Kitewithfish

Wednesday Reading Meme for August 26 2026

Wed, 26 Aug 2026 20:04:11 GMT

Reading and watching journal for Wed August 26 2026

Reading:
What I’ve Read
Loveless Vol 1 by Yun Kouga – I am confused! I am intrigued by the worldbuilding, which I know is used in some crossover fics that would be interesting to me, so I am pushing thru, but there are some elements of the main characters that make me want to just… shake people.

being this close ain't close enough by fortunehasgivenup - https://archiveofourown.org/works/42237966 - KinnPorsche Soulmate AU -I found this really compelling but also felt like it focused a lot on the dynamics of the early part of the show and not the later more lush fucked up and Gothic ending. So, recommend for the complicated dynamics of being fate-married to a mafia boss.

Kingfisher Feathers by anonymous - https://archiveofourown.org/works/25604389 – Untamed - A harem ABO au where Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji are bonded but LWJ does not know this and proceeds to create an imperial harem anyways. Welp. Unfinished and given the last update was in 2024, I am operating on the assumption that it will not be finished. However, I had a wonderful time.

What I’m Reading:

Mockingjay – a bit slow to get into it but not without charmg.

What I’ll Read Next
No idea, I am in the throes of a new fandom.

Shows and Movies
What I've Watched:

On the Rad East Asian Four-Act Story Structure by Henry Lien - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYTkL2QhhFs – really interesting analysis of how a different story structure works in Asian story telling, with examples from Parasite and Mario!

Kinnporsche (Thai, 2022) I think this was incredibly popular in 2022 when it was airing and I was just on the edges of that fandom. I have complex thoughts but man, it was not afraid of the audience and it was messy and alive and ended on this tragic Gothic note that I really enjoyed. I adored the show really leaning into the parallels between the main couple’s relationship problems and situations (Kinn and Porsche) and the secondary couple’s problems, which are the same ones, just turned up to eleven. I really liked the level of attention to performance – I was somewhat inclined to go back and rewatch the whole thing again from the start to see if I had missed anything.

The Servant Prince (Japan, しもべの王子様, 2026) Honestly quite sweet – there’s a structural power exchange relationship between the two leads, but the plot is largely about the ostensible dom coming out of a deep depression and redisovering life, and the sub being a terrifyingly effective CEO who will take revenge against his boyfriend’s awful family. The dynamics are fantastic. There is a terrible wig.

Don’t Be Too Emotional – (Thai, ongoing) – Complex emotional realtionships to debt! Yup! That will in fact get you if you don’t talk about it beforehand.

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Wednesday Reading Meme for August 19 2026

Wed, 19 Aug 2026 18:57:46 GMT

What I’ve Read
The Bird King by G. Willow Wilson – What a strange and wonderful book. It didn’t really do a particularly strong adventurous structure, but it had a fantastic sense of internal reflection and used the concept of a magical island in a really interesting way. I researched into the poem that is the in-text inspiration for the novel and I’m adding it here as a reminder to myself- https://www.sacred-texts.com/isl/bp/bp01.htm (English trans from Persian in like 1880)

What I’m Reading
The Subtle Art of Folding Space – I do not think this older sister is a nice person.

Mockingjay – slow.

What I’ll Read Next
War for the OaksFicciones
Ana and Din Book

What I've Watched

I appear to be sticking with the BL series for a little bit, at least, so I’m going to log some that I’ve tried out and see what I end up sticking with

In the Ancient Texts side of things, I finished Yuri on Ice! The latter half of the show surprised me – I didn’t expect to love so many of the other skaters. Even JJ Le Roy grew on me. Yuri and Viktor’s relationship and the promise of their future together – god, what a lovely ending. (I will include a caveat for some real fucking vicious fatphobia in the first few episodes.)

I really enjoyed Bittersweet Love – I think the ending was a little bit rushed but overall, I found myself enjoying a character whose strength was enduring and how at the end he got to really shake up the perceptions of those around him.

I started Kinnporsche because a few people on Tumblr were absolutely obsessed with it a few years ago and I think a solid fanbase has something interesting to fall into. It’s goofier than I expected for a mafia based show, but I’m finding that Thai shows overall are a bit tonally goofy in ways that don’t fully resolve into comedy or camp for me. Not a bad thing, but an observation for myself.

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Wednesday Reading Meme for August 12 2026

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 00:35:05 GMT

What I’ve Read
The Prosecutor’s Office’s Proposal by He Bok – This is a queer Korean romance with a bit of a dark edge and a decent police procedural (I think. I’m reading a fan translation that I got second hand, so I’m grading on curve about things like continuity of spelling and also horrible choices of language around body parts in intimate scenes.) I picked it up after watching the show and enjoyed it – the book does a more comprehensive murder plot, the show is differently horny. Can’t talk about either without major spoilers that I think might be more interesting to miss going in – rot13 for spoilers - Gur fgbel vf nobhg n grnz bs gjb vairfgvtngvat n pbyq pnfr - bhe znva punenpgre unf orra bfgenpvmrq nyy uvf yvsr sbe orvat gur fba bs na nyyrtrq zheqrerq, naq ur'f cvpxrq ol gur cebfrphgbe urer fcrpvsvpnyyl orpnhfr OVT FCBVYRE gur cebfrphgbe vf frpergyl gur fba bs gur zheqre ivpgvz. Abar bs guvf fubhyq syl rira n yvggyr ovg, ohg V qb abg xabj rabhtu nobhg Xberna ynj gb xabj! Vg frrzf snveyl pbzcryyvat! V guvax vg'f cebonoyl zber pbzcryyvat vs lbh ner ernqvat vg va gur bevtvany Xberna naq trggvat zber pbafvfgrag qrfpevcgvbaf bs gur rzbgvba.

Let's Go Karaoke! By Yama Wayama – A weird manga! A junior high kid gets picked up by a yakuza for karaoke lessons due to mafia related reasons. The whole of the thing is fascinating in a Weird Friendship way, and I found it because there seems to be a sequel that takes it into a more age gap romance area, and I appreciate someone leaning as far as possible into how fucked up that is. The actual plot is weird and self indulgent and I really enjoyed it – I’m going to find and read the follow up this week if I can.

What I’m Reading
Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins – Audiobook bc Book club annnd I just now realized that it’s not the book for this week’s meeting. Welp!

The Subtle Art of Folding Space – John Chu – Boston based surreal world building with generational trauma? I didn’t know I was getting into it but yay!

The Bird King by G Willow Wilson – Historical fantasy set in the last days of the Emirate of Granada – some fun things about the Conference of the Birds, a 12th century Persian poem.

What I’ll Read Next
War for the Oaks
Ficciones

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Wednesday reading meme for August 5 2026

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 02:35:27 GMT

What I’ve Read
December by samK – This is an omegaverse romance that only sort of landed for me. Most of the Asian omegaverse media I have enjoyed recently did some extra layers on the worldbuilding – not just giving humanity the obligatory second genders, but adding hierarchy or layers on top of them. This book added infertile recessive male omegas and super duper extra alphas, and they didn’t really add much? I think this might be wish fulfillment for a wish I did not have, which is having a guided missile to destroy anyone who has ever been mean to you.

I also re-read the last five chapters of Hunger Games #2 to remind myself where I was to start Mockingjay.

What I’m Reading
The Prosecutor’s Office’s Proposal by He Bok (검사실의 제안) by (헤복) – Still interesting! I found the novel a good companion to the series in terms of plot – this is a good mystery! Stuff is getting fleshed out! I find the relationship a bit more fulfilling just because the main characters, Lee Chaeha and Joo Taeseon, are given more time to actually spend together and work out the weirder elements of their dynamic. (Hint, it’s not the workplace romance that is the problem!) There is a twist that was immediately spoiled in every summary of the show or book that I found, and I will avoid sharing it here, but, ya know, be aware. (Sidebar: do people think polygraphs actually work? Or is this just a convention of crime fiction? The debunking seemed solid enough that I thought they’d break immersion for more people.)

Just started Mockingjay, solid book so far!

The Subtle Art of Folding Space – I am 5% in and the universe is run on fake steampipes that are diagnosed with dim sum metaphors to show what’s wrong. This all feels rather Douglas Adamsy!

What I’ll Read Next
Hugos crunch time if I wante to have an opinion about the best novel category!

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Wednesday Reading Meme for July 29, 2026

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 00:52:42 GMT

Wednesday Reading Meme for July 29th

I skipped a week because my brain fixated on a bunch of BL novels and shows!

What I’ve Watched
Ball Boy Tactics – Sweet, a bit angsty but not too bad. A small and cute former Olympian falls for a basketball player at his new university

The Prosecutor’s Proposal – Dark and fucked up! Went in spoiled for the major twist, still had a great time with it.

Thundercloud Rainstorm – Wild, absurd, enjoyed it a great deal. Stoic asshole slowly falling for a conniving and sweet boy, with a touch of grief. I enjoyed it immensely.

What I’ve Read
The River has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar – A personalized and slightly more queer version of a traditional murder ballad! I liked it a great deal.

Roadside Picnic by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky and Olena Bormashenko (Translator) – a newish translation of a 1970s scifi novel. Aliens are real and they fucked off from Earth before we even really noticed they were here. Set in vignettes around contaminated Zones of post-alien incursion, the book follows a very working class Russian-feeling story of a person staring down the barrel of a massive historical shift. (but technically not in Russia)

Payback by SamK, translated by Publang team
- Ok, this was simply a great translation with good (but not invasive) localization from Korean to English. The story hinges on a character, Lee Yoohan, who fucked up his life and lost his family as a young man – some of it by horrible luck and some by outright betrayal and some by his own damned fault. He starts slowly finding his way back to the realm of human connection and his own feelings after he discovers that his former lover, who fucked him over monumentally, is thriving as an actor – and Lee Yoohan decides to pursue a career in entertainment as revenge. He gets a psychotic new boyfriend and a newfound love of acting and slowly unfolds into a kind of decent human being. This has been adapted into a Thai BL drama that will be completed next week and that I am enjoying watching, a bit more slowly.

Samk did a great job writing this and the translation team did a great job translating it and I had a wonderful time reading it.

What I’m Reading
Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor – not doing much for me at the halfway point – the reflections on her family and life are fascinating, tho.

You sit there in your heartache (waiting on some beautiful boy) by
rawrasaurus – Superman 2025 Clark/Lex – confusingly unconnected to Smallville!

The Prosecutor's Office's Proposal by singNsong – basis of another BL show I watched.

What I’ll Read Next
The Bird King G Willow Wilson
Mockingjay Suzanne Collins
War for the Oaks Emma Bull
Ficciones Jorge Luis Borges

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Wednesday Reading Meme for July 15, 2026

Wed, 15 Jul 2026 18:48:00 GMT

What I’ve Read
Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky – Finished! I think I lost steam on this one because it felt so tightly bound inside the main narrator’s voice and experience. It’s a study of life in a totalitarian capitalist future where most people are scrabbling to prove that they can be contributing members of humanity’s corporate future in space – failure to provide value means you end shelved in a cryo-hibernation unit until someone finds a use for you or you become most cost effective to jettison. It’s awful, and our main character has a lot of soft people skills that make her incredible in making complex team projects function, but it’s the kind of skill that can’t be pointed to as a clear source of value. She’s the grease that keeps the gears turning, in one metaphor the book deploys. It’s very solid, but since it is such a companion piece to a similar book I read last November, Alien Clay, I found myself comparing it to that unfavorably. It’s honestly a toss up as to which would be a better read. If this wins a Hugo, I would be surprised but not disappointed.

What I’m Reading
The River has Roots – Amal el-Motar – Loved her work on This is How You Lose the Time War, looking forward to this one. It feels a bit lyrical and fairy tales.

Counterattack - Chai Jidan - This is the novel that the C-Drama Revenged Love is based on, and I am delighted to discover that it’s significantly more overt in the main characters’ sexual relationship. At a certain point in the show, it seemed like they’d simply started having sex off screen – the dynamics were like a settled couple rather than two horny people dancing around each other. It’s an unhinged story and the translation is hitting a sweet spot of requiring me to look up cultural footnotes but getting the emotional beats clearly. I don’t know that I will end up actually finishing it – the novelty of the novel is wearing off a bit but it’s nice to dip into the best parts of the show and see the messier version that they streamlined for tv.

What I’ll Read Next

Death of the Author Nnedi Okorafor
Colourfields: Writing About Writing About Science Fiction Paul Kincaid Related Work
A Wizard of Earthsea: A Graphic Novel written by Ursula K. Le Guin Graphic Story
Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler Susana M. Morris Related Work
Absolute Wonder Woman Vol. 1: The Last Amazon written by Kelly Thompson Graphic Story
The Space Cat written by Nnedi Okorafor Graphic Story
Automatic Noodle Annalee Newitz Novella
The Summer War Naomi Novik Novella
The Power Fantasy Volume 1: The Superpowers written by Kieron Gillen Graphic Story

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Storygraph 2026 - The Collected Book Suggestions

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:09:43 GMT

Bookish friends (and foes, too, I guess) - I have been to ReaderCon 2026! It was lovely - my first time, and it was a very chill and bookish place.

As per my usual mission, I like to walk away with a robust list of books I have never heard of before to add to my reading list - these suggestions mostly come from panels, conversations with other nerds, and things in the bookshop that I did not let myself immediately buy.

(I will admit, some of these were bookmarked less because the specific title was praised, and more because I was using Storygraph to track this in real time. If a panelist did not mention a specific book, just picked what looked most interesting to me/most book-shaped.)

Changeling by Delia Sherman
Bouncing Off the Moon by David Gerrold
South Riding by Winifred Holtby
Herlands: Exploring the Women's Land Movement in the United States by Keridwen N. Luis
Swords and Deviltry by Fritz Leiber
The Wizard's Map by Jane Yolen
How to Be Gay by David M. Halperin
Anyway: Angie by Daniel José Older
The Winter Prince by Elizabeth Wein
The Rampant by Julie C. Day
The Battle of Jedha by George Mann
Sheepfarmer's Daughter by Elizabeth Moon
Tea with the Black Dragon by R.A. MacAvoy
Rose Macaulay – The Early Years Collection (7 Books including The Furnace, The Lee Shore, Non-Combatants and Others, What Not, Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract, Dangerous Ages & Mystery At Geneva) by Rose Macaulay
A Fish Dinner in Memison by E.R. Eddison
The Unraveling by Benjamin Rosenbaum
Among You Taking Notes...: The Wartime Diaries of Naomi Mitchison 1939-1945 by Naomi Mitchison
The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong
Fantasy's Othering Fetish by P. Djèlí Clark
A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift
Ode to the Half-Broken by Suzanne Palmer
Jumping Off the Planet by David Gerrold
The Barefoot Book of Ballet Stories by Jane Yolen, Heidi E.Y. Stemple
Caliban Landing by Steven Popkes
This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible by Charles E. Cobb Jr.
Death at the Crystal Palace by Jennifer Ashley
Mistress of Mistresses by E.R. Eddison
A Dubious Clamor by Marissa Lingen
Escape from Valo by Daniel José Older, Alyssa Wong
The Fall of the Kings by Delia Sherman, Ellen Kushner
Comrade Grandmother and Other Stories by Naomi Kritzer
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
Higher Magic by Courtney Floyd
The Last Unicorn by Beagle, Peter S. published by Ballantine (1969) [Mass Market Paperback] by Peter S. Beagle
Hammer's Slammers by David Drake
Finder by Suzanne Palmer
The Tragedy of King Alexander the Stag by Delia Sherman
Tremontaine: The Complete Season One by Patty Bryant, Malinda Lo, Racheline Maltese, Joel Derfner, Ellen Kushner, Paul Witcover, Alaya Dawn Johnson
The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirtieth Annual Collection by Gardner Dozois
The Deed of Paksenarrion by Elizabeth Moon
The Dark Descent by David G. Hartwell
The Man with the Knives by Tom Canty, Ellen Kushner
Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser by Howard Chaykin, Mike Mignola, Al Williamson
The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold
Fafhrd y el Ratonero Gris by Howard Chaykin, Mike Mignola, Fritz Leiber
The Armless Maiden: And Other Tales for Childhood's Survivors by Terri Windling
Doctor Mirabilis by James Blish
Hogfather by Terry Pratchett
Engine Summer by John Crowley
The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
Spider in a Tree by Susan Stinson
Heaven Official's Blessing: Tian Guan Ci Fu (Novel) Vol. 1 by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu
Counter Attack by 柴鸡蛋
Unconquered Countries by Geoff Ryman
A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab
The Eyes Are the Best Part by Monika Kim
Agent of Change by Sharon Lee, Steve Miller
Lex Talionis by R.S.A. Garcia
The Last Soul Among Wolves by Melissa Caruso
Solaris by Stanisław Lem
Your Shadow Half Remains by Sunny Moraine
The Mystery of the Bitten Peach by Cecilia Tan
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever by James Tiptree Jr.
No Harmless Power: The Life and Times of the Ukrainian Anarchist Nestor Makhno by Charlie Allison
The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling
Angel Down by Daniel Kraus
The Obsidian Tower by Melissa Caruso
Nothing Tastes as Good by Luke Dumas
The Kids Came Back Wrong by Wen-yi Lee
Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany
The Last Hour Between Worlds by Melissa Caruso
The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
The Husband Stitch by Carmen Maria Machado
Kalpa Imperial: The Greatest Empire That Never Was by Angélica Gorodischer
The Amazing Mrs. Pollifax by Dorothy Gilman
These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart by Izzy Wasserstein
These Deathless Shores by P.H. Low
Columbus and Other Cannibals: The Wetiko Disease of Exploitation, Imperialism, and Terrorism by Jack D. Forbes
The Night Library of Sternendach by Jessica Lévai

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Wednesday Reading meme for July 8 2026 (on Friday!)

