Book 27 of 2024: Delicate Edible Birds by Lauren Groff

This collection was good, but it didn't grab me. It felt correct and MFA-y. Which makes me feel good, as a writer, because I absolutely LOVED Arcadia and Fates and Furies, and Matrix is just astonishingly good. Nice to feel like a writer can get published and keep getting better--like you don't have to spring fully formed from the head of Zeus to make a career as an author. Anyway, these stories are all about women who, in one way or another, are trapped. Passionate and brilliant and extraordinary and trapped. I do think they are very good. They just didn't get a hook into my guts.

What to read next: The News from Spain, by Joan Wickersham, for more well-written stories about love and the problems it causes.

I was so obsessed with Reepicheep when I read Narnia as a child. Probably one of my biggest childhood crushes 😂. And rereading Dawn Treader earlier this year, I really enjoyed and appreciated him as a character. His unshaking faith is admirable.

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Book 26 of 2024: This Spells Love by Kate Robb

This was super cute! Gemma gets dumped; Gemma gets drunk; Gemma drunkenly does a spell to get her ex out of her life. Only the spell works too well--the next morning, she wakes up to a world where she never met her ex, and more importantly, she never became best friends with Dax. On the plus side, she *did* start her own business instead of taking a boring corporate job. But in order to get back to her own timeline, she has to get Dax to kiss her--and hanging out in this new context, she actually falls for Dax. Were the two of them meant to be all along? This was cute and sparkly and witty and just a fun read. The spell element is not very thoroughly explored, so it's more a MacGuffin than an actual fantasy element, but it's still a very sweet, lighthearted romance.

What to read next: The Charmed List, by Julie Abe, for another sweet, lighthearted romcom that leans a little harder into the fantasy side.

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I have been listening to the Hobbit audiobook while working. Bad idea. I didn't work, I drew Bilbo and his fancy home ♥

we absolutely did not appreciate Ursula Le Guin enough while she was around, y'all

worst part about getting angry is how much it makes you want to be mean

Odyssey

based on this poll

I can't be the only one surprised how casually you're just. Here. Mind talking about what it was like to like. Join Tumblr?

It was 13 or 14 years ago. From what I remember you just shouldered aside the mastodons, went into the Tumblr cave and carved your mark on the wall, telling people you were now signed up for tumblr, and then they would haul memes on animal hides past you. Back then it was mostly cats doing amusing things, obviously, but we would watch them by the flickering firelight, and chortle to ourselves hopefully before leaving the cave and trudging back to our lives.

Women want one thing and it's quite obvious, A large affordable interconnected North American Rail Network

Book 25 of 2024: So Let Them Burn by Kamilah Cole

Faron channels the power of the gods. Her sister, Elara, is looking for her own place in the world. But when Elara suddenly bonds to a dragon, forcing her to join the army of the empire that (until very recently) colonized their country, Faron is desperate to break the bond and get her sister back. So desperate that she'll turn to any entity that offers help. I liked this - the worldbuilding and characters were great. My only complaint is that it felt in the beginning like I was picking up the second book in a trilogy. There was a lot of exposition setting up what had happened in the war where Faron got her powers and set the island free. Obviously the author wanted to tell a specific story, but it did create a lot of exposition up front.

What to read next: Blood Like Magic, by Liselle Sambury, for another high-concept fantasy that incorporates real-world issues of race and inequality.

god this tickles me

(OP's tiktok here)

Real life Tetris is trying to fit more books into your already full bookshelf