@2026-book-bingo

Just finished my fifth book for this years @2026-book-bingo challenge a few days ago and wanted to pop in and talk about some of what I’ve read so far!

Short Story Collection: Sorry Please Thank You by Charles Yu

This was meant to be the short story collection for last year’s book bingo, but I just never got around to it. I’m glad I recycled it for this year’s challenge because I thought it was really excellent. There are obviously some of these short stories that spoke to me more than others but this is a really great collection!

On my tbr since: January 2025

College or Uni Setting: Katabasis by R. F. Kuang

I saw that someone else also marked off this space with the book which to me was very cool! Fun to be reading the same things as other folks in the digital space. Unfortunately, this book just didn’t do it for me. I really liked Babel, but this one just didn’t speak to me in that same way and I wasn’t really a fan of the ending.

This one did serve two purposes though! It was read with my book club at work which is always a blast! It’s nice to get time to talk over the book with others because they’ll often notice things I don’t. If you can find a book club, I highly highly recommend joining one. I have two that I attend regularly.

On my tbr since: March 2025

Not Originally Published in English: Blizzard by Marie Vingtras

This one is really interesting as a US American because it takes place in a remote community in Alaska but was originally written in French by a French author! There’s some aspects of translation that make the grammar a little odd in some place but other than that I would not have known that this author wasn’t originally from the US. She writes us well and manages to write both a small remote community and a big city well in the same book.

On my tbr since: December 2025

2026 Debut Author: The Poet Empress by Shen Tao

This one was amazing. Legitimately going to be one of my favorite reads of the year. I’m not sure if authors are just sitting longer with their first work but I have read quite a few fantastic debuts in the last few years.

There are some really interesting thoughts on forgiveness and justice in these pages and the author handles both with some incredible grace. I really enjoyed read this one with my work book club as well.

On my tbr since: January 2026

2025 Award Winner: Pick a Color by Souvankham Thammavongsa

This is a short little novel sitting just under 190 pages. I think it would have been better served by about 50 more pages. I still really enjoyed it and it’s obvious that a lot of heart went into it but it just feels unfinished in many ways.

and i mean, i think this is understandable. it's why a novel like lolita is not the same as a novel like daddy's little toy (in so much as i can make that assumption given i can't actually read dlt for myself). lolita is making a point that is bigger than, like, the literal events that are being depicted in its pages. it's not a book of csa. it's a book about the harm and ruin that comes from people who enact csa on children. it has something meaningful to say beyond entertainment. meanwhile, the assumption (due to how it was marketed and the snippets available) with dlt is that the presence of child grooming is the statement. it's the entertainment. and that's pretty fucking foul.

but i also wonder where we put things like the television shows criminal minds and law & order: svu when it comes to subjects like the sexual assault of adults and children. is the supposed messaging of these shows (this is bad) stronger than the exploitive reality of selling these kinds of stories to viewers? i'm genuinely asking; i do not know. to me, the episodes of those shows that tell stories about sexual abuse still feel kind of icky in that they're still attempting to titillate. they're arousing in the general sense of the word, and they come with ad breaks. should we be socially okay with monetizing entertainment about sexual abuse if it comes packaged as social commentary? it's still fiction, and it's still meant to entertain.

i've seen some comments on tiktok vids about ttws that say, it's one thing to have this kind of dead dove shit on ao3, but a mainstream published book is so gross! and i've found myself taken aback by that distinction. partly because i would think any portrayal of that kind of thing would be seen as unacceptable and deserving of jail time regardless of platform, and partly because i think it's kind of laughable to presume that dlt, a self-published book in a niche genre, would have reached any kind of influential scale. regardless, the question stands in my mind: why would (to these commenters at least) ao3 be an acceptable platform for csa stories while other forms of publishing are not?

in asking these questions, i'm not leaning towards an answer of, well, just eradicate these narratives across all platforms, because good riddance to bad trash. i think having that answer oversimplifies the issue. but at the same time, it's hard to say with my full chest we should allow base, lurid, predatory fiction to run rampant wherever it so chooses.

next day eta: i want to adjust this to add that even my last statement ("it's hard to say with my full chest we should allow base, lurid, predatory fiction to run rampant wherever it chooses") is super hypocritical, given the kind of fic i've read and written myself.

i don't want to take that line out, because i said it, and the purpose of this blog to also deal with the areas in which i, myself, have biases or sticky spots, or contradicting beliefs. i have written a lot of base, lurid, predatory fiction. i've even written that kind of stuff between adults and older teens. and it upsets me that even i can get caught up in the moral panic of this discussion to the point i forget my own participation and start lambasting myself.

if i could adjust what i said last night and rewrite that line, this is how i would:

This is just a reflection on some of the quotes that hit home or made me think. I have said for a long time that losing Catholicism felt like losing a home, a family, a third parent. It makes me angry and then it makes me sad.

Happy Friday, dear readers! in today’s blog post, I hope to continue my reflections of chapter three of Spinning Wyrd by Ryan Smith. Specifically, I want to explore the third part of the Heathen self that Smith talks about, the fylgja. This is the aspect of the Heathen self that I’ve always struggled with and have my doubts about. To clarify, I have no problems believing that we have guiding…