Last week I managed to do a couple of runs, and went to some nice bookclubs. The next month is going to be a lot of sad anniversaries (Mom went into the hospital, mom went back to the hospital, mom opts for hospice) and a few happier ones (I won a goat in my video game), so I'm just going to set the bar really low for myself. I hope to keep up with the kitchen and maybe close a few rings on my fitness watch, but no promises.

February is short anyway! Well, not as short as usual this year, but still pretty short!

Winners on Valentines Day! Finalists out now!

I'm still at 3 pages of currently-reading on goodreads. I'm down to (only?) 38 physical books checked out which includes some picture books and then there are couple of ebooks.

I will be posting at The Bookdate's It's Monday, What Are You Reading headquarters as well as the kidlit version at Unleashing Readers.

Completed

All the Dead Shall Weep (Gunnie Rose, #5)

Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine

40-Love (There's Something About Marysburg, #2)

Dead Man's Hand (The Unorthodox Chronicles, #1)

System Collapse (The Murderbot Diaries, #7)

All the Dead Shall Weep, Charlaine Harris. This was an interesting structure and definitely not a place to enter this series. It's mostly about the sisters hanging out and getting to know each other and learn how they see others and how others see them, with a little discussion of relationships on the side. But mostly just sisters be sisters. There is a bit of plot, mostly driven by the ambitions of people off stage, and mostly by people who should have learned to avoid these sisters.

Borderland, Anna Reid. Ha! I finished this. I started this probably back during the Cybils and finally spent some time reading it so now I have some background knowledge of the history of the Ukraine and also some of the modern stuff up to the first year of the war (Reid wrote the book twenty years ago and then updated it). Congress should just fund their defense already.

40-Love, Olivia Dade. Ha! Another book I started and gave up on last year and now went back to. I enjoyed the author's style, the man interest is not that believable but only so the author can make him worthy of the awesome protagonist, who is large and passionate and worthy of all sorts of perfect men.

Burning Girls and Other Stories, Veronica Schanoes. Foolscap book club pick, which we chose rather blindly off a list of possibly Jewish stories, and that I found amazing. The stories used fairy tales to great effect, both classic ones and modern stories of Emma Goldman and unionists. There were some stories that were all sensation and some that challenged society and some that broke my heart. Good discussion.

Dead Man's Hand, James J Butcher. For my Tuesday book club. The consensus was that it was decent. I found it hard to enjoy all the whining the main character did -- maybe it's realistic that most people would rather not face murderous creatures all day long but then that's why we don't get books about them! But the writing wasn't clumsy and some of the ideas were cool, so we all made it through. Next up -- a book by another Butcher!

Run, Book 1, John Lewis. This next stage of Lewis's life manages to show the conflicts inside the movement -- is violence necessary? Is integration of the movement necessary? Is taking a stand on the Vietnam War necessary? These questions tear at the Civil Rights organizations even while white society is literally taking pot shots at them, and it's interesting to see how Lewis remembers it and what stands he tooks and who he thought was making good choices. I'm not sure there will be more, since Lewis passed away just as this one was being completed.

Rest in Pink, Jennifer Crusie & Bob Meyer. Second story about Liz Danger and her dour policeman who may be in a relationship lasting more than a night. Since they've had dozens of nights in a row. Meanwhile the town of Burney seems to be burning down around them. I liked the balance of danger and personal stress, with little and big questions around all these things and the side characters off having their own lives as well as cheering on the mains.

Ghost Book, Remy Lai. Fun graphic novel about a forgettable kid and her first friend, and almost-dead boy who might get better. Or not. I liked the story, the art, and the friendship but felt it didn't really tackle any of the tough stuff it stirred up -- like addressing the aftermath of the dad doing the forgetting spell.

System Collapse, Martha Wells. Well, I got the audio in case my road trip companions last month had read all the recent ones, but they hadn't so I got to this on my own. It was interesting listening to Murderbot's voice as it keeps trying to avoid thinking about REDACTED; it's a different feel to read it. And the bit at the end with the constructed story was much tenser for me as an audio than as a read.

Started

The Outskirter's Secret (The Steerswoman, #2)

Adia Kelbara and the Circle of Shamans (Adia Kelbara and the Circle of Shamans, 1)

Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation

Bold Spirit: Helga Estby's Forgotten Walk Across Victorian America

Is this a lot? It kinda looks like a lot.

Burning Girls and Other Stories, Veronica Schanoes. Foolscap book club book.

Run, Book 1, John Lewis. Because I read the March books.

Rest in Pink, Jennifer Crusie & Bob Meyer. Because I liked the first one.

Ghost Book, Remy Lai. Saw in a library.

Outskirter's Secret, Rosemary Kirstein. Missed Scintillation book club but want to reread anyway.

Winter's Orbit, Everina Maxwell. Reread.

Hild, Nicola Griffith. Foolscap pick -- do we reread when the new book drops?

Gone Wolf, Amber McBride. Cybils nominee I didn't get to.

Fox Point's Own Gemma Hopper, Brie Spangler. Saw in a library.

In Five Years, Rebecca Serle. Renton River book club pick.

Adia Kelbara and the Circle of Shamans, Isi Hendrix. Cybils nominee I didn't get to.

Jesus and John Wayne, Kristin Kobes DuMez. Lying around on my Kindle.

Champion of Fate, Kendara Blake. Cloudy pick.

Bold Spirit, Linda Laurence Hunt. Recommended by Renton River book club president.

(OK, some of these I started before this week, but I'm only now getting back to them. So lots of the books I optimistically started this winter will hopefully show up here and then move up to COMPLETED!

Picture Books & Short Stories

None.

Bookmarks Moved (Or Languished) In:

Ascendance of a Bookworm: Part 3 Volume 1

Ascendance of a Bookworm: Part 5 Volume 7

Ascendance of a Bookworm, Miya Kazuki. Abandoning my reread of Part 3 now since the new one just dropped. I'll get back to it, don't worry!

Ascendance of a Bookworm, Part 5, Vol 7, Miya Kazuki. I'm in the epilogues at the end, which is fun because we get different PoV. And volume 8 is waiting for me!

Cobra, Timothy Zahn. I'm up to part 58!

Farther Than the Moon, Lindsay Lackey. 2023 Cybils Middle Grade Fiction finalist. It's *almost* science fiction.

Palate Cleansers

I'm slowly marching through these books.

Dragon's Breath (The Tales of the Frog Princess, #2)

The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games (Postmillennial Pop, 13)

YEAR OF WONDER: Classical Music for Every Day

50 Great Poets, ed. Milton Crane (no picture).

Dragon's Breath, E.D. Baker. For once I'm not annoyed by the prince.

The Writer's Stance: Reading and Writing in the Disciplines, Dorothy U. Seyler. (no picture). Walter Mitty!

The Road to Mars, Eric Idle.

Windswept, Adam Rakunas.

The Dark Fantastic, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas. How the world handled a black Bonnie in Vampire Diaries.

Year of Wonder, Clemency Burton-Hill. Caught up again!

Reading Challenges

Cybils 2023: Working on middle grade fiction.
Early Cybils: I might have finished 2007?.
Reading My Library. Finished Children's Audio books, now on music CDS.
Looking at Tacoma's Monster challenge for this year.

Future Plans

I'm putting this at the end because it's complete fiction, but I feel I should attempt some structure. Actually, I've started listing all the bookclubs I'm in, so I hope some actually happens.

I am reading: