mistressofmuses

Quick picture of Berry Mad, lurking in the corner of her plant pot.

On Tuesday, we had a few errands to run, but spent most of the day at Hudson Gardens.

It was a little early, though it's been so warm it didn't feel like it should be, ha. They hadn't yet planted their annuals or put out any of the water plants, but there was still plenty to see, and it was a very nice day to walk around.


Crabapple blossoms against the sky.

Sixteen more pictures:

Lily of the valley.


A bushtit. They are so remarkably tiny, and the name remains so unfortunate!


Potentilla.


Honeybee on an allium.


Wild roses.


An iris.


Speedwell.


More irises.


Lilacs, which smelled wonderful.


These roses were such an intense red that my phone camera didn't want to believe it existed, ha.


Only a few of the flowers had this kind of yellow variegation, but it was neat.

We stopped and had a fancy coffee and split a pastry (banana bread) from the coffee shop down along the bike trail. Always nice.


The bee hives are more accessible again! Still behind their usual fence, of course, but last year they were trying to reestablish some of the grass and groundcover, so a lot of the grounds were off limits, including the view of the hives.

We'd been hoping for frogs, but alas. Mom and Taylor heard a lot of frogsong up in the mountains a few days before (on a Mother's Day hike), but nothing at the gardens, alas.

However...


There were so many tadpoles! Future frogs!

We took another break at the far end of the gardens, and split a can of boba tea. It was delicious, but had a couple silly things on the can:


Shack well! Precipitation may occur!

We spent a long time just sitting in the "cascades" area, listening to the water and talking. It was a lovely afternoon.


Across the 'mountain stream', a family of geese scrambling up the banks. They were so cute! And hungry. We watched the little goslings just going to town on some of the plants over there, haha.


I liked that there was grass and some small plants growing out of the top of one of the logs. I also rather liked the reflection of the trees.

After the gardens, we also stopped by Barnes and Noble. I had a couple of gift cards from Christmas and my birthday, and I was wanting to get Overgrowth, the new Mira Grant book.


Obviously, I found a few more books than that, as always.

Five Ways to Forgiveness was one of the Ursula K Le Guin books that wasn't included in that humble bundle of her work, so it'd been on my list. The other four books were on a "buy one, get one 50% off" horror table. I picked out A House With Good Bones, because I've heard good things about it, and Blood On Her Tongue because it sounds interesting and I was tempted by the cool cover design. (The bloody effect on the pages!) Alex picked out The Last House on Needless Street and The Reformatory, because those sounded the best to him. We'll add them to our shared TBR list, ha.

A third month in a row of reading six books! *confetti*

This month I read:

Tell Me I'm Worthless by Alison Rumfitt
Horror (subgenres: haunted house, political, queer) - ebook novel
4*/5

Three best friends go together to spend the night in a haunted house. One of them never leaves. The two that do are both scarred—physically, mentally, and emotionally—by the trauma they remember the other inflicting on them.
Years later, Alice, a trans woman, is still unable to escape the haunting that has followed her ever since. She tries to continue with her life, with drink, drugs, and questionable friendships. Ila, once Alice's best friend, has instead thrown herself into the UK's TERF movement as an attempt to cope with her own remembered trauma.
The house itself is still there. It is waiting, and it is endlessly hungry. And it wants both of them to come back. To come "home."

My thoughts, some minor spoilers, and serious content warnings:

*It was hard to rate this one, because generally my ratings are a measure of subjective enjoyment, not necessarily an attempt at measuring objective quality. I thought this was a very good book, and I do not regret reading it at all, but I have a hard time saying it was truly an enjoyable read, per se. ("Enjoyment" might be more of a 3, but it feels unfair to rate the book a 3 because I thought it was better than that implies.) At the same time, I was never reluctant to continue reading it. To the contrary, I was finding little five-minute gaps in my day to get through another page or two.
The author states up front that this is a book about trauma and about fascism. It is very much about those, and it is not subtle about them. It features a lot of bigotry (as one might expect, given the two primary themes), including sexism, racism, antisemitism, and especially transphobia. A lot of it is cultural and external, some of it is internalized. There is also a lot of assault, physical and sexual, including a fairly graphic rape scene. It's also often very deliberately grotesque. It's an intense read, and I thought it was very good. But like I can't quite say it was "enjoyable," I'd have a hard time saying I recommend it, because it deals with some really dark stuff.

The story does interesting things with perspective. The chapters rotate their focus. Alice's perspective starts in super close first person, sometimes bordering on stream of consciousness for her. Ila's is in omniscient third, focused on her and what she's doing, but more distant and going off on tangents about other characters and situations and past or future events that she is not aware of. These perspectives blur as the book goes on, in a way that I thought was really interesting to read. The house also has perspective chapters, which were both horrifying and engaging.
I know more about a few of the internet communities that get mentioned in the book than I sometimes wish I did, and I can tell the author does too.
The house is a personification of Britain's inherent fascistic roots, how it is an evil that can never be sated, that will sometimes promise safety that is always a lie, that will warp and destroy everything it touches to turn them into some twisted form of its ideal, how it corrupts everyone who comes in contact with it as it encourages them to give in to their worst impulses and cruelest thoughts... That sure is fascism! It's a very real horror!
This is the first book (or any piece of media) for a long while that's infiltrated my dreams. The first or second night I read some of it, I had a very horror-tinged dream that Alice showed up in.
As far as successfully doing what it set out to do, I think the book absolutely achieved it. It was maybe a little too intense for me at times, but I'm glad I read it.

The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
Fantasy - physical novel
5/5

The unicorn has lived alone in her wood forever, an immortal creature with no real concern for the passage of time. Then she overhears a hunter claim that she is the last unicorn; all others have vanished from the world. She sets off on a quest of her own to find out whether this is true, and to try and find the others if she can. Eventually she is pointed toward King Haggard's kingdom, a barren wasteland, where it is said The Red Bull took the other unicorns. She is aided on her quest by Schmendrick the Magician, whose powers are sometimes questionable, and Molly Grue, a disillusioned woman glad to finally find something that feels worthwhile.

My (apparently extensive) thoughts, some spoilers

I think this is technically a reread, but only very technically... I think I read it as a child, but mostly I remember attempting to read it and not finishing it, and can't remember with 100% certainty whether I eventually succeeded or not. The film was a favorite of mine as a young, unicorn-obsessed child, and the book is an important one to Taylor, so I've wanted to read it for some time again anyway.
I do spoil some plot points, but like... the book is from the 60s and the animated film adaptation is from the 80s, so... kind of hard to feel like I'm spoiling much!
It is hard to imagine more of a tonal whiplash from Tell Me I'm Worthless to this.
I will say, the animated film is an excellent adaptation. A lot of the scenes and dialogue are taken completely word for word from the book. (My younger sibling said something to the effect of "the only downside of reading the book is that I am not *hearing* Christopher Lee deliver Haggard's lines," and they are right! Lee is so fucking good as Haggard.) There are a few things the book includes that the film does not, like the town of Hagsgate, and the curse on both the town and on Haggard himself. The book also has more detail about Schmendrick and his arc.
Hagsgate gives us some pretty depressingly relevant banger lines such as the cursed townsfolk opting not to have Schmendrick try to remove the curse on them for "If it were lifted we might not become poor again, but we would no longer grow steadily richer, and that would be just as bad" after *just* telling him that they should be pitied for how sad their wealth made them, as they'd never allowed themselves to enjoy it for fear of when they would lose it. Well if that ain't a real world fucking attitude problem...
And the whole situation with Schmendrick, and the fact that he's been made immortal until he becomes a true wizard, makes him a little more morally grey and a little more of a... not quite foil, but provides a connection with the unicorn, straddling immortality and mortality that way. It also means that in the movie we miss out on the story of how his mentor once turned a unicorn into a human man, and having the unicorn be utterly horrified by that. ("Foreshadowing is a literary device...")
Part of what makes Taylor love this book as much as they do is that it's got some serious trans vibes. These are vibes/choices to interpret it that way rather than truly overt, but some of it... yeah, I see it very much! One of the main themes is about who you are vs. how you are perceived, with particular emphasis on when the entire world perceives you as something other than you are, and that it can be a rare thing to find someone who can accurately see you. There's also the very literal theme of being forced into a form that isn't truly who or what you are, and how that can be a horror. Taylor has been doing an intermittent reread liveblog, noting scenes or lines that feel trans to them, and I don't know that I saw *all* of the scenes the same way, but... the interpretation also doesn't feel at all like a reach to me. (And I'll also say that for what it's worth, Peter S. Beagle has always been a trans ally from all I have heard, as well as my occasional exposure to his social media presence, which is nicer than I can say for some once-beloved childhood authors.)
I enjoyed the prose a lot more than I remembered. It's got a bunch of fun imagery and humor. There are some individual lines that I wish I'd bookmarked as I went, because some were really good.
Another thing that felt a lot more present in the book, and may have simply been something I understood less well as a kid, was how much of a tragedy the unicorn's time as Lady Amalthea is presented as. I knew that it was sad for her to be trapped in human form, and I knew that part of the fear was that she was becoming mortal in more than just her appearance, and I of course wanted her to change back... but the book hit home a lot more fully just how tragic it is for her to lose herself so completely (and especially for her entire self and history and perspective and quest to all be lost solely in service to a love story, even or especially as that love story is someone else's idea of "happily ever after.") It also pushes that theme of losing yourself a little more, because they acknowledge that she could be happy with this ending as well... but only because she would forget everything that made her a unicorn, and therefore be unaware of the loss. (Which I can also see as suiting that trans read of the whole thing, or a general "closeted queer" sort of narrative.)
I complained recently about stories that are self-aware in a way that makes it feel like they're trying to trash their genre or insult the genre as protection against the audience doing so. This is an example of self-awareness that I feel does it well. Schmendrick points out that they're in a fairy tale, and they have to follow fairy tale rules, because that's how these things happen... crucially, except the unicorn, because while he believes the rest of them to be characters and archetypes that must follow their roles, he believes her to be real... Until she's transformed, and then she must fulfill the fairy tale role of the princess. Then later Schmendrick uses the same awareness to (secretly/subtly) force Lir to remember that he is a hero, and he must behave as a hero, even if he sacrifices his own happiness for it.
I also forgot a bit how bittersweet the ending is. It's a bit more so in the book than the film, as in the book it's made obvious that Lir could become just like Haggard if he is not careful, though there is plenty of hope that he will not.

Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire
Wayward Children book 5
Fantasy (background f/f) - physical novella
5/5

In Christopher's bedroom at Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children, a door appears. Through it comes former student Jack—trapped in her twin sister Jill's body—and Alexis, Jack's twice-resurrected girlfriend/fiancee. Jack had previously returned through her door to her home in The Moors, the horror-tinged world she and her sister had been welcomed to as children. She brought Jill's body to The Moors with her, after [redacted spoiler for book one]. The plan had always been to resurrect Jill, except having already died, Jill would no longer be capable of becoming a vampire, which had been her fondest desire. Infuriated by this, Jill and her vampire master forced Jack to swap the twins' bodies, so that Jill could inhabit Jack's body (which had never died) to become her master's true vampire daughter... even if it throws off the balance of power in The Moors.
Jack, trapped in Jill's body, enlists the help of her friends from the school—Kade, Christopher, and Sumi, plus new student Cora—to come with to help save herself and the world she calls home.

My thoughts, some spoilers for the series as a whole:

I really enjoy The Moors as a setting: just all the classic horror settings squished together. Forbidding castle with a vampire terrorizing the local village? Check! Mad scientists holed up in windmills, harnessing the power of lightning in ways that defy conventional laws of nature? Check! Towns full of slightly-inhuman cultists worshiping monstrously unknowable gods below the sea? Check! The setting and the chance to play all of those sorts of horror tropes straight is just a lot of fun, and I really enjoyed that we got to come back to this world.
Jack and Jill's story, in Down Among the Sticks and Bones and Every Heart a Doorway is one I find compelling and sad, and seeing that arc to its (in many ways tragic) conclusion is satisfying. The sorrow of having tried your best for someone else, in some cases to your own detriment, and having those efforts ignored or dismissed or belittled is one I think a lot of people are familiar with, even if not on quite the scale of these events.
I liked getting to see the students from the school interact more fully with a world that isn't "our" world, but also isn't "theirs." It felt more... dynamic, maybe, this time than it did in Beneath the Sugar Sky. Christopher with Bones and Cora being called by The Drowned Gods were really fun and enjoyable ways of seeing these characters getting to do things in a setting that isn't *quite* right for them.
It hasn't been a hidden theme up until this point, and Kade has outright stated that his world expected him to live and die for them right up until he was no longer what they wanted (when it turned out he was a prince, not a princess) and they cast him aside... but this time it was Sumi who brought up that the worlds select children to become their heroes, then treat them as utterly expendable. It's surprising to get it from the candyland nonsense girl, though it probably shouldn't be, considering the real danger in her world and the fact that she herself did die! Some of the worlds perhaps don't fit that pattern, like Nancy's world (despite being an underworld) and maybe Christopher's (despite being all skeletons all the time). But many of the worlds do seem to do exactly that, even if those children desperately long to return to them. I guess it's sort of an expression of that tension between children enjoying reading about characters their own age put in life and death situations, saving the world or vanquishing evil, and the adults who read those stories and are horrified at children being in those situations at all, and see it as a failure of all the adults who allowed it to happen.

Boys in the Valley by Philip Fracassi
Horror (subgenres: religious, possession) - ebook novel
3.5/5

Peter has been at the St. Vincent's orphanage for most of his young life, after his parents died in a murder-suicide. He's coming up on a decision about where he wants his life to go: to leave the orphanage and try to have a life with a girl who lives on a neighboring homestead, or stay and finish his training to become a priest.
Right as winter hits, the sheriff comes to the orphanage with a dying prisoner—the sheriff's own brother, caught committing unspeakable acts of brutality and child sacrifice. But something seems wrong with the man, something inhuman and evil... and after his death, it seems like something is suddenly wrong with some of the boys...

My thoughts, minor spoilers:

While I've certainly watched a lot of horror movies about demonic possession, I haven't ever read a novel about it. I did enjoy it! There are ways in which getting the interiority of the characters really makes it a more immediate horror than something like a film does. At the same time, the writing itself felt fairly cinematic, in that it was easy to picture most of the events, and I had a mental movie to watch as I read.
One thing I mildly struggled with was trying to keep track of the characters. It wasn't too difficult, but there are something like 30+ kids, plus a handful of adults. Not all of the orphans are named or get any specific attention, but there are enough that do that I wasn't always able to remember which was which. Most of them were pretty well distinguished with something that made them unique, and it didn't ever cause true confusion within the story, but I feel like there were probably some specifics I'd forgotten about the individuals, or certain kids I got mixed up with each other. Occasionally a mild annoyance, especially when trying to remember which kids were on which "side" of the conflict. But overall I'd say the book handled a huge cast well (even if some of them are just there to be cannon fodder.)
The description, the tension, the dread and fear are all really excellently portrayed. It's a lot of horror and a lot of people die in horrific ways! (There is no "infant immortality" here.) It was definitely a page-turner for me. The chapters are short, and it's super easy to just keep reading, because the tension was always so high.
However, I feel like there were ways in which I wish the book had done more. This is, as always, possibly a mark of the difference between expectation and product: just because I expected or wanted the book to go somewhere it didn't doesn't mean the book was a failure, but it did mildly disappoint me in a couple of ways.
1 - There were a couple times where things were told more than shown, in a way I found frustrating. Overall the book does not shy away from showing: there are gruesomely detailed deaths and descriptions of the demon-possessed, conflicted inner narratives, terrible abuses that are described in detail... It made it feel that much more obvious when something did fall on the "tell" side. The perspective changes a lot throughout the book, following different characters, but the only one to get first-person narration is Peter, and he's the one with the biggest character conflict outside of the direct plot, so he's more the protagonist than any of the other characters. He says multiple times that he feels like there's some sort of darkness within him, some terrible aspect of himself he can't confront, things to that effect... but we never really see or feel that. While he struggles with whether he wants to become a priest or marry his sort-of-sweetheart Grace, he isn't struggling with any evil or harmful desires/impulses that we see... he just says he is sometimes, without any specifics. (Maybe this was supposed to be him talking about confronting the trauma of witnessing his parents' deaths, but that seemed like something he thought about and remembered freely, not something he struggled to confront, or bore any guilt over?) And the book does examine conflicted characters: Brother Johnson, the indentured convict, is mostly horrible, but we get the glimpses of his thoughts about sometimes wishing he could protect the boys, being concerned for them when they suffer, even when he enacts petty cruelties (or is directed to do so) against them as well. So it felt weird that our "main" character claims to have some big soul-deep conflict that we just... don't see. Particularly with demons preying on many of the other children, it seemed like it was setting up some conflict over the fate of his soul, or providing something for the demons to seize on... but no.
2 - It's set up a few times that the priests themselves are not necessarily paragons of good and holy behavior, that while the demonic forces are horrific and truly evil, some of the priests themselves can also be unnecessarily cruel, taking sadistic delight in chances to inflict "righteous" punishments, in a few cases having even led to children dying. David (one of the other older teens) talks about how Father Poole would beat him, still thinks about the scarring he has from it, and tells Peter that the orphanage is his idea of hell... But I feel like the book never really does much with that. It's acknowledged, but shallowly. The "good" priest and the "bad" priest get basically the same narrative treatment, with neither being more or less able to confront/resist/withstand the demonic forces. There's never really any grappling with what it means that cruelty within the framework of the church exists and does real harm, yet is not in any way condemned (literally or narratively.) It doesn't complicate anything about the good vs. evil struggle: God is always good, and the demons are unequivocally evil... and even when "good" "holy" men abuse those in their care, that is not a conflict with the idea that they are on the side of Good. There was a parallel between Brother Johnson being unable to resist demonic commands he was given once he gave them his soul, and David at one point feeling unable to resist doing what Poole told him to, even when he wanted to. I wanted that to go somewhere! It didn't!
(And of course it's obvious that in the real world there are many people in religious positions who do terrible things. And in real life, and fiction in general, and this book specifically, people are not all good or all bad, because people are complex; you can't necessarily split people into one category or the other. But in a work of fiction that makes the existence of good and evil a very literal, obvious, known thing as opposed to a matter of faith... I wanted it to matter. Which is also also one of my biggest problems with Christianity in general: that being saved and believing in Jesus is what makes you Good, regardless of your previous or ongoing actions. The book is just following that framework, and I shouldn't be surprised, but I still have beef with that. I guess it's better that the book acknowledged it at all, rather than having all the priests be undeniably good people and ignoring the question entirely.) 
Ultimately, I think this might feel very different to someone who is religious. (Or is a believer in some sense.) That part is very much a me thing, in that I don't find the power of God vanquishing evil particularly compelling or affirming, nor do I find the idea of converting or devoting oneself to that religion an inspiring character arc. I can enjoy it as fiction, but I imagine someone who believes in it in a very real way would feel more strongly about it, ha.

Breaking the Rules by Jen Katemi
M/M/F romance/erotica - ebook novella
2.5/5

Stacie is doing everything she can to get a fresh start. Shunned by her previous community after her now ex-husband's affair, she is starting over in a new town, setting up her new business, and enjoying the fact that no one knows who she is. Then her car breaks down on her way home, where she is luckily rescued by two very handsome men. It seems nearly meant to be: James and Teale are both handy mechanics and happen to be her neighbors, and she's extremely attracted to both of them. The three share a wonderfully hot night together, but that's all it can be: Stacey moved specifically to allow herself a "normal" life, away from gossip and judgement. There's no way she can allow herself to be openly part of a non-conventional relationship... no matter how much she wants it.

My thoughts:

It's possible I'm being too harsh on this one, as it pretty clearly telegraphed what type of story it is, and it's not the story's fault that I wish it was something a little different. The story is subtitled a "forbidden menage romance," so I shouldn't be surprised, but it still leaned way too hard on "gasp, this is so wrong and weird and dirty and scandalous!" for me. I'm into poly romance. Poly relationships are real things that exist, (and while not now, I've been in multiple poly relationships in the past!) and it feels mildly icky when it's treated as that particular kind of weird. (Which is also a matter of really subtle differences sometimes. Angsting over the dynamics or feasibility of a poly relationship, or wondering if the connection exists outside of sex, or worrying about the reactions of family/friends/community can be just fine, and a part of what I like! This was just leaning too hard into the "ooh, it's so bizarre and badwrong" angle for me.
It was also a little weird about James and Teale being bi... though not in the scandalous badwrong way, at least. The two have a long-term involvement with each other, but almost exclusively use this to have threesomes with women... which isn't like, wrong, or anything, but it came across a bit like the threesomes were what defined their bisexuality, as well as pushing a little too hard that while the two of them will sometimes sleep together, and all their flings with women are portrayed as casual, they couldn't ever be in a relationship with just each other because they aren't gay. (And yeah, this is probably supposed to be romantic "centering the female character, who is intended as the one the reader is most sympathetic to" thing, but it came across as an unfortunately common stereotype that rubbed me the wrong way.)
It was also a little too porn-logic for me at the very start. (I expected smut! I was here for the smut! Just... Man, no warm-up, haha.) Maybe it's my kinda ace-ness, but I have never thought about my own anatomy during non-sex activities as much as these characters do. I know it's a genre standard, but damn. Also, while I know this is a novella that's trying to keep the pace snappy, having the main character worrying about whether she's about to get serial-murdered when the guys pull over on the road after her car breaks down, then immediately thinking in detail about how turned on she is by them before she even speaks to them was a jarring dissonance I just couldn't quite get past. (Maybe it was meant to be funny, but it just came across as weird to me.) Stacey also kept thinking things like how she should find it impossible to find two men attractive at the same time, which seems weird, too. This isn't even a "how can I have romantic feelings for two people at once", it's just "how can I find two different people physically attractive?" which doesn't seem like the sort of leap that most people have that hard a time with. 
The sex itself was fine, though if I remember there were a couple euphemisms or descriptions that made me make a face, haha.
The arc is basically exactly what it says on the tin: hot threesome -> regretful rejection due to a desire to be seen as "normal" -> everyone is angsty and sad and angry about it -> reconsideration of priorities -> gesture of reconciliation -> HEA. It's fine if not groundbreaking, and I was happy for the characters to get that HEA and all. The plot all comes after the whole "hot threesome" thing, so it sort of felt like an afterthought? The meet-cute and immediate sexing it up take up almost 70% of the novella, with all of the time apart and sad about it and then reconciling happening in less than 20%. (A full 10% of the novella is a preview of the next book in the series.) 
The 2.5 feels a little low, because it wasn't BAD for a pretty what-it-says-on-the-tin story, and it wasn't unreadable or anything. I'll read a dozen of this kind of story rather than some AI generated slop, and I can see this appealing to someone who isn't me. The vibes just didn't work for me. The search for poly romance that does suit my preferences continues.

Installment Immortality by Seanan McGuire
Incryptid book 14
Urban fantasy - physical novel
4/5

As a ghost, Mary Dunlavy isn't supposed to be able to die again. After being caught in the blast of a bomb her family set in the Covenant's training center, she got about as close as it's possible for a ghost to come. Six months later, the anima mundi has put Mary back together, allowing her to return home to her family and her babysitting duties... but the anima mundi also has a job for her. Mary isn't terribly keen on working for a divinity again, not after her time working for the Crossroads, but it's not like she can say no. The Covenant knows that there was a ghost involved in the attack on them, and they're taking their revenge by capturing every spirit they can find along the east coast, locking them away, and torturing them. With her charges Elsie and Arthur in tow, Mary is headed to the east coast on a mission to stop the Covenant's attack, before the ghosts they're torturing become dangerous weapons in their own right.

My thoughts, minor spoilers:

This book did not have a slot assigned on my TBR list, but was one that I knew I would let jump the line as soon as it was released.
This was a fun entry in the series! It was nice to get a bit of Elsie and Arthur, two characters that have always been more side characters than mains to this point. (As well as getting to see a bit more completely what is Up with Arthur post accidental brainwipe. Definitely wondering how that's going to play out!)
I really enjoyed getting to see more ghosts of varying types. (That was one of my favorite parts of the Ghost Roads trilogy, which is set in this same universe.) I particularly enjoyed the "what happens when a Covenant member turns into the thing they were supposed to destroy" bit... but was sorry we never got to see things play out between the ghost and her brother. (I was actually really pulling for him to get to be an ongoing character, but alas.) The potential for more ghosts in the series (per Mary's assignment) is something I look forward to, and I like the idea of the set roles that ghosts get in the afterlife being a little more changeable than we've been led to believe. (Which we've already seen with Mary herself, and obviously Rose... but it's fun to see more of it. A White Lady just shrugging off the whole vengeance thing because she's got a garden to tend is delightful.)
This book also ramped up the gore factor a bit. Like, there've always been some nasty deaths and injuries and such... but there are a few pretty gruesome bits of this one! Couldn't have happened to nicer folks, though.
I was admittedly feeling a bit emotionally raw due to other life stuff, but the bit about the ghost boy meeting the ghosts of dogs that haunt the animal shelter made me cry, haha.

This is the first of the series with a new publisher (having moved from DAW to Tor.) My strongest hope (except for "I hope the series continues in a supportive environment and that the author is happy with the move") was that maybe Tor would have better copyediting. I was really disappointed with how many typos and errors there were in the last few books, especially as they moved to a more expensive trade format.
Unfortunately... still enough to notice. I only remember two errors that really yanked me out of the book, but I still find it unfortunate to come across them. One was a wrong name in an action tag. (Elsie was grabbing a spirit jar, but the text said Mary was doing so, which for various reasons did not make sense.) The other was the word "protein" when I am pretty sure they were going for "protean".
I think this is something I just have to get over, but it really does bother me. I get that there are a lot of factors that go into this, in terms of what publishers do and don't do, how little time and money they allocate for people to do the copyediting, etc. I mostly shrug off errors that creep into self-pub books, or of course things like fanfic, unless it reaches the point of making it hard to read or understand... but part of what I expect from a mainstream published book is a professional level of polish. Of course typos and stuff still slip in, and that's been the case forever, and I find it fairly easy to ignore most of them... but sometimes they do jump out and it frustrates me every time.

I am currently in the middle of three books:
Space for Growth, a sci-fi romance. This one was meant to be my brain candy side-read, but I'm letting it be the main read instead. Back to my regularly-scheduled TBR after this!
Lord of Souls with Alex
Aftermarket Afterlife with Taylor

Let's see how April goes!

I thought that reading six books in January was a weird high point that I'd fail to recapture... but I've read six books in February, too! (To be fair, some were started in January, and some were shorter novellas. But still!) I'm pretty glad that it means I've already read more in the last two months than I managed for all of 2023.

This month I read...

Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire
Wayward Children Book #3
Fantasy - physical novella
4/5
Back at Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children, a girl comes falling from the sky into our world from another. Her name is Rini, and she's from a nonsense world called "Confection." She's on a quest to find her mother, Sumi, once a student at the school. ...Except Sumi is dead, murdered by a fellow student months before. Since Sumi was killed before she returned to Confection to fulfill her part of a prophecy in that world, it has been taken over by a villain Sumi was meant to defeat, and Rini herself is beginning to vanish from existence, since she could never have been born.

My thoughts, minor spoilers:

It's a good thing I decided to reread the early books, because while I know I did read this one back when it came out, I barely remembered it. This story was cute. Confection is a fun sort of candyland world, one I see the fun of in a childish fantasy sort of way, while also seeing how exhausting it would be, ha. (I enjoy the inventive types of worlds that show up in the series.) Cora, our main character (a displaced mermaid,) is a good one, and I do love getting more of Kade and Christopher, who are a couple of my favorites in the wider cast. 
It feels like the book introduces something that leaves me wondering if it's going to show up in a future installment of the series. (I didn't read much beyond this in my initial read.) Rini having a magical bracelet that allowed transportation to any world seems like a pretty major THING. We've already had a character who became a serial killer in the hopes of reopening their door, and basically all the students, with the exception of Kade, want nothing more than to get back to their worlds... It felt a little strange to me that the involved characters used it purely for the current quest with very little tension over any of them wanting to use it for themselves to go "home." I think there's one tiny little implied bit of jealousy, but it isn't really dwelled on. They lose the bracelet over the course of the quest, but it isn't destroyed, they just don't choose to go back for it. They also make mention a few times of possibly asking the person who created it to make another if Rini needs it again... So idk, it just seems weird that all the characters are so extremely desperate for this one thing that's considered next to impossible (finding the doors back to their worlds), but when they discover a magical item that allows someone to travel to any world of their choice, it's just... nearly a non-event. This is a small thing, and maybe it's setting up a future plot point, but I kept expecting it to turn into A Thing, and it never did!

Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Neo-noir horror (very background m/f) - ebook novel
4/5
Atl is a Tlahuipochtli, a vampire species native to Mexico. She is also the last surviving member of her clan, the rest killed in a brutal drug war between them and a rival faction of Necros, a different vampiric subspecies. She has escaped to Mexico City despite it being a supposedly vampire-free zone, and she hopes to lay low long enough to escape the country. Here she meets Domingo, a trash picker, and against her better judgement accepts his help. But the Godoy family, the leaders of the Necros who killed the rest of her family, have tracked her to Mexico City, seeking revenge for the casualties on their own side.

My thoughts, no real spoilers:

This was a fun read. The setting is interesting - it's a sort of alternate version of the modern world, in which vampires (split into ten different subspecies, with variations on their appearance and abilities) have been known to exist since the 60s, which has led to a slightly different geopolitical landscape. The neo-noir aesthetic of Mexico City was also a really fun setting to have. It would be fun to see it put to film. (Not necessarily a wish to have it adapted, but it could have a very cool visual aesthetic.)
There are a lot of different characters that we shuffle between, and part of me wishes we'd narrowed in more completely on just Atl and Domingo, but the perspectives of Nick, Rodrigo, and Ana were all also fine, and it provided a nice contrast between them all, particularly truly understanding all of their individual motives and such. I really did enjoy the characters, particularly the two mains. Atl's experience of balancing her nature and how she wants to be seen and the question of whether her nature truly is entirely what she claims is a good throughline. Domingo was also an interesting primary character to have, a bit different than I'm used to seeing. The different varieties of vampires were also cool, since it was an opportunity to work in a lot of different folkloric vampire traditions into the various subspecies.
Style-wise there were a few aspects that felt stilted to me, but that's just personal preference, I think. Most characters didn't use contractions, which sounded odd to me in dialogue, but again, that's probably just preference.

Her Rival Dragon Mate by Arizona Tape
F/F Romance - ebook novella (free download)
3.5/5
Alisha is a lawyer, working hard to steadily make her way up the ladder within her firm. Then they hire Kendra, a dragon-shifter. Turns out the two of them hooked up once before, so there's already some history there. Worse, Kendra seems to be on the fast-track to promotion ahead of Alisha, being given lead on a big case the firm has taken on. Alisha does some digging and finds out a secret that Kendra may have preferred to keep, but she also starts to think that maybe the dragon isn't as bad as she initially assumed.

My thoughts, no real spoilers:

This book was cute and perfectly fine. I was reading it to be brain candy, and that's what it was. It wasn't unreadably riddled with typos and errors, which is an improvement over a few of the similar ebooks I've read, but there were definitely some. A lot seemed to be weird word choice errors, with the author just using a similar but not quite correct word. (One I remember was "She imbued confidence with every step" or something to that effect. It seemed clear from context that the word she was going for was "exuded," not "imbued.")
The romance was fairly sweet, if standard, though the last third or so felt kind of rushed. I don't feel like the whole "we hooked up before" thing was... at all necessary? Besides a slightly awkward moment when they recognize each other, it doesn't really come up again, except I guess to already establish that they both like women and that they already found each other attractive.
As far as I could tell, this is the first book in a series of books set in the same world, but it sort of felt like we were coming into a setting that had already been established elsewhere. Nothing super weird - it's a shifter romance, I will Just Go With It that shifters are an expected and normal part of society - but there were locations and things like the monthly mate-finding ritual that seemed like they were meant to be familiar. Then again, I'd rather have that than pages of out of place exposition.
Minor disappointment: if you ARE marketing this as a shifter romance, I want the shifter love interest to shift! Show me the dragons! While there were multiple shifter characters (a mix of dragons and bears... can't remember if there were any other species mentioned. Maybe wolves?) no one ever actually shifted! Instead the whole shifter thing seemed to be more of an excuse to explain why there's a fated mates deal going on.
I don't think I'll be rushing out to buy the series, but I wouldn't refuse to read the author again either.

Never Say You Can't Survive by Charlie Jane Anders
Nonfiction - physical book
4.5/5
A series of connected essays about writing, and especially about writing when the outside world is miserable and tumultuous. The book's subtitle is "How to get through hard times by making up stories." Some of it is about craft, some of it is about ideas themselves, a lot of it is about knowing yourself and what you want.

My thoughts:

I wrote my thoughts out on each chapter individually, so I don't feel like I have a lot more to say. It was a good book to read, and I found a lot of the advice helpful, at least as far as showing me some areas that I may still need to figure out for myself. (Turns out, I think I'm still carrying a lot of baggage from bad advice I bought into as a teen, up through even just a few years ago. I've been trying to get rid of a lot of it, but still have a ways to go.)
I read the book now in part because I really wanted and needed a sense of hope in general, because that feels like something in short supply. And in particular, hoping to regain a sense of hope for writing itself, ha. It feels frivolous and borderline irresponsible to care about my silly writing projects when the world is the way it is. Unfortunately... I think my pessimistic and cynical feelings really did still get in the way. I've heard a lot of people say that the book was inspiring to them and made them feel a lot more excited to be creative... it didn't really leave me with those feelings. I don't think that's the fault of the book so much as the fault in my headspace. I'm not sure much of anything can get through to make me feel less like we're in a doomed timeline. (And in terms of trying to have creative writing be some sort of light in the dark for that doomed timeline, I feel like other people are doing far better than I can.)
It did give me some things that I want to try and do more deliberately and with more care in my writing when and if I am able to work on it. And it does make me at least feel a little better about still wanting to write stories, even if I'm still not convinced that the ones I want to tell have any particular importance.
I think I'll likely try to come back to this book in the future, whether that's a full reread or just poking at the individual chapters. If I were in a less miserable mental place, I think I'd get more out of some of it.

The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling
Sci-fi/Horror (background f/f) - physical novel
5/5
Gyre has been hired for an extended caving mission, mapping out a large cave system on her planet, presumably for mining interests. She may have falsified most of her qualifications, but upon seeing the quality of the gear she was being provided with, she was confident that it meant the mission would come with a strong support team to help. She was sure she'd be able to make it successfully through the mission... and to the high payout waiting on the other side. 
Instead, there is no team at all. Her only support in the cave is Em, monitoring her from aboveground... the woman in charge of the mission entirely. Em is able to completely control Gyre when she wants to, taking control of her caving suit, administering drugs, and controlling her displays within the cave. More and more details about the mission and the cave itself start to seem strange, with supply caches gone missing, unexpected changes to the cave system, and discovering just how many attempts have been made before Gyre's. Soon it starts to feel like she's not alone... and she is extremely unsure how far she can trust Em.

My thoughts, only minor vague spoilers:

This is my favorite of the books I've read (so far) this year. It's creepy, and I absolutely felt Gyre's mounting paranoia and fear. This is possibly the most successful example of "...and now make it worse" that I've ever read: every situation already seems like the worst it could be, and as soon as the characters figure out a way past the new disaster, some new terrible thing happens, ramping up the danger and the stakes even more. Yet all of those horrible events and setbacks and disasters felt completely believable, and like "yes, of course this would go wrong, now!" whether it was caused by an earlier bad decision or just bad luck. The earlier crises felt no less terrifying than the later ones, even as every situation gets worse and worse. 
I found both Gyre and Em very interesting, and they're good foils for each other. Both of them are unlikeable at times, but in a good way, where if one of them had been a 100% sweet cinnamon roll or unimpeachably justified in everything they did I wouldn't have found them nearly as compelling. 
The setting is creepy, and I found myself wishing I could explore it... though maybe via a video game [which I think could be really cool, and would probably feel something like Iron Lung (which actually feels like a relatively close comp title in some regards)] rather than in reality, ha. 
I like that there are some ambiguities left at the end about what the exact cause of some of the horror and anomalies were. I don't want to spoil the specifics, but there are multiple events that could have multiple explanations, and while most have a probable explanation, there's at least some ambiguity left, and I like it in this case.

In an Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire
Wayward Children Book #4
Fantasy - physical novella
4/5
In 1964, when she is eight years old, Katherine Lundy finds an impossible door. Through it she finds the Goblin Market, a magical world where every action and every item can be bartered, always in the service of what the world itself considers "fair value." Those who fail to provide fair value incur debt, and may find themselves slowly changing into birds that populate the forests around the market. But the Goblin Market only wants citizens who are sure that they want to stay. As such, the doors allow children to pass through between their ordinary lives and the Market any number of times as children... as long as they make a permanent decision by their eighteenth birthday.

My thoughts, no real spoilers:

This is the Wayward Children book that I stalled out in the most recent time I tried to read them. (Which was in 2020 - in the book I found my receipt from the time we paid 64 cents per gallon for gas, because it was only a dollar something and we had 70 cents off, lol.) I don't remember there being anything I disliked about it, but it was one of those "I set this down and just never picked it back up" situations.
The book sort of already starts as a tragedy, because we meet Lundy in book 1, and we know how her story has gone and how it ends. 
The Goblin Market is another of the worlds of Wayward Children that I see the appeal of, and is probably fairly similar to the kind of world I would have been likely to find as a child, ha. (Lundy collecting items to take back with her as trade fodder is something I did as a weird elementary school kid. The pockets of my jackets were full of random stuff - lengths of string, small pencils, sugar packets, hard candies, paperclips, coins, rocks, beads, bits of broken glass that weren't too sharp - because it was the sort of stuff I wanted to believe would be useful if I ever got swept up into some sort of fantasy adventure, lol.) 
I can definitely see the allure, too, of a world with an omnipresent power that enforces the idea of fair value, ensuring that no one can take advantage of anyone else by asking too much or providing too little. (Or enforcing that they can't do so for long before they're changed in a way that makes them incapable of continuing to do harm.) Boy does that feel appealing in comparison to *gestures at the world.*
Just a sort of point of interest to me: in her real world life, Lundy was born a year after my mom, so I kept thinking about those sections as happening when my mom was roughly those ages, which was an interesting connection.
Lundy's story is also heartbreaking. Like I said, it's already a tragedy from the start, because we've already seen how it ends for her. It's still painful to see it happen, to see the inability to decide between two terribly important, but incompatible things. (As the narration itself calls the reader out: it's easy to say that of course you'd choose the magical world where you knew in your heart and soul that you belonged... but could you abandon the people on the "ordinary" side of the door that you truly love, that say they need you to stay?)
I didn't particularly care for Lundy as a character in book 1, though I didn't dislike her, but that also wasn't her story. It's maybe not surprising that I connected better with her here. 
In terms of broader worldbuilding, I think it had come up before, but it's interesting to see a world that multiple generations of the same family have visited, and leaves me with questions, ha. (Does the world keep trying, opening doors for new children of the family until it keeps one? Does the cycle continue through nieces and nephews and cousins even if someone does stay? If so, could you find your extended family through the door?)

I am currently in the process of reading four books:
Tell Me I'm Worthless by Alison Rumfitt (current main read, emotionally heavy so far)
Lord of Souls by Greg Keyes (with Alex)
Aftermarket Afterlife by Seanan McGuire (with Taylor)
Breaking the Rules by Jen Katemi (my brain candy time-killer ebook)

The current plan is to rotate in sets of three: one of the Wayward Children novellas, then one of the horror ebooks I got from that humble bundle, then another book from my TBR list. Once I'm done with the Wayward Children novellas (though that'll take a while, since there are ten of them; reading one every third book means I've got 18 more to get through before they're finished) I'll reassess the plan. Should I then alternate in groups of just two, one ebook, and then one TBR book? Introduce some new category for every third book? Start allowing myself to filter in some rereads? Start on the author-specific ebook humble bundles that I was planning to start on next year?

Angst about the TBR list:

I did look at my TBR list again, having realized it was definitely longer than I'd thought at the start of the year. (And I was already dismayed by the 90, even knowing it didn't yet include the UKLG or Discworld books...) But still not including those, I've so far discovered 25 books that I had missed (some are new releases or recs that I've added, some aren't new but are books I don't yet own but know I want to read, others were ones I do own but forgot to add). That puts the list at at least 115 books. There are 26 books in the Ursula K Le Guin bundle (taking out the four picture books, but leaving the anthologies and nonfiction), though as it didn't include The Left Hand of Darkness, I want to at least also get a copy of that. (There are other works it didn't include, but I'll probably not worry about any of those until some further future date.) There are 39 in the Terry Pratchett/Discworld bundle. So I'm actually looking at a list of over 180 books... and it is only going to grow (especially if I like the various "book ones" on the list and decide to add the rest of those respective trilogies/series, or find an author I want to read more from). Sobcry.

I'm trying to remind myself that it isn't a bad thing to have a TBR list...  It's a good thing to have so much I want to read! It would be terrible and sad to me to have nothing I was interested in. Even so, I really would like it to feel like a more manageable list. What's likely to wind up being close to (more than?) 200 books seems like an insurmountable number! I'm trying to make peace with this being a years-long undertaking, even when I am putting forward more effort.

(No, I have no interest in attempting a "book a day!" type challenge, even if doing so would get me through the list and more. I know that "a book a week" became like... the lightweight version, and "read 365 books in a year" became the new thing for dedicated bookfluencers or whatever, but nope. No thanks. Not going to try and breeze through some of these in a day. I want quality time with my books, not just quantity, and I only have so many hours I can read as it is. And I am not a booktoker.)

I am really happy with the current pace of more than a book per week (on average), which for a long while has felt like so much more than I was able to do. This is something I'm glad I'm prioritizing, because... Well. I did get really burned out on reading for several years. AP English in high school was the biggest culprit, but even when I took almost no English courses in college (having gotten the required credits through AP) I remained pretty burned out on both reading and writing. I never stopped entirely, but my pace slowed dramatically. I'd read a handful of things, love them, and then... not read again for months. I certainly noticed the number of TBRs ticking up - I still got books as gifts, or bought them for myself when something sounded good - but it just always felt like something I'd get to later. There's always later! Now... it feels a little less like there's definitely a later that I can count on. Do I have enough of a later to make it through several years' worth of books? I guess I'll find out.

(I keep repeating it, but hey, if things go as bad as they could, at least I spent some amount of time reading books and writing stories before the end. If we make it out the other side, then I still spent some amount of time reading books and writing stories, and that is not a waste.)

Hoo boy.

So, last year, I listed out my TBR list, which clocked in at 36 books. Despite having hit my goal of reading 20 books last year, only a handful were actually from that TBR list (others were new releases, rereads, various ebooks, or things that jumped the line in some other fashion.)

Still, I mostly expected that I'd be looking at a similar list this year, maybe just a little bit longer due to a few new acquisitions outpacing how many I'd read.

Except I figured that I should include the re-reads that I want to do this time. Some are just favorites that I'd like to reread, and others are books that I feel like I need to reread in order to get to others on my list (rereading the earlier books in a series.) Originally I was going to try and get by without rereading, and just doing my best to let new installments jog my memory... but then I did reread The Southern Reach books in preparation for Absolution, and I was so glad I did. So if I feel like I'd benefit from a reread, I want to do that.

And I do have several new "serious" books that I acquired in ebook format, either through sales or humble bundles or the like. I didn't previously include any ebooks because I was so bad at reading them, but I've started to be able to, so I feel like they should be on the list, too.

...90 books. My list is at 90 books. What the fuuuuuuuck.

And this list is NOT completely exhaustive!

( Things it does and does not include, cut for some length: )

...I think I should aim for more than 25 books for the year. (One book every two weeks feels like such a nicely reasonable pace, and I figured I'd try for about half to be physical vs. half ebook format... but that would knock the list down by SO LITTLE.)

( The list itself... )

That is overwhelming. Fucking HOW.

So.

I've currently started the reread of The House in the Cerulean Sea, because I'm excited that it got a sequel, and wanted to reread the first one.

I know I want to read Never Say You Can't Survive sometime early in the year; it's the only non-fiction book I've got on the list, and I've had it recommended several times as helpful for finding creative energy and drive when the rest of the world is sucking... and I feel like the world is about to really start sucking.

Ten of the physical books are the Wayward Children novellas. I've read the first three, but not since they came out, so seven years at the most recent. I'd like to start from the beginning. This should be very much My Thing - portal fantasy about the kids who return, by a favorite author! - but for some reason I've struggled with them. I just kind of keep sliding off in the "whoops, just forgot to pick the book back up again for six months" kind of way. That said, they are at least novellas, so hopefully I can get through them a bit more quickly, if I keep to a steady reading schedule? I think I may try to alternate these with other books, to see if I can make some headway through them without trying to power through them all in a row.

I also want to read Trouble and Her Friends fairly early, because it's an older cyberpunk novel, one I'd somehow never heard of until last year! Since I am hoping to write a cyberpunk AU fic this year, I'd like to read that one to help me get into the mood for the genre.

I probably have to give up on the hopes of doing any of the rereads. Much as I really want to reread Newsflesh.

The four 2025 releases will absolutely end up jumping the line when they come out.

So tentatively for now...

• The House in the Cerulean Sea (in progress)
• Every Heart a Doorway (Wayward Children 1)
• Beyond the Sea (sequel to Cerulean Sea)
• Down Among the Sticks and Bones (WC 2)
• Never Say You Can't Survive (which I can probably read along with other stuff)
• Beneath the Sugar Sky (WC 3)
• Trouble and Her Friends
• In an Absent Dream (WC 4)

Obviously, I plan to read much more than that, but that's where I'm starting at. Plus whatever ebooks I can read to kill time.

I hope I can chip away at this impossible list one book at a time!

I've been *trying* to read more ebooks, for a few reasons.

I've always theoretically been in favor of ebooks, but in practicality I just haven't had good luck with them. They're too "out of sight, out of mind" for me, so that even when I'm enjoying a book, at some point I close the app and then just... never go back.

BUT. If I ever look to actually publishing any original stuff, that is where the market is, and I do kind of want to see more of what's out there.

(Am I looking to publish anything? Not really. I'd have to a) write stuff; b) actually want to do all the other stuff like editing, cover design, formatting, and marketing which sounds like hell; and c) actually feel like I had something I wanted to sell. Plus d) not wanting to do the whole "hobby becomes side hustle becomes something I hate" thing. I'm a lot more likely to put stuff up for free somewhere if it gets to that point.)

There are also other benefits to ebooks: I like being able to read from my phone, so I can do that to kill time while I'm waiting for something, as an alternative to just a social media scroll. The cheaper price point is also a draw, since I don't have much of a book budget.

So far I've only read a few ebooks this year, but it's more than zero!

But fuuuuuuck am I struggling with the current one and the utter lack of like... basic proofreading.

So many wrong words! Sentences that make zero sense! (Plus the writing is bland, characters contradict themselves within pages, big conflicts are hinted at just to peter out into nothing...)

It surprised me, because this particular book had a really high star rating, which is part of why I downloaded it. And I was excited at the time, because the author is pretty prolific, and it's a f/f supernatural romance, which seemed like something I'd be into! I was hopeful it'd be good and lead me to more similar stuff by the same writer... but yeah, this one has not made me want to read anything else by them.

Am I being too picky? I do try to be pretty understanding of small issues that creep in, especially with self-published stuff. I know that weird little mistakes happen, no matter how hard you try! But this book is way beyond a typo here and there.

Now, I did not buy this book. It was part of a free download event a couple months ago. But this isn't *usually* a free book. While expectations of quality and money paid don't exactly correlate, I think it's reasonable to want a product you paid for to have a base level of quality.

(And as a sidenote, this is also a frustration in professionally published books! By real, big publishers! Anger about professional editorial standards is definitely an adjacent gripe, but one I mostly won't go into right now.)

On the maybe bright side, this crappy book is retroactively making me appreciate the previous one I read, though. I'd thought I was annoyed by a few bits of that previous one: a couple awkward sentences or typos, a few stylistic things that just weren't my favorites... But man, it was fucking great compared to this constant mess.

It's silly to be this annoyed by it, because I should just DNF it and pick something else, but instead it's just making me angry, ha.

I definitely didn't read nearly as much as I'd hoped to in 2023. I'd set what seemed like a fairly easy goal of reading 20 books for the year, and I read... 11. Ish. With a pretty big "ish" qualifier, because three of those I did not yet finish. So... 8 and three halves, lol.

