Oh, so this was a whole lot of fun. I love any sort of subverted expectation love trope, so of course Gwen and Art can't be in love because Gwen has a major crush on a super hot female knight, and Arthur has a crush on Gwen's older brother and future king to be, Gabriel! I thought most everything about this managed to feel original despite being based on arguably one of the oldest and most classic English stories. I highly support finding inspiration in classic stories and tropes because there's a reason they endure for centuries across the world with millions of varying audiences! And changing this particular Arthurian legend to hold characters that can represent the queer community as well as function as unique, complex, and fun people was just so fun to read. I loved following along on their journeys, specifically since it takes a bit for Gwen to realize parts about herself and attractions that Arthur embraced about himself long before. I thought it was realistic for Gwen and Art to want to initially blackmail each other and refuse to accept any sort of help or alliance, but loved seeing an uneasy, quirky friendship emerge from the suspicion. I also appreciated how the story was able to sustain a more political B plot that fully unfolded toward the end of the book. Things got a lot more serious in a way that felt appropriate, ​and this is one of the rare times where a miscommunication trope actually worked for me (they hardly ever do). I once again just had a really fun time laughing at the really well-written dialogue (Arthur's quips are seriously enviable) and trying to predict the twists and turns of all the characters' matchmaking. This is a book I'd recommend for any month, but you might as well squeeze it into the last few days of the lovely month of June if you have the time. :)



Some of my favorite quotes from Gwen & Art Are Not in Love:

"To be truly brave, first you must be afraid. And to be afraid, you must have something you cannot bear to lose."

"'Now hang on,' said Arthur. 'I’m a man, and my crotch isn’t a burden.'

'Maybe not to you,' said Gwen. 'But it’s a burden on the rest of
humanity.'"

"I'm crying because I was just in a bloody battle. It was awful, I hated every second of it and I would not recommend it to a friend. And, yes I supposed I'm also crying because I love you and I'm so pleased to see you."

"Shame. That was the feeling. She felt flooded with it, like it was curdling the blood in her veins and taking root in the pit of her stomach. This is what comes of wanting things."

This will be a short and sweet review, but I've just finished reading this text to specifically use it as a textbook for my introductory writing and research class for college freshmen this upcoming fall! I've taught two previous groups of students within this course with slightly different curriculum, but am particularly excited to integrate the main concepts and framework of this book into this third round of my teaching. I have no doubt there's a very real and powerful intersection between faith and writing (even more specifically, the Christian tradition and writing). Having this text to use as a guide for not only writing instruction, but helping students grasp how their levels of faith and spirituality can manifest in the classroom, is truly fantastic. I also love the multimodal elements of this book, namely the relevant artwork, diagrams, and pictures used throughout, as well as the many footnotes connecting the text to all sorts of other research voices and conversations. I'm looking forward to my time this fall with my students and the time we'll spend with this book and its wisdom. :) 



Some of my favorite quotes from Charitable Writing:

"Education in writing, we saw, needed to be interwoven with education in Christian Scripture and tradition."

"Imitation, instead, has long been understood as a catalyst for what rhetoricians call invention, 'the making of something new by remaking the old.'"

"We are always writing for an audience..."

"Humility is the virtue that allows us to see not only our finitude and fallenness but also the goods of our communities. It allows us to recognize that we don't have all the answers."

"...humility means adopting a proper regard for our own thinking as we swim in the broad sea of ideas."

"The best contributions to class discussions are often questions."

"Christians are a listening people..."

"...a Christian writer is not duty bound to write from an explicitly Christian standpoint all the time."

"Simply stated: we may write to learn what we think."

"The kingdom of God is a topic whose richness we can never exhaust."

"To revise is to strive to welcome the stranger into our thinking."

This trilogy's first book reminds me of Cassandra Clare's The Infernal Devices trilogy in all the best ways. Mainly the dark, brooding, magical London vibes, but also the characters. I really like how Kell feels like an enigma until we're in some sort of fight scene or scenario where the forbidden Black London stone is trying to influence him and his own magic. I feel like the combat scenes really shine in this book, and not only describe blocking well, but showcase the manifold ways magic manifests itself in this version of a world with alternate Londons, named by Kell for their colorings as a result of the magic (or lack thereof) and its power. Truly, a round of applause for the creativity of such an idea on Schwab's part. I think it's just so cool. And each London felt like it got its time to shine, to take up some of the slower parts of the narrative to be atmospheric and paint a picture for readers to understand more about how it functions as a part of a much larger whole.
As for Lila, I think she's badass. Specifically because I think she's a great and balanced strong female character by what could be considered a standard definition of a female character capable of exhibiting  traits associated with strength that aren't entirely dependent on stereotypes of strictly physical power. She knows how to brandish a gun, stab a knife, acquire and promptly blow up a pirate ship, and fend for herself on less than welcoming streets. But she also manages to use her cunning and experience on said streets to save Kell and herself on more than one occasion. They make a fun, dynamic team, one that kept me wondering what they'd get into next, and how they'd feel about each other once the dust settled and the chaos passed.
I also appreciated how the political side of this novel's plot was easy to follow, considering it had most everything to do with one measly stone and a pair of rulers from one of the most desolate versions of London. Leaving the overlapping travel between dimensions to a select few with rare magic certainly does sound like the way to keep things neat and tidy. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of this series, seeing as there's certainly a promise of more story and complications to come.



Some of my favorite quotes from A Darker Shade of Magic:

"'I apologize for anything I might have done. I was not myself.'
'I apologize for shooting you in the leg.' said Lila. 'I was myself entirely.'" (her one liners are killer)

"Hesitation is the death of advantage."

"You know so little of war. Battles may be fought from the outside in, but wars are won from the inside out."

"He would see her again. He knew he would. Magic bent the world. Pulled it into shape. There were fixed points. Most of the time they were places. But sometimes, rarely, they were people. For someone who never stood still, Lila felt like a pin in Kell's world. One he was sure to snag on."

"'What are you?' she asked.
'A monster,' said Kell hoarsely. 'You'd better let me go.'
The girl gave a small, mocking laugh. 'Monsters don't faint in the presence of ladies.'
'Ladies don't dress like men and pick pockets,' retorted Kell.
Her smile only sharpened. 'What are you really?'
'Tied to your bed,' said Kell matter-of-factly.
'And?'
His brow furrowed. 'And in trouble.'"

This entry doubles as a book review and direct letter to my dear friend Emma, the lovely poet of this amazing collection. <3
Hi, Emma! So, wow, these poems are kinda the coolest. The way your mind works around and with scripture and the "could bes" and "should bes" of understanding aspects of the Old Testament and its figures really astounds me. I think you've given such beautiful attention to the men and women whose names are more recognizable both inside and outside of Christian traditions as well as those who are less popular, or completely nameless. Each of these figures, after all, were once just people in their own right, hearing the voice of God willingly or inadvertently, unable to presume the affects (or echoes) their voices would have years and years to come in scripture itself as well as collections like this one. I absolutely adored being able to see you in between these words, too. I caught glimpses of conversations we had both about your writing and the presence and spirit of the Lord, about how the effect of words and prophecy shout, whisper, and come in many forms. You put such thought into the structure of the book itself, basing its cycle on the Talmud as you did. I also think there's something to be said about examining and including the voices and experiences of both men and women alike; the feminist agenda does not seek to exclude men, but rather seeks to see how equality can really exist among literally everyone. That truth shines alongside your visceral, exact prose, and makes the contrast between the more ancient and more modern settings within different poems even starker. Thank you for writing these gems, Emma, and sharing them with the world.


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My favorite poems in this collection: "A prophet never folds," "Moses, Between the Before and After," "The plans for you," "Elijah assures Adam and Eve that they will leave hell soon," "God of Sarah," "Say it again: sons and daughters," "The river is not divided," "Gomer never wanted a picket fence," "Hosea always wanted a love story" (my absolute fave), and "Fruit trees for the fearful."

