This is the story of Sally and Gilly from [b:Practical Magic|22896|Practical Magic (Practical Magic, #1)|Alice Hoffman|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1629464836l/22896._SY75_.jpg|4030671]'s aunts. We meet Franny and Jet, and their brother Vincent, when they are in their teens and coming into their own magic. It's a fine read, but I don't have anything really to say about it. I started the other Practical Magic prequel, [b:Magic Lessons|50892349|Magic Lessons (Practical Magic, #0.1)|Alice Hoffman|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1593355938l/50892349._SX50_.jpg|75786942], but probably won't finish it because it seems like it will be repetitive. But if that's what you like, you'll like it a lot!

The titular Telegraph Club is a 1950s San Francisco lesbian venue for "male impersonators." Protagonist Lily Hu learns about it from a newspaper advertisement, which she clips and carries around with her in a math book. One day the clipping falls out and is spotted by Kathleen Miller, the only other girl in honors math. It turns out Kath, as she prefers to be called, has been to the Telegraph before, and the girls make plans to go together.

But it's the 50s and the Red Scare and Lily is supposed to be a good Chinese girl, and her dad's passport has been confiscated, so it's a lot of pressure. I appreciate that Lily is really not about hiding who she is, even though she don't have models or support in her community. This is not a lesbian-dies-at-the-end novel.

All of [a:Aya de León|4329070|Aya de León|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]'s books are five star reads to me. I love her style of Black feminist political romance. The "spy" is Yolanda Vance, a rookie FBI attorney, who didn't sign up to be a field agent, but was tapped for a surveillance gig because of her race and age. The targeted activist group is Red, Black, and GREEN (RBG), a Bay Area youth-oriented environmental nonprofit--obvious terrorists duping teens into Black identity militancy.

I say that ironically, but bootstrapping high academic and athletic achiever Yolanda thinks the RBG kids are whiners, who inaccurately blame all their woes on racism. It's not like she has a lot of faith in white people, but having attended boarding school and a historically women's college, she's been in majority white communities since her early teens.

Getting to know the RBG crew and seeing how police react to a rally help Yolanda see what she's been missing while living the elite life, which of course doesn't go over well with the FBI. Plus there's a dude...

Reading Because Internet made me wish I'd become a linguist! McCulloch's takes on online language are interesting, fun, and political--things I want from a job. (Plus when your job is studying the internet, cat content is part of the deal) Strangely, though it was a fast read for nonfiction, I could have stood it being a little shorter. Or maybe some chapters are just of less interest than others. About 100 pages at the end are the index and bibliography, so it's actually not that long. Because of all the notes, I might recommend reading the book in print. My Libby download didn't handle endnotes well, so I blew them off.

I made more than 25 highlights in the text. Here are some of the most compelling"



Obviously, as an internet scholar, I'm a print culture nerd, so what I like about this sentiment is that it's apt for zines, as well OR MORE SO. This following quote is something zine librarians say, too



TIL: "acronym" is a mid-20th century term. I bet it was coined by librarians.

A measure of when a term invented in BIPOC communities has become coopted: when it starts appearing in Buzzfeed headlines, as was the case with "af" in 2014, which started in LA and Miami five years earlier. I wish she's spent more time, maybe even a whole chapter on the Black internet, though.

And here are some more bits that are relevant to zines, especially how girls and women changed the culture



And of how much interest girls and women's role in furthering language is to male researchers lolsob



Furthering my (as yet unwritten) theory about how girls and women changed zine culture



And here's one for all the a-holes who don't want to use they pronouns because the construction isn't grammatical



Name drops of two people I know: Jessamyn West and Michelle McSweeney!

Exclamation points (which she calls exclamation marks) in email messages as emotional labor!!!






Finally, for some olde linguistic nerdery: Linguist Llama.

This is the second Covid-era novel I've started, and the first I've finished. I think it's a little soon ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, but that doesn't mean I wasn't fully engrossed in the story. There is a lot I can't address without spoiling the novel, but let's just say there is some coronarealness.

We meet protagonist Diana O'Toole when she's living her best life. She's on track with her personal and professional goals when the virus begins to shut things down. She gets out of NYC before the pandemic fully hits, leaving her surgeon boyfriend, Finn, behind before either of them can fathom what life will be like for him, working nonstop against devastating odds.

[Healthcare workers] don't give a fuck about the Empire State Building [lit up red and white this week for healthcare workers], or about people banging pots and pans at 7 P.M. Most of us won't ever see or hear it, because we're in the hospital trying to save people who can't be saved. What we want is for everyone to just wear a mask.

It's hard to identify with Diana at first. She's not the most likable narrator, making rash decisions and enjoying a tropical paradise, "Suddenly it feels juvenile and entitled to be upset about not staying in the hotel I booked, or being hungry. There is no way in hell I'm going to complain to Finn." Um, yeah. Good idea. Not that she really has a clue, as the internet connection in paradise is wonky.

