Bookwormish, 2nd half of 2025
Dec. 31st, 2025 10:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starfishstarOnce again, a semi-annual version of my old "quarterly books" posts...
Oddly, I didn't read anything this half year that I LOVED, anything I could easily name as a favorite. I read plenty of good books! But none that made me swoon and want to clutch them to my chest. (A thing I have sometimes literally found myself doing with books I especially love...) So I guess I will skip right to the "good books" section of this post, rather than trying to name any "top books."
GOOD BOOKS
Girls Girls Girls by Shoshana von Blanckensee – A sweet and sometimes heartbreaking coming of age novel, about two secretly-in-love teenage lesbians who move to San Francisco to finally be able to live as themselves. (And everything they have to do to survive there.)
Unfit Parent: A Disabled Mother Challenges an Inaccessible World by Jessica Slice – As a person with chronic pain that sometimes rises to the level of debilitating / disability, I am extremely interested in books like this, which challenge my notions about disability, the ableism of the way the world is set up, and the things in life that may be possible despite that. A valuable read even if you're not a parent!
Moon of the Turning Leaves by Waubgeshig Rice – Sequel to his novel Moon of the Crusted Snow, which has stuck with me since readig it. In the first book, an Anishinaabe community living on a reservation in northern Ontario survives in a post-apocalyptic world by returning to their traditional ways of living with and from their land. In the second book, the perspective shifts mainly to the original protagonist's daughter, now leading a scouting group south to try to resettle their community in their ancestral lands along the Great Lakes.
The Empress of Salt and Fortune; When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain; Into the Riverlands by Nghi Vo – Such a fascinating series. They are rich in detail and demand close reading.
Flip by Ngozi Ukazu – Ngozi Ukazu is the author of my beloved Check Please! and has newly branched out to writing non-webcomic, non-CP works. Her first book (Bunt) I thought was fine. But this new one, Flip, I was really impressed by! What starts like a simple and even silly premise – the protagonist accidentally bodyswaps with her crush – turns into a deep meditation on self-worth, self-esteem, and internalized racism. Ukazu says she read Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye a lot while writing this book.
To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers – This is a book about a team of interstellar research scientists...and what it is, first and forement, is sweet. The characters live for learning more about the forms of life on other planets. They're not there to establish colonies or research conditions for terraforming a new planet for human habitation. They just want to learn, for the sake of learning, and that alone makes their lives worthwhile.
Proper English and Think of England by K. J. Charles – I really enjoyed these two books! I wish I could spend a lot more time with these characters, especially Pat and Fen and all the hijinks they get up to, in disguise in plain sight as two perfectly proper spinster ladies.
The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar – A slim little novella that weaves fairy tale lore and murder ballads, and manages to feel both original and rooted in such culturally familiar archetypes.
The Book of Fatal Errors by Dashka Slater – A very sweet middle grade novel about a boy who gradually learns to believe in himself over the course of an eventful summer with a bunch of fairies, a know-it-all cousin, and a magical train that has to be returned to where it belongs before time runs out.
We Could Be So Good and You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian – I guess "sweet" is a theme here, because these romances are also very sweet! Or maybe "gentle" is an even better word: gentle and warm stories about people falling in love, sometimes despite themselves.
The Swifts: A Dictionary of Scoundrels by Beth Lincoln – Clever and silly hijinks, with wordplay and a murder mystery and an irrepressible middle grade protagonist.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – This just somehow didn't grip me the way all of Adichie's other books have, although it's certainly well-written and thoughtful, about four women's interwoven lives before and during the pandemic. I was most taken by Omelogor's sections, when she's in grad school in the U.S. and confronting self-satisfied American academics who think they know better than the rest of the world. I could feel Adichie's own rage!
Spent by Alison Bechdel – Alison Bechdel's newest is indeed an odd one. I can understand why some people bounced off of it! But once I got over the mental whiplash of seeing "Alison" (the fictional protagonist who's a cheekily askew version of the real-life author Alison) hanging out with all the old crew from Dykes to Watch Out For (!!!!) I enjoyed it. As always, Bechdel draws the best best best cats – and now goats!
Where Wolves Don't Die by Anton Treuer – Recommended by a teacher friend who's reading this with her students. The coming-of-age-story aspects of this book are so good, and would be a lot stronger if not for the weirdly shoehorned-in and improbably-handled mystery plot.
Among Ghosts by Rachel Hartman – It's no secret that I love Rachel Hartman. I usually name her first novel Seraphina, if backed into a corner and forced to name a favorite book. This latest expansion of the same world was fine. It was very thoughtful; it showed deep care for all of Hartman's characters, even the unpleasant ones, as is her hallmark; it's also her processing-the-pandemic novel, which might be part of why it feels a little offset from where life has moved on to now.
Funny in Farsi by Firoozeh Dumas – A fun and lighthearted memoir about growing up in an immigrant family in the U.S.
The Sign for Home by Blair Fell – Half romance, half adventure hijinks, following a Deaf-Blind man and his new interpreter. The plot got very implausible by the end, but the characters were impossible not to root for and I learned so much about tactile sign language!
Red Milk by Sjón, translated from Icelandic by Victoria Cribb – Sjón's books are always so odd! And I mean that in a good way! I was so very taken by Moonstone: The Boy Who Never Was that I keep reading more Sjón to try to capture that magic, but none of his other books have been quite like that one.
Gathering Moss by Robin Wall Kimmerer – A very sweet book (especially since Kimmerer narrates it herself) although for me it was a lot of time to spend thinking, often metaphorically, about moss...
A Fashionable Indulgence; A Seditious Affair; and A Gentleman's Position by K. J. Charles – I didn't connect with these characters the way I do with some of her others, but K. J. Charles is never bad.
??? WHAT DID I JUST READ ???
Earthlings and Vanishing World by Sayaka Murata, both translated from Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori – I was utterly charmed by Sayaka Murata's novel Convenience Store Woman, about a young woman who steadfastly does not align with the expectations of society around her.
So I figured I would check out some of Murata's other novels. They are...WEIRD. Sometimes very weird. Especially Earthlings, in which toward the end of the book the characters randomly descend into cannibalism, except maybe it was all a hallucination? Or a metaphor?? Murata's books all share themes of characters who don't fit into their world, especially in terms of the romantic and gendered relationships that society tries to force on them, and her work is certainly interesting. Even though I can't say I always enjoyed them, I don't think I'm sorry to have read Murata's books... Well, aside from Earthlings. I might be sorry to have read Earthlings.
Best quotes from Vanishing World:
“Normality is the creepiest madness there is.”
“It’s easier to go insane in the way best suited for your world.”
A BELOVED RE-READ
The whole Murderbot Diaries series by Martha Wells – some of the books more than once!
.
Oddly, I didn't read anything this half year that I LOVED, anything I could easily name as a favorite. I read plenty of good books! But none that made me swoon and want to clutch them to my chest. (A thing I have sometimes literally found myself doing with books I especially love...) So I guess I will skip right to the "good books" section of this post, rather than trying to name any "top books."
GOOD BOOKS
Girls Girls Girls by Shoshana von Blanckensee – A sweet and sometimes heartbreaking coming of age novel, about two secretly-in-love teenage lesbians who move to San Francisco to finally be able to live as themselves. (And everything they have to do to survive there.)
Unfit Parent: A Disabled Mother Challenges an Inaccessible World by Jessica Slice – As a person with chronic pain that sometimes rises to the level of debilitating / disability, I am extremely interested in books like this, which challenge my notions about disability, the ableism of the way the world is set up, and the things in life that may be possible despite that. A valuable read even if you're not a parent!
Moon of the Turning Leaves by Waubgeshig Rice – Sequel to his novel Moon of the Crusted Snow, which has stuck with me since readig it. In the first book, an Anishinaabe community living on a reservation in northern Ontario survives in a post-apocalyptic world by returning to their traditional ways of living with and from their land. In the second book, the perspective shifts mainly to the original protagonist's daughter, now leading a scouting group south to try to resettle their community in their ancestral lands along the Great Lakes.
The Empress of Salt and Fortune; When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain; Into the Riverlands by Nghi Vo – Such a fascinating series. They are rich in detail and demand close reading.
Flip by Ngozi Ukazu – Ngozi Ukazu is the author of my beloved Check Please! and has newly branched out to writing non-webcomic, non-CP works. Her first book (Bunt) I thought was fine. But this new one, Flip, I was really impressed by! What starts like a simple and even silly premise – the protagonist accidentally bodyswaps with her crush – turns into a deep meditation on self-worth, self-esteem, and internalized racism. Ukazu says she read Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye a lot while writing this book.
To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers – This is a book about a team of interstellar research scientists...and what it is, first and forement, is sweet. The characters live for learning more about the forms of life on other planets. They're not there to establish colonies or research conditions for terraforming a new planet for human habitation. They just want to learn, for the sake of learning, and that alone makes their lives worthwhile.
