dorking around with old books for work and reading new(ish) books for fun with strong opinions but an inconsistent rating system | you can find me most places as wynkenhimself including as @wynkenhimself@glammr.us | she/her
This link opens in a pop-up window
7% complete! sarah has read 2 of 26 books.
Gemma Guillory knows her once-charming town is now remembered for one reason, and one reason only.
That three innocent people …
For fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold, a charming, internationally bestselling Japanese novel about …
Cozy not like cozy mysteries but like cozy robots. It was very sweet and comforting, if you're someone who worries about how you fit into the world and/or how you are or are not separate from your work. I'm not a fan of the style of writing alas
For fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold, a charming, internationally bestselling Japanese novel about …
It's been so hard to find books that are working for me! I think it's stress (I know it's stress). This is hitting the spot so far
George Washington Black, or "Wash," an eleven-year-old field slave on a Barbados sugar plantation, is …
I devoured, but slowly, because there's so much to absorb here. Not sure what coherent thoughts I have, nor am I sure how to think about the ending. But I'm so glad I finally read this!
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is a marvel of ingenuity, an experimental text …
I paused in the middle of this and then too much time elapsed to be able to pick it up and have it make any sense! Someday I'll have to start all over with it, because it was pretty great so far :(
Set in northern Michigan in the same area my parents had a cottage and so I was flooded with memories of Traverse City and Leelenaw Peninsula and the dunes and cherries. Maybe because of that, I was extra aware of how much their dysfunctional families were completely unlike mine and how much I couldn’t relate to how they respond to that in their adult lives. But also featuring a children’s librarian, so lots to offer! Not enough Cherry Festival!!! And weirdly ZERO Interlochen, which is a big omission.
The 1960 baseball season is shaping up to be the worst year of Eddie O’Leary’s …
even though I couldn't care less about baseball
The Charioteer is a war novel by Mary Renault first published in London in 1953. …
This was amazing!! Most of the references I see to this book are how great it is as an early openly gay and sympathetic story (no small feat in 1953 England) but it’s also a beautifully written novel. Kinda had mixed feelings about who needed rescuing more but Laurie is the perfect boyfriend.
From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of March, the journey of a rare illuminated manuscript through …
Oof. I liked a lot about this! It also drove me nuts in ways I haven’t worked out but part of it is captured by the voice in the book that praises a future where we’re all beautiful mutts, and just, fuck you, lady. A vision of a future where different races and ethnicities have children together so we’re all amorphously raced is not the happy vision the book’s liberal voice thinks it is. I didn’t like March much either, fwiw.
This is the story of four people in late middle-age - Edwin, Norman, Letty and …
It was my year of reading Pym and this was the loneliest and hardest of them all. Maybe because their ages of oldness are much too close to my own age. But also the smallness and bleakness of the long years of that part of post-war London. Still great Pym, because she's Barbara Pym.
Fetter was raised to kill, honed as a knife to cut down his sainted father. …
I’m 20 pages in and wow has it grabbed me quickly, even with my fuzzy covid brain
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is a marvel of ingenuity, an experimental text …
For my book club and so delightful so far—hitting all my bookish book spots!
Kristin Lavransdatter interweaves political, social, and religious history with the daily aspects of family life …
I am still really pulled in by this trilogy. Kristin continues to make rough decisions, Erlend continues to be a mistake always, but the inner lives and the sweep of it all, and the deeper look into Simon are all great. I think it’s the deeply realized medieval Norway setting in combination with the really subtle storytelling? The details of political feuds escape me, but it doesn’t really matter
Though today’s LGBTQ people owe a lot to the generations who came before them, their …
An odd book that explores an evolving art piece in which the author matched other artists with people whose lives had been included in the archives of an LGBTQ society. The idea for the piece—matchmaking and creating queer lineages—is great. But the book focuses relentlessly on the author’s experiences of creating the project rather than the artists’ experiences of making the art, or even conveying those installations so that the reader can experience them. The third part with invited essays from Katz, Tea, and Vargas was great—smart and beautifully written. If you’re a GLAMs person, this can open up lots of thoughts both about how we as researchers and we as institutional workers could create opportunities for public and creative work with our collections.
