I have not read much poetry, and it’s not usually what I gravitate towards. But I was drawn to the topic of this book because I actually appreciate housework. (It’s a great combination of physicality and solitude – nobody’s bothering me while I’m scrubbing splattered spaghetti sauce off the stove.) So I was excited to see both the good (aforementioned physicality and solitude; the pleasure of a well-cared-for home and of having a home at all) and the bad (it never ends; the persistent gender dynamics of who does it) of housework explored in poetry. And like any collection of anything, there were some I liked more than others. “Perhaps the World Ends Here” snagged my brain and pulled me up hard. “A Man in My Bed Like Cracker Crumbs” used housekeeping as a metaphor and I didn’t love it. “Upper Peninsula Landscape with Aunts” didn’t do it for me from a poetry angle, but I found the subject itself engaging and true-to-life. But I did devour this book in a single evening, found a lot to appreciate it, and spent the rest of the night imagining how my own housework experiences (getting meat out to thaw for tomorrow’s dinner, putting away clean dishes, putting away the miscellaneous things that didn’t end up where they belonged throughout the day) could be made into a poem. I even considered writing this review as a poem, but I am not good at poetry and it didn’t work. So I’d say on the whole it’s a solid collection and a good read.
This book definitely had an old-timey feel, what with all the flowery language, characters as drivers of plot as opposed to a person you’re supposed to connect with, and the whole optimism about the future thing. The way everything shook out was extremely unsettling with strong cosmic horror vibes, made all the more horrifying by the fact that pretty much everyone in the book viewed it as an inevitability at worst, and at best the extremely positive ultimate achievement of the human race. It also left me with a nagging feeling that it didn’t quite finish wrapping up. Sure, that’s the end of the story, but I still have many questions. And it also feels like there’s some sort of message or theme or moral or reflection on the nature or purpose of humanity that I haven’t fully grasped but I’m not sure I particularly like. Perhaps the point is to make you think about the ideas rather than provide answers or express opinions about them, and admittedly some of the questions it raises are interesting. Mixed feelings overall towards this weird little book.
Trigger Warnings: Death, animal death, cosmic horror, is mental body horror a thing?, child loss (not death, just taken away in a sense), apocalypse, suicide, alcohol use, drug use (mentions)
I keep forgetting that Jenny Odell writes works of philosophy, not how-to books – although to be fair, her titles are incredibly misleading on that point. I read and enjoyed her book How to Do Nothing, but was mildly disappointed to find that it wasn’t actually about “how to” anything. I don’t know why I expected anything different from her second book, but I did in fact have the ridiculous expectation that this book might tell me something about discovering a life beyond the clock. Instead, just like with How to Do Nothing, I got only philosophy, in this case philosophy of time. Admittedly, quite a bit of it was interesting. The section discussing how our modern concept of time came to be what it is was quite fascinating. But much of it is about how other cultures conceptualize time differently, how nature’s time scales are different than the ones we humans created during the Industrial Revolution, and mostly about how much climate change is destroying everything. It was something I noticed in How to Do Nothing too, but it’s much stronger here. I hesitate to call it “climate despair,” but Jenny’s writing is clearly and overwhelmingly influenced by fear and grief over the climate crisis. This in itself isn’t necessarily bad. What I struggled with most was actually connecting anything this book said to, well, anything. It could very well be nothing to do with the book and just be about me, but so much of this felt difficult to grasp, and whatever I did grasp felt abstract. There was a lot of information here, but it didn’t feel like a coherent narrative so much as an acquaintance handing me a box full of papers, each one containing a variety of facts and opinions about time. My reaction to that scenario would probably be the same as my reaction to this book: “Great, thanks! But what am I supposed to do with this?” And that’s a question that Saving Time never really answers.
Tags: Biracial/Multiracial Author
Trigger Warnings: Death (mentions), grief (mentions), pandemic (mentions), animal death (mentions), colonization, ableism, racism, classism, panic attack (one mention)
My first DNF book of 2024, and it has nothing to do with the book’s subject. I’m a huge Ancient Egypt fan and I loved the idea of a story focused on women’s power and featuring the daughter of one of the very few female pharaohs. But it really failed in execution. Malayna has clearly done her research and knows a lot about the history and the time period. But it feels anachronistic in a way that’s really hard to place. I think it has something to do with the characters, who feel like a variety of modern people who just happen to live in a world that looks like Ancient Egypt. Modern values and opinions seem plastered over the trappings of the time period. Though it’s definitely not a YA book, stylistically it seems closer to something written for the younger teens. It also feels unpolished, like either the writer is either fairly young or this is one of their earliest forays into fiction. The characters are unremarkable and don’t seem to have any real goals or desires. Supposedly they have relationships to each other, but there’s never a sense that our titular protagonist actually cares about any of them. I think Neferura’s emotions were the most confusing thing about her, because they never seemed to fit what a normal person would feel. Simple, inane things leave her struggling not to cry from sheer frustration; her mother’s casual cruelty doesn’t seem to even register. I feel like a real pharaoh’s daughter would not make it to adulthood being as naïve and gullible as she is – she’d either get wise or be chewed up by the allegedly-ruthless court. And don’t even get me started on the body-shaming and fat-shaming in this book. The very first line is Neferura getting body-shamed by her mother. In the first twenty-four pages, she is fat-shamed by her mother twice, by her own narration three or four times, and she fat-shames her mother once. It’s excessive and entirely unnecessary to anything in the story. So on the whole, while I think the concept is interesting and I would definitely be open to a book exploring Ancient Egypt with Nefertiti’s daughter, this book does not do that idea justice.
