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I haven't been doing a lot of reading of the sort that seems worth logging here -- email and Discord chats and news websites all use those skills, but in smaller pieces -- and my previous reading post was on November 2nd.
This is long because I don't have the time to make it shorter, so mostly it's copied from the booklog I keep on my PC
Books finished:
The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes, by Cat Sebastian -- a romance involving an unwilling heir to a dukedom, and the current duke's wife (and then widow, after she shoots the duke in self-defense); the heir is a sort of Robin Hood with a soft spot for stray animals. M/F but less heteronormative than that sounds; both protagonists and some of the other characters are bi, and they generally think of this as something that unfortunately has to be private rather than wrong.
The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, by Mandanna Sangu -- Found family and a bit of romance, featuring a young woman called Mika Moon who has and uses magic, and has been lonely all her life, because her adoptive mother thinks it's unsafe for witches to spend time with other witches, because then non-witches might notice the magic. Backstory here includes that all witches are orphans, for reasons none of them are quite sure of. Mika has YouTube videos in which she pretends to be pretending to be a witch, and gets email from someone who wants to hire her to teach the three young witches in their care. Fun-- Found family and a bit of romance, featuring a young woman called Mika Moon who has and uses magic, and has been lonely all her life, because her adoptive mother thinks it's unsafe for witches to spend time with other witches, because then non-witches might notice the magic. Backstory here includes that all witches are orphans, for reasons none of them are quite sure of. Mika has YouTube videos in which she pretends to be pretending to be a witch, and gets email from someone who wants to hire her to teach the three young witches in their care. Fun
The Body in the Library, by Agatha Christie -- reread of the second Miss Marple book, and literally what it says on the tin, but better than that sounds.
Tea and Treachery, by Vicki Delany -- low-key cozy mystery, with a viewpoint character who moved to Cape Cod and opened a tearoom after working as a pastry chef in NYC; she is also working part-time for her somewhat overbearing grandmother (who she loves), and her best friend decides to spend the summer on the Cape, because she's not managing to write in NYC. Not bad, though I could have done with less of Bonnie's pushing her to fall for/date one of the other characters (and not just because the book and characters are very heteronormative).
A World of Curiosities, by Louise Penny -- Another in the Inspector Gamache series. It's good, and your content warnings this time are for sexual violence against children [mercifully offstage] and the real-life massacre at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal. (In an afterword, the author says she asked permission to include one of the survivors as a character, and that permission was granted on the condition that the person got to read the manuscript and ask for changes if there was anything in the text that she objected to.)
In progress, sort of:
Life on the Rocks: Building a Future for Coral Reefs, by Judi Berwald. I'm about 20% of the way through this as a library ebook, and may not sync my kindle for a few days in order to read more of it. Thus far, in addition to learning about coral reefs and the people who care about them, I have learned that there is a little-known mental illness that is caused by an infection and can be cured by a course of high-dose antibiotics.
I also have The Sounds of Life, by Karen Bakker, out from the Boston Public Library in hardcover, but I brought it home on Tuesday, put it on my dresser, and haven't opened it yet.
I have several library ebooks on hold, mostly with the holds suspended so the books don't turn up too soon, or too many at once.
This is long because I don't have the time to make it shorter, so mostly it's copied from the booklog I keep on my PC
Books finished:
The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes, by Cat Sebastian -- a romance involving an unwilling heir to a dukedom, and the current duke's wife (and then widow, after she shoots the duke in self-defense); the heir is a sort of Robin Hood with a soft spot for stray animals. M/F but less heteronormative than that sounds; both protagonists and some of the other characters are bi, and they generally think of this as something that unfortunately has to be private rather than wrong.
The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, by Mandanna Sangu -- Found family and a bit of romance, featuring a young woman called Mika Moon who has and uses magic, and has been lonely all her life, because her adoptive mother thinks it's unsafe for witches to spend time with other witches, because then non-witches might notice the magic. Backstory here includes that all witches are orphans, for reasons none of them are quite sure of. Mika has YouTube videos in which she pretends to be pretending to be a witch, and gets email from someone who wants to hire her to teach the three young witches in their care. Fun-- Found family and a bit of romance, featuring a young woman called Mika Moon who has and uses magic, and has been lonely all her life, because her adoptive mother thinks it's unsafe for witches to spend time with other witches, because then non-witches might notice the magic. Backstory here includes that all witches are orphans, for reasons none of them are quite sure of. Mika has YouTube videos in which she pretends to be pretending to be a witch, and gets email from someone who wants to hire her to teach the three young witches in their care. Fun
The Body in the Library, by Agatha Christie -- reread of the second Miss Marple book, and literally what it says on the tin, but better than that sounds.
Tea and Treachery, by Vicki Delany -- low-key cozy mystery, with a viewpoint character who moved to Cape Cod and opened a tearoom after working as a pastry chef in NYC; she is also working part-time for her somewhat overbearing grandmother (who she loves), and her best friend decides to spend the summer on the Cape, because she's not managing to write in NYC. Not bad, though I could have done with less of Bonnie's pushing her to fall for/date one of the other characters (and not just because the book and characters are very heteronormative).
A World of Curiosities, by Louise Penny -- Another in the Inspector Gamache series. It's good, and your content warnings this time are for sexual violence against children [mercifully offstage] and the real-life massacre at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal. (In an afterword, the author says she asked permission to include one of the survivors as a character, and that permission was granted on the condition that the person got to read the manuscript and ask for changes if there was anything in the text that she objected to.)
In progress, sort of:
Life on the Rocks: Building a Future for Coral Reefs, by Judi Berwald. I'm about 20% of the way through this as a library ebook, and may not sync my kindle for a few days in order to read more of it. Thus far, in addition to learning about coral reefs and the people who care about them, I have learned that there is a little-known mental illness that is caused by an infection and can be cured by a course of high-dose antibiotics.
I also have The Sounds of Life, by Karen Bakker, out from the Boston Public Library in hardcover, but I brought it home on Tuesday, put it on my dresser, and haven't opened it yet.
I have several library ebooks on hold, mostly with the holds suspended so the books don't turn up too soon, or too many at once.
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I've been intrigued by the book about coral reefs myself.
P.