Monday afternoon reading time with Stormy-boo. I don‘t want to put SISTERS IN THE WIND down, but I‘m now halfway through and general consensus seems to be that the ending is a lot weaker than the beginning. Hopefully I‘ll have a divergent opinion there.

Here I am, reading about animals with a sleepy animal. (She‘s called Stormy, and she‘s a total sweetie.) This anthology brings together fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and it was a lucky find. While I haven‘t enjoyed every piece, it‘s just so gosh-durned nice to have so much themed writing in one volume. There‘s definitely a literary magazine vibe; expected, given Freeman‘s antecedents, and most welcome.

I thrifted a couple puzzles this week and did one of them while I finished the tagged book. Grace Perry uses an EPIC amount of American school language, which y‘all know grates on me, and she sometimes presents specific experiences as universals, which, ditto. Other than that, I loved this. She has a lot of spot-on observations on things like performative heterosexuality as influenced by pop culture. #audiopuzzling

Please enjoy Casey‘s latest closeup, and also my assurances that I‘m LOVING the tagged book! It‘s not really a holiday read, despite how many Christmas decorations the publisher stuck on the cover. I‘m halfway through and we‘re just at the start of November. What it IS is a really excellent character study, with plenty of stellar fashion and a deeply loved dog. I wish I could binge-read it today, but I‘ve got two events to attend. Tonight, 🤞.

Back into the holiday stuff with tonight‘s treelight read. (Branchlight read. Whatever.) The main character seems pretty terrible so far, but I‘ve gotta think the book‘ll focus on her personal growth. Maybe she‘ll have a change of heart as she experiences the magic of the holiday season?

NB: this was one of the two books I bought to celebrate getting my Kobo to 100% read. It‘s now back to 99% read, which I‘d like to maintain forevermore.

I was so excited when I found DEAD DEAD GIRLS in a Little Free Library near Finian‘s place, and so crushed when I actually dove in. To be generous, this reads like a second draft: flat characters, long paragraphs full of dull sentences that repeat the same thing from three different angles, and consistency errors. It could‘ve been a solid book with a more rigorous editor. As it stands, I bailed at 50 pages. Back into the LFL it goes.

Tonight‘s treelight read. It‘s been great to really delve into M.C.A. Hogarth‘s Peltedverse this year, and I‘m glad I remembered the holiday collection in time to read it during the actual holiday season.

Next year, I tackle all the Fallowtide stuff. This series is huuuuuuge.

I finished the tagged book ahead of my library run. Bob Joseph is a corporate trainer, and it shows both in how he‘s organized the material and in his economic focus. Still a solid primer if you‘re looking for an introduction to or a refresher on the topic.

Last library haul of 2025! I‘m glad katherena vermette‘s new poetry collection made it in for me before I had to suspend all my holds. I ain‘t sure I‘m in the right mood for QUEEN DEMON, but I‘ll give it a go. And I couldn‘t resist this tiny book of essays, poems, and fiction excerpts about walking.

I‘ve loved the entire Evander Mills series, but MIRAGE CITY was my favourite since the first, LAVENDER HOUSE. I love how Rosen brings in so many takes on the fight for queer rights in the 1950s, all wrapped up in a hell of a tense mystery.

Please, may we have more books? Please?

I finished an historical mystery this afternoon, with Finian‘s capable help. (His napping skills are off the charts.) While it does often feel like Vatsal included certain period details just because they came up in her research and she didn‘t want to waste them, I enjoyed this a lot. It‘s a great portrait of a young woman feeling out her options in 1910s America. I‘m sorry Vatsal never continued the series past two books.

I‘m working on my first-ever round puzzle while I listen to this really lovely spin on THE HOLIDAY. Each storyline gives its character so much—queer community for Clover and supportive family life for Bee. I can‘t wait to keep going. #audiopuzzling

Ahhhh, Freya Marske always comes through with the vibes! I loved this ghostly, bisexual take on Cinderella. There was a terrible moment yesterday evening when I thought I was too tired to devour it in one go, but my body came through for me and I finished it before I fell asleep. It was so cool!

Every year, I choose a project book; something fun, but maybe also kinda daunting because it‘s really long or it has a Reputation or whatever. This year, instead of a single book I decided I wanted to get my Kobo to 100% read—and just now, I DID IT.

LAST FIRST KISS was a great note to end on. I‘ll have a proper review for you closer to its January release date, but lemme tell you there were some TEARS.

Tonight‘s treelight (and menorahlight; we‘re multifaithing it here) read is a highly anticipated ARC and also the VERY LAST unread book on my Kobo. I finish this and I‘m at 100% complete, baby!

I don‘t think it‘ll be a struggle. I flew through the first 20% of Jordan‘s story and I‘m excited to dive back in soon as I get supper in the oven.

I started the tagged book by treelight yesterday, and I enjoyed the first 18%. It didn‘t land for the majority of Littens who group-read it last year, but I collect queer assholes and I‘m into stuff about fictional rich people behaving badly, so I feel like I‘m exactly the target audience.

That said, I‘m looking forward to the character development arc. The best queer assholes are the ones who care about stuff, not the always-super-mean ones.

This week‘s library haul. I‘m so glad MIRAGE CITY came in for me before I enter my nomadic period. It‘s gonna make physical library use rather spotty, which is why I chose not to participate in Auld Lang Spine this year. (Also, I somehow only read six non-late-in-series books I‘d consider absolute faves. Some years the goodness overflows; some years you can‘t even assemble a Top 10.)

I finished my aunt‘s mittens at more or less the same time as I finished V.M. Burns‘s third Mystery Bookshop novel. This series is fun so far. I enjoy both the main storylines, which feature multigenerational investigatory shenanigans, and the excerpts from the historical mysteries the main character writes to help herself unwind. #audioknitting

Literally the only thing I like about winter is the way the sky glows on cloudy nights. I read with the house lights off and the drapes open so I can gaze at it.

Tonight‘s glowy-sky read is KJ Charles‘s latest, which I‘m very much enjoying for its hardcore gothicness. Hoping to log some more time with it before I pass out tonight, though I might switch to bed (which has no sky view) because reading on an iPad really is a pain.

Mitten progress. I‘m past the thumb break now!

I‘m trying to alternate between fiction & nonfiction audios through to the end of the year, so I combed through my Litsy stack last night and found Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai‘s memoir. I‘m so glad it was available on Hoopla. She‘s a fascinating person who seems committed to looking at the world through a compassionate lens. #audioknitting

Just hanging out, reading queer SF in the dark. EDGE OF NOWHERE has a totally different vibe from my first book by Felicia Davin, which was epistolary historical fantasy, but it‘s still really good. I‘m happy to spend long stretches with it, and it‘s been a while since I could say that.

(Well, it‘s been two books, but each of them took me FOREVER. I probably won‘t finish this until tomorrow, but at least I‘m reading at a good [-for-me] clip.)

I finally started the patterned part of my aunt‘s lefthand mitten while I finished Richard Wagamese‘s memoir. It doesn‘t look like much of anything yet, but I feel like it‘s coming along faster than the righthand one did. We‘ll see if I still feel that way now I‘m past the first ten rows. #audioknitting

Read another little bit of BRIGANDS & BREADKNIVES while I did an airport run. I devoured the first seventy pages a couple days back, but ever since then I‘ve been limping along through it. I dunno if I‘ll finally find my rhythm with it or if I‘ll just kinda drift away and try again some other time. We‘ll see what happens tonight and tomorrow. I should have more reading time now I‘ve finished another leg of my journal review project.

I blasted through another ten volumes this week, which means I‘m over halfway through revisiting my 130-volume journal! Now it‘s time for a break. I‘ve covered twenty-five volumes since November 23rd and I‘m burnt out on this project.

Tomorrow, THEY burn. I‘d do it tonight, but it‘s late enough I might alarm the neighbours.

(ETA NB: two of these notebooks were made from old book covers. I didn‘t burn novels.)

I‘ve been rereading SKIP BEAT! by treelight. Last night it was vol 50‘s turn. Tonight I fully catch up with vol 51, and begin the wait for 52.

Also of note: I CANNOT BELIEVE how much I loved vol 49 the night before last. The first couple times, I regular-loved it but didn‘t click with it on the same level as the rest of this arc. Now I‘m all, “OMGOMGOMG” over the fabulous character moments and all the little funny bits.

