so-soThe goriness/sex focus of this was not super my thing, but I did enjoy the way it tried to play with language/orthography (the translators' note about trying to represent the things the original in Korean does is fascinating), and how it's obviously about queerness and gender, really.
pickI enjoyed this short novella prequel to the Partials series, about one of the cyborg-esque people of the series title. I don‘t remember Heron having a POV in the books and she‘s a really intriguing character so it was fun to learn more about her past. She turns out to be pivotal to the history of her people because the humans designed and trained her to be too smart for them.
I‘m joining all the fun things late!
#10BeforetheEnd
#BookspinBingo (I‘m going to use every book in the picture 2x, my Jolabokaflod gift & books in progress for the last row. ☺️)
I think I signed up for #MidWinterSolace too!
Just trying to finish all the challenges before the end of the year! Last year I read 7 books in December. 🤞🏼
Thank you
@ChaoticMissAdventures
@TheAromaofBooks
@AllDebooks
@TheBookHippie
@Chrissyreadit
Clarke's 2001 is one of my favorite SF books of all time. I think it's even better than the movie, which is saying a lot bc I love Kubrick. This is my second Clarke read & a word that keeps popping up is perihelion: the point of a planet, asteroid, or comet at which it is closest to the sun
#weirdwordswednesday @cbee
Side note: Villeneuve hinted at an adaptation, but typing the definition, I'm reminded of the excellent D. Boyle movie “Sunshine“
pickHoly crap on a cracker. I did not expect to adore this book. It‘s a cozy, low-stakes sci-fi that is more character-driven than plot-driven. It focuses on identity and found family. I genuinely, truly loved this. I sat up late into the night reading because I didn‘t want to leave. Becky Chambers shared Zoë van Dijk‘s artwork for the folio edition, and it is everything. So many green flags. It‘s thoughtful and thought-provoking. Beautiful.
pickFour robots reactivate and find themselves in a restaurant, abandoned by the owner, and with lots to still pay on their contracts. So, they work together to create a noodle place. It‘s 2064 California and we get to see where society is and why it‘s transformed. I liked this, especially how clearly it is a metaphor for transness.
pickMy god, how to describe it? LeGuin spent 5 years creating and bringing to life the post-environmental-apocalypse fictional culture of the Kesh. She invented their language and their sacred customs and their poetry and their music (with the help of a composer). Then she put it all into a 600 page tome. It's her Silmarillion. I didn't read this all in one go but came and went. By the end I knew everything about these people. Not for the casual.
pickHoly Hell(diver)! That was an intense finale to the Red Rising Trilogy. Even the plot twists had plot twists. Crisp, intentional writing with not a single wasted word. Darrow enters the third installment more broken than he ever had been in the previous two books. An amazing finale that sated my hunger for revenge and justice.
repost for @Riveted_Reader_Melissa
Updated schedule for #SheSaid!
We had 1 book with 5 votes (Wild Swans) and 4 with 4 votes. I added them all to our schedule for 2026 along with our 2 fiction reads. I did bump Wild Swans back to March, so we could read it and the follow-up book by the author after (and hopefully 🤞 when the hold lines at the library are not so long 😬). Then there were about 12 books tied after that…so new vote this summer.
![[tagged book]](https://image.librarything.com/pics/litsy_webpics/icon_taggedBook@3x.png){kind=icon}
