Hi! I am no longer precisely new to tumblr but I’m still settling in. (I feel like this is reasonable to put in a pinned post because it will probably be true for a while.) (OK it’s been a few years, I’m probably settled in now!) I made a tumblr because I wanted to talk to people about books; mostly I use it to reblog other people’s things about books, but hey.
I do occasionally (and fairly arbitrarily) post about specific books in a more organized form, under my #some things about: tag. I try to do a books of the month post every month (unimaginatively, #books of the month). ETA: more regular, but still arbitrarily timed, posts with thoughts about my latest few reads can be found under my tag #some things about some books
Sometimes I write. Sometimes I reblog photos of boats. It’s tumblr, there are no rules here. Enjoy!
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for the book asks: 1. book you’ve reread the most times? and 9. when do you tend to read most?
Over my lifetime I have prooooobably read dragonflight or the silver branch most, but most recently I read Paladin of Souls like once a month this year. So.
I read basically always. I used to stuff my jacket pockets with small paperbacks prior to the advent and my eventual acquisition of an ereader. This was so when I would walk laps at PE instead of dealing with a particularly sadistic PE teacher yelling at me to sport better with no depth perception and a blind eye (most of my PE teachers were perfectly lovely people, I should note, just not this one) I could haul one of those puppies out of my pocket and read. People thought I was perpetually cold. No. I just needed the pockets.
I love a book that can fit into a pocket! I mean, especially in middle school, I would lug books around no matter the size so that I could whip them out at the slightest hint of downtime, but a pocket book is very handy.
With the question turned on me I realize this is difficult to say definitively, but almost certainly something by Diana Wynne Jones, who is still my favorite author even if I reread her books less often than I did when I was younger. Possibly Charmed Life, which was the first book of hers I discovered age ~10, but also very possibly Witch Week - I owned (still do) volumes 1 and 2 of "The Chronicles of Chrestomanci," which are chunky little paperbacks, each including two books (Charmed Life is in vol 1 and Witch Week in vol 2) but I also found a paperback of just Witch Week at a book sale sometime early on, so whenever my family would travel and I'd need to choose a few books to bring, I would bring that one as my (most portable) comfortable familiar DWJ read.
Books of 2026: SOPHIA PARNOK: The Life and Work of Russia's Sappho by Diana Lewis Burgin.
Absolutely squeaking over the finish line with April's Book of the Month Poetry Quest installment!
Parnok was a Russian poet, journalist, and translator who lived from 1885 to 1933 (which, yeah, overlaps with WWI and the Russian Revolution and also Stalin-era Soviet Union--what a time to be a poet). She was also Jewish and pretty openly a lesbian and chronically ill (Grave's disease), so she seemed like a fascinating person to read up on. Turns out: she's hugely relatable, writerly-speaking, and also hilarious, and pointed and brutal. So, yeah, fascinating!
This one winds up being the least poetry per poetry volume in my list. It's got English translations of a selection of Parnok's work (the only readily available, despite the 1994 copyright date??), but it's actually Mostly Biography, pieced together from letters and poems and other people's accounts. I'm pretty sure I picked Parnok out of a Wikipedia lineup of "female Russian writers" (also how I found Tsvetaeva and remembered about Akhmatova), because I've read some Russian authors, but almost entirely men.
Speaking of Wikipedia: The English language page for Sophia Parnok has 170 citations, and the Vast Majority of those are from Diana Lewis Burgin, so. Excellent Spark Notes version, if you're interested!
Parnok is such a writer mood, which absolutely tickled me--the number of quotes I scribbled in my notebook and flagged "girl, mood" was unreal. Even things like "she had to suffer through a shitty office job to support herself" were hugely heartening: Sure, she probably sunk a lot of time into said office job, but what she's remembered for is her art and her literary criticism and her voice, which I love.
It was also interesting to see snapshots of history and of lesbian culture in Russia in this time period--apparently this volume is one in a Whole Academic Series of such things ("The Cutting Edge: Lesbian Life and Literature"), if that's your speed. I found this one fairly approachable, although I was a little disappointed that so many of the quotations were incorporated into Burgin's prose instead of being Freestanding Poems (I was, after all, here for the poems)(to be clear: this is a me problem, not a NYU Press problem lol).
Overall, I found this really neat! Definitely has an academic bent, but it skews heavier toward biographic than theoretical.
...okay I know I posted this at a dumbass time, but I also don't think I'm selling it enough lmao. I have in my notes, "omg old lady yuri cannibalism???", like girlfriend really had a LOT going on
for the book asks: 1. book you’ve reread the most times? and 9. when do you tend to read most?
Over my lifetime I have prooooobably read dragonflight or the silver branch most, but most recently I read Paladin of Souls like once a month this year. So.
I read basically always. I used to stuff my jacket pockets with small paperbacks prior to the advent and my eventual acquisition of an ereader. This was so when I would walk laps at PE instead of dealing with a particularly sadistic PE teacher yelling at me to sport better with no depth perception and a blind eye (most of my PE teachers were perfectly lovely people, I should note, just not this one) I could haul one of those puppies out of my pocket and read. People thought I was perpetually cold. No. I just needed the pockets.
I love a book that can fit into a pocket! I mean, especially in middle school, I would lug books around no matter the size so that I could whip them out at the slightest hint of downtime, but a pocket book is very handy.