Wish You Were Here is my first [a:Jodi Picoult|7128|Jodi Picoult|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1586468459p2/7128.jpg] novel, despite or because of her being so prolific and successful. But you know what? She can write. I admired rich language like

arthritic tubes of acrylics and the palette with layer after layer of dried moments of inspiration.

This part is not super relevant to the book, but I have to mention it--a covid patient fantasizes about having a job in a palace where her job is to interview courtier cats.

Thanks, NetGalley for the digital ARC! And thanks to my sister, Danna, for the recommendation.

This is your old-fashioned butch meets femme story. D'Vaughn, the femme is a gorgeous fat lesbian, who decides to go on a marriage show to come out to her family. Kris is already out. She's on the show for the most aberrant of all reasons: to find love. The coming out happens more easily than the love, even though Kris and D'Vaughn are hot for each other at first sight.

It's a sweet, fun story, and I'm finding that I enjoy reality show novels. This one has great characters, but is a little pat. Read it for solid race and body politics and intense sex scenes. There isn't a ton of plot, but it's not like gets-loses-gets back has any surprises.

There's a trio of characters with similar names: Mick, Veronica, and Nico. Mick lives with her indifferent-at-best mom. She has one good friend, Liz, a fellow swimmer, who drags Mick to parties, hoping that Mick will finally have someone other than Liz to hang out with. At one such party, she meets Veronica, a girl from another high school. Veronica is an aspiring photographer, and Mick, whose mom is a model/cater-waiter is aspiring not to ever have her picture taken. Thus, a push/pull romance is born.

Veronica knows about Mick's aversion to photography, but Mick is so photogenic, she can't help herself. After a consent-related blow-up, Mick ends up on the driver's end of the camera with Veronica's friend Nico, an installation artist/eco-terrorist. There's a lot of Veronica and Mick back and forth and Nico always ready to step in and lend a hand. Danger ensues.

Burn is a thriller with nuanced (sometimes unlikeable) narrators that you may still feel unsure about in the end. But is it the end? The ending isn't very endy.

Floss, Grace, and Neva are three generations of midwives. At 83, Floss is retired, but, as it turns out, she has some important knowledge to share with her daughter and granddaughter.

When we meet the trio, 29-year-old Neva is pregnant and not telling who the father is, which drives Grace mad. The story is told in their three voices, and each reveals her secret in time. Hepworth is a beautiful storyteller, but I got a TERF vibe from her.

I also didn't appreciate quotes like, "...was like a fat man at a buffet: he couldn't help himself" and "I'd more or less given up on female friends in the seventh grade when I realized that female friendship was practically a religion. Thou shalt not..."

Still recommended, unless those sentiments would ruin an otherwise good book for you.

As I try to remember my feelings about Black Cake a week after finishing it, I'm trying to learn more about the titular dessert. It's a Caribbean evolution of plum (or figgy?!?) pudding, brought to the island by its colonizers and soaked in rum all year, with the fruits merged together, less distinct and less heavy than the UK versions.

As one character describes it,

...some foods are born, bred, and developed within a particular geographic area or food culture. Others are imported, and yes, they find their places in new cultures over time, but they wouldn't be there in the first place without long-distance travel, without commercial exchanges and, in many cases, a history of exploitation. ... some foods that are taken for granted in many products and recipes in Europe, for example, are produced in other countries, where in past centuries, their trade depended on forced labor or very low-cost labor. Cane sugar, for example.

The cake is a through-line in this multigenerational story of family members lost and found. There's even a secret baked into a black cake, left by motherless mother Eleanor for her estranged adult children, Byron and Benny.

Byron is a Neil deGrasse Tyson, except with the ocean instead of the stars. Benny. who has a secret of her own, is adrift. I can't think of what else to say that won't be a spoiler, but I will add that in addition to "forced/low-cost labor," one might consider the role of rape in assimilation and foodways.

Many of my reads are lighter and quicker than this one was, but reflecting on the deeper messages of the novel as I write this review, I'm feeling more strongly about my recommendation. 4.5/5!

17-year-old Syd, no pronouns, is a baker at a queer-owned and serving café in Austin, the Proud Muffin. (I love that name) After an unexpected break-up with girlfriend W, a devastated Syd mixes up a batch of brownies that turn out to cause people who consume them to join Syd among the newly single. Once Syd realizes what happens, Harley, pronouns that switch between they and he as indicated on a button, is enlisted to get the couples back together.

Despite being heartbroken, Syd discovers an attraction to Harley, which, while probably reciprocated, is also complicated! The characters are lovable, but not so simple that they seem too perfect. That lovable but imperfect description goes for the other heart of the story, the bakery itself. The whole story is a non-mystery Tales of the City for the 21st century. I'd love to see it continue.

So you get a sense of what the book is like:

Biscotti are croutons that people put in their coffee. Coffee croutons.

and