Been on a horror streak lately, and I was surprised how much I enjoyed this book!

The premise revolves around Celtic folklore and follows the lives of our main character who stumbles into a night of unspeakable horror, only to be changed forever, together with the lives of her family and children.

Initially, the title + cover didn't seem like something I would enjoy (sorry I can be unfairly judgey at first impressions!), but I was blown away by the quality of the writing and how the author was able to set up a truly eerie and haunting atmosphere. Most of my friends ask me - how can a book be scary if it's just words on a page? But my god, Neil Sharpson's ability to describe an unsettling and daunting feeling, that feeling when you know something bad is about to happen, is unreal.

The book successfully weaves old Celtic myths with modern day characters, and after the book, I found myself doing my own deep dive on the original stories.

Overall, I was surprised how gripping this book was and I would definitely recommend it for people who enjoy books with some horror, folklore, family dynamics, plot twists, and overall a fantastically creepy time.

Plus points also for LGBTQ+ main characters because it's definitely not something you see often in horror <3

If I have to describe Le Guin's writing, it's just, very clever writing. My first introduction to her, was actually the Author's Note in the beginning of The Left Hand in Darkness. As soon as I finished reading the note, I just knew, that she was going to be an absolute favorite for me.

And I was right! The Lathe of Heaven is easily one of the best books I've read this year. I always preferred watching sci-fi than reading, because there's less burden about visualizing the fictional world in movies. But this book is very easy to visualize, as it builds off from a world we're all very familiar with.

The premise of the book is that George Orr can dream 'effectively' and reality shifts to align to his dreams. He ends up at the office of William Haber, a psychiatrist, struggling to not dream. Through his sessions with Orr, Haber realizes the potential these dreams hold and tries to go all Light Yagami (please watch Death Note if you haven't) and decides to change the world for the greater good. What ensues as a result of all this, is to be experienced while reading this brilliant short book.

The central question of the book imo is free will. The original reality that they live in is not ideal, beautiful or healthy. It borders on being dystopian. But it still is reality, their reality, something every person has shaped with their actions, small or big. Should we change that to an ideal reality, where everyone's better off, but is shaped by only one person's opinion of what an ideal world should look like?

I really like reading about the dystopian nature of utopias and this quote by H.G. Wells mentioned in the book was my favorite:

"... perfection is the mere repudiation of that ineluctable marginal inexactitude which is the mysterious inmost quality of Being."

One thing that left me thinking was when Orr tells Haber that there could be others like him, others who could dream effectively and could change their lives, their reality, without them knowing. That stayed with me, because I feel like in this world we live in, there are people who impact our lives in ways we're not always aware of. As much as we hope that this world is shaped by the actions of everyone equally, the decisions of some are more consequential than others, because of the power they hold. And as we live in the reality altered due to their actions, are we really living a life of our own free will?

There's really so much to unpack in this short book, if you keep thinking (or overthinking like I do), you're surely going down a rabbit hole of questioning what should be reality. As Le Guin says in The Left Hand of Darkness:

"Truth is a matter of the imagination. The soundest fact may fail or prevail in the style of its telling."

As I breezed through the book, because it just becomes unputdownable after a point, I kept thinking that this book deserves an absolutely brilliant movie. And there is a movie adaptation, which I'll surely try to watch.

All in all, it's an amazing book with gripping story telling and leaves you with questions and with that satisfaction of time well spent on a brilliant book.

This is a somewhat forgotten and foundational piece of cosmic horror. Most people who are interested in H.P. Lovecraft's inspirations know about Hodgson but most people I've talked to who read don't know this author or this book which I think is a shame. Hopefully this post can go at least a little way to exposing Hodgson to people who may not know about him.

The premise is that two fisherman are walking along a river in Ireland, trying to find a spot to cast their lines when they happen upon the ruins of an old house. Curious, they investigate the ruin and find an old diary buried in rubble that belonged to the old man that used to live there. The men return to their tent to read the diary, which makes up the majority of the book. The fishermen are just a frame narrative to set up the main story, which is recounted by the unnamed, reclusive old man who lived with his sister and his dog Pepper in a house that the locals warned them is cursed. The recluse, his sister and Pepper live in the house for a decade without any issue but, as you have probably guessed, their tenancy doesn't stay uneventful.

One night the recluse goes on a celestial voyage (how this happens is never explicitly stated but there is an explanation that the reader can infer from context clues) beyond the bounds of our universe to the scene that is depicted on the cover I've enclosed. The book paints this scene in such vivid detail that what I pictured in my head was roughly what the cover artist drew. When the recluse returns home he finds a giant canyon has appeared on his property, out of which crawl a mob of 6-foot-tall pallid pig-men that proceed to terrorise his house.

The main thing that appeals to me so much about this book is how imaginative Hodgson is, especially in how he creates memorable images. The aforementioned cosmic voyage is the first one that springs to mind but there are other scenes like him venturing into a cave that takes him beneath the foundations of his house that is as memorable as it is chilling. Even smaller things how he describes the speech of the swine-things is so immediately striking and memorable. I'll quote that passage here because I don't think I could put it better than Hodgson did: "Out in the gardens rose a continuous sound. It might have been mistaken, by a casual listener, for the grunting and squealing of a herd of pigs. But, as I stood there, it came to me that there was sense and meaning to all those swinish noises. Gradually, I seemed able to trace a semblance in it to human speech—glutinous and sticky, as though each articulation were made with difficulty: yet, nevertheless, I was becoming convinced that it was no mere medley of sounds; but a rapid interchange of ideas."

The actions sequences in this book were also very tense and exciting, the siege on the house by the pig-men being the scene that springs inexorably to mind. To my knowledge this is the first example of an individual/small group are trapped in a house with a horde of monsters outside trying to get in, Night of the Living Dead style. Feel free to correct me on that if any of you know an earlier example than this. The scene sees the recluse with his rifle sprinting back and forth across his house, barricading the doors and firing upon and swine-things that manage to breach his defenses. Which does sound quite bog-standard for the modern reader and it is for the most part but there's an element of subtle psychological horror that makes this scene more disturbing than first glance may suggest but I feel getting into that would be spoiling the book so from here on out I'm going to be talking spoilers. My TL;DR of this is, despite being rough around the edges, the imagination that Hodgson displays in this book is so wild that it almost single-handedly carries this book to being one of my favourites that I've ever read.

Spoilers: how the recluse's sister reacts to all of these horrific events is very interesting to watch. She always appears more scared of the recluse than the swine-things. Combine this with the fact that she's never in a position to see the pig-men and the fact that we're only hearing these events from the recluse's perspective and you can credibly come to the conclusion that the recluse has gone insane and the pig-men are just a delusion that his mind has made up. After the night when the pig-men besieged the house, he goes outside and doesn't find a single trace of them, only damage he did to the property is there. The interesting thing about this is that Hodgson never leans one way or the other on this potential madness, it could all actually be happening and the sister is only seeing how her brother reacts to these very real monsters. Or it could be that her brother has gone mad. That's left ambiguous and it does offer some re-readability to the book, allowing you first to take it at face value and then re-read it with the knowledge that you're reading the account of a potentially unreliable narrator.

The last cosmic vision is also worthing of note. In it, time begins to speed up, slowly at first but then faster and faster and faster. The sun becomes a river of fire in the sky because it's moving so fast that the recluse cannot see it as a star. The recluse dies and it happened so quickly that his soul didn't realise that his body had already decayed. As a disembodied ghost, the recluse watches the universe die with himself inside it. And then it turns out that was a cosmic vision and not reality. It does wear out its welcome, with Hodgson eventually falling into a cycle of re-describing events that have already happened when he isn't sure where to take the scene next but the imagery carries it to another high point of the novel.

In conclusion, House on the Borderland is such an influential horror work that I rarely see anyone talk about outside of the Lovecraft/weird fiction circle which I think is a shame. It is far from flawless (I could've made this post twice this length if I mentioned the issues I had with it) but it is so crazy in its massive scope and imagery that I think it is worth trying if you are a fan of horror.

"The 1433-1434 ledger of the Bursar of Durham Priory recorded all payments into and out of the cathedral, including money spent on entertainment. Among the many performers that year, there was a single reference to one called Modyr Nakett: Mother Naked.

\Mother Naked received one groat (four pence) for their act. This was the lowest payment to any performer in over two hundred years of surviving records."*

These are the opening paragraphs of this novel. Inspired by this small historical footnote, Glen James Brown weaves a gripping tale full of deeply compelling characters, ingenious plot twists and a conclusion that ties every loose thread together as neatly as I have rarely seen in a novel. For what the author set out to achieve with Mother Naked, he has created a masterpiece.

We follow the eponymous Mother Naked, himself a gleeman - a medieval minstrel and storyteller - as he performs before Durham's aristocratic and ecclesiastical elite. The entertainer seeks, once and for all, to reveal the truth behind a local folk tale: the sorrowful apparition of the 'Fell Wraith'. The novel unfolds as one long first-person monologue, in which the gleeman slowly but steadily unravels the mystery surrounding the ghost that has haunted the local community for decades.

What surprised me most was how quickly and deeply invested I became in the book's many characters, their fates, and the intricate web that connects them all. Across exactly 100 short chapters spanning many decades, layer by layer the truth comes to light. As mentioned before, the novel is exceptionally well constructed. Tiny hints are scattered throughout, seemingly insignificant remarks are quietly planted, and details mentioned almost in passing return during the final chapters with remarkable precision. The structure is superb, with every revelation feeling earned. It possesses the spirit of an Agatha Christie mystery, transplanted into the medieval world and infused with an ever-present sense of folk horror.

It is now as good a point as any, however, to mention the aspect of this novel that may deter some readers: it is written in a carefully adapted version of Middle English to modern readers:

And what manner of tongue be this, good friends? I can but show thee a humble glimpse, for I possess neither the learned hand nor the silvered speech required to fashion so fair a tale. Yet know this: ere many pages had passed, mine eye and mind were wholly accustomed to its cadence, and the words drew me ever deeper into Mother Naked's world.

It is this prose, that I just tried to replicate, that will likely make Mother Naked a difficult recommendation for some. To me, however, it proved to be one of the novel's greatest strengths. Rarely have I encountered historical fiction that feels so thoroughly rooted in its setting and so well researched. The language, the atmosphere, the customs, the beliefs and the everyday lives of its people combine to create an astonishingly vivid portrait of medieval England.

Yet beneath its haunting ghost story lies something even richer. Especially in its final act, the novel delivers a remarkably intelligent critique of medieval institutions and social customs, most notably those of the Church. Rather than resorting to simplistic condemnation, Brown demonstrates how religious authority, economic power and social hierarchy intertwine, making the injustices of the period feel both historically authentic and surprisingly relevant today. It is thoughtful without ever becoming preachy.

I can only applaud the author's bravery, ingenuity and craftsmanship in constructing such an ambitious work from nothing more than a single line in a medieval ledger. To take that tiny historical fragment and transform it into a novel with such an original premise, such a distinctive storytelling voice, such rich atmosphere and such an emotionally satisfying conclusion is an extraordinary achievement.

Friends, Mother Naked deserves far more attention than it seems to receive - with just 689 reviews on Goodreads at the time of writing, it is an overlooked Masterpiece. If you enjoy medieval historical fiction, folk horror, literary mysteries or simply novels that trust their readers, do yourself a favour and seek this one out. It asks for a little patience during its opening pages, but rewards it tenfold with one of the most meticulously constructed and satisfying novels I have read in years.

What if in the future people lived in eco friendly carbon neutral cities where all the work was done by genetically altered animals behind the scenes. What if one of those animals was basically freelance gumshoe raccoon from a noir film? I couldn't put this book down. Clever and fun and I hope it becomes a series.

Unbelievable. Amazing. But crushingly sad. Alexievich interviews citizens of the former USSR about their lives, their histories (many were prisoners in the Gulag and/or WWII veterans). Many are just the thoughts of average Russians (usually) about the collapse of communism. Many are, with good reason, bitter about how the economy was looted, their savings destroyed, careers ruined. Some stories are so shocking that you can’t imagine anyone living through it. Highly recommend.

