Notes
🔖📚 Read Tackling Ballet’s History of Anti-Blackness as a White Woman.
The infinitely kinder cousin of ignorance is curiosity.
A great short piece that’s about cultural humility as much as anything.
🔖📚 Read My Son’s Love Life Is None of My Business, Except It Is by Yukiko Tominaga (Electric Literature).
This is a lovely piece about love and dealing with our children growing up.
Finished reading: The (Fake) Dating Game by Timothy Janovsky 📚
Whew! Timothy Janovsky wasn’t kidding when he said this was his steamiest book yet! Grief and heartbreak serve as the flashpoint for this sizzling romance set against a Supermarket Sweep-style game show.
Y’all got me ready for “I cry a lot but I’m so productive” but I was not prepared for the resonant truth of “I’m so depressed I act like it’s my birthday every day.” 🎵
Finished reading: You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian 📚
Full review coming soon but y’all, this is so great. It’s out May 7. Olivia Waite says if you only read one romance this spring, it should be this one, and she’s right.
New bio!
Mom. PhD. Once and future school librarian. Freelance academic. Citizen of Romancelandia. I manage multiple chronic illnesses. I love books and games. 🌈♿
🔖 Read The Messy Places Are Where the Learning Happens: On Being a Beginner by Michelle Boyd (Digits and Threads)
A great reminder to deliberately be a beginner sometimes.
Finished reading: The Witch Queen of Halloween by Kresley Cole 📚
This is a super fun romance novella, inspired by horror movies. Might become an annual Halloween re-read for me.
Finished reading: The Player by Kresley Cole 📚
A con artist falling in love with her tech billionaire mark? Sign me up.
🔖📚📝 Read Mothering and Writing Are Both Undervalued Labor, so How Do Women Do Both? .
An excellent excerpt from the book The Mother Artist: Portraits of Ambition, Limitation, and Creativity.
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“…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
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“One of the gifts of being a writer is that it gives you an excuse to do things, to go places and explore.” Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
🔖📝 Read An Oasis in the Desert: Why Libraries Are the Best Places to Write.
I love to write in a library carrel. More than once I’ve considered getting one for our home office. I wonder if my favorite local library branch has them. I haven’t noticed. Next time I’m there, I’ll check.
Finished reading: The Master by Kresley Cole 📚
Over here fantasizing about spending my own money on ModCloth and eShakti dresses, as well as having a place to wear them. 👗
Finished reading: The Professional by Kresley Cole 📚
I finished this in just a couple of days. Definitely read the info on the author’s website before picking this one up.
One of the cool things about kids is that some are obsessed with stuff like Pokémon and some are obsessed with stuff like cats, while still others are obsessed with ancient Rome and yet others are obsessed with sea shanties. And some love more than one of these or something else entirely.
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.
🔖🧶 Read This Is Your Brain on Fibre by Michelle Woodvine (Digits & Threads).
A great article that explores a lot of the reasons fiber crafting is good for our mental health.
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.
🔖 Read You are having a midlife crisis. It’s fine.
This is an interesting pairing with The Cut’s The Case for Marrying an Older Man.
The former points out that a woman partying at midlife is not, in fact, a revolution. Which pairs fascinatingly with the latter’s framing of being a young artist supported by a partner as a brilliant life hack. I’m curious what the author of the latter’s midlife crisis will look like.
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.
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.
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.