This is one of the best short story collections I've ever read. Unsettling and tender and double-edged in the best possible way, with climate change and sapphic love always looming large or small in the background. I'm still thinking about several of the stories days later, mulling over the resonances and ambiguities and lovely organic metaphors.
My favorites were "Take Only What Belongs To You," "Fiddler, Fool Pair" and "Endangered Animals."
This is one of the strangest books I've ever read. There were some graphic passages that felt gratuitous - not inherently, I'm not a prude, just that I could tell July was snickering as she wrote it, patting herself on the back for being subversive.
On the other hand, I was utterly engrossed even though I found the characters unlikeable and unrelatable. It's an extremely cleverly constructed novel, very skillfully written. There are some truly beautiful, thought-provoking moments about marriage and motherhood and menopause and the creative process.
It's pretty batshit insane on a fundamental level, and I don't think it really needs to be. So it's a well-earned 3 stars, but a bit of a headscratcher for me.
The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies by Alison Goodman
4.5 stars
A thoroughly enjoyable Regency mystery romp with a social justice and feminist bent. I love that the leading ladies are genuinely old maids (in their forties) and use their own social invisibility to their advantage. There were some surprisingly moving moments, including a passage which I later learned was taken almost word-for-word from Fanny Burney's letters. The romance featuring some of my favorite tropes is just the cherry on top.
A very enjoyable early Discworld! It somehow feels like it was written earlier than Equal Rites, but that could be my faulty memory since it must be over a decade since I read ER. Actually, it felt quite distinct from most of the others because the world and protagonist were permanently altered at the end, not just the usual fun deus ex machina and return to status quo. The chuckle per page ratio is skyhigh, just so many succinct, truthful, and clever observations.
This was a slightly better version of Babel by R. F. Kuang with more of a focus on intersectionality, but it still wasn't fully satisfying. Despite not being marketed as YA, it felt very YA in terms of prose and romance. A little too Baby's First Anti-Colonialist and Anti-Capitalist Fantasy for my taste (but maybe I've just been spoiled by Ursula K. Le Guin). I picked this up because I read a review that compared it to Le Guin, actually, but I'm afraid there's really no comparison.
The setting is certainly imaginative and it is fairly radical in its politics. Compared to Babel, I think it's an interesting choice to have a protagonist who's an ambitious, white feminist, girl boss-y woman who has never considered her complicity in the colonial project before. But Wang is really …
Book 9 of 2025
Blood Over Bright Haven by M. L. Wang
3 stars
This was a slightly better version of Babel by R. F. Kuang with more of a focus on intersectionality, but it still wasn't fully satisfying. Despite not being marketed as YA, it felt very YA in terms of prose and romance. A little too Baby's First Anti-Colonialist and Anti-Capitalist Fantasy for my taste (but maybe I've just been spoiled by Ursula K. Le Guin). I picked this up because I read a review that compared it to Le Guin, actually, but I'm afraid there's really no comparison.
The setting is certainly imaginative and it is fairly radical in its politics. Compared to Babel, I think it's an interesting choice to have a protagonist who's an ambitious, white feminist, girl boss-y woman who has never considered her complicity in the colonial project before. But Wang is really hamfisted in the same way Kuang is, with entire chapters devoted to hand-holding passages explaining basic concepts like false allyship, capitalist extraction, and white guilt without much subtlety or anything that makes it feel transformative or insightful.
This book has lived in my head rent-free since I first read it, and over the years I've looked up quotes from it to help me through many an anxiety spiral. Now was definitely the right time for a reread given the current state of my mental health and the world at large.
In addition to being comforting, it's strange and full of loveable characters and so wonderfully constructed. I'm such a sucker for well-executed metafiction. Also I should probably actually get around to studying Zen Buddhism more seriously. It seems to speak to my soul in a way nothing else does.
I had no idea Susanna Clarke had a new story out (though I later learned it was originally a radio broadcast). Piranesi is one of my favorite books, so I was absolutely delighted when I spotted this in a local bookstore.
It's as delightfully strange and lovingly crafted as Clarke's other books. Victoria Sawdon's illustrations are stunning and complement the text very well. The plot itself is good but too short to have truly compelling characters. I found Clarke's afterword about her unintentional influences and themes almost more interesting than the story itself.
Also, I agree with her that there should be more pigs in fiction. Apple the pig was the standout star for me. 🐷
I was excited to read an alternative retelling of Cortés's first meeting with Moctezuma, and it ended up being completely different from what I expected in the best way. Well-researched and immersive like traditional historical fiction, but modern in prose and postmodern in construction. What surprised me most was how funny it was. In some ways it felt more like a 21st century dark satirical comedy film than a book set in the 16th century. (I couldn't get The Death of Stalin out of my head as I was reading).
It wasn't what I expected, but it was a psychedelic delight from start to finish. The prose is so unique and the jokes are so subtle that I'd love to test out my Spanish skills by reading Enrigue's original text. Maybe a goal to work up to. …
Book 12 of 2025
You Dreamed of Empires by Álvaro Enrigue
4.5 stars
I was excited to read an alternative retelling of Cortés's first meeting with Moctezuma, and it ended up being completely different from what I expected in the best way. Well-researched and immersive like traditional historical fiction, but modern in prose and postmodern in construction. What surprised me most was how funny it was. In some ways it felt more like a 21st century dark satirical comedy film than a book set in the 16th century. (I couldn't get The Death of Stalin out of my head as I was reading).
It wasn't what I expected, but it was a psychedelic delight from start to finish. The prose is so unique and the jokes are so subtle that I'd love to test out my Spanish skills by reading Enrigue's original text. Maybe a goal to work up to.
A lushly written, thought-provoking meditation on life and humanity from the perspective of astronauts who orbit the earth 16 times in a single 24 hour period.
I really enjoyed this, though the last couple chapters dragged for me. Being unmoored from time, gravity, and breathable atmosphere prompted some really lovely passages about what it means to be alive, to be human, to be of the Earth even when you're away from it.
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K Le Guin (graphic novel adapted by Fred Fordham)
4.75 stars
Earthsea is such a masterpiece that means so much to me, so I was skeptical at first. But it was an immediate green flag that Le Guin's son initially reached out to Fordham because he loved his work and wanted to see his mother's works adapted as a graphic novel.
This is so gorgeous, absolutely stunning illustrations with soft, cinematic lighting and sparse text. It's basically long sequences of evocative, painterly images with an occasional direct quotation lifted from the original book. I loved it so much more than I thought I would.
It genuinely made me view and love this story in a new way. I really hope Fordham keeps adapting the rest of the Earthsea books, because I want to keep returning to his version of Le …
Book 14 of 2025
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K Le Guin (graphic novel adapted by Fred Fordham)
4.75 stars
Earthsea is such a masterpiece that means so much to me, so I was skeptical at first. But it was an immediate green flag that Le Guin's son initially reached out to Fordham because he loved his work and wanted to see his mother's works adapted as a graphic novel.
This is so gorgeous, absolutely stunning illustrations with soft, cinematic lighting and sparse text. It's basically long sequences of evocative, painterly images with an occasional direct quotation lifted from the original book. I loved it so much more than I thought I would.
It genuinely made me view and love this story in a new way. I really hope Fordham keeps adapting the rest of the Earthsea books, because I want to keep returning to his version of Le Guin's world.
How to describe this book? An ethnography of a society that doesn't yet exist in post-climate collapse northern California. A collection of imagined cultural artifacts shaped by the long shadow of our current polluting, wasteful, extractive capitalist hellscape. A total rejection of the plot-driven narrative structure and the ideologies underpinning it. Instead, a meandering spiral of related stories that give the reader the tools to imagine a deindustrialized, anarchic future. I agree with Shruti Swamy (who wrote the introduction) that Le Guin is essentially making the case that humans need to reindigenize, devolve into smaller communities, and mindfully scale down our industry and environmental impact in order to weather the coming years of climate change.
This took me months to read and I'll still be digesting it for a long time. I'll definitely be revisiting this …
Book 15 of 2025
Always Coming Home by Ursula K Le Guin
5 stars
How to describe this book? An ethnography of a society that doesn't yet exist in post-climate collapse northern California. A collection of imagined cultural artifacts shaped by the long shadow of our current polluting, wasteful, extractive capitalist hellscape. A total rejection of the plot-driven narrative structure and the ideologies underpinning it. Instead, a meandering spiral of related stories that give the reader the tools to imagine a deindustrialized, anarchic future. I agree with Shruti Swamy (who wrote the introduction) that Le Guin is essentially making the case that humans need to reindigenize, devolve into smaller communities, and mindfully scale down our industry and environmental impact in order to weather the coming years of climate change.
This took me months to read and I'll still be digesting it for a long time. I'll definitely be revisiting this eventually, likely in hard copy so I can flip back and forth to the appendices and glossary. As a first time reader I chose to read completely linearly on my ereader app, and there was so much illuminating context at the back of the book once I got there.
This book is truly just a kaleidescope of genius, it's incredible. I can see myself living with one foot in this world for years.
