Another journal

I feel like I really hit a range this month, a little bit of all the things I love, both genre and theme. I had a nice time with all of them too (not true for a book I’m in the middle of rn). Let’s get to looking at ’em!!

The Storygraph reviews for my top three books:

A Trade of Blood by Robert Jackson Bennett

Will every entry in this series be my new favourite Ana & Din book?! In a gnarly world, this one is particularly so, with its fungus (that I didn’t realise was on the cover until I checked it out!) and meat and madness.

I believe this is the first Ana and Din book I’ve read post-reading some of the Nero Wolfe books and the relationship to them thematically is so obvious now, how delightful! This was a particularly grody and fairy tale like entry into the series and I: predictably loved it.

Ancient Images by Ramsey Campbell

The writing in this scratches at the edges of your mind, it’s truly creepy in a unrelenting way that doesn’t quite let you breathe and the pace one finds reading it is driven to see things to their bloody end. You can see it as a British folk horror film, the kind stalking the cinema just before the whole Video Nasties furore, which feels quite right, given the plot revolving around film.

Still thinking about this one a bit! We just rewatched The J-Horror Virus (have a link to a Fangoria article about it) and it had me thinking about the cycles and ages and influences in horror and media about horror. I will need to check out more by Ramsey Campbell, I quite liked the writing style in this.

Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker

Whew whew whew, from an achingly accurate depiction of intrusive thoughts and obsessions to the far too real horrors of the early pandemic, this story grabs you by the arm, nails digging in, until you see the ghosts as well.

Boy oh boy this is a good one. I liked it more than Baker’s Japanese Gothic, for various reasons. I really enjoy a book that has people who go “okay ghosts are real and great news, we do have cultural experience in dealing with this.” The intrusive thoughts are very very very well depicted here in how they feel, for me at least, which amps things quite a bit, so heads up.

Here’s the array of decent reads I had the pleasure of spending time with in August:

All You Need Is Kill is the light novel that the movie Edge of Tomorrow was based on and I (re) watched the movie after, which was fun. You can go look at my Recently Read on Storygraph to see my summaries of all of these, but I do want to call out Meddling Kids specifically:

There is SO MUCH going on in this book, which sometimes devolves into a script format and never neglects a chance to use parentheses or italics. The descriptive words are slathered on like thick margarine and sprinkles on an indulgent slice of fairy toast. Every trope is kissed on the mouth, some of them with tongue. It’s a riot and a winking, finger-gunning love letter to not just a type of story, but stories in general.

I love a book that finds a way to play with form and BOY did this. A recommended romp. Several of these books I picked up thanks to the “Five Books” recommendation lists from Reactor, a nice place to find a book to take a go with. Also dove into another old Dick Francis fave, always a nice time.

I hadn’t realised I’d read so many books until I was typing out the alt text for the images. Nine! Nearly the same number of pages as June though (like stats matter, just interesting). Not as many winners this month, but it’s not always that we find a new series and suck it down like a shake.

The Storygraph reviews for my top three books:

This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews, the first in Maggie the Undying

Genre smart isekai/portal, with delicious twists and complications, my beloved.

Listen, sometimes something is just Your Shit ™, and you’re aware of the flaws but who cares. I am a deep and faithful sucker for the general concepts of whatever this genre of isekai or portal or whatever fantasy. Because I read a lot of old sci-fi and fantasy as a kid I cut my teeth on stories about young boys who suddenly found themselves to be grown man barbarians, while watching movies about people getting sucked into their books or devil-infested cable boxes. I love this shit. That said!! This book sure had a lot of white characters? Which was weird. It’s like having a book full of straight people to me, like where do you live.

The descriptions of people are robust, because this is that kind of book, and there are a lot of kinds of bodies (a couple of broad broads, even) and faces and noses but so often the skin tone description was some variant of “beige.” Which is a Correct Word, but also feels like a shy kid trying to learn how to be fun at summer camp. Good for beige. But there was a lot of beige. Or tanned. Maybe some sand. It was enough I was startlingly aware when characters were not. Still loved the book! Just found that very interesting. Maybe in the next book we’ll be in a different land and the base skin colour will be something else.

Fabulous Bodies by Chuck Tingle

Delightful horror, as always. Lot of nasty, grody moments in this one but what made me say “ugh” out loud was the description of an aerial tram, lol.

