2025 Reading List
16. All About Love: New Visions Bell Hooks
2/5 Reading Sounds: What About Love? by, Heart
15. WATCHMEN writer: Alan Moore illustrator: Dave Gibbons
4/5 Reading Sounds: Get Happy / Happy Days Are Here Again by, Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande
I only kind of remember when the 2009 movie adaptation of Watchmen came out in theaters. The trailers are pretty iconic. The moody noir vibe, the bright yellow logo, Dr. Manhattan (even if I didn’t know his name). I felt aware that this existed, but I don’t think I really knew what it was till recently. I was discussing how crazy I thought it was that someone I knew read Kiss of the Spider Woman in a Florida public high school, when someone mentioned that they read Watchmen in a Chicago public high school. Maybe I should not have been so surprised by this, but I definitely was. I had no idea that Watchmen was, like, studied in lit classrooms. All the sudden this book that had existed on the periphery of my radar became much more enticing, and I ordered a used copy online so I could dig in. And when I tell you, I was completely shocked at what this story turned out to be, that is a complete understatement. Because I truly had no context for what this story was. For one thing, DC comics always makes me think of the Justice League or Teen Titans, these super heroes that exist in made up cities like Metropolis or Gotham. Maybe they are based on real-world places, but Watchmen actually takes place, for the most part, in New York City. It also follows two different superhero teams, not just the Watchmen, although one kind of replaces the other. Only one hero has powers, Dr. Manhattan, while the rest of the Watchmen and their predecessors the Minutemen are merely masked vigilantes (like a million Batmans and one Superman). Dr. Manhattan is able to see the past, future, and present all at once, and understand the atomic makeup and history of everything he comes or ever will come into contact with; he can teleport anywhere instantaneously; and he seemingly cannot be killed. He seems to be a human embodiment of the Manhattan Project, or the Atomic Bomb. The rest of the world is uncomfortable with the presence of Dr. Manhattan, especially as his political alliances are very clearly American, no matter what he may protest. Dr. Manhattan is too far above such human things as politics, but his very continued presence on American soil and in American cities says more than he may feel comfortable admitting. Early in the book, Dr. Manhattan exiles hisself to Mars, leaving the rest of his retired vigilante comrades to fend for themselves in the wake of a string of what investigative protagonist Rorschach has labeled “Masked Murders,” or deadly crimes targeting inactive supers. The problem is, with general anti-superhero sentiment already ubiquitously found across the world, there is not much weight behind solving these murders or protecting the remaining at-risk now-civilians. While tracking down persons of interest and breaking probably a lot of laws, Rorschach is framed for a murder he didn’t commit and thrown in jail, bringing the number of people who care about this evil plan to zero. It is interesting to see the Watchmen used as a metaphor for the US, because that pretty much means that the rest of America is supposed to be a metaphor for the rest of the world. At one point towards the end, they go so far as to compare the Watchmen to the KKK, saying, “The Klan originally came into being because decent people had perfectly reasonable fears for the safety of their persons and belongings when forced into proximity with people from a culture far less morally advanced.” Flip back to chapter 2, where Nite Owl asks the Comedian, among the wreckage of a smoking street he just managed to clear expeditiously via grenade, who exactly they are protecting society from. The Comedian responds, “From themselves.”
14. Wishing on a Star Deborah Gregory
2/5 Reading Sounds: Hung Up by, Madonna
For the longest time, I did not really fuck with digital books at all. I used to have a basic version Kindle in middle school, but I was never able to use it as easily as I was able to read a physical book. It wasn’t until recently that I started really attempting to listen to more audiobooks and keeping more digital books on my phone, especially for the moments I find myself with nothing but my phone to keep me busy. I have some partially-read Lovecraft short-stories (Novels? Not really sure, to be honest. They’re pretty short.) and Wuthering Heights (Also partially-read) downloaded on my phone, but it’s been months/years of minimal progress. None of these would compel me to pick them up when I was waiting in line somewhere or without Wi-Fi, like I initially intended. I finally decided to try downloading something lighter, easier, and more fun. Maybe that would encourage me to actually read whatever it is. Something like The Cheetah Girls. I read this book mostly checking out at the grocery store and while flying. For this specific purpose, it was pretty perfect. I din’t really know what I was expecting going into it, because I didn’t watch the Cheetah Girls on TV, and if I saw any of the movies it was a really long time ago. The main character Galleria (Raven Symoné’s character) is just starting high school with her best friend Chanel, and they are already completely dead set on being superstars when they run into the eventual other Cheetah Girls. I remember a bit of plot from one of the movies about the girls discovering that one of them was adopted, or living in a foster home, or something like that. It was a pretty big deal in the movie, so when Dorinda introduces herself to Galleria and Chanel at the beginning of the book, I was surprised that she immediately told them she was a foster kid. Then come Anginette and Aquanette, the southern gospel-choir twins, and I catch myself wondering, weren’t there only four Cheetah Girls in the movie? (Yes.) Galleria is an extremely likable protagonist. She is the always-obvious leader of the group, with charisma coming out of her ears and some jokes that genuinely made me laugh out loud while reading. She is constantly coming up with new nicknames for her friends, thinking about leopard print, writing new songs, and talking about empowering the people she cares about. You almost forget that all of her friends are her backup singers. A few times she scolds the twins for carrying hot sauce bottles in their purses, until she finally snaps at one point, saying they have to carry packets so the glass won’t break and make a mess on everything. “‘That’s a Cheetah Girls rule!’” Icon. Identity is also very important to Galleria, and as she introduces everyone in the cast, she lets the reader know what their background is (detail-oriented), including any family history she might know off the top of her head (nosy). It is adorable. There is a scene right after they meet the twins, where Galleria says, laughing, that Chanel will bring the piñata to the party or something. It was kind of cringey, but then a chapter or two later, Chanel confronted Galleria about it, and they had a conversation that I wasn’t expecting. The first book ended with their first real performance as the Cheetah Girls, at the Kats and Kittys Klub Halloween Bash, which, outside of Dorinda’s slight wardrobe malfunction, goes off spectacularly. Wonder what happens next, haha.
13. Harrow the Ninth Tamsyn Muir
5/5 Reading Sounds: June 9th Nighttime by, Florist
So what happened was I was actually reading something else. A book. A book I haven’t read before. But then one of my friends got their audiobook of Gideon The Ninth from the library, and just the prospect of someone new to talk to about this series got me so excited that here I am, two weeks later, with an annotated copy of Harrow the Ninth. This has consistently remained my favorite book in the series every time I have revisited it, but this is the first time I have had to so closely examine some of the critiques that I hear people giving this book: namely, that it is slow, boring, and confusing. I actually struggled to get through Gideon the Ninth the first time I read it because I though there were some really wonky pacing issues, and even though it never suffered from that same issue upon reread, that was not an issue that I ran into at all with Harrow; not the first time, and not now. Harrow takes place over the course of two month-long timelines. One timeline takes place in Harrow’s brokenly misremembered alternate history of the events of Canaan House in Gideon the Ninth. In her new version, Ortus Nigenad accompanies her from the Ninth House to the First to serve as her Cavalier Primary. The other timeline takes place in the present time with Harrow aboard the Mithraeum, God’s giant space station for him and his lyctors. In all honesty, when I look at the actual pieces of the plot, I can understand the argument that it is kind of boring. In the way that Gideon felt like a murder whodunnit mystery, Harrow feels like a slow-burn psychological thriller, with Harrow creeping her way through unfamiliar environments and surrounded by incomprehensibly ancient beings of immense power and Ianthe. She spends a lot of this book soaking up information, much like the detective I always wished Gideon would be back at Canaan House. Although, with Gideon’s slack-jawed, wide-eyed perspective, it was difficult to focus her on anything long enough to understand. Meanwhile, Harrow is so neurotically hyper-fixated on every little detail, it kind of goes all the way back around toward being unhelpful again. Some of my favorite scenes are still the soup scene, the other dinner scene, and the Ianthe’s arm scene. I think that the argument that this book is confusing is also a difficult one to refute. Harrow is a mishmash of ideas, hints, allegations, punchlines, nicknames, confessions, setups, and who even knows what else. Annotating during this reread was a very new experience, and it helped organize a lot of thoughts and ideas that I have about the series. First, I tried to mark every main character with a color or something so that I could easily find them when flipping through the book. Then I started tracking certain themes and ideas that I noticed popping up a lot. These included: halves, time, babies/children, the Body speaking, mentions of swords/references to Gideon, notes, and anytime someone said something along the lines of, “this isn’t how it happens.” The connections that started to pop up when I kept track of these themes were very interesting, and they often led me to notice other things that I want to look for on my next reread: brains and animal/predator-prey relationships. I think that Harrow has some of the biggest hints in the entire series so far regarding the plot of Alecto. Augustine asks John how he could have possibly manipulated Alecto into lying to him and the rest of the lyctors about pretending to be John’s bodyguard so nobody would realize she was his cavalier. What did John say to Alecto that convinced her to keep her mouth shut when all her friends started killing each other. Is that part of why she swore an oath to Anastasia so long ago? So many questions.
12. Where the Hell Is Nirvana? Champ Wongsatayanont
4/5 Reading Sounds: I Know The Way by, Dances with Water
This novelette follows Garmuti, an official employee of the Karma Calculation Department (Thailand Division), as he tries to scam his way to Nirvana. It was like Office Space meets The Matrix or something like that. It starts out with what looks like a nutrition label and turns out to be a daily record of karma points earned and lost by some poor Earthly soul for Garmuti to tally up and deliver their end-of-day karmic total. Garmuti desperately wants to ascend to Nirvana, but he is close to the cutoff of 1,000,000 karmic points, at which point he would descend back to humanity, becoming even further from his goal. The humanization and humor in this was pretty fun, but it was very confusing at times. There are a lot of Buddhist religious terms that I found myself googling, and there were some words that I googled and was unable to figure out what they were from. I may have been googling the wrong thing, or these elements may have been total fantasy. Garmuti is so close to descending back to humanity that he has even begun experiencing such revolting earthly sensations as hunger and lust. At one point, Garmuti’s manager tells him that it is easier for humans than devas or devis to reach Nirvana, because the human experience is so key to the attainment of spiritual enlightenment. Someone else suggests that Nirvana doesn’t even exist, since anyone who continues ascending is not likely to come back for a visit or to chat about what happened to them. Nevertheless, Garmuti soon figures out a way to skim fractions of karmic points from an influx generated by his only-slightly-scummy Anumodana Tax. From now on, any time a human says Anumodana, they receive +2 karma points, and with Garmuti getting pieces of every single instance, he jettisons quickly through the layers of heavens still remaining between himself and Nirvana. Right at the moment of enlightenment, however, the story crashes around him, and he finds himself burning in hell, paying off a debt of -999,999,999,999 karmic points. Overall, I really enjoyed the story and the storytelling. Writing about a celestial dimension, and levels of celestial dimensions at that, getting more convoluted and dazzling with every step, is a hard task, and it is handled beautifully. Cosmic oceans holding universes behind a cosmic wall compared are compared to bathtubs, bringing the overwhelming right back down to Earth.
11. Kiss of the Spider Woman Manuel Puig
4/5 Reading Sounds: I Dreamed A Dream by, Anne Hathaway
My BFF gave me this book when we were like 17 years old, and I didn’t make it more than a few pages in until a few months ago. She read it for school (thank you for the starter annotations, love you <3), and I remember her telling me how good it was. The writing style is very similar to a play, mostly written in script-like lines of dialogue. It reads like a script essentially–noticeably missing, however, any sort of stage directions. Molina and Valentin are cell mates in an Argentine prison, and the majority of the play is written in unnamed lines of dialogue. Molina often spends pages and pages retelling the plots of his favorite movies to Valentin to pass the time. Things start to unravel around who these prisoners are. Valentin is a political prisoner, the member of some unclear revolutionary group trying to overthrow the Argentine government; Molina is gay, obsessed with fantasy movies and ambiguously charged with influencing a minor. The book often follows a stream-of-consciousness structure, so I am unsure if there was more explanation of Molina’s arrest, but I finished the book still very unclear on exactly why he was imprisoned in the first place (outside of just being gay). This stream-of-consciousness style came out in two main sections of the book: Molina’s movie retellings and these weird sections of character backstory that flipped into like some sort of new third-person omniscient POV that kind of threw me off. Some seemed to be from Valentin’s perspective and some from Molina’s, but there was no solid indicator either way. These sections were important to the story, and as much as I tried to hurry through them because they were hard to read, I tried to catch myself and absorb some of what was going on. Molina discusses the struggles of being a flamboyant, feminine, homosexual man in 1970s military-occupied Argentina. It’s pretty relatable, oftentimes bordering on homophobic and transphobic. There’s a lot of self-hatred in this book, which is at odds with the idolization of female starlets and actresses whose whole shtick was being magnificent. Molina’s internalized homophobia and the unrealized transphobia and misogyny responsible for it are not specifically addressed for the most part, but Valentin is a surprising foil to these themes. He pushes back on Molina throughout the book, never willing to accept these “romantic” or “traditional” views as final. This conflict is further investigated through a series of connected footnotes that appear throughout the novel. These footnotes are psychosocial in nature, detailing the earliest Western thinkers on and writings about the origin of homosexuality. Monotheism, and Judeo-Christian religion specifically, take a lot of heat in these footnotes. Puig quotes scientists like D. J. West, Sigmund Freud, and Anneli Taube, citing an ongoing scientific conversation (or argument). They go back and forth on topics like sexual repression, gender roles, nature versus nurture, and more. These footnotes are smartly placed within the narrative to provide additional depth to the story as it progresses. About halfway through the novel, it is revealed that Molina is a spy who has been planted in Valentin’s cell to get close to him and find out any information possible about the resistance. In return, Molina has been promised a pardon, freedom, and the chance to see and take care of his elderly mother once more. Molina is faced with the decision to betray his new friend for the same government that he is already currently being oppressed by, or he can learn how to live for something bigger than himself–like that silly Valentin keeps talking about. I didn’t think I liked this book that much till I got to the end, and then I cried so much in the last few pages it was making it hard to see. I would rate this five stars, except for the confusing stream-of-consciousness scenes that I struggled through a lot. I have a feeling that rereading this would be less confusing.
10. Nona the Ninth Tamsyn Muir
5/5 Reading Sounds: The Firebird Suite: VII. Infernal Dance by, Igor Stravinsky & Columbia Symphony Orchestra
“John loved her. She was John’s cavalier. She loved John. For she so loved the world that she had given them John. For the world so loved John that she had been given. For John had so loved her that he had made her she. For John had loved the world” (pg. 471). So this is the third time that I’ve read Nona the Ninth. It’s also the first time that I’ve read Nona the Ninth on audiobook. Correction: the epilogue of Nona the Ninth was actually my first taste of the Locked Tomb audiobook series, but this is the first time that I’ve listened to it on audiobook all the way through. I also think that this has been one of the most rewarding rereads of the entire series for me so far. The last time that I read this book was last year, and at the time I had nobody to talk to about it. I think that the bottle-up of confusion and overstimulation which seem at this point to be hallmarks of Muir’s world building was only exacerbated by the fact that the only ideas I was bouncing around were kind of disorganizedly ricocheting around in my own head with no outlet (outside of you, Aaronaads.com, how could I forget you?). Now, being able to call my sisters and talk whenever I find something new makes it a lot easier to filter through everything. Or maybe it just provides new filters to read through. This was also the first time that I stopped to savor the short story tucked in the back of the book behind the epilogue. “The Unwanted Guest” follows Palamedes during the battle for Naberius’s body with Ianthe, and it is written in a script format. While sometimes, the format shift could be distracting, it felt weirdly natural in this instance. While Palamedes isn’t the strongest necromancer, and he isn’t the most laugh-out-loud comedian either, but he takes the spotlight in this story so smoothly it could leave readers wondering where his POV chapters have been hiding all this time. The premise of this short story is pretty simple. If Pal can correctly guess which one of seven on-stage coffins in Ianthe’s mind-stage contains the body of Naberius Tern, he gets to take the reins. I guess, we know at this point, starting the short story, after the events of Nona, that he wins the battle for control. But that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable to watch as he skillfully peels away the layers of sarcasm and irony cocooning Ianthe like a meatball. She literally murdered Babs and left Corona, sobbing and hysterical, on the floor of Canaan house amidst the wreckage of basically everything they’d spent their lives working for together up till that point. She talks about knowing Babs since they were born, but maintains he was nothing more than a “perfect tool” that was always meant to be used at the right time. Why should she regret his murder? Pal gets Ianthe to all but confess that Corona is part of her endgame, and thus immune from any collateral damage she has forecasted. This puts Corona in a powerful position during Alecto; she could betray all of Blood of Eden, Paul, Harrow, Kiriona…or she could betray her sister. But the sides are getting kinda too far away from each other to have any hope of Corona bringing them together again. Pal also pushes the idea of soul permeability—to Ianthe’s dismay. It is much harder to continue stomaching and enslaving your childhood best friend’s eternally undead soul to power your immortality and god-like necromantic powers after you realize it’s simultaneously forever gooing and osmosis-ing all over your own soul. It also begs the questions, how much have the lyctors changed since their first ascensions? How much has John changed, or do those rules apply to him? Did Harrow’s soul change after coming into contact with Alecto? I need to chill. I don’t know when the next book is coming out. Thanks Ms Muir. ILY.
9. Everything I Never Told You Celeste Ng
2/5 Reading Sounds: Smoked by, Hayden Pedigo
I recognized the cover in a neighborhood library, because I’m pretty sure this was Tumblr famous. Atmospherically, it’s reminiscent of some timely YA novels of a similar viral origin–thinking along the lines of We Were Liars and 13 Reasons Why (although, I am pretty sure this is not a YA novel). Following the Lee family, an interracial couple with three kids, across generations leading up to sixteen-year-old Lydia’s suicide, this novel feels like a family biopsy, dissecting the tragic event that forever changes the way James and Marilyn live with and love each other as well as their children. The two references I listed above are also notably not both entirely positive. We Were Liars is harmless, and pretty good as far as really short psychological-thriller-family-dramas go; but 13 Reasons Why gets into trauma porn territory, and that is where I think this book goes sort of awry. It’s not that these situations aren’t realistic, relevant, appropriate, etc., but the presentation starts to feel weird when some incredibly impactful and relationship-changing plots like an entire affair gets wrapped up with a sentence to make way for another cursory chapter to wrap up some main plot stuff with a telenovela-worthy scene that will leave many readers wondering, “is she really pushing a love story right now?” I think the largest issues in this book were abandonment issues. They were everywhere. James describes trying to get over the pain of Marilyn unexpectedly leaving him and the children like pressing on a bruise repeatedly till the pain becomes less and less. Only this pain wouldn’t go away as many times as he pressed and pressed and pressed. These themes started to feel heavy, drowning, suffocating… Probably on purpose, I’m sure this was on purpose. (Pointedly not mentioning spoilers). (Vomits). This book was pretty good, and it honestly kind of made me nostalgic for unhinged mid-2010s Tumblr, but this just isn’t something I reach for much anymore. Is there a place for this type of fiction? Yes. Is that place back in the neighborhood library to casually traumatize someone else? Yes. Good luck fellow wanderers.
8. The Westing Game Ellen Raskin
4/5 Reading Sounds: American Teenager by, Ethel Cain
I finished Empire of Silence on a plane ride to visit family, and when I landed I didn’t have any other book to start. I found an old copy of The Westing Game with some reading class assignments from my little sisters tucked in the middle. I kept the hand-decorated construction paper detective notebooks as bookmarks and jumped into this book which I don’t think I’ve read since elementary school. This is a whodunnit novel, something I’ve been reading quite a lot of lately now that I think about it. Gideon the Ninth, Darkly… One of my favorite tropes from this genre of mystery novels has to be the character lists, and The Westing Game is no exception. The first chapter ends with a list of all the new tenants who have been invited to live in the luxuriously glossy new Sunset Towers, a new apartment building (with uniformed doorman and maid service) just across from the old Westing house. The occupancy is listed out by unit, even detailing the coffeeshop, podiatrist office, and Chinese restaurant run by various tenants. Soon after moving in, sixteen seemingly unrelated individuals are invited to bear witness to the final will and testament of Sam Westing, the millionaire who has left two million dollars as well as the truth behind his death up to this group of unfortunate new apartment neighbors. The introduction to this 2004 Modern Puffin Classics edition is written by the book’s editor Ann Durrell, who remembers, “She said that she wrote for the child in herself, but for once I think she was wrong. I think she wrote for the adult in children. She never disrespected them or ‘wrote down,’ because she didn’t know how.” I don’t think that I read the introduction when I first read this book back in school, but it is interesting to read now, because I certainly had a different experience reading this time around. There are layers of running commentary throughout the novel about capitalism, classism, racism, ableism, misogyny, so many things that I have no recollection of discussing with my 5th grade class. Sam Westing is a polarizing figure in the novel, this man with such uncertain and unbelievable ties to this unlikely group of players. Who actually knew Westing? Who would have benefitted from his death? At times, it feels like Raskin is putting all the characters in her hands like dice and giving them a good shake. A fitting metaphor for the game-loving Sam Westing. Coming out of this book, my favorite characters were definitely the Wexler sisters, Turtle and Angela. I have never written a book before, but this is the kind of book that makes me want to write a book.
7. Empire of Silence Christopher Ruocchio
2/5 Reading Sounds: Man of the Year by, Lorde
I don’t really know where to begin with this one. I think I was recommended this series from the same TikTok account that convinced me to read The Locked Tomb series. I had this idea that epic sci-fi fantasy might be my next big thing, but I’m not sure if that hypothesis was proven or not. This book has taken me months to get through, and it seems as though I’ve been complaining about it the whole time. Empire of Silence follows Hadrian “Had” Marlowe as he is banished from his home planet by his noble family and sent to study with the government’s religious sect known as the Chantry. Luckily, he manages to escape this predicament, instead ending up on some backwater planet called Emesh where he spends most of this book trying to survive the unfamiliar atmosphere. The cover of this book brags about being “Sci-fi at its most genuinely epic,” but this could be debatable. On one hand, the scale of things felt thoughtful. We didn’t jump to a million planets, and even the travel from his home planet Delos to the main setting of this book, Emesh, felt weighted. It was a big step, and it took a long time. There were a few scenes that really stood out to me, like when they first discussed the Cielcin in-depth. At the beginning of the book, they just seem like a scary background presence, but before long, Hadrian starts dropping some bombs. He says that over the course of humanity’s conquest of the known universe, they have encountered forty-something forms of intelligent life and enslaved every one of them–until the Cielcin. The Cielcin are tall, pale, sharp-toothed, vaguely cannibalistic, and most importantly, inhuman. The Chantry has spent all of Had’s life demonizing the alien Cielcin race and preaching humanity’s god-given right to conquer and rule over them. On Emesh, Hadrian is forced to live in the poor conditions and squalor created by that planet’s ruling house, he is forced to fight in the coliseum-like war-games between the enslaved and celebrity classes of fighters, and he eventually comes face-to-face with the planet’s own native species. There is a lot to sift through, and it should have been exciting. But for some reason, I thought it would be much faster-paced than it was. I was expecting an epic adventure story, yet this felt more like a character study. Many sci-fi and fantasy series are slow in the beginning, so I am struggling to decide whether or not to continue with the second book.
6. The Nölmyna David Erik Nelson
4/5 Reading Sounds: I’m Still Here (Jim’s Theme) by, John Rzeznick
This was a really cute story I found on Reactormag.com, a welcome distraction from my current read (Empire of Silence). This short story follows the ex-co-host from a haunted house reality show as she finds out that her recently disappeared cousin has more than likely fallen victim to his haunted Ikea chair. Funny, bizarre, unsettling, this story was a quick read during a slow work morning, and it definitely scratches the magic realism itch that has a habit of sneaking up on me every once in a while. The author is Jewish as well as the protagonist and her family. I don’t see a lot of stories about Black Jews, as pointed out by the protagonist herself, and this was interesting for sure. So many Jewish holidays really lean into the idea of Jews being on the outskirts of society and having to fight for their right to simply exist. It is ironic when folks are confronted with the idea that Jews may also be the perpetrators of social isolation or religious/ethnic discrimination. The characters in this story aren’t white enough to avoid the hate sent their way for simply being something else, and they aren’t seemingly Jewish or Black enough to seek shelter within those communities or safe spaces either. They are united through the experience of rooting through the homes of others to debunk their irrational fears and made-up hauntings, as well as that of the chair that this story is named for. The police don’t seem to care about what really happened; rather, they are more focused on tearing up homes and planning stake-outs in order to pinpoint evidence or suspects that don’t exist. It is left to the main character and her missing cousin on the outskirts of this situation–that should in all honesty definitely center them–to scrabble for pieces and understand this breach in the cosmos that they have unknowingly stumbled upon. Overall, I thought this was a really fun sci-fi story, and I would be very interested to check out more writings from this author in the future.
5. Gideon the Ninth Tamsyn Muir
5/5 Reading Sounds: Memory by, Elaine Paige
This is now the third time that I have read Gideon the Ninth by, Tamsyn Muir, and it somehow gets better every single time. Perhaps it is my personal reading style that I miss so many things on the first and second read-throughs, but I just feel like I discover so much every time I reread this series. I remember feeling that this novel was somewhat inaccessible for a good chunk of the time I was reading it the first time, and it is very satisfying to find upon revisiting it that there has always been more than enough intrigue here to go around once you are properly equipped to discern it. I have to assume that anything that is at this point unexplained will be directly relevant to the plot of Alecto the Ninth, whenever Muir sees fit to birth her. Some moments that I really enjoyed during this reread: Palamedes’ rant against Judith after she tried to challenge the Sixth for their keys; imagining Jeanemarry sounding like Puss in Boots; everything that came out of Cytherea’s or Teacher’s mouths. At one point, right after Gideon finds Protesilaus’s head in Harrowhark’s closet and runs off to snitch to Palamedes, Camilla is then sent to gather Harrow herself while Palamedes has this truly heartwarming scene with Gideon. She tells him about how she snitched on pre-adolescent Harrow (karma) to her parents for opening the Locked Tomb right before they and their cavalier primary Mortus hanged themselves in shame; Palamedes becomes the first person to ever tell Gideon that the choices of adults are not the faults of children, and then at some point they end up kind of awkwardly holding hands. Right then, Camilla walks back in with Harrow literally handcuffed to her, and Gideon freaks out thinking they are holding hands too. That was kinda funny, but I need a short story explaining how Camilla managed to handcuff Harrowhark Nonagesimus to her. There were also some frustrating moments, like wanting to shake everyone for not paying any attention to Ianthe. Towards the end she points out the very simple mathematics that everyone seems to overlook in their most holy of histories: 16 servants went to Canaan House all those years ago, and only 8 Lyctors emerged. What happened to their cavaliers? While I see how the reader is never given enough information to ask this question on their own until Ianthe mentions it, I genuinely do not understand how Ianthe is the first person in all of this book to ask this question. Before reading this, I kept saying that the Eighth House is not present enough in the currently-released books, which leads me to believe that they have a bigger role to play in Alecto, but I finished the book second-guessing this assumption. Silas Octakiseron and Colum the Eighth are not absent from this book, they are merely annoying in this book. Harrow leaves them in the background mostly, and they are completely absent from Nona. which kind of makes me think that they might somehow still be alive. If they are, I would be really annoyed to see them in Alecto. But maybe she could become the second zombie hottie to punch Colum in the face. Overall, I really like reading this book, and it seems to get better every time I come back to it. I am kinda getting sick of writing about it after every time though. Haha.
4. The Hot Zone Richard Preston
2/5 Reading Sounds: Toxic by, Britney Spears
The last time my grandpa came to visit me, he bought me this book and told me it was one of the scariest books he’s ever read. On the back of the book, Stephen King says the same thing. They are both right, because this book made me feel physically ill at multiple points while reading. At one point, I was reading about a baseball sized pocket of blood collecting beneath the skin of a dead ebola monkey’s inner thigh while sitting in the middle seat on an airplane. When I read that, seated between two strangers, I audibly gagged, and I am audibly gagging writing about it now. The Hot Zone details the discovery of ebola, as well as that of some of its closest relatives, for additional context. Preston goes back to Africa to study the origins of ebola in Kenya, very near the birthplace of AIDS. He follows multiple outbreaks that occurred before the virus was ever seen in the US. Later in the story, the US Army becomes involved when an ebola outbreak occurs in a single DC primate quarantine house, designed to hold monkeys that are coming into the US from around the world before being distributed throughout the country. Of the 100 monkeys who were exposed to the virus, 29 of them died. After, all 450 monkeys in the quarantine house were euthanized. The United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) is a significant player in all of this, as well as the CDC. By the end of the book, we find out that the strain seen in these monkeys just so happened to be non-lethal in humans, with all who were exposed showing no symptoms, and thus a major global health crisis was averted. The scary part is how little we know about these viruses and their spontaneous ability to jump from host species to host species. Preston brings up examples like human ebola outbreaks and the AIDS epidemic, saying that if a strain of ebola as dangerous to humans as the one faced by USAMRIID in DC was to monkeys, we could see something like the Black Plague again in our lifetimes. It’s also somewhat important to note that there are several instances in this book where people contradict each other and the actual events might be a left unclear. However, most of the book is informed from US Army employees, and they will always serve the best interest of the Army. It feels like there were several instances of USAMRIID employees who were interviewed for this book hiding information or misleading with less-than-true information. I believe that they were a lot more conniving then they wanted Richard Preston to think. Many of the questions from this book that have not been answered yet are chalked up to the fact that researching these avenues of thought could be prosecuted as conspiracy to commit biological warfare, and the US Army doesn’t engage in biological warfare. So everyone is supposed to believe that even though they strong-armed the CDC out of the way so they could handle this without supervision, the US Army wants everyone to believe that after going out of their jurisdiction to take control of this station, while unsupervised they got rid of everything they were supposed to.
3. The Bands of Mourning Brandon Sanderson
4/5 Reading Sounds: Dlp 2.1 by, William Basinski
The Cosmere is huge, and everyone says to start with Mistborn: Era 1. Well, not everyone, but that’s where I started. So here I am, now finished with both Era 1 and the first 3 of 4 books in Mistborn: Era 2. The thing is, Era 1 was pretty good. It can be hard to judge fairly with all the clout that Sanderson has gotten since publishing The Stormlight Archives, but the original trilogy consisting of The Final Empire, The Well of Ascension, and The Hero of Ages was genuinely delightful. Slow at times, and kind of cloyingly political, it held my attention and genuinely provided some yearbook-worthy moments. Era 2 has felt kind of slow in comparison. The first book The Alloy of Law feels like a 350 page prologue. Shadows of Self was around 400 pages and finally dropped hints of a larger plot beyond the pilot episode droppings of book 1. Book 3 The Bands of Mourning picks up with a boring wedding that’s been getting planned since the first book, he said with enthusiasm. Steris was introduced as more of a political ally than anything in earlier books, and there is not much emotional investment here. However, from this point on, the story only got better and better. In classic cartoonish, western, Era 2 fashion, Wax shows up to his own wedding late (just in time), Mr. Incredible style. Of course, a water tower then falls through the church roof and our cast is soon whisked off on an adventure instead. This time, they are traveling outside of Elendel to New Seran, a city at the very southern edge of the Basin. The Kandra have asked Marasi for her help searching for one of their own researchers who has come back from the far southern mountains missing one of his hemalurgic spikes and raving about the mythical Bands of Mourning, rumored to gift their users Allomantic powers regardless of their natural Allomantic inclination or lack thereof. Wax–who turned down the Kandra when they asked him (before Marasi)–conveniently remembers that super important political thing he has to do that is just coincidentally in the same exact place. Wax is so silly like that. Wayne, Steris, and MeLaan come along too, thankfully so, because they kind of steal the show all book. The group dialogue is fast and quippy, and three books in, there is a sense of earned familiarity. Now that they are outside of Elendel, they can see and discuss how central the city has become to the entire Basin. Are the outer Basin dwellers right in their feelings of resentment toward their capital city for so strictly overseeing all economic and political goings on within the Basin? If the Bands of Mourning were real and Allomantic powers were something that could be purchased or gifted on a whim, what would that bode for these political undercurrents? In addition to the inconceivable power of the Bands of Mourning, this book introduces flying ships and an entire uncontacted civilization who worship the Lord Ruler from Era 1 living to the south of the Basin’s borders. The end of Era 1 hinted at the eventual future introduction of firearms and motor vehicles into the Mistborn universe, so it is exciting to see this idea of technological advancement being used within the actual meat of Era 2, rather than just as a cliffhanger teaser at the end of a series to leave readers checking Sanderson’s Twitter for the another update. The end of this book was also very satisfying. There are many people who say that, out of all of his books, this is one where Sanderson starts introducing big, overarching, interconnecting Cosmere-esque ideas. Now, as a Sanderson reader who has only gotten through Mistborn: Era 1 and part of 2, I couldn’t tel you what those ideas are, necessarily, but there are some cool fucking scenes at the end of this book. Wax dies and has a whole “Welcome to being dead,” walk down the upper atmosphere with Sazed/Harmony which was absolutely riveting (and also probably related to bigger Cosmere things?). There was a moment right when Marasi picked up the Bands of Mourning herself, and I thought she was going to become a god like Sazed. Wax and Sazed/Harmony saw the flash from way above the planet and Sazed said it was “‘Trust.’” I totally thought that Trust was gonna be another god like Harmony, and Marasi was ascending. But I guess the Bands of Mourning aren’t infinite, they are just simple metalminds with enough power to very briefly trick readers into thinking Marasi might be a god. Overall, very exciting and fun, I would love to finish this series with book 4 The Lost Metal–even though the copy I found doesn’t match the others I’ve been reading. We will see at that point if I’m feeling up to those big boys from the Stormlight Archive.
