Saki‘s taken to sitting by the coffee table so he can stare at me while I read. It‘s a little bit cute and a little bit creepy.

He also sat on my lap for about forty-five seconds.

When I‘m not in a staring contest with the cat, I‘m making enjoyable but slow progress through FARMER‘S CROWN. I always enjoy M.C.A. Hogarth‘s books, but for some reason I also always feel like they take me way longer than books of comparable length. Sigh.

Today‘s #audiobaking on my mother‘s behalf involved banana cupcakes and the ganache to fill ‘em with. I did them gluten free this time because my aunt‘s coming to visit and she was recently diagnosed with celiac disease. Hopefully they turned out well. I‘ll find out when they cool off.

This is me feeling all, “OMG MUST READ MORE!!!!” about SOMETHING HUMAN.

And this is Casey being sad on my behalf because this is my last unread A.J. Demas novel and I‘m gonna be bereft when I finish it.

Throwback to last night, when I fried up some leftovers to go with another chunk of WINTER. I loathe winter, fully and completely, but these essays are fascinating. Adam Gopnik delves into how and why people engage positively with winter, with a hefty emphasis on how many of those who romanticize it are winter tourists who have the option to leave it when it gets a bit rough, or people who equate suffering with virtue.

This week‘s little library haul features two Korean books, a cozy mystery from the Asian Heritage display, and a sticker from the Pride display. UNDER THE OAK TREE caught my eye in a recent Kobo sale, but I should‘ve thought about my tastes a little more and requested the original novel instead. Comics adaptations of prose works rarely land for me. Let‘s hope this one is an exception.

Onward through the Peltedverse! I read the first third of HEALER‘S WEDDING last night and it‘s both nice to see everyone again and rather stressful because there‘re schemes afoot.

Last week‘s taro bun was so tasty I bought another for today‘s breakfast. I also invested in 60 sachets of Kopiko, so I should probably get a cup the right size for them.

I went from being unsure about Sebastian Nothwell‘s OAK KING HOLLY KING to enjoying it so much I downloaded the epilogue short story collection the moment I finished it. The stories herein are mostly longer novelettes, and the first two were great. It‘s always nice to get just a little more time with characters you like and want good things for.

Here I am, snickering my merry way through another fabulous, community-focused Jenny Colgan novel with a misleading blurb and a cover that screams, “I‘m about a needlecraft store!” when all the knitting happens in people‘s homes.

Gertie wouldn‘t approve of the wee blanket I‘m making for my cousin‘s new baby, since she‘s into boring colours (sorry, Gertie), but it brings ME joy. I can‘t wait to block it and bring the spirals into their full glory.

THE KNOWING is intense; both an in-depth history of the harm perpetuated against Indigenous people on Turtle Island and a personal look at the impact on Tanya Talaga‘s own family.

It‘s also one of many, many, MANY books I‘ve read about the evil done by various Christian churches over the last 500 years, and I realize I‘ve never read anything in which a Christian writer reckons with this horrific legacy. Can any of you recommend one to me?

Outdoor supper with manga and makgeolli. My salad was sooooo good! I tore up all the salami I had left, chopped up a bit of Brie, and dressed it with dumpling sauce in place of a vinaigrette.

Unfortunately, the book‘s not as good. Tatsuya Endo is one of those mangaka whose short works feel more like prologues than stories. They aren‘t bad, but they‘re nowhere near as fun as his longform stuff.

Today I visited the localish bookstore, all afire to give her some money, but I didn‘t find ANYTHING. I was so sad I went all the way back to my favourite bookstore and bought two things I passed on the other day. It‘s important to grab Melissa Scott and Fumi Yoshinaga when you see them (though this Scott/Barnett series IS still in print, digitally, with much nicer covers).

Daisy and I got to sit on the porch this morning! I got back into Rebekah Weatherspoon while we were out there. It‘s been ages since I read her (in fact, I think my last dip was her YA novel, consumed on this very porch, with this very dog nearby) and it‘s so nice to be back in her kinky, bisexual California. I can‘t wait to see how things play out between Meegan and Olin.

Bedtime reading with sleepy Daisy. A DARKER WILDERNESS caught my eye in one of Book Riot‘s deals emails. The sale price was US-only, alas, but the book‘s in Kobo Plus so I get to read it anyways. A lot of nature writing skews too florid for me, but the first three pieces in this anthology avoided that. Hopefully the rest will be just as good!

