I really appreciate Novik's sense that a short story is...a novel in miniature, almost. Something with the same arc that just needs less space to tell it.
These were great, although I do wonder what it is about Jane Austen that makes people say "you know what this tiny piece of ivory needs? Dragons".
I'm not saying the Brontes need dragons, but - actually, I take that back. Give me Bertha Dragon Mason torching Thornfield.

There's a lot in this book that's really useful from a rabbinic perspective, both on ideas of what exactly repair is and how it maps onto what we think about in terms of repentance, but most importantly - the role of community in supporting victims and survivors of all kinds. And that role is not (just) taking care, but the idea of moral community needing to recognize and name the harm that happened and to whom and by whom.
Because it's the failure of the community's morality that breaks and hurts people.

Only Premee Mohamed could make me appreciate a post-apocalyptic novel right now. This was a hard read in 2025 (the perils of not reading things when they came out) and also it packs such a punch for such a light book. I really want to dig into the way that speculative fiction allows her to talk about selfishness versus selflessness and what is (and is not) a part of who we are. There's a lot of there there under the book, for all that it's also a book about the world having ended who we are afterwards.

I'm continuing to slowly make my way through the iconic works by autistic writers and I'm so glad to have read this one. Walker is really good at giving language to things and her approach to "so I defined it" is incredibly useful.

I’m trying to decide if I’m glad or annoyed that I only read this book when I’m 2/3s of the way through teaching hilchot Niddah (the laws of menstruation). 
As per my policy of not rating books that I read because they directly touch on my work because I’m not sure I can accurately assess it beyond its utility, this one has no rating but also it was really good and interesting and in some ways totally upends how I think about Niddah and in other ways deeply validates it. 
I want to give my students the chapter on harchakot for when we learn that topic. 
But it also brings home to me just how contingent so much of halakha is. 
To what degree are we, as inheritors of this tradition and those meant to act with it now, failing in our willingness to notice the world around is and name its influence. How do we choose what we allow to shape us?

I went in to this book thinking, a little, that I didn't need to be told that care matters. It's kind of my job. But what Strauss does here in looking at the psychology and the value of care specifically for caregivers is still incredibly necessary and galvanizing and even, knowing what I know and recognizing many of the Jewish thinkers she cites, really helpful in my own thinking about how I care and how I might present care to my students.

Holy COW.
So it feels like one of the themes of Palmer's books is "what kind of trauma would have had to have happened to the average romance character to make them make such consistently terrible choices?" and then...that's the story.
There is a LOT going on in this story, the plot is extremely wild, the characters are interesting, but not entirely well developed, although some of that is, in fact, plot related. But it was such an enjoyable ride.
Also I very much appreciated having a heavily pregnant protagonist where that is something she needs to account for, but not necessarily something that completely restricts her. One understands the brain fog, given that situation.

Dear random person on Discord who mentioned this book,
THANK YOU. This was a delightful mix of romance, skullduggery, and plot. I flew through it and I so appreciate having something to take my mind off the *everything* and this world and the characters in it were very delightful.
It's also wild to me when historical romance novels need to have their main characters invent modern psychological approaches to cope with their lives - in this case IFS. I don't mind it, exactly, I just appreciate it. Also appreciate, in this one, that healing was treated as a long and extensive process and that the romance is happening...more at the same time than causally. And I really valued that.

Short stories are always so interesting to try to explain because it's difficult to talk about them as a whole, but also they're a whole book so it's silly to just talk about a few.
I often think short stories are places where fantasy writers put stories that can't wind their way to a happy ending. In that respect, this is absolutely a book of fairy tales, especially of the warning variety. The weirdness of the world will break your heart if you let it. You have to let it.

And, once again, I go from "I don't really like urban fantasy or mysteries in cities" to "DAMN IT, THERIN, why am I so invested!?"

So, you know, well done. Thank you for that cliffhanger, I'd like my feelings returned in one piece next time.