lottpoet's 2024 reading

Last year, I did my own sort of NaNoWriMo and ended up writing several drafts over the course of the year of a post-apocalyptic vampire novel. This year, I got a scholarship at our local literary center to write and revise the second novel (in what is now a series) with a cohort of eleven other students. I'm pretty excited! I was going to write it over the course of this year anyway, but now I get company and help. I also left my day job in early December and, having been certified as a Targeted Group Vendor for the State, I'm going to try to only be self-employed in 2024. I just tussled with our state's Affordable Care marketplace and successfully signed up for health insurance.

My reading loves are fantasy, science fiction, and romance. I also deeply appreciate good short story collections. I'm on a journey of Black liberation and have been reading a lot of nonfiction by Black writers in the last couple of years. I've also been reading nonfiction about nature, gender, and feminism. I'm still trying to figure out what I like in graphic novels and manga. So far, I've really enjoyed Frieren: Beyond Journey's End and Monstress. I almost want every manga or graphic novel to read like those.

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

Favorite reads 2023 (ordered by earliest read to latest read)

1. Grass by Sheri S. Tepper
2. Black Love Matters ed. Jessica P. Pryde
3. The Crucible of Time by John Brunner
4. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
5. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass
6. Redeployment by Phil Klay
7. All That She Carried by Tiya Miles
8. Chasing Me to My Grave by Winfred Rembert
9. A Mirror Mended by Alix E. Harrow
10. In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
11. The Bright Hour by Nina Riggs
12. Iron Kissed by Patricia Briggs
13. Transformation by Carol Berg
14. The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be by Shannon Gibney
15. I'm Waiting for You and Other Stories by Kim Bo-Young
16. The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
17. How the Word Is Passed by Clint Smith
18. The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate
19. Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

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

Books I've completed Jan.-June 2024 (favorites are bolded):

1. The Year of the Crocodile by Courtney Milan, ebook, 1/2/2024
2. How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi, audio, 1/4/2024
3. The Dare by Harley Laroux, ebook, 1/4/2024
4. The Old Woman with the Knife by Gu Byeong-mo, audio, translated, 1/9/2024
5. Washington Black by Esi Edugyan, audio, 1/20/2024
6. The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, audio, 1/22/2024
7. The Night Hunt by Alexandra Christo, audio, mytbr, 1/24/2024
8. Black Futures ed. Kimberly Drew, paper, Santathing, 2/3/2024
9. You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson, audio, 2/6/2024
10. So You Want to Talk about Race by Ijeoma Oluo, audio, 2/14/2024
11. Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi, audio, 2/19/2024
12. Among Others by Jo Walton, ebook, 2/23/2024
13. System Collapse by Martha Wells, audio, 2/25/2024
14. Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor, audio, 2/27/2024
15. Patternmaster by Octavia E. Butler, audio, 2/27/2024
16. The Taste of Sugar by Marisel Vera, audio, book club, 3/1/2024
17. Translation State by Ann Leckie, audio, 3/5/2024
18. The Governess Affair by Courtney Milan, ebook, 3/9/2024
19. Men of the Otherworld by Kelley Armstrong, ebook, 3/17/2024
20. Jephte's Daughter by Naomi Ragen, ebook, 3/19/2024
21. Fearing the Black Body by Sabrina Strings, audio, 3/23/2024
22. Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams, audio, 3/27/2024
23. A Kiss of Shadows by Laurell K. Hamilton, audio, 4/12/2024
24. The Unspoken Name by A.K. Larkwood, audio, 4/21/2024
25. The Perfect Find by Tia Williams, ebook, 4/22/2024
26. H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald, audio, 4/24/2024
27. The Color of Roses by Danielle Dall'Armi Hahn, paper, 4/29/2024
28. Black Butler 1 by Yana Toboso, paper, 5/4/2024
29. How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu, audio, mytbr, 5/5/2024
30. Our Life Grows by Ryszard Krynicki, paper, 5/5/2024
31. Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse, audio, book club, 5/6/2024
32. The Black Tower by Louis Bayard, audio, 5/9/2024
33. Shrill by Lindy West, audio, 5/10/2024
34. General Release from the Beginning of the World by Donna Spruijt-Metz, 5/11/2024
35. The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye by Sonny Liew, 5/14/2024

Books I've completed July-Dec. 2024 (favorites are bolded):

Books I'm reading right now

I'm in the middle of a few things and started a bunch more, but mainly I'm in the middle of a book hangover (from The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye), so now I'm not reading anything.

UPDATE: I've started small with the following book. Other books are still paused.

The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert

I've decided to continue writing capsule reviews/notes for last year's (2023) reads in that thread, mainly for my records. I might lose interest in a few weeks, but I think I can get most of them done. In the meantime, I want to try to stay caught up here.

1. The Year of the Crocodile by Courtney Milan
ebook

This was a lot of fun but way too short. I liked getting some POV from Adam. I also read the time travel short story on Courtney Milan's website. I can't wait to read his book in the series (and others as well), but we've been waiting a long time. I might re-read the first two Cyclone books at some point this year, because I did really enjoy getting back in to the world with this short story.

4/5 stars

2. How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
audio

This felt a bit different than other racial justice books I've been reading lately. If pressed, I would say it felt like the author wrote it with people of color in mind and if white people got something out of it, great, but that wasn't the focus. If everyone who reads this book feels that they or their race (or race-class, etc.) group are being talked to directly, then I say, well done, Ibram Kendi. It was hard not to feel defensive reading the book. It's so funny because he talks about feeling hopeful once he got a handle on what being antiracist really means, but I felt pretty far from hope. I decided to get my own copy that I can pull out and revisit every 6 months so that I can take in more of what he's trying to say. I appreciate getting a DEI/racial justice book that is further ahead than I am on the journey and that challenges me to get moving.

4/5 stars

3. The Dare by Harley Laroux
ebook

Woah! I was not ready for this novella. I asked for a recommendation from mytbr.co for a why choose romance that foregrounds the emotional connection over the physical connection. I got recommended a book Losers that this is the prequel for. I was not ready for how steamy this novella was, within a few pages. It's tough because I was bullied (mildly but persistently) throughout my K-12 years, and this features a bullier getting together with a person they bullied when they were in high school. I definitely can feel sympathy and empathy for a bully's background and how they got to where they are, but I still will default to being on the bullied person's side and worrying about their safety and well-being when they are around their (former) bully. I also wasn't sure I liked how her bullying behavior was (being retconned, it felt like to me) part of her need to be degraded and humiliated as a part of a kink she didn't have the label for back then. I got really uncomfortable every time she talked about her bullying behavior in the past being the reason why she needed to be punished and humiliated now. I think I get what the text was trying to say, it was just hard for me to stay on board this particular kink train. Which, yes this book features bdsm and kink, which are completely not my thing with erotic romance. I am intrigued by the characters enough to pick up the next book which picks up a few years after this story.

4/5 stars

Happy reading in 2024, April, and good luck with your writing!

Happy New Year, April!

>7 FAMeulstee: Thank you!

>8 norabelle414: Happy New Year!

4. The Old Woman with the Knife by Gu Byeong-mo
audio, translated

I like to read fictional books about assassins. This one, for me, was a bit of an odd duck. I already knew going in that it was about an elderly assassin who struggles with their physical decline and their cognition/emotional space, so this book wouldn't fit what I usually enjoy about assassin stories which is their uber-competence. One thing that was hard for me is how often she got caught up in memories and rumination, often at what seemed to me to be dangerous times. I spent the book feeling way more paranoid and suspicious of circumstances than she did. This may have been her numbness or resignation. I did feel like some things that got across by the end (how you have to keep moving forward & file away old contracts even in your mind, how you keep missing human connection and participation because of that, and how organization/teamwork in such a profession is ephemeral and it's safety mechanism illusory) were deftly and subtly communicated. I also felt that things that were painted in the book as age gap romantic feelings on her end or by society were really more about her yearning for human connection and community. I did enjoy this quite a bit.

4/5 stars

5. Washington Black by Esi Edugyan
audio

I had started this about a year ago, I think, and got about 1/3 in before I set it aside. I was frustrated by the peril the enslaved boy was in and how clueless the white man 'in charge of' him seemed about it. At one point the boy is disfigured because he cannot disobey another white man. Coming back to it, I actually really enjoyed it this time around. It's interesting because it has chunks set up like adventure stories of the time period (say, Jules Verne, with flying machines and arctic journeys and sea-faring voyages), but they seem quickly to deviate from the romanticism of said stories. I thought this was a pretty realistic story of a young boy who escapes slavery on a sugar plantation: fear & running from a slave catcher, colorism, where (literally, geographically, because slavery ended in Barbados before it ended in the U.S.) is freedom, how freedom isn't the same as equality, how can he make his mark on the world when his intelligence must be presented as a white man's work. I wished aloud at book club that we had read it so we could talk about it & they decided to read it for March book club. I'm really glad I came back around to this book. I'm interested in other work by her.

4/5 stars

6. The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
audio

This was an enraging and demoralizing read. I already knew some of the things about the criminal justice system in the U.S., especially around felons and not being able to vote, being barred from renting by certain landlords, and being barred from many types of work, and also around the huge overrepresentation of Black men in the system, but I learned a lot about the 'War on Drugs' and how much this jumpstarted mass incarceration. I came away from the book being pretty disgusted by the court system, with the whole apparatus feeling like a clever semantics game. I enjoyed the last chapter or two where she talks some real talk about what we have settled for (race bribes for Whites and for Blacks) and how we will have to decide that we will not be satisfied with gains for a small percentage at the expense of writing off a whole swathes of people. My only real complaint with the book is that there is a lot of repetition, not just in stats but also in rhetoric. However, it may be that she expected people to read the book more modularly, rather than cover to cover. I still think some of it shows up as being under-edited.

4/5 stars

Readalike:

Executed on a Technicality by David R. Dow for more about racial bias in the criminal justice system (here about the death penalty) and a whole lot more on court cases and the judiciary system, particularly around habeas corpus.

>6 lottpoet: I have The New Jim Crow on my TBR shelf but didn't quite get to it last year. I hope to do so this year. I did read and enjoy The Old Woman With A Knife a while ago.

>14 arubabookwoman: Thanks for visiting. I'll come over and say hello.

7. The Night Hunt by Alexandra Christo
audio, mytbr

I asked for a novel that deals with monsters and monstrousness and how sometimes that is what's needed for survival. I was thinking of something like Trail of Lightning or Monstress. This was a perfect recommendation, just what I was looking for.

The main character is a monster who instills fear in people and then feeds off that fear to sustain her. She is the last of her kind. Monsters have been exiled by the Gods from this world's version of a sort of Valhalla. Now they're mostly stuck in the mortal realm, having to live a very restricted existence. If they break the rules they are hunted and killed by the Gods or their heralds, even though most of the rules make it difficult for the monsters to live. The main character's parents were killed for some infraction when she is young (maybe the equivalent of a tween or teen?) and she has been in hiding ever since because she thinks she was supposed to have died with them. As far as everyone in the different realms know, her kind are now extinct.

She meets and has disdain for a herald. This herald isn't quite like the other heralds. He yearns to know who he was when he was mortal: what was he like, what was his name, what could he have done so wrong to force him into service as herald. Heralds are those who when they die, their lives are equally balanced between going to the good place (their version of heaven/Valhalla) or the bad place (their version of hell, which I think was called The Never). They have to serve the Gods for one hundred years with no memory of who or what they were, just left with a desire to serve. It was already pretty clear to me that that is a setup for abuse. If they can't remember anything and they love to serve, why would they be released from their contract in 100 years, or ever.

This is an enemies to lovers romantasy. It also has the trope of enemies working together to achieve a common goal (which is how the main character and the herald get to know each other). I thought the balance was really good between the romance/relationship/feelings/angst and the fantasy. The worldbuilding was very impressive, especially considering how little space there is in the book for laying it all out properly. I got sketches of a lot of things very quickly, and the things I didn't know or understand, I mostly felt I could extrapolate what this thing was probably like (like the sort of university the taverner's son attended, the main character's friend). I got a little lost at the end when the bigger picture of what was going on was revealed, but I honestly, at that point, cared more for the romantic relationship and the emotional well-being of the main character and the found family that had gathered throughout the book. I just needed everybody to survive and be together and be happy, so, blah-blah a big war with shifting sides, just sort it out already.

As far as I know the book is a standalone although I would totally read sequels or other books set in the same world. I was impressed and want to read her other stuff. I thought the narrators did a great job on the book, especially the guy who narrated the herald's POV. I looked at the reviews on GoodReads and they're pretty mixed. I just want to point out that my love of the book is not universal love, if you're considering picking it up.

4.5/5 stars

Readalikes:

The Coward by Stephen Aryan for secondary characters with a romanticized/naive perspective being eager to go on a heroic quest. I didn't quite finish this book yet, but I will because I've loved the bits I've nibbled at.

The Broken Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin for a god not knowing he is a god and for how mortals and others get entangled when the Gods decide to bicker or war among themselves. This is the second book in a trilogy, but the whole trilogy would probably be a good rec.

8. Black Futures ed. Kimberly Drew
paper, SantaThing 2023

This book came from my extensive Christmas wishlist. I think it's a very thoughtful selection, fitting in very well with all the nonfiction by Black writers I've been reading and with my project of Black Liberation. I got the trade paperback of what was originally a hardcover. It's a 500 page book of all things Black. There are essays and conversations and interviews and art and playlists and poems and tweets and recipes (of all sorts, not just food). The editors said they wanted to have a 'zine feel in something that was more durable, and they wanted to range across the diaspora of Blackness.

I took my time with this, reading and admiring it a few pieces at a time. There is some color coding of pages (green being recipes, very broadly; yellow being social media/internet), and each entry has a cross-reference at the bottom of the page to 2-4 other entries in the book. I loved the cross-referencing. It was not always the obvious choice of what to group together & it did not repeat across cross-referenced works (so entry 1 leads to 5, 18, and 77, but 5 doesn't lead to 1, 18, 77, but to completely different entries in the book). I read it starting at the first entry (at least once I got the hang of how to tell what discrete entries were) and reading the cross-referenced entries and thinking about how they played off each other. Then I read the second entry (if I hadn't already read it yet by it being cross-referenced earlier) and read its cross-referenced entries. I did that till the very end. By within a few pages from the end of the book there were still entries I hadn't read yet.

I also looked up stuff referenced in the book because it seemed fun. I listened to the playlist from the book. I played a video game called Hair Nah designed by a Black woman where you are hitting people's hands away from touching your hair while they say things like 'ooo, fuzzy', 'is that attached.' I watched youtube videos and flagged some tarot cards to order (Dust II Onyx--they're gorgeous). There was so much interesting stuff in here. June Jordan designed a city of the future! My favorite entry was by Teju Cole. It was called 'A True Picture of Black Skin.' It talks about how Roy DeCarava photographed dark skin and how it went against the traditional hacks to get a technology that had been finetuned to work well for White skin to do decently with darker skinned people. He also talks about people now who seem to have been influenced by DeCarava. As a dark-skinned black woman, I loved it. My second favorite entry was a poem by Eve L. Ewing that is for youth living in prison. It makes me cry every time. I didn't understand everything I found in this book; sometimes I was confused about what an entry was (art? political? fictional?). But I loved being immersed in the large world of Blackness and found the whole enterprise extraordinarily hopeful.

