What have you recently finished reading?

I skimmed and ditched Shahidha Bari’s Dressed: The Secret Life of Clothes because it was pretentious as fuck, gender essentialist to the max, and misgendered a (fictional) trans girl constantly in a discussion about her clothing. So that was kind of a bust.

Before that I read Eat Me: A Natural and Unnatural History of Cannibalism, by Bill Schutt, that occasionally veered into a bit of sensationalism (e.g. says the author tries out cannibalism in the blurb: he eats a piece of someone else’s placenta, to be clear) but had some interesting stuff and sent me on a deep dive into how prion diseases work that contradicted what I learned during my degrees (or rather, suggested that it’s more theoretical and less proven than I thought).

What are you currently reading?

I’ve been keeping my “currently reading” list surprisingly clear for a few weeks, but I started a few at once in the last few days searching for something that would properly grab my interest. I’m in the mood to steamroller through a book, but apparently it has to be the right book.

One of the books I started is Strangers and Intimates: The Rise and Fall of Public Life, by Tiffany Jenkins. This is the one I’m probably closest to just sitting down and steamrollering through, to be honest, but it’s a little harder to just do that because it’s a several-hour read sort of book. I’m finding it very interesting so far.

I also started C.M. Waggoner’s The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society, which is starting out very self-consciously small-town-mystery, and there’s obviously (very obviously) some kind of supernatural influence forcing events to mimic a cosy mystery with a Miss Marple-ish detective. I’m a little curious how it’s going to turn out, but I’d like it to start getting somewhere soon.

Aaand finally I started volume two of MXTX’s Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation. I’m having a little bit of a rough time keeping track of names and clans, which isn’t helping my enthusiasm, even if I have tried-and-true methods of getting to grips with all that as I read. I’m reminding myself firmly that I couldn’t keep track of Mu Qing, Feng Xin, Nan Feng and Fu Yao at first, and it all fell into place easily enough. Still, might not be in quite the right mood for this, especially with that 184-page opening chapter (even if it is broken into parts).

What will you be reading next?

Feng Ren Zuo Shu’s The Beauty’s Blade is out, and I need to read that post-haste to see if I want to get it for my sister for Christmas. (Uhhh, look away, if you’re reading this, Squirtle!)

Other than that, I’m still eyeing Kaite Welsh’s The Wages of Sin, especially since it’s on my Book Spin Bingo board, and also the idea of getting back to my reread of the Greta Helsing books so I can read the new one (meaning it’d be time for Grave Importance).