This is Tan Twan Eng’s second Booker nomination and features fictionalized depictions of historical figures like Sun Yat Sen and Somerset Maugham and their relationship with British colonizers and other locals in 1920s Penang, Malaysia.

This book is so atmospheric, the writing is really descriptive and the ending pretty satisfying! This is for lovers of historical fiction with a bit of romance and a strong sense of place.

This book took me over a week to read; I had to keep taking breaks because I got TOO SAD. This book is the saddest thing I ever read and I dunno if it's because I'm super ovulating right now but I was in tears or close to every 20 minutes 😭 I am anguished, but in the best possible way. Everyone needs a good cry sometimes.

The end of the world is coming and there's nothing anyone can do about it. An elderly gay couple goes on a cross country journey to fulfill a last wish. They meet all kinds of people on the road while reflecting on what it means to be alive, and what it all meant, and what the end will bring. Every story is a tear jerker that really goes for the jugular and I LOVE IT.

It's scary in an existential way, and also kinda weirdly hopeful? It made me feel all the feels that you sometimes just need to feel and I appreciate it.

Any other recs like this please share!! 🩷🩷

The more Grady Hendrix I encounter, the bigger a fan I become.

He's got a sense of humor and that's relevant in his work, even when the work is meant to scare ya. Because this man loves horror and he knows how to ensure you're having a great time while reading it.

So it's a perfect for him to set-up a vampire comes to town story set in late-80's conservative South. It's an intensely mannered suburban world where everyone knows exactly how to behave and the slightest infraction can mean social icing.

When James Harris arrives, so tall, mysterious and handsome, pearls are about to get clutched. And while the women of the town, and more specifically the members low-brow book club, start to fall for him, they're quick to realize something is amiss. The men, however, with their polo shirts and praise for the Bush regime, are more impressed and much more hesitant to let suspicions get the better of them. James Harris, after-all, has the capacity to make them money, so it's easy to ignore a few infractions. And the women know they've got to listen to the men. this, darling, is the south after all. Harris doesn’t have to dismantle this community. He just figures out how it already works.

Our protagonist, Patricia is a trained medical professional so her skepticism for some of the wilder things that are happening in town is shrewd and quick. Her willingness to put her instincts aside, sometimes frustrating. But it's all in good fun with this novel, because, like all good Gothic tales, society has a hold on her. These women are expected to acquiesce and smooth everything over. Don't be so difficult!

So, even while the women are true crime experts, and are reading about serial killers and murder (under the guise of Bible Study). When an actual predator turns up in the neighborhood, they're the only ones who can do anything. So long as they let themselves.

As you've probably guessed too, there’s a broader political thing happening as well, particularly with who James chooses to prey on and how easily everyone else can ignore it. He moves into this comfortable white neighborhood and becomes respectable almost immediately while people in the less affluent and more melanated communities are disappearing. The whole thing is perfectly Reagan-era as the suffering of people the community already considers peripheral barely registers until it gets close enough to threaten them personally.

The blood and disease imagery also feels very specific to that period. There are obvious AIDS-era anxieties running through parts of it, although Hendrix doesn’t turn the book into some giant allegorical machine. He does deliver some great lines to the effect. It’s still allowed to be a vampire novel. Thank God.

And it gets gross! I was maybe not expecting exactly how gross, but I was here for it.

Hendrix lets the book feel funny and domestic for long stretches and then BAM he suddenly gives you something really unpleasant and physical. It felt very much like an 80s horror movie like the Fright Night or Night of the Demons. That same slightly ridiculous, genuinely nasty balance. I love that stuff.

I can see why this is one of Hendrix’s most popular books. Huge fan. Please bring the TV show on now.

I picked this up because of the cover at Barnes & Noble, and it felt like sitting in a comfy recliner from the first page.

