been wanting to read this book for a very long time; it took me so long just to find a copy! This may be my favourite book I've read so far this year.

I seem to have missed my first 'Thingiversary' on the 15th! Ah, well. At least I'm reading, right?

Happy belated Thingaversary! The same happened to me this year, I was too busy reading.

>100 GraceCollection: Happy Thingaversary! The tradition is to buy yourself a book for every year you’ve been on LT, plus one to grow on, so you can go buy yourself some presents!

Happy Thingaversary.

Thanks all for the warm wishes! As for buying a book for every year and one to grow on... Well. I went on an unrelated shopping spree on last Monday. How about a dozen per year I've been on LT one more dozen to grow on?? It feels good to be able to justify the money I've spent as a holiday celebration! Happy Thingiversary to me!!!

>104 GraceCollection: Haha, I say you make the rules that work for you! Happy Thingaversary!

31. The Three-Body Problem



This one has been on my TBR for a while. I really enjoyed this hard sci-fi tale which starts during China's Cultural Revolution and slowly unravels a physics-related mystery. There was a little bit of the science that went over my head (I know nothing about protons) but I was able to basically nod and accept the explanations at face value even if I wasn't sure about the actual science behind it. The tale was gripping and suspenseful and the mystery of what exactly is going on is slowly unraveled throughout the whole tale, and I enjoyed the questions the story raised about society and humanity, without being too didactic.

The dialogue was often stilted and unnatural, which contrasted strangely with such strong, evocative prose. I assume this must be a cultural constraint to do with the translation. I very much appreciated the translator's notes, which in my edition were footnotes at the foot of the page instead of endnotes at the end of a chapter, or worse still, the entire book.

I enjoyed the story overall, but did have gripes. Namely, although there were well-developed and important female characters, one of the main character's wife suffered from 'wife syndrome' — she had no personality, no mentioned job or hobbies, I can't even recall if she was given a name, and her only role in the story was to worry about her husband and ultimately not understand all the troubles he was dealing with. His point of view carried on for so long with nary a mention of a partner at home that I was surprised when she suddenly enters the narrative to fuss ineffectually over him.

I would also warn potentially interested parties that the book begins with multiple scenes of graphic violence, which I believe do set the scene for the book but which nonetheless were not really what I expected when starting this book.

32. Pretty in Punk: Girls' Resistance in a Boys' Subculture



Ever seen stuff about punk and wondered where all the girls and women are? This is the book for you. As a disclaimer, this book was published in 1999, and probably took a year to write after all the research was finished in the first place, so plenty has changed, especially in a subculture that is generally dominated by youths. Nonetheless, I found this an interesting and at times very moving read about punk girls who choose to resist mainstream cultural pressures, gendered expectations, and the males who dominate the punk scene, and the cost they pay for that resistance, being kicked out of school, kicked out of their families, and frequently harassed. Yet these punk girls refuse to give in or apologise for who they are. I think we all have something to learn from these brave girls and women.

33. Your Knowledge or Your Life?



I really enjoyed the world created in this book. I was very fond of Eva, and I enjoyed the arcs of character growth over the course of the book. However, I often found the prose a bit forced, or unnatural; the narration had a tendency to discuss the psychoanalytical reasoning behind the actions of the characters. It went contrary to the oft-quoted 'show-don't-tell' advice, and became a little grating. There were also times I felt the pacing to be a bit off, like characters falling in love or getting over a death too quickly. Nonetheless, I still found this book pretty fun and charming.

Through no fault, I'm sure, of the author's own, my digital copy of this book had some sort of encoding error, and every hyphen had a question mark before and after it (think 'jack?-?of?-?all?-?trades') and every m-dash had a question mark before it ('like this?—see') which was jarring at first, but which I feel I eventually got used to.

34. Wilderness Survival: Staying Alive Until Help Arrives



I had a few of my own non-fiction books I considered for this, but at the last minute I decided one wasn't focused enough on the wilderness aspect and the other wasn't focused enough on survival, and since I'm trying to read more female authors this year, I sought out an ebook written by a woman on wilderness survival.

There are a few bits of this book that are very focused in North America (such as where you can take preparedness classes, find resources and information, and of course northern hemisphere weather/season/etc. details) but overall this was a great, quick resource about general survival advice in a wilderness setting, including what survival needs should be your priority & how to address those needs, what you should always pack with you, skills you should master to be prepared for emergencies before one happens, and the best ways to get help if you do become stranded. Overall a helpful, if short, informational resource.

35. Postcolonial Love Poem



This has been on my TBR for a while and features red text in the title and red beads worn by Diaz on the cover.

Every time I start to read poetry I think, 'I don't really get poetry,' and then a poem reaches out and grabs me by the heart. For me at least, I don't read poetry often — it's very emotionally complex, so I only do it occasionally, like a strong painkiller or a particularly rich chocolate cake.

Diaz reminds me of Richard Siken in a way that is difficult for me to articulate as someone not very knowledgeable of poetry. That isn't to imply that she doesn't have her own voice; just that I think if you like his stuff, you should check out hers.

I very much enjoyed this collection and will need to read it again when I am not rushing the end of the month.

