This was a cute children's book about skunks, written back when skunks were still farmed for their fur and killed as a nuisance animal. There's some casual racism in it (all the animals are simply named their species except... Crow. Just guess). I read it because my Twitch chat requested it, but I only realized after that it's not public domain in Canada thanks to the new NAFTA agreement (yes I will die made about it).

Read this for my Twitch, and I'm really happy to have re-read it as an adult. Not only did I get to make it scary for someone who didn't know the story, but I know far more about Victorian repression, anti-gay laws, and queer subtext than I did as a small child. It's one of the only books Stevenson intended to be read as an allegory, and while he wasn't gay himself, there's definitely a queer interpretation available here.

I almost forgot to post my monthly round up! Lots of short reads. I tagged Styles because I didn't want to tag something I already had and none of the other books really stood out. Or well, if they did, it was for the wrong reasons. The Pride activity book was actually terrible! The meditation book was ableist, classist, and uninformative! The rest were basically fine, though Sam is My Sister was definitely inferior as a trans narrative.

Oh, this one is too easy for me. I read almost every book for my Twitch streams three times: once before going live with it, once on stream, and once when I listen back to it to create the highlights!

📘 I've tagged Shadow-shapes because I'm still working on those annotations (aiming to publish by Armistice Day 2024).
📘 Lord of the Rings ofc!
📘 Cat Sebastian's The Soldier's Scoundrel is my most recent fun reread.

#TLT #ThreeListThursday @dabbe

I always see #wondrouswednesday by @Eggs and then fail to do it because I can't think of an answer to one of the questions. Not this time!

🐣 KJ Charles, Cat Sebastian, Nghi Vo, and Jordan L Hawk!
🐣 I'm really bad at favorites, but I've always loved poetry and John Keats (tagged) is an easy one to claim. Most of the Romantics, really.
🐣 You see answer one? Ditto! Cat Sebastian and Nghi Vo most of all, with fewer misses in mid-series for me.

Yes, I'm reading random Georgian satirical pamphlets. I'm actually trying to trace a long chain of anonymous plagiarism, after a snide remark in Derenzy's Enchiridion about a cravat pamphlet. This one came much later, and is stolen from a French satirist. But that's okay, because I think he stole it from an Englishman before him. Anyway, it's all very silly and yet still has real and interesting insight into 1820s men's fashion.

Just started reading this on my Twitch channel. Glad I read it before starting, I needed to remove some blink-and-you'll-miss-it racism that could be excised without harm to the book. I think it would be creepier reading it in the Victorian era, but on the other hand, there is absolutely no subtlety about the lesbian relationship. It's not coded at all, it's just right there on the page. As I told my chat, “yes, this is a kissing book!“ 😆

I've been a little absent from here, just didn't have time to post! I've been working on my back log of kids' lit, as well as my usual assortment of review blog reading, random very old books, and queer romance. I've tagged an interesting collection, but tbh, the real highlight this month was Sailor's Delight. Don't let the ridiculous cover fool you - it's 0 spice, 99% pining, and EXTREMELY Jewish. Takes place between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur!

Yeah, I'm a bit meh on this Dumas book. I'm reading it for Twitch for Black History Month (Canada) because it's one of his shortest works. The trouble with this book is that it's a slow burn, with 13 long chapters of build up to all the action in the last 7 chapters. It's hard to get invested in the tragedy of Lucien and Louis. My viewers are enjoying it, surprisingly enough. It's the forgotten basis for a pile of SFF stories, too.

My January (tracked) reading. I'm chipping away at my backlog of modern children's books (I try to know what's out there to gift to friends' kids and also for fast URC solutions haha). The only book here I DO NOT recommend is “A River's Gifts“. It plays fast and loose with facts and assumes children are too stupid for nuance. It's also not written by Klallam people and it shows. The two queer romances are both @willaful's fault, thank you. ❤

I first read the 14th edition (1879) years ago, and own the Dover edition. I'm now reading the 1st UK edition (1841) on my Twitch because one of my friends is developing an age of sail themed game and wanted to research but felt overwhelmed. Dana's text is dense but concise and precise. His legal citations are thorough. The structure is a little odd - landlubbers may need to skip to the glossary in the middle before reading the initial chapters. ⚓

This is a roller coaster of a read - put on your seat belt (which didn't exist yet), you're in for some whiplash. Bryan, later an important film documentarian of Nazi crimes and the Siege of Warsaw, is only 17 when he packs off to the French front of WW1. His diary bounces between the hijinks and energy of an invincible teenage boy and the horrifying realities he witnesses. Gallows humour and bad decisions abound, and everybody's a bit drunk.

