I haven’t done one of these in a while! Here are some books I’ve read so far this year that I enjoyed. I don’t think I have especially wild or interesting taste in books and mostly read science fiction and fantasy, but maybe you’ll discover something new to read at your local library or indie bookstore. Links usually go to Bookshop.org, which directs a little bit of revenue to your local bookstore of choice and not Amazon. Sorry this is so long, I’ll do these on a more quarterly basis in the future. You can always see what else I’ve read on Storygraph.

Hogfather by Terry Pratchett – I had started this one in December of course but didn’t finish it until the beginning of the year. I have to imagine that everyone reading this knows about Discworld and folks know if they like it or not but I’ll be another person recommending it. I keep meaning to read the entire series.

The Skull by Jon Klassen – I’m going to include some kids books in this post as well. I have been a fan of Jon Klassen’s for a while and this is a good one. It’s a bit longer than your typical picture book and has lots of lovely art. It’s also fun reading something to the kids that feels a little darker and creepier but really isn’t actually dark. This one is about a little girl and a talking skull getting in and out of trouble and my kids liked it too.

To Clutch a Razor by Veronica Roth – The second novella in the Curse Bearer series. Veronica Roth is most known for the Divergent series, which I’ve never read, but I liked the two novellas in this series. They’re pretty dark fantasy stories based on Slavic folklore but set in the modern day and queer. I suspect the Divergent books are maybe not really in my age range but if she writes more in this series I’ll read them.

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller – Reread this one after I originally read it 20 years ago and I still like it. I think I’ve heard the sequel isn’t great so I probably won’t bother with that one.

A Mouthful of Dust by Nghi Vo – The 6th novella in the Singing Hills cycle about a wandering cleric. I’ve been a fan of all of these and this latest one was great too. The novellas are written so they can be read in any order so you can just grab whatever one you see first at the library.

Doctor Who: Scratchman by Tom Baker and James Goss – Yeah that’s right, a Doctor Who novel. This one is an adaptation of a Doctor Who movie script that Tom Baker wrote in the 70s and never got produced. It’s just a fun Doctor Who story with the 4th Doctor, nothing mind blowing or any weird lore stuff getting made up here. I listened to the audiobook version narrated by Tom Baker and from reading the Storygraph reviews and Doctor Who wiki, he ad-libbed a line or two, continuing the theory that he really just is The Doctor in real life.

Disability Visibility, edited by Alice Wong – This is a collection of essays from folks writing about their experiences being disabled and living in the United States. Can’t recommend this one enough to people (like me) who need to see the world from the perspective of folks living with disabilities.

Hardcore Gaming 101 Presents: The Guide to Beat-Em-Ups Volume 1, edited by Kurt Kalata – Do you like games such as Double Dragon and River City Rampage? Good news, this is a book about a ton of those types of games. I got a DRM-free copy of this through an eBook bundle that isn’t available.

She Who Knows by Nnedi Okorafor – Africanfuturist novella coming of age story about a teenage girl. I guess this one is set in a previously established universe but I didn’t know that before reading this and I enjoyed it.

The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses by Malka Older – Basically if Holmes and Watson were lesbians in space solving mysteries. It’s the third novella in the series and my favorite so far. In fact, I want to reread the first two now because while I did like those, I enjoyed this one much more and I don’t know if I was just in a bad mood reading those or what.

John Candy: A Life in Comedy by Paul Myers – Recommended if you’re interested in actor John Candy or SCTV. It dives deeply into that comedy scene and even with it being about an actor that everyone seemed to love working with it still had a lot of interesting things to explore. This was written by the brother of actor Mike Myers, who also wrote a good book about The Kids in the Hall.

Bloodchild and Other Stories by Octavia E. Butler – Turns out that beloved author Octavia E. Butler was also very good at writing short stories.

The Deep by Rivers Solomon – Novella about mermaid descendants of African slave women. I listened to the audiobook version narrated by Daveed Diggs and music by Clipping and felt that it elevated an already great story.

Wash Day Diaries by Jamila Rowser and Robyn Smith – Just a really nice slice of life graphic novel about four women that was on the recommendation shelf at my local library.

To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers – a novella about a crew in space looking for habitable worlds. I think this is only the second or third thing I’ve read by Becky but I loved it.

Fresh Start by Gale Galligan – Lovely graphic novel for kids about a kid who has moved to a new area and is starting over at a new school. I think a lot of kids (or I did anyway) will relate to being kind of a dork trying to fit in somewhere new. There’s so many great graphic novels for kids being made these days.

The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On by Franny Choi – Poetry collection by an author I’ve been a longtime fan of, with most of the poems being focused on the ends of worlds and apocalypses. I actually did the audiobook for this one and I would recommend it if you’re someone who wants to read more poetry but maybe struggles with how to read them.

Bi: The Hidden Culture, History, and Science of Bisexuality by Julia Shaw – Well written and lots of good info. I thought some sections like the history were more interesting than others. It being on the shorter side prevents it from delving deeper into other topics and a lot won’t be new info to bi/pan folks but I think it’s still nice to read and validating

The Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie – The second Poirot book. I actually read the first book in the series this year as well and liked it but I think this is when the series starts to figure out the form more and really takes off. We all love a man with a funny mustache who solves mysteries. This one is actually public domain now.

Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems by June Jordan – She’s so good. I don’t think you should really just sit down and read a collection of a poet’s works in the order of release like I did but occasionally reading a poem here in there by someone this good is lovely.

Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky – You’d think I would have read this by now given how much I love the film Stalker and wrote a ttrpg inspired by it but no. Of course I loved it! I listened to an audiobook narrated by Robert Forster and he had the perfect voice for this story too.

Even Though I Knew the End by C.L. Polk – Just a very good supernatural noir novella with lesbians.

The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa – Saw it in a list of reads a book club in a discord I’m in is doing and holy shit. I feel like I should be over Orwellian novels at this point but this had such a dreamlike logic to it that I found it to be very compelling. Will be thinking about it for a while.

Nobody’s Baby by Olivia Waite – Second book in the Dorothy Gentlemen series, a sci-fi mystery series of novellas. It’s just a nice, breezy mystery about a baby that is suddenly found on a ship and the series does some interesting stuff in its sci-fi setting.

Well, that’s all for this post. I realize that’s a ton of books but when you account for it being half a year of reads and so many of these being novellas, I don’t think it’s as bonkers as it looks. I hope you find something good to read!

Looks like I did a post on stuff I liked reading in the Summer, so here’s another one. Books? They’re good! I’m not listing everything I read because I decided to log even the chapter books I read to my kids on Storygraph, and it would be incredibly tedious for people to look at that. I don’t have amazing taste in books by any means but maybe you’ll find a new book or two to check out from your local library. This list is not ranked by any means, just the order I read them last year and the links generally go to Bookshop.org or another place where you can buy it.

Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant – This memoir by Curtis Chin is about growing up as a gay man in a family that owned a Chinese restaurant in Detroit during the 80’s, a very difficult time for the city. On a related note, it was nice to hear that Detroit is now hitting historically low crime rates.

Hardcore Gaming 101 Digest Vol. 8: The Bride of Retro Horror – Hardcore Gaming 101 has put out a lot of good books on retro games. This one was a follow up to a previous digest on horror games, which I would also recommend if that’s your thing. The link goes to Itch.io but I think there’s print versions of all their books on Amazon.

Peter & Ernesto: The Lost Sloths – Graham Annable, who I know from the Puzzle Agent games but has done lots of animation and won an Oscar, has put out a few Peter & Ernesto books. They’re comics about two sloths, very cute and I like reading them with my kids. The link goes to his site where you can buy a signed copy.

The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band Who Burned a Million Pounds – A book about the band KLF. Can’t recommend it enough if you’re a fan and maybe even if you don’t listen to them but are a big music history nerd. I think this was recommended to me by Ste Pickford on Bluesky, which I would suppose would make sense because I don’t know if there’s many Americans recommending me books about the KLF. That said, I actually did listen to the audiobook for this through my local library using the Hoopla app, so there’s dozens of us in the US that like KLF.

Vagabond: A Memoir – Tim Curry wrote a memoir! And it’s good! I listened to the audiobook for this one. I cannot imagine how difficult it was for him to read this after becoming disabled from a stroke, but it was nice to hear his voice. I also actually thought it was fun that he wouldn’t talk about any relationships he has been in other than Miss Piggy during Muppet Treasure Island. I was also very surprised that he briefly mentions video game work. Mostly just to say that he doesn’t understand them but thought acting in front of a green screen was fun. But still, didn’t expect to hear him say the words “Red Alert 3”

Spread Me – I read a bunch of books by Sarah Gailey and this novella was another good one. Basically The Thing but more horny.

More Bugs – Em Reed of DOMINO CLUB fame (idk man, had to work in a Domino Club reference in this post) also has a book. I think I referred to it as erotic body horror on social media along with Spread me, which is not entirely accurate, but there’s still body stuff. Very surreal but I think it also captures the weirdness of living in a small town in the midwest. This review sucks but the book is very good! It’s not actually like Gregg Araki’s Nowhere (a film I love) and I think there’s way more empathy for the characters, but it did remind me of it. I got the ebook for this one but a print version is available.

Anyway, books are good! Make a goal to read at least a couple this year.

I guess I should post on here more. I’ve been pretty busy pretty busy this summer but here’s what I read this last month. You can always follow me on Storygraph

Ariol – A Beautiful Cow: This was a collection of comics that one of my kids picked from the library. It was fine! I never heard of it before

Dragonflight: My first Anne McCaffrey book! I thought it was ok but suffered from some very boring stretches but it has some neat concepts and I liked the ending. I will read more by her at some point in the future.

Exhibit by R.O. Kwon: Big fan of this writer. Didn’t enjoy it as much as The Incendiaries but still thought it was very good. The marketing for the book was very odd to me because it felt like it was hyping it up as an erotic and fun novel and that’s really not what the focus was. Not a criticism of the book at all, just weird that the marketing chose to go with that.

Kindred: My first Octavia E. Butler book! Nothing really insightful to say about this one. Yep, it’s a great book and I’ll need to read more by her. By knowing what the book was about in advance, I sorta expected it to be kind of a slog but nope. It felt like a quick read to me.

The Long Game: My first Ann Leckie story. This is another one of the short sci-fi stories that is available as part of Amazon Prime so I read it. I don’t really remember anything about it and my storygraph says I gave it 3 stars so I guess I thought it was just fine. I’ll read more by Ann because I know this isn’t really representative of her writing and to be honest, I’ve kinda felt “it’s fine” has been the case with all of the stories in this Kindle series.

The Stars Too Fondly: Really fun sci-fi, gay romance novel by Emily Hamilton. I don’t really know if I had seen people discussing it on Bluesky (where I now follow a ton of writers) before grabbing it from my library, but I’m glad I did.

Servant Mage: Meh. Fantasy novella that still felt kinda boring in the middle and I didn’t really find the characters to be too interesting.

Yours Cruelly, Elvira: My Wild Life as the Mistress of the Dark: This is the autobiography by Cassandra Peterson, the actress who plays Elvira. I would have a hard time recommending it to people who don’t know who she is, but I really liked it. Went with the audiobook for this one, which I think was the right choice. I think it’s neat my library had it.

In the House of Aryaman, a Lonely Signal Burns: My first Elizabeth Bear book. To be honest, I have already sorta forgotten what it was about and had given it 3/5 on Storygraph, which usually means I thought it was fine but not memorable. I had checked it out just because it was something I could listen to for free as part of my Audible trial. I’ll read more by her though. I thought it was neat that the main character wasn’t white, it was a perfectly fine detective story, and I was kind of in a weird mood when I listened to it anyway.

The Y in Life: This was a self-published novel by a local author that I checked out from the library because I enjoyed the author’s blog posts about local bookstores and soccer team. It’s a weird one that’s kind of a mess and way too long but I still enjoyed it? Maybe I like when an author knows they are probably just writing one book and just put everything in there. Maybe I should read more self-published books even if they’re messy?

When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain: I really liked the previous book in this world, The Empress of Salt and Fortune, but didn’t click as much with this. But it’s short, everyone else seemed to like it more than me, and I still didn’t even think it was bad, just not great like the first book. Still might read more in the series though since they’re standalone novellas set in the same world.