May Review:

Books read: 6
CATs read: 9/9
CultureCAT: Punk/Metal
NatureKIT: Plants, Fungi, etc.
RandomKIT: Punctuation
SF&FKIT: Authors of the Global South
ScaredyKIT: Out in the Wild
ColourCAT: Red
AlphaKIT: I & D
CoverKIT: More than one element
MysteryKIT: Not My Country
BingoDOGS: 1
Female authors: 5/6
Fiction vs. Non-Fiction: 3 vs. 3

>107 GraceCollection: This one looks really interesting!

>112 Jackie_K: I enjoyed it and would definitely recommend it!

36. Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World



This has been on my TBR for a while and I'm so glad I got a chance to read it! The best way I can sum up this book is by quoting Yunkaporta himself:

I write to provoke thought rather than represent fact, in a kind of dialogical and reflective process with the reader.

I certainly felt that I was sitting on a porch or walking through country yarning with Yunkaporta throughout this book, and he wasn't so much sharing what Indigenous Knowledge is, but how Indigenous Thinking works, giving me new cognitive tools with which to view and interact with the world and people around me.

Definitely recommend this one.

37. Ash and Quill



This is a continuation of a series I started a while back. It was very good at sparking my memory for the things that happened in previous books, without breaking the flow of the narrative.

The main conceit of this YA series is that the Library of Alexandria never burned, and instead rose to a power above that of any government, suppressing ideas such as Gutenberg's press to remain in total control of all knowledge. They are able to reproduce copies of books which an individual can possess but which is still controlled completely by the Library and can be erased or changed at any time. Original books (which, with the continued suppression of the printing press, must be transcribed by hand) are forbidden from private possession. Jess Brightwell, a young smuggler in the trade of original books, is accepted to be trained into the Library's service, which he is entering in as a spy for his family. However, his first and best friend there invents the idea of the printing press (again), which will land everyone he knows in hot water.

I won't spoil main plot points of Ash and Quill, but the following description does by its nature spoil events that happen in earlier books, so I've censored it. This instalment finds our heroes landed in the Burner city of Philadelphia, a ragtag village of rebels against the Library that have been rebuilding from the ashes of Library bombardments for over 100 years. These book burners do not quite believe in 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend,' however, and they are quickly imprisoned by a different sort of fanatics than they were in previous books. Even if Jess can manage to pick the locks of their cell, they are a world away from Alexandria with no known Translation chambers to get them there, in a city surrounded by Library guard on a continent with no allies. Out of the frying pan, and into the fire.

Caine builds a colourful, complex fantasy world with rich, quick-thinking characters and hardly a breath to be taken between the suspense and action.

38. The Soul of an Octopus



This book made me laugh, made me cry, and caused a pretty big shift in the way I view the natural world around me. If you are interested in this book at all based on the title, I recommend moving this one to the top of your TBR. You will fall in love with the octopuses in this book, just as the author (and I) have. It's an approachable, relatable, and very interesting nonfiction read.

>116 GraceCollection: I loved this book too, and I did fall in love with octopuses!

>116 GraceCollection: This book is on my Bullet list. Moving it up.

>117 Charon07: I'm so glad I finally got around to reading it!!

>118 lowelibrary: Can't wait to hear what you think of it, when you read it!

39. The Moment of Tenderness



Like many, I grew up with my own very loved copy of A Wrinkle in Time, so when I saw this collection available a few years ago I snagged a copy. Most of these stories were never published before L'Engle's death in 2007, although a few had featured in literary magazines and the like. They were all written before Wrinkle, and many before she had ever even started on her first novel.

These stories are, for the most part at least, semi-autobiographical, and many of them were written as ways of a young L'Engle making sense of intensely emotional moments in her life. As such, they are mostly what I would call 'slice-of-life' stories, or perhaps personal dramas; there are few with sweeping plot actions or endings that don't seem raw and open-ended. Her granddaughter, who curated and introduced this collection, mentions that more grounded endings with more subtle hope can reach those in dark times better than a cheery, saccharine ending where everything falls neatly into place. I don't disagree with that, but I was hard-pressed to find such hope, subtle or otherwise, in most of these stories. They were still touching, and I felt seen by some that spoke to my own personal experiences, but I wish the introduction hadn't set my expectations for something a little brighter.

Most of these stories are realistic and contemporary to the time they were written in, though some are historical and 3 have fantasy/sci-fi elements (the back-of-book blurb had me expecting half or more of the stories to be SFF, but no joy. Or rather, 3/18 joy). There were some things just under the surface of the story that spoke to a dated view of race, but still the collection was, for me, tolerable in this respect (except for 'White in the Moon the Long Road Lies,' which got grating). I did really enjoy reading this book overall. I would say my favourites were 'The Foreigners', 'Poor Old Saturday', and 'The Sign of the Sparrow', the last of which was religious in tone (and really lacking in female characters) but which I nonetheless really enjoyed, and which, as last in the collection, put the reader down on a gentle note of a hope in an otherwise fairly sad collection.

If you are a fan of L'Engle, or of realistic and somewhat sad short fiction, I would recommend checking this one out. Otherwise, you might do well to read the 3 I mentioned and skip the rest.