Fri, 10 Jul 2026 20:36:04 GMT

Reading journal for July 8 2026

What I’ve Read
OK, look, I read nothing to completion this week. I got sucked into a deeply unhinged Chinese boy love drama and I rode that till the wheels came off! And I’d do it again! Subtitles take up a similar level of eye strain as reading a book!

So here’s my review of that:
Revenged Love (2025) is a gay (BL) Chinese language drama that focuses on a young man who gets dumped by his girlfriend and decides to seduce the rich man she replaces him with. The story starts out with magnificent levels of plotting and scheming, and gradually shifts from a story about manipulating people to get what you want to a story about knowing people deeply and loving them with your whole heart. The young revenger falls, and falls HARD, for the rich young man that his girlfriend replaced him with, and it’s a great set of performances from these two. It’s comic and goofy and heartfelt. It also involves someone having a deep care for his pet snakes – a thing that I find fairly rare in TV!

The whole series can be watched in Mandarin with English subtitles on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlCSMHgOKbE&list=PLiCVOcxScfwh-Gkl0A0SeugdHQUg4QZIu
Trigger warnings for: suicide attempts, self destructive behavior of several kinds, tossing a twink to a gang, OODLES of manipulative behavior, LOTS OF SNAKES

What I’m Reading

I have abandoned the sheep book – I had too little time left on the audiobook to finish and after I found out the reason for the murder, I lost interest.

Shroud – Adrian Tchaikovsky – about 85%

逆袭 - 柴鸡蛋 | Counterattack - Chai Jidan – the English language translation of the novel that is the basis for Revenged Love. It’s absurd and very, very funny.

What I'll Read Next
Hugos! No changes
Death of the Author Nnedi Okorafor Novel
Colourfields: Writing About Writing About Science Fiction Paul Kincaid Related Work
A Wizard of Earthsea: A Graphic Novel written by Ursula K. Le Guin Graphic Story
Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler Susana M. Morris Related Work
Absolute Wonder Woman Vol. 1: The Last Amazon written by Kelly Thompson Graphic Story
The Space Cat written by Nnedi Okorafor Graphic Story
Automatic Noodle Annalee Newitz Novella
The Summer War Naomi Novik Novella
The Power Fantasy Volume 1: The Superpowers written by Kieron Gillen Graphic Story
The River Has Roots Amal El-Mohtar Novella
Murder by Memory Olivia Waite Novella

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Wednesday Reading Meme for July 1 2026

Wed, 01 Jul 2026 21:58:58 GMT

What I’ve Read
Nothing to completion, I have been in C-drama obsession.

What I’m Reading/ Watching

I’ve fallen into a C-Drama called Pursuit of Jade, which is delightful. The main drama is around a young woman who is trying to make a living as a butcher for herself and her little sister after the death of her parents – only she needs to have a husband marry into her household to keep her family home from going to pay her uncle’s gambling debts. So, she marries this extremely hot refugee she picked up injured off the side of the rode, nearly beaten to death, and marries him to give him a local home. Of course, he’s actually a noble in hiding! Who is figuring out who tried to have him assassinated! Only, well, he’s never really had someone just take care of him, and he’s a bit hopeless with the pork business but great at calligraphy so he’s starting a little side business to help support the family. The two of them are resolutely in a mutually beneficial business arrangement! No warm fuzzy feelings at all, no sir! There’s no reason for all the kettles nearby to start steaming whenever these two get in arm’s reach of each other.

Obviously, the small town section gives way to the politics towards the back half. There’s court intrigue, the previous generation absolutely did some rebelling, but that’s in the background for the first half of the show. A full half of the show is set in this quiet northern village, with people running small businesses and coping with the difficulties of normal life. It’s charming and compelling and I have been watching that instead of reading books so, it makes it into the reading post.

Shroud – Adrian Tchaikovsky – Getting real weird on this planet where the sunlight can’t get thru the dense atmosphere! Alien life is getting real bonkers and strange! Kind of love that Tchaikovsky can still do me in with kind of alien life he can imagine.

Three Bags Full – Leonie Swann – Not technically aliens, but sheep as protagonists have led to a really interesting story for this mystery novel.

What I’ll Read Next

Hugos list! No changes
Death of the Author Nnedi Okorafor Novel
Colourfields: Writing About Writing About Science Fiction Paul Kincaid Related Work
A Wizard of Earthsea: A Graphic Novel written by Ursula K. Le Guin Graphic Story
Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler Susana M. Morris Related Work
Absolute Wonder Woman Vol. 1: The Last Amazon written by Kelly Thompson Graphic Story
The Space Cat written by Nnedi Okorafor Graphic Story
Automatic Noodle Annalee Newitz Novella
The Summer War Naomi Novik Novella
The Power Fantasy Volume 1: The Superpowers written by Kieron Gillen Graphic Story
The River Has Roots Amal El-Mohtar Novella
Murder by Memory Olivia Waite Novella

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Wednesday Reading Meme for June 24 2026

Wed, 24 Jun 2026 14:50:22 GMT

What I’ve Read

Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint (novel), Vol. 1 – by singNsong - translated HYE YOUNG IM (Translator), J. Torres (Translator), BLACKBOX (Illustrator) – A bit of an edgelord take on a transmigration novel – or maybe it’s portal fantasy? Not entirely sure where one genre ends and the other begins. Basically, a Korean fan of a particular webnovel finds himself in the middle of that novel, and as the only person who had finished the book, he’s got a whole strategy worked out for how to game this system. Heavy video game influence, rather edgelordy view of the world and how everyone one earth would simply turn on each other at the drop of a hat. I got into it because there’s some interesting AU fanfic and I think, from what I’ve gleaned, the book has a mechanic where you get to play around with time. But I am just not sure. It’s all a bit inside baseball – the book is written with the expectation that the reader is very familiar with certain genre tropes. As a translation from Korean, I suspect some of the clunkier translations are actually artifacts of the original version using “English is cool” that the translators had to stick with – including things like using “stigma” to mean “in-world bonus power given by external forces,” rather than, ya know, a stigma.

The Raven Scholar – Hodgson –So, interestingly, the book had some surprises left for me! The last 20% of the book still had some plotty revelations that landed quite well, and layered in enough intrigue that I am interested in seeing where the trilogy goes. I do have some complaints – while the book was less meandering than I thought (turns out some of the wandering was set-up for later fun payoffs), it was still quite repetitious and did not seem to trust me to follow along with it. And, well, fine. That’s okay. I think the narrator’s viewpoint was done somewhat messily (omniscient third person works well for a character who is actually omniscient), the prose was fine but not inspired. The overall issue I had was just a sense of shallowness? The characters don’t seem to actually believe in their religion, the cultural differences should result in characters with actually alien values, but don’t, and the sense of the thing was just… like GRRM – someone dabbling with imaginary cultures instead of really digging into what makes them different. The fact that it’s an English writer, who layers in a few extremely English touches, doing an Asian inspired world, made me a bit leery, but she mostly lands it. Just. Not deeply. It’s up for the Hugo best novel and if it wins I will be disappointed, but it’s not a bad book and I think most people will like reading it.

What I’m Reading

Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint vol 2 SingNSong – Not very far in, but there’s already been a situation where post apocalyptic survivors have banded together and become dependent on a team of thugs to protect them, and I’m like, man, I would be happy to never see this trope again. Seems like a shallow edgelordy kind of take. I have a sense that this book gets into structural weirdness that I would enjoy, but it’s taking some time to pan out.

Shroud – Tchaikovsky – Continues to be weird and interesting and awful. Capitalist post-Earth space hellscape with a distinctly unfriendly planet to explore.

Three Bags Full Leonie Swann with A.J. Finn, Anthea Bell (Translator), Caroline Lennon (Narrator) – Wonderful, fun, really digging into how weird the world would look to sheep and how that would impact their attempts at solving the murder of their shepherd.

What I’ll Read Next

Set My Hand Upon the Plough by E. M. Barraud – A memoir of a lesbian’s time as a landgirl! I would love to find an ebook of this, because it seems to be reprinted a couple years ago by a tiny English press. Alas, the only place to buy it is Amazon and I am so so bad with paper books these days.

