Hummingbird, distracted.

The Alex Craft series (Price) has been recommended, though I haven’t tried it yet. First Grave in the Right (Jones) is the only Death book I’ve tried and not liked, but I have friends who were big fans.

Reincarnation Blues was delightful, as were the Discworld books. I also liked On a Pale Horse (Anthony), A Dirty Job (Moore), the Sandman series (Gaiman - with all the caveats that have to come with that recommendation). Arden’s The Bear & the Nightingale is on-theme, though not as directly.

Scythe, by Neal Shusterman The book cover is white fading to yellow with diagonal red slashes. A figure stands center, wearing a long red cape and holding a stylized black scythe taller than they are. The decorative top of the scythe creates the outline of the figure’s profile.

💙📚 I spent the first half of the book thinking “nuh-uh, this is SO ridiculous. A system to manage an immortal population could NEVER work like this!” But I kept reading & reading, wanting to see what would happen next in this implausible but captivating world. Stories about Death are totally my jam.

YA romance is a great place to go for sweet love stories that don’t overdo the spice. I particularly recommend Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell, or for something actually aimed at an ace-spectrum audience, The Summer of Bitter & Sweet by Jen Ferguson.

Baby X, by Kira Peikoff The cover is orange with a big blue X across it. The orange and X overlay a shadow-image of a fertilized human egg. The title and author’s name are large and centered, partially obscuring the image.

💙📚 Intriguing, sometimes a bit head-scratching, but fun. I'm embarrassed at how long it took me to connect all three storylines, even given that I am notoriously easy for authors to trick. Chewing on this genetic “what if?” was worth the read, even if its plausibility felt a bit wobbly at times.

Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier The classic paperback book cover depicts a background of loosely draped red silk. The title is in pale yellow with a large, highly stylized capital R. The author’s name is below in white. A caption reads, “An unsurpassed modern masterpiece of romantic suspense.”

💙📚 I prefer my romances gothic & twisty, and this one is the Grande Dame of them all. With an unnamed protagonist and an antagonist who’s been dead since before the story began, the stage is set for moody, surprising turns. Is it really a love story?

(Of course it is. Every story is a love story.)

Swordheart, by T. Kingfisher The book cover depicts a riotously colorful scene in an illustration style behind the white font of the title and author name. A pale blue sword with a red hilt bisects the image from top to bottom. Four round towers with pointy roofs frame the edges. A bird is perched on each side of the sword’s pommel. Greenery and flowers fill all the spaces between. Smaller text under the title says, “Love is a double edged sword.”

💙📚 Why I keep reading @tkingfisher.com’s romances even though romance isn’t my jam:

“Know your place. She is your wielder. [...] If she chose to wander about wearing nothing but strategically placed lizards, that would be her choice.”

You think you know how a sentence will end, then BAM lizards.🦎

Whalefall, by Daniel Krauss The cover of the book shows an enormous sperm whale swimming toward the surface of the ocean. Directly above the whale’s open, toothy mouth swims a very small scuba diver.

💙📚 Well that was a hell of a thing.😳 A fascinating if not completely enjoyable ride where the author asked, “this story from legend SHOULD be impossible, but what if it wasn’t?” The answer was harrowing and claustrophobic, but I read it compulsively and learned a whole lot of things about whales.

The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald, by John U. Bacon Book cover has a dark background with a gold-lettered title, and white-lettered subtitle and author name. A detail from the 1995 painting by David W Conklin titled “Every Man Knew (The Freighter Edmund Fitzgerald)” shows the end of a red and white shipping freighter fighting raging waves under a dark, threatening sky.

💙📚 Beautiful. Terrifying. Heartbreaking. Fascinating. Historical details from the mind of a master researcher, but related with a touch so gentle it sometimes stings. I have faced waves I thought mind end me and know that fear. Bacon brings the story alive.

Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, by Brandon Sanderson, illustrated by Aliya Chen. The book cover is in shades of midnight blue, with pale yellow font. A young man and young woman reach toward each other from opposite corners, as if floating toward each other in the air.

💙📚 Tied with Tress for my favorite of the four Kickstarter novels. Top stars, as always, for creating a world so different from anything I’ve seen before, but so immediately recognizable at the same time. Themes and tropes that speak to me. Just the right amount of romance. Made me crave noodles. 🍜

I would very much like to know more about AI toothpaste. (Also I think Nick’s comment is really compelling.)

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. The cover shows the facade of a red-painted building covered with green vines. A doorway in the middle of the facade frames a woman in an old fashioned green dress.

💙📚 The Island of Doctor Moreau meets the Twilight Zone’s “The Lateness of the Hour.” A sweet story of a journey from innocence to empowerment. The romantic sub-plot took a turn I didn’t expect, which was my favorite bit. My first Moreno-Garcia read that wasn’t either 🔥 or DNF, but a very solid 3⭐️.

If I were more crafty at the socials, I’d have carefully deliberated over which book to review first, with an eye toward making some kind of statement about what kind of reader I am. Nope. This is just the last book I finished. Saw Cory Doctorow talk the day after. He’s so nerdy cool.

I’m not famous for my follow-through on projects like this, but maybe this time will be different (haha)? Worst case scenario, I fizzle out by March and no one cares because I have no followers. :) It’s a me-project with the potential for occasional conversation.

My reading tastes are eclectic, but lean toward sci-fi, fantasy, mystery, and creepy-twisty. I love reading other people’s favorite books.

I haven’t found a way to put myself out on the socials yet, but I find I’m enjoying having small conversations with strangers here. I’m going to try posting micro-book-reviews, as a challenge to see how well I can compress them, as a way to track my reads, and as an invitation to talk about a book.

Cover photo of the novel Red Team Blues, by Cory Doctorow. It is royal blue with red and white font, showing the silhouette of a running man framed by a keyhole.

A tech-world “bad guys stole a thing and good guy will do crafty and slightly dangerous things to get it back” romp with an unlikely 67-year-old forensic accountant as our protagonist. I liked that much of the conflict concerned Hench dealing with real-world consequences of action-movie decisions.

This judge-a-book-by-its-cover girl is totally sucked in. Please congratulate your cover artist - these are stunning. Grabbing a copy of Castaways now. :)

Eh. It’s the bulk-reader’s dilemma. There are worse problems!

The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes for mysterious, puzzly, romantic fun. I thought this series was over but now I see it has three more books.

Lockwood & Co for Percy Jackson vibes with a five-book run that is a perfectly contained story.

Ooh, The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea, by Axie Oh.

Long Live Evil, by Sarah Rees Brennan. A spoof of/love letter to the current run of romantasies.

Arc of a Scythe trilogy. The first book is just Scythe. It’s YA with dystopia, vibes, but not the kind that reflect too directly on our current steaming pile.

Particularly, Paladin’s Grace for a fantasy-romance with killer world-building, extremely lovable characters, and a certain amount of silliness. If you like that one, she has SO many more.

Have you read any T. Kingfisher yet?

A nest of milk and dark chocolate tagliatelle with a straight red strawberry nestled in the middle.

A kajillion pasta hearts in shades of white and pinks.

Love is in the noods! … Noods are in the air? Hmmm…

Working on a recipe for the chocolate noods that’s worth sharing.

A screenshot showing a book’s availability at five different libraries. It is available now at two, and holds times are listed for each of the other three.

Check with family or friends in other states to see if they’d be interested in being library card buddies. :) Libby lets you manage multiple cards in one place, which is SO GREAT.

Awww, lame. It must a limit set by each library.

Also a mood reader. Useful Libby tools: put a 2026 tag on a ton of books. Scroll that list for what’s both available and fits the day’s mood. Their hold system is nice too: put 10 books on hold; when they all come at the same time (as they do), check 1 out and suspend the rest until you’re ready.