Yucky, love it! Not as much as Lucky Day, which remains my fave of Tingle’s traditionally published horror, but what a concept. As usual, the story builds and builds in weird and horrible ways until it bursts (literally-ish) into the climax. Also bonus: I learned that no thanks I will not be trying the aerial tram in Palm Springs probably (I like the one in Portland that goes to OHSU, it feels like a shuttle docking at a space station).

Trust by Hernan Diaz

Layers on layers I love a book within a book and this is a nesting doll of the type.

Chase read this and alerted me to it, because they know what I love and this was two of them: The Great Depression (!) and story-as-form. This was particularly fun as I’ve read plenty of the kind of stories that the first and second layers are masquerading as, and they hit the tone spot-on. Then the third layer is just altogether more interesting and the final, fourth layer!! A treat at the end that you dig from the packing peanuts and bubble wrap and thoughtful packaging.

I’ve begun re-reading some of my favourite physical books in my library, trying to catch up to my intent to read at least one a month. I’d been meaning to do it via these gorgeous mid century sci-fi and horror novels Chase’s mom rescued from a book donation, but they’ve been mid so far and made me lose faith. Hence the print book: I’m back to reading my deeply re-read horse racing mysteries.

Anyway!

A friend had shared a video summarising the whole mess of production for the 1963 Cleopatra and I will rarely watch an essay video but I realised I (who have delighted in the relevant, epic section of the wikipedia entry), could look to see if there are tell-alls. And of course there are, and My Life with Cleopatra: The Making of a Hollywood Classic by Joe Hyams, Walter Wanger came out like, contemporary to the movie and is dishy as hell. It’s a breeze of a read and had me eye-emoji the whole time.

Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker and Space Invaders: A Novel by Nona Fernández with Natasha Wimmer as translator I picked up thanks to reviews from the always wonderful rachelmanija on Dreamwidth, both books I enjoyed and wouldn’t have found otherwise.

Read a LOT more books this month than last, thanks to a friend telling me about The Tyrant Philosophers series by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It was exactly what I needed–a big ol’ world and quite a few books to sort of shake off the enjoyable plod of (good, but also, involved) non-fiction.

The Storygraph reviews for my top three books:

Pretenders to the Throne of God by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Aaaaah is there anything like watching all the pieces of a story come together?!! Once more we see old faces in the new skins (and names) of their new home, and learn new characters to love and revile. You can almost hear each puzzle piece click into place as the story marches on.

I had to wait a bit for this one to be released from hold and it was all the more delicious for it. This is the penultimate book in the series and ooooh boy it’s all coming together. The plan, for me, is to read the last book when it comes out, then listen to them all again on audio book, which I’m told has a solid voice cast. There are so many moving pieces in this series but they’re all gears turning to quite the end.

Radiant Star by Ann Leckie

Listen, listen. Every addition to the Ancillary universe is going to rip. Leckie does something fun and fresh and interesting with each new entry, and because each book has its own voice and ideas and priorities it fills the world out like a cat stretching out comfortably.

The world of this particular book is weird and messy and absolutely fucked, and frankly might well have been on that path before the Radch, though their interference very much helps it along. It’s delightful.

There is limited shelf space in my home, but a couple years back I bought the first three books of the Imperial Radch series so I could have them on tap and this newest addition has me itching to re-read. I love a crumbling empire, I adore how Leckie writes weirdos and bureaucrats and the mess of politics.

House of Open Wounds by Adrian Tchaikovsky

What a ride. Picture an island of misfit toys only it’s a camp hospital in the middle of a war, and they’ve just acquired a new member who has the fairy tale youngest son luck of being kind to animals (little gods) and more or less being a bit wet and trying his best.

The acknowledgments thank a panel where someone brought up magical healing, which sparked this story and I thank them too, the concept is delved well here.

If I had to pick a favourite of the Tyrant Philosopher series so far it might be this one. Clicking around I saw someone suggest M*A*S*H as a comp and that is: pretty spot on. I mean, war (never changes) is truly horrible and that’s a constant in this series, even when it’s funny, but the way magical healing works in this is rather brutal as well.

I really particularly admire how some characters are threads through this series, drifting to the edges or moving to the core of the story. Some fray and fade, some are abruptly cut, new threads are woven in.

You’ll note in the graphic up there that I read a print book, well that is a lie, let me explain.

