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Mars's Reading Update: 8/14/26

I actually really liked doing the daily reading updates during vacation. So I want to keep doing reading updates on my blog! Maybe weekly, maybe just when I find something really good or really bad... I'll see how I feel.

This week I've continued to work on my Deltarune Flowers challenge, where I read books based both on the flowers' colors and personalities. Something about these characters screams cozy fantasy to me, so that's most of what I've been reading for this challenge. After being disappointed by the atrocious cozy fantasy I read for Seth (with the litfic outliers I read for Green and Yellow not faring too much better), I was nervous about the rest, but this week has proven to me that the genre doesn't have to be bad!

For Blue, I read The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna, and that was a perfect 5-star read for me. It truly did everything right. The characters were delightful (I particularly loved Ian, and the children were adorable as well), the romance was swoony and hot (I really enjoyed how Mika and Jamie were just kind of resigned early on to the fact that they would be having sex with each other eventually, but that they still had to build to that point), the witchy vibes were perfect and exactly what I've been constantly searching for ever since I played The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, the dog was wonderful, I laughed out loud at a few moments, and there was just enough genuine conflict that it didn't get boring. It's such a warm and happy story and I think Blue would be proud of the amount of love pouring out of it. I think the most telltale sign of a 5-star read for me is that when I'm not reading it I wish I was reading it, and that was this book in spades.

And for Flowery and his golden yellow color, I read The Keeper of Magical Things by Julie Leong. I had determined that Flowery's primary value is friendship, and this book literally has the word "friendship" in the synopsis; that's an important part of the book for sure, even though ultimately it is more focused on the romance. I gave this book 3.5 stars, which is on the low end of "good" for me. It's a nice, sweet time, although for most of the book it suffers from the usual cozy fantasy problem of a lack of conflict or setbacks, which made the middle portion a little boring. But it had enough cool threads to keep me interested, especially the nature of Certainty's magic specialty (she can talk to objects, very Date Everything-coded). I wasn't as moved by the romance here, and part of that might be that I'm just not that into sapphic romances, but I did see other reviewers saying that they love sapphic romances but this one didn't necessarily feel earned, so I think I'm a little bit justified.

Reading these two books side by side has solidified that what I prefer when it comes to fantasy is not a wholly invented setting but rather our real world with magic in it. I don't know if you'd call this "urban fantasy" or "magical realism" (I don't think either of those genres quite describe what I mean) or what. I just don't care to learn about the imaginary politics of some imaginary country. Worldbuilding is lost on me.

Since finishing those books, I've taken a short break from the Deltarune challenge to read my book club's choice for this month, which is a raunchy mystery called Murder on Sex Island by Jo Firestone (it's definitely a weird book club for weird girls), as well as the recent romance sensation Phoebe Berman's Gonna Lose It by Brooke Averick. I'm 60% through Murder on Sex Island, which is about a fictional reality dating competition show that is every kind of fucked up; it's an intentionally stupid and goofy book, and while I don't find it that funny most of the time, I think at its best it almost reads like satirical horror. For the most part I'm a little bored with it, though. I'm leaning towards 3 stars at this point.

Phoebe Berman's Gonna Lose It, on the other hand, is fantastic so far. I'm 35% through it and I'm already feeling that 5-star pull of "when I'm not reading it, I wish I was reading it." It's an important story to tell in the romance space, which I think the author's note makes very clear, and as a 30-year-old, late blooming, anxious and socially avoidant semi-virgin I just feel so seen by this book. I keep being stunned at all the ways Phoebe is just like me - not just because she's Jewish and loves stationery but in more profound ways, too, the feeling like she's broken, the wanting things so badly but being terrified to go for them. I was literally just thinking this morning that if I were to write my own novels my niche would probably be "Emily Austin for straight women" and then I started this book and what do you know, Brooke Averick is already writing Emily Austin for straight women (affectionate). So far I think my favorite of the three possible love interests is Matthew (they have so much in common and he's clearly crazy about her) but I'm not rooting for the book to go in one direction or another, I just want to see where it takes me!

