Books Reread
Holes by Louis Sachar
**Book Hangover Alert
Felt compelled to read this again the other night so I did. A great book to binge. I just think this book is perfect. And the movie is also perfect. I love the way the storylines all interlock and come together. After being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Stanley is sent to Camp Green Lake, a juvenile correctional facility where he digs holes all day in the hot sun. The book explores the fates of Stanley’s ancestors and the local history which all converge on Stanley and what he may or may not find buried in the dry lakebed.
5/5 yellow spotted lizards
New Books Read
The Time Machine by H.G. Wells*
The narrator attends a dinner party where the hosts claims to have invented a time machine. He relates his adventures in the far future and his guests are unsure what to believe. I read this as research for a project I’m thinking about. I just wanted to see how Wells approached the time travel aspect of the novel and the frame narrative. Those things were both interesting. I wasn’t that interested in Wells’s future world and future people. I couldn’t figure out if it was racist or it was a critique of racism.
3/5 crystals
The Ornithologist’s Field Guide to Love by India Holton*
Love’s Academic book 1 of 2
So silly and fun. A Victorian historical fiction, this one also a lite fantasy and a romance. The Ornithological Society puts on a competition to catch a rare bird and win Birder of the Year (and also tenure!). Beth Pickering is determined to win, but handsome, roughish Devon Lockley keeps getting in the way, and there’s something more going on–a conspiracy, a rigged contest, dangerous magical birds threatening the public–and only Beth and Devon, working together can figure out what’s going on. The focus was on the romance and the humor which both worked beautifully. I would have liked a little more world building. The dangerous magical birds were fun, but I was curious if there were other magical animals? How prevalent magical bird attacks are for the general population? If it’s possible for humans to use magic in this world? I also was kind of expecting there to be some real bird facts, but no, just bird puns lol.
4/5 magical birds
The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo***
The Singing Hills Cycle book 1 of 6
A nice little fantasy story. The structure was kind of interesting and used artifact type things at the beginning of each chapter to unite the present day storyline of a scribe who is hearing and recording the life of an older woman who had worked for the empress. I do really enjoy Vo’s prose.
3/5 magical birds (a theme this month?)
The Crime Without a Name: Combatting Ethnocide and the Erasure of Culture in America by Barrett Holmes Pitner***
**Book Hangover Alert
CW: fascism, genocide, ethnocide, racism
Fascinating. A linguistic and philosophical examination of the United States’s particular brand of fascism and racism. Holmes Pitner argues that we do not have the language to describe our own history and traumas and therefore cannot fully understand, process, or move forward from them. He proposes the word ethnocide to describe when a people’s culture is destroyed, but the people themselves are not (think Native American boarding schools or the Trans-Atlantic slave trade). Holmes Pitner does a good job of breaking down his argument and explaining it very clearly. He also has some interesting ideas about how to build culture in a non-exploitative way. Should be required reading for everyone. My only qualm was that it was published in 2021, when Holmes Pitner clearly had some hope about moving past Trump with Biden’s presidency, so reading it now in the year 2025 is somewhat disheartening.
4/5 ofrendas
House of Flame and Shadow by Sarah J. Maas*
CW: torture, slavery, fantasy racism
Crescent City book 3 of 3 (?)
I did not love this one. I think Maas’s style is a bit repetitive, though clear and easy to read. (I counted 3 “the column of her throat”s in this book, one “the column of her spine.” Wasn’t counting “his/her mouth kicked up at the corner” but I should’ve been.) This is the third book in the Crescent City series and to me it felt like the last, though my roommate thinks there will be more. I don’t need more. I liked the first one, which was kind of a murder mystery (so on brand for me). And I remember thinking the second was pretty good too. But I wasn’t crazy about this one. It was too long, for one thing. Maas has a lot of characters and POVs, which is something I like doing myself, but I don’t feel like her characters are different enough from each other. All the women seem the same and all the men seem the same. I also thought the world building was a little shaky. I like the idea of the fantasy creatures and magic in a technological city where people are using phones and cars, but I don’t think the development of technology makes sense. I would assume humans invented it because they can’t use magic, but the technology is all powered by magic, so that doesn’t make sense and it isn’t explained (unless I forgot from an earlier book??). There’s also kind of a weird blending of Christian and Norse mythology that just feels kinda haphazard. And finally, it’s a white savior narrative (or a “save the poor, ugly, powerless, downtrodden humans who can’t save themselves narrative” even though absolutely none of the main characters are human).
2.5/5 shifters
The Chalice of the Gods by Rick Riordan
**Book Hangover Alert
Percy Jackson and the Olympians book 6 of 8
Still delightful. In his senior year of high school, Percy must get three letters of recommendation for college by completing quests for the Gods. When Ganymede’s chalice goes missing, Percy, Annabeth, and Grover must track it down. Lower stakes than most of the other books in the PJ universe, but still clear stakes and motivations. Nice to see the way Riordan keeps developing characters we all know and love so well, and lovely to see the gang back together.