I found myself in a Jackie Lau mood last night, so here I am with coffee, a taro bun, and the second Cider Bar Sisters romance. It feels like it‘ll be quick and fun, with lots of entertaining grumpiness and possibly some heartwrenching family stuff.

Did the baguette sandwich & audiobook thing tonight. Alas, every Canadian baguette I‘ve tried since I got back is a slap in the face to France. This one had an okay crust but tasted like DUST. 😭

My reread of THE SECRET HISTORY is going great, though! It‘s got me thinking about the interesting/admirable divide, the Apollonian vs the Dionysian, and the ways we shape ourselves through performative behaviour, especially at university age.

Yesterday I found evidence someone tried to break into this house, which was scary for me personally and also would‘ve backfired big time for the thief because the awful couch? Ain‘t even the start of it.

Also, Daisy would‘ve mauled them and peed on their foot while she husky-shrieked.

But hey, I got to visit my favourite used bookstore today! I bought stuff by Fumi Yoshinaga and Melissa Scott. The Massey Lecture was a Little Free Library find.

And for our Victoria Day reading we have ALL OUR ORDINARY STORIES, Teresa Wong‘s deeply affecting comic about her life with her parents, and their lives before she knew them. It‘s yet another Canada Reads Longlist title that‘d be a great shortlist contender in a year or two. I really feel like the 2025 panelists chose the weakest books to defend when they had such bounty.

Sunday theatre with Daisy-May, who‘s decided she‘s tired of being upright and would like to sprawl on her awful couch for a few hours, thanks.

(The STORIES I could tell you about this couch! It‘s an atrocity. Those leather couches people leave by the curb as freebies and nobody ever actually picks up because they‘re AWFUL are nicer than this late Victorian piece to which my aunt is hopelessly attached.)

I‘m enjoying MAJOR PIECES so much I‘ve decided to make it my (mostly) primary read. It‘s great, AND I feel like I should know all these stories before I tackle the next Peltedverse novel.

I‘m also totally hooked on Kopiko instant coffee. I tried their black 3-in-1 as my travel backup coffee since it uses nondairy creamer and you can‘t bring milk into France. It was so good I‘ve also committed to their brown and white varieties since I got home.

I saw a stuffed one of these on a childhood trip to Wall Drug. I‘m scared of dead pheasants (yes, really. It‘s the weirdest fear ever), so I found it TERRIFYING. Ditto the many, many full pheasants in the place.

Wall Drug really wasn‘t my favourite road trip spot.

I‘ve stuck with this book, obviously, and I‘m really enjoying it now. Even though it feels very long for its story, it‘s got good vibes. I‘ll put up with a lot when the vibes are good.

This week‘s library haul, straight from the bench under the overhang while I wait for the unscheduled rain to pass so I can cycle home. I got one more from the Canada Reads Longlist, an Alexis Hall romance, Tatsuya Endo‘s early short comics, and the latest volume of YONA OF THE DAWN, which was a lucky shelf find. Just last night, I thought I should check to see if they‘d ordered it yet and put in my request. Now I don‘t have to.

I get to hang out with Casey on this rainy morning! He‘s gonna help me see if I can click with OAK KING HOLLY KING. I read the first 12% last night and didn‘t find myself engaged with either character or curious as to how they fit together, but I‘ll give it a couple more chapters this morning.

Tonight I made dandan (with bok choy, so it‘s basically healthy) and started the latest Dublin Driver mystery. I‘m looking forward to really getting stuck into it before bed!

Today‘s Mother‘s Day #audiobaking. My mum loves her homemade sandwich cookies.

I‘m only a little ways into CITY OF BRASS, but it seems promising. I have high hopes for it given how much I loved Chakraborty‘s more recent novel, THE ADVENTURES OF AMINA AL-SERAFI.

Casey‘s ailment is a pancreatitis resurgence. The vet‘s office gave him excellent care and he‘s already doing much better, but he‘ll have to make some changes that‘ll be tough for my parents. They want to feed him all the bacon and peanut butter, and they CANNOT.

Little dude‘s promised to serve as reading buddy while I finish HONEY AND PEPPER today. I saw myself devouring it in one sitting, but I just didn‘t have enough reading time yesterday.

