Books
Finished reading: Rebel by Beverly Jenkins 📚
Ms. Bev knows her business and does it well.
📚💬 “We can’t hide in romance. We have to find strength in it.” Adriana Herrera in today’s episode of Fated Mates
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.
📚 Happy book birthday to Adriana Herrera and A Tropical Rebel Gets the Duke!
Finished reading: Rule of the Aurora King by Nisha J. Tuli 📚
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. 🔥🔥🔥🔥
Finished reading: A Fashionable Indulgence by KJ Charles 📚
Just excellent.
📚💬 “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
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Do not obey in advance.
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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?
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Take responsibility for the face of the world.
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Remember professional ethics.
For me, this is about protecting library patrons’ privacy.
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Be wary of paramilitaries.
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Be reflective if you must be armed.
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Stand out.
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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.
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Practice corporeal politics.
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Establish a private life.
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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.
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Learn from peers in other countries.
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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.
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.
Finished reading: The Ruin of Gabriel Ashleigh by KJ Charles 📚
A fun short story. A hot 🔥🔥🔥.
💬📚📝 “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
💬📚📝 “…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
💬📚📝 “…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
💬📚📝 “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
Finished reading: Dark Lover by J.R. Ward 📚
Listened to the audiobook. This one is very much of its time (2005).
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.
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.
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! 🔥🔥🔥
💬📚 “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
FEBRUARY
- 4 A Tropical Rebel Gets the Duke by Adriana Herrera
MARCH
- 4 Shadow’s Heart by Kresley Cole, Oathbound by Tracy Deonn
APRIL
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15 Love in 280 Characters or Less by Ravynn K. Stringfield
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29 Once Upon You & Me by Timothy Janovsky
MAY
- 13 A Curse Carved in Bone by Danielle L. Jensen
JULY
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8 These Summer Storms by Sarah MacLean
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15 A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna
SEPTEMBER
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2 By the Horns by Ruby Dixon
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30 A Mannequin for Christmas by Timothy Janovsky
📚 Anticipating My Reading Year 2025
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.
Finished reading: Trial of the Sun Queen by Nisha J. Tuli 📚
📚 My Reading Year, 2024
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:
