DNF @ page 109. I simply can’t. I already kind of couldn’t, but then I talked to someone about it, and I fully ceased to be able to read this book any longer.

I originally heard about Us before it was translated and so desperately wanted to read it, because there's not enough representation of relationships between cis and trans women and I wanted to get my hands on every little bit I could find. Still do.

Two years of wanting to read it later, I found it a bit... after-school special? Don't get me wrong. I do think that we need coming out stories, and this is one that's informative and cute and does a thorough job of explaining that this is only one transition story, all are different and all are valid. It depicts both the hardships and the joys of the changes in Sara and Diana's lives, both as individuals and as girlfriends. And with the exception of a couple of well-meaning but unexamined "welcome to womanhood" sorts of statements that would piss off some trans women I know, I think it's generally free of missteps.

I guess that it just didn't feel like the most hard-hitting book for me at this point in my life because I've been the cis girlfriend rooting on a trans partner early in her transition (albeit a cis girlfriend who had already come to terms with her lesbianism and thus didn't have some of the same struggles as Sara). It kinda felt like old news to me.

However, I can see how Us would make others feel seen in a powerful way, and it did bring up some emotional memories for me. People who need a transition story for either education or moral support could do worse than this for sure.

As an added bonus, there is also a cute black cat!

A dear friend gave me my copy of Strong Female Character for Christmas (<3), but in true procrastination-prone me fashion, it took me until April to read it. But hey, just in time for Autism Acceptance Month!

It was only after having this on my TBR for awhile that I realized that this Fern Brady was the same Fern Brady who does the standup that my roommate sends me videos of every now and then. Her book has a similar voice--and even the same bit about the badger puppet--as her comedy, but anyone expecting a light, funny read might be disappointed. Life pre-autism diagnosis is deeply confusing and messy, and Fern doesn't shy away from showing the unpleasant (and absurd) situations that autistic people can find ourselves in when we don't fully understand how our brains work or how to interact with people or why sometimes our entire nervous systems go haywire. I really appreciate this candor, and the honesty with which she admits that there isn't really a neat, happy ending that she can share.

I also appreciate how much information about autism she shares in her footnotes. A lot of us end up with autism as a special interest for awhile after being diagnosed--I can't even tell you how many YouTube videos I watched, in addition to reading the huge tome Neurotribes--so her research is relatable and I'm glad she got to put it to good use.

1. I came for lesbian space necromancers, I got lesbian space necromancers.

2. Reading this was like a bucket of ice water dumped over my head. Rude awakening time: I need to prioritize more demanding books.

3. Books in general were a mistake. Authors are liars who only seek to hurt you. I did start Harrow the Ninth immediately.

02/10/2023: On rereading this, I can confirm that it’s in my top five favorite novels of all time.

05/01/24: Yep, still love it.

I chose this book mostly at random, because I enjoyed reading Mary Oliver last year, because I was struggling to finish anything and thought poetry might help, and because this one was available as an ebook through my library. I didn't even read the synopsis.

So I was surprised to discover that this is a collection all about two topics that I've thought about and struggled with for the last year or so: grief and faith.

I read a lot about grief. It's a topic I'm comfortable with. Since losing my dad, books on grief find me even when I'm not looking for them, and I find that I trust people who have known grief more than I trust others.

Faith is another matter. I rankle when people bring up God, when they say that they are praying for me, when they suggest that I attend their church. I describe myself as pagan-ish but for the past couple of years have struggled even with that. So when the Lord started showing up in these poems, I was concerned.

To my shock, the poems about faith turned out to be some of my favorites. They made me feel a bit like I do when I attend UU service, which I started doing because I thought it might be good for me to be around hopeful people for an hour each week. Oliver writes about God in a way that's grounded in her observation and love of nature, and that's usually where she finds God: in fields, in birds, in a fox at the end of the path or squirrels sleeping in the eaves. It's a way of approaching faith that I could get along with, even if most days I don't know what my faith centers itself around, anymore.

So, overall, I loved this. There are even some dog poems, because it is Mary Oliver, after all.

I'm glad that I finally read this book, because it is an important portrait of abuse, and because it captures Southern family dynamics with a skill and style and even at times with a dark, dark humor that reminded me of William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor. But oh boy, did the ending make me mad.

Very good, but it will ruin several days for you, so pick your time to read it carefully.

This is well-written, well-drawn, and incredibly important, but I just can’t right now. I’m already in favor of a free Palestine, and I’m getting information about the current situation multiple times a day. I need to do something else in my reading life.

This was so oddly comforting by the end. And it made me crave froyo like a motherfucker. (Pun intended.)

I had been meaning to read this, because I love a cursed movie, and I loved Certain Dark Things. For the first quarter or so, I was hooked: I loved the characters and their interactions, I loved getting settled into their world. But somewhere around the halfway mark, it started feeling repetitive and slow. Not necessarily just because the plot is slow, but the writing is, too, and I noticed this a lot in the action scenes, when I still had trouble engaging. It’s just that so much of this book is people telling each other stuff, and not taking a break from telling each other stuff even when things are literally on fire. And they tell each other the same stuff over and over again, and I guess it’s stuff some people need to hear (like that being a Nazi is bad), but I didn’t need to hear it that many times, personally. 3 stars, because an A+ concept executed in a way that didn’t do it for me is still not too shabby.