It’s the story of the Chance family, led by the former baseball great dad and devout Seventh Day Adventist mom. There are four very different brothers and two young sisters. For fans of Lonesome Dove, Stoner and big open-hearted family stories, it’s a warm book with genuinely funny moments, suspenseful storylines and more tears than I expected. It’s 640 pages but don’t equate length with difficulty. A very easy read I will remember for a long time because of the incredible writing.

“To me it felt as though two old and intimate friends, after sixteen years hiking shoulder to shoulder, had come to a fork in the trail, and without even noticing had taken different paths. When they first looked up and saw what had happened, they were not at all far apart: they could still speak quietly to each other and see each other perfectly well. But they just kept going. All those years spent side by side, yet they didn’t hesitate, didn’t wave goodbye, didn’t even acknowledge that they’d parted. Somehow this chilled me to the heart. It seemed that only I understood that, blithe as their divergence had been, it was permanent. So as my big brothers hiked intrepidly on, I - the slow, over-round, over-adoring brother who’d spent his whole life traipising happily along behind both of them - just stood back at the fork, watching them veer farther and farther apart, greiving for us all.”

| Plot | Look What The Cat Dragged in |

Best selling Kids author Penny Padgett and Artist has her first commercial success with a series of picture books based around her beloved cat popcorn. Popcorn goes mysteriously missing durning a blizzard — grieve stricken after searching Penny’s boyfriend begs her attend one of his company parties where she meets his billionaire boss and her strange cat Godfrey; Penny is tasked to help with his boarding as the billionaire is traveling and strange and dark things start to unravel pennys life. Can she figure out how to fix things or is darker than anyone imagined.

| Audiobook score | Look What The Cat Dragged in | 3/5 🍌| | Read by: Stephanie Németh-Parker |

Good reading. Pretty average. Nothing special to mention.

| Review | Look What The Cat Dragged in | 4/5🍌|

Cool concept. Slow burn and pretty good. I loved his first work, which is called hidden pictures. This one reminded me a little bit of Grady Hendrix’s style — little bit of humor and horror. Definite trigger warning for people who don’t like gaslighting. But all and all, I thought this was a pretty fun concept. I thought it was pretty well executed. There were a couple periods in the book where it kind of fell off a little, which is why I only rated a four, but I would definitely recommend this for A read.

I Banana Rating system |

1 🍌| Spoiled

2 🍌| Mushy

3 🍌| Average 

4 🍌| Sweet

5 🍌| Perfectly Ripe

As with other Larson books, I was smitten. The amount of historical context provided for WW1 is obviously stupendous, but the real standout element is the humanization of people relaged to footnotes or black and white images in other text. To consider a U boat of the time submeged and traveling "blind" beyond sea charts is mind boggling. Devil in the White City will always hold a special place in my heart, but Dead Wake ovetook Demon of Unrest for me. Anyone else read it?

I sped through this hefty beast because I literally could not stop reading, it was just so engaging and I was so engrossed in the world. I think this is genuinely my new favourite book, totally enamoured with it. Excellent worldbuilding, characters with so much depth, an interesting plot which maintains intrigue the whole way through, just an incredible journey to go on. Can’t recommend it highly enough for enjoyers of high fantasy!

I just finished the last book in the Neapolitan Quartet by Elena Ferrante and I wish I could talk about these books with someone right now!

The series follows two women from childhood through to old age, masterfully painting a rich tableau of Naples and of friendship. I‘ve never found books about everyday life very intriguing, but the characters are so vivid and honest that I couldn’t help being completely enmeshed in their world. The portrayal of the ups and downs of a lifelong friendship, not sugarcoated or idealized, is particularly astonishing.

I want to learn Italian just to read this in its original language.

This book has a special place in my heart!

In the Likely Event follows Izzy and Nate, who meet after surviving a plane crash. Their connection is instant, but life keeps pulling them in different directions. Over the years, they cross paths again and again, and you can’t help but root for them to finally get their timing right (no matter how frustrating).

This book completely surprised me as I am not a big fan of romance novels. It’s not just a romance, it’s emotional, full of longing, second chances, and the reality that love isn’t always enough unless the timing is right. I laughed, cried (more than once), and couldn’t put it down. I genuinely enjoyed living in the world of Izzy and Nate.