#reading update #books and reading #the very secret society of irregular witches #the keeper of magical things #murder on sex island #phoebe berman’s gonna lose it

whyenn-reader

the youtube notification of ''ooohh your video isn't starting up smoothly???? turn off your ad blocker you cunt <3'' is so pathetic to me bc it takes five seconds max. you think i can't wait five seconds? you think i need to give you money because five seconds is too long? i pity your wife.

#it's literally so funny

lingthusiasm

101 places to get enthusiastic about linguistics

In honour of Lingthusiasm's 100th episodiversary, we've compiled this list of 101 public-facing places where linguists and linguistics nerds hang out and learn things!

17 podcasts about linguistics

Lingthusiasm — A podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics!

The Vocal Fries — Language discrimination and how to fight it

The History of English — From Proto-Indo-European to Shakespeare in 180 episodes (and still running!)

A Language I Love Is — Guests (some linguists, some not) talk about languages they love and why

En Clair — Forensic linguistics and literary detection

Because Language — New guests every episode discuss their linguistic interests

The Allusionist — Stories about language and the people who use it

Subtitle — A podcast about languages and the people who speak them

Field Notes — Five seasons on linguistic fieldwork

Tomayto Tomahto — Language meets cog sci, politics, history, law, anthropology, and more

Word of Mouth — A long-running and wide-ranging linguistics program on BBC 4.

Words Unravelled - A new and very well edited etymology podcast with popular creators RobWords and Jess Zafarris

Something Rhymes with Purple — Learn the background behind another word or phrase each episode

Lexitecture — A classic etymology podcast with a huge back catalogue

A Way with Words — A "lively and upbeat" public radio call-in show about language and culture

Språket — A radio program in Swedish answering listener questions about language. We don't speak Swedish, but this was the most-mentioned non-English content in our listener survey!

Living Voices — A podcast in Spanish about endangered languages of the Amazon

12 nonfiction books about linguistics

Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language by Gretchen McCulloch (Amazon; Bookshop) — A linguist shows how the internet is transforming the way we communicate

How Language Works: How Babies Babble, Words Change Meaning and Languages Live or Die (Amazon; Bookshop) by David Crystal — A journey through the different subsystems of language

That's Not What I Meant!: How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships by Deborah Tannen (Amazon; Bookshop) — A pioneering researcher on conversations gives advice on how they can go wrong

Memory Speaks: On Losing and Reclaiming Language and Self by Julie Sedivy (Amazon; Bookshop) — Scientific and personal reflections on nostalgia, forgetting, and language loss

The Art of Language Invention: From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves to Sand Worms, the Words Behind World-Building by David J Peterson (Amazon; Bookshop) — an accessible guide to making your own conlang

Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme—And Other Oddities of the English Language by Arika Okrent (Amazon; Bookshop) — The history behind English's many oddities

Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language by Amanda Montell (Amazon; Bookshop) — A well-researched pushback on sexist language ideology

Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries by Kory Stamper (Amazon; Bookshop) — A lifelong lexicographer discusses the job and the things she's learned along the way

Lingo: Around Europe in Sixty Languages by Gaston Dorren (Amazon; Bookshop) — A quick, funny tour of the quirks of 60 European languages

Bina: First Nations Languages, Old and New by Felicity Meakins, Gari Tudor-Smith, and Paul Williams (Amazon; Bookshop) — The story of Australian indigenous languages' resistance and survival

Says Who?: A Kinder, Funner Usage Guide for Everyone Who Cares About Words by Anne Curzan (Amazon; Bookshop) — A writers' style and grammar guide focused on real usage, not made-up rules

The Language Lover's Puzzle Book: A World Tour of Languages and Alphabets in 100 Amazing Puzzles by Alex Bellos (Amazon; Bookshop) — Solve puzzles about writing, grammar, and meaning drawn from real and fictional languages

Poems from the Edge of Extinction: An Anthology of Poetry in Endangered Languages (Amazon; Bookshop) — An anthology of poems in endangered languages, with commentary

6 linguistically-inspired novels

Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution by R.F. Kuang (Amazon; Bookshop) — Imagine a world where linguistics was as vital — and as ethically compromised — as engineering is in ours

True Biz by Sara Nović (Amazon; Bookshop) — Love, friendship, and struggle at a residential high school for the Deaf

Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by by Mark Dunn (Amazon; Bookshop) — "A progressively lipogrammatic epistolary fable" full of wordplay and weirdness

Semiosis by Sue Burke (Amazon; Bookshop) — Human space colonists communicate with sentient plants

Translation State by Ann Leckie (Amazon; Bookshop) — What does life look like for a perfectly genetically engineered alien–human translator? (Spoiler: weird, that's what.)