Another one I'm reading for Twitch. Abbott is really committed to the world-building of his intellectual exercises here. I think the social satire aspects are under-valued in most analysis of it, which tend to focus on the math. I had fun showing chat a lobster bustle, as the size of the Victorian lady's bustle was at its peak when this was written and there's a whole bit about swaying ladies' backsides for visibility.

Reread this for my Twitch stream, including having the illustrated plates on the video for viewers. It's always such a wild ride, but this is my first time introducing it to others and seeing what they had to say. We also had fun trying to find all the little figures inside the textual portions of each plate. Lots of mermaids and birds, in addition to the dynamic little people. The Swedenborg burn worked even for non-Blakeans. 💀 🔥

My first completed read of the new year is a classic of disability literature. As you might guess from the image, I read it aloud for my Twitch stream, and my viewers asked a lot of good questions about late Georgian life in general, and distinctions from the following Victorian era. Derenzy had a great sense of humor, and he's the rare Regency gent I think I'd actually like to hang out with. Open Library's copy has marginalia from him!

I thought this would be nice for individual updates, although obviously you can do whatever you want really, but this is for the less image editing savvy/enthused. 😁

#URC2024 @Faranae

As an improvement over last year, I'm going to post a few templates for keeping track and sharing your URC reads this year! They'll also be available on my blog and my Ko-Fi. If anyone has a clever way of making bingo cards for 52 books, let me know! 😅

#URC2024 @Faranae

Happy New Year! Welcome to the What We've Been Reading Ultimate Reading Challenge of 2024! This year's prompts are a bit lighter than previous years. 52 books did not fit legibly on a bingo card, so have a tidy little list. Use the tag or just tag me directly! You can also check out the other challenges and other ways to join the fun at my blog https://harpgriffinbooks.wordpress.com/2024/01/01/happy-new-year-its-2024/

#URC2024 @Faranae

I'm a day late and always a dollar short, but I didn't want to miss a chance to talk about the Romantic poets, especially eternal outsider William Blake. It was this or Keats. I really enjoyed KJ Charles' quoting of him in A Seditious Affair, though most of those are from A Marriage of Heaven and Hell, which is a much wilder ride.

#Naturalitsy #Midwintersolace #Fridaynightshare
@Chrissyreadit @thebookhippie @jenniferw88 @alldebooks

📕 The easiest of my goals is to finish and self-publish my annotated edition of Shadow-shapes by ESS. My hardest publishing goal is to finish writing a novel!

🎬 I want to turn my blog, Twitch, etc, into something that provides me an income. I have concrete steps I can take to help with that, but a lot will still be down to luck!

🏥 There's some medical things I hope I can finally tackle in 2024.

#TLT #ThreeListThursday @dabbe

This was fantastic. It was really fun to learn about the wild times in Regency and late Georgian Christmas parties. These rantipole doings are not to be found in Austen, who tries a little too hard to be respectable. Miss Revel disapproves of all this kissing and lap-sitting with a sly wink. CW for 2 problematic 12th Night characters.

Image from my Twitch streams, if you want an audiobook version! https://www.twitch.tv/collections/DZBEA7Fbnhe2UQ

This was a surprisingly decent read. I picked it entirely because it had a possum chapter and that's a thing on my Twitch channel. I'm happy I read it, though I don't think I'll read more Sharp.

This is partly a shameless plug for my Twitch stream. There's no audiobook on Librivox for this 1912 (1st edition 1905) children's nature book, so you can consider my stream collection a low-rent option https://www.twitch.tv/collections/vAlu9pQSohd7AA

1) I inhaled the backlists of KJC, Cat Sebastian, and Jordan L Hawk so it's really hard to pick a favorite between them.
2) Of books I finished, Under the Black Ensign, which was atrocious. Just offensively bad. I read a lot of bad books this year though, and I don't track my DNFs...
3) No. Well, maybe? Dunno.
4) No and ye gods no
5) The snow didn't completely melt in our warm spell, so sort of both?

#snowflakesquad #wintergames @puddlejumper

#Midwintersolace

🍿 What are your favourites? My top two are Muppet Christmas Carol (hence the tag), and Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas.

🍿 Do you have any seasonal traditions? For movies not really.

🍿 What films bring you comfort and joy? I have a huge soft spot for the incredibly twee Depression era films meant to cheer people up during bitter winters.

@TheBookHippie @Chrissyreadit @jenniferw88 @AllDeBooks

I don't usually do candles, but I found this candle holder amongst the Christmas decorations and thought, why not use it for #Hyggehour ? I had set out to have the cozy time make my current Terrible Book more tolerable, but it just made it worse, so I switched to the tagged book because who doesn't want to see Jerry again (everyone who's pissed him off that's who)

#Naturalitsy #Midwintersolace
jenniferw88 Chrissyreadit AllDebooks thebookhippie

Some by theme, some purely by color. I confess to first using books already uploaded to my canva account, because I'm lazy. 😂

#Naturalitsy #Midwintersolace #Hyggephotochallenge
@TheBookHippie @Chrissyreadit @jenniferw88 @Alldebooks

Sir Pterry is almost always a winner, and this one was basically an instant classic for me. I think I'd make it my annual Christmas read if I owned a physical copy - Discworld's footnotes always work better for me in paper form. The movie isn't a bad adaptation either, and it's obviously a labor of love, which is the best kind of film.

#Naturalitsy #Midwintersolace #Fridaynightshare
@TheBookHippie @Chrissyreadit @jenniferw88 @Alldebooks

#Naturalitsy #Midwintersolace #WinterGames

📖 What books do you enjoy this time of year? December is when I read piles of picture books to catch up on the ##URC.
📖 Do you have a preferred genre? Fantasy, queer romance, non-fiction...
📖 Do you have a traditional read? I used to, but then found the author is a bigot.
📖 What would you recommend? The tagged book is never a bad choice.

@TheBookHippie @Chrissyreadit @jenniferw88 @Alldebooks

Playing catch-up on my posts for the past few days. I only got 8 hours of reading done, but Lady Susan alone cleared my 20 chapters easily. I didn't keep close track, though. I definitely read more than 20 pages! Not all of these were on my December TBR, I hope that's fine (I'm having trouble keeping all these readathons straight!).

#MidWinterSolace #Naturalitsy #WinterGames #20in4 @Andrew65

📖 What are you reading today? The tagged book!
📖 How far into it are you? About 25%
📖 Was it recommended? Cited on a Jane Austen blog
📖 Would you recommend it? I think every Regency-ish historical romance author should give it a look, there are SO MANY flirtations in here.
📖 Have you read the author's work before? Uncertain - real name unknown.

#MidWinterSolace #Naturalisty @Chrissyreadit @TheBookHippie @jenniferw88 @Alldebooks

I don't have a physical copy of a single romance novel, so for today's #dailyphotochallenge theme of “Love“, I tried to gather up all the romance stories that at least have a Christmas scene or theme that I'm going to re-read this month. These aren't on my TBR - I'm just giving myself permission to re-read them for points (obviously my sole reason 😉).

#WinterGames #SnowflakeSquad @PuddleJumper

#dailyphotochallenge 1. Red Cover

None of these are on my TBR for December as I've read almost all of them before, although A History of Burning is badly overdue (I'm very behind on my ARCs). The worm-eaten “The Crisis“ (by the American Churchill) is the oldest physical book I own. The tagged book is the first book I ever owned! I'm sure which ones I got in university are fairly obvious. 😆

#wintergames #snowflakesquad @PuddleJumper

First read: Lady Susan, as I'm reading that for my Twitch Stream tonight. And I completely forgot that most of the book takes place in December!

Tomorrow I will make my Twitch highlight from the stream, write some reviews for my blog, and probably do some reading.

My first properly festive activity is probably going to be playing Christmas themed video games. 😆

#wintergames #snowflakesquad @puddlejumper

Stoker's last, worst book is based on the legend of the Lambton Worm (in coal country rather than clay). It is awful, especially in the form I, and everyone else, read it: the 1925 edition. This edition claims to be the 1911 text, but not only cuts over 100 pages (and 12 entire chapters), but rewrites entire sections. The 1925 edition makes no sense and is way, way more racist. So now I need to read the real book. 😭

1) I always decorate, even the years I lived in a tenement with neither room nor money for a tree. I made a flat tree out of cardboard scraps, cheap paint, & takeout containers.

2) Although I'm not Christian now, I still have a love for nativity scenes. We somehow have 7 of them!

3) Oldies are the best, traditional carols and classical. But I do have a soft spot for Willie's song “Pretty Paper“ about a street person.

#wondrouswednesday @eggs

#wintergames #snowflakesquad

1) I like to go outside on a snowy night and listen to the silence.

2) Mug of coffee or cocoa, snuggled under the throw a friend knit for me with my chubby kitty snoozing on my legs. 13 pounds of fluff is better than any heating pad!

3) Games! I'm really looking forward to being more active on Litsy and meeting new people!

4) Révellion! Tourtière, cipâte, bûche de Noël, and homemade candies.

Kicking off my participation in #wintergames as part of the #snowflakesquad is my December TBR. Strictly speaking, this isn't my entire TBR. I don't plan specific books ahead really so much as pick from the towering heap that is my StoryGraph TBR. These are just the ones that for whatever reason I definitely intend to read in full next month. The tagged book might end up being read live on my Twitch channel.

Alright, it's November, so it looks like only half my #URC2023 is going to be queer romance. Meanwhile, I went back to my past unassigned reads and found 4 books that fit prompts - the one not included here is The Story of My Life by Helen Keller for a blind author.

I'll actually be reading Lady Susan a second time later this month for my read-along Twitch stream.

These are the prompts I have remaining for my own #URC2023 and I'm slightly annoyed that this late in the year, I still have too many to make a little bingo card out of them.

I do have a few dozen books that I haven't applied to prompts yet - children's books and the like, which I'm saving for the December panic. The tagged book is one I can't find a prompt for. I read a lot of those, too, this year.

Now if all of these could be queer romance...

For the #URC2023 I am committing crimes against my own prompts and decided that a book with a how-to book *title* was close enough. Luke is just as much of a little shit as I expected and it was fun to watch him fuck around and find out. Joss and Gareth get more than just a cameo, so we get to see their HEA more than a decade on from the first book, a rare treat.

Saw this #ihavequestions from @RaeLovesToRead on @willaful's feed and decided to join in.

1. Tagged book may not be scariest, but definitely most horrifying. Would never read it now.

2. Not really. I'm okay with cozy and romance horror, or classic 19th century horror.

3. Frankenstein is always good. Most of Edgar Allen Poe. Not strictly gothic, but Lafcadio Hearn's spooky stories are really good adaptations.

I already posted about this book for another litsy thingy, but it was also my only #URC2023 read for September, at least by my current tracking. I considered counting Unfit to Print for the Black joy prompt, but I'd prefer to find a book by a Black author for that.

Rake (book) is alright as a standalone bit of fun, though it's a shoddy mystery plot that serves as a threadbare excuse to put two frenemies together.

I haven't been reading much, especially for my challenges, due to Octocon looming (Oct 7 & 8! Online and in Dublin!). Still, I managed an accidental one for the #MRC2023

Soto is Mexican/American living in the South Pacific, and threw several Indigenous Mexican dishes into this book. This book is all vibes, no plot, and that's just what I hoped for. I'm really curious about what these two will do when they finally quit their jobs.

For #titlesandtunes September theme of #dramaqueen, I finally settled on a book featuring a character sarcastically dubbed the “Melodramatic Prince“. Not quite a queen, but close enough! As for the song, opera was the obvious choice, but I opted for something outré with Walter de los Rios' synthetic 'Caro Nome' from Verdi's Rigoletto https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXnub0YuL_c Definitely check out all of the “Operas“ album!

@Cinfhen & @BarbaraBB

The August #TitlesandTunes theme is #TheWorldIsMyOyster and I finally found my pair. For my song, I chose “We Are!“, the first One Piece anime opening (Japanese version). Nothing says “the world is my oyster!“ like an adventure series for 13 year old boys. My book opens with Amelia inheriting £500K in 1884, as well as being Very A Citizen of the British Empire in Egypt.

https://soundcloud.com/opphantasy/we-are-one-piece-1

For #MRC2023 July, I got 4 books read. 4! I've tagged Cat Sebastian's latest, which @willaful suggested for Building On Cover and thusly did I use it. Really surprised to enjoy it despite it being in present tense and some other marks against my tastes. Finna was a quick read but I'm glad I knew the author is NB or I'd have been annoyed by it. Queer Principles is a fabulous romp. The Yield is one of the most fascinating books I've read this year.

For #URC2023 July, I only managed to fit one book into the remaining prompts. Admittedly, it's a good book, and since the cuddling is a major element of the pining and romantic plot (lolplot), it was fun to add it to the “A book involving cuddling“ prompt. I have books that could fit my prompts if I weren't being silly and trying to find almost exclusively queer romance, so I'm not panicking yet! Plus, I have a lot of Jordan L Hawk to read still!

#TitlesandTunes #sexdrugsandrockandroll @Cinfhen, @BarbaraBB

I was systematic and figured out every band and album referenced in Daniel Cabot's book, then listened to them all. Fortunately for the Spotify list, I chose David Bowie's “Aladdin Sane“ for the song. Gladys Knight's “Heavy Makes You Happy“ would be Alex's song. If you want to hear the wildest band in the book, try Suicide's Rocket USA. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bc-E78guBLI

#MidYearBookFreakOut Saw @willaful post this and went a little mad.

1 I'm bad at choosing.

2 Is it? Maybe, I dunno.

3 Willaful put it on my TBR

5 I'm still mad.

6 TENTACLES?!

7 New to me!

8 I want Jerry to be my friend.

9/10 I think half the gay novels I read in February and March made me cry happy tears, & I think Dawn just made me depressed but not cry so close enough.

11 Rattling Bone was the only book I received (I did not buy any).