well read & full of dread

Land / Maggie O. Farrel

The first thing that comes to mind when I think of this book is beautiful.

Land is a breathtakingly tragic yet gorgeous account of Irish colonization. Spanning multiple timelines (and centuries), the novel discusses the ways that land shapes culture, and how culture shapes our conceptions of land.

The book follows Tomás, an Irishman employed (aka, stolen from an orphanage) by the British military as a cartographer and mapmaker, and his family. As they live, work, and love, we see the ways colonization acts through the erasure of names, place, and culture, rewriting the land this people have known for centuries.

by day, i'm a librarian. by night, i am... also a librarian but this time on netgalley and storygraph :)

i'm a major fan of horror and literary fiction, especially when a book happens to be both.

gothic, surreal/weird/cosmic horror especially when meshed with the horror of the domestic and mundane... ugh. this has my absolute entire soul. i'm also super the always-been-here-but-now-has-a-name genre "weird girl lit," especially when it is horror, literary, and queer.

i'm starting this blog because i love books and i love talking to people about books! i also got into arc reading/reviewing, so i'm going to post some of my arc reviews and share books i think would really fit into the niches i described above. so far, my favorite arcs of this year have been Wife Shaped Bodies and The Language of Liars. i'll never post spoilers, only vibes and critiques, and all trigger warnings shared will be marked ahead of time (both as triggers and as potential spoilers, lol)

actually, the amount of reading i've been doing has increased exponentially recently. last year, i read 6 books before june. from july to the end of the year, i read 87. coincidentally i started vyvanse sometime last year.

since january 1st of this year (and yes, january 1st i finished a book, and yes it was I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman), i'm somewhere in the 160s -- 60% digital, 16% print, and 23% audio for my storygraph fans out there

of these, 90 have been horror and 57 literary. my favorites of the year are:

Victorian Psycho, Virginia Feito

Motherthing, Ainslie Hogarth

Awake Awake, Fiona Mozley

Annihilation, Jeff Vandermeer*

Marion, Leah Rowan

The Obscene Bird of Night, José Donoso

Make Me Better, Sarah Gailey

One's Company, Ashley Hutson

The Language of Liars, S.L. Hang*

Wife Shaped Bodies, Laura Crainhill*

Ghost Wall, Sarah Moss

Our Wives Under the Sea, Julia Armfield*

asterisks are absolutely required reading, trust me