Lovely but too short! I‘d guess this is a novella or even novelette rather than a full novel—you may notice it took me only three days to read. It had a fairy-tale feel that I adored but between that and the length it felt almost like a prologue rather than its own story. I wonder if she plans more in this world? It is a fun world (like an inverse Spinning Silver, summerlings rather than Staryk), and wonderful & very smart characters.

I don‘t even know what to say, I loved this book so much. I started out, after the prologue, empathizing with Shiva as a queer woman mourning a beloved Jewish father who died too young of cancer (okay, my dad died almost four years ago, but the pain is still there). But there‘s so much more to this book. Four+ generations of Jewish women‘s silence and stories. Love and laughter. Magic and possession.

Squeeeeee 😍😍😍

Somebody points out to the Tin Man that he never reconnected with the girl whose love caused him to be chopped up and turned to tin. Time for an adventure! The usual random bizarre assortment of creatures and places await. I appreciated Baum explaining a bit of the history of Oz becoming a fairyland where no one dies, though as a mom I‘m horrified at the prospect of babies staying babies forever. Then again, if they can‘t die, maybe not so bad?

@BarkingMadRead This book is quite large. And you say it‘s only 15 chapters?! 😨 I hope the print is big…

Really fun #bookhaul from the Renaissance Festival! Enfys J. Book is actually a visiting author but sadly I won‘t be able to make it the weekend they are coming.

This was a lot of fun! I confess myself baffled by the autofiction aspect; with most of the other DTWOF characters there, why not use Mo and Sydney instead of “Alison” and “Holly”? A lot of the same themes from DTWOF are there, and it‘s less about money than I expected. I wonder if Holly‘s video success with wood chopping is inspired by one of my internet crushes, Nicole Coenen.

Apparently Stuart COULD get more my type: now poly and tattooed 😍

I have enough to read, I told myself. I‘ll just pick up my two holds (one for #hashtagbrigade) and not look at the other books. But… they had this staff picks table right at the entrance… and can I resist a sapphic selkie story? No, no I cannot. (I‘m glad to see at least that I‘d already stacked it thanks to a couple of positive reviews! And the fact that it‘s a sapphic selkie story.)

I read the last chapter of this book over a lovely white peach and I‘m mad they‘re both finished.

I‘m not sure how to review this book. 🤷🏻‍♀️ I‘m glad I read it and glad I had @BarkingMadRead and the #hashtagbrigade along with me! Archer drove me crazy and I felt sorry for Ellen. I feel like there was a lot more to the two women (May and Ellen) than he ever noticed and wish he would have figured that out. Or at least consciously noticed that things had been changing his entire life despite his belief that society never changed.

I liked the characters in this book and the trajectory of their romance, and I loved the language of flowers aspect—that was really well done. I was also interested in the depiction of people living under-the-radar queer lives in Regency England. But Charlotte frequently annoyed me and I was very frustrated with this book as P&P fanfic. There were a lot of little ways it differed from canon, plus one big one, a convenient wealthy eccentric aunt.

This didn‘t always grab me and haul me along, but I definitely enjoyed following the twists of Lore, Bastian, Gabe, and their friends and gods. The ending was very satisfying… in that it‘s the second book of a trilogy and I have no idea what‘s going to come in the third book. I‘ll definitely be reading it, though!

I spent the weekend at the shore with my family—here‘s proof of reading on the beach!

Sliding in under the wire with my #bookspin list! @TheAromaofBooks

I appreciate this call-out to the biphobia that was frequently evident in Dykes to Watch Out For. I took it as a sign of the time and the characters being realistically flawed humans, but it‘s even better to see Bechdel address it so clearly. Hopefully she‘ll address the transphobia too (though I notice some characters still have trouble with JR‘s pronouns, assuming they use they/them and not they/she).

I really want to like this book—sapphic! Jane Austen! Language of flowers! And there are some parts I love. But there are other parts that drive me nuts. Such as the consistent misspelling of Longbourn as “Longbourne” 🙃

I really liked this one! There‘s an actual plot and a reason they can‘t just fix everything with one of their magical objects (and the magic belt seems to exist again, though of course it doesn‘t work the way it did originally). Plus there‘s lots of Scraps being smarter than everybody. I didn‘t like the way the animals were so mean to each other, though. #BeyondtheYellowBrickRoad

What a great opening line! 😂

This book has all the ups and downs. It‘s amazing how much story and emotion Bechdel can fit into this strict format. The political arguments are especially funny and depressing to me—we‘ve been having the same conversations over and over again and not getting much of anywhere. So some parts felt absolutely timeless. While others, such as Mo trying to get Sydney off the internet so she can use the phone, are delightfully dated.

I thought it was fun to see a reference to the House of Worth in this chapter. Of course, May would have her gowns made over by the premiere Paris fashion house. https://www.metmuseum.org/essays/charles-frederick-worth-1825-1895-and-the-house... #hashtagbrigade

I really thought I would like this! I just didn‘t 🤷🏻‍♀️

Or maybe they were too busy crying over the ending! (I‘m surprised to see Mo reading a work of classic literature that isn‘t queer.) #hashtagbrigade

Fun, creepy retellings of fairy tales and the occasional Bible story. It felt very Danny Lavery, so I think it helps that I‘ve been loosely following his career (The Toast, Dear Prudence, his memoir) for a while. My favorite story was the horror version of The Velveteen Rabbit. Some of the other stories, especially the last couple, felt underdeveloped. Some had some interesting gender stuff that definitely could have used more development.

This video describes the fashionable clothes of the era of this book, and even specifically mentions the velvet ribbon as Archer and Ellen see in the play! https://youtu.be/izrLIMZOqA0?si=jx6u1J0iPG-jxSfo @BarkingMadRead #hashtagbrigade

I absolutely adore Naomi Novik‘s writing. I don‘t know which story was my favorite: “Spinning Silver,” the story that turned into the novel, with quite a bit of the exact same language but a very different ending; “Dragons & Decorum,” which could also be called “Elizabeth Bennet, dragon rider”; or “Castle Coeurlieu,” like a dark retelling of a fairy tale that never existed.

I am astonished that I hadn‘t heard about this book before and had to pick it up randomly from a new books table at the library. It is SO powerful and good. In an alternate 2020 after Gore won the 2000 election and declared a War on Climate Change, Maddie spends all her time with her boyfriend and their two bandmates (one of whom she‘s in love with) at the warehouse he owns. When she finds a notice that the state plans to demolish it for…

I keep telling myself that I‘m going to limit the number of books I take out of the library so I can read the ones I already own. Then I go in to pick up a hold (in this case, the tagged book) and they have all these tempting displays… #libraryhaul

The tendency of the Rushworths to make foolish matches, hmm? Has to be a Mansfield Park reference 😂 #hashtagbrigade

My Storygraph July wrap-up! No idea why I seem to have picked up the pace in the second half of the month but I‘ll take it.

Since I finished Animal Farm, I‘m updating my list. #bookspin #bookspinbingo

I‘m glad I finally read this—and glad I read it as an adult, not in school. My history classes definitely didn‘t give me the necessary understanding of the Soviet Union (though perhaps an English teacher would have). I know a lot more about that period in history now, and I‘m sure that gave me a fuller appreciation of this satire. Don‘t let the pigs have all the apples, folks.

Gaskell writes such real-feeling characters. I didn‘t like this as much as Ruth, but maybe I would have if she‘d lived to finish it 😢 I definitely still hope to read the rest of her novels. Thanks as always to @BarkingMadRead and the #HashtagBrigade for another fun buddy read!

My Kobo informed me that a T. Kingfisher book I hadn‘t read was on sale today, so naturally I grabbed it!

#bookspin list for August!

Lots of fun new characters in this—I liked Prince Inga, King Rinkitink, and especially Bilbil the talking goat. It has an actual plot, too, which made it even more fun. However, Oz is barely relevant. The title is strange since not only does Rinkitink only spend a couple of chapters in Oz, he‘s not even the main character. Why not call it Prince Inga in Oz? #BeyondtheYellowBrickRoad

First I show up in this book, now another one of the books I‘m reading!

"A green-haired girl lounging on the pink silk chaise with the blood stain on it shouted that it was a minute until astronomical dusk."

My hair is currently blue-green. A pink silk chaise (even with a blood stain) is a place I would lounge. My child regularly informs me of the times of civil dusk, astronomical dusk, golden hour, and day and night. Have I just appeared in the book I‘m reading?

Maybe I just don‘t remember anything about this book besides the names of some of the characters. Very little of this is familiar!

So glad I read this *after* Songbirds and Snakes—there is stuff in this book that is really enhanced by knowing Snow‘s story, and perhaps more important, I liked this one a lot more. I thought I knew how Haymitch‘s story would go but this kept surprising me, even though I knew the broad strokes. It was fun to see so many familiar characters—and some of them surprised me, too. I‘m thinking about rereading the original trilogy now.

Excited about this #littlefreelibrary find!

“…we encounter text [produced by an LLM] that looks just like something a person might have said and reflexively interpret it, through our usual process of imagining a mind behind the text. But there is no mind there, and we need to be conscientious to let go of that imaginary mind we have constructed.”

The art in this is very “standard manga style,” which I‘m not a big fan of, but it was done well—the characters are all very well distinguished. (I particularly enjoyed how evil Lucy Steele looked and how stupid her sister Anne looked.) This is quite a faithful adaptation, surprisingly comprehensive, though I missed Margaret‘s funny lines and there‘s some over-the-top romantic bits at the end. Good way for a manga fan to get into classic lit!

Wow, I did not remember the beginning of this being so dark. 😰

Great queer YA retelling of Northanger Abbey! I loved Catherine‘s obsession with gothic novels updated to Cade‘s obsession with horror movies. The gay fears and love story felt very real, especially for teenagers in rural Texas.

Unfortunately, when I showed this to my gay classic-lit-and-horse-loving friend, he informed me that this artist is just as bad as all the others at drawing horses 😂

I really wanted to love this short story! It had some great ideas, really interesting worldbuilding, and compelling characters. There were places where the writing was beautiful. But it desperately needed an editor. I wouldn‘t say no to the world being more fleshed out, either. I might read more by this author but I will be checking the sample first.

Fascinating book! I don‘t know if this is more comprehensive than the embroidery one or if I just know more about embroidery (or less than I thought, since I expected sashiko to be in that one and it‘s in this). There are three projects I really want to make. I might have to buy this book (it‘s a library borrow) as well as the supplies. #LitsyCrafters

Patchwork quilt made by my MIL!

This book struck a decent balance between “plot” and “random punny adventures.” Some of the things that irk me about other Oz books were definitely present here (are Glinda and Ozma *really* all that great?). But I just loved Trot, Cap‘n Bill, and the Orks so much that I can‘t downgrade the rating. #BeyondtheYellowBrickRoad

A character has been turned into a grasshopper and another character asks “Can you give molasses?” The first character opines that he is not that kind of grasshopper. Does anyone have any idea what they are talking about? I searched “grasshopper molasses” and just got stuff about making a grasshopper trap.