Books on Kimberly Hirsh

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 10:49:42 -0500

Finished reading: Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë 📚

Well. This was not what I expected. Heathcliff isn’t the ghost, the ghost is barely on page, and Heathcliff and Catherine have minimal time on-page together. Still a compelling read if, like me, you’re comfortable with the 19th century language and writing style.

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 00:11:13 -0500

Finished reading: Viscount Vagabond by Loretta Chase 📚

Fri, 27 Feb 2026 22:56:22 -0500

Finished reading: The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan 📚

Read it aloud to my kid. I read it once about 15 years ago. Super fun.

Fri, 27 Feb 2026 22:54:19 -0500

Finished reading: A Kingdom of Dreams by Judith McNaught 📚

Brilliant and old school.

Sat, 21 Feb 2026 09:54:34 -0500

Sometimes I’m trying to read and words won’t go into my head, and it makes me feel like not-myself. 📚

Sat, 21 Feb 2026 02:47:53 -0500

Finished reading: Bet me by Jennifer Crusie 📚

Brilliant. Perfect banter, achingly romantic. I miss the way we talked in 2004.

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 22:02:45 -0500

Finished reading: Soulless by Gail Carriger 📚🎧

Been listening to this audiobook for literal years. It wasn’t as steampunk as I thought it would be. I was pleasantly surprised by how much romance it incorporated.

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 09:48:03 -0500

Finished reading: Texas! Chase by Sandra Brown 📚

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 07:36:26 -0500

📚 Kelly Jensen continues to be a key voice informing readers about censorship in libraries and schools both at Book Riot and in her personal newsletter.

“Government officials now ultimately determine what is on the shelves of public libraries, and therefore our books are on the ballot every time we go vote.” Leila Green Little, plaintiff in Little v. Llano County

Sun, 15 Feb 2026 12:19:14 -0500

Finished reading: Texas! Lucky by Sandra Brown 📚

Fri, 13 Feb 2026 04:34:23 -0500

Finished reading: Close Enough to Touch by Victoria Dahl 📚

Excellent contemporary cowboy romance.

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 21:02:47 -0500

📚💬 “She was as uncomfortable with her body as she was serene about her mind.” David Rieff of his mother, Susan Sontag, in the preface of Reborn: Journals & Notebooks 1947—1963

Sun, 08 Feb 2026 16:43:16 -0500

Finished reading: Devil’s Bride by Stephanie Laurens 📚

A classic historical romance. I liked the way this one tests the couple by having them get frustrated because they’re each scared the other will get physically hurt and neither is willing to stop putting themselves at risk to protect the other.

The library where I work had a pipe burst in the ceiling. 📚

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 13:37:53 -0500

A little over a week ago, as I was getting into the car with my kid to drive to his school, where I work as the Lower School librarian (serving grades 1-4), I got a text from the head teacher. (Sort of like a principal.)

Good morning, I’m sorry to be reaching out with bad news, but I’ve just learned that a pipe burst in the lower school library. I’m on my way to school and will assess myself and text you back with updates. I just wanted you to have a heads up so you weren’t surprised when you got to school.

I thought, “Well that won’t be good but I don’t have many materials stored near where most pipes are.”

We arrived at school. I got M settled in his classroom and then the head teacher showed me the library.

The burst pipe had been in the ceiling in the center of the space. The water from it had destroyed the roof in the center of the library and the library bathroom. Couches had been directly under the collapsed ceiling. When I got there, there was an inch or two of water on the floor. The head of our facilities team said when he had arrived, it had been much more, a flood gushing out of the library door when he opened it.

Well, I thought, at least it was in the part of the library with the fewest books.

That was last Wednesday.

We were out for weather on Thursday.

On Friday, a day I don’t normally work, our administrative assistant called and asked if I could come in. The insurance adjuster was coming and the facilities head was asking if I would be available to assess the damage.

I headed in. We met the insurance adjuster, who was just finishing up and told me they’d need an inventory of damaged materials and their cost. In this moment, I had no idea how much damage there had been, but I guessed not too much.

The head teacher and I met with our head of finance and head of facilities. We talked about what documentation we needed, what the insurance process would look like, what kind of repairs the library would need, and now that a remediation team had come in, facilities head was able to tell us which parts of the library had a lot of water damage.

Facilities head estimated we wouldn’t be back in before spring break, but we might be able to get the construction work done by then and be using the space again when we returned from spring break.

Head teacher and I sat down with the information they gave us, spreadsheets from a collection audit and analysis I did using data from December 2024, and a list of purchases I’d made for the library since December 2024.

Based on where the facilities head told us the most damage was, we determined that about half the collection would potentially need to be replaced.

That’s about 3,000 books.

Remediation/dehydration of the space is ongoing. I still need to assess furniture and classroom supply damage and make a plan for assessing damage to books. Once we know what needs to be replaced and have the money from insurance, I’ll need to order the replacements.

Our book vendor does a lot of the processing including cataloging, putting barcodes on, and putting spine labels on. But on-site we do some other processing, like adding genre labels and stamping the book with the school’s name and address. So that will have to be done.

We’ll need to order new furniture. Once the furniture is in place and the books have arrived, we’ll have to get everything up on the shelves.

I won’t have to do all this alone, but it’s daunting. I’m overwhelmed and stressed out. I’m emotionally devastated and feel like between last week and the next couple weeks I will have spoken individually to each of 120+ children about how things are looking in there and what we know about the timeline for re-opening (not much).

Overnight, my job responsibilities have changed. I thought I would be spending the next several months supporting instruction with materials and providing research instruction, helping kids figure out what to read next, and leading students through the process of voting in the North Carolina Children’s Book Awards.

Instead, there’s a lot of recovery work to do.

At the moment, I need to wait for the remediation and construction team to finish drying out the library, so I’m turning my attention to what library programming looks like when you don’t have access to the physical space or materials.

This has all been a lot.

Sun, 01 Feb 2026 11:23:10 -0500

Finished reading: Love in 280 Characters or Less by Ravynn K. Stringfield 📚

📚 Book Review: Love in 280 Characters or Less by Ravynn K. Stringfield

Sun, 01 Feb 2026 11:20:44 -0500

Full Disclosure: I am online friends with the author of this book. We met when she taught a workshop I took on creative nonfiction writing for academics.

Here’s the publisher’s description:

Sydney Ciara Warren is excited as she starts her first year of college, but also nervous. Despite her interests in writing and fashion, she has no idea what path will ultimately be right for her. As she tries to figure out her place on campus and in the world, she finds solace in blogging about her life, putting together outfits with meaning, *and spending time online.

It’s within the digital space that she connects with someone who goes by YoungPrinceX. She may not know “X” in real life, but that doesn’t stop her from developing a crush on him. Except she’s also navigating her first romantic relationship, with a sweet boy on campus named Xavier (who maybe could be X???).

Can Sydney Ciara not only make it through her first semester, but thrive in real life, as much as she seems to be thriving online?*

It’s an oft-repeated piece of writing advice that you should write the book that only you can write, and with Love in 280 Characters or Less, Dr. Ravynn K. Stringfield has done exactly that. This is an epistolary novel for the digital age, made up of blog posts, tweets, text exchanges, and emails. Our main character, Sydney Ciara Warren, is a freshman at Coastal Virginia University, a fictionalized public university near Virginia Beach. Syd has been writing online for an age and is keenly aware of how digitally mediated her experiences and relationships are.

Dr. Stringfield herself blogged her way through grad school and lived for years on Twitter (that’s where most of our getting to know each other happened). Her scholarship is deeply entwined with Black girlhood, girl culture in media, fantasy, and comics. All of that comes through in Sydney Ciara’s experiences in a way that makes Syd’s understanding of her writing, both public and private, and her navigation of relationships richly textured. There are authors who would write something like this and it would feel hollow, like a person who never wrote a blog post or tweet trying to do what they think would appeal to readers who had a digital adolescence. Dr. Stringfield instead has given us an incredibly rich portrait of a young woman navigating life and love in the digital age. While the specifics of the technology Syd uses are linked to a particular moment in time, this tightrope walk of IRL-or-not is something all of us, but especially people coming of age, will be living for the foreseeable future.

Like Dr. Stringfield’s debut, Love Requires Chocolate, this is marketed as a romance but is more about one young woman’s transition to adulthood than it is about one particular romantic relationship. Most of the book involves Syd connecting with people on campus including a girl with incredible style and perfect baby hairs, a boy with a killer smile and ambitions of being a diplomat, and a PhD candidate teaching assistant who acts as a mentor and supports Syd through some of her most difficult moments. Through all of this relationship-building, she writes about her life, texts her best friend who is at a college a three-hour drive away, and navigates her mom’s ambitions for her to be pre-law when she’s not sure that’s what she wants at all.

Syd is thrust into the online spotlight when she writes about an incident where her best friend’s roommate is followed home from a party and arrested for breaking and entering when he accidentally uses the wrong card to try to swipe into the dorm. In sharing the information she heard from witnesses and the young man’s fellow students, she receives messages of gratitude and solidarity from other Black college students and messages of hate from people who refuse to believe that the young man could possibly be anything other than a criminal.

Syd has to ask herself, is she an activist writer? Is it possible to divorce the political from her writing? In the face of the realities she and her fellow Black college students experience, can she write only about fashion without bringing politics into it? All of this figuring herself out is entangled with her relationships with her best friend Malcolm, her boyfriend Xavier, her sister Janaya, her friend Angie, and her mentor Zion.

I love this book. I’d recommend it to anybody who enjoys coming-of-age stories and especially anybody who is interested in how our online and offline identities intersect. The publisher says it’s perfect for fans of The Neighbor Favor by Kristina Forest and I think that’s a good comp. I could see Sydney growing up into someone like Lily, the main character in that book, and they both tackle that online-IRL spectrum of experience.

Book: Love in 280 Characters or Less
Author: Ravynn K. Stringfield
Publisher: Macmillan
Publication Date: April 15, 2025
Pages: 320
Age Range: Young Adult
Source of Book: ARC via NetGalley, Public library

Sun, 01 Feb 2026 10:09:17 -0500

📚💬 “All of my feelings and emotions spill out into what I wear and my life is deeply influenced by the people and things that I love, so my writing reflects all of that, in all of its complexity.” Ravynn K. Stringfield, Love in 280 Characters or Less

This quote from Sydney Ciara, the main character in Love in 280, feels a little like a mission statement for Dr. Ravynn K. Stringfield’s career. Y’all, this book has so much to say about digital writing, love, relationships that weave together the physical and digital, and what it means to be a Black artist in a world where Black love and joy are under constant threat. It’s so great. Full review coming later.

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 08:58:03 -0500

Today’s Book Riot Literary Activism newsletter is all about ways we can support Minneapolis through literary activism. I’m giving to this Donors Choose project to buy books for a school library in a historically underfunded school in St. Paul. 📚

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 16:45:05 -0500

Finished reading: Check, Please! Book 2: Sticks & Scones by Ngozi Ukazu 📚

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 15:13:01 -0500

Finished reading: Check, Please! Book 1: # Hockey by Ngozi Ukazu 📚

This is very cute and I’m glad I was able to read it in book format. I’m curious how the experience was different as a webcomic.

Sun, 25 Jan 2026 15:37:07 -0500

Finished reading: Every Step She Takes by Alison Cochrun 📚

I didn’t sob like with _Here We Go Again _ but I teared up much more frequently. I really love Alison Cochrun’s books.

Sat, 24 Jan 2026 10:33:06 -0500

🔖📚 Read Arkansas Puts Complete Ban on Incoming Books, Magazines, Other Materials for Incarcerated Individuals.

I just signed decARcerate’s statement calling for the reversal of this ban and you can, too, even if you don’t live in Arkansas.

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 08:13:08 -0500

Finished reading: The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever by Julia Quinn 📚

Sat, 17 Jan 2026 23:38:18 -0500

Finished reading: Ice Planet Barbarians by Ruby Dixon 📚

Thu, 15 Jan 2026 01:09:37 -0500

Finished reading: The Hating Game by Sally Thorne 📚

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 07:19:22 -0500

🔖📚📝 Read Behind the Writing: On Writers and Their Day Jobs by Ed Simon (Literary Hub)

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 02:16:30 -0500

Finished reading: Three Hard Lessons by Nikki Sloane 📚

Sat, 10 Jan 2026 16:38:36 -0500

Finished reading: Natural Born Charmer by Susan Elizabeth Phillips 📚

Sat, 03 Jan 2026 07:54:27 -0500

Finished reading: Hallowe’en Party by Agatha Christie 📚

📚 Quick Book Review: Call the Bee Doctor! How Science Is Saving Honey Bees by Sandra Markle

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 17:53:44 -0500

One of the units the first and second grade classes teach at our school is about pollinators, so last year I started keeping an eye out for books to support this unit. Call the Bee Doctor. How Science Is Saving Honey Bees caught my eye and I requested a review copy on NetGalley.

This is a short non-fiction book appropriate for middle grade readers. At school, I would recommend this as something for teachers to read aloud to students over multiple sittings in first or second grade.

Sandra Markle wrote The Case of the Vanishing Honeybees, published in 2013. After the book’s publication, she learned about the efforts of some scientists to help honeybee populations recover. She researched a variety of approaches apiologists were taking and shares what she learned in this book.

Markle discusses multiple reasons for the depletion of bee populations: pesticides, poor nutrition, parasites, and pathogens. She then explains approaches to managing these causes including vaccinated queen bees, providing food supplements to improve nutrition, and genetic modification. She concludes by discussing the impact of climate change on honeybees and providing recommendations for actions readers can take for helping honeybees.

Vibrant photos and clear diagrams illustrate the book. Markle provides a glossary, a list of her research sources, and books and websites readers can explore to learn more.

I would recommend this book as a purchase for elementary and middle school libraries as well as public libraries.

Book: Call the Bee Doctor! How Science Is Saving Honey Bees Author: Sandra Markle Publisher: Millbrook Press Publication Date: October 1, 2024 Pages: 48 Age Range: Middle Grade Source of Book: ARC via NetGalley, Public library

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 17:50:27 -0500

Finished reading: Call the Bee Doctor! by Sandra Markle 📚

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 17:09:02 -0500

Finished reading: Match Me If You Can by Susan Elizabeth Phillips 📚

📚 Looking Back on My 2025 Reading Year and Ahead to 2026

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 08:48:19 -0500

Hello, friends! It’s time to talk about my favorite thing to talk about: books! There are some glitchy issues with the way Micro.blog is tracking which books I read which year, so the numbers on my list are probably inflated, but I definitely read over 100 books this year. Fewer than 10 of those were children’s books. 86 were romance or romance-adjacent (like Sarah MacLean’s These Summer Storms). I track my romance reading at Pagebound as well as at Micro.blog.

2025 Reading Goals

My main reading goal for the year was to always be reading one more book than I’ve already read. I love this target because it’s achievable right up until December 31st. At some point I decide that’s it, I’ve met the goal and I’m not increasing it by one. I’m currently reading Susan Elizabeth Phillips’s Match Me If You Can and I’ll probably call the reading year done after that.

I had some stretch goals for the year, too. Let’s see how I did!

Read one nonfiction book a month.

I read six or seven adult nonfiction books this year, so I missed this target. But I have a couple nonfiction books on the go. I did shift my habits so my default while taking my meds and eating breakfast is to read nonfiction. The books I’m in the middle of are Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal by Mark Bittman and The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper by Roland Allen. I look forward to continuing reading these in the new year.

Stop requesting books from NetGalley that I don’t know anything about except what is on NetGalley.

I did this one!

Stop requesting books from NetGalley based on marketing emails they send me.

I did this one, too!

And as a bonus, I even have reviewed some of my older NetGalley requests. I’m trying to improve my feedback ratio and the easiest way to do that is to give feedback on books I’ve requested in the past.

Keep up with new releases from authors I love.

I’m going to say I did this. Here are some new releases from authors I love that I read this year:

All of Us Murderers by KJ Charles
Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One by Kristen Arnett
A Tropical Rebel Gets the Duke by Adriana Herrera
These Summer Storms by Sarah MacLean
A Curse Carved in Bone by Danielle L. Jensen
After Hours at Dooryard Books by Cat Sebastian

Any time I’m in a city with a romance-only bookstore, visit it.

CloseI I visited Peach Basket Books, which opened up in my city, and Friends to Lovers in Alexandria, Virginia. I didn’t make it to Bright Side Books and Wine, which is in a city near mine.

Looking Ahead to 2026

So, what do I want my reading to look like in 2026? I’m not even calling these goals. They’re just things I’m thinking about.

More memoirs and diaries
More children’s books
More of my old NetGalley requests

How has your reading year been?

Mon, 22 Dec 2025 02:50:19 -0500

Finished reading: Three Holidays and a Wedding by Uzma Jalaluddin 📚

Sun, 14 Dec 2025 18:23:03 -0500

Finished reading: I Will by Lisa Kleypas 📚

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 11:59:08 -0500

Finished reading: The Merriest Misters by Timothy Janovsky 📚

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 13:57:46 -0500

📚 Authors of children’s books, I am begging you: PLEASE have a newsletter. It’s hard for librarians to keep up with all your new releases and this would make it easier.

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 07:28:50 -0500

🔖📚 Read Friendship Is My Writing Process by Ana Hein (Electric Literature).

I love this. I’ve been thinking about writing a lot lately, and this really resonates with me.

Tue, 09 Dec 2025 10:43:20 -0500

🔖📚 Read Public libraries in TX, LA, and MS are no longer protected by the First Amendment.

This is disheartening as can be and I don’t have the eloquence to explain all the ways it’s terrible.

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 04:59:26 -0500

Finished reading: After Hours at Dooryard Books by Cat Sebastian 📚

Cat Sebastian’s work unfailingly delights me and makes me feel like there’s somebody out there as awkward as me, somebody who feels things as deeply as I do. I’m so glad I read this book.

Sat, 29 Nov 2025 12:33:11 -0500

📚💬 “Farming is not for everyone, but society chooses what kind of farmers to support, and what those farmers get to grow; they’re part of a larger system.” Mark Bittman, Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal

Sat, 29 Nov 2025 12:16:04 -0500

📚💬 “[The USDA’s] first loyalty has always been to the ag/food industry and to destroying any knowledge that would jeopardize the industry’s profits.” Mark Bittman, Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal

📚 Quick Book Review: Golemcrafters by Emi Watanabe Cohen

Fri, 28 Nov 2025 13:15:10 -0500

Faye and her brother Shiloh are half-Japanese and half-Jewish. At their school in Boston, other kids bully them. Over their spring break, their estranged grandfather visits, determines that it’s time to teach them how to build golems, and invites them back to his apartment in New York for training.

While there, Faye and Shiloh start having shared dreams where they are living the lives of other people with the same Hebrew names as them. Faye has the makings of a powerful golemcrafter, but she’s afraid of her power.

Emi Watanabe Cohen has meticulously researched the history of the Jewish diaspora and incorporated the history of Japanese people and Japanese Americans along with that history. Cohen provides an extensive bibliography.

This book is hard to read because it so clearly reflects the struggles Jewish people have faced and continue to face and explicitly connects the antisemitism of the past with the antisemitism of the present. Cohen presents this challenging story beautifully.

Structurally, the story wasn’t quite what I expected. I expected something with a sort of classic fantasy structure, but instead there is a lot of time spent in the dreams and a conclusion that felt to me like it should really be the beginning of the next part of the story rather than the end of the whole thing.

Readers looking for an exploration of Jewish history and why it’s important for Jewish people to hold onto who they are will find that here, from the perspective of modern kids.

I myself am three generations out from the Jewish people in my family who assimilated and intermarried so successfully that nobody was really around to pass on Jewish culture directly in our family. I’ve had to seek it out through other sources. As assimilated as my family has been, I still felt a deep connection to the story of these two kids and their ancestors.

Recommended for kids with interest in Jewish heritage and the commonalities between Jewish people and other oppressed peoples throughout history.

Book: Golemcrafters
Author: Emi Watanabe Cohen
Publisher: Levine Querido
Publication Date: November 12, 2024
Pages: 264
Age Range: Middle Grade
Source of Book: ARC via NetGalley, Public library

Fri, 28 Nov 2025 12:52:56 -0500

Finished reading: Golemcrafters by Emi Watanabe Cohen 📚

Mon, 24 Nov 2025 13:03:52 -0500

💬📚 “Hyperlexia is an early sign of golemcraft aptitude. Golems are made of words, just as Jews are made of books.” Emi Watanabe Cohen, Golemcrafters

This is a kid’s novel about two half-Japanese, half-Jewish middle schoolers who learn to make golems from their estranged grandfather.

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 17:27:46 -0500

Finished reading: Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid 📚

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 21:30:23 -0500

Finished reading: Game Changer by Rachel Reid 📚

📚 Thank goodness someone is thinking of the men (novelists). 🙄

Tue, 18 Nov 2025 23:36:22 -0500

The Guardian seems grateful that this year’s Booker winner puts masculinity back at the center of literary fiction, claiming that for a decade women have dominated litfic.

Novelist Caro Claire Burke looked at the numbers: men have ⁷won 60 - 80% of major book awards in the past decade. Seems like “female interiority” is sharing the stage.

Let’s imagine for a minute that litfic was dominated by women for a decade, contrary to fact.

Literary fiction as a term seems to have been popularized around 1980. That’s 35 years before women dominated. Take it back to modernists in the 1920s. Men dominated for 90 years, then. Or go back to the beginning of printing: 500+ years.

Even if women were winning 70 - 80% of literary prizes (and we aren’t), there’s a long way to go before anyone needs to worry that men are being pushed to the margins of literature.

Sun, 16 Nov 2025 07:56:42 -0500

Finished reading: Run Posy Run by Cate C. Wells 📚

Fri, 14 Nov 2025 10:41:58 -0500

Finished reading: Dream A Little Dream by Susan Elizabeth Phillips 📚

If your public library, like mine, is having a delay in ordering new books due to the closure of Baker and Taylor, may I suggest checking out an author’s backlist? Susan Elizabeth Phillips would be a great choice.

Wed, 12 Nov 2025 04:29:52 -0500

Finished reading: The Magpie Lord by Kj Charles 📚

KJ Charles’s writing is so reliably delightful.

Fri, 07 Nov 2025 21:17:24 -0500

Finished reading: Black Rabbit Hall by Eve Chase 📚

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 20:46:17 -0500

💬📚 “…I feel like both her confidante and her baby…” Eve Chase, Black Rabbit Hall

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 19:03:36 -0500

Finished reading: A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas 📚

So far I’ve liked each book in this series better than the last.

Tue, 28 Oct 2025 16:54:29 -0500

Finished reading: What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher 📚

Why is fungus so goth? I don’t know but it is and it’s excellent. A very different take on gothic fungus from Mexican Gothic.

Mon, 27 Oct 2025 01:24:19 -0500

Finished reading: Again The Magic by Lisa Kleypas 📚

Sun, 26 Oct 2025 20:54:36 -0500

Finished reading: I Must Say by Martin Short 📚🎧

Martin Short is a delight and listening to him read his memoir is wonderful.

Thu, 23 Oct 2025 04:49:21 -0500

Finished reading: The Cherry Robbers by Sarai Walker 📚

Tue, 21 Oct 2025 19:56:14 -0500

Finished reading: Worth Fighting For by Jesse Q. Sutanto 📚

Sat, 18 Oct 2025 12:03:34 -0500

🔖📚 Read The Pushkin job: unmasking the thieves behind an international rare books heist.

Book heist! Fascinating stuff!

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 16:43:24 -0500

Finished reading: The Death of Jane Lawrence: A Novel by Caitlin Starling 📚

Wed, 15 Oct 2025 06:38:54 -0500

🔖📚 Read A Texas District Has Just Banned Students from Secondary School Libraries.

In New Braunfels ISD, middle and high school libraries will be closed for an indefinite amounts of time while books are reviewed. Read the article for suggestions on how to defend the freedom to read in Texas.

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 17:40:48 -0500

Finished reading: A Court of Mist and Fury (a Court of Thorns and Roses, 2) by Sarah J. Maas 📚

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 13:55:16 -0500

🔖📚 Read To Haunt and Be Haunted: On the Exhumation of Edgar Allan Poe by Ed Simon (Literary Hub).

I love that Simon is able to draw lines from Poe’s work to his burial, from his burial to his exhumation, to multiple author’s taphephobia to Barthes and the death of the author.

Fri, 10 Oct 2025 20:49:41 -0500

Finished reading: The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang 📚🎧

I love what I know of Esmé Weijun Wang, as a teacher, writer, and fellow traveler through the wilds of chronic illness. She reads the audiobook and her sweet voice lends such warmth to her beautiful essays.

Fri, 10 Oct 2025 08:12:34 -0500

🔖📚 Read New NC law means teachers are providing fewer books for their students to read.

This bill requires schools to publish a complete catalog of all texts available to students. It creates an administrative burden and has a chilling effect on students’ access to materials.

Mon, 06 Oct 2025 22:51:28 -0500

Finished reading: The Cloisters by Katy Hays 📚

This is on the list of key titles for gothic fiction at NoveList Plus. It definitely skews more dark academia than traditional Gothic. More ambition and dangerous thirsd for knowledge than dread and family secrets.

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 09:48:18 -0500

Almost every gothic novel since Rebecca is Rebecca, and Rebecca is Jane Eyre. 📚

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 09:41:51 -0500

Finished reading: All of Us Murderers by KJ Charles 📚

Listen, I already knew KJ Charles was great because I read most of her Society of Gentlemen series and loved it. But after reading this bit of gothic perfection, I want us to become best friends.

Sat, 04 Oct 2025 07:35:43 -0500

📚 This has been a good week in book news for me. Kresley Cole announced a new series spun off of Immortals After Dark and preorders are open for Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows epistolary follow-up.

Fri, 03 Oct 2025 15:56:36 -0500

Finished reading: Worth Any Price by Lisa Kleypas 📚

Mon, 29 Sep 2025 08:09:00 -0500

Finished reading: Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One by Kristen Arnett 📚

There are some authors whose writing (and fine, online presence) makes yyou want to be friends with them. For me, Kristen Arnett is one of those writers. Maybe someday.

Sun, 28 Sep 2025 23:06:20 -0500

📚💬 “Oh, this clown will never run out of bits, because every gag is taken from the endless wellspring of her own self-loathing!” Kristen Arnett, Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One

Sun, 28 Sep 2025 05:38:15 -0500

📚💬 “How can I turn this into a bit, I wonder. That’s how my brain always chooses to process trauma or grief or anxiety.” Kristen Arnett, Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One

Fri, 26 Sep 2025 22:30:06 -0500

Finished reading: With Teeth by Kristen Arnett 📚

Kristen Arnett’s books are sad, funny, and ultimately hopeful. I don’t often miss the Florida of my early childhood, but when I read her work, I do. I tore through this one in one day.

Fri, 26 Sep 2025 00:09:58 -0500

Finished reading: Home for the Challah Days by Jennifer Wilck 📚

Sweet, like an apple dipped in honey. A Hallmark movie if Hallmark made Rosh Hashanah & Yom Kippur movies.

Tue, 23 Sep 2025 21:18:45 -0500

Finished reading: When Strangers Marry by Lisa Kleypas 📚

Tue, 23 Sep 2025 07:32:54 -0500

Finished reading: The Border of Paradise by Esmé Weijun Wang 📚🎧

Esmé Weijun Wang writes beautiful prose. This book is intense and upsetting; over and over again I found myself sympathizing with a character only to be appalled by then when perspective shifted away from them and to someone else. Read the NPR review before picking this one up.

Sat, 20 Sep 2025 09:24:27 -0500

Finished reading: Lady Sophia’s Lover by Lisa Kleypas 📚

Mon, 15 Sep 2025 18:07:22 -0500

Finished reading: Where Dreams Begin by Lisa Kleypas 📚

Somehow both low-conflict and high-angst.

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 11:38:32 -0500

Kelly J. Baker and Book Riot continue to do critical reporting on the current administration’s impact on the Institute of Museum and Library Services in today’s piece about Freedom Trucks. 📚

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 09:47:35 -0500

📚 I kind of want to have this quote from Anne Trubek as a poster, cross-stitch, or tattoo:

conceive of reading as pure, unadulterated pleasure. A hobby, a way to shift gears, a way to get away from the damned phone, a thing you can do in bed, an outlet for curiosity. A way to counter loneliness, a way to soothe, free therapy. Conceive of it in any way you can that strips it of whatever pressures, should’s, competitions you may have placed on it.

Mon, 08 Sep 2025 15:31:52 -0500

Finished reading: A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas 📚

Fri, 05 Sep 2025 15:15:01 -0500

Finished reading: The Season by Sarah MacLean 📚

I just love Sarah MacLean so much.

Wed, 03 Sep 2025 07:45:34 -0500

🔖📚 Read Duke cut librarians. It never told the faculty they worked with.

This is one example of many where the people with whom library staff collaborate didn’t have the opportunity to advocate for them.

Tue, 02 Sep 2025 16:54:55 -0500

Finished reading: Waking Up With the Duke by Lorraine Heath 📚

So great.

Sun, 31 Aug 2025 11:46:12 -0500

Finished reading: Pleasures of a Notorious Gentleman by Lorraine Heath 📚

Fri, 29 Aug 2025 13:37:14 -0500

Today is a great day to tell your representative to support library funding in next year’s budget (FY26). Let’s be sure Congress comes back from recess to find a flood of messages supporting library funding. 📚

Wed, 27 Aug 2025 21:54:44 -0500

💬📚 “How many times could a mother’s heart break? An infinite number. Each time her children were hurt.” Lorraine Heath, Pleasures of a Notorious Gentleman

Tue, 26 Aug 2025 08:48:10 -0500

Finished reading: Passions of a Wicked Earl by Lorraine Heath 📚

Lorraine Heath is just so reliably excellent.

Mon, 25 Aug 2025 06:52:12 -0500

Finished reading: The Invisible Parade by Leigh Bardugo and John Picacio 📚

I’m very obsessed with this Día de Muertos picture book with an Own Voices illustrator. So much of the storytelling is in the images and it’s a gorgeous collaboration. Highly recommend for reading around Día de Muertos or anytime. 💀

Thu, 14 Aug 2025 06:36:51 -0500

I just renewed my family’s membership to the Friends of the Durham Library. Have you joined your library’s Friends organization? It’s a straightforward way to support an institution that’s losing a lot of structural support right now. 📚

Tue, 12 Aug 2025 21:21:16 -0500

Finished reading: Vanish by Sophie Jordan 📚

Sat, 09 Aug 2025 21:54:51 -0500

Finished reading: Storm Front by Jim Butcher 📚🎧

James Marsters reads the audiobook and he’s great.

Sat, 09 Aug 2025 17:48:13 -0500

Finished reading: Protecting What’s His by Tessa Bailey 📚

Fri, 08 Aug 2025 09:22:26 -0500

Finished reading: The Last Wicked Scoundrel by Lorraine Heath 📚

Fri, 08 Aug 2025 07:33:38 -0500

Finished reading: Midnight Pleasures With a Scoundrel by Lorraine Heath 📚

This is an absolutely bananas book. A great ride.

Tue, 05 Aug 2025 13:27:05 -0500

Finished reading: Stranger in My Arms by Lisa Kleypas 📚

Sun, 03 Aug 2025 22:17:42 -0500

Finished reading: Because You’re Mine by Lisa Kleypas 📚

Sun, 03 Aug 2025 07:29:17 -0500

💬📚 “Each [major innovation in industrial farming] has benefited the biggest [farms] and penalized the smallest.” Mark Bittman, Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal

Sat, 02 Aug 2025 09:02:21 -0500

📚 Leigh Bardugo has a picture book about death and grief that she wrote with John Picacio available for pre-order.

[This book is] for kids like me who spent a lot of time in graveyards reading epitaphs, who didn’t quite feel safe among the living.

This book is for me. 💀🖤

Thu, 31 Jul 2025 23:17:47 -0500

Finished reading: Somewhere I’ll Find You by Lisa Kleypas 📚

Sat, 26 Jul 2025 07:52:49 -0500

Finished reading: The Bladesmith Queen by Sarah MacLean 📚

Wed, 23 Jul 2025 12:31:36 -0500

📚 Hear me out: sun-soaked summer gothic literature. These Summer Storms by Sarah MacLean. The Villa by Rachel Hawkins. What else?

Mon, 21 Jul 2025 18:47:20 -0500

📚 Reading Zoraida Córdova’s Labyrinth Lost and realized I had the perfect bookmark for any book by this author.

Mon, 21 Jul 2025 13:34:38 -0500

Finished reading: Surrender to the Devil by Lorraine Heath 📚

Lorraine Heath is so good at the job.

Sat, 19 Jul 2025 15:08:43 -0500

Finished reading: A Curse Carved in Bone by Danielle L. Jensen 📚

This companion-sequel to A Fate Inked in Blood spends the first third or so revisiting the first book but picks up in the middle third and is gripping and full of revelations for the last third. I highly recommend the duology.

Sun, 13 Jul 2025 21:22:06 -0500

Finished reading: These Summer Storms by Sarah MacLean 📚

I will follow Sarah MacLean anywhere, from Whitechapel to Narragansett Bay. If you like family narratives with a strong romantic thread, read this book.

Sun, 13 Jul 2025 20:33:57 -0500

Finished reading: Three Simple Rules by Nikki Sloane 📚🎧

Sat, 12 Jul 2025 12:30:30 -0500

“There was something about trains.” 💬📚 Reading Sarah MacLean’s These Summer Storms while actually on a train.

Thu, 10 Jul 2025 12:52:39 -0500

Finished reading: The Rose & the Dagger by Renée Ahdieh 📚

Another excellent book!

Sat, 05 Jul 2025 19:10:14 -0500

Finished reading: Managed by Kristen Callihan 📚🎧

Sat, 05 Jul 2025 10:50:34 -0500

📚 In Animal, Vegetable, Junk, Mark Bittman writes 19th century farmers wouldn’t let land lie fallow or rotate crops because it made the most sense to force land to yield the most profit. This led to soil exhaustion. I think the same thing happens when we try to extract maximum labor from people.

Tue, 01 Jul 2025 18:45:33 -0500

Finished reading: The Wrath & the Dawn by Renée Ahdieh 📚

So great.

📚 Book Review: Once Upon You & Me by Timothy Janovsky

Fri, 27 Jun 2025 09:37:37 -0500

Once Upon You and Me by Timothy Janovsky is a contemporary romance. On the closed door/open door/in the room/in the bed heat scale, this book puts you in the bed with the main characters. Here’s the publisher’s description of the book:

When Taylor Frost’s boss, Amy, flies him across the country to prep for her daughter’s sweet sixteen at the Storybook Endings Resort in the Catskills, the solo mission is well within his wheelhouse. Taylor is excellent at his job—except, he’s probably not supposed to flirt with the resort’s mountain man of a manager, Ethan Golding. Because the rugged older man is also the birthday girl’s father, aka Amy’s ex-husband. Oops.

For Ethan, his divorce seemed like the bad ending to his romantic story. And now, making his daughter’s sweet sixteen dreams come true is the closest he’ll get to the kind of magic happiness in fairy tales. Until adorable Taylor has him wondering if maybe this is just the beginning of a more erotic kind of bedtime story…

The only problem is Amy. And how very not okay she’d be with the chemistry between her assistant and her ex.

If only forbidden flings ever led to happily-ever-afters…

What I loved

I always love Timothy Janovsky’s characters, and Taylor and Ethan are two more delightful guys I loved watching fall in love. Ethan has ADHD that’s only recently been diagnosed. He’s spent a lot of his life feeling like his challenges with executive function are moral failings, and especially like his ex-wife Amy saw them that way. He’s a dad who lives on the opposite coast from his daughter, which breaks his heart a little all the time. He’s bi which sets him up for frustrations when he tries to date, as the men he meets are always surprised by this and often aren’t comfortable dating someone who is also attracted to women. He is deeply lonely.

Taylor is the second oldest kid in a family with many siblings. His older brother took off young and his parents are inattentive and flakey, which leaves him as the primary caretaker for all his sibs. He’s very good at taking care of people. He’s been working as Amy’s assistant for three years, waiting for a promotion, and quietly making sure she has everything she needs to keep her business running smoothly. But it seems like no one ever takes care of him.

In my favorite romances, the people in the relationship each are able to be exactly what the other person needs. Taylor is able to meet Ethan’s ways of coping with ADHD with compassion. Ethan shows Taylor that he deserves to be cared for as much as he cares for others. I love how these two are like puzzle pieces specifically carved to fit together.

I also love the way fairy tales suffuse the story. The resort where it’s set is inspired by fairy tales. Taylor and Ethan read fairy tales together. Taylor starts out their time together staying in the Snow White Cottage. I’m sure Timothy Janovsky chose this fairy tale to highlight her specifically. I’m choosing to imagine it’s because he is a Disney fan and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the first Disney fairy tale feature adaptation.

What I wanted more of

There’s nothing Timothy Janovsky left out. I would just be happy to spend more time with these guys.

What I need to warn you about.

Timothy Janovsky includes warnings at the beginning of the book, so check those out. There is biphobia and some judgmental responses to Ethan’s ADHD. There’s also discussion of Ethan’s father living with MS that has progressed so far as to limit his mobility.

Who should read this book

People looking for a low-conflict, high heat contemporary where two charming men connect and complete each other’s lives.

Book: Once Upon You and Me Author: Timothy Janovsky Publisher: Afterglow Books by Harlequin Publication Date: April 29, 2025 Pages: 288 Age Range: Adult Source of Book: ARC via NetGalley, Library

Tue, 24 Jun 2025 06:47:28 -0500

It’s very Kimberly that I just had a nightmare in which the nightmarish occurrence was that the public library had pushed the YA bookshelves so close together that they were inaccessible. 📚

Fri, 20 Jun 2025 00:04:10 -0500

Finished reading: To Have and to Heist by Sara Desai 📚

Super cute and fun!

Mon, 16 Jun 2025 13:07:19 -0500

📚💬 “When no help comes from outside, a lost crop becomes a famine.” Mark Bittman, Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal

Sat, 14 Jun 2025 11:54:12 -0500

Finished reading: Once Upon You and Me by Timothy Janovsky 📚

Another delight from Timothy Janovsky. Full review coming soon!

Fri, 13 Jun 2025 23:00:39 -0500

Finished reading: Idol by Kristen Callihan 📚🎧

Tue, 10 Jun 2025 11:24:36 -0500

Finished reading: Tangled Up In You by Christina Lauren 📚

A super cute Tangled retelling!

📚 Book Review: A Tropical Rebel Gets the Duke by Adriana Herrera

Sun, 08 Jun 2025 11:21:21 -0500

A Tropical Rebel Gets the Duke by Adriana Herrera is a historical romance set mostly in Paris during the 1889 Exposition Universelle, about a Dominican-Mexican doctor and the duke who falls for her. On the closed door/open door/in the room/in the bed heat scale, this book puts you in the bed with the main characters. Here’s the publisher’s description of the book:

Physician Aurora Montalban Wright takes risks in her career, but never with her heart. Running an underground women’s clinic exposes her to certain dangers, but help arrives in the unexpected form of the infuriating Duke of Annan. Aurora begrudgingly accepts his protection, then promptly finds herself in his bed. New to his role as a duke, Apollo César Sinclair Robles struggles to embrace his position. With half of society waiting for him to misstep and the other half looking to discredit him, Apollo never imagined that his enthralling bedmate would become his most trusted adviser. Soon, he realizes the rebellious doctor could be the perfect duchess. But Aurora won’t give up her independence, and her secrets make her unsuitable for the aristocracy. When a dangerous figure from their past returns to threaten them, Apollo whisks Aurora away to his villa in the French Riviera. Far from the reproachful eye of Parisian society, can Apollo convince Aurora that their bond is stronger than the forces keeping them apart?

What I loved

This is the third book in Adriana Herrera’s Las Léonas trilogy, and I have loved every book in the series. Herrera gives us three best friends, each having her own adventure. By the time it’s Aurora’s turn to be the heroine, her friends Luz Alana and Manuela have found their own partners and the circle of the three friends has expanded to include Luz Alana’s husband, Evan, and Manuela’s partner, Cora. Evan and Cora often serve as a Greek chorus for the hero, Apollo, and it’s delightful.

Apollo himself is an incredibly dreamy hero. Aurora has been running herself ragged tending to patients both night and day. She has neglected her own needs. Apollo notices her taking care of others and not taking care of herself, and takes it upon himself to take care of her.

Aurora is a fierce doctor, the first woman licensed to practice medicine in Mexico, collaborating with colleagues in Paris to establish a network of women’s clinics. She dedicates herself to her work. Her growing attraction to Apollo gets her out of her head and into her body.

Adriana Herrera always gives us a delightful cast of supporting characters and here she gives us Brazilian boxing club owner Gilberto and his Vietnamese partner Minh, whose mother farms lavender in the French countryside. Apollo’s body man, Jean-Louis, is a giant who Apollo appoints to escort Aurora on dangerous night patient visits but whom Aurora quickly wins over to doing what she asks more than what Apollo does.

I feel like I’m not doing the book justice here.

Adriana Herrera writes love scenes that tie the emotional and physical relationships of the main characters to each other in a way that both titillates and tugs at heartstrings. The more Aurora and Apollo get to know each other, the more each of them impresses the other with their commitment to helping the people they serve: patients in Aurora’s case, and tenants in the duchy in Apollo’s case.

Romance readers love a broken character, and I especially love the way Aurora is broken, the way she is constantly fighting to prove her worth while also caring deeply for her patients.

What I wanted more of

I found myself lingering over this text rather than devouring it, I think because I didn’t want Las Léonas to end. There’s nothing I wish Adriana Herrera would have included in this book that she didn’t. I just hope she keeps writing historicals.

What I need to warn you about.

The clinics where Aurora works offer services that were perfectly legal in Paris in 1889, but also those that were not, especially contraceptive services and abortions. Abortions and abortion aftercare are discussed in the book. Herrera has a note about this at the beginning of the book, so definitely look at an ebook preview or the first few pages of a physical copy to read that. Aurora is put in physical danger and there is reference to poor treatment at the hands of a peer in her past as well as reference to the same peer continuing this behavior in the book’s present.

Who should read this book

Lovers of historical romance. People who want a historical romance that isn’t set in England or during the Regency. Readers who want to see fierce Afro-Latina women defying the limitations society tries to put on them and finding love. Readers who love found family.

Book: A Tropical Rebel Gets the Duke Author: Adriana Herrera Publisher: Canary Street Press Publication Date: February 4, 2025 Pages: 432 Age Range: Adult Source of Book: ARC via NetGalley, Purchase

Sat, 07 Jun 2025 14:10:18 -0500

Finished reading: A Tropical Rebel Gets the Duke by Adriana Herrera 📚

I love this book. Full review soon!

Sun, 01 Jun 2025 00:37:24 -0500

Finished reading: Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places by Colin Dickey 📚

A fascinating book about what our ghosts say about us.

Fri, 30 May 2025 07:47:27 -0500

📚💬📝 “Tending to your body and mind is a way to tend to your work.” Sarah Fawn Montgomery, Nerve: Unlearning Workshop Ableism to Develop Your Disabled Writing Practice

Fri, 30 May 2025 07:46:27 -0500

📚💬📝 “A disabled life is a life interrupted.” Sarah Fawn Montgomery, Nerve: Unlearning Workshop Ableism to Develop Your Disabled Writing Practice

Fri, 30 May 2025 07:05:28 -0500

Finished reading: An Island Princess Starts a Scandal by Adriana Herrera 📚

Another re-read. I basically cried through the last two chapters.

Thu, 29 May 2025 21:49:07 -0500

📚💬 “In that moment Manuela began counting her blessings to have found friends who not only came to the rescue but who knew there was no problem in life one could not tackle armed with good cheese and champagne.” Adriana Herrera, An Island Princess Starts a Scandal

Wed, 28 May 2025 08:32:50 -0500

📚💬 “Ghost stories, for good or ill, are how cities make sense of themselves: how they narrate the tragedies of their last, weave cautionary tales for the future.“Colin Dickey, Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places 👻

Sun, 25 May 2025 13:43:24 -0500

Finished reading: A Caribbean Heiress in Paris by Adriana Herrera 📚

This is a re-read. It’s a testament to Adriana Herrera’s work that even though it’s only six months since I originally read it, I found this riveting and didn’t want to skip or skim at all.

Sat, 24 May 2025 21:53:05 -0500

Finished reading: Firelight by Sophie Jordan 📚

Wed, 21 May 2025 08:37:06 -0500

📚💬 “…surely ghosts will follow wherever there is bad record keeping.” Colin Dickey, Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places 👻

Sat, 17 May 2025 07:11:45 -0500

📚💬 “Here, then, is a central paradox in the way that ghosts work: to turn the living into ghosts is to empty them out, rob them of something vital; to keep the dead alive as ghosts is to fill them up with memory and history, to keep alive a thing that would otherwise be lost.” Colin Dickey, Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places, writing about the dissonance between Richmond’s history as the home of slave trade and torture and the fact that all Richmond’s ghosts are white 👻

Fri, 16 May 2025 01:43:00 -0500

Finished reading: Kiss the Girl by Zoraida Córdova 📚

This is such a perfect move of Disney’s The Little Mermaid to contemporary romance. There is so much perfection to be had here, such magic work taking movie moments and making them part of our world. If you’re an Ariel person, you should read it.

Thu, 15 May 2025 22:10:33 -0500

📚💬 “Romantic heroes are the greatest cryptids of all.” Zoraida Córdova, Kiss the Girl 🧜‍♀️

Wed, 14 May 2025 10:46:00 -0500

Finished reading: By the Book by Jasmine Guillory 📚

A sweet Beauty and the Beast retelling.

Wed, 14 May 2025 07:38:05 -0500

North Carolinians, use this tool from EveryLibrary to contact your state senator about H636, a bill that “threatens student rights, undermines local control of school libraries, and risks costly censorship battles across the state.” I’ll try to do a detailed breakdown of the bill soon. 📚

Tue, 13 May 2025 11:36:41 -0500

📚💬 “The contemporary attitude toward Spiritualism as a particularly ridiculous belief stems in no small part from the misogyny with which it was attacked in the second half of the nineteenth century.” Colin Dickey, Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places 👻

Tue, 13 May 2025 11:00:13 -0500

📚💬 “Ghosts, you could say, flock to women left alone.” Colin Dickey, Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places 👻

Mon, 12 May 2025 12:41:26 -0500

📚💬 “Even though the soles of her feet felt like she was walking on broken glass, she glided across the greenroom and stood face-to-face with her father.” Zoraida Córdova bringing a little Hans Christian Andersen to her Disney-inspired Little Mermaid romance retelling, Kiss the Girl 🧜‍♀️

Mon, 12 May 2025 07:16:08 -0500

📚💬 “Live in a house for any length of time, and you make it your own memory palace.” Colin Dickey, Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places 👻

Mon, 12 May 2025 06:43:51 -0500

📚💬 “Uncomfortable truths, buried secrets, disputed accounts: ghost stories side out of the shadowlands, a response to the ambiguous and poorly understood.” Colin Dickey, Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places 👻

Mon, 12 May 2025 06:39:34 -0500

📚💬 “Those aspects of a life that are discontinuous, fragmented, or unexpected, are made whole through the ghost story.” Colin Dickey, Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places 👻

Mon, 12 May 2025 06:37:28 -0500

📚💬 “A haunted house is a memory palace made real: a physical space that retains memories that might otherwise be forgotten or that might remain only in fragments.” Colin Dickey, Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places 👻

Mon, 12 May 2025 06:28:13 -0500

📚💬 “The past we’re most afraid to speak aloud of in the bright light of day is the same past that tends to linger in the ghost stories we whisper in the dark.” Colin Dickey, Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places 👻

Fri, 09 May 2025 16:45:57 -0500

Finished reading: If the Shoe Fits by Julie Murphy 📚

Super cute modern Cinderella retelling.

Tue, 06 May 2025 20:08:03 -0500

Finished reading: Deep Blue (Survival Instincts, #0.5) by Adriana Anders 📚

Mon, 05 May 2025 16:54:46 -0500

Thank you @cygnoir@social.lol for pointing the way to this beautiful thread about the power of connections we make online. 📚💬 “She strode the earth clad in the invisible armor of their virtual companionship.” ― Lev Grossman, The Magician King

Mon, 05 May 2025 03:19:35 -0500

Finished reading: Between the Devil and Desire by Lorraine Heath 📚

Fri, 02 May 2025 16:22:48 -0500

Finished reading: In Bed With the Devil by Lorraine Heath 📚

Lorraine Heath is great at her job.

Wed, 30 Apr 2025 17:10:53 -0500

Finished reading: Born In Ice by Nora Roberts 📚

This one made me a little weepy.

Mon, 28 Apr 2025 13:11:24 -0500

Finished reading: Oathbound by Tracy Deonn 📚

Ugh so good, Tracy Deonn is so wonderful and I hate that I have to wait a long time for the next book in the Legendborn Cycle and I also know writers need time to do their work. Probably will do a full series re-read ahead of the next.

Fri, 25 Apr 2025 12:57:23 -0500

Finished reading: Radiant Child: The Story of Young Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat by Javaka Steptoe 📚

A gorgeous picture book biography.

Fri, 25 Apr 2025 08:01:23 -0500

📚💬 " ChatGPT has access to every poem ever written, at least in theory, but it can’t feel anything when it generates a poem from a prompt. Is this still poetry?" John Warner, More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI

Thu, 24 Apr 2025 08:17:53 -0500

📚💬 “It’s a near certainty that generative AI can have some positive effects on human writing, but for that to be true, we must hold fast to what makes writing meaningful to humans.” John Warner, More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI

Thu, 24 Apr 2025 07:31:43 -0500

📚💬 “What do we make of a technology that is simultaneously undeniably powerful, has access to all the information in the world, and can produce outputs at a speed unmatchable by humans, but at the same time is also untethered from reality?” John Warner, More Than Words

Thu, 24 Apr 2025 07:27:51 -0500

📚💬 “The things ChatGPT is ‘smarter’ at… are relatively limited as compared to our human capacities for experience, reflection, analysis, and creativity…” John Warner, More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI

Thu, 24 Apr 2025 07:20:38 -0500

📚💬 “It’s not that ChatGPT makes stuff up. It has no capacity for discerning something true from something not true. Truth is irrelevant to its operations.” John Warner, More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI

Thu, 24 Apr 2025 07:19:17 -0500

📚💬 “Large language models do not ‘write.’ They generate syntax.” John Warner, More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI

Wed, 23 Apr 2025 16:29:29 -0500

This is happening and I’m very excited. 📚

Tue, 22 Apr 2025 07:17:30 -0500

📚💬 “Removing thinking from writing renders an act not writing.” John Warner, More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI

Tue, 22 Apr 2025 07:14:34 -0500

📚💬 “…ChatGPT cannot write. Generating syntax is not the same thing as writing. Writing is an embodied act of thinking and feeling. Writing is communicating with intention.” John Warner, More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI

Tue, 22 Apr 2025 07:12:39 -0500

📚💬 “…segregating people by those who are allowed and empowered to engage with a genuine process of writing from those who outsource it to AI is hardly democratic. It mistakes product for process.” John Warner, More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI

Mon, 21 Apr 2025 17:48:20 -0500

Finished reading: Born in Fire by Nora Roberts 📚

Technically I read this in the binding of the Irish Born trilogy that has all 3 books, but I’m giving myself credit for each individual book as I finish it. La Nora writes such a moving story.

Mon, 21 Apr 2025 17:19:48 -0500

📚💬 “‘That was it,’ Maggie said with a laugh. ‘I was bright. Brie was sweet.’” Nora Roberts, Born in Fire

Mon, 21 Apr 2025 09:08:35 -0500

📚💬 “All you need for Paris, Maggie, is a romantic heart.” Nora Roberts, Born in Fire

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 13:05:39 -0500

Finished reading: Before She Was Harriet by Lesa Cline-Ransome 📚

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 13:00:54 -0500

Finished reading: Thank You, Omu! (Caldecott Honor Book) by Oge Mora 📚

A lovely picture book about generosity with super cool cut paper mixed media illustrations!

Thu, 17 Apr 2025 12:57:09 -0500

Finished reading: Shadow’s Heart by Kresley Cole 📚

Sun, 13 Apr 2025 13:56:53 -0500

Finished reading: What I Did For a Duke by Julie Anne Long 📚

Oh wow. I love both main characters in this one. The heroine is so tired of being seen as a reliable dog geyser person. The hero is deliberately prickly and mysterious. I love them.

Fri, 11 Apr 2025 12:48:10 -0500

Finished reading: The Secret Garden by Mariah Marsden and Hanna Luechtefeld 📚

The Secret Garden is one of my favorite books from childhood and this is an excellent graphic novel adaptation that captures its magic beautifully.

Thu, 10 Apr 2025 08:26:23 -0500

💬📚 “Rather than seeing ChatGPT as a threat that will destroy things of value, we should be viewing it as an opportunity to reconsider exactly what we value and why we value those things.” John Warner, More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI

Tue, 08 Apr 2025 16:24:53 -0500

Finished reading: I Kissed an Earl by Julie Anne Long 📚

A headstrong lady! Shipboard romance! As always, Julie Anne Long does the job.

Mon, 07 Apr 2025 09:20:53 -0500

💬📚 “Do you want to look back on a life of items crossed off lists drawn up in response to the demands of others? Or do you want to hang on to, and repeat, and remember, the thrill of discovering things on your own?” Rob Walker, The Art of Noticing

Sun, 06 Apr 2025 11:06:20 -0500

Finished reading: How to Tell When We Will Die by Johanna Hedva 📚

This book challenged me. I don’t know the last time I had to look up several new-to-me words in a book, but we’re talking decades. This book was full of essays that resonated deeply with my own experiences and others that were like a window into a completely different world. I’m so glad I read it.

Sun, 06 Apr 2025 09:43:30 -0500

📚💬 “I want a life capacious enough to contain what I choose to be true about myself and that which I did not but have nevertheless learned to work with, to use, to wield.” Johanna Hedva, How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom

Sun, 06 Apr 2025 09:16:55 -0500

📚💬 “…kindness is a form of magic we can choose to know how to do. What matters is attending to suffering, no matter why it’s there.” Johanna Hedva, How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom

Thu, 03 Apr 2025 12:55:30 -0500

Finished reading: Let the Children March by Monica Clark-Robinson 📚

A great picture book about the Children’s Crusade in Birmingham in 1963, perfect model of how kids can make a difference.

Tue, 01 Apr 2025 11:29:35 -0500

Finished reading: The Undefeated by Kwame Alexander 📚

A gorgeous picture book poem.

Mon, 31 Mar 2025 22:38:15 -0500

Finished reading: Since the Surrender by Julie Anne Long 📚

Julie Anne Long is really good at the job. Lots of yearning in this one, in the best way.

Sat, 29 Mar 2025 06:57:36 -0500

📚💬 “In illness, the now feels like punishment.” Johanna Hedva, How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom

Sat, 29 Mar 2025 06:38:17 -0500

📚💬 “Maybe the blast radius of disability destroys everything and also makes new worlds. Maybe these are worlds of paradox: both the radical limitation of what you used to be able to do and an explosion of the horizon around what you thought would ever be possible.” Johanna Hedva, How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom

Sat, 29 Mar 2025 06:28:50 -0500

📚💬 “The most anti-capitalist protest is to care for another and to care for yourself. To take on the historically feminized and therefore invisible practice of nursing, nurturing, caring. To take seriously each other’s vulnerability and fragility and precarity, and to support it, honor it, empower it. To protect each other, to enact and practice a community of support. A radical kinship, an interdependent sociality, a politics of care.” Johanna Hedva, How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom

Fri, 28 Mar 2025 10:58:45 -0500

Finished reading: How to Steal a Galaxy by Beth Revis 📚

Super fun but also upsetting because of the social commentary middle book in a space heist romance trilogy.

Fri, 28 Mar 2025 07:50:47 -0500

📚💬 “…this is the conundrum all sick and disabled people live with. To be pathologized is to be allowed to survive.” Johanna Hedva, How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom

Thu, 27 Mar 2025 13:59:36 -0500

📚💬 “When you have chronic illness, life is reduced to a relentless rationing of energy.” Johanna Hedva, How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom

Thu, 27 Mar 2025 13:45:55 -0500

Finished reading: Swim Team by Johnnie Christmas 📚

A great graphic novel!

Thu, 27 Mar 2025 12:10:35 -0500

📚💬 “How can you throw a brick through the window of a bank if you can’t get out of bed?” Johanna Hedva, How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom

Thu, 27 Mar 2025 10:28:18 -0500

📚💬 “How many of us have already met our doom and then had to get out of bed and go on?” Johanna Hedva, How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom

Thu, 27 Mar 2025 07:41:22 -0500

📚💬 “Disability describes a condition that is both more othered from and profoundly closer to one’s body than any other political condition that I can think of.” Johanna Hedva, How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom

Thu, 27 Mar 2025 07:31:18 -0500

📚💬 " All the ways we cannot do something, all the ways we won’t be able to do something—what sort of political dreams can come from this as a starting place?" Johanna Hedva, How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom

Thu, 27 Mar 2025 07:18:59 -0500

📚💬 " What about stories that are enlivened, vivified, not despite illness and disability but because of them?" Johanna Hedva, How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom

Thu, 27 Mar 2025 02:15:06 -0500

Finished reading: Like No Other Lover by Julie Anne Long 📚

So great. Julie Anne Long is excellent both at the plot level and at the prose level.

Fri, 21 Mar 2025 13:36:33 -0500

Finished reading: Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman 📚

As great as everyone says. It’s striking how much chronic illness and grad school prepped me for accepting rather than struggling with the ideas here. This is a perfect book to read when you’re in your 40s.

Fri, 21 Mar 2025 09:21:46 -0500

📚💬 “…having large amounts of time but no opportunity to use it collaboratively isn’t just useless but actively unpleasant…” Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

Fri, 21 Mar 2025 09:05:50 -0500

📚💬 “…the presence of problems in your life… isn’t an impediment to a meaningful existence, but the very substance of one.” Oliver Burkeman, Forty Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

Fri, 21 Mar 2025 08:54:07 -0500

📚💬 “…reading Is the sort of activity that largely operates according to its own schedule.” Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

Thu, 20 Mar 2025 23:40:39 -0500

Finished reading: The Perils of Pleasure by Julie Anne Long 📚

A book with an awesome heroine and a delightful hero. Julie Anne Long is new to me and seems bound to become one of my favorite historic romance authors.

Thu, 20 Mar 2025 08:17:40 -0500

📚💬 “Results aren’t everything. Indeed, they better not be, because results always come later—and later is always too late.” Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

Thu, 20 Mar 2025 08:13:35 -0500

📚💬 " …a good hobby probably should feel a little embarrassing; that’s a sign you’re doing it for its own sake rather than for some socially sanctioned outcome." Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

Wed, 19 Mar 2025 11:51:01 -0500

📚💬 " In order to most fully inhabit the only life you ever get, you have to refrain from using every spare hour for personal growth." Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

Tue, 18 Mar 2025 12:08:51 -0500

📚💬 “…if you’re procrastinating on something because you’re worried you won’t do a good enough job, you can relax—because judged by the flawless standards of your imagination, you definitely won’t do a good enough job. So you might as well make a start.” Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

Mon, 17 Mar 2025 12:06:59 -0500

📚💬 " The real measure of any time management technique is whether or not it helps you neglect the right things." Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

Sun, 16 Mar 2025 20:14:52 -0500

Finished reading: Full Speed to a Crash Landing by Beth Revis 📚

The first novella in a series of three. At first I thought it might not be the right moment for me to read this, but I’m glad I stuck with it. The payoff is great.

Sun, 16 Mar 2025 04:21:21 -0500

Finished reading: Dark Russian Angel by Odette Stone 📚

Sat, 15 Mar 2025 19:42:36 -0500

📚💬 “… there’s no reason to believe you’ll ever feel ‘on top of things,’ or make time for everything that matters, simply by getting more done.” Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

Sat, 15 Mar 2025 09:02:14 -0500

📚💬 “… once you become convinced that something you’ve been attempting is impossible, it’s a lot harder to keep on berating yourself for failing.” Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

Fri, 14 Mar 2025 19:53:52 -0500

Finished reading: Winter’s Orbit by Everina Maxwell 📚

I really enjoyed this! Sad boys falling in love in space.

Mon, 10 Mar 2025 08:58:13 -0500

Finished reading: Whiteout by Adriana Anders 📚

Like if The Thing, that Antarctica episode of The X-Files, and a Michael Crichton book all had a baby with a romance novel. So, you know, pretty great.

Sat, 08 Mar 2025 05:18:30 -0500

Finished reading: The Earl Takes All by Lorraine Heath 📚

A wild premise deftly handled.

Thu, 06 Mar 2025 08:33:48 -0500

💬📚📝 “…a story’s as much house or garden as song.” Jane Alison, Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative

Thu, 06 Mar 2025 07:48:10 -0500

Finished reading: Falling Into Bed with a Duke by Lorraine Heath 📚

Lorraine Heath knows the job. Minerva Dodger is a delightful heroine.

Wed, 05 Mar 2025 18:09:10 -0500

Finished reading: Romancing the Beat by Gwen Hayes 📚

A very useful and straightforward book about romance novel structure.

Mon, 03 Mar 2025 13:51:43 -0500

Finished reading: The Heroine’s Journey: For Readers, Writers, and Fans of Pop Culture by Gail Carriger 📚

This is a great book about story structure that helped me understand, among other things, why Jean-Luc Picard is my favorite Star Trek captain.

Mon, 03 Mar 2025 13:07:35 -0500

📚💬📝 “…what are we writers but Machiavellian manipulators of a stranger’s emotions?” Gail Carriger, The Heroine’s Journey

Fri, 28 Feb 2025 23:06:01 -0500

Finished reading: A Duke Worth Falling For by Sarah MacLean 📚

I love Sarah MacLean so much.

Thu, 27 Feb 2025 17:52:43 -0500

Finished reading: The Worst Best Man by Mia Sosa 📚

Cute rom-com with a heroine who has put walls around her heart and has to learn when to open the gate and let someone in.

Sun, 23 Feb 2025 13:02:33 -0500

Finished reading: To Catch a Raven by Beverly Jenkins 📚

Another awesome heroine.

Sat, 22 Feb 2025 18:50:35 -0500

Finished reading: Anything You Want by Derek Sivers 📚

Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:26:13 -0500

Finished reading: Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott 📚

A classic for a reason.

Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:25:29 -0500

💬📚 “Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.” Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Sat, 22 Feb 2025 09:37:07 -0500

💬📚 “Don’t be afraid of your material or your past. Be afraid of wasting any more time obsessing about how you look and how people see you. Be afraid of not getting your writing done.” Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Sat, 22 Feb 2025 08:01:32 -0500

💬📚 “You wouldn’t be a writer if reading hadn’t enriched your soul more than other pursuits.” Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Fri, 21 Feb 2025 13:01:14 -0500

💬📚 “… everything we need in order to tell our stories in a reasonable and exciting way already exists in each of us.” Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Fri, 21 Feb 2025 09:56:31 -0500

💬📚 “I don’t think you have time to waste not writing because you are afraid you won’t be good enough at it, and I don’t think you have time to waste on someone who does not respond to you with kindness and respect.” Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Thu, 20 Feb 2025 10:20:56 -0500

💬📚 “Writing is about hypnotizing yourself into believing in yourself, getting some work done, then unhypnotizing yourself and going over the material coldly.” Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Thu, 20 Feb 2025 09:42:02 -0500

💬📚 “Take the attitude that what you are thinking and feeling is valuable stuff, and then be naive enough to get it all down on paper.” Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Sun, 16 Feb 2025 23:23:05 -0500

Finished reading: Wild Rain by Beverly Jenkins 📚

I loved the heroine in this one. Spring is a tough rancher who has been cut off from her feelings for years, except for the feelings she has for horses.

Sat, 15 Feb 2025 10:56:08 -0500

Finished reading: Rebel by Beverly Jenkins 📚

Ms. Bev knows her business and does it well.

Wed, 12 Feb 2025 09:08:18 -0500

📚💬 “We can’t hide in romance. We have to find strength in it.” Adriana Herrera in today’s episode of Fated Mates

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 23:04:34 -0500

Finished reading: After Hours on Milagro Street by Angelina M. Lopez 📚

So great. It made me cry. Jeremiah, the hero book, is a phenomenal example of an engaged scholar.

Tue, 04 Feb 2025 15:43:11 -0500

📚 Happy book birthday to Adriana Herrera and A Tropical Rebel Gets the Duke!

Sun, 02 Feb 2025 00:05:16 -0500

Finished reading: Rule of the Aurora King by Nisha J. Tuli 📚

Tue, 28 Jan 2025 21:39:19 -0500

Finished reading: A Seditious Affair by KJ Charles 📚

A Tory pursuing seditionists for the Home Office and a radical pamphleteer fall in love in Regency England and it’s just as perfect as you’d expect. 🔥🔥🔥🔥

Sun, 26 Jan 2025 14:22:15 -0500

Finished reading: A Fashionable Indulgence by KJ Charles 📚

Just excellent.

Wed, 22 Jan 2025 13:28:07 -0500

📚💬 “Kill the protestors, arrest the leaders, gaol the journalists. It’s what they do. It’s what tyrants do.” K. J. Charles, A Fashionable Indulgence

Just… In case you were wondering whether romance tackles serious issues.

📚 Reading notes on ON TYRANNY: TWENTY LESSONS FROM THE TWENTIETH CENTURY by Timothy Snyder

Tue, 21 Jan 2025 08:52:13 -0500

Do not obey in advance.
Defend institutions.

choose an institution you care about and take its side.

Mine is libraries. I’ll be posting resources on defending libraries soon.

Beware the one party state.

Any future elections will be a test of American traditions.

I fear we’ve lost this already. What can we do? In the face of the challenge to the NC State Supreme Court election especially?

Take responsibility for the face of the world.
Remember professional ethics.

For me, this is about protecting library patrons’ privacy.

Be wary of paramilitaries.
Be reflective if you must be armed.
Stand out.
Be kind to our language.

Make an effort to separate yourself from the internet. Read books.

The effort to define the shape and significance of events requires words and concepts that elude us when we are entranced by visual stimuli.

Believe in truth.

Post-truth is pre-fascism.

Investigate.

The individual who investigates is also the citizen who builds.

Once we subliminally accept that we are watching a reality show rather than thinking about real life, no image can actually hurt the president politically.

Make eye contact and small talk.

You might not be sure today or tomorrow, who feels threatened in the United States. But if you affirm everyone, you can be sure that certain people will feel better.

Having old friends is the politics of last resort. And making new ones is the first step toward change.

Practice corporeal politics.
Establish a private life.
Contribute to good causes.

…one element of freedom is the choice of associates, and one defense of freedom is the activity of groups to sustain their members.

Learn from peers in other countries.
Listen for dangerous words.

People who assure you that you can only gain security at the price of liberty usually want to deny you both.

The feeling of submission to authority might be comforting, but it is not the same thing as actual safety.

It is the government’s job to increase both freedom and security.

Be calm when the unthinkable arrives.

For tyrants, the lesson of the Reichstag fire is that one moment of shock enables an eternity of submission.

Be a patriot.

The point is not that Russia and America must be enemies. The point is that patriotism involves serving your own country.

nationalist ≠ patriot

A patriot… wants the nation to live up to its ideals, which means asking us to be our best selves.

A patriot says that it could happen here, but that we will stop it.

Be as courageous as you can.

EPILOGUE

We will have to repair our own sense of time if we wish to renew our commitment to liberty.

The whole notion of disruption is adolescent: it assumes that after the teenagers make a mess, the adults will come and clean it up. But there are no adults. We own this mess.

In the politics of eternity, the seduction by a mythological past prevents us from thinking about possible futures. The habit of dwelling on victimhood dulls the impulse of self-correction.

The danger we now face is of a passage from the politics of inevitability to the politics of eternity, from a naive and flawed sort of democratic republic to a confused and cynical sort of fascist oligarchy.

To understand one moment is to see the possibility of being the cocreator of another. History permits us to be responsible: not for everything, but for something.

History gives us the company of those who have done and suffered more than we have.

I’ll say that those of us who are neurodivergent and disabled may need to modify #s 12 and 13. But the sense of them is to interact in meat-space with other people. Get to know your community. Show up in more ways than posting online. And even if we struggle to make eye contact or can’t move our bodies in ways that facilitate protest, we can find ways to meet people and show up for them.

Mon, 20 Jan 2025 20:36:28 -0500

Finished reading: On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder 📚

This was a good book to read today, full of helpful ideas. Reading notes coming soon. Highly recommend.

Sun, 19 Jan 2025 00:15:08 -0500

Finished reading: The Ruin of Gabriel Ashleigh by KJ Charles 📚

A fun short story. A hot 🔥🔥🔥.

Thu, 16 Jan 2025 10:27:35 -0500

Finished reading: Priest by Sierra Simone 📚

Y’all, this is both explicit and taboo. Content warning for suicide (one of the MC’s siblings, before the book takes place but the MC finding her is mentioned). A VERY hot 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥.

Wed, 15 Jan 2025 09:16:04 -0500

💬📚📝 “For some of us, good books and beautiful writing are the ultimate solace, even more comforting than exquisite food.” Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Wed, 15 Jan 2025 09:14:51 -0500

💬📚📝 “…we no longer need Chicken Little to tell us the sky is falling, because it already has. The issue now is how to take care of one another.” Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Wed, 15 Jan 2025 09:13:09 -0500

💬📚📝 “…a moral position is not a message. A moral position is a passionate caring inside you.” Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Wed, 15 Jan 2025 09:06:14 -0500

💬📚📝 “The core, ethical concepts in which you most passionately believe are the language in which you are writing.” Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Sun, 12 Jan 2025 16:22:50 -0500

Finished reading: Dark Lover by J.R. Ward 📚

Listened to the audiobook. This one is very much of its time (2005).

Sat, 11 Jan 2025 23:16:02 -0500

Finished reading: How to Tame a Beast in Seven Days by Kerrelyn Sparks 📚

The pacing in this is wild, and by wild I mean slow. But it was interesting enough to keep me reading.

Mon, 06 Jan 2025 20:34:56 -0500

Finished reading: Captive Prince by C. S. Pacat 📚

This book is well-written and compelling. It’s also intense and full of potentially triggering moments. I recommend perusing the full Does the Dog Die? page for it before reading.

Sat, 04 Jan 2025 18:27:48 -0500

Finished reading: The Serpent and the Wolf by Rebecca Robinson 📚

I loved this! A woman who has to learn to let love in, a man who is patient enough to wait for her to do so, a coven of friends, political machinations, and magic. Chef kiss! 🔥🔥🔥

Thu, 02 Jan 2025 07:24:59 -0500

💬📚 “A new notebook is not about starting over—it’s about leveling up.” - Ryder Carroll, The Bullet Journal Method

📚 2025 Book Releases I'm Excited About

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 17:30:59 -0500

FEBRUARY

4 A Tropical Rebel Gets the Duke by Adriana Herrera

MARCH

4 Shadow’s Heart by Kresley Cole, Oathbound by Tracy Deonn

APRIL

15 Love in 280 Characters or Less by Ravynn K. Stringfield
29 Once Upon You & Me by Timothy Janovsky

MAY

13 A Curse Carved in Bone by Danielle L. Jensen

JULY

8 These Summer Storms by Sarah MacLean
15 A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna

SEPTEMBER

2 By the Horns by Ruby Dixon
30 A Mannequin for Christmas by Timothy Janovsky

📚 Anticipating My Reading Year 2025

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 10:10:09 -0500

In anticipation of my reading this year, I want to articulate one main goal and a few stretch goals.

My main reading goal is to read one more book than I already have. This means the total for the year is a moving target

Here are some stretch goals, meaning I want to remember to do them but I want them to be low pressure:

Read one nonfiction book a month.
Stop requesting books from NetGalley that I don’t know anything about except what is on NetGalley.
Stop requesting books from NetGalley based on marketing emails they send me.
Keep up with new releases from authors I love.
Any time I’m in a city with a romance-only bookstore, visit it.

Mon, 30 Dec 2024 22:59:51 -0500

Finished reading: Trial of the Sun Queen by Nisha J. Tuli 📚

📚 My Reading Year, 2024

Fri, 27 Dec 2024 10:40:12 -0500

Like last year, I’m going to share some notes on my reading before popping the full list of all the books I read this year in here.

I read 106 books this year, including 4 picture books/easy readers. As with last year, I overwhelmingly read romance. This is about twice as much as I normally read, which can be attributed to two things: how propulsive so many romance books are, and the fact that I was freelancing and only doing that minimally from January through July. This left a LOT of time for reading. I read two or three books a week in that period. I’ve slowed down to my usual one a week since beginning my part-time school librarian job in August.

I did deep dives into the backlist of Kresley Cole and Sarah MacLean, thanks to the podcast Fated Mates. This podcast has been the greatest influence on my choice of what to read this year. I read a lot of old X-Men comics reading along with the book The Best There Is at What He Does: Examining Chris Claremont’s X-Men. I’m still in the middle of that project, which I started after watching X-Men ‘97. I think I’m going to pick it back up soon.

In just the past couple of months, I have really found my way into fantasy romance. My favorite and the series that really got me here is Milla Vane’s barbarian fantasy romance series, A Gathering of Dragons. It answers the question, “What if grimdark, but romance?” which is not something I thought I would want when I first started this tear of romance reading but actually is exactly the thing I want right now.

Here are all the books I read this year:

Wed, 18 Dec 2024 10:57:39 -0500

Finished reading: A Fate Inked in Blood by Danielle L. Jensen 📚

Viking fantasy romance/romantasy. Not exactly a cliffhanger but not NOT a cliffhanger, either. Highly recommend. 🔥🔥🔥🔥

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 10:01:34 -0500

💬📚📝 “…in order to be a writer, you have to be reverent.” Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 09:55:15 -0500

💬📚📝 “Writing is about communicating what’s going on. Now, if you ask me, what’s going on is that we’re all up to here in it, and probably the most important thing is that we not yell at one another.” Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Timeless.

Sat, 14 Dec 2024 14:21:10 -0500

Finished reading: Bull Moon Rising by Ruby Dixon 📚

I really enjoyed this, mostly for the fantasy and emotional stuff. Love a nerdy heroine and a bull-headed hero (literally, in this case). The uniquely minotaurish monster romance bits were not the main source of its appeal for me. Definitely a very hot 🔥🔥🔥🔥. Not for the faint of heart.

Fri, 13 Dec 2024 09:35:44 -0500

📚 2024 has been a good year for queer sommelier romances.

Tue, 10 Dec 2024 08:46:09 -0500

💬📚📝 “All you can give us is what life is about from your point of view. You are not going to be able to give us the plans to the submarine. Life is not a submarine. There are no plans.” Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Tue, 10 Dec 2024 08:43:38 -0500

💬📚📝 “The development of relationship creates plot.” Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Mon, 09 Dec 2024 11:53:55 -0500

Finished reading: Swordcrossed by Freya Marske 📚

Lovely! 🔥🔥🔥🔥

Fri, 06 Dec 2024 16:27:58 -0500

📺📚📓 Read The Great Experiment: race and authorship in Shonda Rhimes’s Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story by Claudia Calhoun (Adaptation).

This is an eminently readable and beautifully argued journal article.

Fri, 06 Dec 2024 00:25:00 -0500

Finished reading: A Touch of Stone and Snow by Milla Vane 📚

I might love this even more than A Heart of Blood and Ashes. A mild 🔥🔥🔥🔥.

Mon, 02 Dec 2024 08:47:53 -0500

💬📚 “When you make a business, you get to make a little universe where you control all the laws. This is your utopia.” Derek Sivers, Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur

Mon, 02 Dec 2024 08:41:49 -0500

💬📚 “I’m a student, not a guru.” Derek Sivers, Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur

Tue, 26 Nov 2024 14:57:53 -0500

Finished reading: A Heart of Blood and Ashes by Milla Vane 📚

So, so good. I’m so happy to have found my fantasy romance sweet spot. 🔥🔥🔥🔥

Thu, 21 Nov 2024 08:42:06 -0500

I love my job and my family, and yet I find myself resenting that I have to do anything today besides sit around reading A Heart of Blood and Ashes. 📚

Wed, 20 Nov 2024 17:59:32 -0500

Finished reading: The Beast of Blackmoor by Milla Vane 📚

Milla Vane asks, “What if grimdark, but romance?” and I answer, “Yes please!” So great. 🔥🔥🔥🔥

Wed, 20 Nov 2024 12:38:34 -0500

Finished reading: Killer Underwear Invasion! How to Spot Fake News, Disinformation, and Conspiracy Theories by Elise Gravel 📚

This is a great book, aimed at kids. I’m definitely going to order it for our library. I might try to write a full review later.

Mon, 18 Nov 2024 14:34:41 -0500

Finished reading: Nobody’s Baby But Mine by Susan Elizabeth Phillips 📚

Most of this book is set in the Smoky Mountains near Asheville and I just kept thinking about all the aftermath of Hurricane Helene up there. This book was published in 1997.

🔥🔥🔥

Sun, 17 Nov 2024 08:51:43 -0500

Finished reading: A Caribbean Heiress in Paris by Adriana Herrera 📚

I love Adriana Herrera’s Las Leonas series so much. This is a very hot 🔥🔥🔥🔥. Paris, Scotland, an awesome woman running a business and taking care of her sister. Top notch. Highly recommend.

Fri, 15 Nov 2024 23:14:55 -0500

Finished reading: Some Writer! The Story of E. B. White by Melissa Sweet 📚

White wrote the first novels I remember reading: Stuart Little, Charlotte’s Web, and The Trumpet of the Swan. This children’s biography had me tearing up several times. Highly recommend.

Fri, 15 Nov 2024 14:01:18 -0500

💬📚 “Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.” E. B. White quoted in Some Writer! The Story of E. B. White

Fri, 15 Nov 2024 13:58:53 -0500

💬📚 “Anyone who writes down to children is simply wasting his time. You have to write up, not down. Children are demanding. They are the most attentive, curious, eager, observant, sensitive, quick, and generally congenial readers on earth…. Children are game for anything. I throw them hard words, and they backhand them over the net.” E. B. White, quotes in Some Writer! The Story of E. B. White by Melissa Sweet

Sat, 09 Nov 2024 11:26:27 -0500

Currently reading: Memento Mori: The Art of Contemplating Death to Live a Better Life by Joanna Ebenstein 📚

Sat, 09 Nov 2024 11:25:06 -0500

📚💬 “By learning to live with our fear of death, we also learn to live with our fear of that which we cannot control, to sit with the mystery at the heart of life and still appreciate, and with great joy, the life we have been given.” Joanna Ebenstein, Memento Mori: The Art of Contemplating Death to Live a Better Life

Tue, 05 Nov 2024 13:29:02 -0500

Finished reading: Heaven, Texas by Susan Elizabeth Phillips 📚

🔥🔥🔥

Sat, 02 Nov 2024 17:35:44 -0500

Finished reading: Lord of Scoundrels by Loretta Chase 📚

The. Best. 🔥🔥🔥

Tue, 29 Oct 2024 00:24:22 -0500

Finished reading: Captives of the Night by Loretta Chase 📚

So good. Loretta Chase knows the job. 🔥🔥🔥

Mon, 21 Oct 2024 05:22:37 -0500

Finished reading: The Truth About Him by M. O’Keefe 📚

🔥🔥🔥🔥

Mon, 21 Oct 2024 05:21:55 -0500

Finished reading: Everything I Left Unsaid by M. O’Keefe 📚

🔥🔥🔥🔥

Wed, 16 Oct 2024 19:01:39 -0500

Finished reading: You Had Me at Happy Hour by Timothy Janovsky 📚

Of course Timothy Janovsky can write a book that has incredible mental illness & neurodiversity rep, is adorable, and scorches, all at the same time. A very hot 🔥🔥🔥🔥, almost 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥.

Mon, 14 Oct 2024 20:48:48 -0500

💬📚 “His brain doesn’t work like everyone else’s, so he’s largely stopped expecting understanding from others.” Timothy Janovsky, You Had Me at Happy Hour

We love a romance between two neurosparkly kings.

Sat, 12 Oct 2024 21:53:53 -0500

Finished reading: The Pairing by Casey McQuiston 📚

I love it. I’m a sucker for a second-chance romance. Casey McQuiston always does a great job. This book made me want to eat and travel and love with my whole heart. 🔥🔥🔥🔥

Fri, 11 Oct 2024 07:51:50 -0500

📚 The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper by Roland Allen looks like exactly the kind of thing many of my Internet friends and acquaintances would love.

Fri, 11 Oct 2024 07:38:13 -0500

Finished reading: The Villa by Rachel Hawkins 📚

This is a modern gothic. I bounced off of it in print but audio worked beautifully for me, as there are different perspectives and time periods, plus documentary-style bits. Highly recommend.

Tue, 08 Oct 2024 07:59:07 -0500

Finished reading: The Lion’s Daughter by Loretta Chase 📚

An older book by a luminary of the genre. I love when romance includes a lot of adventure and boy does this ever. 🔥🔥🔥

Wed, 02 Oct 2024 09:15:53 -0500

Finished reading: If I Stopped Haunting You by Colby Wilkens 📚

📚 Book Review: Hungry Bones by Louise Hung

Mon, 30 Sep 2024 10:25:27 -0500

Hungry Bones by Louise Hung is a spooky middle grade novel about a 13 year old girl who learns there’s a ghost in her new house. Here’s the publisher’s description:

A chilling middle grade novel about a girl haunted by a hungry ghost.

Molly Teng sees things no one else can.> By touching the belongings of people who have died, she gets brief glimpses into the lives they lived. Sometimes the “zaps” are funny or random, but often they leave her feeling sad, drained, and lonely.

The last thing Jade remembers from life is dying. That was over one hundred years ago. Ever since then she’s been trapped in the same house watching people move in and out. She’s a ‘hungry ghost’ reliant on the livings’ food scraps to survive. To most people she is only a shadow, a ghost story, a superstition.

Molly is not most people. When she moves into Jade’s house, nothing will ever be the same—for either of them. After over a century alone, Jade might finally have someone who can help her uncover the secrets of her past, and maybe even find a way out of the house—before her hunger destroys them both.

I requested this book from NetGalley for two reasons. First, I’m familiar with Louise Hung from her work with The Order of the Good Death, as producer of Ask a Mortician, and as one of the hosts of Death in the Afternoon. I was excited to see she’d written a book. Second, the kids at work always want more scary books and I thought it would be good to see if we might want to order this one. (Spoiler: We will.)

What I loved

My favorite thing about this book is what makes it so unique and a story unique to Louise Hung: it is steeped in Chinese beliefs about ghosts, the experience of being Chinese American, and the way shared culture can help us build found family. Molly’s mom, Dot, has hauled her all over the country in an attempt to protect Molly from social consequences of her spooky abilities. But often this has meant Molly has been the only Chinese kid at school, and almost always it means she’s not in one place long enough to make friends. When they move to Buckeye Creek, Texas, Molly expects it will be the same. But it’s not the same, because this time instead of just seeing zaps of dead people’s lives, Molly meets a ghost who, like her, is Chinese American. Jade has been haunting this house for well over 100 years, and Molly is the first person who’s lived in it that looks like her. This understandably means so much to Jade. Together, they work to figure out how to help Jade learn about her past and help Molly settle into a place she doesn’t want to be her future.

Molly and her mom befriend Hazel and Rose Loh, sisters who own a Chinese barbecue restaurant. The restaurant is situated in International Village, a strip mall where most of the businesses are owned by immigrants from all over the world or their descendants. The connection with the Loh sisters expands Molly’s circle and helps her see that maybe Buckeye Creek will be different from all the places she’s lived before.

One of the key roles the Loh sisters play in Molly’s life is as mentors who share with her the history of Chinese migrants that is usually left out of America’s dominant westward expansion narrative. As many as 20,000 Chinese migrants worked to build America’s First Transcontinental Railroad, working in poor conditions for low pay and often dying due to the dangerous nature of the work. The Loh sisters tell Molly that not long after the railroad was finished, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, banning Chinese migrants from immigrating to the United States and limiting the movement of Chinese migrants and Chinese American people who were already in the U.S.All of this history comes in through the narration of individuals’ experiences, so that rather than feeling like a history lecture it’s grounded in empathy. (See the Publisher’s Weekly review of Hungry Bones for more on this.)

The Loh sisters’ restaurant is also the site of the strongest incident in the book that demonstrates how this history of racism against Chinese people echoes into today and gives Molly an opportunity to shine as she stands up for her found family.

Louise wrote a post for Teen Librarian Toolbox about her experiences being “the Asian kid” and writing her story then and now. I highly recommend it. She also wrote a piece for The Order of the Good Death about hungry ghosts, the Chinese spiritual belief at the foundation of the supernatural elements in Hungry Bones.

What I wanted more of

The pacing at the start of the book took a little while for me to settle into, and I would have been happy for it to be scarier sooner. That said, I think the atmospheric build as written works if you know that’s what you’re walking into. The book is mostly spooky and only slightly scary; Jade herself is not a scary ghost, but the hungry monster within her can be truly terrifying.

What I need to warn you about

As you may have guessed from the part where I talked about what I loved, the book does not shy away from depicting racism, including horrible treatment of Chinese American domestic workers. It also depicts illness (I think tuberculosis?) in some detail.

As I said, I’ll be ordering this for our school library. I expect it to have a long hold list once one kid gets ahold of it and starts telling others about it.

Bonus: If you join the Order of the Good Death at the Tier Two Member level, you can participate in Mortal Media Club. Louise will be speaking on October 24th. The event is titled “Hungry Ghost Month: When it’s Time to Feed Your Dead.” (I’m a member but that’s my only vested interest in the organization.)

Book: Hungry Bones
Author: Louise Hung
Publisher: Scholastic
Publication Date: October 1, 2024
Pages: 336
Age Range: Middle Grade
Source of Book: ARC via NetGalley

Thu, 26 Sep 2024 12:09:36 -0500

Finished reading: Operation: Cover-Up by Tate Godwin 📚

Mon, 23 Sep 2024 12:02:35 -0500

Finished reading: Hungry Bones by Louise Hung 📚

Full review coming soon!

Sat, 21 Sep 2024 06:52:58 -0500

📚 Read Even Books Have Ancestors or That Time I Was a Fourth Grade Publishing Mogul by Louise Hung (Teen Librarian Toolbox).

I’m reading Louise’s debut novel Hungry Bones right now. I love this piece.

Wed, 18 Sep 2024 03:15:28 -0500

Finished reading: Knockout by Sarah MacLean 📚

Another extra hot 🔥🔥🔥🔥.

Bless Sarah MacLean for giving us a short, round, dark-haired, brilliant, weird heroine who fears she’s too much and a man who can never get enough of her.

Fri, 13 Sep 2024 18:45:27 -0500

📚 The ebook of Gothic Charm School: An Essential Guide for Goths and Those Who Love Them by Jillian Venters is on sale at Amazon and B&N! I love this book and have it in both print and e. Highly recommend.

Tue, 10 Sep 2024 18:55:17 -0500

Finished reading: Heartbreaker by Sarah MacLean 📚

Whoo. This is a hot 🔥🔥🔥🔥 on the romance.io scale. Romance is unmatched and so is Sarah MacLean.

Mon, 09 Sep 2024 13:44:31 -0500

📚💬 “…the deeply rooted culture of the Jews of Eastern Europe was utterly destroyed between 1939 and 1945.” Ashkenazi Herbalism: Rediscovering the Herbal Traditions of Eastern European Jews by Deatra Cohen and Adam Siegel

📚 Book Review: When We Flew Away by Alice Hoffman

Mon, 09 Sep 2024 09:48:28 -0500

When We Flew Away by Alice Hoffman is a middle grade novel that imagines what Anne Frank’s life might have been like before she had to move to the attic of her father’s office building. Here’s the publisher’s description:

Bestselling author Alice Hoffman delivers a stunning novel about one of contemporary history’s most acclaimed figures, exploring the little-known details of Anne Frank’s life before she went into hiding.

Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl has captivated and inspired readers for decades. Published posthumously by her bereaved father, Anne’s journal, written while she and her family were in hiding during World War II, has become one of the central texts of the Jewish experience during the Holocaust, as well as a work of literary genius.

With the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, the Frank family’s life is turned inside out, blow by blow, restriction by restriction. Prejudice, loss, and terror run rampant, and Anne is forced to bear witness as ordinary people become monsters, and children and families are caught up in the inescapable tide of violence.

In the midst of impossible danger, Anne, audacious and creative and fearless, discovers who she truly is. With a wisdom far beyond her years, she will become a writer who will go on to change the world as we know it.

Critically acclaimed author Alice Hoffman weaves a lyrical and heart-wrenching story of the way the world closes in on the Frank family from the moment the Nazis invade the Netherlands until they are forced into hiding, bringing Anne to bold, vivid life.

Based on extensive research and published in cooperation with the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, When We Flew Away is an extraordinary and moving tour de force

.I’m going to diverge from my usual review format for this book and be a bit more stream of consciousness. But I hope you’ll still get a sense of the book and whether it might be for you, someone you love, or someone you work with.

I’ve never read anything by Alice Hoffmann before, and many other reviews talk about her using lyrical language and that being a struggle for them. For me, the early chapters of the book read like a middle grade nonfiction book, describing Anne’s experiences, with little dialogue or direct action portrayed. I think that’s a bit tricky, especially for a book like this that isn’t nonfiction but draws heavily on research and might be hard to distinguish from nonfiction.

The lack of action and dialogue made it hard for me to read this at first, but eventually I really got into imagining Anne’s life in the city of Amsterdam, and that’s what really brought the book to life for me. I think many of us only imagine Anne in hiding during the Holocaust, rarely thinking about the many years of her life before this event that both defined her literary voice and led to her death.

That’s the great joy in When We Flew Away for me: thinking about her daily life before going into hiding. Anne went to bookstores. She ate ice cream. She flirted with boys. She ice skated. And all of these activities and more are things she does in this book.

Like many women, I imagine, Anne Frank’s diary was very important to me as a young person. I first read it in sixth or seventh grade. I read it again before auditioning for the play adaption of it when I was in ninth grade, and I think I’ve probably read it again as an adult. One of the things that’s so remarkable about Anne Frank’s diary is how true to the developmental experiences of a wide variety of Western teenagers across time and place it is. I think many young people reading it can see their own dreams and anxieties, family relationships and hopes for romance, in Anne’s writing.

Because Anne’s writing has been so important to me, I made it a priority to visit the Anne Frank House while I was in Amsterdam. Before you go into the attic, you walk through rooms with video and audio about the time Anne was living in and the expansion of Nazi occupation into the Netherlands. Then you walk through the bookcase hiding a secret door and up a very narrow staircase (typical of staircases in Amsterdam) and find yourself in the attic.

Wandering through the rooms, I was disheartened by how hard it was to feel connected to that time long ago and the people who lived there, even though I was in their space. I was surprised by the things that really made me feel closer to their experience: the pencil lines on the wall tracking Anne and Margot’s heights. The view of a tree through the one place Anne could see the sky.

The wall where the Franks kept track of Anne and Margot’s growth. Over two years, Margot grew only 1 centimeter, but Anne grew over 13 centimeters. This photo is from the Anne Frank House’s digital collection.

And of course, seeing the diary itself. That was the most powerful thing of all.

The view out the window of the cafe at the Anne Frank House. Anne Frank would have seen this canal and these houses when she went to visit her father at her office, and as she entered the building when she was moving into the attic.

In the same way that seeing these things helped me understand Anne’s experiences, reading this book and thinking about the things I experienced in Amsterdam beyond the Anne Frank House added a whole new dimension to my understanding of her life. Anne walked the same streets I did. She looked at the same houses I did. She went to the same parks.

A tree in the Vondelpark, a park Anne visited.

Readers who need action and dialogue to stay engaged with a book will struggle with this book, but readers who want details that help them imagine other people’s lives more fully will find so much here.

A bronze statue of Anne Frank is around the corner from the house itself.

Book: When We Flew Away
Author: Alice Hoffman
Publisher: Scholastic
Publication Date: September 17, 2024
Pages: 304
Age Range: Middle Grade
Source of Book: ARC via NetGalley

Wed, 04 Sep 2024 21:50:48 -0500

Finished reading: Bombshell by Sarah MacLean 📚

Sarah MacLean is just so good. This is like… A 3.5 on the romance.io scale? The language is slightly (but only slightly) euphemistic; it’s pretty clear exactly what’s happening where.

Tue, 27 Aug 2024 21:13:38 -0500

Finished reading: Love, Come to Me by Lisa Kleypas 📚

This has a steam rating of 🔥🔥🔥.

A very early Kleypas. Be warned: the hero is a Confederate veteran. Apparently, he opposed slavery but fought for the Confederacy anyway.

Thu, 22 Aug 2024 19:32:02 -0500

Finished reading: When We Flew Away: A Novel of Anne Frank Before the Diary by Alice Hoffman 📚

Full review forthcoming.

Wed, 21 Aug 2024 07:31:49 -0500

Finished reading: When Grumpy Met Sunshine by Charlotte Stein 📚

Super cute, very hot. 🔥🔥🔥🔥 on the romance.io scale.

Sat, 17 Aug 2024 06:26:50 -0500

Finished reading: This Will Be Fun by E B Asher 📚

Full review forthcoming.

📚 Book Review: Hers for the Weekend by Helena Greer

Sun, 11 Aug 2024 15:09:40 -0500

This is a romance. I would say on the romance.io steam rating scale, this is 🔥🔥: behind closed doors.

Helena Greer’s romances set at Carrigan’s Christmasland, a magical lodge/Christmas tree farm in the Adirondacks owned by a Jewish family, come to a close with Hers for the Weekend. Carrigan’s is a place as real to me as many of the actual magical-feeling places I’ve been in my life and the Carrigan’s Crew are all immensely lovable people with supremely relatable flaws.

Here’s the publisher’s description:

No-nonsense Tara Sloane Chadwick is practically perfect. An impeccably mannered Southern belle, she’s the youngest to make partner at her law firm and still friends with all her exes. However, when the woman behind her most humiliating breakup invites Tara to her wedding, Tara panics at the thought of showing up alone and impulsively declares she’s bringing her very serious girlfriend.

One issue: Tara is seriously single.

Waitress and wild child Holly Siobhan Delaney may be lusting over Tara—but Tara only dates women she can marry, and Holly’s sworn off relationships. So when Tara needs a fake girlfriend, Holly’s eager to propose a no-strings, temporary fling. Only sharing secrets and steamy kisses show Holly the caring woman beneath Tara’s picture-perfect exterior, tempting Holly to break her own rules. Can these two opposites trust their feelings enough to try for forever—or will their relationship go down in flames?

What I loved

Helena Greer’s whole deal is taking beloved Hallmark tropes and queering them. In this one, the frosty blonde fiancée gets the girl. And I adore this frosty blonde fiancée. Tara Sloane Chadwick is a Southern belle with a wild past using her degree from Duke law (where my Dad probably would have been working when Tara was in law school, if she were real!) to subvert the inequitable justice system from whose bias she benefited as a young person.

Tara is less ice queen than snow queen: she just needs someone to help her melt. And a propos of a snow queen (of which I am one, which is to say, I melt easily), her favorite Disney movie is Frozen II. This comes up in the book A Lot. If you don’t know the movie, you’ll be fine, but if it spoke to your heart (it did to me, even more than Frozen), you are going to appreciate a lot of bits of this book even more than you would otherwise. So I love this, I love Tara feeling like she’s Elsa.

I love that Tara struggles to believe she is loved by her friends, especially her platonic twin-flame, Cole. But she is. And this is a romance novel so part of the happy ending is her accepting that love, eventually. But the journey, whew. It left me weeping.

Holly doesn’t speak to my heart as directly as Tara does. But she is still a great character, who has sanitized her punk rock self into a more socially-acceptable rockabilly quirky girl. Like Tara, she is haunted by a mistake she made in her youth and doesn’t trust herself because of it.

Both of these women mask themselves from the world and both of them, over the course of the book, will learn that it is not just okay, but actually great, for them to be themselves.

There are lots of fun Christmas wedding hijinks here, and if you’ve read the first two Carrigan’s books, all the Carrigan’s interactions will feel extra rich and make everything more fun. (And if you haven’t, you should. They’re great.) All of the secondary characters feel full and whole.

What I wanted more of

Listen, I have no notes, I’m just sad not to have new Carrigan’s stories.

What I need to warn you about

There are some really awful parents in here. Helena Greer writes great warnings at the start of her books, so be sure to check those out.

Who should read this

Anyone who likes to cry during their rom-coms. Anyone who wants the ice queen blonde fiancée to get a happy ending after her quirky partner leaves her. Anyone who wants to spend time in an idyllic mountain area with a festive destination and a delightfully queer-friendly and racially-diverse small town. People who like Courtney Kae’s books.

Book: Hers for the Weekend
Author: Helena Greer
Publisher: Forever
Publication Date: August 27, 2024.
Pages: 368
Age Range: Adult
Source of Book: ARC via NetGalley

Sun, 11 Aug 2024 14:24:46 -0500

Finished reading: Indigo by Beverly Jenkins 📚

This is so good. I learned more about abolitionism from this romance novel in a more engaging way than any history class I’ve taken would be able to achieve. Highly recommend.

Thu, 08 Aug 2024 13:23:12 -0500

Finished reading: Hers for the Weekend by Helena Greer 📚

Loved it! This releases August 27. Expect a full review soon!

Tue, 06 Aug 2024 15:43:02 -0500

Finished reading: Gentle Rogue by Johanna Lindsey 📚

📚 Book Review: Love Requires Chocolate by Ravynn K. Stringfield

Mon, 05 Aug 2024 23:00:00 -0500

If the Paris 2024 Olympic Opening Ceremony has you dreaming of reads with Parisian vibes, I’ve got a new release for you. Love Requires Chocolate, by Ravynn K. Stringfield, is a coming-of-age story with a soupçon of romance (it has a happy ending but the romance takes a back seat to the coming-of-age). It releases on August 20 and I loved it.

(Full disclosure: Dr. Stringfield was my instructor for a workshop on creative non-fiction writing for academics. We have since bonded over our shared loves of comics and YA fiction, as well as our shared experiences navigating PhD programs and life after them. We’re Internet friends.)

Here’s the publisher’s description:

Whitney Curry is primed to have an epic semester abroad. She’s created the perfect itinerary and many, many to-do lists after collecting every detail possible about Paris, France. Thus, she anticipates a grand adventure filled with vintage boutiques, her idol Josephine Baker’s old stomping grounds, and endless plays sure to inspire the ones she writes and—ahem—directs!

But all is not as she imagined when she’s dropped off at her prestigious new Parisian lycée. A fish out of water, Whitney struggles to juggle schoolwork, homesickness, and mastering the French language. Luckily, she lives for the drama. Literally.

Cue French tutor Thierry Magnon, a grumpy yet très handsome soccer star, who’s determined to show Whitney the real Paris. Is this type-A theater nerd ready to see how lessons on the City of Lights can turn into lessons on love?

What I Loved

I mean, everything? But specifically? Whitney is a list girlie. I love a list girlie. She has Plans. Her fashion is always on point. (Check out Ravynn’s WhitneyCurryCore reel on Instagram.) Her love of theater is palpable. Her knowledge about Josephine Baker is impressive but her commitment to learning more is even more impressive. Whitney’s mixture of confidence and insecurity resonates so hard for this type A- former theater teen.

Whitney herself is enough to make this book awesome. But Stringfield layers in an incredible sense of place. Yes, she gives you plenty of looks at tourist destinations, but it’s the more quotidian Parisian moments that make this feel lived-in. Whitney gets lost in Montmartre. She has a dinner party at Thierry’s family’s home. She explores the streets of Paris. She sings “J’ai deux amours” swinging from a street lamp. (And have you seen a Parisian street lamp? They’re gorgeous.) Oh look, here I am trying to talk about Paris and ending up still telling you how much I love Whitney Curry. Whoops. Well, just trust that this book is full of awesome Parisian places, because Stringfield was a flâneuse herself when she studied abroad.

I love Whitney’s growth, her passion, and her outlook.

I love the romantic elements here, too. Thierry is wonderful. I mean a grouchy footballer whose family owns a chocolate shop? Come on. I mean. (This brought to you partly by my new obsession with retired footballer Zizou and partly by my old obsession with Roy Kent.)

Something that I think is worth pointing out is that Whitney is a Black American looking for the history and culture of Black Americans in Paris as well as Black Parisians of any descent. The importance of this piece of Whitney’s identity adds another layer to the Bildungsroman vibes. As a white woman I don’t feel equipped to discuss all the work Stringfield has done here at length, but I really appreciate her highlighting how important this is to Whitney, the conflicting feelings Whitney experiences about Josephine Baker’s recognition as an artist of Paris coming about after her death, and the contrast between Whitney’s image of how Black people experience Paris and the reality Thierry, whose grandmother came to Paris from Mali to escape trouble caused by French colonialism, shares with her.

What I wanted more of

The adventures of Whitney Curry? This is the first in a series but it’s an anthology series, so the other books will be by other authors and about other characters. Guess I better start writing some Love Requires Chocolate fanfiction.

What I need to warn you about

Not much. There is, as you might have guessed from what I said earlier, discussion of racism.

Who should read this

People who love Paris or think they might love Paris. Theater nerds. Football (i.e., soccer) fans. People who enjoy YA romance. People who like chocolate.

Book: Love Requires Chocolate
Author: Ravynn K. Stringfield
Publisher: Joy Revolution
Publication Date: August 20, 2024
Pages: 288
Age Range: Young Adult
Source of Book: ARC via NetGalley (but I loved it so much I pre-ordered it too)

Fri, 02 Aug 2024 13:55:58 -0500

Finished reading: The Knowledge Gap by Natalie Wexler 📚

Read this to prepare for collaborating with teachers at work who want support finding books to work into our literacy curriculum. It’s especially interesting as someone who started her teaching career in the era of No Child Left Behind.

Wed, 31 Jul 2024 20:30:08 -0500

Finished reading: Tender Rebel by Johanna Lindsey 📚

Mon, 29 Jul 2024 10:32:32 -0500

Finished reading: Love Only Once by Johanna Lindsey 📚

Sat, 20 Jul 2024 14:50:46 -0500

Finished reading: Daring and the Duke by Sarah MacLean 📚

If you want to see Sarah MacLean do a magic trick and turn the villain of two books into the hero of the third, read the Bareknuckle Bastards series.

Sat, 20 Jul 2024 06:27:42 -0500

🔖📚 Read Sherlock Holmes self-insert fanfic written by a 7th grader in 1903.

I love this so much.

Thu, 18 Jul 2024 04:52:24 -0500

🔖📚 100 of the Greatest Posters of Celebrities Urging You to Read by James Folta (Lit Hub)

This is the kind of content carefully calibrated to please me, specifically.

Mon, 15 Jul 2024 16:23:38 -0500

Finished reading: Brazen and the Beast by Sarah MacLean 📚

Sarah MacLean is just the best.

Tue, 09 Jul 2024 22:16:41 -0500

Finished reading: Wicked and the Wallflower by Sarah MacLean 📚

I love this one. The hero is so dreamy.

Mon, 08 Jul 2024 16:41:32 -0500

📚💬 “All I ever wanted was to belong, to wear that hat of belonging.” Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

Mon, 08 Jul 2024 16:38:50 -0500

📚💬 “Seeing yourself in print is such an amazing concept: you can get so much attention without having to show up anywhere.” Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

Mon, 08 Jul 2024 16:37:20 -0500

📚💬 “I understood immediately the thrill of seeing oneself in print. It provides some sort of primal verification: you are in print; therefore you exist.” Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

Mon, 08 Jul 2024 16:33:57 -0500

📚💬 “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

Mon, 08 Jul 2024 06:05:02 -0500

🔖📚 Read Notes on Romance Novels as “Camp”.

Andrea, author of the Shelf Love newsletter, does an amazing job of arguing for romance novels as Camp.

Fri, 05 Jul 2024 13:04:21 -0500

Finished reading: The Day of the Duchess by Sarah MacLean 📚

This one made me cry. I just really love a second chance.

Wed, 03 Jul 2024 16:45:27 -0500

Finished reading: A Scot in the Dark by Sarah MacLean 📚

Wed, 03 Jul 2024 16:45:18 -0500

Finished reading: The Rogue Not Taken by Sarah MacLean 📚

Wed, 26 Jun 2024 18:43:30 -0500

Want to read: The Book-Makers: A History of the Book in Eighteen Lives by Adam Smyth 📚

Mon, 24 Jun 2024 09:03:37 -0500

📚🔖 Read The Literary Power of Hobbits: How JRR Tolkien Shaped Modern Fantasy by Verlyn Flieger (Literary Hub)

Dr. Flieger says:

Tolkien created modern fantasy via fae-ery, the creations of secondary worlds.
The inclusion of hobbits in Middle Earth grounds Tolkien ’s fantasy.

Sun, 23 Jun 2024 19:19:15 -0500

Finished reading: The Price of Pleasure by Kresley Cole 📚

This one made me smile at the end.

Tue, 18 Jun 2024 19:51:32 -0500

Finished reading: The Captain of All Pleasures by Kresley Cole 📚

I do love a sailor heroine.

Mon, 17 Jun 2024 09:39:30 -0500

Finished reading: If You Desire by Kresley Cole 📚

Somehow forgot to post this when I finished it. It was my favorite of the MacCarrick Brothers trilogy.

Thu, 13 Jun 2024 21:08:53 -0500

Finished reading: If You Deceive by Kresley Cole 📚

Sat, 08 Jun 2024 14:53:40 -0500

Finished reading: If You Dare by Kresley Cole 📚

Thu, 06 Jun 2024 07:44:25 -0500

Want to read: Love in the Time of Self-Publishing: How Romance Writers Changed the Rules of Writing and Success by Christine M. Larson 📚

Tue, 04 Jun 2024 03:15:11 -0500

Finished reading: The Devil of Downtown by Joanna Shupe 📚

Another excellent Gilded Age historical romance.

Fri, 31 May 2024 17:20:48 -0500

Finished reading: Here We Go Again by Alison Cochrun 📚

This made me bawl. I love a childhood best friends to enemies to lovers story, and this one is about English teachers and their mentor English teacher and love through decades.

Thu, 30 May 2024 12:33:28 -0500

Today:

woke up way too early
read about Romance Writers of America filing for bankruptcy and the absurd way they’re trying to blame it on Courtney Milan 🔖📚
had my first mammogram (later than I ought) (they used cute stickers to mark my sebaceous cysts)
caught up on Season 3 of Bridgerton 📺

Tue, 28 May 2024 12:38:22 -0500

Finished reading: The Prince of Broadway by Joanna Shupe 📚

I loved it. A delightful heroine, a debutante with dreams of owning a women-only casino. The bitter casino owner she’s chosen to mentor her. Excellent stuff.

Tue, 28 May 2024 00:23:05 -0500

Finished reading: The Essential X-Men Volume 3 by Chris Claremont 📚

Read as single issues and only the Uncanny X-Men books, not the annuals, but this is the easiest way to track reading the comics.

Sat, 25 May 2024 00:09:00 -0500

Finished reading: The Rogue of Fifth Avenue by Joanna Shupe 📚

Gilded Age New York, a hotshot lawyer, and a responsible eldest daughter who finds her responsibility chafing. What’s not to love?

Wed, 22 May 2024 11:58:37 -0500

Finished reading: The Essential X-Men Volume 2 by Chris Claremont 📚

Again, read as single issues in Marvel Unlimited, but this is the best way to track. It’s a powerhouse of a run with both Dark Phoenix and Days of Future Past in it.

Wed, 22 May 2024 06:50:40 -0500

Finished reading: Never Judge a Lady by Her Cover by Sarah MacLean 📚

This has my favorite of Sarah MacLean’s heroes. Give me a guy who is clever and made his own way over a titled rogue any day. (But I like to read about titled rogues, too.)

Mon, 20 May 2024 16:45:14 -0500

📚 Reading The Dark Phoenix Saga (not for the first time) and I had forgotten how heavily this whole deal, especially Scott talking to Dark Phoenix about love, influenced Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Dark Willow storyline.

Mon, 20 May 2024 06:10:29 -0500

🔖📚 Read Jamaica Kincaid and Kara Walker Made an Irreverent, Charming Kids’ Book by Stephen Bell (Harper’s Bazaar).

I’m super curious to see the book. The article only contains one sample page. It’s gorgeous and I look forward to seeing more.

Sat, 18 May 2024 10:07:03 -0500

Currently reading: The Best There is at what He Does: Examining Chris Claremont’s X-Men by Jason Powell 📚

Started watching X-Men 97 📺 which reminded me that I love the X-Men, so now I’m reading this and reading the comics mentioned alongside. Super fun.

Fri, 17 May 2024 06:19:01 -0500

Want to read: A Web of Our Own Making by Antón Barba-Kay 📚

Thu, 16 May 2024 19:51:58 -0500

Finished reading: No Good Duke Goes Unpunished by Sarah MacLean 📚

I love every Sarah MacLean heroine.

Tue, 14 May 2024 17:31:10 -0500

Finished reading: One Good Earl Deserves a Lover by Sarah MacLean 📚

Lady Phillipa Marbury is a refreshing take on a bluestocking.

Tue, 14 May 2024 07:46:58 -0500

📚🔖 Here is the actual study with the evidence of the correlation between fiction reading and cognition.

Tue, 14 May 2024 07:11:58 -0500

🔖📚 Read If You Read a Lot of Fiction, Scientists Have Very Good News About Your Brain.

It’s always good to look at the actual studies behind news articles like this, but the evidence that reading fiction is associated with improved cognition suggests the importance of libraries, I think.

📚 Book Review: You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian

Mon, 13 May 2024 09:02:50 -0500

Austin Kleon introduced me to a newsletter issue in which director and writer Mark Slutsky talks about the feeling of being in good hands:

I’ve come to trust a certain feeling that comes over me when I first make contact with a piece of art. The opening lines of a book; the first 30 seconds or so of a movie; bars of a song, etc. It is a feeling of being in good hands, an intuitive sense that the author knows what they are doing and that the experience will be worth my time.

I felt this way as soon as I read the first sentence of Cat Sebastian’s We Could Be So Good:

Nick Russo could fill the Sunday paper with reasons why he shouldn’t be able to stand Andy Fleming.

I loved that book so much, so I was thoroughly psyched to get the chance to read an advanced reading copy for You Should Be So Lucky, a novel set in the same mid-20th-century America narrative world, about a grouchy, grieving arts reporter and the golden retriever/foulmouthed jerk baseball player whose slump the editor of Mark’s newspaper has tasked him with writing about. As often happens in a romance, these two knuckleheads learn, grow, and fall in love, not necessarily in that order.

What I loved: So much. Woof. Hard to even think of how to explain it all. I’ll start by saying that mostly, I love these two characters, and most especially I love Mark, who is a snarky reporter with a squishy heart, who simultaneously so appreciates the way his deceased partner William made him feel worthwhile and loathes the way William’s political ambitions meant that they could never seem even at all possibly queer. I just love him so much. I imagine him as a young Trent Crimm (from Ted Lasso, in case you’re not familiar).

I love Eddie, too, his inability to hide his feelings just ever. His willingness to throw caution to the wind and let his blossoming friendship with Mark just exist in the world without constantly looking over his shoulder about it. His beautiful relationship with his mother and his own bruised heart in the face of learning he was about to be traded to a team that would take him far from his home and everything he knew.

What I wanted more of: Let’s be clear. There is nothing that I’m like, “Cat Sebastian didn’t do enough of that,” because Cat Sebastian is awesome. But let’s also be clear. I will read more of whatever Cat Sebastian wants to write, and if she wrote a lovely Christmas novella about Nick and Andy (from We Could Be So Good) and Mark and Eddie all being at a Christmas party together, I would read it so hard.

What I need to warn you about: This book is about two dudes falling in love, so if you don’t want to read about that, skip it. There is some spice but the language isn’t very explicit. I’d say, medium-ish, maybe slightly less than medium spice? There are some of the kind of things that people usually want content warnings about: death of a partner before the book starts, period-appropriate homophobia, parents kicking a son out due to their own homophobia.

Who should read this: People who want a romance with a lot of interiority, minimal conflict between the two main characters, people who like baseball mixed in with their love.

Sat, 11 May 2024 20:55:42 -0500

Finished reading: A Rogue by Any Other Name by Sarah MacLean 📚

I do love a good 19th Century casino. Thank goodness for the romance-guaranteed happily ever after, because there was a lot of this book that made me sad when the two main characters had huge misunderstandings.

Thu, 09 May 2024 18:28:34 -0500

Finished reading: Eleven Scandals to Start to Win a Duke’s Heart by Sarah MacLean 📚

Yes, I finished this less than 36 hours after I finished the last one.

Thu, 09 May 2024 07:20:52 -0500

🔖📚 Read How Pregnancy Forever Transforms the Body and the Mind by Lucy Jones (Literary Hub).

Wed, 08 May 2024 08:20:27 -0500

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.

Mon, 06 May 2024 16:27:54 -0500

🔖📚 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

Mon, 06 May 2024 08:05:01 -0500

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

Sun, 05 May 2024 09:12:36 -0500

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

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

Fri, 03 May 2024 21:47:09 -0500

Finished reading: The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo 📚

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

Tue, 30 Apr 2024 04:19:37 -0500

🔖📚 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.

Mon, 29 Apr 2024 08:09:41 -0500

🔖📚 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.

Sun, 28 Apr 2024 11:34:45 -0500

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.

Thu, 25 Apr 2024 20:17:06 -0500

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.

Mon, 22 Apr 2024 15:20:08 -0500

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.

Sun, 21 Apr 2024 11:48:36 -0500

Finished reading: The Player by Kresley Cole 📚

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

Sat, 20 Apr 2024 08:04:01 -0500

🔖📚📝 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.

Fri, 19 Apr 2024 19:25:29 -0500

📚💬

“…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

Fri, 19 Apr 2024 09:55:32 -0500

📚💬

“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

Thu, 18 Apr 2024 16:09:21 -0500

Finished reading: The Master by Kresley Cole 📚

Tue, 16 Apr 2024 23:09:27 -0500

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.

Mon, 15 Apr 2024 02:21:30 -0500

Finished reading: Munro by Kresley Cole 📚

The heroine in this one is a time-traveling Transylvanian knife-throwing carnie so, you know, she’s awesome.

Sat, 13 Apr 2024 07:50:31 -0500

Finished reading: Wicked Abyss by Kresley Cole 📚

This is a banger of a Beauty and the Beast retelling, with an ending I radically prefer to the Disney version. Highly recommend.

Wed, 10 Apr 2024 10:13:27 -0500

Finished reading: Shadow’s Seduction by Kresley Cole 📚

It took me a long time to get into this one and it’s not as strong as a lot of the other Immortals After Dark books, but I still ended up liking it.

Tue, 09 Apr 2024 04:04:03 -0500

Finished reading: Shadow’s Claim by Kresley Cole 📚

I really liked this one, the way the main characters interact with each other is both sweet and hot. I’ve only got 4 books left before I’m caught up on the Immortals After Dark series.

Sun, 07 Apr 2024 04:46:24 -0500

Finished reading: Sweet Ruin by Kresley Cole 📚

“She’d thought there was no greater connection than destiny decreeing them joined. But there was—the choice they’d made to love each other.”

Loved it.

Wed, 03 Apr 2024 13:27:23 -0500

Finished reading: Dark Skye by Kresley Cole 📚

Other people seem to hate this one but I like it pretty well. Lanthe and Thronos’s story is epic, spanning years and continents. Lives ruined. Blood shed. Worth a try if you’re making your way through Immortals After Dark.

Wed, 03 Apr 2024 10:17:32 -0500

📚 When I’m catching up on a long-running series, I sometimes forget that there are people who, for example, couldn’t read 19 Immortals After Dark books in a row and, in fact, had to wait a year or more for the next one to come out, and that I, too, can wait.

Fri, 29 Mar 2024 14:20:54 -0500

Finished reading: Suddenly You by Lisa Kleypas 📚

A lovely historical about an author and a publisher who fall in lust and then love. Her body is described as voluptuous, bountiful, abundant, generous. It’s clear that these are attractive things for her to be. Quite spicy. Content warning: miscarriage.

Thu, 28 Mar 2024 08:48:35 -0500

Finished reading: The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang 📚

A lovely romance novel with an autistic heroine. I highlighted a lot.

Sun, 24 Mar 2024 22:55:54 -0500

Finished reading: Matilda by Roald Dahl 📚

We went to see Matilda the Musical and I loved it. I’d watched the Netflix movie of the musical and years ago the movie with Mara Wilson, but I’d never actually read the book. It’s a lovely book but I think the musical is even better.

Fri, 22 Mar 2024 20:46:38 -0500

Finished reading: MacRieve by Kresley Cole 📚

This one is beautifully done as always. There’s a traumatic backstory of childhood sexual abuse for the hero and the way it impacts his relationship with the protagonist broke my heart. But of course there’s a happy ending because romance. ♥️

Sun, 17 Mar 2024 19:58:38 -0500

Finished reading: Lothaire by Kresley Cole 📚

Of course if you’re reading Immortals After Dark you must read this one. You simply must.

📚 Baby’s First Author Event

Fri, 15 Mar 2024 15:33:44 -0500

Let me be clear, when I say “baby,” I mean “big kid.” We took M to his first author event a couple weeks ago. It was awesome. Adam Gidwitz has a new book out. It’s called Max in the House of Spies. It’s about a German Jewish kid whose parents send him to London in 1939 and he falls in with British spies while he’s there. Also a dybbuk lives on one of his shoulders and a kobold lives on the other.

We first encountered Adam Gidwitz because of his amazing podcast, Grim, Grimmer, Grimmest. (M’s favorite episode is Hans, My Hedgehog.) Gidwitz is a former teacher who now works as a storyteller and author. He’s written the A Tale Dark and Grimm series and the book The Inquisitor’s Tale, and he is the co-author of the Unicorn Rescue Society series. In that series, kids travel around the world saving different cryptids. For each book, Gidwitz teams up with an author who is a member of the culture that the kids are visiting. They’re super fun and a great way to learn about folklore around the world.

Gidwitz talked about a family friend who had been one of the children sent away from Germany ahead of World War II and how the story of that friend inspired him to write this book. He said he felt it was an important book to write now because he thinks it’s an important time to look at Germany before the Nazis came to power and ask, what is it that makes the people of a country vote for leadership they know is wrong? What makes them willing to sacrifice justice for the promise of security? I think he’s absolutely right that these are key questions for our time.

Gidwitz shared the story of how he became a writer: he wanted to teach his students about ancient Egypt and couldn’t find a book to go with the lessons, so he started to write one. He’d write a chapter, share it with his students, and then they’d say, “Then what happened?” He’d tell them, “I don’t know!” and go home to write the next chapter. With a lot of positive reinforcement from his students, Gidwitz decided to quit teaching and write full-time. He didn’t get an agent with the Egyptian book. (He called it a “burner book,” explaining that many authors have at least one book they write and learn a lot from but don’t get to publish.) But he did when he started digging into Grimm’s fairytales.

Gidwitz is super entertaining and a great storyteller and doesn’t look anything like I imagined him. (I imagined him looking like Joshua Malina’s character, Jeremy, from Sports Night. I have no idea why.)

After he talked about his books and answered questions for an hour, there was a signing. When we got up there, he told M., “You’re a lot younger than most of the kids here and I wasn’t sure how you would do while I was talking, but you did great.” (M. is average height but tiny with giant eyes so it’s easy to mistake him for younger than he is.)

Wed, 13 Mar 2024 16:10:45 -0500

Finished reading: Preferential Treatment by Heather Guerre 📚

Read this billionaire romance because it’s the next Fated Mates read along. It’s very well done & deflates the billionaire fantasy without taking all of the fun out of it. Definitely check the content warnings before reading.

Mon, 11 Mar 2024 04:55:16 -0500

Finished reading: Dreams of a Dark Warrior by Kresley Cole 📚

This one took me a little while to get into but once I was in, I couldn’t put it down.

Thu, 07 Mar 2024 22:39:22 -0500

Finished reading: Demon From the Dark by Kresley Cole 📚

I really enjoyed this one and tore through it. Give me a sad, traumatized couple of people who find a new family in each other and I’m happy. 😍

Tue, 05 Mar 2024 22:22:06 -0500

Finished reading: Pleasure of a Dark Prince by Kresley Cole 📚

I really liked, maybe even loved this one. The back half is all adventure, super cinematic.

Sun, 03 Mar 2024 18:00:50 -0500

Finished reading: “Untouchable” in Deep Kiss of Winter by Kresley Cole 📚

📚 Why am I obsessed with romance fiction right now?

Sun, 03 Mar 2024 07:45:45 -0500

Last May, I read Mr. and Mrs. Witch by Gwenda Bond, and it made me so happy that I decided to try exclusively reading romance for a while. From May to October, I read 16 romance novels. In October I took a break to read some gothic but quickly came back to romance, finishing out the year having read 22 romance novels and one romance anthology. This year, I continued the pattern. So far, I’ve read 17 romance novels this year. I talk about romance and think about romance a lot of the time. So why?

First, social factors:

Last June, The Good Trade published an article called What Romance Novels Taught Me About Taking Pleasure More Seriously and then in December a follow-up, How to Get Started Reading Romance Novels. This led me to the podcast Fated Mates and I joined their Patreon and Discord because I needed people to talk to about romance besides two of my friends and W.

But that was after I’d already started to read romance more heavily. So why? Why romance?

The obvious reason is that it’s an optimistic genre. Even in dark romance, the author or publisher has, by virtue of calling the book or story romance, promised that the characters who fall in love will end the book either living happily ever after or happy for now. Any problems on the horizon at the end are problems you know they will solve together. (And if you read something that the author or publisher has called romance that doesn’t have this feature, please let everyone know, so they won’t pick that book up expecting a HEA or HFN.) The world is big and scary and full of bad, and it can be comforting to know that you are going into a story where the people will end up with someone(s) who will support them.

Another reason is that romance contains an immense variety of subgenres, which means if you’re a mood reader that you can probably find something you’re in the mood for. You’ve got contemporary, paranormal, historical (with its own subsubgenres based on period and geography), dark romance, fantasy romance, sci-fi romance, romantic suspense, romantic mystery, and many more. Likewise, romance is full of tropes that give books a flavor that make it easy to know if you’re likely to find it interesting: friends-to-lovers, enemies-to-lovers, billionaire, forced proximity, sibling’s best friend or best friend’s sibling, second chance, fated mates, fake dating, and again, many more.

It’s also because, like sci-fi and fantasy, romance lets you tackle difficult topics in a way where you know that characters will be supported in working through these. Here is an incomplete list of difficult topics the romance I’ve read since last year has touched on:

anxiety
depression
gang conflict
family illness
chronic illness
homophobia
truly awful parenting
arranged marriage
transphobia
top surgery (difficult because of medical processes described in detail)
war
anti-Muslim harassment
well-meaning people being casually super prejudiced
the cost of a bad reputation

And I tend to read stuff on the lighter side.

And then there are things that are unique about romance: its focus on interiority and emotion, on women’s and non-binary people’s pleasure, the way it places relationships at the heart of stories.

I’m sure there are more reasons, too. Do you read romance? Why?

Fri, 01 Mar 2024 11:44:13 -0500

Finished reading: You’re Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop by John Scalzi 📚

This was a re-read. A bit of a time capsule from the web of 2005-2007, a web I greatly miss.

Mon, 26 Feb 2024 22:13:05 -0500

Finished reading: Kiss of a Demon King by Kresley Cole 📚

Mon, 26 Feb 2024 22:13:04 -0500

Finished reading: Kiss of a Demon King by Kresley Cole 📚

Sat, 24 Feb 2024 13:18:20 -0500

Finished reading: Dark Desires After Dusk by Kresley Cole 📚

🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ I tore through this one so fast. I think it might partly be because the heroine is a PhD candidate.

Thu, 22 Feb 2024 10:25:50 -0500

Finished reading: Dark Needs at Night’s Edge by Kresley Cole 📚

My favorite Immortals After Dark book so far. A burlesque dancer becomes a ballerina, ends up a ghost, and falls in love with a vampire who is trapped in the New Orleans Gothic manor that she haunts. 🌹👻🩰

Mon, 19 Feb 2024 12:47:58 -0500

Finished reading: Wicked Deeds on a Winter’s Night by Kresley Cole 📚

🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ as always. Werewolves continue to not be my thing but I love witches.

Thu, 15 Feb 2024 10:16:08 -0500

Finished reading: No Rest For The Wicked by Kresley Cole 📚

Listen, all these Immortals After Dark books are 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️, okay? That’s just what’s up. I like this one better than the one that came before it, definitely more my vibe.

Wed, 14 Feb 2024 09:34:54 -0500

📚🗨️ “This union was supposed to be for eternity—it followed that their courtship would be extended.” - Kresley Cole, No Rest for the Wicked

See, that’s why W and I were together for 10 years before we got engaged. ("‘Til death do us part" is for quitters.)

Tue, 13 Feb 2024 14:14:32 -0500

📚 This is your reminder that The Frame-Up by Gwenda Bond is out today!

Sun, 11 Feb 2024 10:22:52 -0500

Finished reading: A Hunger Like No other by Kresley Cole 📚

Incredibly high spice level, all the chili pepper emoji 🌶️! A Valkyrie/vampire hybrid and a werewolf (there wolf) fall in love. I’m reading this as I listen along to the first season of Fated Mates.

Sun, 11 Feb 2024 10:19:47 -0500

Finished reading: The Truth About Dragons by Julie Leung 📚

A 2024 Caldecott Honor winner.

Sun, 11 Feb 2024 10:18:59 -0500

Finished reading: Two New Years by Richard Ho 📚

Winner of the 2024 Sydney Taylor book award.

Thu, 08 Feb 2024 18:04:37 -0500

Finished reading: Nacho y Lolita/Nacho and Lolita by Pam Muñoz Ryan 📚

Pam Muñoz Ryan won the Children’s Literature Legacy Award. This was where NoveList Plus recommended starting with her work.

Thu, 08 Feb 2024 18:02:51 -0500

Finished reading: Fox Has a Problem by Corey R. Tabor 📚

Reading my way through this year’s American Library Association Youth Media Award winners. This won the Theodor Seuss Geisel Award for the most distinguished beginning reader book. It’s super cute.

Wed, 07 Feb 2024 21:40:49 -0500

Finished reading: Dreaming of You by Lisa Kleypas 📚

A sizzling historical that has two refreshing leads: she’s a writer, not a bluestocking. He is a gambling club owner, not a duke.

Sat, 03 Feb 2024 19:25:46 -0500

Finished reading: Then Came You by Lisa Kleypas 📚

Classic 90s pre-Victorian historical, medium spice level.

Tue, 30 Jan 2024 21:38:25 -0500

Finished reading: The Charm Offensive by Alison Cochrun 📚

Lovely! What if the dude who was producing The Bachelor fell in love with the bachelor? This book is all kinds of sweet and affirming, with great queer, neurodivergence, race, and mental illness rep.

📚 Reading Notes: A Quaker Book of Wisdom by Robert Lawrence Smith, Chapter 9, “Education”

Mon, 29 Jan 2024 10:57:17 -0500

…a good school is one that is constantly engaged in self-examination, in improving itself, in becoming wiser in its ability to both teach and inspire.

Smith returns to this idea many times in this chapter. Every school I’ve worked at had some sort of process for this, but Smith says that in a Quaker school, everyone in the school is involved in this process. In the public schools where I’ve worked, there was always a School Improvement Team (PDF). This is basically a committee and it consists entirely of adults. Students aren’t on the SIT. Further, as you might expect in a public school, the success of the School Improvement Team and the School Improvement Plan is evaluated based almost entirely on students’ scores on standardized tests, which to my mind is an incomplete measure of learning.

It’s a school that is intent on turning out good people who will help make a better world.

At the beginning of every school year, M’s teachers have us complete a survey and one of the questions is always about our hopes for the school year. We always answer that we want him to grow into himself and to continue to learn how to be a caring member of our community. I love this idea. While I suspect most teachers in most schools have this in mind as their intention, the systems and structures of compulsory public education, at least in North Carolina when I was working in public schools, tended to focus on performance in a few academic subject areas and compliance with school policies. I like the idea of a whole school taking this approach, rather than only individual teachers.

It’s the soul of a school—its intangible persona, its character, its principles, its daily life over time, the impressions it makes, the efforts it inspires, and the moral authority it possesses—that helps mold a child into an educated, assured, humane, and caring adult.

Yes! Especially the daily life over time: how we spend our moments is how we spend our days is how we spend our years is how we spend our life. The life of a school is in the day-to-day.

At a good school teachers and students are jointly engaged in a search for truth…

This jibes well with a school librarian’s focus on inquiry-driven learning.

Teachers… work to provide a climate of sensitivity to the human condition.

This is so critical. When I was a student teacher and first set foot in my mentor teacher’s classroom, I was appalled by what seemed to me to be an out-of-control class with absolutely no attention paid to Latin, the class’s subject matter. (I was 22 and I like to think I’m less judgy now.) By the end of my four months in student teaching, my perspective had totally transformed: I saw that my mentor teacher was more concerned with supporting her students than with a laser focus on their academic achievement, and that her love and support was a critical foundation before they could have academic success.

Without input from people of differing life experiences and cultures, a school quickly becomes insular and intellectually stagnant.

It seems obvious but it’s absolutely necessary to say.

…moments of silence help students center themselves amidst the hubbub of the school day.

To quote the Carolina Friends School website:

Settling In and Out
We use this Quaker practice of shared silence as a meaningful way to make oneself present in the moment, focus or redirect attention, and create a shared energy and sense of intention with a community.

Back to the book…

Another characteristic of Quaker schools is that they have involved students in community service at all grade levels.

Experimental education is the name of the game in Quaker schools, and they are constantly cooking up new ways of doing things.

And what’s probably my favorite quote from the chapter:

There is no formula for imparting love of learning. Despite new methodologies, there must always be reliance on the old virtues of skills, care, love, patience, and time.

Care, love, patience, and time are all things that the structures of public schools make it hard for teachers to prioritize, though I bet most teachers would love to be able to prioritize them.

Sat, 27 Jan 2024 11:39:34 -0500

🗨️📚 “Take the time to take time because nobody else will do it for you.” Anne Berest, Audrey Diwan, Caroline de Margaret, and Sophie Mas, How to Be Parisian Wherever You Are: Love, Style, and Bad Habits

Fri, 26 Jan 2024 18:35:25 -0500

Finished reading: New Adult by Timothy Janovsky 📚

Like if 13 Going on 30 was instead 23 Going on 30. Timothy Janovsky’s characters make me so happy, they’re so heart-full. Also lots of good stuff about keeping comedy in its proper place in your life rather than letting it become an all-consuming obsession.

Wed, 24 Jan 2024 04:12:11 -0500

Finished reading: A Dish Best Served Hot by Natalie Caña 📚

A lovely, slightly spicy romance. This one resonates a lot because one of the main characters is an oldest sibling who feels responsible for everything.

Sun, 21 Jan 2024 22:31:49 -0500

Finished reading: A Proposal They Can’t Refuse by Natalie Caña 📚

Super sweet and a little steamy romance.

Sat, 20 Jan 2024 07:05:16 -0500

Want to read: Grove Hollow Metamorphosis: A 1980s Gothic Paranormal Romance Novel by Shelby Nicole McFadden 📚

Probably going to buy this one but I’ve told myself I have to finish one of the books I own before I may.

Sat, 20 Jan 2024 06:46:35 -0500

Finished reading: In the Case of Heartbreak by Courtney Kae 📚

Highest of recommendations here. This book is a cute romance but it’s also healing to read.

Fri, 19 Jan 2024 20:33:59 -0500

📚🗨️

You are not a burden… You are a blessing.

Just Courtney Kae still wrecking me with In the Case of Heartbreak, that’s all.

Fri, 19 Jan 2024 08:57:13 -0500

📚🗨️

Your feelings are valid and important no matter how they make me feel… you aren’t responsible for my response.

Read this in Courtney Kae’s In the Case of Heartbreak last night and then wept uncontrollably for a while. Is this what a trauma response feels like?

Sun, 14 Jan 2024 19:27:13 -0500

Finished reading: Love Requires Chocolate by Ravynn K. Stringfield 📚

Full review coming later, but I loved this confection of a YA romance from Ravynn K. Stringfield, my creative nonfiction for academics teacher. A Francophile Black American girl falling in love with Paris and a cute Parisian. Highly recommend.

Book Review: The Frame-Up by Gwenda Bond

Fri, 12 Jan 2024 13:32:22 -0500

The thing about Gwenda Bond is that she’ll take your favorite microgenre or trope, mix some magic in, and give you a whole new story to enjoy. Which is exactly what she does with The Frame-Up. She takes an art heist story and adds in magic powers that make people good at their roles: mastermind, hacker, and more.

But Gwenda’s website tagline for a while was “High Concept with Heart,” and even more than the magic, the heart is what really makes The Frame-Up shine. This is a story about a daughter dealing with the fallout of betraying her mother and learning how to be right with herself whether or not her mother ever forgives her.

Here’s the publisher’s description:

A magically gifted con artist must gather her estranged mother’s old crew for a once-in-a-lifetime heist, from the author of Stranger Things: Suspicious Minds.

Dani Poissant is the daughter and former accomplice of the world’s most famous art thief, as well as being an expert forger in her own right. The secret to their success? A little thing called magic, kept rigorously secret from the non-magical world. Dani’s mother possesses the power of persuasion, able to bend people to her will, whereas Dani has the ability to make any forgery she undertakes feel like the genuine article.

At seventeen, concerned about the corrupting influence of her mother’s shadowy partner, Archer, Dani impulsively sold her mother out to the FBI—an act she has always regretted. Ten years later, Archer seeks her out, asking her to steal a particular painting for him, since her mother’s still in jail. In return, he will reconcile her with her mother and reunite her with her mother’s old gang—including her former best friend, Mia, and Elliott, the love of her life.

The problem is, it’s a nearly impossible job—even with the magical talents of the people she once considered family backing her up. The painting is in the never-before-viewed private collection of deceased billionaire William Hackworth—otherwise known as the Fortress of Art. It’s a job that needs a year to plan, and Dani has just over one week. Worse, she’s not exactly gotten a warm welcome from her former colleagues—especially not from Elliott, who has grown from a weedy teen to a smoking-hot adult. And then there is the biggest puzzle of all: why Archer wants her to steal a portrait of himself, which clearly dates from the 1890s, instead of the much more valuable works by Vermeer or Rothko. Who is her mother’s partner, really, and what does he want?

What I loved

The art, honestly. Great descriptions of art and art periods. Dani is a character with a clear love and respect for the art she forges. The heist crew vibes: everybody’s got their role and while Dani is working with her mom’s estranged team, there is still love there between herself and Mia and Elliott, the two other members of the team close to her age. The intense interiority: always seeing inside Dani’s heart, her desire for her mother’s approval, her regret about her past actions. Most of all, Dani’s sweet dog Sunflower.

What I need to warn you about

Not much here, except there are some really garbage parents and their adult kids are dealing with the repercussions of having been raised by such rotten people.

What I wanted more of

I mean, I would read a lot more heists with this crew, so… Sequels?

Who should read this

People who like fantasy set in our world. People who like heists and secrets. People who like paintings. People who like reading about fancy rich folks. People who like reading about Kentucky. People who like border collies.

Book: The Frame-Up
Author: Gwenda Bond
Publisher: Del Rey
Publication Date: February 13, 2024
Pages: 352
Age Range: Adult
Source of Book: ARC via NetGalley

Thu, 11 Jan 2024 20:24:12 -0500

Finished reading: The Frame-Up by Gwenda Bond 📚

I thought this was going to be a romance book with a heist, but I was mistaken. It’s a heist book with a romance! It’s beautifully done. Full review coming soon. The Frame-Up releases February 13. Pre-order it now!

Sun, 07 Jan 2024 15:30:46 -0500

Finished reading: Never Been Kissed by Timothy Janovsky 📚

Another delightful romance given to us by Timothy Janovsky, whose little details feel so calculated to please me. This time: The Great Movie Ride (RIP) figures in a key scene.

Wed, 03 Jan 2024 20:11:07 -0500

Finished reading: Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert 📚

I’m late to this party but happy to finally be here. As sweet and hot as the romance here is, it’s the portrayal of fibromyalgia that makes my heart sing.

Sat, 30 Dec 2023 11:11:29 -0500

Finished reading: For Never & Always by Helena Greer 📚

I love it so much. Finished it in under 48 hours. Helena Greer has given us a lovely place in Carrigan’s Christmasland and a host of delightful people to populate it. I keep seeing different bits of myself in each of her characters and it makes me happy. Highly recommend.

Fri, 29 Dec 2023 17:53:31 -0500

Me: I started this book last night and read only one chapter before bed. Now I’m on page 214.
W: Sounds like my wife.
📚

Thu, 28 Dec 2023 17:36:54 -0500

Finished reading: How to Excavate a Heart by Jake Maia Arlow 📚

Lovely and sweet. Made me cry when the main character’s mom really shows up for her. Also kinda makes me want to travel to DC.

Thu, 28 Dec 2023 17:17:30 -0500

📚🗨️ “I want to live my life being irrationally hopeful. Loving people and fish and cities with my whole heart.” Jake Maia Arlow, How to Excavate a Heart

Sun, 24 Dec 2023 20:40:39 -0500

Finished reading: Kiss Her Once for Me by Alison Cochrun 📚

This one was so lovely it made me cry. I can’t even sum up. Go read the description if it sounds good to you, try it out. Highly recommend.

Sun, 24 Dec 2023 17:19:23 -0500

🗨️📚 “the emptiness was the absence of myself.” Alison Cochrun, Kiss Her Once for Me

How I talk about books online 📚

Mon, 18 Dec 2023 10:19:16 -0500

In today’s issue of Happy Dancing, Charlie Jane Anders writes about how to fix GoodReads to avoid people review-bombing books to lower their ratings.

I haven’t used GoodReads in a long time but Anders brings up a point that has me wanting to share how I write about books online. Anders shares an anecdote about losing a bunch of star ratings on songs in iTunes and then switching to a simple love/don’t love system, then says:

And I feel like with books, it’s pretty similar. Did you like this book or not? Would you recommend it to your friends? Would you look out for more books by this author in future? The important questions are all yes or no.

And this is how I tend to share books when I’m writing about them quickly.

If I loved a book, I’ll end my short post with “Highly recommend.” If I like it, I’ll just share that I finished it and maybe a brief description. If I don’t like it, I probably didn’t finish it, and I probably won’t post about it at all.

When I write a full review, I share a summary, what I loved, what I wanted more of, what I need to warn you about, and who should read the book. I only write this kind of review about books I would recommend.

Since 2007 I’ve had a policy of only publishing positive reviews on my website and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

Sun, 17 Dec 2023 18:21:32 -0500

Finished reading: You’re a Mean One, Matthew Prince by Timothy Janovsky 📚

Oh my goodness I love it. Matthew Prince starts out as a spoiled party boy but Janovsky slowly pulled the onion layers back until I loved him. And his love interest Hector is wonderful. Highly recommend.

Fri, 15 Dec 2023 21:18:19 -0500

📚 Listening to Patrick Stewart read A Christmas Carol and it’s just feels like having Jean-Luc Picard read it to you. 😍

Thu, 14 Dec 2023 23:45:57 -0500

Finished reading: In the Event of Love by Courtney Kae 📚

A lovely place-based friends-to-lovers second chance. As often happens, the third act breakup made me want to yell at the main character but the book had me happy-teary by the end.

Thu, 14 Dec 2023 23:06:13 -0500

Finished reading: Eight Kisses by Mindy Klasky 📚

Eight Hanukkah romance stories. I read one each night. My favorites are the one with the Frisky Bean coffee shop and the one with empty nesters reconnecting.

Thu, 14 Dec 2023 10:41:06 -0500

📚🗨️

When people who don’t have fibromyalgia ask me how it feels, I tell them to imagine the last time they had a bad flu, then to picture going shopping, cooking, or exercising while feeling like that.

Ginevra Liptan, The FibroManual

Tue, 12 Dec 2023 07:02:10 -0500

🔖📚 Read How To Get Started Reading Romance Novels by Stephanie Fallon (The Good Trade).

This is an excellent guide. Also? If you have unkind things to say about romance as a genre, please say them somewhere else. They’re not welcome in my replies.

Thu, 07 Dec 2023 17:16:33 -0500

Today’s stay poor slowly scheme: open a romance-only bookstore. 📚

Wed, 06 Dec 2023 11:10:59 -0500

📚 Today’s library haul. Catching up on Holigays22 and some other holiday reads, plus a YA biography of my hero Sarah Bernhardt - quand même!

Wed, 06 Dec 2023 07:19:02 -0500

Finished reading: Written in the Stars by Alexandria Bellefleur 📚

The first holiday rom-com of a month where I hope to read many. Elle is an astrologer who dreams of a big love. Darcy is an actuary who’s terrified of having one. This book’s heat level is sensual, a couple explicit scenes. A lovely book but I wish the third act break-up had been resolved more quickly so I could’ve had more joyous reunion time.

Tue, 21 Nov 2023 16:06:20 -0500

Finished reading: Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado 📚

A bunch of excellent and chilling stories. Horror and make it literary. Uncertainty that is maddening but then that’s kind of the point.

Fri, 17 Nov 2023 12:42:11 -0500

Want to read: Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found by Frances Larson 📚

Fri, 17 Nov 2023 12:41:17 -0500

Want to read: Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places by Colin Dickey 📚

Thu, 16 Nov 2023 07:29:55 -0500

Want to read: Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner by Judy Melinek 📚

Mon, 13 Nov 2023 17:49:20 -0500

Want to read: Wish You Were Here: Adventures in Cemetery Travel by Loren Rhoads 📚

Mon, 13 Nov 2023 17:47:38 -0500

Want to read: Dark Archives: A Librarian’s Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin by Megan Rosenbloom 📚

Mon, 13 Nov 2023 17:46:30 -0500

Want to read: The Victorian Book of the Dead by Chris Woodyard 📚

Mon, 13 Nov 2023 17:46:05 -0500

Want to read: A is for Arsenic: An ABC of Victorian Death by Chris Woodyard 📚

Mon, 13 Nov 2023 17:44:14 -0500

Want to read: Good Grief: Loving Pets, Here and Hereafter by E.B. Bartels 📚

Mon, 13 Nov 2023 17:40:51 -0500

Want to read: The Anatomical Venus by Joanna Ebenstein 📚

Mon, 13 Nov 2023 17:40:28 -0500

Want to read: The Morbid Anatomy Anthology by Joanna Ebenstein 📚

Mon, 13 Nov 2023 17:39:10 -0500

Want to read: Cabarets of Death: Death, Dance and Dining in Early Twentieth-Century Paris by Mel Gordon 📚

Mon, 13 Nov 2023 06:38:18 -0500

🔖📚🎭 Read Why We Should Celebrate the 400th Anniversary of Shakespeare’s First Folio (Literary Hub).

Sun, 12 Nov 2023 14:18:45 -0500

Finished reading: Future Tense: Why Anxiety Is Good for You (Even Though It Feels Bad) by Tracy Dennis-Tiwary 📚

A helpful framing of normal, baseline anxiety as a source of information that can spur us to creativity and action.

Wed, 08 Nov 2023 20:13:22 -0500

Finished reading: The Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish 📚

A 17th Century bit of philosophical fantastical adventure.

Wed, 08 Nov 2023 19:47:28 -0500

📚💬 “I endeavour to be as singular as I can.” Margaret Cavendish, The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World

Tue, 07 Nov 2023 08:01:48 -0500

🔖📚 Read A Pennsylvania Public Library Had Funding Cut Because of LGBTQ+ Books. Then, An Olympian Stepped In..

