A novella by Scalzi which is short and goofy and a good time. If you liked Kaiju Preservation, you’ll probably like this story of a woman who does constitutent services on a future Earth where the district she is living in is minority-human so there are a LOT of different things to take into account when you’re helping various people of various species help solve their civic problems. Humorous and a quick read, not a lot happens but there’s a satofying and amusing story arc and a good solid ending.

Harrow keeps getting better. This is a story about a legend and the person writing the story about the legend while also becoming part of the story. It’s got time loops and female knights and some academic drama and a mean old queen (and a misunderstood horse) and a lot of ruminations on the nature of freedom and of love. How do you tell the story of a people? How do you perfect that story, if it wasn’t quite right? Hard to talk about without spoilers. Treat yourself.

This is a collection of “poems you’ve probably heard of” set to illustrations by someone you probably haven’t heard of. I went in thinking this would be something different and was a bit underwhelmed, but my partner was flipping through it and felt it made poetry he’d otherwise maybe not be clicking with suddenly make sense or become more accessible. Poems are split up into seasonal sections, illustrations are good, not all the same. A few stand-outs.

Taking place in the mid-late 1800s, this story about a female bookbinder and the web of intrigue she gets mixed up in was up my street but not exactly right for me. There’s a bit of a mystery at the center of it but it’s really not a mystery book. There’s some fancy descriptions of book stuff which I always love, but maybe not enough of it. It seemed to be trying to be too many things at once, so while I enjoyed reading it, it also didn’t stick with me too much.

I usually have a bright line “no Nazis” in the books I read but a friend really enjoyed this and suggested it. It’s the story of a POW camp in a castle in what became East Germany. The people running the camp played by the Geneva Convention. The people in the camp tried to escape ALL the time, and often succeeded. The war is in the background and the Nazis don’t show up until the very end. I did not know this bit of WWII history and it was a good read. The last bit of it, besides having an extensive bibliography was a longish “what happened to them?” section which is the sort of thing I always like.

Book two of this goofy LitRPG series. I enjoyed it a lot, maybe not quite as much as the first one because there was a lot more “WTF is going on?” in the first one. This book introduces quests and some other kind of important dungeon beings. The cat gets a pet and there’s a big fight against evil clowns and knife-wielding lemurs. You’ll know if you’ll like this book or not by how you feel about the previous sentence. I enjoyed it.

A woman’s young husband dies and he leaves her a gift of one hand-picked book per month from the local independent bookstore. This is an engaging and basic romance novel which has at its core the idea that books can change lives. It goes pretty much exactly where you think it’s going to go. It’s nice, it’s bookish, the characters are likable and I did not at all mind being in this world for a while, even though romances are not usually my thing.

As someone who has had a bear at her bird feeder, I read this book with interest. The author is an outdoorsy type who talks about the various kinds of animals you might see if you live near their habitats and what, if anything, you can and should do about them. The animals she discusses range from bears to alligators to foxes to skunks to wild turkeys. It’s sensible advice which acknowledges the complexity of these situations.

I put off reading this because the cover is so dumb. I’m glad I persevered. It’s a “What if an RPG was in novel form and was funny?” book with Carl who survives a weird apocalypse only to wind up in a dungeon RPG along with his ex-girlfriend’s cat who gets some buffs so that she can talk. There’s a complex ruleset and a lot of funny bits while there’s also a lot of boss battles complete with weird monsters and a lot of gore. Part of a longer series, will read more.

A fun book about what we know about the human body based on science. It talks about the body section by section. The book is filled with trivia including a lot of mentions of people who are not well-known by folks (including some scientists whose research was co-opted by others who took all the glory). I knew some things, I learned some things, and I thought “Oh I think that’s changed” about a few things (book is from 2017). Readable and fun.