2025 Book Log

Fiction:
1. Faust, First Part, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
2. Wolf's Path, Joyce Chng
3. The Bright Sword, Lev Grossman
4. The Downloaded II: Ghosts In the Machine, Robert J. Sawyer
5. Who We Are In Real Life, Victoria Koops
6. Faust, Second Part, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
7. 120 Murders: Dark Fiction Inspired by the Alternative Era, Nick Mamatas (ed.)
8. School of Shards, Maryna and Serhiy Dyachenko
9. Never Whistle At Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology, Shane Hawk (ed.)
10. May Our Joy Endure, Kev Lambert
11. Demon Engine, Marten Norr
12. Slow Horses, Mick Herron
13. Together We Rise, Richie Billing
14. Love Medicine, Louise Erdrich
15. The Butcher of the Forest, Premee Mohamed
16. The Dragonfly Gambit, A.D. Sui
17. Lost Ark Dreaming, Suyi Davies Okungbowa
18. The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain, Sofia Samatar
19. The Brides of High Hill, Nghi Vo
20. The Tusks of Extinction, Ray Nayler
21. Someone You Can Build a Nest In, John Wiswell
22. The Ministry of Time, Kaliane Bradley
23. Bad Cree, Jessica Johns


Non-Fiction:
1. Bad Fire: A Memoir of Disruption, Tucker Lieberman
2. Orwell's Roses, Rebecca Solnit
3. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, Omar El Akkad
4. Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons From Marine Mammals, Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Poetry:
1. The Book of Questions, Pablo Neruda, William O'Daly (Translator)

Plays:
1. William Shakespeare’s As You Like It: A Radical Retelling, Cliff Cardinal
2. Too Good To Be True, Cliff Cardinal
3. Huff & Stitch, Cliff Cardinal

Books With Pictures In 'Em:
1. The Memoirs of Miss Chief Eagle Testickle: Vol. 2: A True and Exact Accounting of the History of Turtle Island, Kent Monkman
2. Ghost Ghost, Crooked Little Town, and The Same Water, Richard Fairgay
3. Spotlight on Labour History, Cy Morris

Short Things:
1. The Four Sisters Overlooking the Sea, Naomi Kritzer

Reading Wednesday

 Just finished: The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley. I don't know what to make of this, and will definitely be checking out the Wizards vs. Lesbians episode on it (not that I always agree with them, but they do raise perspectives that are interesting). I would say overall the prose and characters carried it. I got to know these people, I fell in love with them in the same way that the narrator did. It was compelling, as the kids say.

But I don't think the ended quite landed and I'm struggling to think of why. In part (and this is confirmed a little in an interview that follows the book), it's hurt a bit by the first-person narration. Bradley is telling a much bigger story than the narrator sees, and while that thankfully rescues it from being a didactic Message Book, it might have swung too far towards the other direction where I'm not exactly sure what it was trying to say. It's one of those books that straddles the literary and genre, and I tend to prefer genre in a literary style than literary fiction exploring genre. 

That said, it was so relentlessly well-written that I feel like my ill-defined issues with it are kind of irrelevant because I highly enjoyed it.

Currently reading: Bad Cree by Jessica Johns. I'm almost done this one. It's almost the reverse—protagonists figuring out genre solutions to literary fiction problems. I was given a warning about this book and I'm yet to figure out why.

What Feasts At Night by T. Kingfisher. I didn't read the first novella in this series (What Moves the Dead) despite it having my favourite cover the year it came out. So it's taking some getting used to. On the plus side, the opening is suffused with so much gothic horror that I find myself turning into a young woman fleeing in a white gown across the moors, holding a candlestick.

L&O season 2: Episode 10

The finale was...good, actually? Again, grading on a curve. It is still a bad show. But it's one of those bad shows where you get the sense that there is someone in the writers' room doing their best and sneaking all kinds of fun content in (see also: Archie singing IWW songs in Riverdale).

I had to check Reddit to see which case this was based on—it takes most of the episode to get to it. A seemingly unremarkable middle-aged travel agent drops dead in his driveway while his wife is out for a jog. It looks like a heart attack, but a cop in 44 Division suggests to Holness that she might want to get "her best" on it. Unfortunately the best that Toronto Police Services—sorry, TPD on the show for some reason—have are Graff and Bateman.

( spoilers )

And that's a wrap. I guess I'll have to find some good show to watch now.