Oh, look, I really enjoyed the book that won two categories in the Goodreads awards.
But like also let’s talk - in a good way - about the fact that McQuiston has written an AU fanfic on the real world where things are just a leetle different. And that isn’t meant just as a description of the plot.
Fanfic is a stylistic genre, one that cares about a pattern of tension and release in the emotional experience of the reader. It feels often more like a series of vignettes that add up to a narrative. And it’s often just as if not more interested in the small moments than the large ones.
And also, as more writers who cut their teeth on it become published and polished storytellers, I think we’re going to see more of it as a style.
Bring it.
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I do have one quibble though. In this fantasy world where the 45th president of the USA is a divorced Texan woman with biracial kids...why is Bibi still prime minister!?!?
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ETA: Also, I figured out another piece of the fanfiction thing. Harry/Draco. Alex is Harry (especially Desi Harry) and Henry is Draco and it's part of the way that that dynamic has become an integral part of culture as both a response to HP and an alternative model for enemies -> lovers OTHER than Lizzy and Darcy. Both the gender element, but also the power element. Who has what power, who has what freedom? Anyway, yes, I don't think this book is based at all on Drarry, but I also think it could not exist without thirty years of Drarry.

I say pretty consistently that I’m not a horror person, although given how many times I’ve read Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, that’s probably a lie. I’m not a visual horror person. I don’t like horror movies. And I don’t like the way that prejudice is often used as the source of horror - the encroaching other is often just another person, but one of another skin color or religion or sexuality.
So, as with romance, I’m picky and I avoid most film versions, but it means I really have GOT to stop being surprised when a novel by an author I love is an excellent experience merely because it’s horror.
Kingfisher is fantastic here and knows her genre and tropes extremely well and if you are a person who scares, you will be scared in the best way.

Mendlesohn is fascinating and there were absolutely times I felt like I should be taking notes on what to read next and also she and I very clearly have different tastes in books, which is also deeply interesting.
Her intervention is just a little bit mind blowing in how it helps one categorize what books are (or are not).

Well, we're certainly coming to the middle of my "read ALL the Tolkien".
Ive heard these shorter works referenced before, but never read them. Roverandom reminds me of the Hobbit in tone and content and it's delightful, Farmer Giles and Smith are both really interesting and fun visions of what Tolkien sees in the history of England and, of course, I adore Leaf by Niggle.
Also, Derek Jacobi does a great job reading.

I always get back to these books and it's like "oh, right, the weird fourth wall breaking thing, here that is again."
Which, of course, in the third book is itself lampshaded and it's not at all the point of the book.
I quite appreciated how handily Goss refocused the story to make this a book about women and dispensed with the extremely annoying dudes of 19th century literature and also I feel like we've met basically everyone in the who's who by now.
The books ended well and also I feel like this is the right number of them to have written about these characters.

Ugh, short story collections are so hard to review. These were, overall, really good and I'm always a sucker for a good and ancient romance and these did not disappoint.
I love myth retellings and I just want more like this. Please!

Ahh, feel good space opera with battles and good versus evil and mysteries to solve and space eugenicists to blow up.
This series was a good find and I've very glad I tripped over it.

Today's entry BOTH into classic sf of the past that I actually want to read and "WTF is that cover and did they read the book!?"

Both Wolfe's style and deliberate lack-of-introduction took a while to actually catch my attention and I was often more interested in finding out what the world will throw at our main character next than what he himself will do. Severian spends much of the book as a cypher, but also the book itself is weird and I want to know what happens next please.

I read an audiobook in two days.
Who DOES that? Thank goodness for fasting and the New York subway.
Thomas does something interesting here where she gets the setting and language very right and then uses it to tell a 21st century detective story. These are not cozy mysteries and there is a feel to the topics/bluntness of the text that is - deliberately, I think - out of sync with the language. It’s as if Thomas is asking “what if they spoke about the things we speak about” and then wrote that story.
Also, Charlotte Holmes is excellent and I really liked how different she and Mrs. Watson and everyone is from the original while still filling the correct narrative hole.
Obviously I just bought the next book.