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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.

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.

I’m 20 pages in and wow has it grabbed me quickly, even with my fuzzy covid brain

For my book club and so delightful so far—hitting all my bookish book spots!

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

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.

I can’t really explain why this pulls me in so much—Kristin herself is so annoying and I don’t relate to the devout Christianity—but I am just loving this trilogy

Not entirely sure it was wise to choose a romance that has a lot to do with the precariousness of being Jewish in 1832 London and the desperate hopes that they will finally be granted emancipation—lots of anxieties around today’s world pulling me out of a relaxing read, oops

My chronological reading of Pym continues to pay off. I loved this one. Less mockery and cringe, more wistful and generous. Despite Wilmet being the center (or maybe because) it really feels like a study of men and the roles open for them.

my library copy is back and I can finally finish this even though I'm pretty sure I don't remember enough to make sense of it, oops again

just one tragedy after another, and Thrall does an excellent job of exploring the many stories that he interweaves into Salama's search for his son, and connecting micro actions with the macro circumstances and decisions that created the conditions for this.