40. Cool Engineering



For the most part, this was a really neat little children's nonfiction about different types of engineering, historical examples of problems -> solutions, short profiles of engineers, and a few fun experiments to try. It discusses the steam engine, climate change, bioengineering, simple machines, inclusive design, and more. However, this book was published before Elon Musk did a Nazi salute on television, and I wonder if future editions — if they will exist; this seems like a pretty unknown book here on LT, so I wonder if it sold well in the first place — will remove someone like that from an otherwise fun and educational read.

41. The Construction of Shadows



I was really sucked into the world of this story, where 2 groups of 8 Divinities pass down various intriguing abilities to the majority of the population. Of the two main characters, Meiling Katz, the underdog with no abilities but lots of enthusiasm and intelligence, and Suraya Zialitos, the golden child from the most powerful family with the most powerful abilities ever recorded, I must say that I found Meiling more interesting and dynamic, but I did still enjoy reading Suraya's chapters.

The action kept me engaged throughout the book, although I felt the sense of time in the book was not established very strongly; sometimes one chapter would abruptly begin weeks after the last, simply because nothing interesting apparently had happened in the meantime. I caught on to the major twist in the story early, which I can forgive since this is a YA novel.

I will certainly be looking forward to the next in the series.

42. My Favorite Thing is Monsters, Books One and Two



I guess that's the difference... a good monster sometimes gives somebody a fright because they're weird-looking and fangy... a fact that is beyond their control... But bad monsters are all about CONTROL... They want the whole world to be scared so that BAD MONSTERS can call the shots.

Karen Reyes has always been different. She sees (and draws) herself as a werewolf. When her upstairs neighbour, Anka, is shot under mysterious circumstances, Karen decides to investigate, and over the course of several notebooks that she fills with her drawings she explores bullying, her sexuality, morality, family secrets, death, and Anka's history of being prostituted as a young girl and surviving the holocaust as a Jewish German.

It's hard to describe the experience of reading this story, because it seems to cover a little bit of everything. Art, growing up, poverty, censorship, adversity, prostitution, gang violence, and of course, monsters of every variety... It's set in '60s Chicago, but clearly speaks to the world around us today. If I had to make a complaint, there were times I would start reading one page left-to-right, top-to-bottom, only to find that that page only makes sense read top-to-bottom, then left-to-right, or left-to-right across the entire two-page spread, instead of one full page and then the next full page. I wish it was a little clearer when the reading order changed from what was intuitive.

43. The Happiness Project



Gretchen Rubin spent a year reading about happiness and trying all sorts of advice from all sorts of sources. She isn't trying to prescribe that every person who reads her books should sing in the morning and read Aristotle; she emphasises many times that every person's "Happiness Project" will look different, although she offers some valuable insight in how to set up resolutions for yourself and ways to keep yourself accountable to keeping them. A question she seemed to get asked often during this project (although it often seemed more like an accusation) was along the lines of, "Isn't it selfish to try to be happier? Wouldn't it be better to try to be a better person/Aren't there better uses of your time?" Through philosophy (happiness is the one true goal in life), statistics (happier people are more likely to help others, donate to charitable causes, etc.) and, eventually, her own life experience (as she becomes happier, so do the people around her, in a positive feedback loop), she argues that this is a worthy cause for all people to pursue, and I have to say that I agree with her.

I don't have time in my life right now to sit down and plan out a year's worth of my own happiness goals, but I do hope to be able to someday, and in the meantime there are still ideas I'm planning to apply to my own life based on Rubin's findings.

June Review:

Books read: 8
CATs read: 9/9
CultureCAT: Aboriginal Australia
NatureKIT: Oceans and Rivers
RandomKIT: Invasion
SF&FKIT: Anthologies and Collections
ScaredyKIT: Graphic Novels
ColourCAT: Yellow
AlphaKIT: C & Q
CoverKIT: Something with Wheels
MysteryKIT: LGBT+
BingoDOGS: 2
Female authors: 7/8
Fiction vs. Non-Fiction: 4 vs. 4

And now, finally, I get to start on my July reading!!

Whew, July has been a busy month. I'll be lucky to get very many more books in.

44. Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel



Discussing primarily elephants, wolves, and killer whales, with some investigation of dogs, parrots, corvids, dolphins, and primates, Safina examines what it means to be "intelligent", "self-aware", and "empathetic". There is, Safina observes, a bias present in the scientific community when it comes to animal psychology and behaviourism. Out of fear of committing the cardinal sin of anthropomorphism, much of animal science has lost objectivity and began to deny or obfuscate observable phenomena in some animals. It seems some of us have forgotten that humans are animals, too. There is family, politics, culture, hardship, and complex emotional lives in the animal communities investigated in this book, and there is a healthy (though not overwhelming nor distracting) level of snark regarding double-standards that are applied differently for non-human animals than they are for humans.