I‘m pretty sure I heard the latest iteration of AVENGERS ACADEMY has been collected somehow or other, despite its Infinity Comicness, but Litsy‘s database doesn‘t have it and I NEED to tell y‘all how much I love it so I‘m sticking it under a way older one.

It‘s SO FUN. Silly and cute and heroic and also full of Very Serious Emotions. Plus, it‘s queer as all getout. I have to force myself to put it down and do other stuff.

I need to cook from EAT DELICIOUS more often. Dennis The Prescott has tons of great recipes. Tonight I made a modified version of his cheesy shakshuka. I shrunk it, took out the onions (yuck), added spinach, didn‘t puree the sauce, and cooked the whole thing on the stovetop instead of mucking around with the oven. It was delicious, and a LOT of food. I won‘t need to eat again until tomorrow morning.

I‘ve got most of my to-do list done, so it‘s time for a book & Casey break! I started GO LUCK YOURSELF last night and almost abandoned it because I wasn‘t really feeling it. I‘m enjoying it a bit more now, past the 100-page mark, but I still don‘t feel as strongly as I want to. A lot of my issues with THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE KISSMAS are still very much present, and there‘s just not enough of a spark to overcome them.

I finished reading through another ten volumes of my 25-year daily journal, so I got to have a little fire tonight. I‘ve reached 2004, in which I hit a LOT of weird little personal touchstones.

Gonna see if I can clear volumes 61-70 before I lose the privacy I need for this process. That‘ll take me past halfway through my 130-volume archive.

My library ordered THE WINTER SPIRITS last year but cancelled it, so I was glad to see it in a recent ebook sale. The first story in this ghostly winter anthology was very good indeed. Casey snuggled with me for most of it, then hopped out of the chair and made faces at me. Little dude wants to walk in the snow, not read.

I decided to go straight from THE SHADOW QUEEN to SHALADOR‘S LADY so I didn‘t lose momentum like I did the last time, when I had to wait for the second book‘s release. Alas, I had trouble sitting down with it while I was sick, but I‘m hard into it now. Hopefully I can finish it tonight, by treelight, with some assistance from this bright little decoration.

I‘m still not eating a whole lot, but I was well enough to hit the grocery stores and the library today! I‘m especially happy to see Sadiqa De Meijer‘s new book, since I loved her last one. It‘ll be good to see what Travis Baldeee‘s crew is up to, too, and even though I had big issues with THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE KISSMAS, I still had enough curiosity about the characters to request the follow-up.

I had a big to-do list for today, but a small flu took over my life. I didn‘t even get a whole lot of reading done because I tried to sleep in between pukey sessions.

I did manage to read a play, some African history, and a few comics, though, including about half of the tagged book. I keep going back and forth on this series. I don‘t like it as much as Arakawa‘s other work, but every time I‘m about to tap out it pulls me back in.

A few years ago, I started rereading the daily journal I kept for twenty-five years so I could make note of important stuff and then burn each volume. I had a longer-than-anticipated gap in the process, but the conditions are right this week so I‘m back at it. Ten more volumes met their end tonight.

If you‘re all 😱, be assured I don‘t do this lightly. This journal is my mandala: something I had to make but don‘t have to keep forever.

Last night I gave in to my Anne Bishop cravings and started rereading THE SHADOW QUEEN. I read it right after it came out in 2009 and basically all I remembered was that I went in with no expectations and loved the hell out of it. I dunno if it‘ll be quite so hell-free after this time, but I don‘t wanna put it down. I‘ll take a night off from African political history so I can properly wallow in this slice of life dark fantasy.

Put some decorations out last night, then read two more stories from LEGENDARY FRYBREAD DRIVE-IN, a shared world YA anthology that gives an Indigenous twist to the inn-between-worlds concept. As of 50%, the majority of the stories are strong, with solid emotional cores.

I finished the tagged book while I rigged my bookshelf with colour-changing lights. (This blue‘s my fave, so it‘ll be the default.) As others have pointed out, Coward‘s scholarship ain‘t exactly rigorous. He tackles a few subjects I know inside and out in such a way it‘s obvious he doesn‘t, so I must assume he‘s the same on most of his other topics—BUT, so much joy went into this book, even in its darker moments, that I had an awesome time with it

Somebody got GRUMPY at bedtime last night. I had to sit up with him until he calmed down, which wasn‘t too much of an issue because I wanted to finish rereading THE WAR OF THE WORLDS anyways. I enjoyed it a lot, both for itself and for all the familiar imagery it brought into the canon. I mean, pretty well every disaster narrative has That Scene with the crowded freeway or whatever, and boom. Here it is, along with a bunch of others.