Proper English and Think of England by K. J. Charles – I really enjoyed these two books! I wish I could spend a lot more time with these characters, especially Pat and Fen and all the hijinks they get up to, in disguise in plain sight as two perfectly proper spinster ladies.
The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar – A slim little novella that weaves fairy tale lore and murder ballads, and manages to feel both original and rooted in such culturally familiar archetypes.
The Book of Fatal Errors by Dashka Slater – A very sweet middle grade novel about a boy who gradually learns to believe in himself over the course of an eventful summer with a bunch of fairies, a know-it-all cousin, and a magical train that has to be returned to where it belongs before time runs out.
We Could Be So Good and You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian – I guess "sweet" is a theme here, because these romances are also very sweet! Or maybe "gentle" is an even better word: gentle and warm stories about people falling in love, sometimes despite themselves.
The Swifts: A Dictionary of Scoundrels by Beth Lincoln – Clever and silly hijinks, with wordplay and a murder mystery and an irrepressible middle grade protagonist.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – This just somehow didn't grip me the way all of Adichie's other books have, although it's certainly well-written and thoughtful, about four women's interwoven lives before and during the pandemic. I was most taken by Omelogor's sections, when she's in grad school in the U.S. and confronting self-satisfied American academics who think they know better than the rest of the world. I could feel Adichie's own rage!
Spent by Alison Bechdel – Alison Bechdel's newest is indeed an odd one. I can understand why some people bounced off of it! But once I got over the mental whiplash of seeing "Alison" (the fictional protagonist who's a cheekily askew version of the real-life author Alison) hanging out with all the old crew from Dykes to Watch Out For (!!!!) I enjoyed it. As always, Bechdel draws the best best best cats – and now goats!
Where Wolves Don't Die by Anton Treuer – Recommended by a teacher friend who's reading this with her students. The coming-of-age-story aspects of this book are so good, and would be a lot stronger if not for the weirdly shoehorned-in and improbably-handled mystery plot.
Among Ghosts by Rachel Hartman – It's no secret that I love Rachel Hartman. I usually name her first novel Seraphina, if backed into a corner and forced to name a favorite book. This latest expansion of the same world was fine. It was very thoughtful; it showed deep care for all of Hartman's characters, even the unpleasant ones, as is her hallmark; it's also her processing-the-pandemic novel, which might be part of why it feels a little offset from where life has moved on to now.
Funny in Farsi by Firoozeh Dumas – A fun and lighthearted memoir about growing up in an immigrant family in the U.S.
The Sign for Home by Blair Fell – Half romance, half adventure hijinks, following a Deaf-Blind man and his new interpreter. The plot got very implausible by the end, but the characters were impossible not to root for and I learned so much about tactile sign language!
Red Milk by Sjón, translated from Icelandic by Victoria Cribb – Sjón's books are always so odd! And I mean that in a good way! I was so very taken by Moonstone: The Boy Who Never Was that I keep reading more Sjón to try to capture that magic, but none of his other books have been quite like that one.
Gathering Moss by Robin Wall Kimmerer – A very sweet book (especially since Kimmerer narrates it herself) although for me it was a lot of time to spend thinking, often metaphorically, about moss...
A Fashionable Indulgence; A Seditious Affair; and A Gentleman's Position by K. J. Charles – I didn't connect with these characters the way I do with some of her others, but K. J. Charles is never bad.
??? WHAT DID I JUST READ ???
Earthlings and Vanishing World by Sayaka Murata, both translated from Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori – I was utterly charmed by Sayaka Murata's novel Convenience Store Woman, about a young woman who steadfastly does not align with the expectations of society around her.
So I figured I would check out some of Murata's other novels. They are...WEIRD. Sometimes very weird. Especially Earthlings, in which toward the end of the book the characters randomly descend into cannibalism, except maybe it was all a hallucination? Or a metaphor?? Murata's books all share themes of characters who don't fit into their world, especially in terms of the romantic and gendered relationships that society tries to force on them, and her work is certainly interesting. Even though I can't say I always enjoyed them, I don't think I'm sorry to have read Murata's books... Well, aside from Earthlings. I might be sorry to have read Earthlings.
Best quotes from Vanishing World:
“Normality is the creepiest madness there is.”
“It’s easier to go insane in the way best suited for your world.”
A BELOVED RE-READ
The whole Murderbot Diaries series by Martha Wells – some of the books more than once!
.