Stories of your Life and Others by Ted Chiang (Amazon; Bookshop) — Includes the long short story that became Arrival, plus other reflections on humanity and change

13 linguistics youtube channels

Crash Course Linguistics — A whole linguistics course in 16 videos

Tom Scott's Language Files — Pithy language facts explained quickly and clearly

NativLang — Language reconstruction and the history of writing

Geoff Lindsay — Facts (and some scholarly opinions) about regional English pronunciation

The Ling Space — An educational channel all about linguistics

langfocus — A language factoid channel that digs deeper than many

K Klein — Language quirks, spelling reform, and a little conlanging

biblaridion — Teaching about conlanging and worldbuilding, with lots of linguistics along the way

RobWords — "A channel for lovers and learners of English"

Otherwords — "the fascinating, thought-provoking, and funny stories behind the words and sounds we take for granted"

LingoLizard — Widely spoken languages and their quirks, comparisons, and history

linguriosa — Spanish linguistics (in Spanish), including learning tips and linguistic history

human1011 — Quick accessible facts about linguistics (and sometimes other things)

Simon Roper — Language evolution and historical English pronunciation

10 shortform video channels about linguistics (tiktok/reels)

etymologynerd — Internet speak, etymologies and more! (reels)

linguisticdiscovery — Writing systems, language families, and more (reels)

jesszafaris — Fun facts about words, etymologies, and more (reels)

cmfvoices — An audiobook director talks about the linguistics of voice acting (eels)

mixedlinguist — A linguistics professor comments on the language of place, identity, politics, technology, and more (reels)

landontalks — Linguistic quirks of the US South (reels)

sunnmcheaux — Language and culture from Harvard's first and only professor of Gullah (reels)

dexter.mp4 — Talks about many branches of science, but loves linguistics enough to have a linguisticsy tattoo (reels)

danniesbrain — Linguistics and psychology from a researcher who studies both (reels)

wordsatwork — Quick facts on languages, families, and linguistic concepts (reels)

the_language — The Ojibwe language — plus food, dancing, and more

lingthusiasm

101 places to get enthusiastic about linguistics

In honour of Lingthusiasm's 100th episodiversary, we've compiled this list of 101 public-facing places where linguists and linguistics nerds hang out and learn things!

8 linguistically-inspired videogames and board games

Heaven’s Vault (video game) — Decode a mystery hieroglyphic language as a space archeologist traveling with her trusty robot sidekick

Chants of Sennaar (video game) — puzzle your way through uncoding the language and world of The Tower

Tunic (video game) — You don’t need to decode the writing system to enjoy exploring this video game as an anthropomorphic fox, but some people have enjoyed the additional challenge of cracking the writing system

Cypher & Epigraph (video game) — Test and grow your cryptographic skills with these increasingly feendish puzzles

Wavelength (board game) — A relaxed and silly party game featuring comparatives and scales. Very fun for a flexible-sized group.

