Skip to content

Reading the End Posts

Fandom Got Its Cooties All Over Your Profic

Let me begin by saying that I highly recommend both of the books I’m going to talk about in this post, Olivia Dade’s contemporary romance novel All the Feels and Freya Marske’s fantasy romance A Marvellous Light with two Ls because she’s Australian. That’s a little tl;dr for anyone who might just want to know “but should I read these books” rather than receiving a disquisition on what I feel is good about fanfic. Can’t imagine anyone feels that way, but it takes all kinds to make a world. Both of these books are out now, and you should buy…

Leave a Comment

A Few Kerfuffles: A Links Round-Up

Hello, hello! Once again, we have reached the weekend. We’ve done it together, hand in unlovable hand. I think the weeks and months are getting longer. Has anyone else noticed? I recommend convening a national committee of scientists to study this phenomenon and issue a comprehensive report about how to make it stop. Whilst time is crawling by, the weather has simply stopped trying. I am writing this post on an October evening and it is eighty-five degrees outside. This is ungodly. I have never heard of this alt-lit writer from a time before I was quite as online as…

Leave a Comment

Hot Take: YA Is Good (feat. sisters, boats, Tarot cards, posh schools)

After a fallow period of YA reading, I’ve been absolutely tearing through new YA books this October. Hot take, YA is really good right now! Sometimes when I think about my own youth and the, like, three bookshelves worth of YA books my library had back then, and half of them were Lurlene McDaniel, and that was a good library system, I just feel very very happy that the youth of today have such an amazing profusion of great books. At least something is going right for the youths! The rest of the world is chaos and disaster but they…

Leave a Comment

I’m Sorry But I Need to Talk about It: A Links Round-Up

Look I know I KNOW we are all tired of the kidney / group chat / bad art friend discourse, it was fun when it dropped and now it’s the end of the week and we’re tired, I KNOW. It’s just that I need to talk about it with my mother at Sunday coffee, and for that to happen I need her to read the article, and for her to read the article I have to be like MOM READ THIS HERE on my blog or else one of us is going to forget that we ever wanted her to…

Leave a Comment

Review: Light from Uncommon Stars, Ryka Aoki

Note: I write this review while listening to Béla Bartók’s “Sonata for Solo Violin.” No disrespect to the other orchestra sections but strings are the best ones. Light from Uncommon Stars has three protagonists: a teenage violinist, a grown adult violinist who can buy her soul back from Hell by giving it seven souls of younger violinists (her students), and a donut shop proprietor who is actually an alien on the run from galactic warfare. As that description indicates, this is a book that unapologetically blends genres, a fantasy novel that’s a sci-fi novel that’s actually really a novel about…

Leave a Comment

Review: Partly Cloudy, Tanita Davis

I discovered Tanita Davis memorably at an event where I was supposed to be doing things and paying attention, but because I had gotten so wrapped up in her middle grade novel Peas and Carrots, I just read and read and read it and ignored the events happening all around me. Which was/is kind of surprising! I don’t think of myself as a huge reader of middle grade books. Even at a time when middle grade is clearly undergoing an explosion of awesome content, it doesn’t tend to do much for me. I have, tragically, aged out of it. (I’m…

Leave a Comment

Montero! A Links Round-Up

This year has been shit. This month has been shit. This week has been really shit. But there is a single ray of light, and it is Lil Nas X’s new album, Montero, which is getting me through. Craig Jenkins reviews the album for Vulture. (link) I am excited to see songs from Montero turn up in the repertoire of college marching bands. What does appropriation mean in food culture? (link) NPR crowd-sourced a list of the best SFF from the last ten years, and it’s a good-ass list. (link) The Jeopardy! situation was some real fuckin bullshit and I…

1 Comment

Episode 152 – 2021 Book Preview (Part 2) and Dial A for Aunties

Hello, patron friends! This podcast is coming to you earlier than expected because there is a very enormous hurricane coming my way, and I have had to hustle to get this podcast out in advance of its arrival. If you are not in the path of a hurricane currently, please keep a good thought for us! If you are experiencing some other natural disaster, please know that I am keeping a good thought for you. What a dreadful world it is these days! Why are we all stuck with it this way? You can listen to the podcast in the…

1 Comment

Postcard Poems: An Interview with Jeanne Griggs

2021 is mostly garbage, but even bad years have good moments, don’t they? And one of the bright sides of this year is that my lovely friend Jeanne, of Necromancy Never Pays, has come out with a book of poems! We’ve been IRL friends for years, and blogging friends for even longer than that, so I was thrilled to have the chance to interview her about the collection, her writing process, and all the travel she can’t wait to get back to. How did you go about putting the poems together? What organizing principles did you use, and how much…

Leave a Comment

It’s Friday the 13th But We’re Not Doomed: A Links Round-Up

My Friday the 13ths tend to be good, but I’m getting the results of a COVID test today, which feels very very cursed. Pray for me; I really want to do sister night with my sister tonight, and I very much want to spend some bonding time with my nephew this weekend. I miss him! He is such a good boy! Anyway, let’s have a links round-up! I’m going to start with an article that is partly rather grim about the future of the pandemic, but also reassures us that the pandemic will end someday. This is helpful to me.…

Leave a Comment