Finished reading: Ten Ways to Be Adored When Landing a Lord by Sarah MacLean 📚

I love the heroine in this so much. Big eldest daughter, have-to-hold-it-together energy, and I’m so happy the hero is ready and willing to act as a partner and show her that just because she can do everything alone, that doesn’t mean she should have to.

🔖📚 Read What Eve L. Ewing’s Career Trajectory Tells Us About Black Women’s Place in Mainstream Superhero Comics by Ravynn K. Stringfield.

Dr. Stringfield does an awesome job illuminating how Eve L. Ewing’s comics career highlights structural inequality in the comics industry

🔖📚 Read A Daughter Becomes a Mother: On Inhabiting Both Roles in Fiction and in Life by Heidi Reimer (Literary Hub).

Finished reading: Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake by Sarah MacLean 📚

My first MacLeaniverse adventure and, of course, I loved it.

Finished reading: The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo 📚

So great. I loved it so much. More later.

Me: goes to Target Ah, it’s so nice to be out in the world.

🔖 Read The films that gave us unrealistic expectations about what makes a ‘home’.

…I too had one of those houses I had always dreamed of. But it wasn’t by design… It was by living my life and creating a home that served the needs of that life.

Now that the offer letter is signed and everybody at the school has been notified, I’m happy to share that next year I’ll be the librarian at my son’s elementary school!

🔖📚 Read Tackling Ballet’s History of Anti-Blackness as a White Woman.

The infinitely kinder cousin of ignorance is curiosity.

A great short piece that’s about cultural humility as much as anything.

🔖📚 Read My Son’s Love Life Is None of My Business, Except It Is by Yukiko Tominaga (Electric Literature).

This is a lovely piece about love and dealing with our children growing up.

Finished reading: The (Fake) Dating Game by Timothy Janovsky 📚

Whew! Timothy Janovsky wasn’t kidding when he said this was his steamiest book yet! Grief and heartbreak serve as the flashpoint for this sizzling romance set against a Supermarket Sweep-style game show.

Y’all got me ready for “I cry a lot but I’m so productive” but I was not prepared for the resonant truth of “I’m so depressed I act like it’s my birthday every day.” 🎵

My friend Josh died last week. He was only 32 and had already given the world so much. I’m angry on the world’s behalf at all the decades of Josh it should have had and won’t.

We weren’t close but I love(d) him. When I announced to our improv team that I was pregnant, Josh started walking in front of me with his arms out whenever we were at the theater together, pretending to speak into an earpiece like he was my bodyguard.

One time when I was working at UNC, I bumped into Josh running the campus cypher. I told him I’d just come from a conversation where I told someone my flow (as in, rapping) was passable. Josh, himself an incredible hip hop artist, scolded me. So I revised my self-conception: my flow is good enough for comedy.

I sometimes fantasized about running across Josh at the city cypher after a night out at the movie theater around the corner from where the cypher happens. I wanted to introduce him to W.

Josh was an educator and whenever I came across research on hip-hop pedagogy I would send it to him and he always made me feel like each time I did it I’d given him an exquisite gift.

When he was 25 and I was 35, Josh asked me what advice I would give my 25-year-old self. I have no idea what I told him. I do remember being floored by the wisdom he showed in asking the question.

I don’t have a conclusion to this.

Finished reading: You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian 📚

Full review coming soon but y’all, this is so great. It’s out May 7. Olivia Waite says if you only read one romance this spring, it should be this one, and she’s right.

New bio!

Mom. PhD. Once and future school librarian. Freelance academic. Citizen of Romancelandia. I manage multiple chronic illnesses. I love books and games. 🌈♿

🔖 Read The Messy Places Are Where the Learning Happens: On Being a Beginner by Michelle Boyd (Digits and Threads)

A great reminder to deliberately be a beginner sometimes.

Finished reading: The Witch Queen of Halloween by Kresley Cole 📚

This is a super fun romance novella, inspired by horror movies. Might become an annual Halloween re-read for me.

Finished reading: The Player by Kresley Cole 📚

A con artist falling in love with her tech billionaire mark? Sign me up.

🔖📚📝 Read Mothering and Writing Are Both Undervalued Labor, so How Do Women Do Both? .

An excellent excerpt from the book The Mother Artist: Portraits of Ambition, Limitation, and Creativity.

📚💬

“…publication is not all that it is cracked up to be. But writing is.” Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

📚💬

“One of the gifts of being a writer is that it gives you an excuse to do things, to go places and explore.” Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

🔖📝 Read An Oasis in the Desert: Why Libraries Are the Best Places to Write.

I love to write in a library carrel. More than once I’ve considered getting one for our home office. I wonder if my favorite local library branch has them. I haven’t noticed. Next time I’m there, I’ll check.

Finished reading: The Master by Kresley Cole 📚

Over here fantasizing about spending my own money on ModCloth and eShakti dresses, as well as having a place to wear them. 👗

Finished reading: The Professional by Kresley Cole 📚

I finished this in just a couple of days. Definitely read the info on the author’s website before picking this one up.