Xenolanguage (board game) — An ethereal storytelling game about communicating with aliens featuring a unique ouija-board inspired gameplay mechanic

The Gostak (interactive fiction) — A classic text adventure you need to decipher a secret language to play

IPA Scrabble (board game) — Do-it-yourself instructions for making your own International Phonetic Alphabet Scrabble tiles

7 blogs, newsletters, and magazines about linguistics

Nancy Friedman's substack — A professional name developer (that's a thing!) weighs in on trends

Language Log — One of the longest running linguistics blogs: a few professors discuss their interests

Separated by a Common Language — "Observations on British and American English by an American linguist in the UK"

Sesquiotica — Riffs on etymology and meaning

Language Hat — Another longtime classic, featuring literature, translation, and lexical curiosities

@official-linguistics-post — Sharing posts and conversations of linguistic interest from around Tumblr

Babelzine — A print magazine of language and linguistics, great for school libraries to subscribe to

9 linguistically-inspired movies and tv shows

Atlantis: The Lost Empire — A linguist protagonist meets a conlang plot device

Arrival — The most linguistic fieldwork you'll ever see in a sci-fi blockbuster

Darmok — The Star Trek episode that launched a thousand linguistics memes

CODA — The biggest names in ASL theatre in a multilingual movie

Avatar — The sci-fi epic that gave us Na'vi, one of the best loved conlangs

We Still Live Here: Âs Nutayuneân — A documentary about the Wampanoag scholar who revived her nation's language

My Fair Lady — A classic musical about dialect, social class, and (of course) love

The King's Speech — Based on a true story: a speech-language pathologist helps King George VI overcome his stammer

Talking Black in America — A documentary series on African American English, Black ASL, and more

6 linguistics-related events and physical spaces

Planet Word (Washington, DC, USA) — An immersive language museum

Mundolingua (Paris, France) — A hands-on museum with exhibits on many branches of linguistics

The COSI language pod (Columbus, OH, USA) — Participate in linguistics experiments inside this science museum

The SLIYS summer camp (Columbus, OH, USA) — The Summer Linguistic Institute for Youth Scholars introduces high school students to linguistics

Kletskoppen Festival (Nijmegen, Netherlands) — A festival about language and language development for children, and their adults

International Linguistics Olympiad (2025 in Taipei, Taiwan) — An annual puzzle-solving competition for secondary school students, with many national editions in various countries

10 places to get even more

r/linguistics — A subreddit for discussing linguistics; check out their reading list (Note that we singled out this one for being a big, public, high-traffic community — but if you'd prefer a closed Discord server or a Facebook meme group or any other platform-specific thing, ask other linguistics nerds on that platform and you'll probably find one.)

Bluesky linguistics starter pack — Some linguists who post actively about linguistics, several of which have also made starter packs for specific subfields

conlang.org's community list — Pointers to the many places conlangs are discussed

Superlinguo's list of linguistics podcasts — Many more podcasts than we had room for

A very long list of pop linguistics books on All Things Linguistics — Many more books, too…

Linguistic Discovery's list of books — …and even more!

High School Linguistics' books list for teens — Get started early…

Superlinguo's list for kids — …and even earlier!

Mutual Intelligibility's resource directory — Links on a wide range of subjects

linguistics humor tag on All Things Linguistic — Just the funny stuff

We've been doing lingcomm since 2011 and we're astounded by how many more pop linguistics resources have come into existences since we started and how many difficult decisions we had to make to get it down to just 101 places

If you’re more on the lingcomm creator side, check out the lingcomm website — we'd love to hang out with you at the LingComm Conference (it's online!).

Many thanks to the people who filled out the Lingthusiasm survey over the past 3 years for suggesting over 1000 places where you get enthusiastic about linguistics! Please feel free to highlight your favourites from this list or add further suggestions for the benefit of other people reading!

allthingslinguistic

Here's your back-to-school list of resources for nerding out about linguistics, whether you're currently enrolled anywhere or not!

#linguistics

marsscorkboard

I’m so glad I proved to myself that cozy fantasy doesn’t have to be bad - in fact, in can be amazing, like The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches! I still have two more cozy fantasies to read for my Deltarune flower challenge and I’m much less nervous about them now.

Also exciting news, with The Keeper of Magical Things I’ve officially gotten halfway through that Date Everything challenge I found on StoryGraph (if anyone has wondered, I put the DE character icons in the corner of book pages to indicate which prompt they’re fulfilling). I’ve read exactly 50 books since starting the challenge and every one of them has managed to hit at least one of the many, many prompts, but if the challenge is going to get difficult I feel like it’s going to start now.