Hugos Reading Check In:
Awards are August 30^th (I think)

By my very rough count, I have finished about 45% of the Hugos reading I intend to do. (Based on page count, and excluding items that have specifically no page count [the Spreadsheet of Doom, podcast episodes] or have uncountably large page counts [A Girl and Her Fed has been running for 20 years])

Completed Hugos Reading:

A Drop of Corruption Robert Jackson Bennett Pre-Nomination
The Incandescent Emily Tesh Pre-Nomination
Cinder House Freya Marske Pre-Nomination
What Stalks the Deep T. Kingfisher Pre-Nomination
The Everlasting Alix E. Harrow May 2026
The Raven Scholar Antonia Hodgson 6/23/26
Inventing the Renaissance Ada Palmer 6/9/26

Incomplete Hugos Reading (items over 100 pages)

Death of the Author Nnedi Okorafor Novel
Colourfields: Writing About Writing About Science Fiction Paul Kincaid Related Work
A Wizard of Earthsea: A Graphic Novel written by Ursula K. Le Guin Graphic Story
Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler Susana M. Morris Related Work
Absolute Wonder Woman Vol. 1: The Last Amazon written by Kelly Thompson Graphic Story
The Space Cat written by Nnedi Okorafor Graphic Story
Automatic Noodle Annalee Newitz Novella
The Summer War Naomi Novik Novella
The Power Fantasy Volume 1: The Superpowers written by Kieron Gillen Graphic Story
The River Has Roots Amal El-Mohtar Novella
Murder by Memory Olivia Waite Novella

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Wednesday Reading Meme for June 17 2026

Wed, 17 Jun 2026 21:33:22 GMT

This is a week not without stress! The in-laws are visiting (slightly soccer related reasons) and it’s a lot.

What I’ve Read
There’s a Fire in Me – suzukiblu - https://archiveofourown.org/works/19040134 An Avatar fic where Earth freedom fighter Jet is revealed to have been secretly a Firebender. There’s trauma, there’s worldbuilding, there’s Zuko trying to be a teacher to someone other than Aang – it’s great and a very good read for a stressed out brain.

Mortifying Ordeal by Windsoftime - https://archiveofourown.org/works/58454809 - This a soulmate AU of a fandom I have never read in, Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint. The gist is a character believes that his soulmate has rejected him but, in fact, his connection is lopsided – he’s receiving visions of his soulmate’s life (the norm) but his soulmate isn’t getting anything from him at all. I had a fun time – it’s a solid romance novel plot that I would happily read again. I do think that a different version of this fic would have more wallowing in the main character’s feelings of unworthiness, fear of being seen, but honestly, this is a very cohesive light fiction and I think it was fun.

What I’m Reading
Omniscience Reader’s Viewpoint – Vol 1 – I figured that the time had come and I might as well read a long ass web novel. It’s pretty fun – I have received some spoilers but none of them make a lick of sense, so I’m just here for the ride and to learn some tropes I’d never heard of before. (Happily, my partner has read enough manga/manhwa that I can get an explanation of certain tropes on tap, which the book does not see fit to actually provide.)

The Raven Scholar – 75% - It’s a bit odd how this book is structured so that bit events have happened precisely the 50% and 75% marks.

Shroud – Adrian Tchaikovsky – Dark and interesting and weird. I usually like his work so I’m going to continue on ahead.

What I’ll Read Next
More Hugos, more

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Wednesday Reading Meme for June 10 2026

Wed, 10 Jun 2026 22:00:14 GMT

Reading Journal June 10 2026

What I’ve Read
Out of the Dead Land by orphan_account - https://archiveofourown.org/works/1871955 - Really good solid Bucky-centric novel-length fic with creepy robots - the ending landed very well. I love alienation from the self as a theme, I love when it’s weaponized, I love when people are actually allowed to be fucked up by the things that fuck them up.

cast your bitterness into the sea by Kilerkki – Untamed Fanfic, Jiang Cheng/ Original Female Sect Leader - Also an older fic (2021, I guess that’s older) that I was returning to. This is technically unfinished, but seems like it lands in a solid spot for a “for now” ending. Jiang Cheng’s competent in this, solid and reliable in a way that the brilliance of his family can overshadow in the main series. This fic shows him slowly coming into an adult understanding of how, in the right hands, he could be a weapon. Also, morally complex sect leader OFC!

Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie (Imperial Radch #3) – I am so glad I went back to this series. This trilogy has the tightness of a single story in satisfying chapters – I was seeing payoffs from the first book come up in this final book. Breq using the cards dealt her to actually break free of the system she so strongly opposed just tickled me to no end – most often it feels like these autocracies in fiction just get a new king. Not how Breq does it! Really enjoyed these characters – kind of happy to know there’s more in front of me!

Inventing the Renaissance – Ada Palmer – An excellent book about history, the study of history, and the history of history, thru the lens of the study of the Renaissance. Palmer is clear-eyed towards the past and tender towards the people living thru it. If you’re a little bit interested in history, this is excellent – if you’re obsessed, you’re probably going to get something out of Palmer’s examination of how history was built. There are some great approaches to history here, including a really excellent set of metaphors (ever-so-much-moreso, history lab, extensive nicknames, the focus on great minds as belonging to extremely normal human beings.) Palmer has an excellent grasp on how strange the past was, and how the people living in it were being humans in a fascinatingly different context than we are.

What I’m Reading
Feet of Clay – Terry Pratchett – My continued read-thru of the Night’s Watch thread of Discworld.

The Raven Scholar – Antonia Hodgson – At almost exactly the 50% mark, I got to an actually interesting twist. A minor complaint – I was able to put this book down (as of yesterday) nearly a month and pick it back up again without missing any of the threads. Fortunate for me, but a sign of a repetitive style of writing that doesn’t really trust the reader to have been paying enough attention to catch all of the hints and apply them to the characters. I wish this book trusted the reader more to follow along on our own attention span – I don’t need THIS MANY reminders about who people are and how they have interacted in the past attend each mention of them. It feels like Hodgson doesn’t trust me to not have my phone out.

The Postman – David Brin – post apocalyptic story, I’m only about 5% in

What I’ll Read Next
Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky
More Hugos nominees

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Wednesday Reading Meme for June 3 2026

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 20:36:46 GMT

What I’ve Read

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (Imperial Radch #1)
A re-read for Necromancy Book Club, and man, I am glad I re-read this instead of relying on memory. I had felt rather unmoored while reading it last time, but having the general scope of the plot in my head meant that I could really sit back and enjoy the writing and little character moments. It does such an interesting job of working with the viewpoint of a character who is thinking in first person, but functionally has limited omniscience for segments of the book. I first read this in, I think, 2020, and that overall might have shaped my capacity to really sink into a book – I don’t think I read very well that year. Breq as a character has an incredible drive, and her experiences are both deeply human and deeply inhuman. She loved someone and lost them, she loved her life and lost it, she loved her empire and became disillusioned about it – all of these are very human experiences. And, when you have a character like Breq, for whom a multiplicity of experience is normal, you are getting all of that from multiple angles, sometimes at once. Really tightly written.

Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie (Imperial Radch #2) – I liked Justice so much that I just picked this This book picks up immediately after Justice, and the focus of the book is a case study of the cold war that Breq revealed in the last book, now out in the open. There’s questions about policing and justice and empire and how to move forward when you can’t change the past. It also does some wonderful montage work of building scenes around music that Breq and her crew are singing.

What I’m Reading

Out of the Dead Land by orphan_account - https://archiveofourown.org/works/1871955 - A Winter Soldier -focused fic. Catnip – this fic focuses on Bucky’s alienation from himself via the metaphor of murderous robots pretending to be real people. The point of view is Bucky’s and the internal conflict as he pieces together what has been done to him, and who he is in the aftermath? Excellently done. (If you like this, worth looking at Some Desperate Glory or Incandescent.)

The Raven Scholar – Static, I should get back to this

Inventing the Renaissance – Ada Palmer – about 75% - This book remains great and really interesting. Her running thread about HOW you first read or teach about the Renaissance shapes how you approach it – honestly great centering point of the book. She talks in the section I read this week about building a syllabus around Machiavelli’s The Prince that gave her students Machiavelli’s letters as well as other historical reference points so that when they finally read The Prince, they have a wealth of context for his writings style and what his references meant to him at the time. I am inspired to try and do something similar myself.
I also found something really interesting in her discussion of Scholasticism as a philosophical movement – the stakes! Her discussion of how Scholastics were trying to reconcile Christian works that were, on the face, diametrical opposite, but endorsed with equal weight by the church – so if you understood them wrong, your literal immortal soul was on the line! And the souls of all your readers! Palmer does a lot of work to help me get to understand the actual weight that this carried for the people living at the time.