45. The Immortal King Rao



A Dalit ("untouchable") named King Rao was born in 1950s India and grew up on his paternal family's coconut farm before migrating to the United States, where he studied computer science, and with the professor who got him admitted and the professor's daughter who would one day become his wife, he founds Coconut, and designs a revolutionary new personal computer, the Coconut I. From there, he and his company only become more influential, until eventually the world is run mostly by the Algo, the algorithm designed by Coconut that learns everything about everyone through social media, job history, family profiles, etc., and assigns social credit to each action, which is then exchanged like currency. Those who opt out of this system are known as "Exes", and move themselves to the "Blanklands" — islands which have been disconnected from the Algo and the internet at large. When King falls from grace, and then from power, he eventually moves the Blanklands, and in his nonagenarian years, pays an Ex to carry he and his wife's frozen embryo, which he raises in isolation.

Through alternating chapters of past, present, and (our) future, his daughter Athena explains King's origin, his rise and fall, the change from government to the Algo, her own childhood, and her decision to leave his isolated island and home, unravelling a few concurrent mysteries in how exactly things got so bad. The world of Athena's present reminds me of Walkaway, although with significantly less sex. I would advise that this novel contains a few scenes of sexual assault, which is described in detail but with a since of detachment that, for me at least, made it more bearable to read.

46. Fun Home



This graphic novel memoir by celebrated comic artist Alison Bechdel focuses mostly on her fraught relationship with her father, an emotionally-distant and controlling hobbyist Victorian home restorer, small-town funeral director, and 12-grade English teacher with a fondness for Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce. After Bechdel comes out as a lesbian to her parents, her mother reveals that her father had affairs with men — and boys — throughout their marriage. Not very much longer after that, he is struck by a truck and killed in what was highly suspected to be a suicide, leaving Bechdel with the puzzle of who her father really was and what legacy he has left her.

This was masterfully done and the symbolism was incredible.

47. The Haunted Attic



Judy Bolton, allegedly, was a better role model for girls than Nancy Drew, which was originally published at around the same time. I can't say that Judy was really more independent or self-reliant than Nancy, at least in this book, especially considering that her brother ends up solving about half the case and doesn't clue her into to nearly any of what he discovers, and her female friends are either absent or treating her badly for at least half the book, unlike her male friend (and, I assume, future love interest) Peter. I can't say that I've revisited as an adult any of the Nancy Drew books I grew up on, but I don't remember Nancy relying on Ned (her boyfriend) to ever solve any part of her cases, and I seem to remember her female friends George and Bess being capable and reliable friends.

The story itself was okay. Judy's family moves into a house that is supposedly haunted, one of the girls at school has been burgled recently, and her friend Peter addresses the couple who raised him as "Grandma" and "Grandpa" although he knows nothing of his biological parents and they refuse to answer his questions on the subject. Predictably for a girl-sleuth novel, the solution to all these mysteries is connected and revealed at the end. It was rather exciting to me as Judy found clues and solved bits of the mysteries, even if we heard nothing of the half that her brother solved until the very end. There was a nice little message Judy learns about classism, although there was some racism present within the novel that rather put me off.

Overall, I am glad I read this one, to see what Judy Bolton was like and to revisit the nostalgia of my Nancy-Drew-influenced girlhood, but I don't think I'll be reading any of the others.

48. The Art of Frugal Hedonism



This book is all about reducing spending to maximise pleasure. 51 bite-sized chapters give tips on everything from groceries to relationships, sourced from friends, scientists, and the past. Some tips were very eye-opening, and if you have an open mind you may discover you're only living the way you are because of a culture of surplus, and not because it actually gives you joy.

Like any self-help book, not all advice will apply to all people — for example, there was some stuff in this book that simply isn't helpful for me as a disabled person. The concept that you enjoy an indulgence more when you work for it and therefore shouldn't pay for the convenience of, say, a pre-made frozen meal — it may be more expensive than the ingredients alone, but I know I will not be able (or if I am able, will not be willing to spend my limited energy) to prepare, cook, and serve a meal, so I spring for pre-made when I am eating alone. When almost everything is something difficult you have to work for, the end result doesn't feel rewarding, it feels exhausting. It may be cheaper and better for the environment to grow my own salad in a garden, but I know I will be unable to keep up with the maintenance of such a project.

Nonetheless, I did find good tips for myself and I am glad I picked this book up.

July Review:

Books read: 5
CATs read: 9/9
CultureCAT: India
NatureKIT: Inner Lives of Animals
RandomKIT: The Hills are Alive
SF&FKIT: Alternative History
ScaredyKIT: Ghosts
ColourCAT: White
AlphaKIT: W & T
CoverKIT: Fruit on the Cover
MysteryKIT: Series Sleuths
BingoDOGS: 0
Female authors: 3.5/5
Fiction vs. Non-Fiction: 2 vs. 3

49. Nona the Ninth



I am now caught up with this crazy series of necromancer lesbians in space and I can't wait for the next book to come out! I can't recommend this series enough to anyone who thinks they may be even vaguely interested, with the caveat that the POV-character changes with each book, and each of these characters is an unreliable narrator (albeit for different reasons) so there is a lot that (by design) the audience doesn't fully understand on the first read-through, which is an experience that I know is not for everyone.

That being said, it's nearly impossible to review this book without spoiling the ones that come before, so I am 'spoilering' the rest of my review!

