Linking up with Taking on a World of Words.

What have you recently finished reading?

I think the last thing I finished was Sunyi Dean’s The Book Eaters, which was a bit of a mixed bag for me. I found the world-building a bit goofy: these people literally eat books, like… chew and swallow them. And that transmits the information into their brains somehow? But someone within the story refuses to call that magic, and other stuff frames it as biological? Yeah… no. That’s not how any of that works. If it’d just called it magic, I’d have got along with it a lot better — but then other stuff wouldn’t have worked so well.

On the other hand, the discussion of monstrousness and motherly love and family, all of that was pretty powerful and well done.

What are you currently reading?

I’ve started even more books at once, because it sparked joy in the moment, so I’ll mostly highlight those! I started two queer books and one about booksellers, and the three of them are additive in interesting ways: A.K. West’s How Queer Bookshops Changed the World, Jean-Yves Mollier’s A History of Booksellers and the Bookshop, and Harry Tanner’s The Queer Thing About Sin. The latter has a premise I’m very curious about, that acceptance of queer relationships is stronger when there’s higher levels of economic and political equality; I hope Tanner carries it through the book and reflects on it more, because I’d like to see more evidence than just ancient Greek city-states.

I also started on volume one of Lv Ye Qian He’s The Wife Comes First, which is leaning into court intrigue type stuff that I’m very curious about. Jing Shao definitely didn’t deserve Mu Hanzhang’s loyalty in his past life, and I’m wondering whether it’ll ever show us why Mu Hanzhang was so loyal. Either way, I’m enjoying Jing Shao’s eagerness to please Mu Hanzhang now that he understands how amazing he is.

What will you read next?

I got a couple of poetry collections by Mary Oliver at the weekend, and Fred Fordham’s graphic novel adaptation of A Wizard of Earthsea, so those are high on my list! I also need to get round to some of my library books, like Asako Yuzuki’s Butter, because the library wants them back.