lottpoet's 2026 reading

I was so exhausted after my year-long novel-writing class in 2024, I didn't want any obligations on me, for reading or writing. But, I'm back now. After doing a draft and half of a revision of the second novel in my unpublished novel series, I'm back to revising the first novel, incorporating all the things I've learned from working formally with a group and instructor on the second novel. I'm calling this draft of the first novel, draft 4a. I'm about 1/3 of the way through. I've downsized the cast by about a third, and am reordering events and shifting some of the beginning of the second novel into the first. I hope to have the draft completed by the end of June, so I can do deep revisions, looking to start submitting to agents and small presses this fall. That's how the writing is going.

I'm still self-employed with a contract from the State. I moved in with my sister in a first ring suburb of the Twin Cities so we can help each other out financially as her now-grown children move out (in theory) one by one. That was a significant downsizing for me, especially with books. I had been meaning to cull my books for years. I sold and donated about eighteen paper grocery bags of books to Uncle Hugo's in their new location in Minneapolis (the old store burned down during the uprising). I donated another fourteen paper bags to another independent bookstore in town. When I moved in here my sister had just as many bags of books of children's/MG/YA books that she made her children cull. I bagged them up for a used book sale in town who then got overwhelmed by the amount of books and didn't take any of them. *Sigh* We've been dropping them at various sales around town, two to four bags at a time.

My reading loves are fantasy, science fiction, and romance. I also deeply appreciate a good short story collection. I'm on a journey of Black liberation and have been reading a lot of nonfiction by Black writers in the last few years. (I attended a reading/talk with Hanif Abdurraqib where he read us the liner notes he wrote for the LP of the movie Sinners. I was so enamored (I am writing a vampire novel!) that I talked about needing that album even though I don't have a record player. My sister is the best and got it for me for Christmas. That whole evening with Hanif Abdurraqib, the introduction by Douglas Kearney, and the powerful poems by teen contest winners, was a fabulous evening of Blackness for me.) I've also been reading nonfiction about nature and gender.

I usually read close to 100 books a year. I'm very good at picking my sort of books so I end up loving lots of books.

Favorite reads 2025 (ordered by earliest read to latest read):

1. BLK ART by Zaria Ware
2. Water Moon by Samantha Sotto Yambao
3. The Siren of Sussex by Mimi Matthews
4. Becoming Earth by Ferris Jabr
5. To the Forest by Anais Barbeau-Lavalette
6. Doctor Who: Imaginary Friends, 1960s by Jacqueline Rayner
7. Written in Red by Anne Bishop
8. *Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater
9. The Way Back by Gavriel Savit
10. Black Faces, White Spaces by Carolyn Finney
11. On the Pleasures of Living in Gaza by Mohammed Omer Almoghayer
12. The Good Ally by Nova Reid
13. Otros Valles by Jamie Berrout
14. The Agony of Bun O'Keefe by Heather T. Smith
15. The Archive of Alternate Endings by Lindsey Drager
16. Daisy Bates in the Desert by Julia Blackburn
17. Expanded Roster by Aimee Rivkin

*standout: a 5-star read for me

2024's thread
2023's thread
2022's thread
2019's thread
2016's thread
2015's thread
2014's thread

Favorite reads 2024 (ordered by earliest read to latest read):

1. The Night Hunt by Alexandra Christo
2. *Black Futures ed. Kimberly Drew
3. You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson
4. Among Others by Jo Walton
5. Translation State by Ann Leckie
6. The Governess Affair by Courtney Milan
7. H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
8. The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye by Sonny Liew
9. The Princess and the Grilled Cheese Sandwich by Deya Muniz
10. Hold Me by Courtney Milan, a re-read
11. The Duchess War by Courtney Milan
12. A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness
13. Losers, Part 2 by Harley Laroux
14. Hell for Hire by Rachel Aaron
15. Curio and the Curio Vignettes by Cara McKenna
16. Digger Unearthed by Ursula Vernon
17. The Lion and the Bird by Marianne Dubuc, a picture book

*standout: a 5-star read for me

Books I've completed Jan.-June 2026 (favorites are bolded):

1. Palimpsest by Lisa Wool-Rim Sjoblom, paper, 1/2/2026
2. All the Colors We Will See by Patrice Gopo, audio, 1/23/2026
3. The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer, audio, 1/25/2026
4. Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, audio, re-read, 2/3/2026
5. A Life Impossible by Steve Gleason, audio, 2/9/2026
6. Dare to Be Daring by Chelsea Lin Wallace, paper, 2/10/2026
7. Long Past Midnight by Jonathan Maberry, ebook, 2/16/2026
8. Crazy Love by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, paper, 3/3/2026
9. Moonlight in Odessa by Janet Skeslien Charles, ebook, 3/5/2026
10. They Called Me a Lioness by Ahed Tamimi, audio, 3/6/2026
11. The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin, audio, booklist, 3/7/2026
12. The People Remember by Ibi Zoboi, paper, 3/9/2026
13. Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory by Martha Wells, ebook, 3/27/2026
14. The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates, audio, 4/1/2026
15. Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie, audio, re-read, 4/13/2026
16. The Verifiers by Jane Pek, audio, 4/13/2026
17. Sweetness in the Skin by Ishi Robinson, audio, 4/17/2026
18. Dreaming of You by Lisa Kleypas, audio, 4/17/2026
19. Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie, audio, re-read, 4/19/2026
20. The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson, audio, 4/21/2026
21. Big by Vashti Harrison, paper, 4/25/2026
22. Cannery Row by John Steinbeck, audio, 4/27/2026
23. Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon, audio, pointed word concierge, 4/28/2026
24. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, audio, 4/29/2026
25. Yours, Eventually by Nura Maznavi, paper, 5/1/2026
26. Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup, audio, 5/2/2026
27. The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu, audio, 5/3/2026
28. Binti: Home by Nnedi Okorafor, audio, 2booklist, 5/10/2026
29. Cry Wolf by Patricia Briggs, audio, 5/15/2026
30. Platform Decay by Martha Wells, audio, 5/22/2026
31. Dreamsnake by Vonda N. McIntyre, audio, 5/25/2026
32. Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews, ebook, 5/27/2026
33. A Caress of Twilight by Laurell K. Hamilton, audio, 5/27/2026
34. Life after Life by Kate Atkinson, audio, 5/30/2026
35. Club Dead by Charlaine Harris, audio, 6/3/2026
36. Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede, Mark Reads, 6/5/2026
37. How Long 'til Black Future Month? by N.K. Jemisin, audio, 6/19/2026
38. Hunting Ground by Patricia Briggs, audio, 6/20/2026
39. Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki, audio, 6/21/2026
40. Sorcery & Cecelia by Patricia C. Wrede, audio, 6/23/2026
41. Riddle-Master by Patricia A. McKillip, ebook, 6/28/2026

Books I've completed July-Dec. 2026 (favorites are bolded):

42. The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune, audio, 7/9/2026
43. Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado, audio, 7/10/2026
44. Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay, audio, 7/11/2026

Books I'm reading right now:

The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold
Go Ahead in the Rain by Hanif Abdurraqib
Hell of a Witch by Rachel Aaron
Inciting Joy by Ross Gay
Sea of Grass by Dave Hage
What Doesn't Kill Me Makes Me Weirder and Harder to Relate To by Mary Lucia

Welcome back!

>6 drneutron: Thanks!

1. Palimpsest by Lisa Wool-Rim Sjoblom
paper

I was glad to have read this. It was tense and upsetting, engrossing and very informative. At the start of last year, I think I read one memoir by a trans-racial adoptee and now I'm following a trail of other books. It's a subject (adoption in general, trans-racial adoptions in particular) I knew very little about. The story in Palimpsest doesn't have a neat resolution (spoilers, I suppose, but it seems like many memoirs around this subject end with many things unresolved), but I felt a huge emotional connection to the writer and her journey. Reading this gave me a vibe like the documentary Three Identical Strangers where the more the person looks into their adoption records, the more anomalies and possibly unsavory or illicit or unethical things might have been happening. Also, there's some way in which the adoptees (during the adoption process) get viewed as items or goods rather than full human beings.

4/5 stars

Welcome back, April.

Happy New Year, April!

Thanks, Paul & Nora!

2. All the Colors We Will See by Patrice Gopo
audio

This was a very frustrating book. I don't want to say that all people of color should have a universal reaction to racism. I feel angry and humiliated, maybe a bit of self-loathing, but other people feel different things when racism is pointed at them. But this was a book that the author, who is Jamaican-American with South Asian heritage, wrote to talk about her particular experiences of racism, yet most incidents were quickly flipped to 'everyone makes mistakes or says the wrong thing.' The overall feeling was of great niavete. My frustration was mostly about not getting why we would bother to talk about racism without pausing there and maybe having some revelations. I did appreciate some of what she had to say about internalized oppression and the way that can lead to some off-kilter all-Black interactions. One example was about wearing your hair natural and having certain curl patterns, and having the expectation of certain 'real' curl patterns rather than acknowledging what is natural for *your* particular hair. I also think she portrayed her own emotional reaction and thoughts in any particular moment pretty well. For me, the biggest pain point was the quality of the writing. There are a lot of stories that are told in what I think is called habitual past, so like there were many instances of a particular thing that happened and we opt to talk about all of them together because they're mostly the same. I found that distancing, but I also thought it was a bit wobbly because we would dip in and out of particular differences in the habitual past, when it's usually about what's the same. I also thought that the writing mostly lacked a care with diction and telling details, the particulars, of any circumstance. Overall, I found the book to be shallow in its default to the universal.

3.5/4 stars

3. The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer
audio, mytbr

This is a small book, an expansion of an article Kimmerer wrote. It uses the serviceberry to talk about the gift economy and communality. So, you don't store more than you need in any particular moment because you are not an isolated individual but part of community (including the plants and the weather and the animals) that will be there for you when you need it. When you have excess you share. Hopefully all, but sometimes only most, of the other community members do the same. When you gather serviceberries, you leave some behind to grow other berries and to feed insects and birds, etc., you weed a little, you bring some water for the plants. I loved that the author wrote this to think through her thoughts about how a gift economy could work alongside capitalism. She looked to the serviceberry to help her think both larger and just as small as the berry.

This was a good book for me to read when I did. In the Twin Cities area of MN during the ICE surge, I'd been feeling disheartened about the possibility of humans making things better. This book was a warm hug. It encouraged me not to let go of my humanity and to remember my interconnectedness with all beings, not just humans. I'm definitely ready to go on to Braiding Sweetgrass.

4.5/5 stars

Readalikes:
Becoming Earth by Ferris Jabr, another book that reminds us of the largeness of life, and the aliveness of all parts of it

4. Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
audio, re-read

A fun re-read. Hard not to just burn through the rest of the trilogy.

4.5/5 stars, still

5. A Life Impossible by Steve Gleason
audio

This book had a great opening that got me emotionally invested in his struggles living with ALS and how it effects him as a husband and father. Then we go back to his youth and learn about his childhood and parents and his career in football, moving back to that present moment. I thought it was a good way to structure the memoir. However, I found his striving for extreme experiences to be very hard for me to identify with or understand. I word it that way purposely, because it wasn't just about sports or pushing his body to the limit, but also gastronomical adventures, and slow camping(?). Also, as I read more about his relationship with his wife and children, he struck me as emotionally stunted or immature and somewhat self-involved, even before he was diagnosed with his illness. I do appreciate that he and his wife agreed to be honest about what their whole journey had been like, and I did learn a lot about ALS. I wonder if this book is just too emotionally revealing for me. For a while, I wondered if I was struggling to stay connected because I didn't know who Steve Gleason was, but it's hard to imagine a fan of his from his football days would be happy with so many examples of his pettiness, neediness or sorry-I'm-a-jerk apologies (that aren't really sorry about what was done). I'm not sorry I read it, but if I had missed it, that wouldn't have been a tragedy either.

3.5/5 stars

6. Dare to Be Daring by Chelsea Lin Wallace
audio

I enjoyed the illustrations of this picture book well enough. They are the sort with children's heads being oversized but their facial features small (so, like the boy on that Puffs commercial or the animated short Lost and Found), which is kind of off-kilter but still cute enough that we don't slip into some sort of uncanny valley. I also appreciated the diversity in race and gender and disability status of the children. I found the poem text to be eh: too many variations in the rhythm of the lines which kept me off-balance throughout, falling in and out of assonance/consonance/rhyming, and overlong (per page and overall). But I'm used to finding 'musical' picture books to be more miss than hit for me as a poet. The main thing is that I was frustrated by the scary things presented that the children had to overcome by being daring. I suppose I reacted as my younger self. Don't minimize my legit fears of actual danger (days without food, loss of home, violence among family members, racism) with mild situations of social anxiety and 'ordinary' or 'typical' (fear of the dark) childhood fears. Don't tell me to be daring when you seem to have no idea of all the ways that I've been daring throughout my childhood days. (I say that last one is true even if you had a more stable and secure childhood. Being a child in a world of adults is not easy. Children are conquering fears and being resourceful and meeting challenges all the time. Although, in the book's favor, *celebrating* the many ways a child is daring, is a lovely thing.) I mostly felt like the solution for the fears was 'just do' and then you'll either reap some benefit or understand it was nothing to be scared of. The one fear that was split over the whole of the book (where the child kept failing to move through her fear), I couldn't understand why the girl would have to. Why does a young child need to go down into a darkened basement alone except on a dare? Mainly, the message of the book felt somewhat muddled to me and not particularly helpful. It had a feel of being what adults think children need or want to hear, but not really informed by children's actual concerns. Perhaps children would love this book. I don't know. But it definitely wasn't for me.

2.5/5 stars

7. Long Past Midnight by Jonathan Maberry
paper

This was my first Jonathan Maberry & I really liked it! I knew him as writing zombie novels/series. This book didn't feature any stories about zombies. These stories were all about a little (cursed/haunted) town in PA called Pine Deep. I definitely want to read the Pine Deep trilogy now. Oh, and the Joe Ledger series! Those stories with Joe Ledger were some of my favorites. I also loved the werewolf/not-exactly-a-werewolf stories. (It turns out I prefer a more horror sort of werewolf story rather than urban fantasy were-wolf/dominance/alpha/fated-mates sort. This one made me think a bit of Neil Gaiman's "Only the End of the World Again.")

Pine Deep is a small town that was already known as the most haunted town in the U.S. But then they had a horrific event that killed the majority of the residents and a good chunk of the tourists that were in town for the haunted Halloween festival. It's labeled a terrorist event, but it may have actually been monsters. (Spoilers: It was monsters.) Now the town is still sparsely populated and most of the older residents who survived that horrible event are battle-scarred and severely traumatized. And strange things happen there all the time, because the event wasn't a one-time event, or, more exactly, the threat was defanged to a certain extent but was not out and out defeated.

I thought the author did a good job of creating an eerie and grim and desperate atmosphere, and I loved the deep character work, including a strong voice and interior voice for the main characters of each of the stories. Also, his imagination was fecund. In his introduction, he talked about loving to do research into off-the-beaten path creatures of myth and folklore. So maybe that's what it is. But I figure he still had to do a lot of thinking and planning about how to have these lesser known creatures mesh with others in the stories, and to present them so vividly, even when the reader may not quite understand all the distinctions being made. (I loved the werewolf creature, but I totally didn't understand all the ways it was different than what we usually think of werewolves, and also other types of 'werewolves' in the stories. I believed there was a difference, even if I didn't quite understand it.)

Some things that didn't work so well for me was that the structure of all the stories was the same (a series of numbered sections that most of the time I didn't feel was necessary), that the dialogue sometimes got stuck in a space of being clever or banter-y (which I think upsets the delicate balance of our reality interfacing with a dark, monstrous one by pointing out the artificialness of what's happening, that we're being told a *story*), and the one poem that was not really a poem (more a dramatic monologue, I suppose, but the language and lineation didn't point to poetry at all). Those were all small things.

I relished each of these stories, stretching the collection out to have time to think and talk about each one before moving on to the next. I found the collection inspiring as a writer. Sometimes I feel like my ideas are too out there & that I'll never have the writing chops to get them across anyway, but if this guy could, maybe I could, too. I love it when a writer seems to be writing exactly what they *need* to.

4/5 stars

8. Crazy Love by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
paper

The title is unfortunate, but could be attributed to its time (published in 1977). This is a memoir of her marriage to a man who gets diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. They are both quite young, she's in her early 20's and he's probably in his late 20's. He starts declining when he's in grad school. The memoir mostly focuses on the struggle to know how to help someone with a serious mental health diagnosis and the lack of adequate professional help for the diagnosed person. Early on, most outpatient programs or inpatient hospitals or residential programs are skeptical of the author's concerns and reports of their lived experience. Often the overburdened systems dismiss his presentation as not serious enough to warrant a spot in the program. Her husband's paranoia manifested in a way that made him very compliant and personable with systems or authority figures because he did not want to call attention to himself, he wanted to slide out from under any attention so that he would be safe(r). Later, when he becomes a danger to himself and others, she struggles to get him to an inpatient facility and to get him to stay through the intake process and remain on the premises. He was a high elopement risk, partly because of how compliant he could seem. The author gets frustrated that others tell her she needs to get him into treatment when she can't force someone who's larger and heavier and still marked out as a competent adult to do very little that he does not want to do, and his illness tells him he's completely fine and that everyone else is the problem. I have a close family member with a similar diagnosis, so I really appreciated the struggle and weariness of continuing to see the person as a true person with their own desires and volition, but also acknowledge that their perceptions are altered *and* they will struggle with what I (and the author) might consider basic life skills. How do you not infantilize or other someone who has such struggles? It's probably true for any person dealing with a chronic illness or disability, but there's the added fear around mental illness (in particular, schizophrenia) and all the complications of having an invisible disability. And how do you set effective boundaries when there is very little resource out there for the mentally ill person besides what's usually considered the main support of family members and friends. I felt seen and understood by this book, even as I re-experienced a lot of the rage and frustration I feel dealing with the mental health system day to day. The writing was mostly plainspoken, with some lovely turns of phrases and sort of what-if imaginings (what did a 'simple' girl like her in that time period dream a marriage would be, how her husband seemed to be torn between people to make happy (starting with his parents) until he couldn't try anymore). I also thought she did a good job at getting into what her thinking was and her emotional state, even when it isn't flattering to herself.

4/5 stars.

9. Moonlight in Odessa by Janet Skeslien Charles
ebook

I originally got this book from the Skip the Line list on Libby. I read as much as I could in that one week but didn't finish and had to get on the holds list to get access to it for longer than a week. I really liked the main character and hearing about the ways she thrived as much as she could in Ukraine. Even though her and her grandmother have some economic struggles, she loves her country and her city. This was a novel that seemed very new adult/coming of age. I enjoyed sitting with the character while she figured out that she wanted romance, but couldn't figure out how to sort out the options available to her (a boss who expects sexual favors for giving her the job, a mobster who she finds appealing but is immature, a mail order bride situation for a man in the U.S., etc.) She wants to have children and a family, but she doesn't want a broken or dysfunctional family. In her mid-twenties, she's considered an old maid by those in her city. The main character was an interesting mix of savvy (knowing who to bribe when, outmaneuvering her handsy boss) and naive (believing in America as the land of opportunity, believing what the men she corresponds with tell her about themselves and about their love for her). And when she eventually does make it to the U.S., she has to figure out whether she can stay for the wonders of the U.S. (along with its disappointments) at the cost of her heart, or if she should return home, or if there could be some middle option where she gets to keep the U.S. while she has more time to figure out life partners and children. I really liked her and wanted so badly for things to go well for her, even though I wasn't sure how that could happen. The ending wasn't quite as definitive as I hoped, but I think it was a good call to have a much more open ending where she's still figuring it out as she gathers those around her who will support her in whatever she decides.

4/5 stars

10. They Called Me a Lioness by Ahed Tamimi
audio

This book stressed me out and infuriated me. I felt terrible that her childhood had to be so curtailed by being treated as such an underclass by Israel. It's been a while since I read this so I hope I get the geography correct. The author lives in the West Bank of Palestine, but Israeli settlements keep encroaching on the Palestinian land, using threats of violence (and violence), destruction of land/farms, restricting access to water sources, and Israeli military protections and aggressions. Her community's protests and demonstrations during her childhood are met by the Israeli military with a great deal of brutality and oppression. I appreciated her honesty about how afraid she was to join her family in demonstrating, but that staying home was not safer as their homes, mainly occupied at the time by the very young and the very old, those not capable of marching, were bombed and gassed. She was imprisoned as a teenager for slapping an Israeli soldier who was trampling her family's gardens, using their wall as cover to shoot their neighbors and family and friends. I have read a few books about Gaza and about the Palestinian diaspora, but I think this was my first book about the experience of Palestinians in the West Bank. There's a really moving scene where they are able to go to Gaza after going through a grueling multi-checkpoint process, and how she feels unfairly cut off from the rest of her people and from the sea. This story has so much heartbreak and injustice, but also has so much celebration and deep community. I was glad to have read it.

4/5 stars

I was at our romance bookstore (Tropes & Trifles) last week for a book club for my first Lisa Kleypas (and my first 20th century-written romance), Dreaming of You. I got some books while I was there (even though I didn't really have the money for it)!

- a pretty sprayed edges book of Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
- Yours, Insatiably by Aveda Vice, because I really liked her Lost Touch duet
- a blind-date with a book that said it was for those who loved Seven Days in June by Tia Williams, which I haven't read yet but I so enjoyed the book I did read by her and I want to read that one next: Yours, Eventually by Nura Maznavi, a book I'd not heard of

That was my first blind date with a book. I liked that this set of them told you more on the wrapper besides the genre or sub-genre. I also could tell what most of the books were by the descriptions, even if I hadn't read them, because I spend so much of my day keeping track of books and book news and reading reviews and listening to book podcasts, etc. The one I got, I didn't recognize, but I mainly got it because of the Tia Williams comp. I'm enjoying it so far. It's a modern Persuasion retelling.

Me and my sister were just out for Independent Bookstore Day. In MN, we have a passport put out by Rain Taxi that we can get stamped at the different stores we visit. I had only intended to get one book per bookstore (ha-ha, it's like I don't know myself). I sold so many books at Uncle Hugo's a year and a half ago when I moved, that I still have credit leftover after covering the cost of my books today.

Strive Bookstore:
- two Twin Cities postcards
- Stress Coping Skills Deck by Dr. Faith G. Harper
- Big by Vashti Harrison, a picture book that made me teary in the store; it has beautiful soft rounded illustrations & a great message

Comma, a bookshop:
- 33 Place Brugmann by Alice Austen, a blind date with a book that's wrapper asked 'Can a building be a literary character?', this was a book I hadn't heard of & looks good
- A Field Guide to the Natural World of the Twin Cities by John J. Moriarty, 'cause I'm getting out into nature more and want to learn all about it, and this one's for my location

Uncle Hugo's:
- MonsTABOO 1 by Yuya Takahashi, used, a young woman falls in love with a monster who's maybe not like the other monsters
- Become You 1 by Ichigo Takano, used, because it's got a grumpy dude, and it was giving me the soft, sweet vibes of Yuri on Ice
- The Arrival by Shaun Tan, used, one of his first books that was such a big deal when it came out
- The Case Study of Vanitas 1 by Jun Mochizuki, used, because it features vampires and humans, a vampire doctor (??), and a threat to vampires and humans
- What If? by Randall Munroe, this is what happens when you're feeling book credit flush, you get a nice hardcover of a book you've been meaning to read for ages, $30?, that's ok, I got it to burn
- Monstress, Volume Three: Haven by Marjorie Liu, these graphic novels are gorgeous, and I love a good story about monstrousness
- I was looking for the Doctor Who: The Decades Collection, but they would've only had a used copy/used copies, but they showed me where the Doctor Who section is, so I can keep a lookout

Moon Palace Books:
- The Nap Ministry's Rest Deck by Tricia Hersey, my sister found these for me; I'm on the long waiting list at the library for her Rest Is Resistance
- The Fall of the House of Tatterly by Shanna Miles, because the back cover voice of the boy mc made him sound so competent as a medium/ghost-expert
- Star Child by Ibi Zoboi, because it's poems about Octavia E. Butler
- A Suit or a Suitcase by Maggie Smith, the cover has been catching my eye online & I liked the poems I read in the store

Two more books from Amber & Cream, a last hurrah from Independent Bookstore Day, which is celebrated for five days in MN.

Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency by Chen Chen, poetry
Electric Life by Sander Funneman, a graphic nonfiction about electromagnetic forces, because it sounds interesting and it'll help with my novel

I was at our romance bookstore (Tropes & Trifles) last week for a book club for The Verifiers by Jane Pek. I got some books while I was there!

- Embers and Sparks by Amy Allen, a blind date with a book that mentioned a muse and art and being 'kinda asexual,' sold!
- They Wouldn't Dare by Deanna Grey
- Two Wings Fly Away by Penny Mickelbury

Next month this book club will be Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki. I'll report back on what books I pick up on that trip.

11. The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisins
audio

This was a nice solid end to the trilogy. We got the immovable object/unstoppable force of the mother-daughter storylines (with contradictory objectives and lots of terrible water under the bridge) dovetailing. I loved hearing more from the past and about the stone-eaters before they were stone-eaters. We learn more about Father Earth. It was all very satisfying. And I especially appreciate that it wasn't a nice, tidy, happy ending, but something way more realistic.