So, Greener Than You Think I picked up because Mike Davis mentioned it in the section about LA being destroyed in fiction, at the end of Ecology of Fear, and seemed to really get a kick out of it. Most of the other stuff I’d seen or read, or it seemed like it sucked. I found an ebook on Libby then was horrified to learn, on opening it, that it was one of those “ebooks” that is really just a PDF. Which is impossible to read on my tiny ancient phone.

I poked around online and hooray hooray, Project Gutenberg has a lovely edition of it that I grabbed instead. It’s a mean little book. Because it’s a Gutenberg, I wasn’t sure how to input it properly into Storygraph so I’m just living with the bad data point. I enjoyed this from the Project Gutenberg transcriber:

The text intentionally contains non-standard contractions, unhyphenated combination words and other informal styles and spellings, which, except for minor typographical errors, have all been transcribed as printed.

It sure does. But it’s still easier to read than the ebook I checked out of Battle Royale. But, what is fun is the point in a book where the weirdness of the language just sort of becomes What It Is and you stop noticing it (sort of the whole conceit of Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker).

My holds queue shows a book landing soon, then I’ll release another non-fiction from suspended hold and one more dive into the cool info that takes me one william years to read mines.

I only read FOUR books this month, and not that much else (short story-wise) which is thanks to reading two non-fiction. I said this in the latest newsletter but I get distracted reading non-fiction books. I see something interesting and want to look up more about it! Chase has been teasing me about the quantity of non-fiction I’ve read this year, which isn’t that much really! I’ve read eight non-fiction titles this so far year and I read eight last year, but I suppose the year isn’t done yet and there’s more nonsense out there for me to read-learn about.

The Storygraph reviews for my top three books:

Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles And The Imagination Of Disaster by Mike Davis

Fascinating and thorough, I spent as much time looking things up that Davis mentioned as I did reading this book. In the nearly thirty years from publication to no, so much has changed and so much remains the same.

This month I finally read a Mike Davis book, instead of having bits told to me, or seeing snippets! City of Quartz is big on my to-read and I would have gone for that, but Chase read the first bit of this one and was like “you need to read this actually.” Davis’ opening section touches on the ecosystem of Los Angeles County/Southern California (not! deserts! it’s a Mediterranean climate, which is a rare and beautiful and weird thing!) and the bounty of life here. Have a taste:

The biodiversity of Mediterranean regions is, in fact, only second to that of tropical rainforests. California lone has more than seven thousand native plants, nearly a third more than Texas, the next most species-rich state.

Like yeah to be fair California and Texas both have a lot of landmass, but also both feature some unique confluences of climate that create wild little specified biomes. Anyway, the whole book could have been about the ecosystem and I’d’ve been delighted but it ranges from forest fires, some City of Quartz city-growth aligned stuff, tornadoes (not! uncommon here actually!!), and finishes off with a look at LA being destroyed in fiction–which is clearly where Davis had a Very Fun Time.

Escape from Pompeii: The Great Eruption of Mount Vesuvius and Its Survivors by Steven L. Tuck

A very thorough and thoughtful look at possible and probable survivors of the Vesuvius eruption and what we can understand about their lives, communities and the response to the disaster.

This is such a well laid-out book. It’s like a dissertation or paper, proving step by step the paths of survivors from the Vesuvius eruption through their impact on the communities they fled to. There’s bits where its very like the “begat” books of the bible, as Tuck’s methodology is comparing inscriptions of names, most of which are funerary. But then suddenly you’re learning about a family with a bunch of very business-forward women who are identified partly thanks to their support of the Temple of Venus. Or the family that was The garum family.

This book I picked up thanks to encountering some article (not this one but I’m sure also from around 2024) and placing a request on the book before it was published. Hmmm, maybe I am becoming a non-fiction reader.

The Body by Bethany C. Morrow

Hoo-Wee, what a ride. The barbed wire teeth of a Type of church and expectation of marriage the tightrope walked to the unexpected but inevitable end.

I could have *sworn* that I’d read this thanks to someone’s recommendation, but as it wasn’t from the one person I thought it was I’m lost to guess which source put it into my orbit. It was!! Icky!! Fascinating and a fun horror to read but didn’t leave much of an impression for me (which is fine! sometimes one just wants to take a ride). I think maybe particularly yucky for folks from specific Church type backgrounds with controlling families.

There was only one other read in April, but it was an audio book, however, here’s the grid:

Boy oh boy, I have never heard someone have as much fun narrating an audio book as Max Meyers narrating The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes. They do the voices! They sing!! They chew the scenery and if you’re of a specific age you can hear the ’90s anime voice acting influence. Big big recommend, glad I decided that Chase would enjoy this and that I’d like to reread it in audio with them.

