in terms of books, she was doing fine

2026 reads / storygraph

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

historical fantasy

a gay Sri Lankan war photographer who was just murdered - and wakes as a ghost in the afterlife, with seven moons to figure out who killed him, otherwise he’ll be stuck there forever

he must find a way to lead his boyfriend and best friend/beard to his stash of photos that will expose the brutalities of the civil war, while avoiding the demons and monsters of the afterlife

audio favourites

Bloodtide - 4.5

Someone To Daydream About - 3.25

The Wolf and His King - 4.25

Hallowed Be Thy Name - 2.25

Platform Decay - 4.5

A Long and Speaking Silence - 4.5

Princeweaver - 4.25

Something To Be Proud Of - 3.5

The Language of Liars - 4.25

The Library of Amorlin - 3.25

Japanese Gothic - 4.5

Cry, Voidbringer - 3.5

No Charm Done - 3.25

Seven Recipes For Revolution - 3.5

Shapes of Love - 4.25

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida - 4.75

nonfic

elseship

comics/gn

Witch Hat Atelier - 7-14

Forgive-Me-Not

Clock Hands

The Apothecary Diaries vol 15

It's Kind of a Funny Story

Witch Hat Atelier Kitchen 1-2

Well I don't like how it feels. I don't feel cleaner without body hair. I don't prefer not having body hair. But who will advocate for women like me, but me? For women who do like hair removal, they are advocated for every time they step out of the house and see 99% of the female population also conforming to that standard, or when they watch a movie and see all the shaved actresses, or view an advertisment, or open a magazine, or watch a music video, or scroll through social media, or walk down the streets without receiving insults and glares for having a completely normal bodily feature.

Books of 2026: June Wrap-Up.

'Twas the month of homes and hearts and murder islands, apparently?? Happy Pride?!?

I did try to read exclusively queer authors (plus Poetry Quest material), and I was successful on that front! I'm also still chugging along on my revision project (and feeling the deadline squeeze)(we won't talk about that)(much).

Reviews linked!:

BEING ARO ★★★ Enjoyed some of these a lot! Unimpressed with some, too, though. BEING ACE is the stronger collection, but I'm glad they both exist!

COME HOME TO MY HEART ★★★★★ This fucked me up so bad I had to set it down for a week. Achingly and heartbreakingly well done

MODEL HOME ★★★★ I will follow Rivers Solomon anywhere, up to and including a horrible HOA in Dallas suburbs. More literary bent than haunted house, still extraordinarily well done.

THE ODYSSEY ★★★★ Phenomenal and fascinating translation, hugely approachable and thoroughly modernized language (with good pedagogical reasons for why!), I will be checking out Wilson's ILIAD also because of this.

MAKE ME BETTER ★★★ I will also follow Gailey anywhere, up to and including coral cult island :)

SEASONS OF GLASS AND IRON ★★★★ Amal El-Mohtar once again knocking it out of the park!! Loved this prickly collection.

THE ENDING WRITES ITSELF ★★★½ Indulgent fun! Check it out if you're a writer and want someone coming for your jugular, maybe skip it if you're a mystery/thriller aficionado.

ANNA AKHMATOVA - 169/942 pages read. Made it through "Rosary"! I'm still scribbling a LOT of fragments in my notebook, I dig her stuff a lot, I think.

Next month, I will be swinging back around to read more Driscoll-adjacent fiction (writing project reasons). I've got seven (7) scenes I'm trying to finalize by the end of July to stay on my Oft-Revised Target--I need to have this manuscript wrapped up by early September, so we're approaching the Final Sprint. Send more caffeine, I'm gonna need it!!

Under the Cut: How I Conceptualize ~*★Stars★*~

Somehow, June felt overly long, and like it blew right on by. Celebrated my mom's birthday, made some art in sticker form for her, went to the zoo, sculpted a bird out of glass, took up latte art. And how could I forget, the suncatcher I made for the yarn shop. I guess it was pretty busy! I know I said I was going to take this month easy on the reading front, but I feel like I still managed to read a fair amount. A good chunk of novellas (I love you, Murderbot), but still!

Bluebird by Ciel Pierlot ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – A lot of fun! Hurt my feelings a little bit! Non consenual body mods is my favorite genre. I kept thinking [REDACTED] was going to betray them, and was pleasantly surprised to find out they didn't.

All Systems Red by Martha Wells ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – rereading all of Murderbot to refresh for the new installment! Still love it. Love how quickly Bot goes from "I hate humans" to "no one touches my humans". Love how much Gurathin is like bot. Love how bot hates him for it. This is the first time reading since the show came out, and I still don't like Skarsgard for it.

How To Hold Someone In Your Heart by Mizuki Tsujimura ⭐⭐⭐⭐ – Back on my Tsujimura bullshit! Didn't enjoy it as much as the first one in some way. I think it's the lack of Newness. But still full of Feelings. Grief again. Loved ones are gone from the world, but not our hearts. Ouchie. Would be hurt again.

Artificial Condition by Martha Wells ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – Continuing my Murderbot reread. No new Thoughts, except maybe I think this is my favorite because of the Bot ART interactions. A Private Channel With My Friend. Keep The Communication Device In Case We're In Range Again Someday. ART playing Santuary Moon episodes and OST to calm Bot. Chewing the plaster about this. I love them your honor.

The Blighted Stars by Megan E O'Keefe ⭐️⭐️⭐️ – This one is hard for me to rate because there are a lot of things that hit My Buttons. Feelings about AI spaceships, mind controlling fungus, tiny robot companions, there's a lot here that I really did enjoy. And yet. It's not even that the romance was bad, but every time they ogled at each other I was left thinking can we move on? Y'all are running for your lives, this is not the time. I'd like to read it with my own eyes and see if the narrator had anything to do with it, because this is not adding up.

Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – For some reason the ending didn't change this time? [REDACTED] still crushed to death? Has anyone else experienced this? I'm also fascinated with when Bot calls itself SecUnit vs when it calls itself Murderbot. It does so twice in this entire novella. Once when its cover is blown and everyone's pointing guns at it, and again when [REDACTED] dies and it fails to save it. I'm sure this means nothing.

A Magical Girl Retires by Park Seolyeon ⭐️⭐️⭐️ – Book of the month! This was cute and silly and fun and needed to be longer. More fleshed out. Love that the message seems to be It's Never Too Late. Would have loved to have taken a bit longer to get there. It was Almost Gay, but again. No time to discover that. Even the Big Fight seemed too short. The illustrations were lovely and added a lot, and the translation didn't feel stiff or choppy.

Wolfworm by T Kingfisher ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – Okay this one Got Me. It wasn't the body horror, it wasn't the locked underground, it wasn't the animals acting weird. It was The Bugs. Not the least bit helped by the fact somehow every time I read this, some sort of bug was crawling on or around me. Enjoyable, and the ending was cute, which is rare for a horror novel, would be scared again.

Blood Over Bright Haven by ML Wang ⭐⭐⭐⭐ – Read because tumblr told me to! What tumblr did not tell me that it was a Tragedy on par with Gideon the Ninth and The Once and Future Witches. Thanks, tumblr! In all seriousness this was a great book with great and terrible characters, and the only thing keeping it from being a full five stars is there was a lot of textbook-y info dumps right at the beginning. They were relevant (they were so, so relevant), but it's hard to get through. I figured out the magic system before the characters, and let me tell you! It still punched!

I don't think I can pinpoint a Favorite of the month. I want to say Wolfworm, but I think that's just recency bias. I have fond thoughts about Bluebird, and Blood Over Bright Haven was wonderfully done. I will endorse any of those in a heartbeat.

But at the same time it acknowledged that it was good that minds were changed. That it was good to see the horrors, to try and fix things. To learn youve done wrong. At the end, despite it all, there was hope. Not for now, not for them, but for the future. For the kids. For the grandkids.

Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu- this one is a precursor to Dracula and feels more manageable in length and story. It’s about a young lonely girl whose family takes in a mysterious stranger and they become attached until a horrible secret is revealed.

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman- basically a big long poem that stands on themes of nature, sexuality, being, and life. I really liked this book because you can read it cohesively and then afterwards I like flipping to random pages.

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf- I’m reading this one right now and I really enjoy Woolf’s way of prose-writing a novel. She does a good job keeping the reader involved and writing beautifully.

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka- a short story that packs a LOT into it. If you haven’t already heard of it, The Metamorphosis is about Gregor Samsa who wakes up one morning to find he’s now a giant beetle. This story is short, but made me emotional by the end.