What I’ll Read Next
Tomb of Dragons Katherine Addison - reread for Xing Book club

Hugo nominations still to read:

Novels
Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor
Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Novellas
Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz (Tordotcom)
Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite (Tordotcom)
The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (Tordotcom; Arcadia UK)
The Summer War by Naomi Novik (Del Rey US; Del Rey UK)

comments

Wednesday Reading Meme for May 27 2026

Wed, 27 May 2026 20:49:53 GMT

Reading journal for Wed May 27 2026

What I’ve Read
Marae by Anonymous - https://archiveofourown.org/works/31072724 – A fascinating Star Wars prequel AU with Maul/Rex and Blade Runner influences. I recommend! The premise is that the close are not quite replicants of Blade Runner, but not unlike them – organic droids anchored to physical form with a set of memories that come from … well, spoilers. It’s great, it’s weird, it’s got a work skin that I didn’t really get to enjoy. This author was prolific but opted to leave fandom, so tho I know their name, I’m going to avoid sharing it here. Their works remain on AO3 and collected here - https://archiveofourown.org/collections/001100_00

Indexicality by Therrae aka DashaMTE - https://archiveofourown.org/works/27580219 – The final addition to the long and delightful Xenoethnography series - I should have read this when it came out about 4 years ago, and I don’t think I finished it. But by god, it was amazing and a fitting conclusion to a very long and emotionally complex series. If the word count feels daunting on this series, just start with the first one and see if it you like it – pleasures like this, you can savor.

Honorable mention for a shorter fic: Rites series by soulshrapnel – Darth Maul/Qi’ra (from the Han Solo prequel movie) https://archiveofourown.org/series/1978516 – After the new Maul: Shadow Lord cartoon, I have been interested in some fic about Maul – poking randomly thru the tags found this gem. Focusing on the new character, Qi’ra, this fic series is a fascinating look at Maul from an external perspective of a crime lord who is interested in manipulating him via sex – and, well, it works pretty well, in the short term, and has some consequences she did not expect and does not like. I felt like this fic really nailed the ways that these two extremely damaged people would create intimacy without trust via manipulation and exploitation. (I adore a touch-starved Maul, and a situation where people exploit the limited power they have.)

Isle in the Silver Sea – Tasha Suri – Sigh. I loved the elevator pitch of this book! I think it might work for others!

The story focuses on the idea that the Isle (which is explicitly a magical England) ontologically depends on the re-enactment of stories to maintain the physical reality of the nation. Our main characters, Simran and Vina, are stuck in a story that will lead to their murder-suicide. Both magical and political power constrains them to this end, unless they try to fight it.

The idea is interesting! But, the actual story lacked focus enough to be a standalone novel, and lacked space enough to be a trilogy. The end result was characters that felt, not shallow, but rushed, and a book that wasted time giving grace notes to side characters who were barely there to begin with. It vacillates between overexplaining some concepts and ignoring the mechanics of others – so the balance of setup and payoff was skewed and inconsistent.

Petty gripe: if you are going to show me a magical chalice and a guy who is definitely King Arthur with the serial numbers filed off and talk about the power of stories, at some point, you do have to address Jesus. If your story is set in a magical England and you have THE HOLY GRAIL, you do have to deal with the underlying myth of why the grail is holy. Because if Wales and Punjab exist as they do in reality, then so must Christianity!

What I’m Reading

The Raven Scholar – Static

Inventing the Renaissance – Ada Palmer – about 30% - Actually fascinating look at the Renaissance with historical details and a fun bouncy tempo. The thing I am caught up on is how foreign and insane the past was, and how well Ada Palmer explains it.

The chapter on how political patronage and the religious concept of grace both overlap in the justice system and in the religious system is fascinating – like a seeing a puzzle come together. It makes so much more sense out of things in history that felt absurd and insane when I heard about them. In a snippet, the idea of a judicial being fair and consistent was simply not a goal for these people. The idea of justice was to impose harsh penalties as a lesson about hierarchy, from which the guilty sinner/convict would be saved by the grace of their patron (human or saintly) as a display of God’s mercy. So, while many more crimes had the legal penalty of death than do today, the expectation was that a criminal would be saved from the full force of the law and given a lesser punishment as a show of their patron’s holy mercy.

What I’ll Read Next
Tomb of Dragons Katherine Addison - reread for Xing Book club
Ancillary Justice Ann Leckie for Necromancy Book Club

Hugo nominations still to read:

Novels
Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor
Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Novellas
Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz (Tordotcom)
Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite (Tordotcom)
The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (Tordotcom; Arcadia UK)
The Summer War by Naomi Novik (Del Rey US; Del Rey UK)

comments

Blorp

Mon, 18 May 2026 00:39:30 GMT

Busy season at work - had to come into my remote job for the first of two weekends doing semi-useful gruntwork for our annual constituent conferences. It's a long ass drive, plus overnights, on the weekend - I felt like a squeezed lemon slice by the end of it.

I do get time off to compensate, but I have not used much of it since most of next week is also quite busy for work and personal travel reasons.

All this is really to say, I got to sit at a desk and be asked repetitive questions and answer them, and was unbothered the majority of the time, so I got some reading time!

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Wednesday Reading Meme for May 20 2026

Mon, 18 May 2026 00:18:29 GMT

Weekly reading Journal for Wednesday May 20 2026

(Updated now that I am back from my most recent travels and in a position to actually say something useful)

What I’ve Read

Xenoethnography Series by Therrae aka DashaMTE– I have been giving this series a well deserved re-read - https://archiveofourown.org/series/913458 I don’t think you actually need to know anything about the Transformers cartoons or movies to enjoy these – as I certainly didn’t. I suspect from the footnotes that it is actually full of little easter eggs that I didn’t fully appreciate at the time, and I’m looking them up this go-round. The main character is an anthropologist who is helping the Autobots explain themselves to humanity. (Edited 5/22/26) - I didn’t realize how much I had read of Therrae/DashaMTE in a previous fandom, The Sentinel, and how long she’s been actively writing some of the most tender and thoughtful characterization I know of. Please, go give her stuff a read.

Ancient Magus Bride vol 4 - Kore Yamazaki – nice to revisit the dragons. I think I am getting manga saturation.

Falling - Humani Nihil – Rengyuo by narayana – Maul/Amidala Phantom Menace fic, from 2001ish. I managed to find a copy of the series from the Darth Maul Estrogen Brigade 2.0, before it was taken down. It is written with some of the (now noncanonical) Expanded Universe novels but before the general shape of the prequel trilogy was known, so there is a lot of extrapolation and fun experiments. Maul, never sent to Naboo and never bisected, is sent by Sidious to seduce Amidala and pull her to the Dark Side. It works reasonably well. I have apparently memorized some sections of this and forgotten others, which is about what I would expect for a fic I remembered from 20+ years ago but hadn’t gotten to read in the interim.

Bonus: I really enjoyed Maul: Shadow Lord, in the recent Star Wars cartoon expansion - has some great elements of characterization and really lovely animation.

What I’m Reading
Isle in the Silver Sea – Read a lot of this on a recent journey – I feel like we are sloooowly getting to parts I find more interesting.
The Raven Scholar – Static
Inventing the Renaissance -About 8 hours in. I will almost certainly not get a chance to finish this before the Hugos, but it is a great piece of approachable writing about how historians work.

What I’ll Read Next
Tbd!

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Wednesday Reading Meme for May 13 2026

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:59:38 GMT

What I’ve Read

Dracula by Bram Stoker – I cannot believe I failed to mention that I finished Dracula in my last post! I enjoyed it and I could absolutely see why it’s a classic, but I am gonna say – I don’t see it as being nearly as dear to me as Frankenstein. Stoker’s writing is engaging and I love that he’s so devoted to the documents and journals and letters so we can get each character’s voice. I cared, quite deeply, about each of these people. However, Stoker is so into doing each character voice that it gets honestly kind of obnoxious to read Van Helsing’s speech and writing – he’s given a Funny Foreigner Accent and it’s conveyed phonetically, so it carries into his writing in a way that undercuts his authority as a scholar. Also, the book got aggressively religious in the last third as Mina gets progressively more vampirized, and it feels repetitious. Jonathan’s fierce love of her redeems a great deal! Not all. But, overall, compared to the beginning, the ending of the book felt rushed and nowhere near as loved. Dracula, the character, had completely disappeared from the novel, in pursuit of Dracula the monster, and the death blow felt like a fizzle. If you want to have a fun little side quest, look up all the phrenologists that Stoker lists in here by name.

Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu – I read this after Dracula because a friend pointed out that Carmilla predates Dracula, and it seemed like a short read. Highly recommend – no one is kidding about the lesbian subtext; the book burns with it! The commonalities between Carmilla and Dracula are already subject of better minds than mine, but I do feel like Stoker improved on one element – grafted on the historical Vlad Tepes Dracula makes for a far more engaging fake aristocratic background than the one created whole cloth for Carmilla. I also see the same element of the Character of Carmilla disappearing inside the Monster Carmilla once the vampiric nature is revealed. It’s quaint and charming and worth a read!

The Everlasting by Alix E Harrow – Adored this book. Told from the first person, the main character is absolutely the kind of specific voice that renders the particular themes of the book most clear – when the author makes this kind of structural choice for their book, they are already working from such a point of strength! The main voice of the book is a soldier whose complicated relationship with patriotism and fealty wend their way into his scholarship of his country’s founding myth, and what it means for the warrior heroine of his country’s darkest hour to have been a real person who bled and wept and wanted nothing more than to stop killing people. Excellent book, go in spoiler free if you can. This book was so good and so specifically *for me* that it is actually making it challenging to read books that are too similar because I keep wishing I were re-reading this.

Platform Decay by Martha Wells – Murderbot Diaries #8 – Hm. I liked this fine. I think there was an element of emotional growth for Murderbot that felt…. A bit too on the nose. A bit too close to home. I often love narratives where an imperfect victim of neglect is allowed to be a bit rough and a bit messy and make some mistakes, and this is not NOT that. But it’s possible that Murderbot is perhaps becoming more mentally healthy than me, and I feel weird about that. The plot is solid, if nothing particularly new for Murderbot. I really liked Three getting some sidequests and fucking them up in new and delightful ways.

What I’m Reading
The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgeson – I’m trying to not compare everything that is vaguely magical and monarchical to The Everlasting, but, well, it was a good book, and good books have a long hangover! I am also trying to not compare this to the Tensorate Series by Neon Yang. But. Well. I don’t dislike it, either on a sentence or paragraph or chapter level- I am waiting to see how the book comes together before I finally judge it. But – I am trying to NOT read into the book more Asian-coding than it actually calls for, and I’m failing? It feels like a Pan-Asian restaurant, rather than a specific era and time with a specific understanding of itself, and that’s not necessarily a flaw! Good characters so far, and I’m not even a third in.

The Isle in the Silver Sea by Tasha Suri – This, unfortunately, I really did have to set aside for when I’m in a more charitable mood. I found myself quibbling with sentences and pacing and paragraphs and that no way to read a book. It’s working on some themes similar to The Everlasting, and I loved that book immediately and this one deserves a fair shake on its own terms.

Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer - Audiobook – Excellent! Hugo nominated. Funny and informative and charming. I am even getting over the unexpectedly English narrator. (Seriously, why.)

Ancient Magus’s Bride Vol 4 – On hold for now, I have lost some oomph but I will come back to it.

Code Switching by Therrae – I picked this up to re-read because the series is the most unlike the Everlasting I could think of while still fitting my current mood.

What I’ll Read Next
Tomb of Dragons Katherine Addison - reread for Xing Book club
Ancillary Justice Ann Leckie for Necromancy Book Club

Hugo nominations still to read:

Novels
Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor
Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Novellas
Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz (Tordotcom)
Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite (Tordotcom)
The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (Tordotcom; Arcadia UK)
The Summer War by Naomi Novik (Del Rey US; Del Rey UK)

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Wednesday Reading Meme for May 7 2026 which is a Thursday

Fri, 08 May 2026 02:55:27 GMT

I am getting this done ! I am completing the task!

What I Read

The Other Bennet Sister – Janice Hadlow – What an excellent book! Really well constructed story and deeply enjoyable arc. I think the romance was nicely done, but the center of the book was reflection – Mary the least loved Bennet sister gets to really take her time and observe the people in her life and know them deeply. It felt slightly self-indulgent (Mary is indeed going to the garden to eat worms) and yet I am here as the self and I am being indulged.

The Ancient Magus’ Bride Vols 1, 2, 3 – Kore Yamazaki – A fun read! Interesting world building and a slow burn romance between Chise and Elias Ainswroth, a horse/deer-skulled maybe human magus who bought her (not from One Direction!) in order to save her life and also marry her, maybe, at some point? It’s also deeply indulgent to the exact kind of big symbolic magic that I love, and gives a lot of time to the slow unfolding of their connection and what Chise’s magical powers will do. The story with the cats has been my favorite so far, but the Succubus in love with the random farmer who can’t see her at all is also a sweet tragedy. Really enjoying it.

I will say, I feel some conflict about one of the villains (so far) being revealed as the folkloric character of The Wandering Jew. Particularly because he’s a villain, and secondarily because I have no concept of how this character is understood by the author or by a Japanese audience, who are largely not dealing with the kind of hegemonic pressures to be Christian that shaped the folklore around that character. I weirdly adored the way that character trope was used in A Canticle for Leibowitz, because he was so very much Just Some Guy, and in particular, still identifiably, cantankerously Jewish in the face of being immortal, in a world where we only otherwise see Christians. So. I'm putting in a pin in that character for now.

AMB is interesting to read in context of My Happy Marriage, which also features a young woman with hidden magical powers escaping an uncaring/abusive family to a Perfectly Arranged Marriage. In the context of what Spouse is reading, this led to a discussion about the nature of isekai (a favorite Spousal genre) and the idea of different kinds of escape. Romance the genre often has an element of escapism baked in, and it’s sort of odd to think that some people in these novels are getting a Person to whisk them away to another magical world where they are treasured and important as a bride, and other people are getting hit by a bus.

What I’m Reading
The Everlasting by Alix E Harrow – A romantic and Romantic story. I love Sir Una Everlasting and I love Owen Mallory and the loving depiction of his flaws and how he becomes a useful idiot to a certain kind of patriotism that he also clearly sees thru and yet and yet and yet.

Platform Decay – Martha Wells – New Murderbot! No spoilers! I’m having a good and also bad time!

What I’ll Read Next
SciFi/Fantasy Book Club
Tomb of Dragons Katherine Addison - reread

Necromancy Book Club
The Everlasting Alix E. Harrow
The Isle in the Silver Sea Tasha Suri
Platform Decay (murderbot 8) Martha Wells
Ancillary Justice Ann Leckie

Hugo nominations!

Novels
A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey; Hodderscape) - read, it was great
Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor (William Morrow; Gollancz) - know the author, know nothing about this
Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor UK; Orbit US) - haven't read this, looking forward to it
The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow (Tor US; Tor UK) - already on the to-read list
The Incandescent by Emily Tesh (Tor US; Orbit UK) - read, it was great (tho a bit obvious)
The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson (Orbit US; Hodderscape)- never even heard of this one

Novellas
Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz (Tordotcom)
Cinder House by Freya Marske (Tordotcom; Tor UK) - read it, very interesting
Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite (Tordotcom)
The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (Tordotcom; Arcadia UK)
The Summer War by Naomi Novik (Del Rey US; Del Rey UK)
What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher (Nightfire; Titan UK) -read it, solid, not a standalone without the first two novellas

The other categories also merit attention but the funny thing is just the movies - I have already seen all of them except Mickey 17.

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Wednesday Reading Meme for April 29 2026

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 02:46:03 GMT

What I've Read
The Visitor - KA Applegate - This was one of my most favorite Animorphs and it really drives home that the book is going to look at the cost of this war on an individual level. Rachel has to infiltrate the home of a Yeerk leader who is also the father of Rachel's old friend. Losing a parent is awful - but this child has lost her parents while they are still present and alive because the brain controlling aliens running her parents' bodies do not love her like he parents did.

My Happy Marriage Vol 2 & 3 - This is a self indulgent manga with good art and some main character whump.

The Other Bennet Sister - Janice Hadlow - Audiobook, this ruled. The conceit is obvious- take a side character from Pride and Prejudice and look at them closer, it's been done before, it so often works! Because Austen's side characters can stand up to scrutiny, but they have enough space to dig into who they are. The choice to look at Mary, starting before the events of P&P, when she's a plain little girl who cannot understand why she can't please her mother or connect with her father or break into the pairs that her four sisters have fallen into - was there ever such an ugly duckly, such a middle child? It's an excellent story of someone trying to be special to others somehow, and the main story comes together quite sweetly. Hadlow manages a book with a similar sense of interest in character as Austen but without trying to ape her style so closely that I felt it veered into pastiche.

What I'm Reading
The Ancient Magus Bride (vol 1 manga ) So far so good, weird world building and a dude with a horse skull for a face bought our main character from her shitty family.
Dracula - Continues to be a banger.