( Thoughts on the books I read this year: )

Now the much scarier list... my To Be Read list.

This isn't even a complete list! There are plenty of other books I want to read but don't have listed for whatever reason. (There are quite a few that I only have in ebook format, and my struggle to read ebooks means they aren't imminently on the list, even though I still plan to try.) This also includes nothing that hasn't been released yet, and there are several books (especially in ongoing series) that will come out in 2024 that will definitely be added to the list.

( 36 books I want to read: )

All the things on my TBR list don't account for much in the way of rereading. A couple are technically rereads, but they're things read so long ago that it might as well be the first time I've read it. This list does not include anything in the "I love this and want to read it again" category. And that is a bummer, because there's actually quite a bit I would really like to reread!

There are some faves that I just want to read again because. (The Broken Earth trilogy, the Captive Prince trilogy, the Newsflesh trilogy, the Six of Crows duology, the Shades of Magic trilogy, The Southern Reach trilogy... And actually, that last one I really extra want to, because a fourth book is allegedly coming out in late 2024!)

I also often really want to reread the previous books in a series before reading a new one, because I'd hate to have forgotten some detail that adds to it! So I have to resist the urge to reread all the Murderbot books, Dark Heir, the Shades of Magic trilogy, The City We Became, the earlier Wayward Children books...

I keep trying to remind myself that rereading things I loved is doing myself a disservice if it prevents me from finding the new things that I will love just as much. At the same time, it's frustrating to read new things that I don't enjoy as much as I would enjoy rereading a favorite series, ha.

IF I could manage 3 books per month, that'd knock out my list, but I don't think that's even CLOSE to a realistic goal for me. I also really don't want to focus so heavily on quantity. I know there are a shitton of "50 books in a year!" or "100 books in a year!" or "A book-a-day for a year!" types of challenges out there, and that is pretty emphatically NOT what I want to do. I want to have the room to really enjoy the books I read, I want to enjoy the writing itself, and I want to appreciate the books as a whole, rather than just feeling like I have to race to the end.

So... I'll probably aim for 20 books again, which feels like a more reasonable pace. I'll try to stick to books that ARE on this list (minus any new releases that cut the line), rather than rereads, though if I get a really strong urge to reread something specific, I'll probably give in, haha. (And if Absolution does get a definite release date for Fall 2024, then the Southern Reach trilogy gets bumped up for sure.)

Meant to have this done last week, but here we are. I also kept finding more to say. I need to find a way to trim these things down if I'm going to keep writing them, lol.

Things I've Watched:

Glass Onion
Not a ton to say that other people haven't said! But I enjoyed it! I have fun with twisty murder mystery stuff, and I love revenge. I especially love long-con revenge, and while this was more of a medium-con revenge, it was satisfying to me. The casting was excellent. The characters never quite felt all the way caricature-ish, while at the same time feeling *exactly* like That Person you totally know/know of. Lots of genuinely funny bits.
"Are you calling me dangerous?" killed me.

You
Been out for a while, and I think we watched a couple episodes of the first season before it was on Netflix. Alex had watched a bit more of it, but we started it over. (Good timing: didn't know the fourth season was starting up imminently.)
( Cut for length (a losing battle): )

( More thoughts than I wanted to have on Season 3, including minor spoilers: )

( Thoughts on the first half of Season 4, minor spoilers: ) 
( Bigger spoilers up through the mid-season finale: )

I feel like the first season was pretty good and well-contained. I know that after season two, the story has veered away from the books it was based on. Three and four have felt the weakest, or at the very least less cohesive. Some of the subplots have been stronger than others, but they haven't gelled as well as seasons one and two.
It feels like post-season-one, they may have also been reacting to the million thinkpieces about how terrible it was that people liked Joe so much because he was an objectively bad person. They didn't make him less likeable, just more self-aware. Idk, it's not terrible, but I enjoyed it when he was more fucked up, tbh.

Nope
This was a re-watch, and I still like it! I enjoy how many things in the first half get visually called back to for the second half. A popping balloon, the puff of powder... I still can't believe how many complaints I saw (to be fair, probably only three or four separate ones) saying that they didn't think the Gordy plotline made sense or had any bearing on the rest of the movie.
Lucky is the best.

Things I've Played:

Nier: Replicant
We finished it! For real! I had a lot more thoughts about it!

AI: The Somnium Files - Nirvana Initiative
We barely started it - we got through what's functionally the prologue - it's pretty extended, but plays out before the opening credits, and that's where we ended.I had fun with AI: The Somnium Files, so I'm looking forward to this one. Aiba, my favorite little shrimp hamster eyeball! I love her! Apparently Taylor really ended up liking new character Ryuki (judging by his character utterly taking over their tumblr for a while), so looking forward to learning more about him, too. So far, we've got a similarly outlandish string of impossible serial murders (bodies sliced in half lengthwise on an atomic level! The second half of a body showing up years later than the first, but seeming to still be a recent death!) to investigate, so excited for more.

Things I've Read:

City of Saints and Madmen
I have not had as much time as I would like to read, which has been frustrating, though I'm very close to the end of this book!

Thoughts on the component parts:

( The Strange Case of X: )

"The AppendiX":
This is the part that was mostly left out of my first copy! A set of shorter stories, set within an additional frame story that all of these were found as documents that had been in Patient "X"'s possession before he mysteriously vanished.

Feelings on the individual short stories:

( A Letter from Dr. V. to Dr. Simpkin: )

"X's Notes":
Notes left by X and transcribed by Dr. V. (who still inserts some additional requests for funding.) Speculating about the nature of the stories he's writing and reading.

( The Release of Belaqua: )

( King Squid: )

( The Hoegbotton Family History: )

( The Cage: )

( In the Hours After Death: )

( The Man Who Had No Eyes: )

( The Exchange: )

( Learning to Leave the Flesh: )

( The Ambergris Glossary: )

What Manner of Man
When Dracula Daily was a prominent thing, one of the other subscriptions that someone had been advertising was for an original (queer) vampire story that they wanted to serialize in a similar way, and that has started. It's so far shared a prologue and the first two chapters. It's not a lot to go on yet, but I'm liking it! It's epistolary, shared as letters and journal entries, set in 1950 about a priest who is sent to a remote island, theoretically to perform an exorcism. He has yet to meet his supposed host who for *some mysterious reason* failed to meet him when his boat docked.
You can subscribe here if you're interested!

A Desolation Called Peace
Only a few more chapters (and I think I want to try and reread them before Taylor and I get together again. Through no fault of theirs or of the book, I started to doze off.)
These books are so damn heavy on THEMES. THEMES, I TELL YOU.
Lots about identity and individuality vs collective thought. (Through varying sci-fi premises, there are multiple ways in which an individual may not be the ONLY set of thoughts a person has.) In a broader sense, the idea of being the heir to something, and how the expectations placed on the previous holder of a position or title reflect on those farther down the line. The use of language. The multiple types of colonization that goes on - the taking over of other cultures and identities, and either destroying them or assimilating them. There's a monstrous, unknown species that is literally devouring the ships and people it encounters... which is positioned with the way the empire metaphorically and culturally devours the other societies it encounters. There's also a LOT of political shit going down, like damn.

I had some good intentions about writing out a sort of media roundup of stuff I watched in the last week or two, and even got started on that, but... I need to shower and sleep and stuff like that, so gotta punt THAT forward a ways.

-

I did get my new copy of City of Saints and Madmen - a day early! - and this one does include all the correct stories, ha. I'm glad of that, because I didn't want to have to try and hunt down a more obscure edition, lol. (Or, more likely, just borrow Taylor's copy. And maybe photocopy the missing bits.)

I'm part-way into "The Transformation of Martin Lake", which Taylor said was their very favorite story out of the book, and I'm liking so far.

-

Work had some critical payroll failure last night, so no one's direct deposits went through. Apparently there was a mad crush early this morning to get physical checks printed and then distributed to all of our offices.

I got to use my bank's mobile check deposit for the first time, so that's fun.

-

Mods for the zine I've been writing a fic for want me to change the end just slightly, so I've been trying to mentally figure how to rework it. I feel like I can just change a few pieces around... They said the ending seems abrupt, and want something to happen after the dialogue I closed on. I'm fine with that, but I really don't have any further parts I want to cut, so instead I just want to rework the scene. Seems like a matter of getting the bits to jigsaw back together, but I haven't had an Ah ha! moment just yet.

