Conversion Therapy Dropout   
by Timothy Schraeder Rodriguez (2026)

read: 8 June 2026
rating: [+]

I got this book as a giveaway in exchange for an honest review. This is an achingly poignant story about a guy who grows up in a religious household trying to “pray the gay away” for eight years with conversion therapy programs all the while enjoying a very successful career as a social media marketer for the same churches which don’t accept him. He eventually comes to a better place as a queer adult but it’s a long slog to get there and he remains very religious, but within an affirming community and supportive friends. If you’re someone who just can’t stomach people with strong religious beliefs, this one may not be for you, but it probably is for everyone else.

Love By the Book   
by Jessica George (2026)

read: 8 June 2026
rating: [+]

This is a story within a story of a platonic and yet also romantic (bot not sexual) friendship between two women. Remy is dealing with the inevitable aging-and-distancing of her best-friend group and she meets Simone who is pretty closed off but maybe open to being friends. Both women go through a lot in the short course of this novel. Remy is also trying to undo some writer’s block after her first successful novel and decides to write about their friendship.

Lovely Recipe   
by Myra Rose Nino (2026)

read: 7 June 2026
rating: [+]

A graphic novel about two teenagers in their last year of high school who are both interested in food. One works in her parents restaurant. One misses the way her grandmother would make big meals that brought the family together. They meet up during the whirlwind of senior year and the whole “Who is going away to college and who is staying nearby?” uncertainty and begin cooking together and healing some of their unrecognized underlying feelings. Sweet and well-drawn.

Open Borders   
by Bryan Caplan (2019)

read: 1 June 2026
rating: [+]

This is a graphic novel about why open borders make sense both from an economic perspective (i.e. most immigrants give more to their new country than they receive $-wise) and also by other measures. It traces some of the history of immigration in the United States and shows, using a lot of stats and studies, why fewer restrictions on immigration would benefit the US in a number of material ways and help turn it into a more just society. Not just an essay with pictures.

Bleeding Heart Yard   
by Elly Griffiths (2022)

read: 31 May 2026
rating: [+]

Another book in the Harbinder Kaur series and, unlike the Ruth Galloway books, this series really doesn’t center the protagonist (a late-30s queer southeast Asian detective in London) as much as I might have liked. It’s a story about a group of popular kids who are some part of a murder in their school days and now it’s 20 years later and... there’s another murder. Plotwise it’s fine, wraps up better than you think it’s going to.

The Gales of November   
by John Bacon (2025)

read: 28 May 2026
rating: [+]

I grew up listening to Gordon Lightfoot and the song he wrote about this tragedy is one of my favorites. This book is about what actually happened before and after the shipwreck with some postulating of what may have happened to cause the wreck. It’s a well-researched, readable book that is very clear about what is known and not known. The author doesn’t speculate, he just lets you know what the facts are, and since so little is known about the actual sinking, it doesn’t turn into a traumafest. It’s a great story about a community and culture with a lot of Great Lakes boat lore tossed in as well.

The A Word: A Global History of the Abortion Struggle   
by Elizabeth Casillas (2025)

read: 26 May 2026
rating: [+]

This book was a “graphic essay.” It’s an overview of the history of abortion rights worldwide, from when abortion was just considered a medical concern, to the currently hyper-politicized fraught topic which it is today. There’s a lot of good information, from an author who is unapologetically in favor of abortion rights and I appreciated the global perspective but it did read sort of like an essay and didn’t make as much use of the graphic medium as I’d hoped. It was nice to get a worldwide perspective on the topic.

Northern Borders   
by Howard Frank Mosher (1994)

read: 25 May 2026
rating: [+]

Mosher writes Lake Wobegon-type novels about a fictional location in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont “back in the day.” Very evocative of a sense of place and time and the people in that place and time in both good ways and sometimes less-good ways, heavy with nostalgia. This one is more of a collection of shorter stories all with the same narrator with slices of life from when he went to live with his grandparents between the ages of six and 18.

Constituent Service   
by John Scalzi (2025)

read: 15 May 2026
rating: [+]

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.

The Everlasting   
by Alix Harrow (2025)

read: 13 May 2026
rating: [+]

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.

Nature Poems to See By   
by Julian Peters (2026)

read: 10 May 2026
rating: [+]

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.

The Bookbinder's Secret   
by A. D. Bell (2025)

read: 4 May 2026
rating: [+]

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.

Prisoners of the Castle   
by Ben Macintyre (2022)

read: 4 May 2026
rating: [+]

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.

Carl's Doomsday Scenario   
by Matt Dinniman (2021)

read: 30 April 2026
rating: [+]

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.

This Book Made Me Think Of You   
by Libby Page (2026)

read: 30 April 2026
rating: [+]

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.