I'm pretty sure this is the third and final book in this series I adore so so much, but too much of a good thing can very quickly become a bad thing. This book ends in a place that seems like a quiet sort of goodbye to me. Nothing big or extravagant, but rather soft and full of promise for what Emily and Wendell's life will look like after the many series of unfortunate events they had to endure in this book.
I really really liked this conclusion, which came as no surprise to me! I sincerely don't think there's another cozy fantasy series out there right now doing it quite like this one, though I'm not super well versed in the variety of cozy fantasies on the market right now. That being said, I continue to marvel at the ingenuity of these novels' being told in the form of Emily's journal entries. The overarching story and mythical intrigue of Faerie as viewed through Emily's scholarly eyes feels at once charming, academic, and raw, since time and time again Emily reminds readers that she's just a curious human who's been swept up within the supernatural through her connection to and love for Wendell. I consider myself to be a journaler, but I am nowhere near Emily's caliber.
​I really liked how this third installment satisfied the momentum of the two to come before it: first with Emily's slow realization of who Wendell truly is (and has become to her), secondly paired with their eventual search for his lost realm and throne. In this book, the realm has been found! But---oh no! Wendell's evil stepmother refuses to allow him to regain his rightful throne without a fight, and curses the entire realm with a clever set of tricks. The stakes felt truly high in this book despite the sometimes slower pace of certain journal entries, since Emily's ability to track the patterns of a certain Fae story builds plenty of suspense concerning how her and Wendell's story may end, or if there are any loopholes to be found. I continue to adore Emily and Wendell's romance as well, expressed as it is mainly through sometimes cheeky, sometimes incredibly moving and swoony dialogue. If a Fae king wanted to whisk me away to his kingdom after falling in love with my socially awkward, book-inclined self, how could I refuse? :) I'm hoping Fawcett may write some fun novellas or spin off tales with these delightful characters someday, but I'm grateful for the lovely gift these three books are.



Some of my favorite quotes from Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales:

"... as always, writing helps. Sometimes I feel it is the only thing that prevents me from coming apart."

"I know your heart by now, Em; it is not all stone and pencil shavings, as you are wont to pretend."

I wish I could say I enjoyed this more than I actually did. And it's not that I didn't enjoy it, either, but it just felt like it was missing something. What that something is, I also don't quite know. Maybe that's my main qualm with this book overall---it just feels like it has the potential to be something really epic and emotionally sweeping, but falls just a bit short. Maybe it's the character development, which felt to me like it had great momentum at the beginning and then fell a little flat. Or the fact that the voice actors for the audiobook I listened to were just kind of really bad (sorry, but I really need to hear more than one type of voice inflection to believe that you've ever read anything out loud before). It may also be the inevitable game of comparison I played concerning similarities to Throne of Glass. Thanks to the influence of TikTok and the ferocity with which I devoured Maas' series two years ago, a story about a main female character desiring freedom from her oppressive master, discovering she can control a strange, powerful kind of magic, and eventually becoming an assassin of sorts for a slightly corrupt order of magical warriors is going to make me think of Celaena and the literary world in which she exists. I thought there were some great unique side characters, and a lot of promise for the book's world to be expanded in the rest of the series I'm not planning on reading. I also thought Max's backstory and the incorporation of a weapon of mass destruction in the form of a parasite were fascinating parts of this story that set it apart from Throne of Glass. But I still felt like the little momentum going at the beginning dropped off and got convoluted with overlapping political subplots, the introduction of this parasitic monster, and the slow burn romance I wished was just a little less and slow and a little more burn. I may be the slow burn's biggest fan, too, so this is saying something. As I've already decided to not continue with this series, I'll end this review here, quite eager to move on to something that hopefully has the spark I'm looking for in a fantasy series with such an intriguing concept as this one.



Some of my favorite quotes from Daughter of No Worlds:

"Men want power because it makes them feel good. Women want power because it lets us do things."

​"I had spent the night cutting myself up into little pieces for consumption, forcing people to acknowledge me, thrusting my pain into their faces."