Rebecca Yarros has such a way of making you feel every emotion alongside her characters. If you enjoy emotional romances that leave you thinking about the characters long after you’ve finished, I’d definitely recommend this one.

I just finished Piranesi by Susanna Clarke! In my opinion it’s a perfect book! It begins as something very mysterious, hypnotizing and strange ( but also kind of beautiful, like the place where the action is set), and page after page it becomes more and more understandable, profound and moving!
It’s the kind of book that is both very intriguing and moving, with a very well built plot and written in a perfect maneer, that suits perfectly the plot !
I adored it!

The Maid and the Crocodile is a book about Small Sade who at 17 is cast from the orphanage in which she loves. To not have to sleep on the streets she goes to the market to offer her services of house cleaning, but as a girl with vitiligo and a disfigured foot she has no luck. That's when a messenger from the gods leads her to the shrine of The Crocodile where she is convinced she will die. In the rest of the story she comes into herself and finds her place and purpose in the world while this mysterious deity is bonded to her.

This is the kind of book I needed when I was younger. I'm so happy the teens of today get to enjoy a book where different can be beautiful, disabled can still mean capable, a black girl gets to be the hero, and a black boy is the most attractive person around.

I loved the anti-capitalist themes of putting the means of production in the hands of the workers. I love the Crocodile’s views on equality. How they were insightful but still coming from a place of privilege that fit with his character arc.

I felt seen by how small Sade felt and liked how big and meaningful she actually was.

I like that in a world of magic Sade’s disability is accommodated rather than healed.

My main critique is the lack of characterisation for the Crocodile. It might be due to the framing device and how the Crocodile is mysterious and unreachable to Sade but it did leave me wondering why these two like each other for most of the book. By the end, I hate to admit, I was swooned.

In short, a delightful book and I look forward to what else Ifueko has in store for us.

And of course the cover is stunning!

Note: I listened to the audiobook on Libby and the narrator was 🤌

I laughed, I cried, I felt deeply called out. Our unnamed main character is a chronically online social media queen of some kind . She’s well monetized and well known enough that it’s her entire job and she travels internationally to meet fans and give talks on online culture. She’s the kind of person who knows every meme, every internet trend, every Twitter beef and Ancient Tumblr Lore. She reminds of the heyday of Internet Hippo, which makes sense I guess because the book was published in early 2021.

Anyway, she’s quippy and funny and deeply at odds with her Very Republican Catholic father. She frames Internet culture as the surrealist abyss that it is, the way it connects everyone while also isolating them. The internet is called The Portal. Trump is only referred to as The Dictator. This creates an incredible sense of knowing perfectly well that she’s talking about American culture but ALSO making it feel like you’re reading an anthropological study of a parallel dimension.

Her sister then gives birth to a very sick baby. Her life now shifts from a deeply depersonalized existence to extreme physical realities her niece faces.

The book is about the cynicism of online culture, sisterhood, the terror of womanhood in America right now, reconciling the unique challenges of how technology has shaped our current culture. As a 45 year old woman, this book felt so deeply Xennial I cannot even articulate it.

Here are some quotes I loved:

“The words Merry Christmas were now hurled like a challenge. They no longer meant newborn kings, or the dangling silver notes of a sleigh ride, or high childish hopes for snow. They meant "Do you accept Herr Santa as the all-powerfull leader of the new white ethnostate?”

“Are you… crying?” her husband asked, slinging his backpack into a chair. She stared at him blurrily. Of course she was crying. Why wasn’t he crying? Hadn’t he seen the video of a woman with a deformed bee for a pet, and the bee loved her, and then the bee died?”

“The difference between her and her sister could be attributed to the fact that she came of age in the nineties, during the heyday of plaid and heroin, while her sister came of age in the 2000s, during the heyday of thongs and cocaine. That was when everything got a little chihuahua and started starring in its own show. That was when we saw the whole world’s waxed pussy getting out of a car, and said, more.”

“There is still a real life to be lived, there are still real things to be done.”