First of all, I adored the return of some beloved characters, (Cam especially, for me) and the introduction of Nona, who I believe is impossible not to love. The story keeps you on your toes to find out who Nona is, but gives you plenty of time to explore her world and her social life before everything suddenly falls apart and the action makes the book impossible to put down. There is a certain joy, for me at least, in putting pieces together and figuring out what Nona doesn't know. At the risk of spoiling what happens during this book, I'll stop here — but for as long as I dragged my feet for reading about a new character I didn't know, I loved Nona and I loved this book!

Busy month and I've not been keeping on top of LT...
50. The Lost Art of Reading Nature's Signs



Originally published as The Walker's Guide to Outdoor Clues & Signs, this book teaches a sort of logic to the natural world — using plants to read wind direction and soil makeup; using the angle of the sun and stars for direction, date, and time; using animal behaviour to find water, other people, or predict weather. Some of it is common sense, if you had thought about it before (which I hadn't) and that makes it easy to remember — if a tree trunk is very thick and stout, for example, you know that forces (wind) caused it to grow in that way. If you know which plants love sun, you know they will grow on the side of a hill which faces the sun — the southern side in the northern hemisphere (upon which most of the more specific trivia is based, although I believe there is information helpful to all in this book) or the northern side in the southern hemisphere — now, that hill becomes a compass.

Some of the way Gooley discusses indigenous populations, their ways of life and knowledge, made me uneasy, but overall I did enjoy & would recommend this read.

51. A Hero Returned



I was very excited to win this ER. What a fun concept! Two best friends get hired at the publishing company responsible for their favourite web-novel in high school, and get transported into the world themselves, where they have to save the world they loved and resolve the story which left off on a hiatus years ago. I wasn't a huge fan of the narrative voice, and often found myself rolling my eyes, especially in the beginning. It's hard for me to articulate exactly what the problem was — trying too hard to be self aware, perhaps? If this wasn't an ER read, I would have put it down — I'm glad I didn't. I also found Rachael as a character to be frustratingly dense. Nonetheless, I did truly enjoy the world the author has shoved Rachel & Nora into and the characters they meet, and I may have to pick up the next book when it becomes available.

Well, been far too busy and far too far from LT for far too long, and now October threads are being posted! Oh dear. I finished this some days ago.
52. The Book of Hope



Overall, this was a great read. It discusses Goodall's childhood, her work, and the myriad reasons she holds on to hope for future despite everything she knows and has seen. While I am glad people like her are holding the torch for hope, as it were, and passing that hope to others, I can't say I feel the same way — some of the rhetoric for hope depends on the idea that individuals can make a difference in, for example, climate change. 1,000 individuals switching to a locally-sourced, plant-based diet (as she seems to suggest as a positive action) wouldn't be a drop in the bucket to combat the damage even a simple conglomerate mega-corporation does in a year. However, 1,000 individuals voting in their local and national elections, protesting, and contacting their representatives to advocate for these corporations being held accountable? That might make a change.

I'm interested in reading more from Goodall, and perhaps seeing a talk from her some day. She's both very knowledgeable and very personable.

August Review:

Books read: 4
CATs read: 8/9
CultureCAT: Any Culture You are Not a Part of
NatureKIT: Weather and Climate
RandomKIT: A Writer
SF&FKIT: Space
ScaredyKIT: Female authors
ColourCAT: Grey
AlphaKIT: N & J
CoverKIT: Photography
Did not finish:
MysteryKIT: Legal thrillers
BingoDOGS: 0
Female authors: 2.5/4
Fiction vs. Non-Fiction: 2 vs. 2

53. Shut Me Up in Prose



I found this to be a wonderful little collection on the experiences of womanhood, with some very creative and moving stories, although there were one or two I felt I didn't 'get'. This collection covered a pretty wide range of genres and topics, including what one might describe as dystopian (or utopian?), historical, contemporary, fantasy, and thriller. Two of my favourites, 'Feerday's Fog' and 'The Ferig Express', were beautiful surrealist metaphors about some of the most trying times in our lives, and another favourite, the titular 'Shut Me Up in Prose', sees a free-spirited and eccentric woman in the 1960s condemned to a woman's insane asylum by her husband as he feels he has insufficient control over her.

I did very much enjoy this collection and would recommend it to others who enjoy short stories.

54. Excerpt from The 99% Invisible City



For the first time this year, I deliberately chose to not read the entire book. This book consists of essays which are thematically similar but otherwise unconnected, and since it is a physically quite large book and I am so very far behind on my reading this month, I made the decision to read only Chapter 5, Geography, which consists of 5 subheadings (delineations, configurations, designations, landscapes, and synanthropes, of which only the latter 2 were relevant to Urban Nature), each consisting of a few related short essays.

This is fascinating stuff, and it certainly has opened my eyes to things I had not noticed before, or explained some things I had noticed. (Anyone hear talk over in Bug Collectors about 'null island'? That's a real place, although it isn't really an island!) This is a book from the United States, and such books have a tendency to be, well, myopic towards the United States. I was pleasantly surprised to find some mentions of ancient Rome, of Charing Cross, of Barcelona, but overall this book was also focused mainly on the United States. That isn't necessarily a criticism; just information that may inform another's choice to read it or not.

