Friday Reads — January 23rd, 2026

It's Friday again, and time for Friday Reads!

This week, LibraryThing staff are reading:

Tim / @timspalding: The Wright Brothers by David McCullough
Abby / @ablachly: The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold
Kate / @katemcangus: A Stranger in the Family in Jane Casey
Kristi / @kristilabrie: Sorcery and Small Magics by Maiga Doocy
Lucy / @knerd.knitter: A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
Abigail / @AbigailAdams26: Welcome Stranger by Lenora Mattingly Weber
Zeph / @ZephCraven: Neuromancer by William Gibson

What about all of you? What are you reading this Friday?

I felt the need for something light and fun, going with Shrubley, the Monster Adventurer by James T Callum.

Listening to Yellowface as a library loan. Not sure what to make of it so far. It has a lot of insider publishing info that's amusing, but the main character is pretty uninteresting except for her casual swipe of her dead friend's work and how long she can continue to pass it off. It's a bit too popular left political and politically correct to be anything like controversial, which I think it wants to be. I also was severely annoyed at the writer's casual swipe against "cheap Etsy jewelry" which just seems blinkered to me. I get where she's coming from, but it still was insulting. The narrator is good though, I like her delivery.

It's time for me to pick a new novel, having just finished Maurice. In the meantime, I still have my other rolling reads in progress:

The Weird Tales of Dorothy K Haynes (short stories)
The Best Art You've Never Seen (nonfiction)
A Swarm, A Flock, A Host: A Compendium of Creatures (poetry)

Remainder trade pbk:
Spook: science tackles the Afterlife Ch 12- / Mary Roach

Via Kindle app (recently updated w/a terrible color highlighting "improvement"):
Doctor Faustus Ch XLVI- / Thomas Mann; translation, notes, introduction Ritchie Robertson (Oxford World's Classics)
The Burning Earth: a history of the last 500 years Ch 8- / Sunil Amrith
The Fugitive: In Search of Lost Time volume 6 ch 1- / Marcel Proust; translation, notes, introduction Peter Collier (Penguin Classics)

Bedtime reading:
Everyman Hardcover: Lavengro Ch XXII- / George Borrow
Via Kindle:
The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World / A.J. Jacobs (Jacobs is reading through the hardcover Encyclopaedia Britannica w/a chapter per letter; I'm at "N.")

I'm on the last chapters of Spook & Doctor Faustus; I'll be dipping around various books in the next week to determine "what's next"

>3 Bookmarque: I have bought several handcrafted Etsy jewelry pieces! Lovely ones. Well, that was back when Etsy was good, before it too became enshittified. Now it's impossible to endure the flotsam from any search result.

>6 DebiCates: Yeah it's quite sad, but there is practically nowhere else for a handmade artist to sell and get any traction or credibility. I've been on there for more than a decade though.

My commute reading this week is Wargames according to Mark : An historian's view of wargame design by Mark Herman. It's enjoyable. The typography isn't impressive (it's self-published) and there are typos, but on the whole, not too bad.

My bedside reading is Watto's wisdom : Zine and con writing by Ian Watson by Ian Watson. It's what it says on the tin. Again, I'm not too happy with the graphical design, too much text on each page and minimal margins. Although these were great as fanwriting once upon a time, they don't hold up 100% in book form decades later, but I read and I skip a little here and there. Ian's a good guy, it's interesting to hear what he has to say.

>7 Bookmarque: Oh, do you sell on etsy?!

I do. I'll PM you.

I've finished Radiant Star and Fire Logic this week, and am listening to The Wave in the Mind. Not entirely sure what I want to read now.

About two thirds through Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid while earnestly trying to understand what he's talking about.

La Ragazza di Bube, by Carlo Cassola (for an Italian book club)
Choosing Community: Action, Faith, and Joy in the Works of Dorothy L. Sayers, by Christine A. Colón
Fair Play, by Louise Hegarty

I’m continuing with The Daughters by Ben Rogers, an Early Reviewers win. I’m also reading Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker and Big questions, or, Asomatognosia: whose hand is it anyway by Anders Nilson. On audio, I’m listening to Aegypt by John Crowley and At Blackwater Pond by Mary Oliver.

Comfort reread of Full Share

Comfort reread of Full Share

Prince of Fire by Daniel Silva.