4/5 cups
The Weaver and the Witch Queen by Genevieve Gornichec***
**Book Hanover Alert
CW: slavery, death, child abuse
Ugh. This was so excellent I don’t know what to do with myself. After an ominous prophesy ties together the fates of three girls in circa 900 Norway, Gunnhild runs away from her abusive mother with the seeress who made the prophesy in order to become a witch too. Ten years later, the farm of her two friends is attacked by witches and one of them abducted. Gunnhild swears to help Oddny find her sister and the two women must join the hird of the future king of Norway I don’t feel like I did a good job with that summary, but please believe me that it’s really good and you should read it. Really nice prose. Great world building and immersion in the narrative. Compelling characters. And I did read this right after House of Flame and Shadow and I was thinking a lot about the place of smut and sex scenes in novels and I wasn’t crazy about any of the smut in HOFAS. I didn’t think it was particularly arousing or narratively satisfying. There is only one real sex scene in The Weaver and the Witch Queen and it’s not at all explicit, but I found it SO much more effective. It was subtle but still arousing as we’d been building up to this moment for half the book with the tension between these characters. It was just really well done.
5/5 sparrows
Small Steps by Louis Sachar
Holes book 2 of 2
Can’t compete with the masterpiece that is Holes, unfortunately. Taking place after Camp Green Lake, the story follows Armpit as he tries to get back on his feet after his stint in the juvenile justice system, taking small steps toward a better future. His plans for a quiet life are threatened by a ticket scalping scheme run by X-Ray, another former Camp Green Laker. I did enjoy this, although the sense of impending doom was almost enough to make me stop reading. I really just wanted Armpit to be happy and safe after all he’s already been through. I would also have appreciated seeing X-Ray’s perspective which we don’t get in the novel. I feel like I would have had more empathy for him if we’d gotten to be in his head sometimes. But as it was written, I just felt like X-Ray was dragging Armpit down.
3.5/5 counterfeit tickets
Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson*
This was so fun. I’ve been meaning to read something by Sanderson for forever (can I call myself a fantasy fan if I haven’t read anything by him??), so I asked a friend where I should start. She said Mistborn or Tress. I put Mistborn on hold at the library, but this one was available, so I ended up reading this one first. Tress is an ordinary girl on an ordinary island, but when the boy she loves is captured by the Sorceress, she must leave the Rock and sail the spore sea with pirates to bring him back. I really enjoyed this. I enjoyed the world and the concept of the spores. I loved the narrative voice of the story which was very funny and a unique way of telling the story (from a side character in this story, though a character that appears in Sanderson’s other works, I gather). The story was a pretty simple fairy tale but done in a refreshing way.
4/5 spores
Dragonfruit by Makiia Lucier***
CW: animal death, slavery, parental death
A really nice fantasy inspired by Pacific Islander mythology and culture. A seadragon egg can provide a wish, but at what cost? Hanalei is exiled from her island after her father steals an egg to save her life, at the cost of the princess’s. But the princess’s son is still looking for another egg to save his mother and Hanalei may be the only one who can help him. I really enjoyed this. My only beef with it was that spiders don’t blink. They don’t have eyelids. The author says twice that the spider character blinks. Which is a dumb tiny thing to be annoyed by. Also, fair warning, one of the animal companions died, and I was mad about it.
3.5/5 fruit bats
Hell Followed with Us by Andrew Joseph White***
CW: gore, body horror, religious trauma, death, dysphoria, transphobia, homophobia, genocide
I don’t know, this book was kind of a bummer. Not that it wasn’t good and maybe necessary for some people. But it did not improve my mental state to read it. In a near-future post-apocalypse, religious fanatics have spread a plague to nonbelievers, decimating the planet. Benji, a transman and carrier of the final weapon of the religious fanatics escapes the colony in a search for freedom. He finds a community of queer kids resisting the Evangelicals but there’s only one way for them to truly be free. It was incandescently angry (justifiably so). It did have too much gore for me, and I also think I would have got more out of it if I had some religious trauma or even any religious background. Somebody needs this book but it isn’t me.
3/5 monsters
*This book only includes straight white cis people. The Time Machine was written in 1895 so we’re not surprised. The Ornithologist’s Field Guide to Love is just a historical romance with no representation (I guess there was one gay kiss). Yes, I know House of Flame and Shadow has a couple of gay characters and a couple characters that are not white. But none of the main couples are gay or not white. None of the smut is gay or diverse. Tress of the Emerald Sea might have included a few nonwhite, characters, I don’t really remember any of the descriptions. Everyone was straight and cis as far as we know.
**Book Hangover Alert indicates the kind of book that will leave you full up on love. Satisfied, but wishing the book never had to end. You’ll be laying on the floor with no idea what to do with yourself (other friends have called this feeling Good Book Depression or say that certain books necessitate Floor Time). This is the kind of book that gets its teeth in you and won’t let go easily. After the last page you’ll be thinking about this book for a long time. You’ll bother all your friends trying to get them to read it so that you won’t be alone in your Hangover.
***This book is part of my Books for a Social Conscience series! Read The Empress of Salt and Fortune for LGBTQIA+ rep and Asian inspired fantasy. Read The Crime Without a Name to learn about fascism and racism in America. Read The Weaver and the Witch Queen for LGBTQIA+ rep in Viking historical fiction. Read Dragonfruit for a Pacific Islander inspired fantasy. Read Hell Followed with Us for LGBTQIA+ rep.
Reads marked as part of the Books for a Social Conscience series will regularly address topics like race and racism, colonialism and post-colonialism, LGBTQIA+ experience, feminism, BIPOC experience, social and political issues, history, identity, class, disability experience, immigration, gun violence, poverty, colorism, environmentalism, and more! The goal of these books is to diversify the stories we’re reading, grow our empathy for those who are different from us, and amplify voices who are often silenced.