I especially enjoyed the bits about urban nature, since that's what I picked the book up for (this time, at least; I do hope to read the whole thing some day). There was a sense in these essays, which I sometimes find missing in the discussion of environmentalism, that I will sum up by quoting the book itself: "people need to understand that cities and nature are all part of the same ecosystem." Any solution or idea which depends on the idea that humans are separate from all the other animals, separate from our environment, ultimately will not work out.

I really need to update on my reading more often.

55. Stone Butch Blues



I cannot remember ever in my life reading a book which was so emotionally difficult to read and yet so hard to put down. I'm actually glad I read it electronically — even physical books which I personally own I find a strong reluctance to ever annotate, highlight, etc., but with my ereader I have no resistance whatever and found myself highlighting a large amount of quotes which spoke deeply to me and will remain with me. At times I saw myself in Jess, and at other times I saw a strength that I do not know if I could muster in the same circumstances. This is a profound book and I believe it will stay with me forever.

56. No Place Like



Lexie Brookner has begun to shift between different versions of her reality — one where the brother she lost in his 30s to a drug overdose as well as her late husband are alive, but her living and happily-retired sister was brutally murdered as a young adult, and occasionally one where the world seems to be, frankly, falling apart. She wonders if she might be hallucinating or maybe even have dementia, and her children — as well as her alternate husband and brother — are beginning to worry about her.

This was the kind of story I really enjoy about what one little thing many years ago might have done to catapult you into being a totally different 'you' with a different life. There were themes of love, loss, family — and of course, a very supportive Great Dane. I liked this story, and I don't think it gets 'too sci-fi' for your average reader.

As a separate note from the story, I was disappointed by the file I received. It wasn't formatted well, and showed up on my e-reader as 'Unknown' by 'Unknown', with no cover image. The chapter titles in the navigation pane were also all in caps, which may or may not have been intentional but was straining to the eye.

September Review:

Books read: 4
CATs read: 6/9
CultureCAT: Working Class Cultures
NatureKIT: Urban Nature
ColourCAT: Silver
AlphaKIT: B
AlphaKIT: M
CoverKIT: Cats & Dogs
Did not finish:
RandomKIT: Cardinal Direction in Title
SF&FKIT: Back to School SFF
ScaredyKIT: Stephen King and family
MysteryKIT: Silver age mysteries
BingoDOGS: 0
Female authors: 3/4
Fiction vs. Non-Fiction: 3 vs. 1

57. When Elephants Weep



Alright, so this book wasn't only about elephants or only about endangered animals. Through successive chapters, the authors argue for the likelihood that animals other than people feel emotions too. Each chapter covers different emotions, from fear to joy to awe, including anecdotes from some of the foremost animal behaviour researchers such as Jane Goodall, philosophical and logical arguments, and more than a few accounts of some pretty horrendous stuff — both exemplifying cruelty of humans towards animals, and of animals towards each other. This book was very well-researched, with pages and pages of notes at the end of the book.

>144 GraceCollection: Definitely need to read this. Taking a BB

58. Educated



A moving account of survival from a childhood of religious extremity, shocking neglect, and familial abuse, to independence and education. Westover worked hard and combatted a terrible start to get to where she is today. Inspiring to any survivor of abuse, hers is a story of what can come when we learn to trust ourselves and connect to the world around us.

59. The Turn of the Screw



There are several reasons why I might not have connected with this story. Sentences are long and convoluted, and the horror of the story depends mostly on a Victorian sense of spiritual corruption of innocent children, which is not really a perspective I subscribe to or therefore have strong reactions about. I also, as mentioned previously in this thread, don't really get scared by books in the first place.

I wanted to enjoy this; I know it's a classic. It was just okay, and I spent most of my reading time waiting for the scary part to happen.

October Review:

Books read: 3
CATs read: 5/9
CultureCAT: Non-Mainstream Religious Subcultures
NatureKIT: Endangered Species
ScaredyKIT: Gothic
ColourCAT: Black
CoverCAT: Will it fit in your pocket?
Did not finish:
RandomKIT: When I Was a Child
SF&FKIT: Mysterious Artifacts
AlphaKIT: F
AlphaKIT: P
MysteryKIT: Police Procedural
BingoDOGS: 0
Female authors: 1/3
Fiction vs. Non-Fiction: 1 vs. 2

60. Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California's Natural Resources



Overall, this was a very interesting and informative resource on the history of contact with indigenous people of California, their material culture, diet, and 'protoagricultural' intensive management of the land around them — coppicing/trimming, weeding, sowing, and especially controlled burns, used to control multiple different ecosystems around them, which plants grew therein and how they grew (ie, straight shoots of certain plants for construction, basket weaving, nets, etc.), and controlling animal behaviour (ie creating browsing spots for the deer they hunted, driving rabbits out of fields to hunt them, etc). The idea of a 'virgin, untamed wilderness' or a 'lazy Indian' gathering the fruits of a miraculously-stocked land are false: the rich resources Europeans found when they came to the Americas were the result of millennia of intimate ecological knowledge and careful tending of the land. The devastating wildfires unfortunately so common in California are, at least in part, due to plants growing wild (where they are growing at all) that should be and for generations previously were carefully managed to avoid catastrophic fires by setting small, controlled ones often enough to clear fire fuel and and fire ladders.