An important reminder from Kelly Jensen about how libraries are on the ballot today in many places.

📚 Reading Notes—Collection Management for Youth: Equity, Inclusion, and Learning)—Chapter 1: Why a focus on equity?

Mon, 30 Oct 2023 08:44:23 -0500

Collection Management for Youth: Equity, Inclusion, and Learning

Here’s the publisher’s summary of this book:

With a renewed emphasis on facilitating learning, supporting multiple literacies, and advancing equity and inclusion, the thoroughly updated and revised second edition of this trusted text provides models and tools that will enable library staff who serve youth to create and maintain collections that provide equitable access to all youth. And as Hughes-Hassell demonstrates, the only way to do this is for collection managers to be learner-centered, confidently acting as information guides, change agents, and leaders.

I’m reading an ebook so quotes won’t have page numbers.

⭐ systemic inequalities ⭐

“Advancing equity must be our goal.”

⭐ “Equity means that everyone gets what they need to thrive no matter their identity or zip code. When we focus on equity, our ultimate goal becomes justice.” ⭐ GREAT DEFINITION OF EQUITY

demographic data = useful for trends, not getting to know individual youth & communities

opportunity gap: marginalized youth disproportionately experience it

EVEN IN HIGH-RESOURCE ENVIRONMENTS:

special ed
discipline
school climate

“Libraries are not immune to perpetuating inequities.”

disconnection & exclusion

outsider in the library

behavior control → denied access

LIBRARY MAY BE ONLY SOURCE OF INTERNET ACCESS

< ½ LGBT YOUTH CAN FIND INFO @ SCHOOL

in/accessibility

chilling effect of book challenges

LIBRARY STAFF MUST FACE SYSTEMIC INEQUITIES

GORSKI equity literacy framework

“BE A THREAT TO THE EXISTENCE OF INEQUITY”

RECOGNIZE
RESPOND → immediate term
REDRESS → long-term
CREATE & SUSTAIN bias-free & equitable environments & cultures

STRUCTURAL IDEOLOGY MODEL

it challenges:

deficit view → asset
paradigm → abundance

DEVELOP COLLECTION POLICIES THAT DON’T REPRODUCE INEQUITIES

Focus on what you CAN DO

MOVE BEYOND MAKING SPACE → YOUTH MUST BE ACTIVE PARTICIPANTS & LEADERS

Other reading notes for this book: Introduction

📚 It's cozy fantasy season!

Wed, 25 Oct 2023 09:38:54 -0500

I think between reading a few Gothics (The Fall of the House of Usher, The Turn of the Screw, The Haunting of Hill House, The Hacienda) and watching Mike Flanagan shows, I’ve scratched my Gothic itch and it’s now time for me to turn to cozy reading. And because I’m me, that means cozy fantasy.

I first learned about Cozy Fantasy when I heard about Wyngraf Magazine, which I think I learned about in the Signal Boost section of Alasdair Stuart’s The Full Lid, which I learned about because it was a Hugo nominee for best fanzine. And I was looking at the Hugo nominees because those are the awards from the World Science Fiction Convention aka Worldcon, which is mentioned on Wikipedia’s page on fandom as an early and ongoing convention. (Yes, this is an example of how my web wanderings work and how much I love to live the dream of the 1990s.)

The note about Wyngraf talked about fantasy in the vein of The Hobbit and Redwall and I thought it sounded good and like exactly what I needed in a world that has been both personally and globally terrifying for years.

Cozy fantasy is exactly what it sounds like: a cozy mystery with magic instead of murder. (Some cozy fantasy is also cozy mystery.)

Here are some cozy fantasy titles I’ve read in the past few years:

Redwall
The Hobbit (audiobook version narrated by Andy Serkis, highly recommend)
Howl’s Moving Castle
Smith of Wootton Major
Farmer Giles of Ham
The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches
Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries (this is included on a lot of cozy fantasy lists but it’s a bit high-stakes for me to think it’s super cozy)
The House in the Cerulean Sea

I’ve read the first issue of Wyngraf and am a little ways into the second. I believe I’ve read all the flash fiction on their website. I have the other issues, as well as their book of cozy poetry and a book compiling their flash fiction. I own the ebook of Bard City Blues. I’m currently debating whether to also buy the paperback. (Leaning toward yes.)

Cozy is a vibe: good food, good friends, low stakes. Things like opening a coffee shop or hunting for the tavern cat who’s gone missing (he’s fine, just stuck somewhere). It’s the fantasy version of a Hallmark holiday movie.

Want to join me in reading some?

Photo by Pavan Trikutam on Unsplash

Tue, 17 Oct 2023 18:53:39 -0500

Finished reading: The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas 📚

Great all the way through but extra compelling for the last third. Like Mexican Gothic, it uses Gothic tropes of a spooky house and a mysterious husband to interrogate colonialism in Mexico. Highly recommend.

Mon, 09 Oct 2023 17:48:19 -0500

Want to read: The Brain that Loves to Play by Jacqueline Harding 📚

Mon, 09 Oct 2023 17:48:18 -0500

Want to read: The Brain that Loves to Play by Jacqueline Harding 📚

Sat, 07 Oct 2023 22:24:34 -0500

Tonight I’m very obsessed with the idea of reading The Secret Garden as a child as a gateway to a love of Gothic literature. 📚

Thu, 05 Oct 2023 18:16:47 -0500

Finished reading: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson 📚

Keeping this Gothic train rolling. This one is excellent, of course.

Thu, 05 Oct 2023 12:37:57 -0500

📚💬 “When I am afraid, I can see perfectly the sensible, beautiful not-afraid side of the world, I can see chairs and tables and windows staying the same, not affected in the least, and I can see things like the careful woven texture of the carpet, not even moving. But when I am afraid, I no longer exist in any relation to these things.” Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

Substitute depressed or anxious for afraid here and it’s exactly how I feel.

Mon, 02 Oct 2023 23:32:20 -0500

Finished reading: The Turn of the Screw by Henry James 📚

Another Gothic. Governesses, am I right?

Mon, 02 Oct 2023 11:38:52 -0500

💬📚 Dropping this quote here so that next time I try to hung it down I’ll find it on my own site and not have to go to GoodReads:

“She strode the earth clad in the invisible armor of their virtual companionship.” Lev Grossman, The Magician King

Mon, 02 Oct 2023 02:47:28 -0500

Finished reading: “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe 📚

Making my pivot to Gothic now that it’s October. (I skipped my usual campus novels in September and stuck with romance.)

This one’s a classic, of course. But I like “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Masque of the Red Death” better.

Sun, 01 Oct 2023 11:41:04 -0500

📚💬 Roderick Usher has sensory integration issues:

“He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odors of all flowers were oppressive…” - Edgar Allan Poe, “The Fall of the House of Usher”

📚 Books about Freelance Writing

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 08:50:50 -0500

Originally posted on LinkedIn:

One of the tools in my toolbox for carrying me through times between big projects is freelance writing. As I expect to ramp this piece of my work up when my current contract (which is full-time work) ends, I’ve been revisiting my resources to help me with this.

Here are 3 books I use for this:

📕 The Freelance Academic by Katie Rose Guest Pryal
📗 How to Get Started in Freelance Science Writing by Sheeva Azma
📘 Win at Freelance Writing by Gertrude Nonterah, Ph.D.

What are your favorite resources?

Sat, 23 Sep 2023 03:06:13 -0500

Finished reading: We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian 📚

I loved it so much, finished it in under 48 hours. “Newsies for shippers” is an apt description. I love people being sweet on each other and making happiness when they feared it just wasn’t out there for them.

Fri, 22 Sep 2023 11:41:19 -0500

Today’s Literary Activism newsletter from Book Riot shares information about several student groups fighting book bans. 📚

Tue, 19 Sep 2023 19:45:29 -0500

📚 I’m reading Sandra Hughes-Hassell’s book, Collection Management for Youth: Equity, Inclusion, and Learning and planning to share my reading notes. I’m trying to decide whether it makes more sense to create a new post for each chapter or just do one for the whole book. Thoughts?

Wed, 13 Sep 2023 21:04:46 -0500

📚💬 “She didn’t know much about buildings, but it was clear that this one needed an unbelievable amount of work.
But at the end of it? Something she built up, rather than cut down.” Travis Baldree, Legends & Lattes

Wed, 13 Sep 2023 18:15:14 -0500

Finished reading: An Island Princess Starts a Scandal by Adriana Herrera 📚

So good! Manuela is going to marry a wealthy man, for the good of her family. But first, she’s going to spend six weeks in Paris, having Sapphic adventures.

As with all the best romances, this book is about two people who make each other grow as much as it’s about falling in love.

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 Hotter than steamy, very explicit.

Highly recommend.

Tue, 12 Sep 2023 18:30:16 -0500

There are few feelings as good as canceling a bunch of library holds because your family already owns all the books. 📚

Sun, 10 Sep 2023 02:20:55 -0500

📚 There are still spots available for online attendance at Public Librarianship in Contentious Times, a conference hosted by the University of Michigan School of Information and the Michigan Library Association. School librarians should find this relevant to their work as well and are welcome.

Sun, 03 Sep 2023 08:22:10 -0500

📚🍳 Started reading the introduction to Jules Sherred’s Crip Up the Kitchen: Tools, Tips and Recipes for the Disabled Cook and I might cry.

“The kitchen is the worst room in the house if you are disabled. I’m about to change that and make life easier for everyone.”

Fri, 01 Sep 2023 05:29:47 -0500

🔖📚 Read Shadow and Bone author Leigh Bardugo: ‘People sneer at the things women and girls love’ by Sian Cain (The Guardian).

She really is my hero.

Fri, 01 Sep 2023 05:21:40 -0500

🔖📚 Read Falling in Love With the Avengers, America’s Most Toxic Work Force by Leigh Bardugo (New York Times, gift link)

I love Leigh Bardugo so much.

Wed, 30 Aug 2023 10:15:40 -0500

💬📚 “I hunker down with books when I need time to process what’s happening in my own life.
Books give me the space to breathe.”

Kelly J. Baker, Final Girl: And Other Essays on Grief, Trauma, and Mental Illness

Wed, 30 Aug 2023 09:53:33 -0500

Currently reading: Final Girl: And Other Essays on Grief, Trauma, and Mental Illness by Kelly Baker 📚

Austin Kleon says to climb your creative family tree. Kelly is like an intellectual big sister, so I’m starting with her. (Katie Rose Guest Pryal is another.) 📝

Sun, 27 Aug 2023 18:23:12 -0500

Finished reading: From Bad to Cursed by Lana Harper 📚

Loved it even more than Payback’s A Witch. Full review coming later this week.

Sun, 27 Aug 2023 17:58:03 -0500

📚💬 “Disaster and hero, monster and martyr, beauty and beast . . . Choose your own dichotomy. Because it doesn’t matter. We were always built to be both.” Lana Harper, For Better or Cursed

Fri, 18 Aug 2023 10:23:13 -0500

📚🔖 Read The Parentified Protagonist: From Shifting Roles to Shapeshifter, a guest post by Stephanie Willing (Teen Librarian Toolbox).

Fri, 18 Aug 2023 07:08:47 -0500

📚 Book Riot’s Literary Activism newsletter is always valuable. This week, Kelly Jensen takes a deep dive into the use of ChatGPT to decide whether books should be removed from libraries.

Thu, 17 Aug 2023 09:46:52 -0500

Finished reading: Payback’s a Witch by Lana Harper 📚

It’s a witchy romance between two bi women and it has a punny title. What’s not to love? Moderately steamy.

Thu, 17 Aug 2023 07:45:48 -0500

📚💬👱‍♀️ “When Pearl Dragon and cheap wine and even magic have all failed us… there will always be Buffy marathons.” Lana Harper, Payback’s A Witch

😭 I’m not crying, you’re crying.

Bookstore Romance Day Recommendations 📚♥️

Wed, 16 Aug 2023 19:10:42 -0500

We’re just a few days out from Bookstore Romance Day!

A couple things to know about romance novels:

First, they always end with the love interests having either a happily ever after or a happy for now.

Second, they range in smuttiness from super sweet with hardly any physical intimacy, to quite explicit. But the emotions are always the core of the story, not the smut.

Here are some of my favorite romance reads. Pick some up at your favorite indie bookstore!

Mr. and Mrs. Witch by Gwenda Bond. Like Mr. & Mrs. Smith but with a lady witch and her dude witch hunter fiance. World travel, intrigue, blisteringly hot.

The Widow of Rose House by Diana Biller. Gilded Age, haunted house, widow unfairly subjected to scandal, cute inventor man, fairly steamy.

Ayesha at Last by Uzma Jalaluddin. Pride & Prejudice but everyone lives in Toronto, is Muslim, and is Indian or Indian-Canadian. Sweet, not even kisses until close to the end.

Hana Khan Carries On by Uzma Jalaluddin. You’ve Got Mail but with halal restaurants instead of bookstores. Everyone lives in Toronto, is Muslim, and is Indian or Indian-Canadian. Sweet, not even kisses until close to the end.

Red, White, & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston. Transatlantic shenanigans where the son of the president of the US hates and then loves the spare prince of England. Very hot, a little explicit but not much, super witty, unputdownable. Read if you watched the movie but wanted more. (Skip the movie if you read it and will be disappointed that they had to combine or change characters and drop a lot of detail to make it work for the screen.)

The Neighbor Favor by Kristina Forrest. A publishing assistant corresponds with her favorite author, who stopped writing fiction after his book about black elves didn’t sell much and his publisher closed. He ends up being her neighbor and they fall in love. Pretty steamy.

If you’re more of an audiobook person, see if you can support your local indie bookstore via Libro.fm.

Mon, 14 Aug 2023 10:36:23 -0500

Finished reading: Chef’s Kiss by TJ Alexander 📚

This book is super queer and super cute. Simone’s a chef. Ray’s a kitchen manager. They take a long time to get together but once they do, it’s 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥. Warning: Transphobia & a relatedly garbage workplace.

Sun, 13 Aug 2023 10:13:13 -0500

Want to read: Disabilities and the Library by Clayton A. Copeland 📚

Sun, 13 Aug 2023 09:43:06 -0500

Want to read: Kids Across the Spectrums: Growing Up Autistic in the Digital Age by Meryl Alper 📚

Sat, 12 Aug 2023 13:36:58 -0500

Want to read: 90s Bitch: Media, Culture, and the Failed Promise of Gender Equality by Allison Yarrow 📚

Sat, 12 Aug 2023 13:33:06 -0500

Want to read: Birth Control: The Insidious Power of Men over Motherhood by Allison Yarrow 📚

Fri, 11 Aug 2023 09:18:36 -0500

📚🔮 “…the Tarot constitutes first and foremost an apprenticeship in seeing.” Marianne Costa, The Way of Tarot: The Spiritual Teacher in the Cards

Thu, 10 Aug 2023 20:18:08 -0500

Finished reading: Solomon’s Crown by Natasha Siegel 📚

Gorgeous prose in this book that’s like if The Lion in Winter was mostly a romance between Richard and Philip. Recommend!

Wed, 09 Aug 2023 11:08:44 -0500

📚💗 August 19 is Bookstore Romance Day!

My fiction reading has been almost exclusively romance (across a variety of subgenres) since May and it’s making me very happy. Why not support your favorite indie bookshop & buy a romance from them?

I’ll write up some recommendations in the coming days.

Mon, 07 Aug 2023 10:38:38 -0500

Finished reading: The Enchanted Hacienda by J.C. Cervantes 📚

This one didn’t click with me right away, but that was about me and what else I’ve read recently, not about the book. It’s beautiful and sweet with a bit of spice, too.

Mon, 07 Aug 2023 10:04:39 -0500

📚💬 “…my body is the keeper of secrets, and this pen is its liberator.” J. C. Cervantes, The Enchanted Hacienda

Mon, 07 Aug 2023 05:52:20 -0500

📚📺 The trailer for The Power dropped. I loved this book so much. The show has an amazing cast. I’m looking forward to watching it.

Sat, 05 Aug 2023 20:19:11 -0500

Finished reading: The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune 📚

Listened to the audiobook. I understand why so much of the beginning of this book had to establish for us the dreariness of Linus Baker’s life. I didn’t really get into it until he arrived at the eponymous house. And from then on it made my heart sing.

Sat, 05 Aug 2023 06:40:21 -0500

📚💬 “We are who we are, not because of our birthright, but because of what we choose to do in this life.” TJ Klune, The House in the Cerulean Sea

Sat, 05 Aug 2023 05:55:34 -0500

📚💬 “Why can’t life work whatever way we want it to? What’s the point of living if you only do it how others want you to?” TJ Klune, The House in the Cerulean Sea

Tue, 01 Aug 2023 01:08:57 -0500

Finished reading: The Neighbor Favor by Kristina Forest 📚

Adorable romance about a publishing assistant who starts an email friendship with the author of her favorite book, then he unknowingly moves into her apartment building. I love stories about book people. Highly recommend.

Sat, 29 Jul 2023 06:14:49 -0500

Finished reading: Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett 📚

Lovely! A scholar of faerie lore travels to a frozen Scandinavian town to research for her book and along the way, her annoyingly wonderful colleague decides to join her. Brilliant use of both academia and faerie stuff in this one. Highly recommend.

Thu, 27 Jul 2023 11:26:24 -0500

📚💬 “I was supposed to remain comfortably outside the stories with my pen and my notebook.” Heather Fawcett, Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries

📚 Research methods in Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett

Thu, 27 Jul 2023 04:18:49 -0500

📚 I am a very specific kind of nerd. In this book, set in 1909, a scholar studying faeries says she’s going to use naturalistic observation and ethnographic interviews as her research methods. I immediately thought this was anachronistic, because I knew Naturalistic Inquiry wasn’t published until 1985.

I was wrong. It’s not anachronistic, but it does show that Dr. Wilde is using cutting edge methods. While ethnography was first developed as a science in the 18th century, naturalistic observation wasn’t formalized until the turn of the 20th century.

So. Who cares? Well, me, because I’m a qual nerd. But I’m also a book nerd, so I feel like Wilde’s choice of methods reveals something about her as a character.

The way she writes about her research shows that she thinks of herself as a natural scientist, observing faerie behavior much as one would observe animal behavior. At the same time, the questions she’s asking and the way she treats her research “subjects” (a term that isn’t cool to use now but is absolutely what you’d use in 1909) shows that she can’t help but treat her research as social research, because surprise! in her world, faeries are people, not animals.

(What distinguishes people from animals? I’d say for Wilde’s purposes, speech and self-awareness.)

And now that I’ve written 200+ words about an imaginary scientist’s research methods, I should probably get back to bed.

Wed, 26 Jul 2023 19:50:17 -0500

📚💬 “He felt lighter somehow. Like he wasn’t paint blending into the wall. He felt real. He felt present. Almost like he could be seen.” T. J. Klune, The House in the Cerulean Sea

Wed, 26 Jul 2023 01:44:17 -0500

📚💬 “Home is where we get to be who we are.” T. J. Klune, The House in the Cerulean Sea

📚 Finding my throughline: Library enthusiast 💻

Mon, 24 Jul 2023 13:07:01 -0500

I recently listened to Katie Rose Guest Pryal on Camille Pagán’s podcast, You Should Write a Book, talking about how she found the throughline in her work and life. (Just listen to her articulate it on the podcast. I am afraid if I try to sum it up, I’ll get it wrong.)

At the time I listened to it, I was like, “I don’t know what mine is. Maybe I’ll never find it. Waaaah!”

But as I sat and let the idea marinate for a while, and I think I’ve figured it out.

I recently bought the above sticker and several other library-themed stickers, as well as a Read Free or Die t-shirt, from its creator.

One of the possibilities I was considering for after my postdoc was going back to being a school librarian. I don’t think that one’s going to pan out, but it did sort of launch me in the direction of identifying my throughline.

In May, several folks working on different grants funded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services, including myself, met and talked about what we’d learned from our work and what our capacity was for working on connected learning in libraries moving forward. All of the other academics indicated that they had to move on to other work, which might incorporate connected learning, but would not focus on it.

I found myself heartbroken.

This is what I want to work on. And nobody else, nobody with an institutional affiliation, was going to be able to work on it anymore?

Well.

Over the course of many weeks, I decided that I would still work on it. That I would find institutional partners who were willing to do a little bit of the work, so that I don’t have to have an institutional affiliation myself to get the work funded, but that I would be happy to do the bulk of the work so long as I could get a consultant’s fee for doing it. Enough to pay my student loans, mostly.

I’m in the process of refining this vision.

But the throughline, I’ve got that now.

Fine, it needs refinement, too, but here’s the basic idea:

My work builds libraries’ capacity to facilitate learning and connect with their communities. The two modes I use to do this are research and professional development.

This describes so much of what I’ve done for the past 8 years. And more than that, it describes what I want to do going forward. It’s expansive enough for me to take on a variety of projects, and narrow enough that I can continue to establish my areas of expertise and grow my network.

What’s your throughline?

Mon, 24 Jul 2023 09:55:25 -0500

🔖📚 Read IN A WAVE OF GREEK MYTHOLOGY RETELLINGS, WHERE ARE THE GREEK WRITERS? by Lyndsie Manusos (Book Riot).

Lots of exciting recommendations in here.

Fri, 21 Jul 2023 04:08:55 -0500

💬📚 “Sometimes silence was the loudest thing of all.” T. J. Klune, The House in the Cerulean Sea

Fri, 21 Jul 2023 03:59:58 -0500

💬📚 “Why is it that I must always worry about tomorrows?” T. J. Klune, The House in the Cerulean Sea

Thu, 20 Jul 2023 19:54:41 -0500

Finished reading: Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston 📚

Listened to the audiobook. Super adorable. Super hot. Super made me teary with it’s AU 2016 election that a woman won. Highly recommend.

Wed, 19 Jul 2023 19:20:42 -0500

Finished reading: Nimona by ND Stevenson 📚

Weird I waited so long to read it. A lot going on here and I’m always delighted by the way ND Stevenson’s art reminds me of Quentin Blake’s.

Tue, 18 Jul 2023 21:48:45 -0500

Finished reading: Ana María and The Fox by Liana De la Rosa 📚

Mon, 17 Jul 2023 11:03:37 -0500

🔖📚 Read Let the Kids Get Weird: The Adult Problem With Children’s Books by Janet Manley (Literary Hub).

Wed, 12 Jul 2023 00:58:25 -0500

Finished reading: The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna 📚

What a sweet, cozy cup of tea of a book. This one made me so happy. And for the first time in a while, I feel like writing a full review. Stay tuned.

Tue, 11 Jul 2023 12:37:45 -0500

💬📚 “It was always irksome when an idea went nowhere, but Mika knew by now that there would always be new ideas.” Sangu Mandanna, The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

Sat, 08 Jul 2023 13:22:57 -0500

Finished reading: Hana Khan Carries On by Uzma Jalaluddin 📚

Another sweet romance set in the Toronto Muslim community from Uzma Jalaluddin. This one has Shop Around the Corner/She Loves Me/You’ve Got Mail vibes. It includes a community dealing with racial hatred and coming through in a joyous way. Highly recommend.

Fri, 07 Jul 2023 06:35:36 -0500

🔖🎭📚 Read It’s Getting Hard to Stage a School Play Without Political Drama by Michael Paulson (NYT, gift link) via Book Riot’s Literary Activism newsletter.

When I was in Europe reading censorship news from the US, I kept thinking, “I just want to fight censorship and make theatre.” Turns out these two things are related.

Mon, 03 Jul 2023 19:11:56 -0500

Finished reading: You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi 📚

I read this start-to-finish in about 8 hours. It’s a romance that illuminates grief and what can come after. It made me cry. It made me hungry. Highly recommend.

Thu, 29 Jun 2023 09:44:11 -0500

Finished reading: Ayesha at Last by Uzma Jalaluddin 📚

This is a beautiful homage to Pride & Prejudice, as well as to the Toronto Muslim community. A sweet love story with beautiful language. And so much tasty-sounding food and drink! Highly recommend.

