readaroundtherosie

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book recs: feb 2024

(disclaimer: I have spent nearly three months languishing and sullen with post-COVID symptoms and have read, over dec-feb, eighty-one books. this is a ruthlessly streamlined list of recs that does not include, uh, all the rereading of sarah maclean and charlie adhara and georgette heyer books.)

AT FIRST SPITE by olivia dade - what if I moved in next to the man who ruined my engagement to his younger brother, and tried to ruin his life by playing monsterfucking audiobooks really loudly?? a heartfelt and lovely romance that also expertly sets up a great small-town setting for an ongoing series.

THE REFORMATORY by tananarive due - historical horror based on the existence of a real school for boys, clear-eyed and brutal in showing the the effect of racist systems in the 1950s american south. compelling as hell. even if you're not usually into horror, I'd recommend this: the ghost aspect is light-handed and really not as important as the horror of what humans do to other humans.

SOMETHING WILD & WONDERFUL by anita kelly - this is a m/m romance about walking the pacific crest trail which made me see the appeal of very long walks. a miracle! it's gentle and emotional and well put together; the characters really grabbed me.

THE BELL IN THE FOG by lev a.c. rosen - the followup to 'lavender house', and somehow even better?? a historical mystery series featuring a queer private eye in 1950s san francisco who looks into crimes against other queer people. amazing queer history! ACAB! I hope there are fifty more books in this series.

FEAST WHILE YOU CAN* by mikaella clements & onjuli datta - beautiful, greedy, terrifying small-town horror that is also a fucking fantastic, gorgeously written sapphic love story. this one IS for the horror fans. it gave me the absolute creeps but I couldn't put it down.

LADY EVE'S LAST CON* by rebecca fraimow - I described this on bsky as 'if you like Leverage, space opera, old screwball comedies, and dashing sapphics who are at all times spiritually wearing a leather jacket: this one is for you' and I stand by that. huge amounts of fun.

LONG LIVE EVIL* by sarah rees brennan - I will be screaming from here until forever about SRB's first adult fantasy book. if you like the isekai'd-into-a-villain-character setup and want it to be hilarious, genre-savvy and wildly angry and clever, you will roll around in this like a blood-stained mud puddle and then beg for more.

THE LAST HOUR BETWEEN WORLDS* by melissa caruso - really clever and original fantasy about a woman on maternity leave who gets dragged into saving a cocktail party which is falling through increasingly murderous and bizarre dimensions. LISTEN, JUST GO WITH IT. it's a seriously cool adventure.

YOU SHOULD BE SO LUCKY* by cat sebastian - yes, it's another m/m romance about queer history in the mid 20th century, this one between a baseball player and the journalist assigned to write a story about his slump. made me care about baseball. cat is a genius.

*I read these as ARCs, they're not available yet but consider preordering or keep your eye out for them!

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“I feel very strongly that if historical romance can give women a happy ending, it can give queer people a happy ending. M/f historical romance doesn’t tie itself in knots over the likelihood of the rake having syphilis, the terrible dentistry, the lice, the prolapsed uterus after multiple pregnancies, the prospect of death in childbed, or the horrifying legal discrimination against married women. We don’t close the book on the wedding scene reflecting that the heroine can now be legally raped, has just lost all her property to her husband…and would be vanishingly unlikely to obtain a divorce. Historical romance readers aren’t stupid; we know this stuff, but we choose to believe our heroine will be one of the lucky ones. And I don’t see why we can’t extend that happy glow to other stories, too. If women’s lives don’t have to be blighted by social oppression in romance, neither do those of people of color or queer people. Moreover, human nature doesn’t change. A lot of what we read about LGBT people in history is appalling because the rec­ords we have are the legal documents, the newspaper reports, the accounts of people who were victimized. We don’t generally have the hidden stories of the people who lived under the radar…. But we know…people we’d now call gay, bi, trans have always existed and [that] as a matter of statistics plenty of them must have lived and died without ever coming to the law’s attention. Which is not to hand-wave the horrors of the past but only to say that horror isn’t the only story, and it’s not an acceptable reason to deny marginalized people their happy-ever-after.”