2. Darkly Marisha Pessl
4/5 Reading Sounds: Dark But Just A Game by, Lana Del Rey
Marisha Pessl has had my heart ever since I first picked up Night Film, what, almost ten years ago now. Jeez. Since releasing Night Film, Pessl has stuck to Young Adult fiction, with Neverworld Wake and now her newest release Darkly. Her signature flare for the obsessively detailed and neurotically organized is somewhat stifled within the YA genre; extensive footnotes and meandering plot lines are celebrated hallmarks of her adult novels, but this characteristic lavish sprawl is noticeably absent. Night Film often spent chapters and chapters precariously creeping through the story like a confused video game avatar, interspersed with web pages, letters, and various media to further cement the story in reality. Darkly keeps the letters and other media created for the book, but it loses much of that addicting “fluff” (for lack of a better word) that fans of Pessl have come to love in her adult works. That being said, every single sentence of this novel packs a punch and hurtles the reader ever closer to the end–as good YA should, honestly; and mixing a Marisha Pessl-level psychological thriller with the pacing of a modern YA novel is a crackhead approach to storytelling that I am fully in support of. Much like Night Film, Darkly is about a genius creative with a cult following that kind of gets of away from them. In this case, Darkly follows the elusive Louisiana Veda, the late mastermind behind Darkly board games which swept the globe by storm and garnered themselves and their infamous creator a dangerous reputation. Arcadia “Dia” Gannon has been selected to participate in a highly competitive Darkly internship program this summer, alongside 6 other high schoolers from around the world. They are flown off to the Darkly factory and briefed on the situation: Someone has stolen a secret original Darkly game and is holding secret playings with the local children. One missing local child–gone from his room without a trace–is suspected to be somehow connected to these underground gamers. Dia and the other interns feel like CLUE characters, and you know what? The entire book feels like a love letter to the cult classic, or maybe one to cult classics in general. Pessl does seem to fascinate over the enigmatic, and her most iconic characters are inevitably portrayed in bits and pieces, through third or fourth party information: stories of stories. The interns definitely read as two-dimensional as the aesthetically complementary characters in the games they obsess over, but it’s ok because Pessl posted literal board game character cards for them on her Instagram. Self aware queen. What makes up for this is the legend, the mythos, and the mystery she summons around characters like Louisiana Veda. There is a revelry in the unmasking of the unmaskable and the knowing of the unknowable, but it is a short-lived and sober one. Pessl’s stories are always decadently layered, literary baklava dripping with intrigue and sprinkled with whimsy. There is a delight in the story itself that encourages readers to latch onto the wildest theories imaginable. Nothing is impossible in a book like Darkly, because there the implausible is already legend. This feels like a technically perfect novel, and I only give it 4 stars because it didn’t lend itself to the lingering and snooping that Night Film and Special Topics in Calamity Physics so readily do. And I didn’t realize till halfway through that this is the first book in a planned series. There will be at least one more book according to the same Instagram post referenced above, and I will once again buy it on publication day. Live, Laugh, Marisha Pessl.
1. The Mists of Avalon Marion Zimmer Bradley
3/5 Reading Sounds: Look Mama, I’m Trying to Change by, Dale Hollow
Before I can really review this book, I have to talk about the author. When I read The Bright Sword last year, the empathetic portrayal of Morgan le Fay was a shock, and my mom encouraged me to read this book because it more closely follows her story. After starting this book, I went back to the acknowledgments in The Bright Sword to make sure that I didn’t miss the part where he mentions The Mists of Avalon or its author as inspiration. I checked all the extra pages too, and then I started to Google. I found out about the allegations against the late Marion Zimmer Bradley and her husband (1 2 3), and it deeply affected the way that I read this book. There is a lot of child abuse and sexual violence in this story, and although many will say, “But it is historically accurate,” it is still weird as fuck that a story about that stuff is written by a child abuser and sexual predator. That being said, it pains me to admit how long this book took me to finish. I thought for sure I would be able to finish this in 2024 with enough time to possibly read something else after (if not more than one somethings). That, apparently, did not happen, and the only book I was able to read toward the end of the year aside from this one was Harrow the Ninth, which I was listening to on audiobook when I was driving or otherwise unable to read with my hands. I began reading this book in October, and it wasn’t a lack of enjoyment that caused it to take such a long time; it was genuinely the density and volume of the story. The plot in this is huge, and I was unprepared coming into it for how comprehensive the existing Arthurian canon is. I read The Bright Sword last year, and that was kind of my first introduction into “King Arthur” stories, but I didn’t realize how much of that stuff was actually canon. When Morgan le Fay shows up in The Bright Sword, she complains about basically everything that happens in The Mists of Avalon, but it sounded so out of pocket that I didn’t realize she was just describing what is the actual canonical story of King Arthur. It is also worth noting that The Bright Sword happened kinda sorta outside of the actual Arthurian legend itself, while The Mists of Avalon is just a retelling of the classic story from the female characters’ perspectives. At the beginning of this book, I was extremely compelled. I flew through the first 200-300 pages, and I felt genuine interest in the plot and the conversations that the characters were having with each other, particularly surrounding Christianity. But the more they had these conversations, the more confused I became as to how we were moving further and further away from resolving the conversation. It seemed that they were saying the same things over and over and over again. Gwenhwyfar’s whole “How can a good Christian not be an oppressor?” sob story was old before it started, and that’s how most of the big ideas running through this story played out. Morgaine is struggling to come to terms with the fact that nobody is super down with the idea of her having an incest baby with her brother, and she spends the whole book asking why it couldn’t have been her cousin Lancelet who she is in love with. Everyone around her, is becoming more and more Christian with the passing years. Even Arthur and Lancelet, both born of the same old lineage as Morgaine herself, are moving away from the religion and culture that they were born into and adopting these new Christian tenements. Morgaine doesn’t want to be left in the past with the mists of Avalon, forgotten, but it seems that her friends and family are not going to bring her with them into the future if she keeps up with this whorish pagan incest baby shit. These motifs were nearly omnipresent, getting sliced, diced, and dissected through every scene of the book, but there seemed to be very little progress or growth in them. The things these characters say, do, and believe at the beginning of the book are startlingly similar to those at the end, and for such a long book, this is frustrating. Morgaine’s big come-to-Jesus moment (-.-) at the end of the book was when she realizes that the Goddess has always been present in the Virgin Mary… But, like, haven’t they literally all been saying that since the beginning of the fucking book? Right? My mom told me that this is her favorite book of all time, that it has meant something very different to her every time she has reread it in each decade of her life. I don’t necessarily know if I would read this book again, but I am interested in reading further in the series eventually.