Wed, 28 Jun 2023 03:20:58 -0500

📚 Me, reading Ayesha At Last: This is a Pride & Prejudice retelling, I know this, so when is Khalid going to go all Mr. Darcy?

Author Uzma Jalaluddin, on page 40: Here you go.

Tue, 20 Jun 2023 13:17:11 -0500

📚💬 “To me intellectual life is fundamentally different from academic careerism.” bell hooks, remembered rapture: the artist at work

Tue, 20 Jun 2023 13:14:33 -0500

📚💬

It is precisely because common structures of evaluation and advancement in various academic jobs require homogenous thought and action… that academia is often less a site for open-minded creative study and more a space of repression that dissenting voices are so easily censored and silenced… it is dangerous for us to allow academic institutions to remain the primary site where our ideas are developed and engaged." bell hooks, remembered rapture: the artist at work

Mon, 19 Jun 2023 17:48:31 -0500

📚💬 “Science fiction is the literature of social and technological change.” Nalo Hopkinson, “What is science fiction for?” in Science Fiction: Voyage to the Edge of Imagination

Fri, 16 Jun 2023 08:41:13 -0500

Finished reading: The Widow of Rose House by Diana Biller 📚

This is a lovely romance set in Gilded Age New York, where a scandalous society widow and a famous inventor fall in love as they try to exorcise a ghost from the Gothic mansion she just bought. Content warning: spousal abuse, neglectful parents, bad treatment in a mental health facility.

Fri, 16 Jun 2023 07:08:38 -0500

💬📚 “Real life is people leaning on each other when things are hard. It’s loving each other so much there’s no question about facing things together. It’s fighting for each other and with each other and being damned grateful for every morning you wake up together.” The Widow of Rose House, Diana Biller

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 09:32:14 -0500

📚💬 “Love isn’t naïve, Alva. It’s hope, and it’s faith, and it can outlast buildings and wars and empires.” The Widow of Rose House, Diana Biller

Mon, 12 Jun 2023 11:34:26 -0500

🔖📚💖 A couple of links about pleasure reading for your reading pleasure:

What Romance Novels Taught Me About Taking Pleasure More Seriously by Stephanie Fallon (The Good Trade)
Don’t Call Them Trash by Sophie Gilbert (The Atlantic)

Tue, 30 May 2023 15:35:08 -0500

Finished reading: Demon in the Wood Graphic Novel by Leigh Bardugo 📚

Gorgeous graphic version of the Darkling’s origin story.

Sun, 28 May 2023 09:43:16 -0500

🔖📚 Read This Is Dedicated To Anyone Who Ever Left - Kelly McMaster interviewed by Lyz Lenz.

Sun, 28 May 2023 09:05:35 -0500

🔖📚 Read “I think, like marriage, home is a fantasy” - Kelly McMaster interviewed by Amanda Montei

Here are all of my intellectual intentions and here is this adorable, smiling, chubby baby, swallowing it whole.

When writing real life, there is always going to be a connection between what is happening at the breakfast table and how you are showing up on the page.

Thu, 25 May 2023 16:33:02 -0500

📚 Here comes the BBC with a list of the 100 Greatest Children’s Books of All Time. Maybe when I’m recovered from jetlag I’ll see how many are on both this and Time’s 100 Best Fantasy Books list.

Thu, 25 May 2023 13:59:05 -0500

Want to read: The Light Room by Kate Zambreno 📚

Thu, 25 May 2023 11:20:11 -0500

📚 Purchased 2 different books from museums to be shipped directly to my house rather than carrying them home myself:

Sarah Bernhardt - Et la femme crea l’etoile exhibition catalog (Petit Palais, Paris)
Science Fiction: Voyage to the Edge of Imagination exhibition book (Science Museum, London)

Sun, 21 May 2023 13:04:38 -0500

📚 Revisiting Time’s The 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time.

N. K. Jemisin:

Don’t think of fantasy as mere entertainment, then, but as a way to train for reality. It always has been, after all.

Sat, 20 May 2023 19:44:38 -0500

Finished reading: Flowers from the Storm by Laura Kinsale 📚

A sweet historical romance involving a Quaker and a rakish Duke.

Sun, 07 May 2023 17:49:40 -0500

Want to read: The Witch of Woodland by Laurel Snyder 📚

Thu, 04 May 2023 14:34:52 -0500

🔖📚 Read BookTok encourages reading as an aesthetic and no one is safe from its gaze by Elena Cavender (Mashable).

Insightful piece about how limiting our reading to a particular aesthetic connects with our attention being commodified.

Wed, 03 May 2023 01:02:02 -0500

Finished reading: Mr. & Mrs. Witch by Gwenda Bond 📚

Loved it. Scorchingly hot, fun secret agent hijinks. Highly recommend.

Mon, 01 May 2023 05:35:20 -0500

I am reading Gwenda Bond’s Mr. & Mrs. Witch right now and one of the 🔥 scenes actually made me cry because it was so beautiful and made me so happy. 📚

Fri, 28 Apr 2023 11:49:15 -0500

Want to read: How Romantics and Victorians Organized Information by Jillian M. Hess 📚

Thu, 27 Apr 2023 07:53:23 -0500

Want to read: It’s Not That Radical: Climate Action to Transform Our World by Mikaela Loach 📚

Wed, 26 Apr 2023 20:33:36 -0500

Want to read: Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space by Amanda Leduc 📚

Fri, 21 Apr 2023 21:23:26 -0500

I’m trying to see myself as others see me. Would you please tell me:

When have you seen me happiest?
What do you come to me for?
Where do I stand out against my peers?

Qs from Christina Wallace’s The Portfolio Life 📚

Wed, 19 Apr 2023 16:51:49 -0500

🔖📚 Read Roman Polanski, David Bowie, and a New Solution to the Problem of Art Made by Monstrous Men by Laura Miller (Slate).

The magnitude of an artist’s personal transgressions sometimes matters less than the nature of the attachment it disrupts.

Response to Charlie Jane Anders's "What the Universal Translator Tells Us About Exploring Other Cultures"

Tue, 18 Apr 2023 03:11:55 -0500

🔖📝📚📺🍿 Read What the Universal Translator Tells Us About Exploring Other Cultures by Charlie Jane Anders (Happy Dancing newsletter).

Anders talks about the way a universal translator gives us shortcuts to understanding other cultures that don’t really show how hard it is to actually understand another culture.

She offers a lot of examples of this and asks,

How is it that Han Solo understands Chewbacca, but doesn’t speak Wookiee himself? And vice versa?

It’s been a long time since I was getting my Master of Arts in teaching and had to take a course on how Language Acquisition happens (almost 20 years), but I recall that we tend to understand much more of a language than we can speak, and I’ve certainly found that to be true recently.

For W’s Fulbright, we spent two months in the Netherlands, and had learned some very basic Dutch using Duolingo before heading over there. I often didn’t understand what people were saying, but I always understood more of what they were saying than I could ever speak myself.

Our first week there, some young people overheard my son saying his favorite Dutch word, “kat,” on the bus. They asked us about our being Americans and then one of them wanted to know if we were full of “kattenkwaad.” We didn’t know this word, and the person who asked didn’t know English well enough to explain it, but his friend tried.

I asked if it meant behaving like a cat, and he indicated not exactly. He tried to explain by example: pushing the stop button on the bus, then not getting off when the bus stopped.

“Oh, like, pranks!” I said.

“Yes, like pranks.”

“Mischievous,” my sister suggested. He wasn’t sure about that one.

Weeks later, I found this book in the shop a short walk from our house:

Google translates this title as “First Aid for Mischief: The Survival Guide for Cat Parents.”

I don’t think it captures the sense entirely, based on our bus conversation, but it’s hard to be sure.

Fri, 14 Apr 2023 03:38:19 -0500

💬📚📓📝

No dissertation is worth a lifetime of revision.

William Germano, From Dissertation to Book

Sun, 09 Apr 2023 13:24:31 -0500

Finished reading: Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett 📚

My first finished Discworld. Reading Piers Anthony feels like coming home (miss me with your takes on him, please, I know his flaws). Reading Terry Pratchett feels like visiting a treasured friend. A lot of fun here.

Thu, 06 Apr 2023 03:53:11 -0500

💬📚📝📓

Learn how to revise and you will produce a better first book. Remember it and you will enjoy writing the books to follow.

William Germano, From Dissertation to Book

Thu, 06 Apr 2023 03:51:45 -0500

💬📚📝📓

Revision is unromantic, time-consuming, tiring. It is also the only way to make one’s writing better.

William Germano, From Dissertation to Book

Wed, 05 Apr 2023 10:35:17 -0500

💬📚📝📓

Writing isn’t a record of your thinking. It is your thinking.

William Germano, From Dissertation to Book

Wed, 05 Apr 2023 10:28:32 -0500

💬📚📝📓

Revision is a job for optimists.

William Germano, From Dissertation to Book

Tue, 04 Apr 2023 03:22:18 -0500

💬📚📝📓

…the operating instructions of scholarly publishing rarely form a part of graduate training…

William Germano, From Dissertation to Book

Mon, 03 Apr 2023 11:29:59 -0500

💬📚📝📓

Write everything you want published as if there are people who make decisions and work within limited budgets—their checkbooks, or their libraries’ acquisition budgets.

William Germano, From Dissertation to Book

Mon, 03 Apr 2023 03:55:08 -0500

Want to read: Malice House by Megan Shepherd 📚

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 23:13:11 -0500

Want to read: Pre-Raphaelite Painting Techniques by Joyce H. Townsend 📚

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 23:11:42 -0500

Want to read: Pre-Raphaelite Vision: Truth to Nature by Allen Staley 📚

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 23:10:34 -0500

Want to read: Pre-Raphaelite Women Artists ; Publ.on the Occasion of the Exhibition at Manchester City Art Galleries, 22 November 1997-22 February 1998 by Jan Marsh 📚

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 23:09:37 -0500

Want to read: Flora Symbolica: Flowers in Pre-Raphaelite Art by Debra N. Mancoff 📚

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 23:08:24 -0500

Want to read: The Pre-Raphaelites by Laurence Des Cars 📚

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 23:07:22 -0500

Want to read: English Pre-Raphaelite Painters: Their Associates and Successors by Percy H. Bate 📚

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 23:02:00 -0500

Want to read: Haunted Texts by William Evan Fredeman 📚

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 23:00:11 -0500

Want to read: Essential Pre-Raphaelites by Lucinda Hawksley 📚

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 22:57:42 -0500

Want to read: The Pre-Raphaelite Tragedy by William Gaunt 📚

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 22:55:41 -0500

Want to read: Pre-Raphaelites in Love by Gay Daly 📚

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 22:49:47 -0500

Want to read: Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde by Tim Barringer,T. J. Barringer 📚

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 22:47:34 -0500

Want to read: The Pre-Raphaelites in Literature and Art by Dennis Sydney Reginald Welland 📚

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 22:45:24 -0500

Want to read: Reading the Pre-Raphaelites by Tim Barringer 📚

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 22:43:26 -0500

Want to read: The Pre-Raphaelite Art of the Victorian Novel by Sophia Andres 📚

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 13:21:49 -0500

I love the Gothic Charm School book very much and am happy to have bought it as an ebook so I can re-read it as I travel, but I miss the special font for the Secret Goth Cabal. 💀📚

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 06:17:23 -0500

Want to read: Haunted Greece by John L. Tomkinson 📚

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 06:15:47 -0500

Want to read: Troublesome Things by Diane Purkiss 📚

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 06:14:45 -0500

Want to read: Fairy Tales, Now First Collected by Joseph Ritson 📚

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 06:13:36 -0500

Want to read: Fairies and Witches at the Boundary of South-eastern and Central Europe by Eva Pocs 📚

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 06:12:35 -0500

Want to read: The Banshee by Patricia Lysaght 📚

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 06:10:39 -0500

Want to read: Elf Queens and Holy Friars by Richard Firth Green 📚

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 06:09:45 -0500

Want to read: Handbook of Fairies by Ronan Coghlan 📚

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 06:08:32 -0500

Want to read: The Fairies in Tradition and Literature by Katharine Mary Briggs 📚

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 06:06:50 -0500

Want to read: Dictionary of Fairies by Katherine Briggs 📚

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 06:05:27 -0500

Want to read: Fairies in Nineteenth-Century Art and Literature by Nicola Bown 📚

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 06:04:31 -0500

Want to read: Fairy Lore by D. L. Ashliman 📚

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 06:02:48 -0500

Want to read: Tolkien on Fairy-stories by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien 📚

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 05:59:10 -0500

Want to read: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Fairies by Anna Franklin 📚

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 05:55:59 -0500

Want to read: The Good People by Peter Narvez 📚

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 03:44:00 -0500

Want to read: Northumberland Folk Tales by Rosalind Kerven 📚

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 03:42:05 -0500

Want to read: Fabulous Creatures, Mythical Monsters, and Animal Power Symbols by Cassandra Eason 📚

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 03:37:58 -0500

Want to read: The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries by W. Y. Evans-Wentz 📚

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 03:33:27 -0500

Want to read: Strange and Secret Peoples by Carole G. Silver 📚

Wed, 29 Mar 2023 19:30:19 -0500

Want to read: The Classic Fairy Tales (Norton Critical Editions) by 📚

Wed, 29 Mar 2023 19:24:30 -0500

Want to read: The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler 📚

Wed, 29 Mar 2023 19:04:49 -0500

Finished reading: A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow 📚

This one took me a little while to get into but once I was in, I was all in. Super fun while also dealing with all the ways our stories can be garbage. Highly recommend.

Wed, 29 Mar 2023 14:06:01 -0500

🔖📚 Read Ladies of Leisure.

This one bummed me out. I think it sells Dept. of Speculation short.

Wed, 29 Mar 2023 13:50:33 -0500

🔖📚📝Read Is Parenthood the Enemy of Creative Work? by Kim Brooks (The Cut)

That’s one of the major things parenting is teaching me, the balance between letting go in writing and practicing craft, the balance between being ferocious with my imagination and rigorous in my practice. Shape and chaos. Learning to shape chaos.

Wed, 29 Mar 2023 11:51:31 -0500

🔖📚 Read The books that help define motherhood – for mums everywhere to read

Is it ever possible to reclaim yourself without endangering your child?

I don’t know. Because for me it’s been more about reconstructing myself rather than reclaiming myself.

Wed, 29 Mar 2023 09:02:33 -0500

🔖📚 Read Art or Babies.

you can make your art without being an art monster: You can do it as… an art mother.

Wed, 29 Mar 2023 08:29:03 -0500

🔖📚 Read Why are we only talking about ‘mom books’ by white women? by Angela Garbes (The Cut).

I love Angela Garbes’s writing. This is another old one.

Wed, 29 Mar 2023 08:16:29 -0500

🔖📚 Read The Stranger Guest: The Literature of Pregnancy and New Motherhood by Lily Gurton-Wachter (Los Angeles Review of Books)

Another old bookmark.

How will having a baby disrupt my sense of who I am, of my body, my understanding of life and death, my relation to the world and to my sense of independence, my experience of fear and hope and time, and the structure of my experience altogether? Dr. Spock is silent on these topics.

By the time a new mother has the time (or free hands) to write again, the most extreme experience is beginning to fade from her memory.

Wed, 29 Mar 2023 07:55:52 -0500

🔖📚 In a Raft of New Books, Motherhood From (Almost) Every Angle by Parul Sehgal (The New York Times).

Recent books on motherhood, however, frequently and sometimes unwittingly, illustrate a different phenomenon: how motherhood dissolves the border of the self but shores up, often violently, the walls between classes of women.

Wed, 29 Mar 2023 07:46:18 -0500

🔖📚 Read Maggie Nelson: Inflections Forever New by Ariel Lewiton (Guernica).

We’re all human beings with bodily needs living within a system. We don’t need to prove that we’re not a part of the fabric of the culture in order to want to change it.

Wed, 29 Mar 2023 07:22:41 -0500

🔖📚 Read Why All the Books About Motherhood? by Laura Elkin (The Paris Review).

Another bookmark I’ve been sitting on for years.

These new books recast motherhood not as the reactionary choice, the choice made because it’s what’s socially expected, but as something hard won, intellectually demanding, a form of creative labor. Not something that takes you away from your work but something that is now both frame and canvas for it.

Wed, 29 Mar 2023 03:02:46 -0500

🔖📚 Read We Need to Talk About Whiteness in Motherhood Memoirs by Nancy Reddy (Electric Literature).

I bookmarked this 4 years ago & am only reading it now. Reddy points out admitting you’re struggling carries a different risk for moms of Color.

Tue, 28 Mar 2023 09:50:48 -0500

🔖📝📚 Read The parent trap: can you be a good writer and a good parent? by Lara Feigel (The Guardian)

Feigel writes about motherly ambivalence.

Tue, 28 Mar 2023 09:31:38 -0500

Want to read: A Circle of Quiet by Madeleine L’Engle 📚

Tue, 28 Mar 2023 09:21:47 -0500

Want to read: How Not to Exclude Artist Mothers (and Other Parents) by Hettie Judah 📚

Tue, 28 Mar 2023 09:05:33 -0500

🔖📝📚 Read I left my baby to write this. How do artists balance creativity and the ache for their child? by Rhiannon Lucy Coslett (The Guardian).

Coslett has as many questions as answers and mentions a lot of books I’m keen to check out.

Tue, 28 Mar 2023 08:57:11 -0500

Want to read: This Boy We Made by Taylor Harris 📚

Tue, 28 Mar 2023 06:11:32 -0500

Want to read: Weird Girls by Caroline Hagood 📚

Tue, 28 Mar 2023 06:02:38 -0500

🔖📚📝 Read The Mother, the Artist, and Me by Caroline Hagood (Elle).

This is a great essay about what can happen when we bring our kids into the work of art with us, when our kids become part of our creative community.

Tue, 28 Mar 2023 03:52:49 -0500

Finished reading: Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill 📚

I want to write a long response to this one but don’t have time today. It’s less about art-making than I expected. It’s also excellent.

Sun, 26 Mar 2023 16:09:37 -0500

I just want to fight censorship 📚 and make theatre 🎭.

Sun, 26 Mar 2023 12:42:37 -0500

Finished reading: Never Say You Can’t Survive by Charlie Jane Anders 📚

I love this so much! Charlie Jane Anders says to invent imaginary friends to hang out with and write about them, which inspired me to write stories about characters friends and I invented a while back and now almost 10K words later I feel capable of writing fiction again. Highly recommend.

Sat, 25 Mar 2023 13:59:05 -0500

Finished reading: Bloodmarked by Tracy Deonn 📚

I might love this even more than Legendborn, which I didn’t think was possible. Tracy Deonn goes broader and deeper and is my hero.

Sat, 25 Mar 2023 02:30:18 -0500

I cannot recommend Book Riot’s censorship coverage highly enough. They’re doing great work, with Kelly Jensen leading it. If you’re in the US, you can also get their e-book How to Fight Book Bans and Censorship for $2.99. It’s helping me cut through feeling helpless. 📚

Tue, 21 Mar 2023 05:45:28 -0500

🔖📚📝 Read

A Beginner’s Guide to Writing IP in Publishing — ERIC SMITH ericsmithrocks.com
Read: www.ericsmithrocks.com
ericsmithrocks.com https://www.ericsmithrocks.com/blog/2023/3/9/a-beginners-guide-to-writing-ip-intellectual-property-in-publishing

Awesome blog post from Eric Smith full of helpful information.

Being active in the spaces you want to write about, helps build your profile and helps get you seen.

Friends, I cannot stress the importance of community in the bookish and writerly space.

Sun, 19 Mar 2023 22:13:04 -0500

Want to read: A Life of One’s Own: Nine Women Writers Begin Again by Joanna Biggs 📚

Sun, 19 Mar 2023 22:09:46 -0500

Want to read: Saving Time by Jenny Odell 📚

Sun, 19 Mar 2023 15:58:17 -0500

Want to read: The Magician’s Daughter by H. G. Parry 📚

Tue, 07 Mar 2023 01:18:40 -0500

Finished reading: Amsterdam: A History of the World’s Most Liberal City by Russell Shorto 📚

This has been a great read while wandering Amsterdam. I have a much better understanding of the significance and uniqueness of the city, and have been able to attach more meaning to particular places, than I would have if I hadn’t read it. Highly recommend.

Tue, 07 Mar 2023 00:46:45 -0500

📚💬 “Life is absurd. It has no meaning. But it has beauty, and wonder, and we have to enjoy that.” Frieda Menco, Holocaust survivor, quoted in Amsterdam: A History of the World’s Most Liberal City by Russell Shorto

Fri, 24 Feb 2023 19:46:52 -0500

Finished reading: The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers 📚

Happy to have read it. Turns out vibes are enough when you’ve got charming characters.

Thu, 23 Feb 2023 03:17:43 -0500

Currently reading: The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers 📚

Now that I’m reading for vibes & character instead of a narrative arc, I’m enjoying this properly. The book didn’t work for me the first time I tried it.

Thu, 16 Feb 2023 14:41:18 -0500

I’m not saying I’m just saying, the introduction to GENDER AT SEA talks a lot about Moana and what the story can tell us about women in maritime pursuits and how Moana saves the environment and teaches Maui it’s okay to be vulnerable, so… I chose wisely. 📚🌊🎓

Thu, 16 Feb 2023 11:35:20 -0500

Who goes to the Dutch National Maritime Museum and buys an edited collection titled Gender at Sea as a souvenir? This academic. 📚🌊🎓

Mon, 13 Feb 2023 12:43:10 -0500

🔖📚📝 Read Mess Up Your Good, Premium, Luxury Notebooks.

Yes! Great advice from Anna Havron.

Sat, 11 Feb 2023 12:10:36 -0500

Finished reading: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke 📚

This one took me a while to get into. Before giving up, I hunted down a review. The review indicated that there was more to this than vestibules, halls, statues, and tides, so I stuck with it. I’m glad I did.

Tue, 07 Feb 2023 05:24:19 -0500

📚💬📓 “… being transparent about one’s positionality, and choosing a granularity of analysis appropriate to your actual knowledge and experience, are key choices soneone must make as they enter fan studies.” Henry Jenkins, “Textual Poachers, Twenty Years Later”

Thu, 02 Feb 2023 17:17:55 -0500

Finished reading: The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas 📚

I’m extremely late to this one. It’s excellent, of course. I love the way Angie Thomas shows that even in the face of tragedy and appalling oppression, there’s room for joy.

Mon, 30 Jan 2023 18:50:08 -0500

Finished reading: Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo 📚

I love it so much. I left the hardcover at home but bought the ebook to read while I’m traveling, which meant I could highlight without feeling weird about it and I highlighted a ton of stuff.

Mon, 09 Jan 2023 10:10:08 -0500

📚💬 “Be open to the possibility that you are bigger, more magical, more powerful than you dare imagine, that you are here to do something that is necessary and consequential and that only you can do.” Bakara Wintner in WTF Is Tarot? And How Do I Do It?, on XX JUDGMENT

Mon, 02 Jan 2023 06:23:55 -0500

Finished reading: The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie 📚

Poirot’s first case. A bit of homage to Doyle at the start, then on to the modes that come to define Christie’s work: a rogue’s gallery & a drawing room reveal.

My Reading Year 2022, Part Deux

Fri, 30 Dec 2022 19:10:38 -0500

I’m calling it for the year. I’m not going to try to squeeze one more in before the end of the day tomorrow. When I wrote my year in reading post on December 2, I’d read 46 books this year. I’ve read 5 more since. I’ve also got a nifty new Micro.blog plug-in that will show you the covers of all the books I read.

Not a lot has changed in terms of my favorites since that original post. Hildafolk and The Bloody Chamber continue to be standouts. I’m very happy to be caught up on Leigh Bardugo just in time to get behind again when my preorder for Hell Bent comes in.

Season of Love is a recent favorite. Raybearer was super compelling and as I’ve started the sequel, that’ll probably be my next finished read.

I’ve got Bloodmarked on hold but it’s a wait of about 14 weeks. (I’m going to buy the paperback when it comes out so it’ll match my copy of Legendborn.)

Here’s all the books I read this year:

Fri, 30 Dec 2022 19:00:11 -0500

Finished reading: Hooky by Míriam Bonastre Tur 📚