After sorting THAT out, I'll try to turn my energy toward some new writing project. I've been slacking on that (but enjoying reading, so not too sad that I've been spending my free time on that.)

I feel like the end of this year really got away from me! I know the week between Xmas and New Year's is always quick, but it seemed to go very fast. But Xmas also seems like it was already forever ago, so go figure.

But anyway... seems to be the time to reflect on the year and all of that. I had set a few goals for myself last year, so taking a look at how those went...

- Habit tracking is still a positive! I stuck with it for another year, and it has continued to help me keep track of things, and see that I do make progress on things sometimes.

Writing:
- I'd joined a couple of writing challenges: Get Your Words Out (goal of 150k) + Inking It Out (goal of 100k) - These were a success! My actual wordcount for the year was 231508 words, which was higher than I'd been aiming, and definitely higher than I expected!
- In 2021 I'd written quite a bit, but completed and shared very little. Even more than any of the word totals, my biggest writing goal for 2022 was to complete some of my WIPs that had been lingering uncompleted. I succeeded in completing both Connections of the Heart and Island Territory. I also completed and started posting both All Strange Wonders and Outbreak.
- I'd also hoped to work on some new things. That... was less of a success. I did poke at a couple new things, but really never had anything bite me with much enthusiasm, and I haven't gotten anything else worked on much, much less near any level of completion.

- I'd hoped to find some kind of enjoyable exercise - not a success. We still go on walks/hikes, and I've been to a couple concerts that involve more dancing and such, which I still like! But anything more regular... I still didn't really try anything new, so of course I didn't find anything I love doing!

- Keep up with DW - success! I did post every day again, for the second year in a row. Mixed success in terms of whether much of that was "meatier" posting like I'd talked about wanting to do. There were a few posts like that, but I do think that I was still mostly sharing daily stuff.

- Find more fandom connection - mixed! I've got multiple fannish friends on DW, and while we don't for the most part share actual fandoms, it does make me feel at least somewhat connected to fandom as a whole. This "goal" has felt in some ways less... immediate than it did at the start of last year, because I am sort of drifting away from my primary fandom. And that's bittersweet, but also makes sense... Particularly as nothing has really replaced that fandom at this point, fannISH connections fill that need more than fanDOM-specific friends would, I think.

- Read more - mixed! I actually thought I'd done pretty badly on this measure, but tallying things up, I read more than I thought. (I did crap out for quite a while on one book in the middle of the year, though it went fast once I got back into it.) I'm encouraged that I did better than I thought I had. (Though to be fair, a few are currently in-progress, so they aren't COMPLETE books, but I'm still willing to count them.)
( This year I read: )

So 17 books, plus +/- 3 or so for the short story collections. Not nearly as bad as I thought!

- Pay attention to more movies/TV shows - I think this one was more of a success than not. I still have a lot of stuff that just plays in the background, but I tried to pay attention to a few more things more fully, and that was nice.

A bit of a miscellaneous one, rather than for a set time period or anything, since I do these... sporadically, at best. Just kind of a vague sense of Some Stuff I've Experienced Lately.

Things I've played lately:

Nier: Replicant
Not a lot to say that I didn't already talk about before. I'm still curious about what way we get to have an impact on the ending, or if it will be much of one. Going through with new knowledge (though admittedly, not all of that knowledge is something the protagonist is privy to) very much makes me wish that I could alter the story - have the protag make different choices, choose not to fight certain enemies, prevent NPC deaths that I know are coming...
But at the same time, it is effective tragedy to know that you're doing something terrible, yet be unable to stop or alter it.

Things I've read lately:

Spelunking Through Hell by Seanan McGuire
Summary: Alice Price-Healy has spent decades searching for her husband, after he was taken away by the Crossroads as payment for a deal he made saving her life. Finally, she receives a clue to where he may have been hidden... though she still has little idea how to rescue him.

I enjoyed it! I do, however, think it very much needed the buildup of the rest of the Incryptid series behind it to grant it the necessary weight. That is generally what the author has said: the entirety of the series was built just so that people would care about these characters and their story - as a standalone, without the way in which these characters have hovered in the distant background of the rest of the series, I don't know that there's enough connection to them to really feel invested in their story. (Mainly to say: I think she had the right idea by saving this story for the 11th entry into the series.)
There's also a LOT that references the short stories about the characters. Those short stories have been released via Patreon. Taylor and I read them all (all the ones written so far, anyway), and did so specifically to be "ready" for this book, and I'm glad we did. But I'm not completely sure how the book would come off without that context? I think there's certainly enough for it to be understandable, but I think the mentions of those events and characters felt a lot richer for having read the stories, rather than having them just be disconnected references.

Be the Serpent by Seanan McGuire
Summary: October is forced to fight against one of her oldest friends, as one of the long-lost Queens of Faerie is found... no matter how much destruction her return leads to.

I got to have the Real Fandom Feel with this one, because Taylor and I have our pet theory that we went into the book with, so we've been flailing at each other over it.
( Cut for very minor spoilers: )

Things I've watched lately:

Don't Worry Darling
Summary: Alice lives a completely idyllic 50s life with her loving husband, Jack. While the work he does is mysterious, it provides a completely perfect, comfortable suburban life for the two of them, much like all the rest of the members of the community. Strange things begin happening around Alice, causing her to question whether everything is possibly as perfect as it seems to be.

Alex and I went to see this one on Tuesday. I've mostly ignored the ~drama~ that's been alleged about the whole thing, and don't really care about that. The movie itself seems to be kind of love it or hate it - I've seen a couple people saying it was literally one of the worst movies they've ever watched, and that I really don't get.
I wouldn't say it's my new favorite or anything, but I thought it was pretty good. I thought it was well-acted, the costume design was great, and I thought it captured a sort of fridge-horror aspect that I really liked.
( Cut for spoilers: )

Diabolique
Summary: The wife and the mistress of an abusive man team up to murder him. After his body disappears, the two of them seem to be stalked by someone who knows what they've done.

A movie from the 90s, remaking a French film from the 50s. I hadn't seen it before.
One of my first thoughts was "ah, I see where The One Lifetime Movie I Genuinely Enjoyed got much of its plot from."
I liked the cast: Sharon Stone was very hot in the 90s, and Isabelle Adjani does "fragile waif" extremely well. Also Kathy Bates is in it, and she's pretty much always delightful to watch.
And "Wife and mistress team up to murder abusive husband/lover" really is an A+ plot (even if there is more to it.)
Apparently this was ROUNDLY hated when it came out, and to be fair I haven't seen the movie it's remaking, so maybe that one is miles better. I don't know, I thought it was fine? It wasn't SUPER suspenseful, but I was entertained, and ultimately enjoyed the ending.

Dark Skies
No, not the newer, better-known one, and also not the TV series. This was a low-ish budget made-for-TV disaster movie from 2009! (Also apparently known as "Black Rain.")
Summary: A group of three college friends come across a fourth man who has been living as a recluse in the woods. They recognize him as a brilliant scientist who graduated a few years before them. The four wind up trapped in a storm that rains deadly acid - the result of an industrial "accident" caused by unscrupulous business decisions.

We picked it, assuming it would be an extremely formulaic SyFy-style disaster movie... and I won't say it *wasn't* that, but I *was* surprisingly charmed by it, for two main reasons:
- 1: it had a much stronger thesis than most of these movies have. It's typical enough to have an Evil Corporation [represented in this movie by an Evil Businesswoman, played by Leslie Hope as our "kinda slight name recognition" actress for the film], but this movie was a lot more critical of it than I'm used to seeing. Instead of "oh, this one company was bad and led by one bad person", this one actually stated "as long as businesses are motivated solely by profit, they can never be trusted to make good decisions regarding health and safety."
- 2: after the main guy has a random shirtless, bare-ass scene toward the beginning, Alex and I were both waiting for Obvious Pretty Girl!Scientist Love Interest to show up. While one of the other characters is a Pretty Girl!Scientist... she is not the love interest!
The shoehorned-in romantic subplot was between the main guy and one of the other men in the group. #equality #lovewins To be honest, it surprised me that they actually went for it, and I like it. I want to watch bad genre movies with queer characters, and I got to do that!