A powerful listening experience. It's a sad, horrific, true story of the massive consequences of health inequality, told with humanity and grace. I understand now why this became his cause, and there's hope in the fact that so much has and still can be done to help. (Though as an American, it's hard not to fear we've taken such a wrong turn, we soon won't even be able to help ourselves.)

#RealHistory #HonestHistory #MonthlyNonfiction2025

I did! Willa for a lot of reasons. Same initial as my old name. Feminine version of William, “strong protector.“ Partial homage to a woman named Wilma who was very important in my life but no way was I naming myself Wilma. (She quite agreed. 😂) I came across it in a book and liked it.

2. Most of them were dreadful but I had two hamsters named Haba and Sima, which were taken from a Zipha Keatley Snyder book.

3. Cleery from Magic in the Alley

#BookSpin list for June. I've been working on customizing it for maximum potential enjoyment.

1. No obvious standout this month, perhaps because I was tremendously picky about everything! I guess the favorite I read was Paladin's Strength and the favorite I listened to was Great Big Beautiful Life.

2. I found a Laura London (Tom & Sharon Curtis) romance I somehow missed when they were reprinted, called The Testimony, so I'm looking forward to that. I hope the time in which I could appreciate them is not completely past!

I didn't have a specific goal for #JumpStartSummer but I think my subconscious goal was to take pressure off. So I didn't just read, but also DNF'd and took books off my TBR, and I do feel much freer!

In addition to these I finished, I listened to about an hour of Undercooked by Dan Ahdoot (probably a DNF), about an hour of Everything is Tuberculosis (definitely will finish) and started reading The Thursday Murder Club, from my #BookSpinBingo.

Charming romance about two privileged Black teens dealing with the emotional fallout of perfectionist parents. This can be read as a follow-up to Williams' lovely adult romance Seven Days in June or as a standalone.

#WhereAreYouMonday

I'm in the fascinating, fragrant city of Ankh-Morpork. Unfortunately, so is a dragon.

@Cupcake12

Each man thought: one of the others is bound to say something soon, some protest, and then I'll murmur agreement, not actually *say* anything, I'm not as stupid as that, but definitely murmur very firmly, so that the others will be in no doubt that I thoroughly disapprove, because at a time like this it behooves all decent men to nearly stand up and almost be heard...

But no man said anything. The cowards, each man thought.

And so we have entered a strange era of human history: A preventable, curable infectious disease remains our deadliest. That's the world we are currently choosing.

I actually had kind of a love/hate experience with this book, but I enjoyed a lot of it and am glad to have finally read it.

#Roll100

My #Bookspin choice was a book by K.L. Noone; I intended to start with The Magician but this turned out the be a prequel. It's a short fantasy romance with some lovely writing, and definitely piques interest for the next book.

#JumpStartSummer (this time for sure!) book #1

Hey, fellow members of @PuddleJumper's Queer Book Club!

A reminder that we'll be discussing the work of Neon Yang at the end of the month. I'll be posting some general discussion questions around the 30th; feel free to participate and/or post a review of what you read. Please let me know if you'd like to be tagged, or removed from my tag list. (For this month only -- for permanent tags, contact @Puddlejumper)

#QueerBC

Good grief, you are all way too polite. Nobody told me I was doing this a week early. 🤣

High schooler Huda tries to maintain control when her parents start divorce proceedings. I've enjoyed all her previous books but I guess I wasn't the right audience for this one and it just didn't grab me.

#SeriesLove

I liked this even more than Paladin's Grace, because the characters are such delightful gentle giants.

More at my blog: https://willaful.wordpress.com/2025/05/22/tbr-challenge-paladins-strength-by-t-k...

#SeriesLove2025
#URC rodent on cover. (The main one -- this is an alternate.)

There was no town. There was only the road, which was damp clay splotched with stones, like a toad's back. Perhaps the whole world was a toad. It was no stupider than anyone else's cosmology. Clara would leave the order of St. Ursa and found the order of St. Toad. They would sleep a lot. Yes. Sleeping seemed like a good commandment for the order. Sleep and hot tea. Yes.

Pleased with my #JumpStartSummer weekend. Despite spending 4 1/2 hours on Eurovision 🤣, I met my goals of reading Erasure and Floating Hotel, listened to a couple of hours of Great Big Beautiful Life, cleaned a bunch of short reads off my ereader and am in chapter five of Paladin's Strength. Will certainly read for at least another hour tonight, but might as well post now.

Character-driven science fiction of the kind described as cozy, notwithstanding murder and torture. The premise is great, like an old star-studied movie: a lot of people, all with their own secrets, living out interconnected stories in an hotel spaceship. The plotting isn't as well done as the prose, and I felt let down by the ending, though it does have some lovely poignancy.

Unless you count the Lord of the Rings as one book, which I don't really, it's probably this fanfic, which according to GoodReads has 2184 pages.

I don't even read fanfic! But this one was so popular with my family members I gave it a try. It wasn't as good as rereading The Lord of the Rings again, but it was interesting.

My brain was too tired for my current book (The Floating Hotel) so I read a bunch of little free stories that were cluttering up my ereader, mostly extra epilogues to romances. I don't know why I bother, they're hardly ever worth reading, but at least I did a lot of deleting. I don't even like digital clutter!

#JumpStartSummer

Two very different books for May, I wonder what the next weeks will hold...

