I have been trying to read more lately, with varying degrees of success. Here are some (mostly enjoyable) books I've read lately.
If you read any of these as a result of this blog post, please email me and let me know what you thought! I'd love to hear from you. Book recommendations also welcome. tris at this domain.
Really and truly wonderful
- What you are looking for is in the library (Michiko Aoyama): An absolutely delightful collection of vignettes following folks who have their life changed by a very cryptic and extremely perceptive librarian. Five short chapters that are interrelated but stand up well on their own, so it's easy to put down and pick up again, if you don't have time to read very often.
- Becky Chambers' Wayfarers series (The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, A Closed and Common Orbit, Record of a Spaceborn Few): Chambers really has a talent for world-building; after I read A Psalm for the Wild-Built in Late April updates, I went looking for more of her work, and this series did not disappoint. It's set in space (in case that wasn't obvious from the titles...), has lots of queer characters, and is 90% character development + world-building driven, so super fun to read! My favorite book was Record of a Spaceborn Few; there's also The Galaxy, and the Ground Within which I picked up, but did not finish.
Just fun to read
- Bluebird (Ciel Pierlot): This one is about chosen family; giving any more detail would probably be a spoiler. Anyway, it has spies and lesbians and lesbian spies and it's all in space. You like lesbians and spies and space, right? Great, me too!
- Rebecca Thorne's Tomes and Tea series (Can't Spell Treason Without Tea, A Pirate's Life for Tea, Tea You at the Altar, Alchemy and a Cup of Tea): The most important thing to know about these books is that the two main characters are lesbians and they are so perfect for each other and it's adorable and I couldn't stop going 🥺 while reading the whole time. The setting is gorgeous, the stakes are relatively low (there are no sad endings and no cliffhangers, at least not unless you read the preview of the next book), there is so much love in these characters.
Unsettling
I usually shy away from such things... but now and then they show up in a librarian's recommendation list and I just can't stop myself, for better or worse (usually worse).
- The Dream Hotel (Laila Lalami): Speculative fiction set in a dystopia that hinges on impossible technology is kind of hard for me to work with (it's on me, not the authors, usually), but this one still managed to be pretty deeply unsettling. Too much suspension of disbelief for me, but if you're looking for a peek into a future where civil liberties have slowly eroded the justice system into something totally unrecognizable as technology gets "better" (but nowhere near perfect) about picking up pre-crime, definitely check it out.
- The Reformatory (Tananarive Due): This one is historical fiction, all about racism in the American south 75 years ago (historical), with ghosts and such mixed in (fiction). Very graphic, actually really horrifying, I didn't come in with the knowledge that it was based on actual history and am haunted by the fact that it is.
Due for a re-read
- A Half-Built Garden (Ruthanna Emrys): It's been a while since I've read this one, which means I'm finally able to re-read it without knowing every detail! This is a really unconventional "first contact" novel; it takes place in a very hopeful future where we've made significant progress on, but not totally solved, climate change. I had a great time with the world-building details too (especially the intricacies of governance). Lots of queer characters, difficult cross-cultural interactions, speculative technology that I didn't have any suspension-of-disbelief issues with.