I've never set foot in California, so there were some place and (apparently) famous people names which were unknown to me, but often spoken of with a presumption of familiarity on the part of the author, and I'd also like to note that the first part of the book (of three) does not hold back when describing absolute depravity and cruelty which took place against the Native Americans, sometimes in graphic detail. Although this is only a concern in part one, which describes the history of indigenous populations in California after contact and is not technically necessary to understand the rest of the book, I also want to warn that when quoting from primary sources throughout the entire book, the author does not replace or censor any slurs used in the direct quotes.

Overall, I would certainly recommend this book.

61. Hollow Kingdom



How delightful! I'm not really a zombie apocalypse reader, but this book has a very refreshing take, being narrated by a crow with a colourful vocabulary. Although there is fowl — ah, wait, I meant foul — language in this book, it isn't one of those were the author drops an f-bomb every other sentence because they've run out of creative ways to describe things: this book might have the strongest voice and some of the most creative and delightful prose I've read all year. I usually give some grace with regards to accuracy when an author writes from the point-of-view of an animal, but it's actually abundantly clear that this author did a lot of research about animals and their behaviour before writing this — although, I can't say the same for the way evolution features as a concept in the story. Again though, in the context of science fiction, we have to give a little leeway with the science in favour of the fiction.

Although the humans in the story are all dying, this is ultimately a story about family, hope, and healing. Highly recommended.

62. The Origins of You



This was a difficult and healing book about the ways our families, through situations outside their control, neglect/abuse, or their own unhealed wounds, cause us to have issues with safety, worthiness, belonging, feeling like a priority, etc. which affect our relationships in all corners of our lives, the way we communicate, navigate conflict, and our boundaries with others. Through accessible but emotionally trying exercises, Pharaon directs readers towards finding the origins of these wounds in their own lives, witnessing and grieving them, and finding new ways to move forward.

Recommended.

63. The Last House on Needless Street



This was a book bullet from @lowelibrary and was basically impossible to put down. I think I ended up finishing it in two sittings. Like your average psychological thriller, it features unreliable narrator elements, (which I know is not everyone's cup of tea,) but that is really where the similarities end. It's hard to describe the experience of reading it without spoiling the best parts of the experience. Like April, I would recommend picking this book up without reading too much about it.

>152 GraceCollection: This was such a great horror book! I believe @lowelibrary put it very aptly as “the book you start out reading isn’t the book you finish reading.” It was so unexpected, and really horrifying.

>152 GraceCollection: It is one of my top reads this year. I am always happy when someone enjoys a book I recommended. Glad you liked it.
>153 Charon07: I got my bullet from you.

64. Fox



This book was more about the symbol of the fox in human culture. The chapter titled, 'The Fox in Nature', for example, discusses how Aristotle believed foxes were made of earth, cold, and bony, and their mothers had to lick them into the correct shape after they were born. There was a large amount of discussion about foxhunting, and a surprising amount of cruelty to animals described, even beyond the foxhunts.

This was still an interesting book, it just wasn't really what I thought I was picking up.

I did have one bone to pick, though — the author makes a point several times that part of the reason foxes are so demonised and hated is their 'inability to be domesticated'. However, he also points out several times different species like Fennec and Bengal foxes are often and easily tamed, kept as pets albeit more exotic ones. This is not to mention the famous Russian experiment started in the 50s which reached some pretty strong conclusions about fox domestication in the 70s — and apparently is still ongoing.

November Review:

Books read: 5
CATs read: 9/9
CultureCAT: Indigenous North America
NatureKIT: The Effect of Nature on Human Beings
RandomKIT: Villains
SF&FKIT: The Day After
ScaredyKIT: Psychological Thrillers
ColourCAT: Blue
AlphaKIT: Y
AlphaKIT: H
CoverKIT: Celestial Objects
MysteryKIT: Psychological Thrillers/Mystery
BingoDOGS: 3
Female authors: 4/5
Fiction vs. Non-Fiction: 3 vs. 2

>152 GraceCollection: A great read, and the cover you featured was one I'd never seen before. Very spooky!

>157 mstrust: It was a mass market paperback, but I did appreciate the artwork!!

65. Blood Ink Sister Scribe



I was a big fan of this contemporary fantasy. Johanna lives alone in what used to be her family's Victorian, renewing the wards every night to protect the magic books her family collected in the basement. Her mother moved across town after many bitter fights with her father, who died a few years back mysteriously via one of the magic books — his last wish, written on a piece of paper by his body, was that she not allow her mother back in the house. Her older sister Esther up and left when she turned 18 and has never returned, because, unbeknownst to Joanna, their father instructed her that this was the only way she could keep the house, the books, and Joanna safe. She was also instructed to keep moving, and never spend more than a year in the same place. But Esther has finally found someone, and she's gotten tired of following her paranoid, late father's mysterious advice. Meanwhile, Nick is the last living Scribe after his parents' murders, the only one who can write new magic books, and he is under the protection of his uncle and the Library of magic books his uncle runs.