"We had carved out these small, intimate spaces for each other in our lives, and by some miracle of human denial, neither of us had thought about what that would inevitably mean. Now, for the first time, I realized the breadth of the gaping absence we would leave in each other."

Oooooohhhh, where to even begin with this long-awaited read. I read it slowly and steadily like I do with most books, though I'm thinking of potentially carving out a day to just sit and reread this in one sitting for a rollercoaster of an experience (if I can find the time and have the emotional bandwidth). I had to stay up pretty late to finish this one; putting it down just wasn't an option. But trying to wrap my head around the terrible series of events that make up the last 50 to 100 pages or so was even more gnarly to have to do in the wee hours of the morning. I truly don't know where to start in commending Suzanne Collins for the work she's done within the department of dystopian fiction and writing as a craft, but maybe I'll start with how well she consistently creates and portrays characters. This narrator at the story's beginning---this unsuspecting boy with a simple life and young love he never wishes to be parted from---is not the Haymitch Abernathy fans have only been able to know him to be in the original series. The beginning narrator is not the end narrator, because too much has been changed and lost in the middle, and I think that's masterful character development as well as authorial understanding of how to get from Point A to Point B in a logical fashion that's also entertaining to read. I really latched onto the concept of Haymitch playing the role of a rascal, of stepping into the skin of a character type he ends up playing too well. It starts with the need for an image that might win him sponsors and distract from foul play, and ends with substance abuse as a result of deep grief. I also latched onto the strange alliance Plutarch Heavensbee and Haymitch create, and loved seeing how this book sows the seeds that blossom into full blown rebellion during Katniss Everdeen's era. All of the subtle but important connections back to President Snow and Lucy Gray consistently blew my mind, too. There's so much more I could say about the uniqueness of the Games' arena itself, but I don't want to tiptoe into spoiler territory and also feel like I wouldn't really describe all my individual thoughts about the psychological aspects of the arena well enough. I need to do some more thinking on the significance of this book during our current apocalyptic-adjacent time. This is also a book I think deserves close reading and careful attention considering the width and depth of this series' fanbase and purpose in the literary canon. At the risk of sounding rather dramatic: How different would so many of our opinions on justice, sacrifice, and human capacity for love and hate be today if we didn't have The Hunger Games on our shelves? On a less dramatic note: I just really want to give Haymitch (among many other characters in this book) a big hug.



Some of my favorite quotes from Sunrise on the Reaping:

​"As much pain as my loved ones feel now, how long will it be until I am just a memory?"

"And while Lenore Dove will forever be my true love, Louella is my one and only sweetheart."

"In the same way you instinctively know the waxed pears on the table lack juice, this girl lacks Louella's essence."

"Sometimes she cries because things are so beautiful and we keep messing them up. Because the world doesn't have to be so terrifying. That's on people, not the world."

"But you can't keep Effie down."

"We hold each other so tight it's like we're one person."

I'm so glad I decided to listen to this as an audiobook because the fabulous Kelly Bishop herself narrates it in her unmistakable, iconic tone and flair! I absolutely adored getting to hear the life story of a woman who I can claim to "know" through her role as Emily Gilmore in Gilmore Girls. But the amount of life Kelly lived before and after this seven season stint really astounded me and made me think about how, regardless of her fabulous representation of a lovingly complex matriarchal character, Kelly is her own separate person with such an intriguing story to tell. And what a story it was! I had no idea she started her professional career on the stage, and still seems to consider her time dancing and acting in live performances peak parts of her career and fond memories. What do you mean the A Chorus Line song "At the Ballet" is about her and her life?? That's so insanely cool. I also appreciated how she decided to take us through her life story, which is no small feat. Beginning with the onset of her career really taking off with A Chorus Line and then working backwards to explain her passion for dancing, her relationship with her mother and father, and how she came to move to New York and have a few romantic flings, functioned as a storyline that I thought worked really well to eventually bring us up to speed with "the present" and the rest of her major life events, including Gilmore Girls, eventual marriages, and various health issues. I also appreciated how Kelly wrapped up the memoir with an attitude I aspire to wear as comfortably as she does if I'm blessed with as many years. It's an attitude that all but screams "this is the end of this book, but certainly not the end of my story." 

