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.

The Bear at the Bird Feeder   
by Randi Minetor (2025)

read: 7 April 2026
rating: [+]

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.

Dungeon Crawler Carl   
by Matt Dinniman (2020)

read: 7 April 2026
rating: [+]

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.

The Body, A Guide for Occupants   
by Bill Bryson (2020)

read: 28 March 2026
rating: [+]

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.

Seascraper   
by Benjamin Wood (2025)

read: 27 March 2026
rating: [+]

A very moody seaside novella about a young man making his living in the hardscrabble world of shanking, scraping shrimp from the low waters with his horse and cart, coming home to the simple cottage where he lives with his mom, getting up and doing it all over again. One day a man appears who wants to put him in a movie, waving money and just the whole concept of “something else.” Just the idea of something else changes him. This book was slow and evocative and a nice place to be in.

Oxford Soju Club   
by Jinwoo Park (2025)

read: 24 March 2026
rating: [+]

This is a great short novel about some North Korean spies, a South Korean who runs a restaurant in Oxford, and an American spy of Korean descent who is also part of this whole thing. It bounces around a bit in the timeline, but overall tells a story of what it means to be Korean, or to consider Korea “home” (or not) and what it means to have family (or not). Very self-contained and event-filled without being thriller-y. I liked getting to know these characters and what made their lives complex as well as interesting.

The Mental Load   
by Emma (2017)

read: 21 March 2026
rating: [+]

Emma is a French graphic novelist who wrote this book in 2017, later translated into English. She is admittedly late to feminist topics and her author bio says that her comics, which run in the Guardian, “have a history of going viral.” I think this would be a better graphic novel for someone newer to feminism and activism than I am. She covers topics like female sexuality, household domestic labor divisions and racist police. All good topics, decently illustrated but some of them felt a bit obvious while some were more sophisticated looks into feminist topics. Overall a bit uneven and more like essays made into pictures most of the time.

The Postscript Murders   
by Elly Griffiths (2020)

read: 19 March 2026
rating: [+]

Unfortunately, this book had nothing to do with the programming language 😆 This was the second in the Harbinder Kaur series and it was good. Sort of had the same issues as the last one, a lot of characters, a few which are nicely built out and a lot of others with generic names who are almost NPCs. A lot of nice views of Scotland. Kaur makes progress with her more-traditional family. As a nighttime book that I wasn’t expecting too much from, it was pretty good.

It Rhymes with Takei   
by George Takei (2025)

read: 18 March 2026
rating: [+]

I had read Takei’s earlier memoir about being sent to an internment camp with his family. This one details his personal and professional journey, only coming out as a gay man in his sixties, when he had already been in a committed relationship for two decades. It’s well-told, poignant and sweet (and a little rage-inducing), showing the fear he had about someone discovering his secret, but also the ways he found to live his life and become the gay icon he is today.