There are many horrible sights in the multiverse. Somehow, though, to a soul attuned to the subtle rhythms of a library, there are few worse sights than a hole where a book ought to be.

I got to a good start on #JumpStartSummer by not being able to sleep last night 🙄 and finishing Erasure. (Full disclosure: I skipped most of the story-within-a-story, and feel completely justified. 😂)

This was so much more than its main plot description... bitter and satiric yes, but also very quietly human and deeply sad.

#AuthorAMonth

An accidental reread, but that's okay because I liked it both times. There are a few stinkers, but the general madness level is on point.

There are a handful of supervillains who go in for the world-saving routine. It's usually an excuse--dramatic speeches, hijacking the airwaves, self-righteousness and posturing, and it's amazing how saving the world always seems to boil down to giving them personally whatever they want.

This is definitely interesting, but I felt a certain amount of skepticism about it as “science.“ I have a Psychology degree and not only have I seen a fair amount of what I learned in college debunked, but I also had to participate in an experiment which I found completely bogus. Nonetheless, if you accept their theories it does make sense out of a lot of otherwise inexplicable behavior. I would love to see a new update on Trump, *again*. 😫

A late #BookSpinBingo entry. I wasn't going to do it this month, because I've been feeling too pressured with reading goals, but I've decided that sticking to the actual BookSpin list version will fit with what I'm trying to do.

I love his YA but this didn't grab me.

I enjoyed this so much! It's a trope-based romance but doesn't expect the tropes to do all the work. The characters are very real and imperfect, which just makes their tender care for each other all the more romantic. And Amsterdam sounds so amazing... can I go please?

A bit like Thank You For Listening, but about podcasts rather than audiobooks. I had some niggling issues but mostly enjoyed it, and there's a nice “worm turns“ arc for the main character. The author also narrates the audiobook.

As an immigrant estranged from her family, Tao has gotten used to a solitary traveling life with only her mule for company. But then she starts encountering others on their own complicated journeys, and everything changes. A sweet, comfortable found family story, though it goes off the rails in the middle which stopped me from loving it as much as I might have.

#TBRTarot make your own prompt: leftover challenge read
#Roll100 Feb.

“I would ask you to remember Tao, as one woman with power to another--the greater good much always come before the personal.“

“No,“ said Tao. Here, at last, was something she was sure off--something that she had learned in her journeys, that perhaps the High Mage had not. “You're wrong. There's no such thing as greater good--there's just good, and the more of it we can do, the better.“

I feel terrible, but I read fully half and then just couldn't go on. I was so bored! Almost every conversation was cringingly lifeless! 😩 😭

#OokBookClub

A powerful, necessary book. I appreciate that it was fairly short and easy to read, because it's such an intimidating topic.

#MonthlyNonfiction2025

Kingfisher says that she wanted to write a fluffy romance, but wound up with a few too many severed heads and rotting corpses. I'd still put it in the fluffy, and formulaic category. Luckily it's also sweet, relatable and often funny, with a nice slow burn.

#SeriesLove2025

A soft pick. I really enjoyed the details of intimacy coordination work and the characters reinventing themselves, but the slow burn romance fizzled out instead of blazing.

(Can't complain about three #ISpyBingo squares for my first book of the month though!)

Four old favs, and one I'd like to read.

#ThreeListThursday #TLT @dabbe

Can someone remind me of the title of the book we read for #SheSaid about how neighborhoods closed down swimming pools and public areas rather then desegregating them?

@Riveted_Reader_Melissa

An adventure romance that reminded me of On The Island -- and honestly, I'm a lot older now than when I read that and I wasn't always sure my heart could take it! 😂 The adventure section is excellent but I felt the ending hit some false notes that took away from the authenticity of the rest. The audiobook is very well narrated.

A decent month, if not the best.

Quite a good month, even though one cover really let me down! (Into the Woods had a tent instead of a cabin, even though there are literally no tents in the story, and the MMC's painted fingernails are not depicted!)

I'm an outlier but 250 pages of Talking It Out was a bit much for me.

Inside his decision-making software there were two subroutines in the shape of wolves, and one insisted that he stay, and the other insisted that he could not stay. Neither of which seemed to be natural behavior for wolves, but Uncharles could only assume this was another aspect of his undiagnosed defect.

He let them fight until one ate the other.

#BookSpin @TheAromaOfBooks

The look on her face...so relatable.

I'm glad this wasn't as dark as the cover suggests. Chloe, a popular high school girl, thinks her autistic older sister Ivy is yearning for a boyfriend -- but her attempts to set her up have unexpected consequences, both bad and good.

Although I don't love books about disabled people that don't center them, I did appreciate how caring and accepting Chloe is, even if she's not always wise. And I related to her a lot.

This is a section from “Reasons for Staying,“ my favorite poem from this. You can read the full poem here: https://griffinpoetryprize.com/poem/reasons-for-staying-vuong/

I definitely didn't get all of these poems, but even the bits and pieces I did were powerful and evocative.

#QueerBC #NationalPoetryMonth

Exciting, engrossing historical fiction about three women who worked at Bletchley park during WWII and the impact that time -- of personal freedom on one hand and intense secrecy on the other -- impacted their lives. It is on the melodramatic side but interestingly, some of the most astonishing elements were drawn from true stories. (I was a little uncomfortable that Prince Phillip is a major character.)

One of the characters is almost (cont)