#journaling #media journal #reading journal #the very secret society of irregular witches #the keeper of magical things

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maddie-grove

A lot of people genuinely do hate or dismiss romance novels because they think all sexual frankness in fiction is immoral and harmful, or because they think women (and only women) are too stupid to know fiction from reality, or because they think it’s gross and laughable for women (especially ones they don’t consider fuckable) to have sexual desires, or because they automatically assume that anything popular with women is inferior, or because they only care about fiction being formulaic or light entertainment when it’s something women like. This doesn’t mean that every romance novel is great and deep and progressive, but these people aren’t coming from a good place with their criticism and they don’t deserve a pass.

#some loser in the tag being like 'i don't hate romance because i hate women i hate romance because i hate STRAIGHT women'#like fuck off for real

penny-anna

one argument you often see about fanfiction is that it's like 'training wheels' writing? like 'oh it's fine to do that while you're still learning, it's easier than coming up with your own ideas'. and I have to say I have just never agreed with that.

penny-anna

in my experience it's actually pretty common for newbie fanfiction writers to gravitate towards coming up with OCs rather than writing about the canon characters (hence the infamous Mary Sue); this suggests that many people find that 'easier' than attempting to write about pre-existing characters.

I would say that recreating the characterisation, mood and general vibes of an existing work of fiction is in fact a skill in and of itself that's acquired via practice. A common compliment delivered to fanfiction writers is how well they have captured the spirit of the original work. Inexperienced fanfiction writers fail to do this.

When creating an original character you can, ultimately, say anything about them and now it's canon bcos you created them and you said so. conversely, well, if you are covering a well known song and start playing the wrong notes people will notice immediately.

In addition: a lot of fanfiction, IMO, is in actuality a form of metafictional literary analysis. a story where two characters sit down and talk about their feelings about a canonical event? literary analysis, which is of course a skill. Sometimes fanfiction is bad bcos the writer is not good at interpreting texts.

finally I have made this point before but you never really see anyone suggesting that fictional works based on existing public domain texts are on 'easy mode'. is it 'easier' to write something based on a copyrighted work than a public domain work? Of course it isn't.

penny-anna

I know I said 'finally' but I forgot a point:

A major strength of the transformative work is its ability to create dramatic irony. If a fanfiction's emotional resonance is dependent on being familiar with the source material that's not necessarily a bad thing. sometimes it's a sign that the author has done a really skillful job of engaging with said source material.

lamine-19

scientific fact

destinationtoast

AO3 creators... have you ever posted something you didn't want associated with your main account?*

Yes - created a separate account

Yes - posted anonymously

Yes - orphaned it after posting

Yes - posted it under a different pseud (but clearly linked to my main)

Yes - Multiple of the above

No - I don't have fanworks I feel that way about

No - I do have fanworks I feel that way about but don't post them at all

I didn't know about these options and am going to go learn a thing

Vanilla extract /answers please

Remaining time: 2 days 6 hours

*Could be something kinky, dark, "weird," off-brand in some way, etc! But I'm not talking about "I split up my different fandoms into different pseuds" or something else where it's purely an organizational preference.

#no #I have orphaned things that I thought people would judge me for but now I regret orphaning #because I don’t give a shit what people think

humperxhumper

i sure do hope nothing happens to my apartment building

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humperxhumper

I went back on Bumble and apparently they let anyone start the conversation now, what the hell

#bumble #me as the woman having to message first was great. it really pushed me to be social #what even makes you distinct from any other app now bumble

New Let's Play series! I'm playing Wax Heads, a record store simulator/puzzle game, and I'm really enjoying it (even though I know nothing about music).

#let's play #wax heads #Youtube

spicymochi

choose your cartoon duo

#still a fan of mordecai and rigby #but the new ones are all excellent

character-association-game

whos the blorbo you have the most merch of? it can be handmade or official or unofficial or ANYTHING just. merch

#reese kelly and kaneeka forsyth #i have the charms of them #i have a physical state fair poster and a digital coffee shop poster #i would happily get more merch of either of them if bt would only be so kind as to release some...

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Watch Anya Live on Cam

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.

✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions

Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming