Book 14: Mall Goth. This is probably a teen/tween level graphic novel about a young bi goth woman who has a family situation that isn't great (overworked mom, absent dad) which leads her to seek connection with people who may not have her best interests at heart. A guy with a girlfriend gives her a lot of attention. A teacher gives her a copy of Lolita, sends inappropriate texts. She knows there are issues but not how to talk about them. Works out ultimately, but its a real seeming conflict

Book 15: The Tainted Cup. A book I liked okay. I'm not really a fantasy person; I like some and I don't like others. This, at its heart, is a mystery story. Or, rather, a few mysteries. The world described is interesting and somewhat fantastical with no modern tech and with recognizable elements; a city under siege from unseen beings. A maybe-autistic detective and her maybe-dyslexic assistant have to figure out a puzzling set of murders. I liked the world, but wasn't compelled by the mystery.

Book 16: And the Sky Bled. This book has a well-crafted plot, a lot of interesting female and NB characters, and is a non-stop sufferfest which I should have guessed from the title and somehow not only decided to read it but decided to finish it. The author admits in the afterword that she was "going through some stuff" and I think that shows in the story, no one emerges unscathed. One of those "this is probably a great book for someone else" novels. Approach with caution.

[rethreading here for a sec, sorry for repeats] Book 17: Brooms. A story place in a world where magic is real but restricted. That restriction is unequally enforced along racial lines in some parts of the country including where the book takes place. A group of mostly women and girls from many backgrounds (queer/non, disabled/non, trans/cis, Black and Choctaw and Chinese American) compete in underground broom racing to help raise much needed cash. Lots of supportive nurturing in this one. A balm

DNF: Be A Blessing. I occasionally get books from Library Thing's Early Reviewers program. Free books in exchange for an honest review. This book's blurb did not match what I found inside the book, or maybe I got the blurb wrong. The author wants to talk about the idea of being a blessing, of oneg, of embodying the idea of joy through being a conduit (somewhat) for the divine. But it's VERY Bible-heavy and Israel-heavy and thus not right for this secular pro-Palestine Jewish person.

Book 18: What You Are Looking For Is In The Library. This is a very sweet set of gentle vignettes about people who are living unfulfilled lives in various ways. They take different paths but wind up at the community center's library where an odd librarian gives them some reading suggestions and a small felted item. These things help them get unstuck. The vignettes overlap barely but subtly in fun little ways. Anyone who has done library work will enjoy these calm stories that go good directions.

Book 19: Winter Morning Walks. Ted Kooser was getting cancer treatment and had turned a corner in a positive way. His doctor told him to exercise and avoid the sun so he took walks by his home in Nebraska in the early mornings and wrote short poems also mailed to his friend Jim Harrison. This collection spans December through March and was so familiar to me, living through my own winter both in the weather and at large. Some lovely observations and elegant turns of phrase which stuck with me.

Book 20: Last Night at the Telegraph Club. Lily is a high school senior who sees a newspaper ad for a San Francisco club with a male impersonator and starts to have some new feelings. She has a friend from school she thinks she can go with. Complications are that Lily is from Chinatown and her family will not understand. And it's during the Red Scare. And maybe her friend is more than a friend. The author's afterword showed how much research she did for this YA coming of age novel and it shows.

Book 21: Playground. Another epic tale from Richard Powers. This one appears to be about friendships and class and the competitiveness of young people, the differing trajectories of lives. It's also about the way the world is mostly ocean and the complex ecosystem that exists there mostly unseen. But it's also about AI and there are about two sentences where you realize, you might realize, that the plot is different than you expected or thought. And I had all sorts of weird feelings about that.

Book 22: We Had a Little Real Estate Problem. An excellent book highlighting the range of Native Americans doing comedy and the challenges they face, from overt racism, to large amounts traveling, to trying to make jokes about the grim history of colonization, residential schooling, land theft and massacres. Each chapter is an anecdote which builds upon the general theme. Some standout names like Charlie Hill and Will Rogers (and attendant controversies) and some new names you'd like to know.

Book 23: The Rabbi Who Prayed for the City. This is the six-years-later sequel to the first Rabbi Vivian book about a lesbian Rabbi in Providence trying to work with her congregation to bring more justice into the world. This one deals with a hurricane (and citywide preparations led by Rabbi Vivian's partner) as well as the launch of an autonomous robot which, for money-raising reasons, is also having its AI shared with Israel. Written in 2023, hits a bit different in 2025, but still a good read

Book 24: Big Jim and the White Boy. A re-telling of the story of Huck Finn but centering Jim and making his story his own, not written by someone informed by all the racism of the time and told by a white man. It's the 1800s so there's still a lot of gnarly shit going down but the author and illustrator do a great job showing you another way this story could be told and there are ample notes and reading lists in the back. A quick read and pretty accessible to all kinds of readers.

Book 25: We Are Not Strangers. A "based on true stories" tale of the friendship between a Sephardic man (Papoo, a first generation Jewish immigrant) and a Japanese businessman, Sam Akiyama, who form an alliance when Sam gets sent to an internment camp. This is all told through the eyes of Papoo's grandson, who only learned about this story after his grandfather had died. It all takes place in Seattle, so it's extra interesting for people who are familiar with the area.

DNF: Wires and Nerve. This was probably a great story IF you had read The Lunar Chronicles series which it is based off of. Instead we got a whole host of characters at the beginning and a lot of unstated motivations which were opaque to me. Well-illustrated and lively, but I couldn't keep track of the people and places and when I was halfway through it and still not tracking, I decided it was not for me. Nothing wrong with it, it was just made for people who know the series.

Book 26: Easy to Learn, Difficult to Master. A short graphic novel about the rise of video games and who really deserved the credit for them, a tale about Nolan Bushnell (Atari, Chuck E. Cheese) and Ralph Baer (Magnavox Odyssey, Simon). I didn't know much about this history and liked learning about it. Each man wound up with some credit. The story is great, though told in a slightly weird style with equally not-that-engaging (to me) graphics. A quick read if you're into the topic.

Book 27: Continental Drifter. Kathy lived in Bangkok with a Thai mom and an American (and older) dad. Her family is quiet. They take summer trips to Maine. Kathy doesn't feel at home in Thailand OR the US and this graphic novel takes place mainly as she goes to her first year of summer camp in Maine and tries to figure out her family, and herself. I liked the storytelling, didn't feel like the usual angsty memoir.

Book 28: Five Star Stranger. A world basically the same as our own except there's an app where you can hire a person to play a role for you in your life. Usually this is just "Attend a wedding/funeral/party with me" but sometimes it's "Help me raise my young child, come every Thursday and pretend you're her dad" Told through the eyes of the stranger/Dad who has his own story that only slowly gets told. I liked it, weird and a little funny with some empathy and some "wtf?"

Book 29. James. Suggested by the librarian after I returned "Big Jim and the White Boy" This is another Jim-centered reimagining of Huck Finn. My enjoyment of this was only marred by thinking "What is wrong with me that I haven't read anything by Percival Everett before?" Really well-told, a mixture of his relationship with Huck but also the US's relationship to slavery and enslaved people just before the Civil War. Hard to read in parts, as you would expect; more humor than you might expect.

Book 30: Anxious People. A book that is about a lot of stressful stuff--a bank robbery, some bad relationships, people with complicated lives--but you can see partway through it's heading somewhere sweet and gentle. A little less relentless than A Man Called Ove (if you read that one) but the same type of writing. I enjoyed trying to figure out where it might go. Don't let the title make you think it might just be a lot of people being nervous and upset. There's some of that but not too much.

Book 31: Swim Team. A graphic novel for tweens about a girl going to a new school who wants to do math club but winds up in swim club. She doesn't know how to swim and eventually learns as well as learns to be part of a team. This book touches on the racist history of Black people being denied access to pools and beaches (and offers further reading on the topic in the end notes) though it's not the central point of the story which is about teamwork and overcoming fears.

Book 32: September. In a small community in Scotland where everyone knows everyone, one of the families is planning a party. We meet two extended families (the laird and the other his childhood friend - both now grown with families) and the folks in their orbits. It's mostly well-off people and their trials and tribulations as they get ready in the months preceding a very big shindig. I really enjoyed getting to know some of the ins and outs of rural Scotland, at once both familiar and not.

Book 33: Alterations. Kevin brought a stinky egg to school and now everyone is calling him Eggboy. One of his old friends isn't talking to him. His other friends are just as nerdy as he is. His grandma from the old country has moved in with their family because his dad left. His seamstress mom is stressed. There's a school field trip. It's a tough time to be Kevin. This is a great graphic novel, so evocatively done. Kevin feels real, proud to be nerdy but still trying to figure it all out.

Book 34: The Janus Stone. This is the second book in a series I started a while ago. It's one of those "All the books will be at the library" types of series, a straightforward--forensic archaeologist and cops encounter weird stuff on the saltmarshes and need both of their skillsets to investigate-- thing. The archaeologist is a middle-aged Vera-style frumpy no-nonsense woman who, in this book, is pregnant and so there's that subtext as well. Little bit of UK/Roman history. A solid read.

Book 35: The Weight of Ink. A dense book with two parallel stories: one about an older female historian nearing retirement and dealing with infirmities who finds a hidden cache of documents, the other about a Jewish scribe in 1650s London, struggling to survive as the plague approaches. The historian is joined by a young American Jewish man working on his PhD. A LOT of interesting and well-told Jewish history (from Portugal, Spain, the UK, and Israel) and a story line which keeps you engaged.

Book 36: Funny Misshapen Body. This is mostly not a memoir about this man's body. It's a series of vignettes, in no particular order, about the life he's led which got him to where he is now. He's a guy who has sort of lumped through life. Had some challenges like Crohn's disease and weirdnesses at art school, trying to make and keep friends, meet women. He paid his way through some of this doing painting at a wooden shoe factory. It's disjointed at times but a good read overall.

Book 37: Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Books. If you're looking for a lightish book about book banning with a bunch of easily-defeated straw man book banners, this is the book for you. It's simple, a bit funny, and does its best to describe just how communities can get to the point where they want to restrict people's access to information, and the knock-on effects of those restrictions. Did not love this one but I liked it well enough.

Book 38: The House at Sea's End. Erosion brought on by climate change has revealed six bodies formerly buried near but not IN the sea. Are they really old, only sort of old, or not old at all? Enter forensic anthropologist Ruth Galloway who has been seconded to the local police to help figure it out. The mystery in this one is almost secondary to the character development (Galloway has had a child that she is raising as a single mom) but there are still some interesting historical aspects.

Book 39: Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea. A tedious retelling of a dramatic shipwreck and the very involved project to locate and salvage the gold from the shipwreck led by one "mad genius" type guy. There is a staggering amount of detail in parts and then a lot of hand wavey "And then they got the rest of the gold" at the end. Looking up the story on Wikipedia, it seems that the mad genius went on the run rather than pay his creditors and investors. That's the book I'd like to read.

Book 40: Well-Offed in Vermont. This is s short sort of bland mystery about a couple from New York who buys a house in Vermont (he got a job with the Forest Service, she was hoping for a job at the Shelburne Museum which fell through) and come to town like fish out of water only to discover a dead man in their well! They can only move into the house once the murder is solved, so they apply themselves to it, driving around in their Smart car like n00bs, and figure it out. Solidly okay.

Book 41: The Last of the Moon Girls. Even though this book takes place in rural NH, it has a very Vermont-y feel to it. A family with generations of single moms with single daughters, all of whom are witchy in some way, live in a farm doing their thing until a tragedy strikes. They are blamed and the family fractures and things unravel. Can Lizzy, the title character, pull it all together, and does she even want to or would she prefer to go back to her more normal and anonymous life in New York?

Book 42: Murder Your Employer. This was a fun one to ILL at the library. My director: "Should I be worried?" The story is about a mysterious school in an unknown location where people receive schooling in the fine arts of undetectable murder (of one's employer). It follows three students through their experiences at the school. The important catch is that if you don't accomplish your "thesis" you will, yourself, be killed. Written by Rupert "Pina Colada Song" Holmes. It's a fun, if goofy, read.

Book 43: To Hell With Poverty. A memoir of a sort by Jon King from Gang of Four covering his early life and the early years of the band through their first four albums and their ascension to popularity and US/UK tours. King has a chatty and funny style and this book is super readable, doesn't feel like a tell-all, and has some nifty photos. It wraps up at a dark time in the band's history which is too bad (since the band continued on and worked some stuff out) but overall a great punk memoir.

Book 44: Leap. A graphic novel about a dancing school in Bucharest and the young women who are trying to figure things out in their lives (mainly relationships with other young women or not-so-young women). Beautifully drawn and very relatable and brought me back to my short time in Bucharest in the nineties. Ultimately, like many of these graphic novels, it's a story of friendship and growing up and learning to set boundaries and get comfortable with yourself.

Book 45: A Room Full of Bones. A good next installment in this set of mysteries about a forensic anthropologist who had a baby with a detective who is still married to his wife. A combination of mystery-solving and interpersonal relationship solving. I like the mystery stuff a lot better than the other stuff but it's still a nice readable and not-too-complex set of novels with a very likable (to me) main character who is a single mom who does her best and doesn't much care what people think.

Book 46: The Change. A compelling story about menopausal-age women who are... somewhat witchy. They don't want to walk the path the world has made for them. They live in an island community off the coast of New York where billionaires vacation and are also (surprise!) acting like total privileged assholes. Bit of a CW since the story has to do with a lot of abused teenage girls (though there isn't graphic abuse in the story) and the bulk of the story is about trying to make things right.

Book 47: Just Enough Research. Been meaning to read this book for a long time. Erica Hall owns Mule Design, a design company notable for keeping it real and really good design. This book talks about just how much research you need to do when you are working on a design project, which kinds are good, which kinds are bad, and which kinds (surveys) can be good but are also tricksy. It's very readable, often funny, and will teach you some things. This was the "shitty pulp edition" and I love it.

Book 48: Orbital. This is a long prose poem, a tribute to space and the people who go there. It nominally has characters--four astronauts and two cosmonauts--inhabiting a space station as it goes around the world 16 times. Nothing happens, there is no real plot. This is either up your alley or not. The writing is lovely and evocative, the "this is what space is like" stuff felt true. I kept waiting for it to "get going" and it never really did. Not really what I was looking for, but a good book.

Book 49: Disappearances. I've enjoyed Mosher in the past, he writes about Vermont's Northeast Kingdom in a way that really gets at the heart of the place without feeling inaccessible or clubby. This is his first novel, a tale of a Quebecois family which winds up in Vermont but not too far into Vermont. Over generations they support themselves with a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Some of them disappear and then return in the strangest of ways. A paean to a place, and a way of life

Book 50: Kluge. Marcus and I went to college together and were in the same program, so it's fun to see some of the things we learned in college show up in this exploration of the foibles of the human brain and human cognition. Marcus uses sensible real world examples as well as citations from real science to explain some of the weird things our brain does and offers some ideas about why it might be that way. He wraps up with some suggestions for ways to think your way out of some common problems

Book 51: We Solve Murders. If you liked the Thursday Murder Club books, you will probably like this. It's a new set of characters but a similar theme--people who are not really in the murder-solving biz get thrust into a situation and have to rise to the occasion. Looks like it will become its own series. Wider age range of characters. Same sort of humor. I enjoyed it and you have to love Osman who thanks booksellers and librarians FIRST in his acknowledgements section.