4/5 stars

12. The People Remember by Ibi Zoboi
paper

This is a picture book that tells the history of Black America by covering the seven principles of Kwanzaa. I thought it was pretty clever. I appreciated that the poems were of variable length and that they didn't lean too heavily into strict meter or rhyme. I was impressed with the amount of historical and cultural information that was relayed while also digging into what each principle of Kwanzaa represents. Impressive and moving. I feel like Kwanzaa gets lumped into the winter holidays as a nominal diversity move or it's outright derided as a 'fake' holiday. I don't formally celebrate Kwanzaa, but I allow the principles to guide how I live my life, and I can appreciate a set time that we can come together and remember and honor ourselves: a good antidote to the day to day amnesia and dismissal of Black accomplishments. Very glad to have read this.

4/5 stars

13. Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory by Martha Wells
ebook

So, I have a weird confession. I reread the Murderbot books constantly, even though I didn't mark them as my favorites and I don't officially mark the rereads in my various literary accounts. They're comforting for me. I'm sure part of it is that they deal with healing from trauma and finding community, which are things I'm focusing on in the novel I'm writing (and that I find useful in my life). Anyway, I keep discovering little short stories/vignettes I hadn't known about. This one was perfect. I loved getting Mensah's POV. After Murderbot, she's my favorite, well, maybe after ART also.

I thought this did a good job of showing how a person can be aware that they have trauma and still be caught up in its effects, sort of like being both inside and outside of it, and also the reticence to fully deal with it (perhaps, and this is me speaking from my own experience, from the reluctance to face the traumatic event more fully when you've already been through its horrors once (originally) all ready). I also liked the way Wells was able to take Mensah's external voice from dialogue and translate that into an interior POV voice that seemed to fit.

So, when I find myself with a few minutes to spare before a concert starts or at a doctor's office, I'll pull out this short, experience all the feelings, leaving me with a smile of delight on my face.

5/5 stars

14. The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
audio

This book was narrated by Joe Morton, an actor I've loved since seeing The Brother from Another Planet when I was in grad school. (He also was in Eureka on USA.) I'm adding him to my best narrators list. Some of the passages in this book were so emotionally devastating. I cried a lot reading this book. I especially remember how he talked about his guardian after his mother was sold away and how her behavior made sense for someone whose children were sold away from her.

I liked how conduction (mostly how the Underground Railroad successfully functions in this book) was something within the conductors that was tied to memory and lineage and was something they would have to figure out how to invoke. It allows them to bring people across vast geographies to freedom in a shorter time than usual. Harriet Tubman was like a saint to the people in this book, a sort of John Henry figure who was bigger than life and to be revered. I loved the passage that described her use of conduction to bring some people who were enslaved, including a relative, to freedom. It was so powerful and resonant and personal, telling her own story of striving for freedom, in a fervent call and response fashion with those who journeyed with her.

I've enjoyed Coates' nonfiction, especially "The Case for Reparations," but somehow I wasn't expecting too much from his first published fiction, but this was so artfully written. I thought it purposefully called back to slave narratives (in particular Frederick Douglass) and 19th century literature in general with the way the POV was deployed and how interior/philosophical the narration was. I would totally read more fiction by him if he wrote it.

4.5/5 stars

Readalikes:
The Known World by Edward P. Jones, for another literary exploration of slavery, this one's magic is more in the lo-o-ong-term vaguely utopic planning of one of the enslaved people's plan (and execution of it) for freedom

15. Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie
audio, a re-read

I enjoyed Seivarden and Ship, but this is the first time I found Breq insufferable. She's always right. The books agree she's always right. And she's so high-handed about it. I was starting to feel a little of it in my re-read earlier this year of Ancillary Justice. I will say I've always liked this book least, mainly because I was starting to get to know and enjoy the crew of the ship but Breq spends a good chunk of the book on the station (with a bunch of functionaries I didn't care about (& a mean girl)) and then the tea plantation. I will also say I'm just crankier this year so it sucks for the books I'm reading, and at this point I've read later written Ann Leckie books, like Translation State, so I may just want more out of the author than she wanted to do (or could do?) back then for her second published novel.

4/5 stars (still)

16. The Verifiers by Jane Pek
audio

I really liked this book. It'd been on my wishlist for a while, and then it was one of the books chosen for a book club at our romance bookstore Tropes & Trifles. I had mostly not been much interested in the book clubs there because they're so popular they seemed to me almost impossible to get into before they filled up. I finally squeaked into one in April where I read my first Lisa Kleypas romance, and while I was signing up for that, I saw the The Verifiers would be a book for one of May's book club. I struggled with the Kleypas but ultimately enjoyed it. But I liked The Verifiers so much I finished it in April in just a few days.

The book club for this book is called Do They Kiss? Which I think might mean is it a capital 'R' Romance, versus something romantic. I think we agreed this book was not a Romance. I said at the book club that I thought it was an anti-romance, which they were all intrigued by. Because the book heavily features dating app algorithms and AI, multiple romantic relationships, both failing and failed, were featured in the book. There was an abundance of people trying desperately to make a romantic connection and to keep the embers glowing. And there was a lot of talk of the struggle of dating app algorithms to make good matches because people lie in big and small ways and they either don't have any idea of what they want or they say they want a thing when they really want something different or they really think they want something they don't want. One key relationship in the novel was the main character's sister who was in a longer term relationship (maybe a year or two?) with a man who she accidentally clicked on in the app--she had not been matched to him. At the end of the book when her relationship is broken up and she's back on the app trying to make another match, she laments that nobody is like the guy she lost, and I was like, that's impossible because the app *did not* match you to that person.

The book is a mystery. The main character, Claudia, is a 25-year old woman of Chinese descent who is a bit of a ne'er-do-well. She is the youngest sibling, the favorite of her mother. The older brother and sister bend over backward to do for Claudia and to bail her out of whatever mishaps she gets into. The woman is obsessed with this fictitious historical detective series featuring Inspector Yuan. She yearns to find herself a mystery to solve a la Inspector Yuan. Several months before the novel opens, Claudia secretly quit the respectable job her brother got her, in finance, I believe, to work for the agency Veracity which charges word-of-mouth clients a lot of money to investigate the veracity of what the person's love interest or potential love interest has told them via various dating apps. The agency has only its two founders, an IT wiz who is never in the office, and Claudia as the workers. I loved the tightness of the founders, Komla (the owner) and Becks, and felt sympathy for Claudia that she couldn't figure out how to get in the mix with them. I also really liked inscrutable Komla, at least for the first 2/3 of the book.

This book has the seeming suicide of a current client of Veracity. Nobody quite believes all the parts of that story, but Veracity is not an actual detective agency, it's a verification service that mostly works through digital sleuthing, and they no longer have a living client. Claudia cannot let it go because her internal Inspector Yuan knows that things are not adding up. She continues to investigate on her own, through some really dicey and dangerous situations. Here's where I have to talk abut the level of immaturity Claudia exhibits. She is both genre savvy about how mysteries work and clueless about her reality of not actually being a skilled detective, much less someone of Inspector Yuan's caliber (who is a fictional character! of course, he doesn't usually fail, it's not the real world.). I got so stressed out in the middle section of the book before Claudia is finally able to gain some allies to help her in her sleuthing pursuits.

I love this kind of mystery that has people realistically choosing to be at odds with each other and trying to alter reality. There are cover-ups, convoluted murder plans, obstructive behavior, scare tactics to get people to back off, roving suspicions, of course, red herrings, and plenty of guilt to go around even if it's not guilt of the one murder that the book foregrounds. My nibling once wanted to set up a murder mystery party but didn't want to use a pre-written script or skit. I felt like a key thing I brought to the table was how multiple characters need to look or act guilty and that we needed plausible reasons the non-guilty people were behaving that way (because they were guilty of/about other things, because they thought they knew who the guilty party was and was trying to protect them, etc.--people have lots of secrets of their own and they can feel very protective of each other).

This book is very rich in all the side concerns and motivations that were not about the central murder. I've already mentioned the failing/failed romantic relationships, some of these were Claudia's siblings, Claudia's inability to commit to a relationship because of past experiences, multiple clients and past clients, and all the people around the murder victim who were suspected by Claudia of being the murderer at one time or another. There is also the whole mechanism of dating apps and their competition with each other and the success of their matching abilities. There is also the layer of the algorithms morphing into usage of AI and who owns the AI and sets their mandates. A lot of theory about matchmaking systems is presented in the book, and I was here for it. We also have the painful family dynamics of Claudia's family. Claudia's mother left China and her two children at the time to seek her fortune elsewhere eventually to send for her children (actually it's unclear whether she would ever have sent for them). While she's away, she gets pregnant with Claudia. The two older children get reunited with the rest of the family when their caregivers in China (I believe the grandparents) get infirm and die. That situation makes the older children feel like they have to keep earning their place in the family so they won't be sent away, which means taking care of Claudia, the 'loved' child. It really broke my heart.

I'm excited to read more of the series. I enjoyed all of the characters, even when they were being jerks or fools.

4/5 stars

Readalikes:
My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephan Graham Jones, for a similar narrator who is obsessed with something fictional that helps them cope with the overwhelmingness of life, and it helps them save the day
The Fixer by Jennifer Lynne Barnes, for a young character in over the head with a convoluted mystery that is bigger than any one person can uncover if they want to live to tell the tale

17. Sweetness in the Skin by Ishi Robinson
audio

This book focuses on colorism in the Black community and how it follows on from colonialism. It's a coming of age story set in Jamaica. The main character is a girl torn between her extraordinarily abusive and neglectful mother who won't let her go and the aunt (mother's sister) who is light-skinned and upwardly mobile. The goal of the aunt is to get a position where she can move herself and the main character to France. The aunt interposes herself between the mother and the main character when the abuse is happening as much as she is able, but when the aunt gets a position in France sooner than she expected, she has to go to France first and concoct a plan to reunite with the niece later. The plan is for the main character to study for and take a fancy French exam so that she can get a visa to transfer to a school in France. The main character feels betrayed to be left behind, at the mercy of her mother who thence makes it almost impossible for her to continue to take her french class and get money for the exam. She also knows that her mother would have to sign guardianship over to her aunt, and she knows that is an impossible thing. Her mother hates the aunt because *their* mother doted on the lighter-skinned aunt and dismissed the darker-skinned mother because there was no way society would ever allow her to amount to anything. I'm flattening out these relationships and their prickly issues: there's definitely a lot more depth to their relationships with each other and the way society mucks it up. The main character has to truly let go of the hope that her mother will choose her for her and not just to spite someone. She also has to put herself out there and get help from many sources and realize that she has become part of a community. It was a bit of a brutal read, but I did enjoy it.

4/5 stars

Readalikes:
Almost Crimson by Dasha Kelly, for a different take on a girl who has to take care of her own caregiver and rely on kind strangers to survive childhood. In Almost Crimson the grown woman has to face how difficult and non-optimal her childhood was, how the adaptive patterns from that time are still with her, and how to do things a different way so that her adulthood can be one that involves thriving rather than just getting through

18. Dreaming of You by Lisa Kleypas
audio

This was the first romance I read that was written in the twentieth century. It definitely had some dated choices, like a totally gratuitous slur for Romany, and seemingly little understanding of consent. It's not like the writer just handles consent differently, say, mostly having the discussion or check-ins happen off the page. It's like consent isn't really anything we need to concern ourselves with when it's a woman with an alpha man. He knows her body better than she does, and that's all that really matters. (Even though in one egregious scene, she's both exhibiting yes and no body language, like getting aroused, but also needing to be pulled into a private room, pushing his body away, trying to get out from under him and reclothe herself.) It was so uncomfortable.

The romance itself is fine. It has a male love interest who is dominant but has a check on his behavior which is that he needs to protect her from his beastly, coarse self. This is not my favorite type of love interest for a romance. I will say once they officially commit to each other, he is mostly sweet and ultra accommodating, the way you would pamper a beloved pet, but you still have to keep the boundary of who's rightfully in charge of this relationship. I make it sound like I didn't like this book. It was one that through it's interminable-seeming length, I fell in and out of like with it. I wasn't sorry to have read it, but knowing what I know, I don't think I would've started my Kleypas adventures with this one.

I read this book for my first Tropes & Trifles romance bookstore book club. I've been hearing how addictive and fantastic Kleypas' series was, so I signed up for this book in the bookstore's Bonkers Book Club. When reading it, I didn't find it particularly bonkers. Yes, it has some extreme mishaps/adventures and some incredibly implausible events to get and keep the romance going, but I'm sure I've read some other romances that were definitely more bonkers. At the end of book club night, we rated the book as 3.5-ish on a 10-point Bonkers scale. The Bonkers Book Club has three stations that breaks up the group of 22 attendees into groups. I started at the crafting section where we decorated (sun)glasses (the talisman of the romance in the book), then moved to the somewhat disappointing abbreviated book discussion circle. I unintentionally saved the best station for last, which was the game corner where the host had converted a Chutes and Ladders game into a Dreaming of You game where the point is to get up to the top with a pair of eyeglasses (representative of us getting our love interest). Climbing ladders (made over into chimneys I think) got us a pair of glasses and sliding down chutes (drainpipes?) usually lost us a pair of glasses. We mutually decided that players could collect multiple glasses in a sort of polycule. The game board had stickers with different things representing our progress through the novel, with a gun at the first turn. The eyeglasses (and opera glasses) were impressive and delightful! They looked like they were made from colorful paperclips.

We started the book club evening playing a 'Would Derek Craven...?' game with things like 'go to the State Fair,' 'write fan fiction.' It sounded like this is something they do on the Fated Mates Podcast on Derek Craven Day. I listen to this podcast but I'm still way back in season 1. Sounds like I have some fun things coming. The book club host said that Lisa Kleypas is editing these older books as they get re-released to be more in line with our contemporary expectations of romance novels, but that we should seek out used unedited versions of The Wallflowers because those are better. I do know that people often reference The Wallflowers series.

To get more into the details of this book, it had some head hopping/POV bleeding between the hero and the heroine, which I'm so not a fan of. I find it--I was going to say lazy, but I think I'll say convenient: you want to have intense romantic and sexual moments to have both POVs, but you can just as well pick, I mean, there'll be plenty more scenes where we can get the other party's perspective, it's a romance novel so we don't lack for those moments. I felt like we got to know the woman love interest's psychology and background in terms of how it explained her behavior much better than we got the male love interest's. And it didn't feel like it was about the page time spent with either. We got concrete things about the male love interest's background, but we never *did* anything with it, so his behavior felt highly repetitive when it didn't feel push-pull/hot and cold. I could do the work with what I was given to figure out why he was doing what he was doing at any particular moment, but the text didn't bother to do that work. That was definitely an area where I thought a romance of the 2020's and maybe the 2010's would explore that very differently and explicitly in the text.

This one was not quite for me, but I will probably read more Kleypas. Considering romance of the 90's, I might try others, but without a book club, I would probably DNF out of them instead of pushing through. There are *so many* fantastic romances of the 2020's and 2010's. It's interesting that datedness is such a turnoff for a romance novel, when I read all kinds of other fiction (and sometimes nonfiction) from the 40's, 20's, etc.

4/5 stars

19. Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie
audio, re-read

See my review for book #15 above for Ancillary Sword. This time I can say I loved Station and Translator Zeiat and Sphene in addition to Seivarden and Five and Ship. I still struggled with Breq, even as we got more information about how Breq as an ancillary is what Ship misses and Ship is what Breq misses but that they can't quite be that for each other. It was fun to witness Translator Zeiat after having read Translation State, so much of what she says and does makes way more sense now that I know how the translators are raised and how they are paired up. This time around I found Anaander Mianaai to be over the top in her villainy, even though I do get how desperate she was. This was a fun, if frustrating, re-read. I still like the shape of the trilogy. I didn't change my rating of the book because I tell how cranky I am right now, and it is better than the second book of the trilogy so I can't give them the same rating. If it was StoryGraph, I could give it 4.25 stars.

4.5/5 stars (still)

20. The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
audio

This was a long reading journey over several years. I would read a chunk, lose interest, put it down, pick it up again a few months later, repeat. It follows three people who moved West or North during the Great Migration. I had the feeling that it was a little repetitive, perhaps to help us remember who was who, as we rotated through the families. This last section I read to finish the book is about the people growing old and infirm, and some dying, bringing us to the present moment when the book was written. And it was definitely repetitive. I think as the people got further from their Southern roots (so, closer to the current moment) and reconciled themselves or didn't to their lives outside the South, the people were likely to circle around the same stories/myths of who they are/were and why/how they made the decisions they did. That's very true to how people can be, but I don't find it very fun to read we keep switching from characters. I prefer Caste by the same author. This book is fine, but I'm not sure I needed to read it. I think I might have a good foundation of knowledge about the Great Migration.

3.5/5 stars

21. Big by Vashti Harrison
paper

This is a pretty book. The illustrations are soft and expressive. The Black girl who is the main character is drawn in color while those around her are washed out and monochrome. First we see scenes from her babyhood and toddlerhood where offpage family members call her a big girl as in 'you're growing up,' you're learning things and having all kinds of new experiences. But then we shift to scenes of people outside the home who call her a big girl as in 'hefty,' and are scornful of or make fun her size. At that point the text says that she started to feel small. The art shows her physically getting larger and larger on the page until she's towering over the people around her like Honey I Blew up the Kid. I really liked the tension between her feeling smaller and smaller and the literalization of how her size becomes more of a problem for those around her. Until we get to her lowest moment when the pages have to fold out to contain her and her tears. Then she realizes that these things people are putting on her, their hurtful words and attitudes are not hers, and she gives them back. Some people try to understand but they still think that helping means changing her to fit in, but she refuses. She knows she is good. In the author's note at the end she talks about the intersection between adultification and anti-fat bias, and how this book grew out of her childhood experiences. I don't really know how to talk about illustrations effectively, but they are both soft and detailed. The girl has a recognizably young Black girl hairstyle with neat parts. The faces are all quite expressive. I was very impressed with this book & wrecked emotionally.

4/5 stars

22. Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
audio

This is my first Steinbeck. I got it from my library's Libby Skip the Line section. The opening paragraph or so of the novel is so beautifully written and leans hard into voice. And I almost gave up in those first few pages because of the ethnic slurs that were used in a matter of fact catalog of the residents of Cannery Row. It wasn't just the slurs, but the tone, sort of flinging them out like it's nothing. I'm very glad I did stick with it.

I thought of Catch-22 throughout this book. It had some of the same vibes with an absurd tone, black humor, cast of oddballs and ne'er-do-wells, full of shenanigans and hijinks. I will say with Cannery Row I was not ready for the number of suicides and the number of people displaying characteristics of profound clinical depression. It's not surprising for such an economically depressed neighborhood, but it was shocking how the book takes it in stride, much the way the characters do.

At first I found the characters entertaining if exasperating. I was not entertained by their madcap schemes and the paths of destruction and harm they left behind. And then, much like Catch-22, I got a better feel for each of the characters and was able to better keep track of who was who. And their stories started accreting. In the end I found the novel funny and emotionally effecting. I would definitely read more Steinbeck, and I kind of think it's really unfair how good a writer he is (of course, I'm glad he is so good).

4/5 stars

Readalike:
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

23. Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon
audio, pointed word concierge

This was a tough one to read. It followed a pregnant teen girl, Vern, who escapes from a Black cult, fleeing into the woods. She was married to the cult leader because she was a troublesome, 'sassy' girl who needed a firm hand. In the woods she gives birth to twins and raises them there until they are four. Many strange things happen in the woods. She's hunted by someone she thinks is from the cult or hired by the cult, but who seems to have supernatural abilities. This hunter taunts Vern with vivisected animal carcasses with baby clothing near them, fires whose containments are falling so that Vern has to make a trench to not have her forest home burned down while she figures out how to put out the fire. I really couldn't tell at first whether there was actually a hunter or if she was confused or delusional. She does have what seem to be hallucinations that are quite realistic and involved. One other strange thing is happening in the woods, and that is that Vern's body is changing. The cult, Cainland, was doing medical experimentation on the people there, injecting them with unknown agents. She assumes that something they did to here is why she is changing into a creature of some sort. The story has flashbacks to her time at Cainland that are nicely deployed in the text, not too disruptive of the flow of the main story, not too on the nose with paralleling what 's happening in the current timeline, not too coy about keeping information from us. Cainland is a Black nationalist group that originally started as a cooperative, but becomes more autocratic and restrictive once the current leader comes to power. With this new leader, it also seems to have powerful protection from (White) government and law enforcement. Vern ends up leaving the woods with her children because she realizes she will need help from someone with what she is becoming, and she will need to figure out what is really going on with Cainland so she can stop this from happening to other people, including children being raised there. I was kind of freaked out the whole time I was reading this book. Warning: It is definitely horror-tinged, in particular body-horror. But it had a satisfying ending, even if I wouldn't quite say it was happy.

4/5 stars

Readalikes:
Firethorn by Sarah Micklem, for another woman who flees to the wilderness to escape an abusive man and has to figure out how to survive there
Lakewood by Megan Giddings: I thought of this one the whole time I was reading Sorrowland. I can't spoil the levels of it (and I tried not to for Sorrowland either), but it features a poor Black woman who gets enticed into a secret experimentation program that seems really invested in keeping the fire of racism (and so called racial resentment) stoked.
The Zero by Jess Walter: This is a little out there as a readalike. It follows a police officer who was at Ground Zero for 9/11. His reality gets more confused and fractured from PTSD, from a head wound, or maybe something else is going on. The dreamy but very real feel of the delusions (or are they?) reminded me of
Sorrowland.

24. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
audio

My local library has a book club where they read shorter books (250 pages or less). This was the May book club pick. I've been meaning to read it for a while now. I was interested in thoughts or ideas about homes and houses and what if yours is nontraditional/not the standard. I'd also had writers in workshop say that this book reminded them of my fiction writing, because of the compression and the lyrical language, and maybe the telling details. I did enjoy it. The book club talked about possible reasons the book had been challenged in school libraries and curriculum. We came up with witchcraft and the supernatural; sexual violence (and threat of it); suicide; centering a Latine family; not holding with the primacy of the English language; a family that isn't completely bought into the 'American Dream.' In googling later, it seemed like we got most of the reasons, including one state that talked about it fostering 'ethnic resentment.' It is a book that was published for adults (so, not YA or MG), although it mostly follows a girl who is a tween tipping into her teenage years. Several people said their child(ren) read it in middle school or junior high. I loved getting something that looked more like what it was like for me growing up. And I appreciated the writing which was allusive, precise, and sharp, and was deeply immersed in voice and character.

4/5 stars

Readalikes:
Striped Ice Cream by Joan M. Lexau: This one is a MG book about a poor Black family, following the youngest child in the family, getting deep into her perspective as being misunderstood and feeling at points stifled by her family's babying of her. I found this book as a child and checked it out many times from the library because, like the tv show Good Times, it just seemed to deal with stuff I was more familiar with around hand-me-downs and stretching a food budget and the stress around the monetary outlay around back to school (and having to get good, sturdy shoes rather than the cute ones because they'll last).

25. Yours, Eventually by Nura Maznavi
paper

This was my first blind date with a book. I got it from our romance bookstore, Tropes & Trifles. It is a muslim Pakistanti-American retelling of Persuasion. Persuasion is my favorite Jane Austen of what I've read so far (I still haven't gotten to Mansfield Park which I think I'll like, or finished Northanger Abbey which I feel kind of 'eh' about). It is the first Austen I read and I read an annotated version which was super helpful for cultural information about why people were saying the things they were saying and doing the things they were doing. I don't read as many books with my eyes anymore. I enjoyed the way this book took all my attention and that it slowed down my reading ('cause I'm a slow reader). I found the main character, Asma, baffling in her deep sublimation to her family's dictates. She's 28 years old and in her last year of medical residency, but still doesn't get to make her own decisions about her life, including living alone, because she's unmarried. And we have Asma's best friend who did what their upper class tight knit muslim immigrant community wanted and married between college and grad school, and still didn't get what she wanted. The best friend had to put her grad school plans on hold to support her husband's career with him promising they would move so she could go to grad school, but that never coming to fruition because that's very selfish of her to uproot their whole family and disrupt his career for going to school when she doesn't need to. I did unfortunately understand Asma's putting every single member of her family's needs and wants before her own. She's not the oldest child, but she does get a burden put on her by her dying mother when Asma was a teenager telling her to take care of the family (because Asma's the most responsible one). I enjoyed the reading of this and kind of wish I was still reading it. I really liked getting immersed in the community and the way the book changes lenses multiple times to see the community and family at different angles. At first we're like, oh, this is a insular community with conservative traditional values, then we're like, oh, ha-ha, look at these rich people who are all about appearances and reputation rather than true values, then we're like, hm, maybe there's something to a more old-fashioned, slowed-down milieu (thinking of the sweet college romance between Asma and Farooq), then we're like rich people get their comeuppance stupidly living beyond their means and contorting themselves to save face, etc. The main character, Asma, also continually reassesses her community, her family, what her mother would have wanted, her own behavior and motivations. I thought the book did a good job at covering the beats of Persuasion. I wasn't sure how they'd handle the guy accidentally being engaged to the younger woman of their party, but I thought they handled it decently. I thought the disappearance of the aunt towards the very beginning of the book was a cop out. That would be the only complaint I had about the book. No, not true, I never got the feeling that Asma and her best friend were really that close. To me, it felt like Asma took and took from her friend and provided very little support or understanding to her. And maybe the author was trying to show that Asma wasn't a good friend or that she was dismissive of her friend because she took a more traditional route. I almost wish that the author would retell some other Austen or write more romances in the broader community here. I'd love for Asma's best friend to get a better romantic partner. So glad to have read this.

4/5 stars

26. Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup
audio

I really didn't get along with the movie before I shut it off halfway through. The source material is actually very good. It is definitely a crafted document to be used by abolitionists to gather support and sympathy, the author says so in the introduction. I suppose what I mean by crafted is not about altering facts or changing information, but is more about where to put the emphasis in the tale (fleshed out scenes vs summation) and giving details that can be corroborated. This was an interesting read after Water Dancer (fiction). They have some similarities in terms of talking about how the brutal system of slavery degrades White people, normalizing monstrous behavior above and beyond what is required for slavery. That it destroys their soul and character. These two books also have a similar shifting between telling the particulars of what is happening and having philosophical thoughts about the bigger picture of what is happening. Solomon Northup had multiple owners and had a variety of tasks depending on who was in charge at any point. He did woodwork and played his violin for parties. He also worked with sugarcane and picked cotton. Some of the things Northup witnessed or experienced were so awful, so beyond the pale. And yet they occurred. Partway through this book, especially while remembering the movie, I started having a controversial thought. Maybe we stop making movies, television, plays that attempt to portray slavery. I might be ok with novels, but then again maybe not. Maybe we admit that the institution is unfathomable and stop pretending that presenting something so god awful will make some sort of difference in our world today. Are we trying to convince people of how terrible it was? Are we trying to remind people that it was a thing that happened? Are we looking to horrify people in a sort of scared straight, never again act? I don't get to decide these things for the world, so I decide it for myself. If the eyewitness accounts (slave narratives) of those who experienced it aren't enough for us, I don't know that anything would be. It's like if we invented a time machine people would travel back to this time period just so they could see with their own eyes the terror, the grinding down, the raping, the mutilating, and the incidental degradation of those enslaved. Somehow these visual media thin the boundary between witnessing and entertainment. Reading this document he left us, I suffered along with Solomon Northup, but of course, I didn't. I got as close as I could to feeling what it must have been like, and that's enough.

4/5 stars

27. The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu
audio

I ended up really liking this. It took until about 1/3 of the way through before I started feeling invested in the characters and the scenario on Earth. This is a novel that definitely works through accretion. Things that seemed silly, trite, or over the top earlier in the novel gained resonance as they were called back, until they were quite affecting. One example that I liked even its first reference is the idea of a language that is not verbal. Since they have these aliens spying on everything they say or do, the main character's love interest suggested that humans needed a nonverbal language. The main character says that it's too broad for conveying precise information, but she insists that that is its strength, that shows how rich nonverbal language is. Then we get one of my favorite scenes towards the end of the novel: where the second in commands of several of the ships that are New Eden (I think that's what they called themselves), the last of the Earth fleet, have a whole discussion with their eyes and very little dialogue. I don't know what that looked like on the page but it was beautiful and affecting on audio. I also really enjoyed the end of the novel and am really interested to see what happens in the final book of the trilogy. But first, I have to go back and read the first book.

The idea of the dark forest is very interesting (as a reason for why intelligent life in the universe is seemingly rare). What I got from it is that these life forms have to hide/stay silent, and destroy anything else out there that is stupid enough to broadcast their presence, either because they will kill them given the chance or they could develop to a point where they would or should do so. It seems that intelligent life can't take the chance to allow enough time to figure out what anyone else's motivation is. It feels a little like, say, marginalized groups hiding their light under a bushel. I think hiding is not an effective strategy for long-term survival. Flourishing, thriving, is also necessary. When I was done with this book, I had to look up the dark forest theory online to get a better sense of it. There was a lot of theorizing and lecturing in this book, and I'm kind of sort of into it? I liked it here for the most part anyway.

This book does have its issues for me. The main one being the really weird thing with the main character creating an idealized woman and then later having a team that can 'find her' in the actual population of Earth. She is real and she is just perfect for him. I spent the whole time once she appeared thinking she was a plant or spy. I also really didn't like this main character. I think he is supposed to be somewhat unlikeable, but I think I may have detested him more than the book intends. My biggest concern is about the very end. I really can't believe that Earth is totally forgiving/understanding of the aliens when they wiped out our fleet in such a scorched earth/total obliteration method with barely a thought. That's partly why I'm so curious how it will go in the third book when humans have to interact in person, sharing a planet, with these aliens.

I'm glad I stuck it out. I'd tried the first book a couple of times and didn't get very far at all. This may have been the best option for me: starting in the middle and coming back around to the beginning.

4/5 stars

28. Binti: Home by Nnedi Okorafor
audio

I like the idea of these Binti books, but I keep feeling a little letdown. I think I care about the aliens more than the humans. I also think I want to see more of what's meant by her being a harmonizer. We got the biggest example of it in the first book, but I didn't really understand how it worked/what exactly happened. It was a huge result so I believe she did do it with her tech-magic, but I want to be able to follow it better. Maybe I'm not the reader for these. Usually I'm ok with being dumped in and figuring it out myself, but I just really struggle here. What does get me with these books is her very personal journey: leaving her homeland/community to get the training she needs, being scared by the slaughter of everyone else on the ship, having to figure out how to negotiate with the aliens, being biologically changed, returning home, not being accepted because she doesn't follow traditional ways, etc. I felt like her siblings were very unfair to her in this book, but I also get the hurt of a family member deciding that their path is a different one than anyone else has taken, especially when it requires leaving the community, and how her absence left a gap in the family/community, a responsibility she was tasked with and shirked it (putting her wants over the community needs). I get it, but still. Also, I get her wondering if she's not quite human, if she's not quite part of her home community anymore, where does she fit. I will probably finish the series, for closure. And also hope springs eternal.

3.5/5 stars

Readalikes:
The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley, for a young woman whose blood (heritage) connects her to an othered nomadic group and has to reconnect with a heritage she didn't know she had.

Edited to add readalike.

29. Cry Wolf by Patricia Briggs
audio

I love Patricia Briggs' interconnected werewolf series because she punches me in the heart multiple times in the story and also has cool monsters/evil-behaving creatures. I read the first couple of Mercy Thompson books, but then I got to the third book, Iron Kissed, & the magic happened. Then for some reason I decided to read one of the last books in the series, Wild Signs, which knocked my socks off. Here I am back at the beginning of Alpha & Omega because I want more of Anna and Charles. This book was a little saggy and dry in the middle. And I really wanted a more nuanced and measured progression of their relationship, but the big bad mucked it up and then they needed the big relationship moment and for Anna to be more settled to help in the defeat of the baddie. I'm sure there'll be more relationship stuff in the next book and maybe the one after that (I hope there will be!), but I missed it here. Bad enough that I missed the start of their relationship, including their mating commitment, because I haven't read the prequel novella. The book shows us how terrible and powerful the monster is, and then you hear part of her background and she starts talking, and you get why she's behaving this way. A horrible past doesn't excuse her behavior, but it makes it understandable. At the end, Bran (the alpha of all of North America, I think) is awful to his mate Leah. And again, it's understandable what he does, but that doesn't make it less screwed up and hateful. I hadn't gotten to see much of Bran until this book so I didn't believe Charles when he tells Anna to be careful of Bran, but Charles was sooo right. I'm excited to continue on with this series and to get back to Mercy Thompson.

4.5/5 stars

30. Platform Decay by Martha Wells
audio

I had pre-ordered this and was looking forward to it dropping on publication day. But I ended up making a miscalculation: I had started a re-read of the previous books that I hadn't allowed enough time to finish before the new one was available. I spent a few days finishing up the last couple of the prior Murderbot books. And then I could dig into this one. I thought I would burn through it but I found myself stretching it out to almost two weeks. Partly it was because I wanted to savor it, but part of it was that it too tense for me. I have all the faith in Murderbot--I know it saves people in impossible situations. But this seemed really impossible & there was collateral damage. It was not able to save everyone.

Murderbot has to rescue some of Dr. Mensah's family who were captured by the corporates. It has to infiltrate a corporate torus around a depleted planet, cross many boundaries between different corporate groups, not let on that it's a sec unit, and rescue a small group that includes a child and an elderly person. It also is given a secondary task of rescuing the family (including more children) of a familiar person from earlier books. It stressed me out. But all was well or as well as it was going to be in the end. I do enjoy an uber-competent agent who can deal with setbacks and plans going to shit.

I was a little disappointed to have a storyline with very little (really almost none) Mensah, Art, Three, Ratthi, Bharadwaj, etc. It was interesting that Three, at the most inconvenient time, started figuring out what it wanted. I also liked the way the main child rescuee interacts with the feed with emojis and hearts and sparkles. There are a couple of books I don't keep in my re-read rotation anymore: the one with Mickey (Murderbot spends a good chunk of the book with no one to play off of), and the one where Murderbot starts working with Preservation Station Security (hard for me to see it trying to convince a skeptic that it knows what its doing and has discernment). I don't think this one is in that category yet, but I can see that it might fall into it eventually.

4/5 stars

31. Dreamsnake by Vonda N. McIntyre
audio

I first tried to read this probably 15-20 years ago back when I only read physical books and owned many, many that I hadn't read. I found it baffling in its meandering. A writing friend said a famous writer in a workshop said something like readers are sheep, they will wander all over if the writer isn't a good shepherd. I think I was a wandering sheep during my first read, desperate for a shepherd. I didn't know at the time that it was a fix-up, even though I knew such things exist. Each original story to me doesn't really feel like enough on its own, and not so much together either. This time around I was frustrated by the main character and by the cool world that I got to see so little of even though its main character is itinerant. The main character was very poor at contextualizing what she does, which is the main thing that led to the death of her dreamsnake at the start of the story. But it happened throughout the story, even when interacting with people outside of her vocation. She seemed incapable of providing context, perceiving the language/vocabulary gap in the conversation, and discerning the key information needed to keep things moving along productively. It ended up making her sound rude, unreasonably surly, and high-handed. There is another character in the story who is not itinerant, and when he goes after the main character (for love, which I got zero sense was an actuality and not just in his head) he has to deal with many different cultures and it doesn't take him long to acknowledge that his way is not necessarily the best way but just a different way of being in the world. The main character never seems to get to this point even though she's been traveling for years. In the last story/section, which is where I think I dropped out before, the villain says healers are all arrogant and that has them all causing harm and less help than they're convinced they're providing. The main character is worn down by the abuse she receives at his hands till she starts to wonder if that might be true. The narrative seems to say yes because she learns multiple things about the dreamsnakes that explains why they can't successfully get them to procreate: they need a mating party of three rather than two, and they need cold, which is usually harmful to earth snakes. But it doesn't stick with her for long and she's back to her old behavior once she escapes. There were so many unresolved parts of this story. Its beyond frustrating that those in the domed city (who have been built up in the whole book) don't get schooled on how it's inbreeding that is causing their genetic mutations and not genetic manipulation. I loved that when we finally get to see the domed city it doesn't seem as all-knowing and advanced as its talked about being, but I wish we had gotten to see more of it, even if they maintained their ignorance and insularity. I also was disgusted by the city of beautiful people where that was all they treasured, that and their progressive no-slavery stance, but the community didn't train its young people well in coming together sexually and gross abuse was happening even in the mayor's house, including a case of slavery in all but name. Even the healer community was a little disappointing, because I felt like the guy who followed his love interest was right that they could still do much good in the world even without dreamsnakes: innoculations are huge and there's just all sorts of medical knowledge that don't rely on advanced tech/magic of off-worlders. At the end of the novel, it seems like the only change will be that more healers can travel around spreading the gospel of the dreamsnake necessity for human healing. What was the point of it all, I wonder?

3/5 stars

32. Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews
ebook

I'd been reading this book off and on for maybe about a decade. I get recommended it a lot, particularly now that I'm into Patricia Briggs. I found the main character needlessly abrasive and cocky, partly making her own trouble. I didn't care about her secret (about why/who/what she really is). I didn't really understand the mystery. I thought the world was interesting, random switches from magic to tech and back.

It's been a few years since I tried to read it again, I think. This time when I got the audiobook from Libby it was horribly buzzy, even after a few attempts to download it afresh. I switched over to the ebook and that helped me get through the book better. The main character's effect was a bit more muted on the page, so if I read further in the series, I would definitely skip the audiobook. I also felt like I got a better sense of the world, reading it with my eyeballs, which was really the thing I was there for.

I don't have much to say about this book. It could be my sort of thing, but it just isn't. It has the thing of urban fantasy where we need a smart-mouthed, tough as nails female main character who has friction with everybody she comes across. After reading so much urban fantasy, I find it tiresome and, too many times, unpersuasive. All urban fantasy isn't interchangeable, but so many recommendation engines act like they are. I do think this series is a good rec for Patricia Briggs' books. This book was violent, gruesome, had interesting monsters, and good worldbuilding. But I don't think it's a good readalike for Rachel Caine or Kim Harrison or Kelley Armstrong. It's only recently that I've gotten in to Briggs, but I've had Magic Bites highly recommended to me forever.

I'm sure the series finds its groove as it goes on. It's possible I'll read a couple of more, a switch will flip and I'll be all in. For now, I'd be fine not reading any more.

3/5 stars

33. A Caress of Twilight by Laurell K. Hamilton
audio

I mostly enjoyed this second book in the series. I can't quite distinguish the various potential fathers for Merry's future child. I'm starting to learn who is who and what their various stories and histories and hangups are, but there are so many of them. The police investigation was probably the most frustrating part of the story. They get thrown off the case because the police officer is unreasoningly prejudiced against Merry. Then the second in command comes groveling for her help, but that person doesn't actually grovel, they come in with attitude, demanding that Merry do what's right. I still like the worldbuilding and the court intrigue and politicking. I don't find the sex too much or at weird times, partly because it's the whole point of the story. I appreciated that in this book Merry starts thinking about what kind of queen she would want to be and how she wouldn't want to be controlled or beholden. That's good character development. I am curious how she will downsize her stable of men when she gets pregnant, but not really because, spoiler, I'm sure she'll figure something out in order to stay poly. This is just a fun series.

4/5 stars

34. Life after Life by Kate Atkinson
audio

I've read one other book by Kate Atkinson, Transcription, which I enjoyed until the end when the author got too-too clever. I really, really liked this book, feeling like its cleverness was warranted. But, the ending is a bit disappointing. I came up with all sorts of things that I thought might happen, especially because I knew there was at least one follow-up book. Some of my ideas were quite clever! Instead I had to go to the internet to help me understand what happened in the drawn-out, murky ending.

I love the conceit of the book. A girl who is born and dies within minutes. Then there is a do-over. The doctor can get there in time to help the newly born baby, but she dies in infancy. Etc. The girl mostly lives a little longer each time because she has a sense of what has come before. My favorite part was her trying to survive the influenza pandemic of 1918. She tries so many things, dying over and over again from the flu, until she manages to figure it out. I thought this book had a good hook, because it actually opens with the main character, Ursula, trying to kill Hitler and being killed in the attempt. We can all get behind a 'let's kill Hitler' story. Then we get to learn about this very ordinary girl who is living in extraordinary times and becomes unfortunately extraordinary in her time do-overs and the perspective they give her.

In the second half of the book, the lives Ursula lives between deaths start to last longer, and they incorporate saving other people along the way, a la Groundhog Day. The part about the Blitz was intense. I never understood how unrelentingly brutal that was. There's also a part where she is stuck in Hitler's Germany, having her passport withheld from her. Her time in Germany was disquieting but also so banal, I mean, until it isn't (after Hitler's death, with Russia approaching Berlin).

So, this is my second book by Atkinson, and I think she wants me to pay for getting invested in her characters and believing their machinations matter. It's such a weird stance to take as a writer. It's a twist on the unreliable narrator that feels more like 'the credulous reader.' And I'm someone who can enjoy a well-deployed unreliable narrator. Honestly, I think most narrators are unreliable. But why should I feel punished or tsked at for getting caught up in the goings on. So much of this book felt earnest, I thought I might be dodging the cynicism of the end of Transcription. The other option is I just don't engage at all with the characters. I watch them at a remove like ants in an anthill, but, like, why would I bother then?

I was still really happy to read this. I would probably re-read it. I might read the sequel.

4.5/5 stars

Readalikes:
My Real Children by Jo Walton, for a woman who has one split in her life with two different parallel lives and her confusion between the two
"The Observer" by Robert Charles Wilson from The Perseids and Other Stories, for thoughts about the nature of time and observer-effect

35. Club Dead by Charlaine Harris
audio

I'm very frustrated by Bill, but I'm not really enamored of Eric either. The author does do a very good job of bringing me back to Sookie when I start losing interest in her good manners and lovestruckedness. I spent most of this book feeling mildly done with the series, but I did appreciate the last couple of chapters. There's some really nice self-investigation that Sookie does, and she admits to Eric that she is poor and that the vampires are constantly putting her in danger and taking her away from her livelihood. The setup from the next book looks interesting, so I might pick it up at some point.

4/5 stars