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This list will be updated as I complete books

Current Total: 8

Full log: #nina can read

Queer Devotion: Spirituality Beyond the Binary in Myth, Story, and Practice, Charlie Claire Burgess

Part How-To on queering your spirituality/religion, and part theological and historical discussion on Queer figures from various myths around the world. I'm not a spiritual person and didn't partake in the How-To components, but it's very interesting read! I like the writing style quite a bit and- while I'm not spiritual- many of the author's sensibilities aligned with my own. There's a big quote toward the end that sums up my personal feelings toward specific brands of Christianity quite well:

“What a tragically self-negating thing, this theology of dissociation. What a life-negating cosmology that enfleshes souls into bodies not to live but to “transcend” the living body until they die into eternal life. It makes me want to scream or weep, this self-abegnation, this condemnation of the lush and vibrant and beautifully sensuous living world. What a tragedy to waste a life waiting for the afterlife.”

The Day the World Came to Town, Jim DeFede

My bestie and I are planning a trip to Newfoundland and while building up our itinerary we learned about Gander and wound up watching the Come From Away musical and then this book which we have now both read!

It's about the real events of U.S. airspace closing during the 9/11 attacks and Gander, Newfoundland (and some neighboring communities) taken in the orphaned planes and the passengers. If you ever want a reminder about the goodness of humans, this is a good book. I cried every chapter, but it's because I cry for every Big Emotion. These were happy tears.

Anathema, Keri Lake

Jumped on the waitlist for this one when the bestie was screaming about it and I now understand why the waitlist was originally 20 months long. This one feels like catnip for the booktok girlies. The sorta dark romantasy smut novel that has puritans clutching their pearls and actual Erotica Enjoyers feeling a wee bit disappointed. I'm just happy they used the words cock, cunt and clit instead of 500 different euphemisms.

AO3 tropes galore. I'm talking 'There Was Only One Bed', 'Sex Pollen' (it's wine), Fated Mates, etc. etc. It's listed as Gothic, but it's really surface level gothic imo. Like the aesthetics are there, but the writing style and vibes does not meet my Gothic Romance standards. I mean this with love in my heart, but it is the Romantasy version of Innamorata.

All this said, it was SUPER entertaining and I'm excited to read the second one.

Is it high literature? No. Is it the best book I've read this year? Also no. It is a trash novel but I am a raccoon.

The Sword of Destiny, Andrzej Sapkowski

I've only known Ciri for one book and if anything happens to her I will start biting people.

This book could have also been titled 'Exposition and Philosophical Conversations with Geralt of Rivia'. I'm not complaining, I just realized about half way through just how much of the book was dialog. I also kinda adore how each book so far had some reference to some other classic fairy tale (Beauty and the Beast in the first one and The Little Mermaid in this one).

Fabulous Bodies, Chuck Tingle

I read all of Chuck Tingle's horror last year [1] [2] [3] and this is more of the same. If you like a co-mingling of scifi and paranormal horror, very creative deaths ala Final Destination, dry dark humour, horror movies like BODIES BODIES BODIES and Tragedy Girls, and can handle gore- you'll probably like Tingle's horror! I liked this one more than I liked Lucky Day[1] but less than Bury Your Gays[3], it's probably tied with Camp Damascus[2] for me.

From Here, Luma Mufleh

A memoir that can be boiled down to choosing your sacrifices and the pain you can survive, and building a life of happiness from there. Acts of survival never seem brave from the inside, but Luma is a brave woman. I'm glad she shared her story and that she has built of a life worthy of her.

How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder, Nina McConigley

Like Hooked, this isn't my normal sort of fiction read but I liked the way it was written. McConigley does a good job putting you in the space of an 80s childhood, a CSA survivor, and a brown child growing up in a white town. There's a lot of 'childish' moments when discussing a serious subjects because, duh, of course.

Blood of Elves, Andrzej Sapkowski

Selling some of my egl/jfashion wardrobe on egl.circlly.com/users/ninapedia

Total: 11

Full log: #nina can read

Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures, Merlin Sheldrake

I love fungi and wanted to learn more about them and the field of mycology. Sheldrake's delightful writing style was a good vessel for that goal. Part informational and part philosophical, the philosophies part of the book already mostly aligned with my own so it had more of a nodding-my-head-in-agreement vibe than a 'Oh, I see!' vibe. It also increased my TBR by, like, 5 books.

Brighter than Scale, Swifter than Flame, Neon Yang

I would say getting off the wait list for this queer knight/sovereign story was a blessing of pride month, but most of my reads have been los gibities this year so...

I liked it! I liked the very clear struggle growing up mixed and finding your place through the diaspora, thinking you've found that place only to be uprooted to live in culture of your other parent. I liked the duty/what's right, and I love a knight/sovereign dynamic.

The writing style is purposefully like a folktale being told, which I thought was an appropriate way to tell the story.

Morsel, Carter Keane

"I might not be a woman, but I am a daughter and that's its own horror story."

RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH. I'M GOING TO TEAR THIS BOOK APART WITH MY TEETH.

"There's a black hole in my gut. I've thrown in bits and pieces here and there, but nothing came close to filling it up." ... "I don't care because I've been hungry my whole life, and now I can finally eat. It's finally my turn to feast. To take bites out of something alive. Just like how living in this world, and for someone else, took never ending bites out of me."

Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism, Amanda Montell 

Super interesting read that dissects the linguistics of cult like language and why the rhetoric works. This includes that language bleeding out into non-cult things like MLMs, conspiracy spaces, influencers, etc. This will be added to the 'books I want to buy so I can reference/annotate them'.

Summer Sons, Lee Mandelo

A Queer Southern Gothic Dark Academia (in the classic literary sense, not the Vibes sense) Appalachian Horror Romance about putting ghosts to rest, both literal and figurative. For whatever reason, I found the pacing in the first half of the book a little disorientating. This could be intentional as so much of the first half has to do with the MC, Andrew, floundering in his grief, or it could have been my own sorta wishywashy headspace listening to it. In the end, doesn't really matter because by about half way through I was hooked and the line of action snapped into place so much better.

I liked it! A solid Summery read that had the sort of toxic relationship nonsense that I roll around in like catnip.

The Transition, Logan-Ashley Kisner

I saw trans-werewolves and said 'It me' and yet I still didn't expect to feel like looking into a mirror. Reading this book felt like watching 'I Saw The TV Glow'. I read Old Wounds by Kisner last year and he really has such a good grasp on creating cinematic experiences in that reading his books feel like watching a horror movie.

Also, Lawrence did nothing wrong. (This is a joke. Kinda.)

I Want to Burn This Place Down: Essays Book, Maris Kreizman

A series of memoir essays that show how a former Good Democrat tm moved further left. There's a bit of levity including when describing the brokenness of it all that I appreciate it. The reading list alone made this book a good pick.

Kreizman's trajectory isn't so dissimilar to mine, and I'm sure there are plenty of people who can see themselves through her journey. Quick read, I enjoyed it!

Hooked, Asako Yuzuki (Translator: Polly Barton)

Not my normal sorta read- more Thriller Adjacent than straight up Thriller. But I saw it in the bookstore with a friend and threw it on my library holds cause it sounded interesting. And it was! Really fascinating character explorations of the parasocial fan meeting their online idol, it's more nuanced than that I think but that sums it up decently enough.

We're Not Safe Here, Rin Chupeco

I kept deferring this hold for a while because I 'wasn't in the mood' but I had an 8 hour car ride and, what a coincidence, this book was estimated as exactly 8 hours.

More narrative focused than character focused, and I normally prefer the inverse. However, I thought the storytelling method in the book was cool. It's the book version of the Found Footage genre ala AR Youtube Horror Series. It's told as a series of transcripts from videos, live streams, text conversations and message boards. I think fans of Welcome to Nighvale or ARGs may vibe with this book.

If you are into Welcome to Nightvale and do plan on checking this one out, opt for the audio book. The full cast really does enhance the experience tbh.

Hungerstone, Kat Dunn

Sapphic Gothic Romance retelling of Carmilla that can be boiled down to 'Are you tired of being nice? Don't you just want to go ape shitt.'

There's a lot I really liked about this book. I love the use of describing lavish meal spreads to highlight how Lenore's hunger wasn't for want of food, but life. I like that Lenore is 30 and older than the heroine of the original novella. I love that it's a novel about (figuratively) starving yourself out of a life worth living to be more palatable to others as a trade of for perceived stability, and how that stability was an illusion. I love how when Lenore tried to satiate her appetites with the gifts of her husband, it would sicken her. This is the sort of book I want to buy simply to annotate it.

"I will swallow it down. All the pain and anger and grief. And I will survive a hollow, cold, hard creature because what else is there?" (CH 11)

Alex & Me: How a Scientist and a Parrot Discovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence - and Formed a Deep Bond in the Process, Irene Pepperberg

Tracey Martel recommended this book and the wait was short enough that I threw it on my holds while I was reading We're Not Safe Here and came off holds before I finished Hungerstone. It is testament to the writing that we started with Alex's passing and, by the time the book ended, I was crying over his passing.

Also, it's BONKERS to me how obtuse certain sects of science could be. The idea that so many refused to even entertain the idea that animals have 'language' that Alex and his team had to dance around semantics is absolutely wild to me. This wasn't that long ago either, within the last fifty years!

Anyways, it was a wonderful read and a really great companion to the comparative thanatology book I read earlier this year. If anyone has any recommendations on comparative psychology audiobooks, please send them my way!

The Ritual, Adam Nevill

I saw the Netflix movie when it first dropped and had no idea it was a book first. So I added it to be TBR and joined the wait list for it earlier this year when I found out.

This being said, I liked the movie better (horrible literary sin, I know!)

Total: 13

Full log: #nina can read

The Unworthy, Agustina Bazterrica (Translator: Sarah Moses)

LOVED the way this was written. A painfully poetic horror of a cult in a world trying to rebirth itself. Loss and love and the pain of choosing to live and not just survive. I love how the story was told through journal entries, more so that the author was aware that this post-apocalyptic account may not have a reader. Defo a top pick for the year.

"Burning a book made me angry because I knew I was setting fire to a world."

The Wolf and His King, Finn Longman

I usually don't jive with second person POV writing, but I really liked the way the author used it to split the points of view between chapters and keep the King nameless.

It's super serendipitous that I read Between Two Fires just earlier this year. I was unaware of the myth this book is based on until Between Two Fires, and once I realized it was that story I was kinda giddy seeing it play out.

"I refuse to be defined by my dismantling/ by these moments of unmaking I refuse-/ we are all made of our collapse."

The Fall of the House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum & Other Tales of Mystery and Imagination, Edgar Allen Poe

Checked this out after experiencing two different retellings of The Fall of the House of Usher without ever actually had read the story. The last time I ever read Poe was in my Preteen years when I was a Baby Goth, it was nice to have some stories refreshed while also reading new ones.

This collection included: The Pit and the Pendulum, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Masque of the Red Death, Ligeia, The Raven, The Cask of Amontillado, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Black Cat, The Premature Burial, and The Facts in the Case of M Valdemar.

I never realized how similar some of Poe's works were. It's really clear his fixated on certain things (premature burial, guilt being someone's unmaking, masonry). I'm on hold for a complete book of his works now and I wanna see if I can find a biography I like for him. I'm really curious about some finer details of his life after reading this.

Gory Details: Adventures From the Dark Side of Science, Erika Engelhaupt

Tongue-in-cheek writing to discuss the science behind the less glamourous bits of life and the natural world. It gives little snapshots on everything from the macabre (rates of cannibalism among mammals) to the straight up nartsy (how flies snacking on dried cum can theoretically fuck up a crime scene investigation). The easygoing writing style makes this a super fun read if you're not easily squicked out!

The Starving Saints, Caitlin Starling

Was on the wait list for this for a year and it was WELL worth the wait. I'm beginning to realize that all the folkloric fae stories I long for are hidden in horror. They never use the word but there's enough similarities in the mythos that they are good neighbors in all but name. There were two books I read last year too where I was like 'this feels fae' and both were some sort of horror or marketed as such.

Anyways, this book touches on so many things I adore: not-catholocism, loyal lapdog knights learning a leash can be pulled from both ends, relationships closer to worship, cannibalism, gay, BEES AND HONEY. My new favourite genre of 'this book reads like how playing elden ring feels'. Defo one of my top picks for the year.

Side note, I guess my fucking theme for the first six months of the year is cannibalism because I'm pretty sure this is the fifth or sixth book I read where cannibalism has been a plot point.

Hollow, Taylor Grothe

This one isn't for me! This is another blind read, I threw it into my holds list because it was on some 'folk horror' recommendations list. There are a lot of cool ideas and concepts, but the execution didn't satisfy.

The pacing meandered without any of the slow creep I usually enjoy from a drawn out horror. None of the characters really resonated, they all kinda felt one note/flat at best and frustrating at worse. A lot of dynamics rely on tropes I don't jive with and my sentiments toward the MC (Cassie) felt like that meme "when someone is 1% more autistic than you: >:C".

The twist was unsatisfying and gave me more questions than revelations. IMO, the best twists are 'solvable'- even if only through hindsight. Twists should be a mystery to solve for a perceptive or genre savvy reader. Hollow did not have enough breadcrumbs that allowed the reader to anticipate the ~big twist~ other than a name being an anagram which doesn't help an audiobook listener. I'm so interested in the lore and the questions the twist brings up but the story explains none of them and instead hastily concludes with a confrontation that lacks tension or a satisfying payoff.

(Also, to be clear, there were pretty standard horror revelations that were solvable. Like, ones I guessed pretty early. It's the BIG twist that didn't do it for me.)

I feel like a pushier editor could have helped this story along but as it stands Hollow just wasn't for me.

Play With Your Cat! The Essential Guide to Interactive Play for a Happier, Healthier Feline, Mikel Maria Delgado PhD

I checked out this book between library holds because it was on my TBR; was only a 6 hour read; and I live in constant fear that I am not doing right by beautiful baby boy who I love so much. Turns out, I'm not doing too shabby! I do need to be swapping out his solo toys more often though.

Very chipper writing style going over the reasons and science behind why you should be playing with your cat and different techniques and guidelines for doing so. It talks about special needs cats, fat cats, indoor/outdoor, different developmental stages, etc. Should be required reading for anyone who has or wants to get a little friend of their own, IMO.

Tender Is the Flesh, Agustina Bazterrica (Translator: Sarah Moses)

Both of Agustina's works that I have read have focused on two different types of 'apocalypse'. And girl, I truly feel you because I, too, have fixated on what sort of future it feels like we're headed for.

There are no heroes here, no one worth rooting for. The horror of a populace swayed to commit atrocities & codifying those atrocities; but also it's a really loud condemnation of exploitative animal industries (factory farming, aggressive lab testings, game hunting, etc.). Between that and the heavy emphasis on corporate greed influencing policy and propaganda it's clear Bazterrica has something to say and she's being very loud about it (I mean this affectionately).

I liked The Unworthy more, but this was a compelling read! Check the triggers if you intend to pick it up.

The Last Wish, Andrzej Sapkowski

Played the games, watched the (first 2 seasons of the) Netflix series, and now I'm finally starting the Witcher books! Geralt is such a fun protagonist! I'm really enjoying it. I'm on the waitlist for the second book.

The Lamb, Lucy Rose

Horror that left me more sad than horrified, and I mean this as a compliment. Not my favourite cannibalism book of the year (which is wild to think I have read enough to have a favourite), but I liked it more than my first impression made me think I would.

The meandering pace almost turned me off, but by halfway through I was beginning to enjoy the read and maybe the last quarter is when my heart started hurting. I have a soft spot for when cannibalism is used as an allegory for a ruinous sort of love, and this book has a lot to say about the different sorts of love and expectations of it, and womanhood and girlhood and queerness, and grief and death. I think maybe this is why it resonated with me on the back half.

I defo need something lighter after this tho, this one left me feeling really heavy.

“I wondered if this was what being a real human was: accepting you were pieces of other people too. The people you loved and the people you hurt.”

Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection, John Green

EVERYDAY I FIND A NEW REASON TO DESPISE J&J

Anyways, I like books that are very informative about a problem humanity is facing but also very 'optimistic'. It is difficult to think of a book that outlines the solvable atrocity of deaths by a curable disease as 'optimistic', but it is because humanity is winning over greed.

“[W]hen we know about suffering, when we are proximal to it, we are capable of extraordinary generosity.”

Agnes Aubert's Mystical Cat Shelter, Heather Fawcett

I wanted something happier after The Lamb and got it! I like Heather Fawcett's writing; I find her characters fun! I thought the system of magic/lore of the world was neat/interesting.

It's a fluffy 'romantasy' that feels like a relative of Howl's Moving Castle- the Ghibli version, not the book. It was a fun read and I got what I wanted out of it.

Root Rot, Saskia Nislow

Another 'green' cosmic horror.

Being able to write the disorienting 'liminal' moment that is a large family trip with relatives you barely recognize and can't recall the names of is talent.

Orchid Mantis Faerie for a somni prompt!

Look at my new demon, boy

Another Star of the Week for Somni