I commend my soul to any god that can find it

Alright it's May reading update time! Actually made progress on the bingo this month, so we get the sheet back up again (hopefully legible). Through no intentional effort I continue to avoid hitting a bingo 😅 but every prompt filled is a step closer...one day.

For the bingo itself I read:

Small Gods of Calamity by Sam Kyung Yoo for non-euro fantasy

Rubicon by J.S. Dewes for blurb buddies (she blurbed my sci-fi fill)

The Iliac Crest by Cristina Rivera Garza for gothic fiction

And then non-bingo reads were:

The 22 Murders of Madison May by Max Barry

The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novak

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law by Dean Spade

and continued reading Dandadan with vol 5

No DNFs this month! I really feel like I got back into my reading stride in May, and even if my choices trended more towards popcorn it's still good to be keeping the habit going.

For book takes, I mentioned in the last update that I was in-progress with a book that had me feeling unimpressed and I can confirm that Normal Life did not (personally) hit. I finished it at the start of the month so my memory of specifics is a little light, but overall I felt that the analysis it made had compelling evidence but not strong enough to support the too radical for me conclusions. For example the book argues that legalizing same sex marriage was an effort focused on allowing the least marginalized in the community (wealthy white gays) to access normative privilege, such as inheritance rights; instead a radical queer movement would have focused on decoupling those rights from marriage in the first place. That's not necessarily wrong! But I do think that incremental change is better than holding out for a revolution and it simply is difficult for me to believe that meaningful change re the abolition of the institution of marriage had a chance in hell compared to what was actually accomplished. The author also argued that legalizing rights gives the impression that the criminal legal system is fair and in fact upholds said system and its injustice. So instead we should have let sodomy stay illegal? Baffling stuff.

Small Gods of Calamity was a novella and it worked at that length, but also give me more with that setting and those characters aaaah!! The Iliac Crest was the sort of book that makes me go "wow I bet this would be really good if I was smart", so take of that what you will. Rubicon was an odd journey from 'neat premise!' to 'kinda underwhelming but fun popcorn time' to '...the plot is what? dude you did not do a good lead up here this is stupid' to the very final chapter making me go 'excuse me?????'. I can't say it was a good ending but by god, it at least was interesting and I gotta respect making a big swing. Considering my frustration with the series this author blurbed was cool ideas but mediocre execution, honestly I maybe should have expected the same issue here. Alas 🥲

I'll try to be shorter for the rest lol. I really liked The 22 Murders of Madison May, though I think it's only surface level sci-fi and is far more satisfying if you got into it looking for a character exploration/drama. The Golden Enclaves was a solid conclusion to a solid series, but for whatever reason none of it really hit my brain crazies? I liked it, I'd recommend it, I'm not thinking about it afterwards. And then Project Hail Mary was a reread after having seen the film and can confirm, both still good!