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Some of my favorite quotes from The Third Gilmore Girl:

"Don’t cry because you think your best days are gone. Smile because you had them in the first place."

"If it’s meant to work out, it will. If it isn’t, it will just make me available for what I’m supposed to be doing instead.” (Sometimes it was reassuring; sometimes it wasn’t.)"

"What on earth would we all do without one another?"

I have much more George Saunders reading to catch up on, but I'm not sure any of it will hold a candle to my opinion of Tenth of December. With that being said, Pastoralia was a weird time, but maybe not as weird as it could've been giving my expectations of what Saunders is capable of and leans into. His absurdism and ability to make even the most unlikeable of characters a little less pathetic and a little more human really impresses me. Every single one of this collection's stories felt like a penned fever dream. Each of them has a strange uniqueness, from the completely one-of-a-kind, often pathetic characters, to the landscapes I can only describe as liminally familiar (for "Pastorialia") or suburban wasteland chic (for the rest of them). "Sea Oak" has really stuck with me. I think it's my favorite of the collection, perhaps because it mixes grief with sexual exploitation, a surreal zombie aunt, the sour taste of regret, and the reality of being unable to escape financial struggles. Saunders' writing is just so poignant in an often uncomfortable way; I don't think anyone would describe his tales as cozy or feel good. I really have nothing good to say about "The Barber's Unhappiness" and stand by the fact that strongly disliking a narrator who's pretty terrible doesn't mean we have to find a way to redeem them. Anyways. Saunders is good at what he does, and for what these stories are within the genre of weird fiction, they're pretty great.

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My favorite quote from Pastoralia ("Sea Oak"):

"Maybe it happens all the time. Maybe there's angry dead all over..."

Considering this is my first foray into the surreal genre-bending stuff Murakami's been up to for a while, I had a better time than I expected to. Considering I also don't read a lot of absurdist, speculative short fiction like all of the stories in this collection, I tried to keep an open mind and think I'm doing a better job of embracing this genre and style of writing for what it is. It's definitely not my genre of choice, but also not at the bottom of my list either. All of that to say, a few stories really stood out to me as either especially weird and hard to grasp, or especially weird but, strangely, easier to grasp as a result. I was particularly drawn to the stories that had supernatural elements or unexplainable, slightly unsettling and creepy goings ons. For example, "The Mirror," which had a classic scary story setting, informative narrator, and nearly Edgar Allan Poe-esque kind of vibe. Or "Hanalei Bay," with a mother's terrible tragedy affecting her son and a ghost potentially haunting her that we don't find out about until the very end. Stories like "Dabchick" and "A Shinagawa Monkey" also worked for me in their really high level absurdism. "Dabchick" just made me laugh, because what are the odds there'd really be a dabchick chilling on the other side of the door at this guy's weird job thinking about death? And the way "A Shinagawa Monkey" starts with what seems like a clear theme about loss of identity ends with a literal talking monkey who steals peoples' names. I think what also really ended up working for me was viewing these stories through the lens of a writer as well as a reader; in other words, I admire how precise writing absurdist and surrealist stuff must be, because too much ridiculousness simply loses readers, while carefully curated randomness makes analyzing the steps the writer took (or may have tried to take) a true form of craft. In addition, keeping in mind that all of these stories were originally written in Japanese helped me understand that certain parts of the original plot may pack a bigger punch in their original language. While I don't assume this is the case for every time I came across something I couldn't understand in part of the stories, I don't discount it as a completely unviable possibility. Overall, I don't think too much was lost in translation (though I'll argue that Murakami's portrayals of realistic women could use some work). I enjoyed this collection more than I expected to. 

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Some of my favorite quotes from Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman:

"No matter what they wish for, no matter how far they go, people can never be anything but themselves. That's all."

"What matters is deciding in your heart to accept another person completely. When you do that, it is always the first time and the last."

"Thinking about spaghetti that boils eternally but is never done is a sad, sad thing."