Started doing a lot more reading in April so I thought I should start documenting what I’ve read. Not that I ever stopped but it’s picked up a lot as I’ve started doing more ebooks and audiobooks in addition to all the physical books I check out from the library or buy. If you live in the US, consider using the Libby app. Generally I prefer checking out physical books over digital copies since book publishers like to screw over libraries through ebook/audiobook fees, but sometimes this is the only way they’re available to me. I also document all of this on my Storygraph but this feels more permanent to me.

Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky: Pretty cool shorter book that works both as a sci-fi and a fantasy story based on the viewpoints of the two characters. This is the first book I read by Adrian and plan to read more. Did this one as an ebook.

Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire: Bought this one a while ago and finally got to it in my backlog. I know this one won a bunch of awards so maybe it’s just me but I didn’t care for it. A lot of good ideas but I thought some of the characters were really poorly written and the book could have probably actually been longer to give some of those ideas more time to develop. Oh well. It’s short so you could probably check it out from the library and see for yourself.

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton: This is a graphic novel memoir by the author of King Baby and The Princes and the Pony, two picture books I love reading to my kids. This is definitely not a kids book but I do think it’s Kate’s best work yet. The book is about Kate’s two years working in Alberta’s oil sands to pay off her college loans. I cannot recommend the book enough if you have an interest in graphic novels or memoirs. Just be sure to read the content warnings first since it has some heavy subjects in it. Did this one as an ebook from my library but will probably buy a physical copy at some point.

Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto: This is another short book that has been sitting in my backlog years after I bought it. Wish I didn’t wait so long to read it because I also loved this one. The book is actually two stories but the main one, Kitchen, is about a young woman who is taken in by another family after her grandmother, her caretaker, has passed away. I guess this book was a big hit when it came out and won a lot of acclaim so it’s not a hidden gem but I don’t see it come up so consider checking it out!

Tea and Murder: Stories of the Xuya Universe: The Citadel of Weeping Pearls & The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard: This is an audiobook I checked out from my library containing two stories, The Citadel of Weeping Pearls & The Tea Master and the Detective. Both stories are set in Aliette’s Xuya universe, a timeline where Asia became dominant in space, but you don’t have to read one to understand the other. I had a hard time following along with Citadel of Weeping Pearls, mostly because it was an audiobook and sometimes that happens with me and sci-fi, but I really enjoyed The Tea Master and the Detective. It’s just a Sherlock Holmes-inspired story but I thought it was a fun read. This was the first story I read by Aliette and also want to read more by them.

The Aquanaut by Dan Santat: I’ve read some of Dan’s picture books before but this is the first graphic novel that I’ve read by him to my kids. Really enjoyed this one as well and thought the art was great.

Selected Poems of Langston Hughes: A Classic Collection of Poems by a Master of American Verse: Another book that had been sitting in my library a long time. It turns out that the universally celebrated poet is very good at writing poetry!

The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw: A short horror fantasy audiobook I checked out about a mermaid and plague doctor. Really liked this one with my only gripe being that I thought the gore descriptions went on too long, to the point of it getting tedious. But I still really liked the book! My first by Cassandra but I’ll read more by them.

All about Me: My Remarkable Life in Show Business by Mel Brooks: While his movies can be hit or miss to me, I also really enjoyed this autobiography by Mel. He intentionally doesn’t go into his personal life in this book, choosing to mostly talk about his works and things that went well and what didn’t. I listened to the audiobook version from my library, which seems like the way to go for this book. I’m just a big comedy history nerd and like stuff like this.

Detriot: A Biography by Scott Martelle: This is a book about the history of Detroit and everything that led to where it’s at today. It’s probably the one I’d recommend if people wanted to know how a city ends up this way. It does a very good job explaining how racist policies, corporations, and other things led to its downfall and the author clearly loves the city and wants to to succeed. My only complaint about it, which isn’t its fault, is that it came out in 2012, at the lowest point of the city when it was bankrupt, and I wonder how things would be different if it were published today. Not that the city is completely fixed, but things have been improving and I would have really liked to have seen the author’s take on it since he has a better understanding of it all than I do.

Doctor Who audio dramas: I also listened to two Doctor Who audio dramas from Big Finish. The Flames of Cadiz and The Age of Endurance. Both are solid 1st Doctor stories and feature the living members of the original cast.