Tags: Protagonist of Color, Nonwestern Setting
Trigger Warnings: Fat-shaming/body shaming (so much), incest (mentions), parent death (mentions), emotional abuse from parent (although not noticed by the protagonist)
Sun of Blood and Ruin (Sun of Blood and Ruin #1) by Mariely Lares
Second book in a row with a fantastic historical setting but the writing just didn’t do it justice. (I keep wanting to give historical books a chance, but they’re sure not making it easy.) I’m not against a good in media res, but this story throws our protagonist into “hero of the people” scenarios without ever establishing that the people care about her, or even know about her. The writing was simplistic, the characters were bland and felt more like cutouts wafting through an admittedly interesting plot than real people with emotions and desires and flaws. For a supposedly anti-colonialism story, the protagonist has a lot of positive words for her colonial-ruler father and so far nothing but criticism for the Indigenous resistance movement. She seems to be doing Zorro-style, Mesoamerican-superhero kind of things without any real motivation to do so – it’s cool, to be sure, but I never get the sense that she has any reason beyond “plot says so”. And it seems an awful lot of harm to put oneself in the way of without having some very clear reason, either emotional or moral, to go to all the trouble. Which is disappointing because the world is interesting and South/Central America is woefully underutilized as a fantasy setting, especially when history provides so many rich opportunities for mythologies and/or historical events to integrate into the narrative. Unfortunately, it ends up being very much like Neferura – a great idea with mediocre execution.
Tags: Nonwestern Setting, Protagonist of Color, Author of Color, #ownvoices Hispanic/Latino
Trigger Warnings: Colonization, blood, guns, injury, death, execution, parent death (mentions), arranged marriage
Very weird, very short, very disturbing. It had some strong magical realism elements, but since the narrator was the only person to experience anything out of the ordinary, it didn’t feel like magical realism so much as one of those books where you’re not sure if there’s actually something supernatural going on or if it’s all in the protagonist’s head. But the back cover also calls it “deeply rooted in the contemporary Native American experience,” so maybe it’s actually including a particular tribe’s understanding of or mythology around ghosts and I’m just missing the context to understand. This whole novella gives me a feeling that I’m missing something. By itself, it’s a disturbing, incredibly dark horror story that never quite answers the question of whether or not any of this actually happened. But I also get the sense that there’s deeper ideas that I just don’t have the context or the analysis skills to really grasp.
Tags: #ownvoices Native American
Trigger Warnings: Death of parent (major), bullying (major), animal death (graphic), gun violence, ableism, body horror, gore (mild)
A very strange book. It’s basically a series of short stories combined into one volume, but the characters are all connected in some ways and taken together they tell the story of how life on Earth was decimated by a plague and climate change and what people did afterwards. The final connections and the overarching narrative of the story doesn’t become clear until the last chapter/story, which pulls everything together. It’s also an exercise in memory, because the whole thing fits together like an intricate puzzle and if you aren’t able to remember details you’re going to miss a lot of the connections. It’s an emotionally heavy story of an uncomfortably possible apocalypse and it made me tear up quite a few times, but also didn’t quite have the emotional impact I think it could have had because I was so busy trying to keep track of how all the different stories fit together and place them in the timeline and the overarching narrative. However, I have a notably terrible memory, so that may be less of a problem for other people. It’s unusual and clever, an interesting story told in a unique way, and worth the read if you like apocalypses with a sci-fi edge or if you just want a book unlike anything you’ve read before.
Tags: Recommended by Someone, Japanese Protagonist, Japanese-American Author, #ownvoices Japanese
Trigger Warnings: Death (graphic), child death (graphic), parent death, pandemic (major), terminal illness, suicide
Liftoff: Couch to Barbell by Casey Johnston (Unread Shelf 2024)
This is a rare book that does exactly what it says on the tin – it will take you from couch (don’t know what you’re doing with weights) to barbell (can lift a barbell, have enough knowledge to do so without hurting yourself). It’s straightforward, no frills and no fancy layouts and not even any pictures (though it does come with a spreadsheet full of video links) and has the general vibe of a self-published book in the most positive way possible – it doesn’t have a publisher insisting on a certain page count or a specific narrative voice, so it skips all that and goes straight to providing practical, useful information. It also spends a lot of time on the stuff you do outside of the gym to support your weightlifting journey – mainly eating and resting. I understand the logic with that, though, because for those of us who are aware of modern exercise culture (read: all of us), the idea of resting, not working out all the time, and eating more to fuel growing muscles are the parts we’re probably going to struggle with more than the actual “go to the gym and lift heavy stuff” part. And as someone with a history of disordered eating, I found the whole idea suspiciously easy. You’re telling me I can lift some weights for around half an hour three times a week, eat half again as much as I have been eating, and still see health and strength (if not necessarily weight or size) results? Sounds fake. But also I’m five weeks into this program as of writing this review and it seems to be working so far. Turns out for me, lifting heavy stuff is infinitely more enjoyable than anything cardio-related. And though I’ve been in recovery from my eating disorder since 2017, doing this program has made it feel possible to be recovered. Take that with a grain of salt because it’s just one person’s perspective, but I’ve found it incredible.
Tags: Unread Shelf 2024
Trigger Warnings: Discussions of weight changes, discussion of calories (in a generally healthy/positive way)
It’s 2024, if you can believe it. I don’t think I’ve had such an absolute year since the disaster that was 2020 – although in this case for much better reasons. But on the whole, though 2023 felt crazy and ridiculous, almost everything turned out better this year than 2022 (which was a rough year personally).
For the past two years, I’ve been working in a job that let me have earbuds in while I work. That meant audiobooks – 40 to 50 (sometimes up to 60) hours a week of audiobooks at 1.75x speed. I got through a lot of books that way. But in March 2023, after almost exactly two years, I left that job for one that is significantly better but involves significantly fewer earbuds. (I am actually allowed to read books on my computer at the new job if we’re not busy, but the amount of “not busy” time varies.) Naturally, going from reading as a full-time job to reading in my spare time had a dramatic affect on the quantity of books I read. But it also had some other, less-expected and less-intended effects.
I switched back to physical books. Since I no longer have large chunks of time to read audiobooks, I’m back to reading print books regularly. I was actually excited about this change, because I had always been a print book lover and audiobooks were a matter of conveninece and opportunity, not preference. But after reading my first print novel in at least two years (A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe), it was quite upsetting to discover that I find print less engaging and immersive than audio. Though I’m over the rough part of adjusting to the format switch, I still prefer audio.
Going to the library in person. I used to love going to the library, any library. But I haven’t set foot in one for many years – partially due to covid, partially because audiobooks go through my library’s app, no physical library visits required. When I switched jobs, I wanted to keep reading, which meant regular library visits. But I’ve discovered that I don’t really enjoy browsing very much. My local library is MASSIVE. The sheer volume of choices is overwhelming, and the physical building is so big I generally need my cane, which makes it difficult to carry books and browse at the same time. I’ve also discovered that I really would rather browse books in an environment where I can easily filter results, check reviews, browse curated lists, and open a new tab to look up the author or other books in the series. (The StoryGraph‘s recommendation algorithm has spoiled me.)
Sticking to my TBR list. Partly because of the lack of library browsing and partly because of the overall reduction in reading volume, my reading choices haven’t been super adventurous this year. The last two years involved a lot of trying and liking new things. But almost all of those unexpected gems came from the librarian-curated lists on my library’s audiobook app. These days, most of my library trips involve me looking books up in advance to see if they’re available and where they’re located, then going to those locations and getting those books. Even when I browse, I tend to get overwhelmed by options and not check out even books that look interesting. So I’ve overall stuck almost exclusively to my TBR list and tried fewer un-researched options in 2023.
My Reading in 2023
As always, I have a lot to say about my reading in the past year (although hopefully less than last year – after all, I read significantly fewer books). I also have my StoryGraph Reading Wrap-Up for 2023. Most of the stats there are accurate. But a few aren’t – the number of books I read that I owned, for example, doesn’t include books that I owned and read, then got rid of and marked as no longer owned.
As always, none of these lists are in any particular order.
Overall Reading
My annual reading goal is always 48 books. This year I actually tracked when I hit that goal: June 6th.
In total, I read 80 books this year, which is 167% of my total goal. That’s 132 books less than last year – but considering I only had two-and-a-half months of the year where I could read the entire work day (I left the audiobook-reading job mid-March), I think that’s a perfectly reasonable number.
I also track how many books I DNF (Did Not Finish), and this year I DNF’d 48 books. So in total I picked up 128 books and finished 62.5% of them.
In reviewing, I reviewed 72 books in total, 11 of which were DNF books. I also continued the Review Shorts this year (and will continue to do them because I like the concept). I wrote 38 review shorts this year, so only 47% of my reviews in 2023 were full reviews.
Reading Charts!
I’m surprised that print was such a small proportion of my reading – but I did have three months of audiobooks and apparently more digital books than I thought.
That small bump in audiobooks in November and December was because we do a lot of driving for the holidays (both his family and my family live in different states than us) and I could listen to audiobooks while we drove.
My Goals for 2023
I set goals for my reading every year. Most of them are the same year to year. But it’s always good to check in on them. So let’s see how I did on my goals in 2023.
Finish 48 books between January 1 and December 31. Check! Because I still had the audiobook-reading job for three months, I reached it faster than I probably would have otherwise, but I definitely hit that goal.
Read at least 50% fiction. Also check! Almost three-quarters (71%) of my reading in 2023 was fiction.
Read only good books (by only reading books I’m interested in, not reading books just because I feel like I “should,” and not finishing books I’m not enjoying). I usually use the star ratings to help me analyze this one. And I read a lot of 3-star books this year, and not a lot of 5-star books. But 35 of the books I read this year (43.75%) were ones I rated 4 stars or higher. But less than half of the books I read were 4 stars or more. This tracks with my general feelings, too. I read a lot of books that were fine, finishable, even enjoyable, but not a ton that were fantastic and outstanding. So overall I’d say I did okay on this (I did, after all, only finish 4 books that I rated less than 3 stars), but I wouldn’t call it a resounding success.
Unread Shelf 2023: Read 12 books I own but haven’t read yet. I didn’t hit that one this year. I only picked up 7 Unread Shelf books this year, and ended up not finishing one of them.
Bonus: Completing series. I didn’t actually set a goal for this one, but since I’m notorious (at least to myself) for starting but never finishing series, I had a section last year on all the series I finished. This year I finished far fewer series, but I did complete a few:
Contagion (technically – I picked up all the books but DNF’d the last one)
Top Fictional Reads of the Year
I don’t pick favorite books. Never have. I read so much and so broadly that it’s really difficult to compare books I really enjoy to determine which I like more. Plus, with such a variety, I often deeply love books for very different reasons.
So, as every year, instead of ranking or picking “a” favorite, this is a list of the top fiction books I read in 2023. As with every list in this post, it’s in no particular order.
It’s a vampire story, sorta. There are definitely vampires in it, at least. But it’s also a blend of Castlevania and dawn of science era a la Frankenstein, with a fascinating setting and a strong plot and, most of all, absolutely fantastic characters. There’s a generous helping of angst, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and even though I’m not usually much for romance this one was sweet, full of mutual pining, and polyamorous, which is always a bonus. The plot is surprisingly twisty and there’s plenty of action. It’s just so good – and it’s first in a series, so there’s more to come!
This was one of my more unresearched selections this year – I’d read the back cover and decided that it sounded like something I’d enjoy (I’m always down for unique takes on gods), but I didn’t know much about it. So it was a delight to find that not only is it a really cool take on gods with an interesting world and a solid plot, the characters were the standout hits of the story and I loved them. Especially our protagonist, who is strong and broken and furious and violent and loyal and traumatized and all-around spectacular – and, of course, stupidly good at murdering deities. I didn’t know going in that this was first in a series but I’m so glad there’s more to come.
A truly unique take on a lot of generic fantasy tropes. The sheltered youngest princess raised in a convent is perfectly happy with that; the impossible magical tasks are not the actual quest and aren’t actually all that hard for the protagonist to pull off; ideas that could have very easily become a somewhat formulaic YA gets a refreshing update with a protagonist who is thirty years old, a princess who would rather not be a princess not because she’s rebellious or wants her “freedom” but because it’s too much pressure and she’d rather knit, and who isn’t whip-smart and in fact recognizes she’s on the lower end of average. Plus she and a variety of companions are on a quest to solve some problems with murder (and honestly, I agree that’s the best solution here). All around an enjoyable story.
This is the sequel to She Who Became the Sun, which made my Top 5 Novels last year. But that doesn’t feel like cheating to me becuase while they’re both astonishingly good, it’s in very different ways. This one leans hard into the morally gray aspects of the protagonist as she passes the point where her relentless clawing upward feels essential to her safety, forcing her to confront the damage she’s doing and making both her and the reader consider if it’s worth it. It’s very dark and full of big, deep emotions. And, being the last book in the series, full of endings – bittersweet for many characters, as I wanted better for them but knew they wouldn’t get it. Dark, intense, and very, very good.
I did enjoy this book, don’t get me wrong. It’s got a compelling protagonist (and self-aware unreliable narrator) who disregards rules purely becuase she has other priorities, an engaging cast of secondary characters, some really fantastic worldbuilding creating a monotheistic multi-planet scifi society, a compeling plot with some genuinely surprising twists, and a general fantasy vibe woven among the scifi. But that’s not why it made this list. It made this list for an interesting take on unreliable narrators (although admittedly, I haven’t read many) and strong engagement with the concepts of belief, fanaticism, religious power, heresy, and ethics vs. religiosity. Those are all concepts that I find generally interesting, and watching the protagonist engage with it was like watching my own deconversion process, but in reverse. I’m going to be thinking about this one for a while.
The Hall of Honorable Mentions and the Otherwise Noteworthy
I Did Not Ask for a Therapy Session But That’s a Risk You Take With Some Books I Guess
Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things by Randy O. Frost and Gail Stekeete. I am not a hoarder. So I didn’t expect an impromptu therapy session from a book about the psychology of hoarding. However, I do have a somewhat complicated relationship with stuff and owning it, and I actually gained some really good insights into the psychology behind relationships with stuff in general and why my own relationship with things I own is so complicated. And even besides that, it’s an interesting read on its own.
I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was by Barbara Sher. If you’ve spent some time in therapy, you’re familiar with the feeling where the therapist suggests something that is an amazing solution to your problem but also blindingly obvious now that they’ve said it. For me, reading this book was the literary equivalent. Nothing Barbara says is all that revolutionary or even something you couldn’t have come up with on your own. But it left me with the same feeling of vaguely sheepish enlightenment. (Plus it’s just straight-up good advice.)
If You Like Weird Books Then Do I Have a Book For You
Sister, Maiden, Monster by Lucy A. Snyder. There’s a pandemic-driven societal collapse and old gods from outer space, and both of those are background elements in this body horror fever nightmare of a book. Unbelievably gory, extraordinarly disturbing, and contains the only book scene to ever make me physically gag. Repulsively readable. I can’t stop thinking about it.
Naamah by Sarah Blake. Now, I am an enjoyer of weird books. But this one is so weird in so many different directions that the primary feeling I experienced was a general “what the fuck is going on?” There’s a ton of weird, uncomfortable, sometimes vaguely incestuous sex scenes. There’s insanely bizarre stuff like the angel who lives underwater with a bunch of dead children, or the time the protagonist time travels to watch an episode of Law and Order: SVU. I couldn’t even tell you if I liked it because I have no idea what is even happening here.
Annihiliation by Jeff Van Der Meer. This is a very weird book with a definite SCP vibe. It does have some semblance of a plot, at least at the beginning, but it goes off the rails quite quickly. It goes hard on a twisted and distorted natural world and a good helping of body horror. It’s also much more towards the scifi edge of weird books than the fantasy edge where I usually read, so I don’t have as much to say about it. It’s pretty good, it’s creepy, it’s very weird. What else do you need to know?
The Gallery of Gorgeous Books
Whether or not you believe in not judging books by their covers, you have to admit that some covers are just prettier than others. This gallery is my favorite covers from books I’ve read this year. (Whether or not I enjoyed or even finished the book is irrelevant – here I judge books by their covers and by their covers alone.)
Reading Goals for 2024
Like every year, I’m aiming for my three annual reading goals: Finish 48 books, read at least 50% fiction, and only read good books.
The Unread Shelf goal (reading 12 books that I own but haven’t read yet) has become a repeating goal over the last few years, too. But I have consistently failed at that one – probably because the majority of the books I own are reference books. So I’m keeping the goal of reading books that I own but haven’t read, but I’m reducing the target to 6.
And finally, I still have a lot of series that I’m allegedly in the middle of – by which I mean I read at least one book in it, said it was really good and I intend to finish it, and then never actually kept reading. Some of these have had the next or final book on my readlist for years. (The exception is the Discworld series. I am actively reading Discworld books, but since there’s a total of 41 books, not counting the novellas/short stories between them, I’m going to cut myself some slack there.) So I am setting one additional goal to finish 3 series that I have started and intend to finish. (I have five different series on my reading list that I only need to read one more book to complete, so theoretically this one should be very doable.)
So my final list of reading goals for 2024 looks like this:
Finish 48 books between January 1 and December 31
Read at least 50% fiction
Read good books, which involves…
Only reading books I’m truly interested in
Not attempting to read books because I feel like I “should”
Not finishing books I’m not legitimately excited to finish reading
Unread Shelf 2024: Read 6 books that I own but haven’t yet read
Finish reading three series that are “in progress” (meaning I have read at least one book in the series and enjoyed it enough to want to read more)
Is this a bit ambitious? Potentially. I have been known to bite off more than I can chew every now and again. But considering this is all just for fun anyway and even if I read zero books in 2024 there would be no real consequences, let’s just see how it goes. If I do it, great! If not, oh well.