My mum wants soft ginger sandwich cookies for Mother‘s Day, so I did some #audiobaking this morning. It took me through a pretty big chunk of MIDNIGHT TIDES, which is probably my favourite volume yet of the Malazan Book of the Fallen. It‘s half extremely fun, half extremely dark.

Read another M.C.A. Hogarth story this morning alongside Casey, who‘s not feeling well at all. His regular doctor‘s in surgery all day, so he‘s going to spend some time at another vet‘s place this morning and hopefully they‘ll be able to pinpoint what it is. He‘s had a history of gut ailments ever since his pancreatitis a couple years back, and as you can see in the picture his nose also looks a little off right now. 😔

Ooh, I have so much love for A.J. Demas‘s work! THE HOUSE OF THE RED BALCONIES was just marvellous. It‘s about a friendship between an engineer and a host (in the Japanese sense), on a quirky island, with lots of great side characters and gardens and public water utilities.

I think I‘m gonna dive right into another of her books. Only two left. I‘ll be so sad when I‘ve caught up.

This week‘s little library haul features another play by Tomson Highway (love his stuff), a couple volumes of poetry, and a crime comic.

Alexandra Rowland reliably delivers books that blend melancholy, hope, and delight in just the right measure. This was a wonderful novella about two people who encounter their gods in a dark wood and come away more fully themselves. I loved it.

My eggplant was also great. I dug out a new recipe on the quick when I realized I didn‘t have enough miso glaze left, and I‘ll definitely make it again. The sauce is Chinkiang vinegar-based.

This morning I took my mom to an appointment near the doughnut store, where I had a credit for a free doughnut and coffee. Good times.

I finished the monster fantasy in and around all that, and I‘m divided. I stuck with it because in theory, it‘s MY THING right down to its core, but I never connected with the characters and I felt no chemistry between them. I mostly finished it because I very much wanted Homily‘s family to get eaten.

And now, a monster fantasy. It‘s too early for me to say how I feel about this one, but I‘m getting a strong “it could go either way” vibe that the Litsy reviews seem to back up. Here‘s hoping I fall into the OMG SO AWESOME camp.

I‘m loving GIRL ON FIRE! Hogarth describes it as reminiscent of Mercedes Lackey, and the vibes totally match. It‘s full of the thrill of discovering a new place with different customs, different social mores, and increased opportunities. I can‘t wait to devour the back half today.

In other news, Casey turned seven yesterday! What a mature little fellow he is.

It‘s finally warm! I sat outside and read this creepy novella from K.J. Charles. It‘s set in an alternate Victorian England where King Victor II‘s rule has the country crumbling apart, and I‘m sorry she‘s never returned to the setting. It feels like she intended to, but I guess her non-alternate historicals have taken precedence in recent years. It‘s been ages since she published any fantasy, too.

Ah, friends, my tiny skull and I are loving SORCERY AND SMALL MAGICS! One of the blurbs calls it Ghibliesque and this is entirely accurate. I‘m excited to wolf down the last 60 pages tonight.

In other news, I‘ve gone a week without infecting the household with my eye cold, so I figure my hand sanitization regimen is strong enough for the Real World (combined with a mask). I ventured out today and bought a TOOTHBRUSH and some FROZEN FRUIT! Whee!

Still in isolation with my books. It‘ll be nice out this afternoon, so at least I‘ll get to sit outside for a little while.

In the meantime, I‘ll hunker down with ELYSIUM, Nora Sakavic‘s very dark urban fantasy. It‘s gripping so far and it does some really interesting stuff with the Basic Buffy Plot that usually pushes me away from UF, but I lost momentum when I fell asleep for five hours yesterday afternoon. Oops. Gonna avoid that today.

For you ACOTAR fans: my favourite indie ordered a huuuuuuuge copy of the book for Indie Bookstore Day! This isn‘t my favourite Sarah J Maas series, but I‘m still disappointed I missed the chance to see it in person. Hopefully they‘ll keep it on display long enough for me to make it down there once I‘m no longer contagious.

I only managed to read 20% of this novella before I very much needed to sleep for twelve hours, but now I‘m back on the case with my mood light to comfort me in my infectious solitude. It‘s great so far! I‘m such a sucker for anything about the theatre.