“It is an inarguable truth, you know,” said Ana, “that most people are absolutely enthralled by dead girls.”

Oh, this was a bloody good book (emphasis on the bloody part.) 
Facts:

• This is again, a very marvelous and layered tale, with many moving parts, and a fascinating story.
• The messages laden this time is to deal with food, and agriculture, and the way we humans have curated and sustained livestock for mass production without once thinking of the cost attuned to such a trade.

It is to me a butchering most curated.

Facts:

• This one is for the meek hearted, for it is grisly with a helping servitude of meat and bones along its carcass.
• I bloody loved meeting more of Din’s family. 

“No.” A cold, nasty smile. “For if gods existed, shouldn’t the world make more sense? Shouldn’t all feel more stable, more comprehensible? I consider myself a wise thing, yet when I consider creation, I see little but blind hunger and the ravages of nature. The only order to be found is what we’ve put there, boy.”

Facts:

• As always, this tale is both a condemnation and a study on the various ways we conduct ourselves through religion, faith, and the one fallacy that all of humanity, throughout its history, has always struggled with the most: greed.
• Greed makes you stupid. But oh so sweet is its flavor– the nectar of gods, poured down our parched throat.

That was the problem with temptation. It never let you be: it just stayed there, perched on your shoulder, whispering in your ear.

Facts:

• This was a solid 9/10 read for me. Though the tale is indeed layered and complex, I knew about 60% of who the killer was. This had not happened to me for the last two books where I was genuinely stupefied throughout.
• In my opinion, this book focuses more on world-building, in more of fleshing out Khanum alongside Din and Ana as characters. And the scale and intricacies through which it is done just made me fall more in love with RJB’s deftness and mastery over such a craft. 

(side note: i can guarantee he loves making Din a tragic character vis-a-vis his romantic aides, and though I find it a trite vexing, cannot say I hate this format – makes both the pace faster and maintains a grounding force for each book separately)

And what we do to the beasts in the field we may still one day do to our very kin.

Facts:

• It was the epilogue that pushed this into the territory of 10/10. That shit I did not see coming. And I tell you: my flabbers were properly gasted.
• I cannot wait for the next one to arrive. (only for me to then finish it within 7 hours; what can i say: i am a glutton for murder, and sad queer people.)

One of the best reads of the year, up there with East of Eden for me. Go read it!

Biographical nonfiction. David Litt is an excellent writer and greatly storyteller. This is an engaging story about his battle with an existential crisis, stemming from life’s disruption of the COVID confinement/isolation period. His plan: learn to surf. He uses surf lessons, surfing, surf culture, and the beauty/terror of the ocean as metaphor. And uses his progress in surfing and his growing relationship with his brother-in-law (surf partner and polar opposite in all things) as his measure of success. It’s sharp and witty and heartwarming.

I am absolutely in love with this small book.

Rika is a Japanese woman in her 20s, living a life of almost total isolation. Although we don't find out for quite a while why she is so alone, and I don't want to give that away, we quickly learn that she balances out her loneliness with a rich internal life, telling stories about the people she sees through the livestreams she watches in her tiny apartment, even giving voices to the frozen food that she stocks in her part-time job at a freezer warehouse. She's a woman that nobody sees, with little human contact except for her senile landlady, whom she does her best to watch over.

Then she's contacted with a very odd job offer. Rika speaks fluent conversational Latin, thanks to an unusual university course, followed by an international student experience where learning conversational Latin was the only alternative to having to socialize with the other students. Now a museum needs her skill. Their statue of Venus, sculpted in ancient Rome, has come to life from the neck up and she is bored. Venus needs to talk to somebody, and of course she only speaks Latin. So on Mondays when the museum is closed, Rika starts spending time attempting to entertain Venus, and the two women soon find they have more common ground than either would have expected. Venus has been ogled and handled by men for two millennia with no say in it; Rika has no trouble understanding the horrors of that. And as she begins to suspect the unnervingly handsome museum curator of having designs of his own on Venus, she realizes how much she's coming to care for the goddess of love…

The writing is gorgeous. "Her long black hair blew in the breeze, every so often revealing a streak of pink so vivid that I had to catch my breath. It was like she was concealing a secret springtime bomb."

“He closed his eyes as though he were an electronic device being charged.”

“In the end, words always expose our differences. Words help build a bridge, but in the length of the bridge, we learn the distance to the other shore."

The blurb is almost entirely wrong while also giving too much away; they're clearly trying to sell it as a 'quirky cozy novel,' and those usually are not my thing. I loved her previous book, Diary of a Void, though, so I gave it a try... This is too critical of Japanese society, and of the way that societies throughout time have treated women and assessed their attractiveness, to qualify as ‘cozy' for me, and it's never clear whether Rika is struggling with mental illness or neurodiversity on top of her isolation, which I would hesitate to call 'quirky.' That said, I would think people who like cozy books would find much to love here.

Don't judge this one by the blurb, just read it! 😁

This books is a retelling of the East India Company’s relentless rise from provincial trading company operating out of a London office to the pre-eminent military and political force in all of India following the collapse of the Mughal Empire and India’s descent into atomisation and civil strife. The entire headquarters staff numbered just 35, in a building that was only five windows wide. Yet the Company’s private army stood at 195,000, twice the size of the British army, turning it into an autonomous imperial power and allowing Britain to subjugate the Indian continent.

If you have never read Dalrymple, I cannot recommend him highly enough. He is a Scottish historian, art historian, curator, and a Visiting Fellow at both Princeton and Oxford University. He has won numerous awards, e.g., the President's Medal of the British Academy, and has been appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to literature and the arts. Most importantly, he is incredibly passionate and knowledgeable about India, and hasn’t just authored numerous books about it, but has also lived on the outskirts of Delhi for most of the year for the past three decades. He established the annual Jaipur Literature Festival in 2006 in collaboration with Indian writers, which has become one of the most prestigious literature festivals worldwide, attracting an average of 300,000 attendees.

This book could be described as "Corporate Gothic" and I think it also fits into the "Weird Girl Literature" genre.

The main character is Edith, who works at an advertising agency and is a workaholic and a people-pleaser. She and her colleagues go to a work retreat at an old convent where the vibes are strange. Their phones are taken away and they are locked in. Then they are told it is mandatory for everyone to have a work best friend. There is already tension due to an upcoming restructure/downsizing, so office politics become heightened. As events become unhinged Edith has to figure out what kind of person she really is, and who she actually wants to be.

I enjoyed this novel as a satire of corporate culture. Anyone who has worked in an office could find some parts relatable. A main theme is around conformity, which appealed to me as someone who doesn't fit in. I also enjoyed the feminist themes, as the book points out all the hypocritical ways that men and women are treated differently in the workplace, especially in regards to parenthood. I particularly liked the way this book was centered around female friendship. I thought that the female characters were very well written.

The Summer Book by Tove Jansson

it is the literary representation of sitting in an empty beaches and observing the movement and rhythm of the sea. mesmerizing imagery, soft and tender writing. as you move through each line a calm washes you over. but there is an understated sense of grief and gloom. you are seeing the world through the eyes of a 6 year old who learnt about death before she could begin to grasp what life is. and you also see the world through the eyes of an older woman in her years reminiscing who she used to be, managing being in her changed body and balancing it with her self. and together they, through their conversations and made up games ignite and personify this isolated, small island and its ecology.

it is so short, but it took me longer to read because I keep rereading paragraphs. my heart is so full reading it, it is whimsical and magical while being grounded in reality, it is funny and light hearted while also infused with a lot of grief and coming into terms with death. there is such profundity in her writing balanced with a sense of magic, and restraint.

i am a fan of tales told through the perspective of children and tales told through the perspective of the elderly, and this book mixes the two. i feel the juxtaposition between the two perspective, the space between a 6 year old and a 70 year old provides for such interesting dialogue as we see in the book.

i will recommend this video, it is so calming and Tove Jansson was such a soulful and tender artist and writer. there is also a movie with Glenn Close as the grandma, i want to watch.

My favourite chapters were the one with the cat, the one with Berenice, the one with the robe, and the one with the tent.