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Hit up the Friends of the Library art fair/book sale (mostly the book sale) this weekend, just before the hot weather hit! Picked out a bag for my local little free libraries (which are chronically empty) and a stack for me, though a few of these are still up for debate 📚
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Game Changer • Emily's Quest • The Lost Future of Pepperharrow • Wolf Speaker* • Fugitive Telemetry* • Magic for Beginners • A Ghastly Catastrophe • The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes • Emperor Mage* • The Sword of Kaigen • The Realms of the Gods* • (The Raven Tower)* • The Haunted Hotel • Clockwork Boys • The Wonder Engine • The Raven Boys: The Graphic Novel • Forest Walking
* * * * *
Game Changer - extremely mediocre. The two halves of the couple make very awkward conversation over the food service counter a few times and then oops! They're having amazing sex and are deeply in love. What do they see in each other? No idea really, there's not much personality to either besides "hot" and "nice." The best thing I can say is that this didn't outright annoy me and they were kind of cute. Still, it's not something that Check, Please fanfic hasn't done dozens of times and also better. Hopefully the following books are better?
Emily's Quest - forget the friendships and hijinks, Emily's been left all alone by her friends and unromanced by the boy she likes, so now we get to explore all of her other romances, good and bad! That's it, that's the book. Sigh. At least everyone ends up with the right person in the end.
The Lost Future of Pepperharrow - I made the mistake of buying this on audiobook before I read the first book, which I ended up disliking, and have been avoiding this one ever since. I finally cracked down and ended up not hating this too much? I almost *did* like it once a certain character had been removed from the story. So. I'd say this series is a failure for me (as much as I wanted to like it), but I'd still be willing to try Natasha Pulley again.
Wolf Speaker/Emperor Mage/The Realms of the Gods - very good rereading, though Realms is still my least favorite of the bunch.
Fugitive Telemetry - reread. Firmly of the belief that this should be read between Exit Strategy and Network Effect both for chronological reasons and because it serves as a nice bridge/interstitial murder-mystery piece between the two larger story arcs.
Magic for Beginners - short story collection, much more successful for me than The Book of Love (which I dnf'd pretty early). VERY strange, I can't say I liked all of the stories, but they were at least always weird and interesting. The first story about the Faery Handbag was my favorite, and the second very reminded me fondly of the book Vassa in the Night, which is at least more comprehensibly strange and I recommend. Definitely willing to try another of the author's short story collections.
A Ghastly Catastrophe - a new Veronica Speedwell! This time riffing (very openly) on Dracula, it was fun as always, but perhaps a bit convoluted. I will absolutely keep reading these as long as she keeps putting them out - I hope we see more of Lady Julia and her husband in the future, they were delightful but very underused in this one.
The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes - meh? Irritated by both the fact that my audiobook switched narrators at this point, and that Doyle decided to try more writing in third person - which isn't bad, btw, but its far too late to be changing things around. Also devastated to discover that The Sussex Vampire has nothing to do with K Addison's "The Surrey Vampire.' She really missed an opportunity there :(
The Sword of Kaigen - been nervous for this one after disliking Blood Over Bright Haven, but I'd already bought the audiobook. I liked this one more, for sure, but it felt a lot messier. I found Misaki's character arc very compelling (and Mamoru - that ending did great things for Misaki, but I'm not sure it was a satisfying arc for his story after all of the time we spent with him?), but the worldbuilding to me felt very disjointed and the larger narrative/plots hinted at beyond the immediate focus of the village were intriguing but unsatisfactorily explored. I think there's a spark of something great here, so I'll probably give the author another chance if something sounds interesting.
The Raven Tower - reread #3, first time in print. I think I like this more as an audiobook, but the great thing about reading this in print is that you have the ability to really stop and think and puzzle over all of the little details. Which god are they actually speaking to? How is this statement both the truth and a lie? Which version of the story is real? I admit that even as a third time reader that the worldbuilding is complicated and it is hard to get into the story, but it's so very worth it.
The Haunted Hotel - have been feeling a little too intimidated to jump back into classics with a full novel, so started with this shorter Wilkie Collins work that Hoopla had on audiobook and sounded like a neat mystery. Alas, the description was *very* misleading and this was mostly ominous vibes with a dash of the supernatural and a woman being driven mad by guilt. Would not recommend.
Clockwork Boys/The Wonder Engine - the completionist in my brain wouldn't let me start the Saint of Steel series without doing the entire World of the White Rat set in the proper order, so I finally cracked and spent some credits for these on audio. 1) no idea why these were split into two books, it really is just one, 2) so I'm very glad that I'd taken the plunge and gotten both of them so I could read them back-to-back, 3) fun!!!! Absolutely definitely the most fun of all the non-reread books I read this month. Extremely delighted to find a second character with magic sneezes and an endless supply of handkerchiefs.
The Raven Boys: The Graphic Novel - a solid adaptation! I missed the beauty of Maggie's writing and the charm of Will Patton's audiobook narration, but as an adaptation overall I'd call this pretty good - definitely a more than decent way to speed-run through the plot of the first book. I could quibble with a few of the design choices, but overall the art was beautifully done and I loved to look at it. TRC isn't my favorite of Maggie's series, so I'll be interested to see how I feel about the adaptations of the rest of the series.
Forest Walking: Discovering the Trees and Woodlands of North America (DNF @ 9%, audio) - an interesting subject, but from what I listened to this is a series of fun-facts strung together as paragraphs and collected into themed chapters. Nothing inherently wrong, but it makes for poor audiobook listening and I couldn't stay focused. I'll hold onto my print copy for now, but will move it over to the non-fiction section and off of my tbr.
If you have limited monthly Hoopla borrows don't forget to go use those up before the month rolls over! I try to do this each month and was so peeved with myself when I forgot last month.
This is a staunchly pro-bug zone. I may have contentious relationships with the ones that enjoy eating me or my food but that's life baby. The great web...
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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This is a portfolio project from last year! I'm interested in chapter book illustration jobs, so I mocked up the cover and first five chapters of a childhood favorite, Dealing with Dragons.