I’m well sick of non-fiction right now but a pal has recommended a series that looks very available for checkout so I’ll ideally be cleansing my palette with a big ol’ hunk of genre in June.

Read more books this month than last, which means nothing in the scheme of things. I did finish a physical book that I’d put down the month prior and forgot to pick back up (collection of short stories), which absolutely torpedoed my average read time–which also means nothing. Stats are interesting numbers and not reflections of Self!

This month I both picked up an author I hadn’t read in a while to my delight and also gave an author a last chance that they did not pass. Lol, the spectrum! Let’s look at April reading stats. NO non-fiction this month, wildly, and tbh thank god. I can only hold so much new facts in my head before saturation means new additions will overspill. Gotta give things time to soak in.

The Storygraph reviews for my top three books:

The Juliet Dove, Queen of Love by Bruce Coville

Every Magic Shop book is a delight and this one even changes up the formula with a twist!

I mean, what else can one say?! I had no idea Coville had this newer addition to one of my favourite middle grade series. If you didn’t know, the books are set around the incredibly ’80s-era concept of a magic shop that appears just when a kid needs it. There’s often a bit of a “careful what you wish for” situation and lots of learning about feelings, and silliness and sorcery. It’s great stuff. This was a particularly interesting entry as it sort of ties together previous stories, gives us more (fascinating) information about the magic shop proprietor and how things work. It feels, in a way, like the end of the series and it’s a satisfying one.

The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling

Mad and hungry, this book tangles three women together ever more tightly as the reality of their world and their places in it melt into something new and wild under the eyes of creatures both more and less than saints. Delicious.

If I had a copy of this book it would live on a particular bookshelf I keep that has titles like Delicious in Dungeon, The Locked Tomb, California Bones, and other hungry books. So, you know, big ol’ content warning for cannibalism and madness. Starling is able to sell it though, with a frenetic and hallucinatory kind of prose that whips you along in the horror and hunger of a long siege.

Letters from an Imaginary Country by Theodora Goss with Jo Walton

A dreamy collection of short stories with an emphasis on identity, monsters and, predictably, imaginary places.

Goss clearly loves to dip into the well of telling the stories of literary characters who didn’t get the page time they deserve, and I am not mad about it. Oh no, shall we dally again by the babbling brook of Borges as well? It’s one of those rare short story collections where they basically all are enjoyable to read and do something interesting, which is a bonus.

And here are rest of April’s reads:

I only just now realised that I could upload a cover for the 1960s one missing it up there. But you can have a fancier picture. It’s one of the ones Chase’s mom sent, the lot of which I picked purely on vibes. Delicious, isn’t it? Nothing much going on in its head, but it’s pretty.

Huh, quite a lot of the books in April were collections of a sort – The Rainseekers by Matthew Kressel, for all that it’s one book, is more a collection of tales. And I think one worth checking out, it’s very short but just the right size for what it’s trying to do.

Really did not read much this month (only four books!), partly because I was catching up on short stories, partly because it takes me what feels like one million years to read a non-fiction book. Hm, I need to do a short story roundup at some point. Well, let’s look at March reading stats.

And my Storygraph reviews for my top three books:

Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane

What a lyrical, loving book. Driving between three journeys to rivers that answer the titles question with a resounding “YES!”, and time spent with a spring by home, this book courses along with stories of people and places enlivened by rivers and the fights to keep them flowing free.

I quite liked this book, Macfarlane does a lovely job describing how places and people change him on his journey to three different rivers while not overly centring himself. There’s some VERY good descriptions in here, like “Rasputined with injuries,” which I think I sent a screenshot of to most people I know, I was so tickled by the turn of phrase.

The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State by Lisa McGirr

A solid history of Prohibition that focuses on the crack it opened for the claws of the modern prison system and federal law enforcement power, as well as the opening salvos of the war on drugs.

My focus, in my particular interest in Prohibition, is how it integrates with the early Pure Food movement/food safety and the world described in Sinclair’s The Jungle, and the still-lasting effects around state laws and the choice of poison in denaturing alcohol. This book’s focus was more on the prison systems and supporting federal structure built to reinforce the eighteenth amendment, which is ALSO very important–but it always feels strange when a thing that is one’s focus is summarised in a few lines and not returned to. A very solid history, however.

Underland by Robert Macfarlane with Roy McMillan as narrator

I didn’t like this one as much as Is A River Alive?, and I think its a mix of author growth and subject (even though I do love a cave).

I’ve mentioned before that I listen to audiobooks with Chase and often they’re the audio version of something non-fiction I’ve recently read, as I try to get better at “hearing” audiobooks. This time though, the book that came through Chase’s holds was Underland, and I was like “well I like that stuff” so I listened along and eventually realised Macfarlane was also the author of a book I’d read earlier that month. There’s a good span of several years between Underland (2019) and Is A River Alive? (2025), and I don’t know if its just the nature of time or the particular experiences Macfarlane had gone through in the later book that led him to de-centring himself a bit more and approaching things with a little less judgement (which! noting not a wild amount, Underland just has moments where his comfortable middle class British life is clearly leading his inclinations of what is good and what is not).

That covers 3/4 of my reads for the month, but here’s the covers of ’em all anyway.

Hmm, do I have anything to say about the fourth book I read in March? No, not anything nice, really. A real “it’s fine” of a haunted house story.

I ended up reading a bit less this month (well, in book numbers, not page numbers) thanks to Flash Fiction February. That said I also am trying to be better about having more than one book checked out on Libby at a time. I get nervous is all, what if I don’t finish the first book while I have the second book checked out, ugh, it’s there hovering, waiting. But Libby has changed it’s delay options, so rather than pushing things back to a date a week, two weeks, some months from now you can only suspend a hold and then unsuspend it when you’re ready. I have, ah, several books suspended right now (most of which are non-fiction because I’m slow at reading them and like to pace them between fiction).

Anyway, here’s the roundup and stats for February.

Here are my Storygraph reviews for my top rated books:

The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes

What a grody, gorgeous, viciously verdant book. The story drips thick and rich through a rotting, sprouting world of opera and overthrown regimes, as the characters twine relentlessly to their fates.

Boy-o, what a delight this was. It’s thick and visceral and lived-in. It just makes me want to use squishy descriptive words about it. It also does some things with structure that I didn’t catch right off, so I don’t want to say too much, but I’d loved Leech and now I guess Ennes is just on my list of To Watch For. This felt like a good companion to Isaac Fellman’s Notes from a Regicide, so if you like one or the other, there’s a rec for you.

The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera

Whew what a book! So many shadowed layers, thickly and deliciously spread with an inhabited world and the mess of people in it. The plot doesn’t twist so much as turn like a winding snake, a winding ribbon to an ending.

This had been on my to-read and I’d then forgotten but then a pal’s review (and a better review than this) reminded me about it and I dropped it in the hold queue. Weirdly?? Reminds me a little of If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler but maybe just parts of it, maybe just the journey of it, the papers and the periods of being lost, the structural play. It’s certainly a better book than IOAWNAT, to me at least.

Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor

The layers of this book fold together like beautiful cloth wrapping, from novel-in-a-novel to interviews to the main tale. It kept me turning and unwrapping the story drawn in by lush descriptions of family and food and life. You want to call the ending the bow on it but it was instead the thing hidden by all those layers and I don’t! feel it was quite what I wanted or expected to find.

Notable about this book, I paired it with Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward in the latest newsletter reading recommendations and I’ll just copy what I said there:

I recently read two books in a row that had the same thing going on. Not the story or the style or anything, but both were awesome rides the full way through, doing some neat things with how a story is shaped, but then the ending didn’t hit for me as solidly as I needed it to. Which does not! Mean they’re not worth reading. It was actually really interesting to interrogate myself on why the endings didn’t work for me the way I wanted. Maybe (probably) they’ll do better for you.

I can’t hate a book for not sticking the landing, not if they do it the best they can. I don’t know how either of these books should have ended but the endings here work! And I enjoyed the ride, so I can’t complain (well, I can, but you know).

Here’s the pretty gradient of the month’s covers:

There’s Legendary Children again, this time it was as audio, a joy. The other book in this lot was Kate Elliot’s The Nameless Land, the concluding book of the Witch Roads duology. As sometimes happens, the second book didn’t do it for me as the first did. Still glad for it, well-written, good conclusion etc., etc., but I can’t pick out which ingredient (longing? world building? quests?) I found so tasty in the first book that was missing here.

This year I’m trying some things around my reading habits. Chase and I are listening to non-fiction audio books (often ones that one of us have read in text previously) while hanging out in the same room. I have a little bit (a lot bit) of trouble hearing and following audio so it’s partly to help me build that muscle, but it’s also the only way for us to read a book at the same pace, as I read at an unfair speed. Also, Chase’s mom sent me a lovely stack of barely-read mid century mass market paperbacks that I am doling out to myself at the pace of one a month. They’re so pleasant to hold! What a perfect object they are.

Let’s look at what the top-level stats were for me in January.

Here are my Storygraph reviews for my top rated books:

Legendary Children: The First Decade of RuPaul’s Drag Race and the Last Century of Queer Life by Lorenzo Marquez, Tom Fitzgerald

I started watching RuPaul’s Drag Race right when it came out, trying to get this new streaming thing working on my laptop. This book is such a deftly handled thing, weaving queer history with the show and adding context to all the things that have made Drag Race what it is. Sure, I knew a lot of it but there were bits of queer history new to me, new movies to seek out and people to learn about. And every time T&L touched on a subject or era and I thought “oh, they better mention [x],” they did. Like any history spanning a wide range of time, it can’t go into full depth on any one thing, but the depth they manage to go into is very good. It’s made to read while pausing to look up and learn or watch more, a brilliant jumping-off point for anyone, no matter how much or little they know.

We’re now listening to the audio book of this, which Tom and Lorenzo read, and the east coast “a” of Tom’s light accent delights me constantly. A delight. I made a Letterboxed list of the movies they mention in the book, even in passing. Most are available on Kanopy!

A Scent of New-Mown Hay by John Blackburn

A tense cold-war thriller that also offers up the science-fictional monstrous. Non-stop pacing with a well done written version of not showing the monster to make it scarier, it’s a neat and tidy book that is like a bit of eldritch horror in a spy novel coating.

This is a snappy, spooky little book that does some very deft things. It has a good aftertaste, if that makes sense, not like you’re thinking of it often after so much as it has a nice little shiver in your memory.

Burnt Offerings by Robert Marasco

Ooh, a good and creepy hungry house story.

Lol, not a lot in that review. But that’s what this book is! It’s one of those books of an era that feels hinged around a specific family dynamic that isn’t as much the norm today. That said, a person having a deep and unexamined hole in her life and self that makes them vulnerable to devil’s bargain trickery is eternal.

Here’s your pretty gradient of all the covers from this month.

Another title of note this month was Non-Stop, which I picked up because the cover I saw in a 70’s Sci Fi Art newsletter intrigued me. It has a banger of a twist. And The Light Eaters, have you heard the good word of Light Eaters? I will get everyone I know to read it at some point. I think it adds a really beautiful dimension to looking at the world and the wealth of growing things in it.

One of the things I want to do for this year is do monthly bookposts. I read apparently 91 books in 2025, a number which normally would indicate I am having ~problems~ but I haven’t, and my time management has been good, so! I think a bit of that volume was me tearing through some series like Nero Wolfe. Anyway, I do keep short little reviews on Storygraph but I thought it would be nice to integrate the fun little visuals they provide for each month and share those here.

Also, a friend has reached 20 years of bookposts and wow! Throwing my hat in the ring. Though I must note: I am not a reviewer, I do not have the mind for it. I can write you a tasty little paragraph max.

All that said, I’m not properly counting my monthly bookposting until I am doing it about January’s reads, but a quick warmup into the concept with December, why not.

Here are my Storygraph reviews for my top rated books:

The Witch Roads by Kate Elliott

Deeeeeeelightful. Tore through this and now impatiently await the second book’s release from library hold. Love the worldbuilding, love the intrigue, the characters, the food descriptions, but oooh boy love me a yearn and the one hear is all slow burn.

Somebody recommended this to me or to folks in general and I don’t know who! But it’s a duology and it’s very fun. Mmm, flavours of The Isle in the Silver Sea by Tasha Suri and Magebike Courier duology by Hana Lee, so if you like one or the other then the other two might also hit for you.

Night of the Living Cat Vol. 1 by Hawkman with Mecha-Roots (Illustrator), Nan Rymer (Translator)

What a delight! I had seen the anime and wanted to check out the manga, which is even more full of horror references (down to its own dense, darks-heavy style). What an utter delight this is, especially for the horror nerd. It’s a celebration of genre and trope, but also: cats.

I’d actually bought Night of the Living Cat–we watched the first season of the anime and loved it utterly. There are so many treats in there for the horror or sci-fi fan. And all the while the story very aggressively avoids violence (at most, loud noises or water to scare cats, which make everyone feel sad) while blackout-bingoing horror tropes. So I used a gift certificate I earned through insurance points (what a world) and bought myself some treats at a bookstore. I don’t need nor have space for the full run of this right now, though I super want to have them at some point. The art looks like a horror manga, but its just: cats.

The Magician of Tiger Castle by Louis Sachar

This was a delight! The same things that make Schar so fun in his Wayside and other middle reader books translate enjoyably to a grown up book. The framing was fun, the characters were a delight, and the story was a joyful romp with a smidge of darkness.

I couldn’t remember why I’d put this book in my Libby hold but as I was flipping through the front matter, a title caught my eye and I paged back: Oh. Wayside!!! This was the second book I’d read recently from someone who mostly wrote YA or middle grade and where the other made me mad, this one was a grade-A romp. It’s fun to have fun!!

Okay and here’s just a pretty gradient of all the books read for December. I’ll pull out Battle Royale by Koushun Takami and Saltcrop by Yume Kitasei as two more faves and note that if you are interested in historical burial practises and/or vampires, Killing The Dead by John Blair is a tasty non-fiction.

Okay, that’s it for December reads! I think this is how I’ll approach it for the upcoming year.

Recently I asked on Twitter (with a typo, yay) if anyone knew any west coast-centric latinx authors of sci-fi or fantasy books I should check out.

This is maybe a dumb ask but I’d like to read some fantasy or sci-do by latinx folks from the west coast/with west coast perspective. Any y’all know some?

— B. Zedan (@BZedan) May 7, 2018

I’ve been holding off buying books and too stressed/busy to read lately but those are excuses and I miss reading and need to be reading contemporary stuff. I wanted some ebooks I can read on the trip to our new home in a new state.

There’s more and more easily findable out there by latinx authors with latinx characters.  This awesome list from Andrea Corbin has a whole mess of ’em. This is great! But it’s also completely east coast authors. I’m mad amped on books like the Brooklyn Brujas series and Shadowshaper, but the samples I read didn’t grab me as hard as when I read a little of Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (and not only because: vampires). She was born in Baja California and currently lives in Vancouver, Canada but is Mexican and writes about Mexico. It may not the West Coast, USA, but it’s a hell of a lot closer to me than Brooklyn.

As I explained to a white person who questioned how I said “latinx” after asking me how I pronounced latinx, there’s a big ol’ cultural and language gap between the coasts. First, folks and their families tend to be from totally different countries, and second, they’ve grown up in and reflect on totally different cultures. I mean, there is a lot of space between Brooklyn and Portland, let alone a Cuban family in New York and folks who came up to California through Mexico.

I’m not like, expecting to find something that perfectly resonates with my experience—I may be getting greedy for something more familiar, finally seeing more latinx faces in my media—but I know I’m never going to see something exactly like what I know as a non-binary mixed Salvadoran raised by a white mom in the rural PNW. I’m no white man who expects to see themself reflected in all mirrors. But I know folks who aren’t on or about the east coast also write books! And yay the Twitter hive mind did send some my way so here’s the list of what I’ve been recommended so far, of west coast latinx authors.

• Jaime Hernandez of Love and Rockets, etc. Absolutely something I should be reading anyway.
• Aaron Duran with La Brujeria and The Forgotten Tyrs, comics and middle-reader books, respectively.
• Ernest Hogan, with High Aztech and several more sci fi books, here he is on Amazon
• Latino/a Rising, an anthology with a bunch of folks from different places so I’m guessing some gotta be west coast-adjacent.
• Slivia Moreno-Garcia, who writes fantasy, vampires and magic,even if she feels she doesn’t qualify because to me she does, so there.

And you know what, fuck it:

• B. Zedan, The Audacity Gambit. Because I’m a latinx author, dammit. And that informs what I do.

THIS IS SO FEW, PLEASE TELL ME MORE. Specifically, I want things like sci fi and fantasy. Please give me genre. Romance novels, second world fantasy, uneasy ghosts in the corner of your eye, hard sci-fi, speculative fiction, high fantasy with high elf drama, post apocalyptic, whatever.

Shouldn’t have to note, but: please also do not give me white folks who write about not white folks unless it’s a real banger and they don’t seem like dicks.

Mirrored from B.Zedan.