5/5 stars

9. You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson
audio

I loved this. This isn't the first fictional depiction I've read of someone with anxiety, but this is the first one I could see myself in, including dimming your light to avoid stressful (and hurtful) attention. This book fits in a sort of subset of optimistic books that I've read, published in the last decade or so, where the overwhelming majority of the people in the book are well-meaning and decent, and the conflict arises from the ordinary ways people can be hurtful to each other (misunderstandings, trauma, increase in stressors in their lives, etc.). It makes them feel gentle or cozy, even when there are real stakes. This one has a great friend crew, a delightful first romance, and people coming together to care for and support each other. I will definitely read more from this author.

4.5/5 stars

Hello! How are you?

>19 Owltherian: I'm doing pretty good, these months later. How are you?

I've been neglectful of my thread because I was unexpectedly away from home for a couple of months. I've been back home for almost two weeks & I'm still getting back into my routine. But, I'm not here to start writing back reviews. I'm here to talk about my Independent Bookstore Day book haul!

My sister came with me even though she doesn't read much and what she reads (like me) tends to be on audio. She found a few things, including some stickers. She gave me a sticker that says 'You are the Bert to my Ernie,' which is so sweet. She found a vending machine at one of the bookstores we were at that had individual poems (rolled up like tiny scrolls in bubble containers) curated by people who are incarcerated. While I perused the poetry book section she got change for a dollar and got one for me and one for her. We sat outside the bookstore and she showed me that a bonus one came out, so we had three. We decided to use our sister sense and pick the one that spoke to each of us. The poems we each picked were pretty intense and disturbing. We opened the third one and read it together. We decided we liked that one best & she said I could keep it.

We arrived at our first bookstore at noon. Since we bussed and the stores were spaced out, we managed to make it to four with a late lunch/early dinner tucked in there and got home about 6:30 pm. We went to Black Garnet, Moon Palace, Uncle Hugo's, and Magers and Quinn. I got poetry, graphic novels, and manga--things I would read on the page instead of audio. And I didn't come in with a list. I browsed, paying attention to what store staff recommended with shelf talkers. Here's what I got:

Black Garnet:
Grand Tour by Elisa Gonzalez, poetry
Gumbo Ya Ya by Aurielle Marie, poetry, because I saw it won the Cave Canem book prize, and I was intrigued by the typographical and layout hijinks that seemed to be going on on the page (blurring, overlapping text, text falling off the page)
woke up no light by Leila Mottley, poetry

Moon Palace:
Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear by Mosab Abu Toha, poetry,
Return of the Chinese Femme by Dorothy Chan, poetry
General Release from the Beginning of the World by Donna Spruijt-Metz, poetry

Uncle Hugo's:
Kitaro's Yokai Battles by Shigeru Mizuki, manga, because I saw there would be a battle in a village with the villagers' hair
Black Butler 1 by Yana Toboso, manga, because I've been wanting to read this
Queenie: Godmother of Harlem by Elizabeth Colomba, graphic novel, because I knew nothing about this historical figure & I'd like to know, also it looks striking
The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye by Sonny Liew, graphic novel, because I've been wanting to read it, and it looks so beautiful
FUN by Paolo Bacilieri, graphic novel, because the setup sounds intriguing, and it looks stylish and fun (ha!)

Magers and Quinn:
Our Life Grows by Ryszard Krynicki, poetry, because the first poem begins 'The truth is: at times I believe/in the existence of the other world, I believe in ghosts,/in vampires sucking your brain and blood,/perhaps in the end I fear even more than believe', SOLD!
H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald, non-fiction, because I loved it so much, I need to own a physical copy and study its structure (I also intend to get my own audio copy of it)
Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, graphic novel, because I've been wanting to read this
Land of the Dead by Brian McDonald, graphic novel, because the premise sounds cool, and it looks gorgeous

Some books I looked at but couldn't afford this time around (added to the wishlist):
A Guest in the House by Emily Carroll
They Called Us Enemy by George Takei
a used first edition of Lost & Found by Shaun Tan

It was fun to buy books in a physical bookstore again. I'd mostly given up on it because audio is my preferred method of reading. I usually just get my books from the library, partly for budget reasons, but partly that there are already too many books at my house that I thought I would read one day and didn't. It's rare, especially with inter-library loan that I can't get what I want, and then I just order for simplicity's sake, that one book every now and again, online from Powells or to pick up at Magers and Quinn. It was intensely crowded at the stores, which I applaud for the businesses, but made me pretty cranky and overwhelmed. I was very glad to be back browsing books in a physical Uncle Hugo's. Their bookstore burned down in the uprising.

I also found this list at Powell's Big Mood Sale ("Feel the love, or the angst, or the joy, or all the feelings, as long as they’re BIG.") I decided I need to read every single one of those books. I'm always talking about books that I loved and how so many of them give me big feelings. Added them to the wishlist.

Edited to fix formatting: that heart emoticon screws me every time

>20 lottpoet: Im doing pretty good, also sorry for the very late response i just noticed this now.

10. So You Want to Talk about Race by Ijeoma Oluo
audio

I really enjoyed this. I can get really frustrated in trying to have a conversation with White people where race is a factor in what we want to talk about (even when we're not talking directly about race or racism), and we get caught in a thicket of misunderstanding about what I think of as the day-to-day reality of life in the U.S. That's very confusing to me! This book talks about a lot of foundational things about life in the U.S. for people of the global majority: microaggressions, police brutality, intersectionality, Black Lives Matter. This was helpful to me because it reminded me of where these conversations tend to break down (& why I feel I have to justify bringing up race when others are very convinced that whatever is happening has and will have nothing at all to do with race). So, yes, some validation of my experience and some chipping away at the internalized racism that keeps wriggling in. I'm usually not fond of Bahni Turpin as narrator, but she did a great job with this book.

4/5 stars

11. Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi
audio

This was, as the subtitle says, a history of racist ideas in America. I found it engrossing and thought-provoking all the way through Jim Crow. Like, I was making connections to things that happen or that we experience today. I felt smart; I was learning stuff. But once we hit Jim Crow (my grandparents' lifetime), it became much more personal. Then I had a lot of feelings, a good portion were rage and despair. Overall, I think I like this book way more than How to Be an Antiracist. But they're different. This one is more scholarly, a sort of preponderance of evidence, about why something is the way that it is. The other is more self-help-y, I guess, more how to do the thing, how to make change. I will re-read this one at some point.

4/5 stars

12. Among Others by Jo Walton
ebook

This follows a lonely teen girl who is healing from physical and emotional trauma. She has lost her twin in the accident(?--not sure what to call it) that injured her pelvis, I think. She walks with difficulty with a cane and has a lot of pain in her leg. Social services sends her to live with her father who she doesn't know. He is financially supported by his sisters who immediately ship her off to boarding school. She has trouble making friends, partly because of her demeanor which is a little chilly or judgmental, partly because of her geeky interests (sci-fi fanatic), partly to protect herself and others from the influence of her mother who is a witch or a supernatural of some sort, maybe, partly because she is grieving, partly because her physical injury keeps her out of sports which are hugely important on campus. I forgot to mention that the book takes places in, I believe, 1980. The main character is a voracious reader and because she has to sit out sports she has plenty of time to lose herself in books. She reads and has definite opinions on classic and newly published sf. I especially appreciated how she figured out how to find out about books to read: lists in the back of books (e.g., also published by the publisher), recommendations from her father who is a SF fan, browsing the shelves at the library. Before the internet, it was hard to find the books you were excited about. Seeing all the talk about these books was fun and made me feel kind of nostalgic. It seems to be the selling point for a lot of sf readers. What I appreciated most was how interior the narration was and how clear it was how much pain and loneliness this girl was experiencing. I really felt for her. She made me think of a Diana Wynne Jones heroine who is slightly older. I loved it & will definitely re-read it.

4.5/5 stars

Readalike: Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones for another teen girl with a complicated/not good relationship with her mother, and for the presence of magic that may or may not be real

Here's an addendum to the above review. I wrote a capsule thing for something else right after I read it & I like what I had to say:

The feel of this book is just what I want for the novel I've been working on--isolation & loneliness, grief & healing from trauma. I didn't know that going in; I knew it was a book about sf books and being an avid reader. That part was fantastic as well. I'm only six years younger than the protagonist. I came to sff around the age she was in the novel (15) and not as young, but that discovery also helped save my life, giving me an anchor in one of the most difficult times in my life. I loved the subtle but far-reaching effects of the magic. It's interesting to think about twinning and identity as well. So many feelings while reading this book.

13. System Collapse by Martha Wells
audio

I think the narrator of these audiobooks gets Murderbot's voice perfectly. I had been spacing these out as comfort reads, but now I'm all caught up, like everyone else. This one may have been my favorite one so far. It's between this one and the fourth one (where it rescues the doctor and reconciles with the team from the first book). I love seeing its friendship with Dr. Mensah. But this one has Murderbot's organic parts fussing with its performance and belief in itself. Good stuff (poor Murderbot).

4/5 stars

14. Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor
audio

spoilers ahoy!

I have been eyeing this book ever since it came out. I wondered if it would give me the monsters I crave in a good fantasy novel. It did! There are all kinds of chimerical creatures and, it turns out, a depth of worldbuilding to explain how things got to be this way: chimerical animal-like creatures in exile, the longstanding war between them and the angel creatures (including exploitation and colonization, it sounded like). I got another trope I appreciate: a magical shop with doors that open onto different realms/locations/worlds. I loved the relationship the main character has with the 'monstrous' father figure in his interesting shop where he collects teeth and deals in wishes (sort of). I also liked how she yearns to know more about herself (and how she's the only human in the family) and has a sense that something is missing in her. I even liked the way the angel-creature was introduced. He was terrifying and seemingly without mercy. His wings burned believers and he didn't care. I was even all right with these two meeting and being infatuated with each other. But, once we started getting the flashbacks to the main character's previous 'life' and more of the worldbuilding we'd only gotten tantalizing glimpses of before (mostly involving the great war and the way everyone has become monstrous because of it; there was also some internalized oppression and hierarchy based on what sorts of animals made up your body), I lost a lot of interest. I thought the love story as presented in the present moment between these two souls was interesting, more on her end than on his. But is it love when you (she) have been lost to it for all the eighteen years or so of your current life? I still really dug the worldbuilding and the great monsters. I might try the follow-up book. I'm really glad that I read it, even though it fizzled a bit at the end.

4/5 stars

Readalikes:

The Ancient Magus' Bride 1 by Kore Yamazaki, for another girl who is taken in by a monstrous looking mysterious magical being and expected to apprentice.

Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones, for another girl whose memories are fussed with ('for her own good') and who can feel that things are off.

15. Patternmaster by Octavia E. Butler
audio

My first Octavia Butler was a mass market paperback of Dawn that I got at Forbidden Planet in New York City, my very first all sff bookstore. I read that book in one big gulp that afternoon into the evening. My cousin invited me to spend the evening with her because my uncle and aunt were out and she didn't want me to be lonely. I wanted to be 'lonely' so I could finish the book! The next weekend, I returned to Forbidden Planet to see if they had the sequel, Adulthood Rites. That was the first hardcover I had ever purchased. I just had to know what happened next. Once I read Adulthood Rites, I had to wait a year or so for the final book of the trilogy. By then, I was on the lookout for other books by her. The third book I read by her was Wild Seed which was very intense but good. Then I read Mind of My Mind, which I liked, but struggled more with. By then, I'd figured out those two books were part of a series called Patternist and that I was reading them (accidentally--it really was about what I could get my hands on in used bookstore mail order catalogs) in chronological order but not publication order. When I found out what the other books were about, set in the future world these books set up, I really wasn't interested. I tried to read Clay's Ark and found it too, too disturbing to finish.

This is quite the intro for a book that was mainly ok for me. It was very short (ah, those leaner, older novels). I could have used a bit more tail to the story--the ending felt too abrupt for me. It's the future and there seems to be ongoing hostility between these eugenically-bred people who use the power of their minds to control mundane people (and abuse them and use them for labor) and people with the virus from Clay's Ark who are known as clays. It sounds like a truly awful existence for people at every level of society. Those at the top-level of their psionic clans are always on guard against those trying to usurp their leadership, from within their clans or from other clans. They also have to brutally throw their mental weight around to show they still got it and keep those under them cowed. If you're a psionic at lower levels in the clans, you're fighting (mentally, often to the death) for a shift in position/hierarchy. If you're at the lowest psionic levels, you're pissed on by everyone above you. It was a bit of a frustrating read because the main character was so sexist and took soo long to consider he might not know everything about women and what's best for them, in general and specifically. I liked it well enough. It read quickly. What a yucky world. Also, Octavia Butler took that writing advice about hurting your characters and let it be her guiding light. Boy do people *suffer* in her books. I say that with awe and admiration.

4/5 stars

16. The Taste of Sugar by Marisel Vera
audio, book club

This book was ok. I wanted to like it more than I did. I spent most of the book worried for the main character's safety around her father-in-law. He propositions her and gets her in difficult positions. Blech! I learned some things about how Puerto Rico became part of the U.S. I wanted to feel closer to most of the characters, but I thought there was a strange zooming out thing that happened whenever I would start to feel connected with any particular character. It was usually a time when politics were talked through by the narrator or folklore was brought up--more of an educating thing. The main character and her family suffer so much throughout this book. It's interesting because she started out as such a romantic character, someone who dreams of Parisian cafes and someone to sweep her off her feet. It does start to feel like, in the world of the book, she was being punished for her privileged upbringing and romantic dreaminess. I'm not sorry I read it, but I probably wouldn't have finished it if it hadn't been a book club book.

4/5 stars

Readalikes:

Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin, for another love letter for a place (here New York, Puerto Rico for The Taste of Sugar).

Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel, for complicated family politics.

Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez, for another devastating hurricane in Puerto Rico where the U.S. government does very little to help and outside businesses sweep in to take advantage.

Another book haul. My friend noticed there was a romance bookstore in her neighborhood, so we made plans to go. Here's what I got from Tropes & Trifles:

Four Weddings to Fall in Love by Jackie Lau
The Dragon's Bride by Katee Robert
Sailor's Delight by Rose Lerner
How to Get a Girlfriend When You're a Terrifying Monster by Marie Cardno
Heartstopper, Volume 1 by Alice Oseman
Mooncakes by Wendy Xu

17. Translation State by Ann Leckie
audio

I pre-ordered this audiobook & then I held on to it until I wanted something good, but also comforting. It's narrated by Adjoa Andoh who did a great job with the translator(s) in the Ancillary books. This had some fun cameos and references to the original trilogy. I liked learning more about the Presger translators, although there is still a lot more I don't understand (I'm hoping that means room has been left for follow-up books). It was helpful that Presger translator youth are left in the dark about what's expected of Presger translator adults, so I wasn't the only one yearning for more information. What we saw was pretty disturbing, but it also made Translator Zeiat's behavior more understandable. I had so many feelings for the people in the story, mainly Qven, the Presger translator youth who tried to escape the translators and ends up taken advantage of and shamed for their victim status, and Reet who struggled with urges and impulses that separate him from his home culture and who it turns out is the child of a translator who successfully escaped in the past. I had a great time with this & look forward to re-reads.