— KJ Charles (Library Journal interview)  (via bookgeekgrrl)

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Currently reading: The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake

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obsessed with mass market paperbacks. their pleasing rectangular proportions. how they fit badly in a hoodie pocket so you can drag them around everywhere with you like a temporary little buddy. the way they fit in your hand because they’re MADE for human hands and not as bookshelf decoration. the way the pages feel when you riffle them gently with your thumb. How pristine and crisp they look when you get them and how creased and folded they look when you’re done, even if you try to be nice to them. how that wear is okay, how that’s correct actually, because they’re made with the philosophy that books aren’t meant to be PRETTY, they’re meant to be read. that little ripple new ones get on the left side from where you hold them when you’re reading, the way the ripple only goes as far as you’ve read, because u change stories by reading as they are changing you. how you can find thousands of these creased and folded and loved little dudes in every thrift store and used book shop and neighborhood library and you can instantly see the ones that someone carried around in a backpack for weeks or read to pieces or gave up on halfway through because they wear being read like fresh snow wears footprints. I love these poorly made, subpar little rectangles so much. truly the people’s books.

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2024 Update

Bookshelf Tour → November 2014 (bookcase ¼)

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Demigods who made it into their adult years is a fun concept because I'm just imagining a random son of Athena on his late thirties who's like, a Math teacher or something, watching the news about "the storm that was destroying half the country" and seeing through the mist that that's fucking Typhon and seeing his mom and the other gods fighting him and just. Wondering what the fuck did he miss lol

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book haul ✨⚔️🐉🔮

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Happy Villaintine’s Day: a love letter

Happy Villaintine’s Day! Behold fancy Orbit valentines just for you & the evildoers in your life. In the spirit of the day, I want to talk about love.

I see people make fun of others for loving fictional characters and being a fan of fictional worlds - in a way nobody makes fun of, say, football fans. And yet we’re not causing riots, but getting our beloved shows renewed, revolutionising publishing, and making modern myth.

In my worst times, imaginary lands and people have cheered me, comforted me, kept me company, and seeing others love on imaginary characters and lands inspired me to write Long Live Evil. When I was trying to write and thinking ‘what’s the point’ I would come on tumblr to read essays about A Song of Ice and Fire, The Lord of the Rings, Six of Crows, the Locked Tomb, The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, Jane Austen. Meta about their favorite characters and why they were misunderstood, or should get with this other character, or how it could all have gone differently. I’ve read things on here that made me cry, and that’s what it’s all about: stories you love so much they feel real.

Rock on, lovely lovers of story. We live a hundred lives, know a hundred joys, and love so hard we make imagination seem like reality. And that has such power it could take over a kingdom. Or two.

So, that’s my Valentine to fans. If you’d like another such valentine, pray preorder Long Live Evil.

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it was incredibly poetic of nora to begin andreil’s storyline with andrew hitting neil with a racquet and ending it with andrew protecting neil from being hit with a racquet.

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my favourite thing about all for the game has got to be the fact that the guy who spent three years in juvie, killed his mother and is on court-ordered mood stabilisers and the child of a serial killer who spent most of his life on the run and is also a pathological liar somehow manage to have the healthiest relationship i have ever read in a piece of media. literally wild

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WHAT THE FUCK!!! NORA!!! WHAT. THE. FUCK.

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#2023 #books #reading #2023 wrap up #2023 faves #faves

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If your bookshelf was your personality, which of your traits would it describe?

#bookshelf #2024

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something about percy winning against ares by drawing first blood, not giving a fuck that it’s the god of war he is making an enemy out of vs him being caught totally unaware by luke and luke drawing first blood because percy hesitated, because this is his friend, because making an enemy out of a god is way more preferable over making an enemy out of a friend. percy winning against insurmountable odds vs him losing because his loyalty is truly and undoubtedly fatal.

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faves of 2023: adult sci-fi

The Deep Sky

Emergent Properties

System Collapse

Chain-Gang All-Stars

The Vanished Birds

Some Desperate Glory

Flight & Anchor

Translation State (also entire Imperial Radch series)

World Running Down

Feed Them Silence

The Infinite

The Meister of Decimen City

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Bookish places in France 🇫🇷