Sometimes, when nothing you've been home for two weeks with no idea when normal life will be restored, and nothing you read is holding your attention, you might decide it's time to revisit a paranormal fiction series about a coyote shapeshifter and her alpha werewolf mate that you haven't dipped into in a while.

In Storm Cursed, Mercy Thompson Hauptman and her pack are up to their furry ears in black magic all sorts of fae, and politicians who think nonhumans shouldn't be allowed to exist.

Cloud Library is failing me, so I can't check my bookmarks. The main thing, is Mercy was just what I needed when I read it.

I read this right after Mercy Thompson #11, thinking I needed more of that world, but it turned out I found it repetitive. Normally I really like the Alpha & Omega series, but this one felt tedious. Same trope, different book. I guess that's the point with series novels, but I wanted a little more. Still, I think my reaction may have been more about consecutive Patricia Briggs novels than whether or not Anna and Charles were dull. Or maybe they were.

I think I picked this up for the roller derby content. Our protagonist's derby name is Rolldemort. I don't remember her real name without looking it up, but I do remember her best friend's: Sibby. Sibby is her derby wife. They're seniors in a Cambridge high school. Sibby, an Aussie transplant is waitlisted at Tufts, and Rolldemort got into Amherst ED. Speaking of transplants, it turns out a liver condition Rolldemort was born with, but didn't pay much attention to is all of a sudden demanding attention. Other important characters are R's parents, her brother Alex, and Alex's best friend Will. There's a little romance, but as with most of my favorite YA, it's really a story of friendship.

The series name, "Wayward Children," is probably what enticed me about this book. I like McGuire's Mira Grant books more than the ones she writes under her own name. In Every Heart a Doorway, Nancy is moving into Miss Eleanor's school (for wayward children) after she disappeared from her family for a time, and came back...different. To Nancy, she discovered her true self; to her parents, their Nancy disappeared. Eleanor is good at talking to parents because she's been at it a good long while. She herself has "disappeared" many times.

Shortly after Nancy arrives at the school, people start dying. Nancy is mostly unruffled, maybe because while she was disappeared, "She had tasted unicorn at one of those feasts, and gone to her bed with a mouth that still tingled from the delicate venom of the horse-like creature's sweetened flesh."

McGuire goes there. This novel is a slip of a thing, which was fine with me. Despite the fact that I felt meh about it, I'm curious what happens next because a few key characters disappear, some presumably for good.

There are 30 or more authors photographed with one or more of their cats, accompanied by an essay about the writer's relationship to cats. The authors covered aren't just the usual suspects. It's a diverse list, as in not just well-known white dude cat-lovers Ernest Hemingway. There are writers I hadn't heard of, including people from outside the US. Perfect bathroom book.

Randall Munroe, of XKCD fame, does what the title says. It's funny, smart, cute, and gets a teeny bit repetitive after a while. Recommended for your bathroom and/or for tween science fans and their parents.

https://lowereastsidelibrarian.info/reviews/giddings/lakewood

This is part a biography of the author's mother and part a history of Numbers, which I only knew about because I read Daddy Was a Number Runner when I was a kid. I still have it on my shelf and should read it again, as it's been 10 or 20 years. I was interested in the subject matter--a strong, Black woman making her way in a world where everything was stacked against her, but ultimately found the writing a little dry and gave up. The issue is surely me, not the author, since my social isolation reading concentration is for shit.

Fun book about packhorse book delivery in coal country in the 1930s. Because I'm a snot, I won't call the riders "librarians." The one person who seemed to have any actual library training, Sophia, had to stay back in the library HQ because she was Black. It's billed as a romance, and the book contains multiple heterosexual unions. I think at least one character might have been a little queer. One possible lesbian and one likely asexual. Despite the culminating romances, the book is more about women coming together to fight sexism and an asshole coal tycoon. I am always up for a book about defeating an asshole coal tycoon!

What do you say about the middle book of a trilogy? I don't get the David Eastman attraction. What a horrible guy.