Here we are, reading African history on a Sunday night. Akpan frames things around twelve non-male rulers, but the book is less about royal profiles than the political setup of each region during the era in question. It‘s interesting, with personal touches from Akpan‘s research trips in aid of each chapter, but there‘s something about her syntax that slows me right down. It takes me way longer than Kobo‘s usually accurate reading time estimates.

It still needs a thumb and a good blocking, but the right-hand mitten is mostly done!

I‘m 75% through IN THE RUINS, too. This series is so stressful, due in large part to the characters who use their religion as an excuse to treat people abominably, but so good! I‘m excited to finally finish it after years of searching for this penultimate volume, which nobody gives away and the publisher only sells as an overpriced ebook. #audioknitting

It‘s always a bit of a question whether the fruit will actually stay put with Nigella‘s cranberry upside down cake, but this time most of it ended up in the right place! Hurray! I whipped the cake up special this afternoon to use up the last of the cranberries I got in the post-Thanksgiving sale. Only people recovering from Covid were allowed to eat some.

I‘ve coughed a lot these past few days, which means my voice is pretty hoarse, but my Covid shot did its job and kept me from getting super sick. Thanks, science!

I still ain‘t about to go out and infect the public, so I‘ll keep on cuddling Casey and reading stuff for a bit longer. Today we‘ve got the rest of COFFEE SHOP IN AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE, which is just delightful. Maybe the pace is a little slow, but I can‘t mind when it‘s so fun.

Shashi Bhat makes the ordinary feel extraordinary. These stories examine a variety of women in familiar circumstances that crackle with depth and meaning. Everything is so well-observed; so layered; so rife with feeling. I‘ll definitely seek out more of her work.

So, it turns out my dad‘s death cold is COVID, and I‘ve finally caught it after almost six years COVID-free. (I wondered if maybe I was doing the tests wrong because I never had it, ever, no matter how snivelly I was. Guess not.)

I drowned my sorrows in avocado ice cream. Now I shall tuck up in bed and see how I get on with the enigmatic Uketsu.

The mitten has reached a photographable point. I got past the thumb break while I listened to the tagged book, which is basically a silly Christmas movie. I thought I was in the mood for that vibe, but maybe I‘m not—or maybe I get hung up on the theological implications of all these royal families who represent commercialized holidays with religious roots. Which is maybe silly of ME, but here we are. #audioknitting

I had to go out first thing to help my dad transfer the Grey Cup tickets he won but can‘t use because he has a death cold. 😔 (Luckily, my uncle‘s gonna go with his neighbour, who‘s a hardcore Roughriders fan.) Now I‘m home with serious plans to read space opera and snuggle Geo, who‘s fluffed right out since I last saw him a month ago. Is he a small dog or a mop? It‘s tough to say but either way he‘s mighty cute.

Throwback to earlier in the week, when I found NISHGA impossible to put down. Jordan Abel‘s research-creation is personal, academic, poetic, and intense. Absolutely going on my must-read nonfiction recs list.

Ahhh, friends, I get so happy when I see Rachel Reid out in the wild! (Actually, I get happy when I see Anybody Reid, because I think, “Rachel!” but it‘s usually just Ava and then I‘m a bit sad.) I‘m glad to see her front and centre at my local Chapters. Also, I had no idea there was a TV adaptation in the works. (Possibly it‘s already out?) I love this book to the moon and back so I dunno how I feel about that.

I baked Biscuits With the Boss, among other things, while I started the tagged book. It‘s interesting, but Snorton does NOT care about clarity. Brace yourself for the very most academical academic language that ever academed.

To be honest, I ain‘t wild about reading on my iPad. It‘s too awkward to hold with one hand, which is how I almost always read. (I was surprised, years ago, when I learned the term “one-handed reads” usually CONNOTES something.) Still, I‘ll put up with it when it helps me get stuff off my wishlist via Hoopla. Today I‘m glad I get to read the second in this series of fantasy mysteries set in a pseudo-Dutch city.