However, not everything is as it seems... The mysteries and twists in this story were my favourite kind — ones where I figure them out before they are revealed, but without feeling like the author has hand-fed me the answers. I'm not sure if this story fits the strictest definition of a 'cosy mystery', but it's hard for me to find shelves full of magical books any kind of setting but cosy.

Recommended.

>159 GraceCollection: Taking the recommendation. This is a BB for me.

>160 lowelibrary: I hope you love it, April!

66. Eve



I learned an incredible amount from this book, including some facts I didn't even realize I didn't know. This book is a little palaeontology, a little anthropology, a little biology, a little sociology, and a little history, all tied together meaningfully. I found the endnotes very educational, and wish the bits that were more than simply a source (I'd wager maybe half) were part of the text itself, instead of tucked away at the back. There were one or two times I disagreed with the author, feeling the evidence she presents contradicts an assertion she follows up with, but for a book I enjoyed as much as this one, I can forgive that.

67. A Room of One's Own



I'm trying to remember if I had to read Woolf in school. It seems natural that of course I would have done, but I can't seem to recall what, if indeed anything, of hers we read.

In any case, I did love reading this one. It's one of those fundamental feminist texts, so although, again, I'm glad for having read it, many of the ideas she introduces are ones I've seen discussed, picked apart, and repackaged over and again by now almost 100 years after she wrote the text. Woolf writes much like me, I think — always with the em-dashes and semi-colons, paragraphs that take up entire pages, having to redirect her attention because she got off on a tangent. It was very homey to read.

There was much that resonated with me, but more than a little bit I disagreed with; there were many times I could see how far we have come in this almost-century between her writing and my reading, but yet too much that seemed not to have changed at all. More than anything, I wish I could sit down with Woolf and just talk with her, about her ideas and mine, about how far we've come and how far we're to go, about London, about reading and writing. I think if a Beadle had told me I couldn't enter the university library because I am an unaccompanied woman, I would have committed a crime.

I think she makes a great point about writing in general, about how oppression (of any sort really, I would note) and its associated criticisms holds the tongue (or rather pen), but I think she misses that sometimes this gives a character to the writing which is actually beneficial, which unlocks part of the human experience, elevates literature, and provides a deep and meaningful reading experience. I think she makes a meaningful observation that feminism came with a pushback from men who didn't want women's stations improved, and that anger or indignation or whatever you would call it shadowed their work and made it observably worse. What I think will stick with me most, however, is this: 'to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery.'

I think many of us, especially creatives, have a tendency to self-censor to please the Headmaster or professor or religious figure or parent or other authority which lives in our head. Always, there will be someone who does not like what you have done. Trying to anticipate and saw off the parts of your work which they will not like, will only serve to stifle your own abilities and remove the appeal of your work in the first place.

Alright, I'm late to post my review, but I promise I finished A Room of One's Own before the New Year, and per my own rules, started my next read before midnight & the changing of the month. Watch this space for one more review, December's summary, and then the year's review. Happy 2026, everyone!

68. Every Heart a Doorway



If you've ever wondered how Alice adjusted to the real world when she got back from Wonderland, take a peek into Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children, where every child holds hope their door will open again.

I was so intrigued by the fantasy world-building that I forgot I had picked up a horror book until a body showed up. The premise is so unique, and seemed to be a sort of metaphor both for neurodivergent children of neurotypical parents and for children with trauma and/or mental illnesses — parents were spoken of both in terms of loving the child they had 'before' and not accepting the way they had changed, but also in terms like, 'their love wanted to fix her, and refused to see that she wasn't broken.' I also loved the unique characters and the way they shared details about their unique worlds. There were a few times the story got a little didactic, but my biggest complaint was that I felt the story should have been longer. Guess I'll have to pick up the next one!

December Review:

Books read: 4
CATs read: 9/9
CultureCAT: LGBTQ+
NatureKIT: Wild Card
RandomKIT: Beginnings and Endings
SF&FKIT: Disabled Main Character
ScaredyKIT: Your Favourite Trope
ColourCAT: Purple
AlphaKIT: V
AlphaKIT: R
CoverKIT: Something You'd Like as a Gift
MysteryKIT: Cosy Mysteries
BingoDOGS: 4
Female authors: 4/4
Fiction vs. Non-Fiction: 2 vs. 2

**Year in Review**

Books read: 68
CATs read: 110/120 91.7% monthly / 110/122 90.2% total
CultureCAT: 12/14 100% of monthly challenges, 85.7% of total challenge
NatureKIT: 12/12 100%
RandomKIT: 10/12 83.3%
SF&FKIT: 10/12 83.3%
ScaredyKIT: 11/12 91.7%
ColourCAT: 12/12 100%
AlphaKIT: 22/24 91.7%
CoverKIT: 12/12 100%
MysteryKIT: 9/12 75%
BingoDOGS: 22/25 88%
Female authors: 54/68 79.4%
Fiction vs. Non-Fiction: 34 v. 34 50:50

Cover wall:

Happy New Year! Please join me in my new thread:
https://www.librarything.com/topic/377140