Final Thoughts
I spent the last two years reading both widely and deeply and trying a lot of new concepts and genres. I did not do that so much this year. A large portion of my reading in 2023 was from by TBR list, or at least pre-researched in some fashion.
I have yet to determine if I want to change this. Perhaps 2024 will be the year I learn to enjoy browsing the library again. Perhaps it will be the year I intentionally choose books outside my comfort zone. Or perhaps it will be another year of working through my TBR list (and let’s be honest, even if I only read books on my TBR list, that would still keep me busy for a year or two).
I don’t think either option is necessarily bad. But sticking to my TBR list definitely has a more narrow scope of genres and concepts than my audiobook reading did the past few years. As much as I enjoyed finding some of the unexpected gems from my more adventurous reading choices, I’m not sure I feel particularly adventurous right now. But really, in a lot of ways life feels like it’s in a state of flux for me at the moment. I have no idea what 2024 will hold in any aspect. So I guess we’ll just have to see how it goes.
This is a thin little book with no credited author and is obviously a gift book more than anything else. But it is full of gorgeous photos of tablescapes. And even though I doubt I will ever be hosting a meal fancy enough to require multiple clearings of the table, I feel slightly more cultured knowing what a charger is and the proper order for wineglasses. (And considering the wide variety of places my work tends to take me, it’s concievable that someday I might attend a dinner where I need to know the right order to use my forks.) There were definitely some good ideas in here – although largely leaning towards the formal and fancy, there’s no reason most of it can’t be toned down to fit a more casual modern lifestyle. Although perhaps adding a little more fanciness and polish to regular meals can be a good thing, too. And there are some interesting ideas about nontraditional meal settings, like how to set the table for a buffet or pack for a picnic. If nothing else, the photos are gorgeous and it inspired me to update my table linens. I’m going to keep it around and go through it again once I have a house and more space to collect linens and nice dishes.
I had no context for this book going in – I didn’t recognize the author’s name, and the book itself has no dust jacket, where the author information and back cover copy usually reside on a hardcover. The only context I had was some of the pictures I saw flipping through it at the library, which were nice. I am interested in interior design and maximalist style as a way to balance my husband’s collecting tendencies with my desire for a beautiful home. So I checked it out. And I think I would have liked it so much better if I hadn’t actually read it and just looked at the pictures. The pictures were very pretty. But the text just smacked of wealth and upper class Britishness. Flora talks so casually about genuine antiques that probably cost more than I make in a month. Out of all the homes featured in the book, only one of them couldn’t have fit my entire last apartment in the foyer. When I found out Winston Churchill was Flora’s great-grandfather, my only thought was “this explains why this lady seems so out of touch with ordinary people’s reality.” There’s a whole chapter that’s just kinda promoting her own product line. And to top it all off, the book never actually explains what a “one day box” is (unless it just means the collection of pretty wallpaper and fabric Flora used as inspiration for her wallpaper and textile designs?). The photos are very pretty and I won’t deny that she has a good sense of interior design. But I also kinda dislike her as a person.
I’m generally not interested in historical fiction or murder mysteries. However, I am interested in Jewish protagonists and characters getting possessed by ghosts, so I decided to give it a shot. And it was good. I read it in a single evening, which is impressive for a 500-page book, but in this case that says more about my mood that day than the book itself. Not that there was anything wrong with it – in fact, there was a lot that was good. The historical Chicago setting felt vivid, the characters were solid, the emotions were done well, the plot was strong, the romance developed well with a lovely touch of angst, and I loved the Jewish community and tradition that infused every page. But the possession element was much smaller than I expected (more a catalyst and driver for the plot than an element that actually does anything) and the primary plot was the murder mystery of tracking down Yakov’s killer. Which, unfortunately, I wasn’t all that into. Again, not a failing of the book, just a personal opinion, but mysteries in general aren’t and have never been my thing. If you enjoy mysteries (and/or historical fiction), you’ll probably like this a lot more than I did. Again, it’s not bad, and there’s a lot about it that’s really good – it just didn’t really appeal to my personal reading tastes.
I generally prefer fantasy over scifi, especially scifi as hard as Adrian Tchaikovksy tends to write. But I picked this up because I enjoyed his novella Elder Race and was willing to try something else. This is fairly hard scifi, but it had solid and likeable characters, a strong plot that manages to have our protagonists hopping from planet to planet without ever feeling contrived or like a fetch quest, and some absolutely amazing worldbuilding concepts. So many of the ideas were unique and tied into a great story. The amazing worldbuilding manages to make the whole story feel intricate and vivid, even though the plot isn’t particularly complex. Adrian Tchaikovsky is a great writer and I enjoyed the read. I’m on the fence about reading book two – not becuase I think it will be bad or that there isn’t room for a sequel, but becuase sequels are usually not quite as good as book one and while I liked this book, I wouldn’t say I love it or call it a favorite. But again, this book was good, so I’m not ruling it out.
Trigger Warnings: War (severe), violence (severe), death (severe), injury (severe), blood, gore, genocide, body horror, unreality, ableism, racism, slavery, kidnapping, confinement (brief), xenophobia (mentions)
The Last Sun (The Tarot Sequence #1) by K.D. Edwards
The ideas behind this book seemed interesting, and there’s a lot going on in this world. But I can’t tell if there was too much going on or it just wasn’t explained well, because I spent most of the time incredibly confused. There’s guns, but there’s also magic. There are humans, but also fey and werewolves (and Atlanteans, who I can’t figure out if they’re human or something different). There is “human society” and a second magical society and I have no idea how the two relate. The houses of Atlantean society are either named after or physical manifestations of the major arcana tarot cards. And Rune, the protagonist, is not exactly a bad character, but he kind of feels like one of those urban fantasy characters who’s trying way too hard to be a badass to actually be a badass. In fact, not of the characters are particularly interesting or emotionally engaging. It’s possible that if I gave it a little longer it might sort itself out, but nothing in the first 47 pages was compelling enough for me to want to. This whole book seems like it’s not quite sure what it really wants to be, and so ends up being a bit confusing and not all that interesting.
Tags: It’s Queer!
Trigger Warnings: Sexual assault (mentions), parent death, guns, violence, death
A fascinating, slightly weird, and overall wildly creative retelling of the Sleeping Beauty myth where the princess was put to sleep for a very good reason and the wicked fairy who did it was barely more than a child herself (and arguably not even a fairy). Despite being several hundred years old at the opening of the story, Toadling was a curious mix of child-like and ancient. She may be able to turn into a toad at will, but I found the most fey thing about her was her nebulous place between young and old. She was engaging and I loved her. The story is told in a straightforward, bare-bones fairy tale style. Details are enough to sketch the world and the plot vividly enough to keep me hooked, but there is no flowery language or dwelling on feelings or reflecting on whether the happenings are right or wrong. Things just are what they are. Despite being a dark and somewhat twisted version of the story we know, it never felt excessively dark and retained a magical fairy-tale feel. I’m having a really hard time putting the mood of this story into words, but it’s very good. And if you really want to understand what I’m trying to say, it’s very short – just go read it for yourself.
Trigger Warnings: Kidnapping, death (graphic in cases), child death, blood (mentions), body horror
Solid in idea and reasonable in execution, but outdated and lacking in generalizability. In this book, the fashion designer author and his team upgrade the looks of several different women, each of which have a unique fashion problem they want solved. I appreciated that there was a plus-size woman invovled in this and that there’s a stated message of body acceptance (although it’s undercut by Isaac’s frequent mentions of how much better these women would look if they lost a few pounds). But most of the advice is specific to the subjects’ situations and concerns and difficult to generalize. And even though several of the subjects are younger, the final looks scream “outfits a middle-aged woman would save on Pinterest in the early-to-mid-2000s” – generic, unexciting, mildly if not unwearably outdated, “nice” without being interesting or memorable. In fact, the only final outfits I actually remember are from the twentysomething who Isaac inexplicably put in what would have been conservative officewear if every shirt wasn’t halfway unbuttoned to expose her bra. (And the one woman in her mid-fifties who he dressed like a cartoon sailor man, red bandana around the neck and all.) Isaac may have “style,” but this book has not convinced me he has taste. The pictures were great and I liked reading about Isaac’s thought process, but if you’re looking for something actually useful or actionable (or even inspirational for a younger person in 2023), it’s not this.
Tags: Jewish author
Trigger Warnings: Fatphobia, discussions of diet and weight loss
The Dire Days of Willowweep Manor by Shaenon K. Garrity and Christopher Baldwin
This book is quite silly in concept but also very fun. The idea is that Haley, a protagonist obsessed with Gothic romances, ends up in the pocket dimension that protects our universe from a universe of evil – and this pocket dimension is inexplicably Gothic romance-themed. It makes fun of Gothic romance tropes a lot, and though I got the major ideas, I’m not huge into Gothic romances so I’m sure I missed a lot of the less-obvious trope-based jokes. The art was fun (although the extreme lack of detail on the faces compared to everything else felt a bit off to me), and I even laughed out loud a few times. Despite the purported seriousness of the plot (pocket dimension being attacked by an evil force that will consume our universe if it succeeds), none of it feels all that dangerous or impactful. Perhaps it’s because Haley’s obsession with Gothic literature makes this story feel fictional even within itself. Everything feels very fake and relentlessly silly. Not necessarily in a bad way – it was fun and I enjoyed it. But it was really hard to get actually emotionally invested because I just couldn’t manage to forget it’s just a silly little story.
Tags: Protagonist of Color
Trigger Warnings: Animal cruelty, violence, blood, injury, mind control, body horror (mild), bullying (mild)
I’m not really sure why I picked this up, but I’m so glad I did. It’s heavily Castlevania-inspired (obvious even to me, who knows next to nothing about Castlevania). The world-building is a bit confusing in places, but probably less so if you’re familiar with Castlevania, and it’s great all the same. The societies and the country itself and how everything works is a fantastic blend of 1800s Europe, dawn-of-science a la Frankenstein, and a world where vampires are normal. I’m normally not much for romance, but this one is deliciously angsty, slightly forbidden, frequently steamy, and polyamorous. And of course the whole book features Remy, who is so good at what he does and also so broken and full of pain and angst and self-sacrifice. He gets an amazing healing arc and he so much deserves it. He’s achingly relatable and so easy to root for and the angst is on point. I love him and I love the vampire couple and this entire book is fantastic. There’s going to be a sequel, and you’d better believe I’m reading it as soon as possible.
This is the final volume in the series, and it was just too short for everything it was trying to do. What it was trying to do – a burgeoning revolution, a big arc for Vess, a romance between Vess and Grix, a creepy religious order bent on destruction piloting a planet as a weapon – was admittedly really cool. But the whole thing felt rushed and missed a lot of moments that could have been really emotionally impactful because it just didn’t have enough time to do anything. Our protagonists did achieve their ultimate goal, but by sheer luck – they floundered around doing small things, and the main thing was actually accomplished by a secondary character who, up until the climax, had been doing everything he could to stop Grix and company. It was realistic, but it also felt a bit cheap. I really am unsure why I finished this series, as I’ve never been a fan of the art style and the story has just kinda been “meh.” But I finished it, and it was just solidly okay.
For an introduction that had such promise, the actual essays were less fantastic than expected. I was thrilled by an introduction that discussed the tension between desiring beauty and the cruelty and destruction that often goes into producing beautiful things. I copied down several of the quotes to save: “There are no pure things in this world: everything that lives does harm; everything that exists degrades” and “desire and repulsion exist in tandem and … the most poignant beauties are interthreaded with ugliness. There is no life without suffering. There is no way to live without causing harm.” But the essays themselves and the conclusion didn’t quite fulfil the promise. I learned a lot about Katy’s personal thoughts on various beautiful things (porcelain, shells, flowers, diamonds, silk …) and a lot about the history of how those things are created and the suffering, pain, and damage behind them, and the writing was engaging and poetic, despite the combination of the personal and general feeling a bit discordant at times. But the whole book felt like it was missing a final point, just meandering to an end without actually saying anything. I think perhaps I just wanted Katy to explain how I can desire beauty while not supporting the cruelty behind it, or to give me permission to desire beautiful things despite the pain and destruction it takes to produce them. In which case, the “missing point” is not the fault of the book but rather the fault of me expecting more than one slim volume of essays would ever be able to give.
The art in this is GORGEOUS. I love the character design and the world and just the whole style. It’s graceful and beautiful and has a dreamlike quality that I adore, and I appreciated how the sparse dialogue let the visual storytelling shine. However, the story itself ranges from vaguely confusing to utterly incomprehensible. I was never fully sure what was going on at any given point. I have no idea what the purpose of the goose even was. And it felt incomplete, like there was a fifth issue that concluded the series that for some reason wasn’t included in the full collection. I finished it mainly because I wanted to look at the artwork, but I still don’t really know what was going on here.
Tags: It’s Queer!, they/them author
Trigger Warnings: Blood, injury, body horror, animal death
Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things by Randy O. Frost and Gail Stekeete
I picked this up mainly because the second half of the subtitle (“the Meaning of Things” bit) sounded interesting to me. I wasn’t all that interested in hoarding itself. At least I wasn’t before I read this book. Because this was actually fascinating. Hoarding is one of those things that people think is a moral failure of some kind, but this book really highlighted the mental health aspect of it and the different psychological aspects involved (although whether they’re symptoms or causes or both is arguable). What I didn’t expect was some insights into myself. I’m not a hoarder, but I do have a complicated relationship with stuff and the act of owning it. I expected to learn about hoarders. I did not expect lines like “Physical objects provide clear and tangible verification of mastery over the world” and “Violations of ownership lead to extreme feelings of vulnerability” to explain some things about my fraught relationship with stuff. So in addition to being quite interesting, I learned a lot about the psychology of hoarding, and also myself.
Trigger Warnings: Mental illness, sexual assault (discussions)
Bluejay Reads 