Well, my 34th consecutive Readathon is very far from my most distinguished one. Between attending to my horrifically gross eye cold and the exhaustion I‘m dealing with from six straight nights of frequently-interrupted sleep, I only finished my first book at the start of Hour 6. Now I‘m finally starting my second. I hope I can squeeze at least one more in, but I‘ll probably have to sleep again, so. 🤷‍♀️ #readathon #deweyapril

And my 34th consecutive Readathon kicks off with this second book about food detectives in Kyoto. I wish I could be happier about it, but my cold is still going strong AND it‘s spread to my eyes, which I didn‘t know could happen. I won‘t inflict the physical details on you, but it‘s basically my personal nightmare and it‘s left me depressed. Gonna try to distract myself with books today. #deweyapril #readathon

Fancy noodles + an important book. When you start reading about Indigenous rights in Canada, you run into a LOT of legal cases. Gabriel does a thorough job of discussing how those cases are weighted against Indigenous folks and the role state-sanctioned Indigenous governments play in that process. It‘s another Canada Reads Longlist title I‘d be glad to see jump to the shortlist in a year or two.

I finished catching up on SKIP BEAT! while Ivy and I enjoyed the outdoors together, and oooh! I loved this volume! Great interactions between Kyoko & Ren, intriguing new characters and settings, and some long running plot threads heading for fruition.

Also, a cat named S‘more. I love it when animals have food names.

Looks like this‘s a two-volume year, so I‘ll anxiously await Vol 51 in the autumn.

Turns out, I need to know what happened in the Prince‘s Game series before I can dive into the M.C.A. Hogarth novels I‘m really keen on. I did read and like EVEN THE WINGLESS a few years ago, but it was very long and very slow-paced and it looks like the rest of the books are the same. I just don‘t want to invest that amount of time in them when I might only keep Kobo Plus for another month.

So here I am, reading Hogarth‘s official summary.

Rainy day reading with Ivy. HOWEVER FAR AWAY isn‘t bad so far, but it all feels extremely EXPECTED. I‘m hoping for some surprises now the wedding‘s about to start.

ONE NIGHT IN BOUKOS is really good, but I‘m limping through it at a glacial pace because I can‘t seem to sit down and actually READ it. Blah. I‘m definitely enjoying it less than I should be. Reading slowly is the worst.

Today I figured I‘d give a big chunk of my afternoon to it, but I‘m dealing with one of those energy-sucking hell colds. I had to NAP. Napping is the other worst. Now I‘m gonna make another push, wrapped in tweed for warmth.

My first library haul in a looooong time features a couple more titles from the Canada Reads Longlist, a couple that just looked good, the latest Dublin Driver mystery, another Auld Lang Spine pick, and a couple of sequels.

Short fiction, coffee, and a hot cross bun (made with mixed fruit, of course; I cannot approve of the raisins-only version). My PROPHECIES, LIBELS, & DREAMS reread has brought me at last to “The Lineaments of Gratified Desire,” which is maybe my all-time favourite short story (/novella). I first read it in a YBF&H anthology and immediately knew I had to seek out and devour everything by Ysabeau S. Wilce. This was one of my better resolutions.

I‘m glad to have an A.J. Demas novel to read and a Casey to snuggle. France is great for dog watching but less great for random doggie interactions. They‘re all so well-trained they don‘t even come say hi to you when they‘re on a long leash.

I‘m sad to be back somewhere cold and brown, where most stuff was built in the 1970s or later and I‘ve gotta pay attention to my expensive food‘s country of origin again. 😔

Here I am on the TGV, listening to my audiobook as we barrel towards Paris. I had all sorts of problems with this ticket when they decided to shrink the train, only to discover yesterday that, despite the gymnastics the lady at the station did to get me a downgraded seat, they automatically reassigned me to a fairly decent one right across from the smaller-train equivalent of my original seat. And no one sat in my first seat, so here I am in it.

Leftover dandan for breakfast, alongside the next Dreamhealers novel. I think I‘m just gonna punch through to the end of this series now. It‘s nice to have sustained time with the characters instead of wondering when I‘ll get to see them again. The individual books are expensive and they‘ve never gone on sale the whole time I‘ve had them on my wishlist, maybe because of their inclusion in subscription services.