Finally used that Christmas Barnes and Noble gift card! ❤️🎁❤️

Emma Woodhouse‘s favorite pastime is to arrange the love lives of the people around her. What could possibly go wrong?

I wanted to enjoys this as P&P was foundational in my decision to pursue an English degree, but god I did not like Emma or Knightley. 😅 There‘s also not a lot that happens, plot wise. And, more importantly for me, I did not feel invested in literally any of these romances. On to Persuasion! 🌕🌕🌗🌑🌑

Usually, I not a huge fan of crab. But wow this turned out beautifully! #DinnerBytheBook

A fascinating work exploring the queens of Medieval England from Matilda of Flanders through to Elizabeth of York.

Very interesting! Dense, and I would have appreciated it more dipping in and out instead of reading it straight through. The best part though is the conclusion which examines the historical queens through the fictional lenses of Beowulf and Mallory‘s Arthurian saga. 🌕🌕🌕🌑🌑

Lily‘s high school year is greatly complicated by McCarthyism, developing feelings for a new friend, & a desire to shoot for the stars.

This was a hard listen, but fantastic. High school stories are always tricky for me, but this was beautifully done. Lily‘s strength of character dealing w/ homophobia, her father getting investigated for links to communism, & a toxic friendship was amazing. Wasn‘t a fan of the time skip @ the end. 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑

Semiramis was born a commoner in a village in Assyria. Through her own ambition & machinations, she eventually becomes Queen of Assyria.

Castati‘s luxurious scene setting was present throughout the novel & her character work remains unparalleled.We see the evolution of her from an abandoned orphan to the most powerful woman. I did want to see more, & see Semiramis‘s control when she was on the throne, not just leading up to it. 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑

#WeeklyForecast

I am so looking forward to starting Fresh Ink! It‘s been on my TBR for years, and @shortsarahrose ‘s recommendation through #AuldLangSpine is just the push I needed! I‘m also really enjoying Telegraph Club!

#BookReport

I am enjoying Babylonia so much! ❤️

The 2nd Raiders of Arcana book is just as fun a historical treasure hunting romp as the 1st!

Have I already read this book? Yes. Did I request this arc entirely for Picard‘s narration? Also yes. She does a fantastic job giving each character such a strong individual voice that I know whose POV we‘re in w/out any other clues. & the emotion she conveys throughout is amazing. I‘m ready to seek out books she‘s narrated w/out any more info.🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑

This is the first book I mostly read in 2025! It‘s an adorable middle grade fantasy retelling of Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast. I‘d highly recommend it for anyone who likes fairy tale retellings and tales of girls taking control of their own stories.

#SundayFunday Have a wonderful day, and don‘t forget to tag me!

Look what came in the mail today! Such a cute decal! 💖

One of my favorite #ThreeListThursday lists so far! It was a delight to look through all these books from my childhood!

Favorites include A Wizard of Earthsea, Howl‘s Moving Castle, and A Wrinkle in Time! ❤️

#TLT @dabbe

Years after his family is split up, Jun decides to take control of his destiny & fight in the competition to be the next Guardian. The stakes of the fights turns out to be more dire when a war mongering general wants to take control.

Intense! A little info dump heavy at times, a lot of violence, & an unresolved ending, but also an intriguing examination of propaganda, the monetization of violence, w/ really interesting characters!🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑

This vodka cream sauce turned out absolutely delicious! #DinnerByTheBook

An in depth, pre-Snowden journalistic investigation into the world of whistleblowers and data leakers.

This was a tough read to get into. Interesting, but dry and dense. Every chapter is also an interweaving of multiple people‘s stories. Pair all that with intentional misgendering and deadnaming of Chelsea Manning and glossing over Julian Assange‘s sexual assault allegations, this is not a book I need to keep or revisit. 🌕🌕🌑🌑🌑

@Princess-Kingofkings thank you so much for the wonderful gift! I adore the book, and I haven‘t tried the sugar cookie Reese‘s cups, so I‘m so excited to try them! ❤️💚❤️💚

And thank you again to @bookish_wookish for hosting this lovely swap! #LCS #LittleChristmasSwap

Polly, in an effort to save her brother & their inn, dresses as a man & joins the army. She discovers that everything, from her friends in the army to the war itself aren‘t quite what they seem.

I apparently need to reread a lot of these. I really appreciate the satire of nationalism (proud of being proud🇺🇸) organized religion, & gender more than the 1st time I read it. I do think there were too many characters to keep track of.🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑

#WeeklyForecast

Almost done with the #OokBOokClub book, and I‘ve got two ARCs coming up this week that I‘m really excited about!

#BookReport

Ended 2024 and started 2025 with some great reads!

The newest installment in the Wayward Children series, and immediately up in my top three favorites of the whole series!

#12BooksOf2024 Thanks for hosting such a fun way to share and reminisce about my favorite reads over the last year! Here‘s to many more amazing books in 2025! @Andrew65

I am so looking forward to starting my #ARC of the tagged book!

But also! Lucy Holland has started talking about her third book, Of Splendid Song, over on Bluesky and I am practically vibrating with excitement, hoping it releases this year! 🤞🏻🤞🏻

#SundayFunday Happy new year! And don‘t forget to tag me in your posts!

This queer historical retelling of The Selkie Wife manages to combine a sweet sapphic love story while also examining the horrors intrinsic to stealing a selkie‘s skin to get a wife. And the audiobook narrator was the perfect voice for this!

#12BooksOf2024 @Andrew65

Ella, living in her stepmother‘s cellar, & Belle, searching for a way to save her father find themselves magically swapped into each other‘s stories.

This was really adorable! The bones of each fairy tale were there, but they way they got reinterpreted was so interesting! & the final twist was really well done! None of these characters acted as young as they were supposed to be, but otherwise this was a lovely middle grade retelling! 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑

This was a lovely little cozy story about magic and teaching and building community.

#12BooksOf2024 @Andrew65

December‘s #MonthlyRoundup was full of amazing reads for #WinterGames2024 !

The score of a lifetime, & it will take a rag tag group racing against a powerful company to get there first.

There was a lot I liked. Found family, space heists, wide expansive worlds, corporations are the bad guys. But we didn‘t actually get to the heist, it felt like we only got the first half of the story, the romance felt forced, & I‘m not a big fan of futuristic sci fi that tells me that fatness shouldn‘t exist. 🌕🌕🌗🌑🌑

I forgot to post yesterday!

Think The Mummy and Road to El Dorado had a baby! This was a fun treasure hunt novel with a plucky female protagonist, the ruggedly handsome mapmaker who helps her, and a hidden city with untold treasures.

#12BooksOf2024 @Andrew65

So, the boxty on the griddle is a little too salty for me. 🤣 But I‘m always down for any recipe that‘s mostly potato cooked in bacon grease. #DinnerByTheBook

2025 here we come!😬#BookSpinBingo #BingoBoard

#BookSpin This Machine Kills Secrets, #DoubleSpin NetGalley

#Roll100 Queen‘s Consort, This Machine Kills Secrets, Grace of Kings

#OokBOokClub Going Postal

#BobWhiteBuddies The Happy Valley Mystery

#BeyondTheYellowBrickRoad The Land of Oz

#QueerBC Last Night at the Telegraph Club (an #AuldLangSpine read!)

#ThematicCozies Karma‘s a Bitch

#LitsySciFiBookClub Redshirts

#AuldLangSpine Fresh Ink

I listened to this audiobook back in August for The Sealey Challenge, and I feel like this collection of poetry fundamentally changed me as a person. I immediately bought a physical copy, and it will be a regular reread for me for years to come.

#12BooksOf2024 @Andrew65

Happy end of #WinterGames2024 ! And wow! I did so much better this half!

17,885 points! Woohoo for #HolidayBookDragons ! And shout out to The Nightmare Before Kissmas for giving me over 370 instances of the word Christmas! 🤣🤣🤣

Thank you all for a lovely month! And happy new year!

As part of my New Year‘s Resolution to read a quarter of the books I own but haven‘t read, I‘ve created myself this bingo board!

With the understanding that I am not allowing myself to buy a new book until I have a bingo! I‘ll be using the hashtag #UnstackMyShelf if anybody wants to use this.

@PuddleJumper ‘s #NoBuy2023 challenge was an enormous inspiration for this!

Happy New Year everybody! May your coming year be filled with good reads, good friends, and good food. 💖

I‘m really excited about these goals for my reading for 2025!