4.5/5 stars

18. The Governess Affair by Courtney Milan
ebook

I loved this! One of the first romances I ever read was a recommendation for The Suffragette Scandal, the fourth book in the series. I liked that well enough. This is the prequel novella in The Brothers Sinister series. The series is named that because the heroes are all left-handed. I believe this sets up the next generation as heroes in the main series. Anyway, there's a man who is the fixer of an obnoxious nobleman. He's working for him for a set period of time to increase both their fortunes. The fixer is not a nobleman, but a former pugilist. The heroine was raped by the fixer's boss while she was a governess at another estate. This resulted in a pregnancy which she is trying to shame/blackmail him into acknowledging the child as his bastard and provide for the child in some small capacity monetarily. She refuses to say she was raped because she didn't fight and she didn't say no because the nobleman said if she denied him he would tell her employers that she asked for it and she would lose her position and references. This romance operates by a lot of misunderstandings and miscommunication, but I found their chemistry palpable and believable, so it was just a matter of those two admitting they want/need to be together. The fixer tried to fix the situation even though he doesn't have all the facts at first. I loved the way they sniped at each other, and I swooned when it became epistolary for a while as they threatened each other by notes delivered by the butler. It's a romance, so of course, they do get together. It sort of starts as a marriage of convenience so that her child would have a legal father and a means of financial support. But these two can't stay away from each other. They are both, the fixer in particular, the sort who don't believe they deserve happiness. I can't wait to read more in the series!

4.5/5 stars

19. Men of the Otherworld by Kelley Armstrong
ebook

This was a lot of fun. In the olden days I used to follow the author on her website so I'd seen some of these stories before. But that was a long time ago. Turns out I don't remember much. (I mean, I was reading them surreptitiously at work because I didn't have internet at home or a smartphone; probably I skimmed more than read them.) The stories are presented in chronological order. They start with Clay being a very young child who was turned into a werewolf by, I believe, a mutt (migratory werewolves who are not a part of the pack), and eventually adopted by Jeremy. If I had this novella by itself, I would have rated it quite high, even though the end was meh. But I found my interest in the stories waned as we moved forward in time. The information (back story, worldbuilding) was cool, but I was less immersed in the story and less connected to the characters as the book progressed. Jeremy is still my favorite character, although I understand Clay better now. These stories did make me want to go back and re-read Bitten, the very first novel in the series which shows backstory of Clay turning Elena into a werewolf out of love without her consent, and is about Elena & Clay, and No Humans Involved which is about Jamie & Jeremy. I don't think these would be fun at all if you haven't read until at least that point in the series.

4/5 stars

20. Jephte's Daughter by Naomi Ragen
ebook

This was an interesting read. I liked the setup and the way it all played out. The setup is a U.S. Orthodox Jewish man from a long distinguished Jewish scholarly lineage is the last male of his family after the Holocaust. He spent his adulthood in the U.S. amassing a great fortune as a businessman and hoping for a son. His mother's dying wish for him (she made him promise) was that he would continue the Judaic scholarship his family was known for. He has only a daughter, the main character of the novel, whom he adores and indulges, although he keeps her mostly sequestered because he doesn't live in an Orthodox Jewish community and doesn't want her corrupted by U.S. modernity. I forgot to say the novel takes place in the 60's, I think. What I liked about the setup was the heartache and heartbreak of this promise extracted from him as a teenager that he can't get out from under but also can't make true. He hits upon having his daughter marry a great up and coming Orthodox Jewish man in Israel, so that his legacy can continue in that way.

I loved the opening set piece which was him showing up at the airport in Israel amidst pomp, like a celebrity, all the Jewish reporters and elders meeting his flight there. You don't even know who this is or why this is happening, but it was really fun and over the top and kind of beautiful. I had some trouble with the writing in this novel, but she does a fantastic job with description: what people are wearing, their gestures large and small, the scenery. So, the father betroths his daughter without her knowledge. She is finishing high school and is looking forward to college. She has an English literature tutor who is a liberated college woman that acts as an older sister to her. She wants to experience some of what her tutor and friend models, sophistication and worldliness, but tempered by her faith which is deep. She is an excellent scholar and has a fine, a hungry mind. I don't want to paint her family's faith as her having no say or little choice. According to her religion, she does have to agree to the marriage in order for it to go through. That is brought up many times. Her father, unfortunately, desperately, manipulates her into going through with the marriage and sticking it out by appealing to her love for him and family and faith.

During her marriage she slowly begins to have more understanding and sympathy for her mother who had been an anemic background presence in the brilliant sunshine of her father. It had not always been thus. When she was small, she had struggled to connect with her mother the way she wanted. She felt her mother did not understand or see her, especially in her curiosity and quest for knowledge. The marriage of the main character does not start out well and ends with her being abused physically and verbally and pretty much held hostage in her home. When she considers leaving the marriage, she finds out she is pregnant. She has a son who she puts all of her love and feeling in to. She wants to protect him from her deprivations and disappointments. Her husband is emotionally abusive to the son. It is when they want to take away her young son to live at a Hebrew Orthodox school because of his strong scholarly lineage, that she acts. She fakes their death and travels to Europe to start over. In their faith, they cannot have a funeral without a body, so her husband is not able to remarry (& she cannot either). She does eventually meet someone who she wants to be with and goes back to Israel to get an official divorce and custody of her son.

