I listened to this as an audiobook, and at just 5 hours it feels almost more like a long essay than a full length book. Anyone picking it up probably already knows that it is a meditation on grief, and a review of the literature on grief and mourning. I found myself reacting to it more intellectually than emotionally, but I have a feeling it's something I'll be thinking about for a long time. Didion's writing is graceful, clear and very personal- especially hearing it read, it felt like a long passage from her journal or diary.

A beautiful but strange story. In a future Italy, young people are forming a new type of free-love, communal living society that shocks and worries the older generations. Triangle portals of light open up in the sky, visible only to a few. Are they hallucinations? Or are they messages from an extraterrestrial presence?

Leda Zawacki has created a beautiful fairy tale, half modern, half myth. The sky god's rebellious older daughter ventures out into the world to find it both more dangerous and more wonderful than she ever expected. Delicately inked and colored with layers of earthy watercolors, the pages are a delight.

An anthology of four longer stories and one very slight one by a collection of excellent authors and illustrators. Kate Leth and Arielle Jovellanos's contribution is a star-crossed high school romance that was a little too frivolous for my taste (though I did appreciate the inclusion of queer characters). Sarah Vaughn and Sarah Winifred Searle's story is the first chapter of an Austinesque tale of a woman entering into a marriage she already regrets. Sarah Kuhn and Sally Jane Thompson created a very fun twist on the coffeeshop au- a literal magical girl who's task is to match up couples to fulfill her assigned quest. Marguerite Bennett and Trungles collaborated on a fairy tale in which a captured beast and a youngest daughter must overcome extraordinary odds to reach their happy ending.

This was a book I savored over two months of slow, delicious reading. Set in England in the 7th Century it follows Hild, a niece of King Edwin of Northumbria, and her family as they scramble to survive in a politically dangerous climate. Hild's mother dreamed that she would be a light of the world and manipulates the King into believing she has the gift of prophesy. In reality, Hild is fluent in four languages and exceptionally skilled at observing and eavesdropping. When her prophesies come true, she gains status and power- but also the enmity of the new Christ Priests who are beginning find places of influence in the royal court as well. This book swings back and forth between tense scenes of violent battle and long dreamy passages that celebrate the richness of the English land and the labor that went into making a living from it. The flowing of creeks, the bending of grain, the rustling of birds in the forest and the crash of waves make the constant peaceful backdrop of Hild's precarious life. A book to re-read, for sure.

Lelek is an angry young witch who makes her living by swindling villagers from town to town. Sanja is the daughter of a merchant who gets tangled up in Lelek's fight with an angry customer. When Lelek sees how well Sanja can handle a sword, she decides to kidnap her. The two girls form an uneasy alliance that softens into friendship as they journey together, through a beautifully drawn world of rolling hills and fields, forests of strange plants and winding rivers.

As a reader, getting to return to Lyra's England is magical. The politics of Brytain, under a tightening conservative religious government, are set in contrast to the efforts of Oakley Street- a network of secret agents and academics working to preserve free speech and democracy. The existence of six alethiometers is reveled, the whereabouts of five of which are known- one has been stolen or lost. These truth-machines are used by both sides of the ideological battle and quickly alert the higher powers that an infant baby, recently born out of wedlock to Lord Asriel and Mrs Coulter, carries a destiny of great power. All of this is unknown to the 11-year-old Malcolm and his daemon, Asta, when they meet the baby girl in the care of the nuns who run the priory across the river from his family's tavern. All Malcolm knows is that Lyra is perfect and that he would do anything to protect her...

I had to suspend a fair amount of disbelief as the novel went along and became more and more strange. It was also a little unsatisfying how many plot threads were left loose, clearly waiting to be picked up in the following book. But these were very small complains set against the joyful pleasure of devouring this new book in two and a half days, reveling in the return to this delightful world.

A beautiful collection of ten zines in the "Sex Fantasy" series by Sophia Foster-Dimino. The early chapters collect lists of desires, many of them extremely practical, while the later installments present fully fleshed out stories. The charm of the collection is only increased by the small and compact square format of the book.

The seven stories of this comic and prose anthology pay loving tribute to the BL genre that clearly feed the creator's imaginations and artistic styles. Each story is sweet in its own way but for me the standouts are Aatmaja Pandya's "Radio Silence", a love story between an artist and a radio DJ, and Emily Forster's "Mix Plate" about a couple bonding over food and family in Hawaii.