I‘m always a sucker for any story asking what happens to the children of portal fantasy stories when they return home, and this book I read in July did a fabulous job!

#12BooksOf2024 @Andrew65

Thanks to @TheSpineView for the tag!

1. A few! I‘m going to read 1/4 of the physical books I own, read more poetry, and get caught up on my NetGalley backlog (if I sound confident enough, it‘ll happen, right? 😅)
2. Babylonia by Costanza Casati, the tagged book (I adored her Clytemnestra retelling)

#Two4Tuesday

Nadya, born in Russia, adopted to Colorado, falls into a pond & discovers a city beneath The Lake of giant turtles, river songs, talking foxes, & love.

I haven‘t fallen in love w/ a character this quickly in this series since Lundy. I loved Nadya‘s curiosity, her determination, her comfort in her own body even w/ the lack of an arm. & the world! I wanted to sink down into this Drowned World. Immediately want to reread the whole series! 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌗

Former child superhero Velveteen is sucked back into the world of heroics when she discovers that the corporation that owns most heroes in North America is not what it appears to be.

A combo of the previous 2 volumes, & a fascinating look into a world where corporations own superheroes & all the horror that comes w/ that. Loved Veleveteen & all her friends, & the nods to superhero media. A little let down on the villain, but loved it!🌕🌕🌕🌕🌗

A magical realism story of Orquídea Divina fleeing Ecuador and her grandchildren discovering her secrets. Two timelines, with magic, secrets, mysteries, generational trauma, and a resolution that left me gasping! Undoubtedly, my favorite read of June.

And the audiobook was, pun intended, divine.

#12BooksOf2024 @Andrew65

Got my read for #ThematicCozies all ready! I‘m going to use this challenge to try and make a little dent in my unread kindle books!

@julieclair

I‘m so excited for the first picks for #Roll100 ! Got a couple chunky ones here, so we‘ll see how it goes! 😁

@PuddleJumper

#WeeklyForecast

I am sooo not ready for 2025! 🤣🤣 But I am so ready to start my first #Roll100 read of the new year!

#BookReport

I really loved all of the books I finished this week!

Milo‘s Christmas vacation at his adopted parents‘ inn is interrupted when a bunch of new guests show up w/ secrets. It‘s up to him & Meddy to solve the mystery.

This was delightful! The gorgeous descriptions of the inn & the windows, a snowed in mystery, using TRRPGs to tell the story, all while grappling w/ really tough topics like Milo‘s desire to know more about his birth family while still loving his adoptive parents. & the twist!🌕🌕🌕🌕🌗

A lovely, cozy middle grade story about a magical puzzle house and the family that returns to it!

I loved so much about this one! I read it to my nibling, and I loved the casual introduction of non-binary pronouns, the lovely family relationships, even with a grandmother who has disappeared into her grief.

And it‘s got such a cute cover! #12BooksOf2024 @Andrew65

Apparently, I don‘t have work New Year‘s Eve this year! Surprise! 😅

Who wants to join me for a last minute day long #Readathon before we ring in the New Year?

#TheEleventhHour

Out of the 1,060 books I own, I have not read 198 of them. So, one of my New Year‘s resolutions is to read a quarter of my unread books! That rounds up to 50.

We‘ll see how this goes. 😅

#SundayFunday Hope you‘re all having a safe and happy weekend, and don‘t forget to tag me!

A fantastic urban fantasy story drawing inspiration from Lipan Apache legends! With an asexual protagonist, strong family relationships, and a fantastic narrator for the audiobook, this was easily my favorite read of April!

#12BooksOf2024 @Andrew65

Shout out to @julesG for pointing out I had space for a little table next to the chair!

Now I‘ve got a little rolling library cart! It doesn‘t really roll on the carpet, but it looks super cute and makes me very happy. ❤️

Listen, if I close my eyes and pretend I don‘t see 2025, can I have 2024 for just a little bit longer? 🤣🤣🤣

#BookSpingBingo @TheAromaofBooks

Thanks @TheSpineView for the tag! I was at work all day! 📮 And I got to chat with a friend about our buddy read for January!

Now I‘m curled up under blanket and cat, reading an ARC and feeling very cozy indeed.

#SaturdayChatterday @AllDebooks