I thought the writing of this novel was somewhat awkward, mostly in the structure of it, in how we go from scene to scene or how the author opts to show or not show a particular thing that happens. It is a bit didactic, but I don't mind that. My biggest issue with the writing is how the narrator tries to tell us the complete psychological make-up of each character in any particular moment instead of showing us and trusting that we'll understand it. I think there's enough presented that we'd have gotten most of it. I wanted the writer to trust herself (her writing) or us more. The story itself is interesting in the characters, the women in particular, who are proud as can be about their modernity, but are still being ill-treated, threatened, taken advantage, or abused. None of them seemed happy with their 'freedom.' I couldn't decide if that was purposeful, that the novelist was trying to show that freedom without morals or limits leads to unhappiness. I thought of it as what reality is like: we want the sky to be the limit, but there are all sorts of bargains you have to make and things you have to cede, partly because of the persistence of oppression. Anyway, I would read more by this writer. I was mostly glad to have read this. One other thing I'll say is that the characters all were a mix of good and not so good qualities and even for the villain of the piece (the main character's husband), we are shown a sympathetic portrait of his childhood and how he got to this point. I also liked that we were presented with a range of ways of being an Orthodox Jew, even in Israel, even within one community.

4/5 stars

21. Fearing the Black Body by Sabrina Strings
audio

This book didn't wow me the way I wanted, but I'm not sure I can articulate why. For me, it didn't seem to definitively lay out the thesis. I got way more about the history of fat phobia than I got about the racial overtones of it, which is not to even say the anti-Black overtones of it. I liked what I got, but I wanted the case to be made stronger. As it is, I thought the origins of fat phobia seemed more socio-economic classist or colonialist, which does have quite a bit of overlap with race. (An aside: I'm really surprised at how much I read about social ills today or political unrest and how rarely people link colonialism to it, when it seems so glaringly obvious to me.) It was a decent read, a bit dry. I am glad I read it.

4/5 stars

22. Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams
audio

This follows a second generation Black Caribbean immigrant to England who starts to crash and burn right at the start of the book as the weight of her trauma (including anti-Black oppression & sexism & the intersection of the two) becomes more than she can manage. It sounds heavy, and it is serious, but there’s a lot of humor, a great friend group, and her family does figure out how to stand with her (despite the stigma of mental illness). She’s young (mid-twenties) & does start to make her way back to equilibrium. I just watched the trailer for the tv show adaptation on Hulu. It looks good! I added it to my watch list.

4/5 stars

Readalikes:

Almost Crimson by Dasha Kelly, for another child who suffers greatly from their mother being in a precarious position and unable to parent much

Edited to correct numbering.

23. A Kiss of Shadows by Laurell K. Hamilton
audio

I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this. I love the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series, and even though I find the most recent ones hit or miss for me, I still love the ones that hit enough that I am a fan till the end. However, I have been infected by the general sense of Laurell K. Hamilton as a poor writer. Like, yes, the prose of the Anita Blake books is underwhelming and a little frustrating (in repetitiveness of language & the slackness of language in the big scenes). I'm not sure why I had this idea that Laurell K. Hamilton only knows how to write one sort of story (bad-ass woman who's not like other women) or one sort of story (detective story mixed with erotica or romance). Anyway, I didn't find that Merry Gentry, the protagonist, read much like Anita Blake at all. This may be the same sort of story, at least superficially, but I was taken by the deep worldbuilding of the fae and sidhe taken into the modern world. Mainly, I felt that many of the creatures we met were, at least in appearance, but sometimes in actions, as well, monstrous. I love good monsters! One guy had a beautiful face but had tentacles on his torso and groin! There were little fairy creatures who were bleeding a guy to death (or close to it) by drinking his blood like vampires and were also eating chunks of his flesh!

I knew the setup of the series, the conceit, which is that Merry was in hiding from the Unseelie court, but has to return and produce an heir (or die (or be killed) trying)). So, a definite reason to have a lot of sex. I was surprised how long it took me to realize this is a harem novel (in the parlance of romance novels). In my defense I will say I was so interested in all the strange creatures we were meeting and the court politics (which I enjoy, but can also find frustrating) that I couldn't take in anything else. I really liked the narrator for this audiobook. I thought she did a great job with Merry's voice. (I think the Anita Blake books also have a great narrator, for most of the books anyway.) I liked this book a lot. I'm sure I'll eventually read more of them.

4/5 stars

Readalikes:

Storm Front by Jim Butcher, as a readalike for the first half of this novel, for a detective story where the antagonist is using powerful magic they poorly understand.

Bloodline Vampires by Katee Robert, as a readalike for the second half of this novel, for a dark erotic harem romance where the heroine has to quickly produce an heir for political reasons (and her survival and safety).