What I'll Read Next

SciFi/Fantasy Book Club
Tomb of Dragons Katherine Addison - reread

Necromancy Book Club
The Everlasting Alix E. Harrow
The Isle in the Silver Sea Tasha Suri
Platform Decay (murderbot 8) Martha Wells
Ancillary Justice Ann Leckie

Hugo nominations came out!
I think the voter packet hasn't come out yet, so I have not gotten the freebies of some of these books yet but I am hopeful.

Novels
A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey; Hodderscape) - read, it was great
Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor (William Morrow; Gollancz) - know the author, know nothing about this
Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor UK; Orbit US) - haven't read this, looking forward to it
The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow (Tor US; Tor UK) - already on the to-read list
The Incandescent by Emily Tesh (Tor US; Orbit UK) - read, it was great (tho a bit obvious)
The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson (Orbit US; Hodderscape)- never even heard of this one

Novellas
Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz (Tordotcom)
Cinder House by Freya Marske (Tordotcom; Tor UK) - read it, very interesting
Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite (Tordotcom)
The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (Tordotcom; Arcadia UK)
The Summer War by Naomi Novik (Del Rey US; Del Rey UK)
What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher (Nightfire; Titan UK) -read it, solid, not a standalone without the first two novellas

The other categories also merit attention but the funny thing is just the movies - I have already seen all of them except Mickey 17.

comments

Wednesday Reading Meme for April 22, 2026

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 20:03:50 GMT

General life of a reader update: I have finally purchased an e-reader outside the Amazon environment, just in time for Amazon to stop supporting my oldest living Kindle. (RIP, first Kindle, we hardly knew ye.) So, I get to try out the wonderful world of Kindle jailbreaking (so far, so good) and then I get to try to put KOReader on it! I have two Paperwhites currently – only one is getting nuked in Amazon’s upcoming changes – But if the process works on the older one, I might do the second. What a luxurious thought, to have multiple functional e-readers at once!

Also a great update for e-reader users: Jo Walton has a fun article about using her e-reader to keep up with her insanely prolific reading habits. https://reactormag.com/how-to-read-sixteen-books-at-once-at-all-times/

And I also found this very pleasant discussion from 2014 about how her e-reader changed her reading habits overall. - https://reactormag.com/how-having-an-e-reader-has-changed-my-reading-habits/

What I’ve Read
Chalice by Robin McKinley – This reads like the literary version of a fairy tale that I had just never heard of. But it’s entirely original and I think this is the pure distilled form of McKinley’s charm – a thoughtful and intelligent woman who becomes powerful thru her devotion to others, and a magically untouchable man who is worth her devotion, made touchable. This is a pure example of the trope of “the virtue of the king is the virtue of the land” except, you know, made a bit more modern and it’s more focused on women. It’s honestly great.

The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World by Virginia Postrel – This is a great book for just about anyone – I read it knowing a fair bit about certain kinds of textiles (both from a New England elementary education and because of Elizabeth Gaskill) and that got expanded on and refined. I adored the discussions about how trade in textiles shaped so much of global commerce. Postrel does not shy away from how awful that can be (chattel slavery and cotton go hand in hand for a reason), nor does she allow it to dehumanize the people engaged in it. It’s honestly a great work that covers a vast span of time and culture – I would be glad to read more from her.

The Invasion (Animorphs #1) by KA Applegate – I picked this up after one more Tumblr post talking about the book series’ respect for the reader and attention to the cost of war. It turns out to be just as good as I remembered, and written simply enough for the age I was when I first read them. (I picked up the first book at the Scholastic Book Fair because it has a lizard on it. On such small wheels our destinies turn.) This book has to do a fair bit of the scifi heavy lifting, introducing the human cast, the aliens, setting the stakes of the intergalactic espionage that is the main conflict, and establishing how the key technology (morphing an animal based on a DNA sample) works. The writing is clear and respects the audience – when people die, they die, but the characters also feel the age of the middle schoolers they are. I’m planning on doing a re-read/read thru and finishing the whole series, which I had bored of as a child as I grew out of the age group. I think that I’d like to see if the resolution is as interesting as the Tumblr Animorphs fans make it out to be.

Cultural Exchange and Comparative Semiotics (Xenoethnography #1 & #2) by Therrae (Dasha_mte) A re-read. Anthropologist works with Transformers, lovely.

Concubine by Kaasknot – Technically an MCU fic, in that it’s an AU of the version of Thor and Loki from those movies, but mostly unrelated and pulls more from the Poetic Edda. Arranged marriage between Loki, who grew up a runt prince on Jotunheim, and Thor, the spoiled prince of Asgard who has no love for his new concubine, leads to Loki isolated as the unofficial ambassador to Asgard. I wanted to like this more than I did. In short, this is doing court intrigue and politics and war, but like, in a boring way that makes Loki look dumb. Things work out in his favor when it would be more interesting to see them blow up in his face. The balance of self-indulgence v. complexity wavers too wildly for me to have sunk my emotional investment into either pole. Bah. 140K words and I kept waiting for it to get really good, and since I waited like ten years to actually read this, I feel a bit meh about it.

What I’m Reading
The Stars are Legion – Kameron Hurley. Picked up an audiobook based on a Tumblr post where someone had pointed our that it was amazing that this book’s reputation had managed to avoid controversy, given that it has zero male characters. Which, given that its about space wars and technology based on biological ships with squishy organs and vehicles that are also animals, I am so here for.

The Visitor (Animorphs #2) KA Applegate – This book’s got a Rachel POV and she’s not as confident as she seems. The book is also doing the kind of fatphobia of the 90s where they don’t even notice the fatphobia, but, well, I lived thru it once – it can hardly do more damage now.

What I’ll Read Next
My book clubs are on books I have not read! (Amazing work, y’all.)

SciFi/Fantasy Book Club
Sunshine Robin McKinley
Tomb of Dragons Katherine Addison

Necromancy Book Club
The Everlasting Alix E. Harrow
The Isle in the Silver Sea Tasha Suri
Platform Decay (murderbot 8) Martha Wells
Ancillary Justice Ann Leckie

I mentally still have a pin in my planned read thru of LeGuin's Earthsea books, and a friend was interested in doing a read thru of the Baru Cormorant Trilogy....

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Wednesday Reading Meme for April 15, 2026

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 02:05:50 GMT

What I’ve Read
The Wimsey Papers by Dorothy L. Sayers – A great look at Sayers’s wartime thoughts in 1935. It’s a loose collection of “letters” between Wimsey relatives that give the impression being Sayers’s soapbox. It’s honestly fairly touching but I’m biased.

Fire on the Mountain by Terry Bisson – Fascinating alternate history novel, told in several timelines. The older timeline is an alternate history of John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, where it actually went off as planned with Harriet Tubman’s help. The younger timeline is about the survivors of a dead astronaut coping with the new Mars mission. It’s great and weird and hopeful and antiracist in a wrathful and constructive way.

Earthlings by Sayaka Murata – Mixed bag. The first section is from the perspective of an abused and neglected child with a single friend – she’s so alienated from humanity she grows to actually believe she’s an alien. It depicts the abuse and violence with the character disassociating thru it all in a very convincing and harrowing way. She thinks of herself and society as The Factory – they make babies and enforce that role on everyone around them – she’ll grow up into the role eventually. The second half of the book didn’t work for me so well – we meet up with the same character in a much calmer time of her life, but the forces of The Factory are more distant until they are radically not. The second half of the book feels ... like a parody of alienation? She’s not feeling her own emotions anymore and so the more shocking actions of the later book didn’t land as closely. It’s an interesting attempt, but I think that Tender is the Flesh did the “cannibalism as dehumanization” thread more justice.

Sunshine by Robin McKinley – Re-Read. A strange and inconsistent creature – McKinley’s one urban fantasy experiment did not actually land the logistics and plot of an urban fantasy, but the vibes are dreamy and weird and I love that.

What I’m Reading
Fabric of Civilization – no movement

Chalice by Robin McKinley – Sunshine made me crave more.

What I’ll Read Next
Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins (eventually)
Animorphs – I enjoyed these books and recently tumblr has tempted me into finishing the series.

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Wednesday Reading Meme for April 8 2026

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:46:26 GMT

Personal update: I have indulged – I got a Kobo ereader to replace my somewhat elderly Kindle Paperwhite. It has BUTTONS - actual, physical buttons! It’s so nice and the lighting is good, and I am at last free from the Amazon ecosystem. On the downside, a good deal of the fic that I have saved for myself the last few years in ebook form was transmitted to the Kindle as emailed attachments, and so I have a new part time job of saving and converting all of those and sending them to the Kobo.

What I’ve Read
Gaudy Night – Dorothy Sayers – I finished this slowly, in writing, and I am glad I took the time. This book is a wonderful summation of the series, giving space for Harriet’s introspection and allowing her to slowly come to terms with her own growing trust in her own judgment. It’s full of allusion, jokes, and self-reflection. I often fall back on the metaphor of fiction as light striking a jewel – a skilled writer can draw out subtle meanings and highlight contrast by what facets are lit by the writer’s attention. By the end of this book both Harriet and Peter are illuminated. Wonderful book, glad I decided to give the series a proper and slow read-thru rather than just goof around.

Sidebar: I have an exacting requirement about English writers, which is that I want them to show their work – I want to see them thinking about what it means To Be English in their works, rather than taking their Englishness for a universal and inevitable norm, like gravity or light. In the case of Sayers, it often takes the form of thinking about time, about changes, about class, about academics, about social roles, about dignity and decency and what is or is not “done.” This book makes me see a vision of Oxford as Harriet Vane loved it, and I think that’s very worthwhile.

Busman’s Honeymoon – Dorothy Sayers – I am glad I picked this up so soon after Gaudy Night! They are very close in time. This book is fascinating because the beginning frame is an epistolary section from Peter and Harriet’s friends and family about how happy they are to see them married, the middle of the book starts as a sort of cozy “murder in a locked cottage” mystery, and then the ending is a gradual examination of what it costs Peter, as a human being, to send another person to be tried and executed for their crimes. It’s book about marriage, and figuring out how to be in a life together with someone else, with all their scars and foibles, and how to do it honorably, without pulling them into being your plaything. It’s moderately incredible and also tonally complex in a way that Sayers’s earlier detective novels just wasn’t. Honestly, great and nothing like I was expecting.

The Orb of Cairado by Katherine Addison – I didn’t know this was a murder mystery, and I think that works because the main character didn’t know either, until he was well into it. It’s short and sweet and mostly complete, and delves into a bit of the social reaction to the reign of Emperor Edrehasivar VII aka, Maia the protagonist of the first novel in this series. Orb does not stand up on its own without that book, and I suspect it does not stand up without the Witness for the Dead novels, and since I have read all of those multiple times, I don’t mind. I am not sure if this book is a cash grab from Addison or an attempt at a palette cleanser, but I can't tell if its successful because I can't tell why she wanted to write it. I also don’t think it holds up well against Sayers (unfair comparison, who could??) and I would not have read them so close together if I had known it was a murder mystery.

Sidebar: This is the third time Addison/Monette has linked being a gay man with murder, that I know of. I rather wish she were a little inclined to ponder if there’s something there, there.

Honorable mention – not a novel, but this excellent fic based in Much Ado About Nothing made me very happy – Reprise by Perennial - https://archiveofourown.org/works/26980378

What I’m Reading
The Fabric of Civilization – Virginia Postrel. The deeper we get into this book, the more interested and niche the information gets. I had some background in textile history – New England children all get a visit to a fabric mill and a maple sugar shack as mandatory field trips, and we also got a background in the Bread and Roses textile workers' strikes in school – so I think I am perhaps unusually versed for the average person on the history of textiles up to and immediately into the 1800s. That said, this was the first time someone really explained the mechanism that punch cards looms DO to make the punch cards impact the cloth, and that alone was worth the price of admission. I was listening to the audiobook but switched to the digital text when I realized I was missing the PICTURES.

What I’ll Read Next
Sunshine (Robin McKinley, a re-read)
Catching Fire

Knitting reflections – I just got the notice that the next Sock Madness pattern is a heel-up pattern, not unlike the Hyrde Sokker I recently did for fun. https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/hyrde-sokker I really enjoy this style of heel-up, in the round sock, as I find it has a comfy padded heel and a high instep without too much fussing. My first pair were these Nordwand socks, one of the few times I am pleased I was briefly on TikTok. https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/nordwand-socksI’m kicking doing this round just because I do actually want these socks for my own. https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/whisky-ahoi

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Wednesday Reading Meme for March 25 2026

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 01:14:23 GMT

What I’ve Read

The Historian By Elizabeth Kostova – This Dracula novel has a fantastic trick which is telling an epistolary story that nails the fun of reading a story thru someone else’s voice and then returning to the main character’s narrative to go “Oh, my god, they had no idea of the danger they were in!” And that trick is a trick I enjoy a great deal! I don’t know that I enjoy 700 pages of it! Overall, while the narrative is the journey we take with the characters, this journey felt extended beyond the needs of the story or my personal pleasure, and ended in a kind of disappointing splat. I can see why it made a splash – It’s not badly written, and the layered epistolary vibe is pretty great for the first half of the book! But that’s not how you kill Dracula, Frank.

My Real Children by Jo Walton – Ok, I just read this in a fever dream on a plane but I really liked it. The story is a well-told life of a woman named Patricia- specifically, two different lives that branch off from each other in 1949, when she makes a single important personal choice. But, as an elderly woman with dementia, in a nursing home, she remembers both lives and both worlds and both sets of children that she has, different as they are from each other. In one, she lives a life of joy and love in a private oasis from a world gradually falling into violence and instability. In the other, she’s snatching tiny moments of personal peace inside a miserable life, but the world is gradually getting brighter, kinder, and more peaceful. It’s a carefully composed book and I enjoyed both stories really well! I will probably have to re-read it to talk about cogently for book club. Jo Walton has always done a great of seeding her world building naturally throughout the stories she writes, so I think this story will reward re-reading.

The Scales and the Sword by foolish_mortal (Restricted link - https://archiveofourown.org/works/773326) – The Hitcher (1986) fic – So, getting into Talamasca fic led to me finding this extremely homoerotic and murdery film, and then the fic about it has been very interesting. The movie is basically “nice heterosexual boy with a car is stalked by hot murderous stranger with a fixation on him.” It’s great, if you like murderous strangers with a fascination that leads them to toy with their food. The film shows the nice boys slow slide into feral violence, which seems to the murderous stranger’s aim – making this nice boy more like himself. The movie would be much more dull if it were more straight. This story is an AU where our nice boy is… less heterosexual, and the murderous stranger is introduced to him under different circumstances. They dance around each other for a loooong time in a flirtation that gradually becomes more explicitly sexual as the story goes on. Think Hannibal.

What I’m Reading
Hemlock and Silver by T Kingfisher – Kingfisher loves an older lady with an area of expertise, and in Anja’s case, that’s poison! It’s Kingfisher, I know it will be good.

What I’ll Read Next
The Fabric of Civilization – audiobook, the library will pull it back soon.

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Weekly reading meme for March 18 2026

Thu, 19 Mar 2026 01:07:28 GMT

I am keyboardless, forgive my brevity.

What I've Read

After the Storm by perennial - This beautiful fic is Don John and Hero from Much Ado About Nothing, in an alternate universe where John revenges himself on Claudio by marrying Hero. Long and slow, this fic look at who John might be if given enough rope, and who Hero might be if she didn't have to marry that credulous shithead.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/31038242

Swordheart by T. Kingfisher A sweet romance, a little too long. Doing some lifting to set up the following books in the series.

The Grief of Stones by Katherine Addison - A reread for me for xing bookclub!

What I'm Reading Now
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova - This is fine? Not sure if I am reaching for the orientalism or if the book is just doing that, but the key problems are repetition and repetition. 700 pages of, Dracula is around still and he's a dick.

What I'll Read Next
My Real Children Jo walton

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Wednesday Reading Meme for March 11 2026

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 23:41:35 GMT

Weekly reading journal for march 11 2025

I am! On! Vacation! Muahahahahaha.

(Happy 11th of March to the few, the happy few, Due South fans out there!)

What I Have Read
Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die by Greer Stothers - I finished this is a fevered rush on a plane, so take my review with a grain of salt. This was fun, it was sincere, it was unpretentious, it was a good time! I wish there had been a little more substance to the ending as the emotional core of Cameron's journey, but I am not upset by it! I did call the main revelation but not all of it! And I'm not sure what I would recommend this book for, exactly, but I had fun.

Chivalric Academia by OldShrewsburyian This fic! Is a delight! The writing is just a pleasure to read - funny and clear, gently ironic and sincere by turns. It's a Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth modern day academic AU where they are both new faculty at a small college. She hates him, he gets his handcut off, they fall in love. Brienne is written with such absolute conviction and commitment, Jaime is always dancing between hiding in the shadows and baring his soul in stupified awe of her. Wonderful, go read it especially if you like Dorothy Sayers. https://archiveofourown.org/works/57674458

Daniel Molloy's Incredible Showstopping World-Famous Model Train Extravaganza for Children and Easily-Awed Vampires (Please Knock) by
Ariaste - I read this bc Ariaste is now posting the sequel as a weekly fic. Its wonderful and porny and like Chivalric Academia, involves people who want to be together figuring out how to make it work.

What I'm Reading
Sword Heart is still slow because it is so so sweet and tender.

What I Will Read Next
The grief of stones
My real children

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