Aaaaand it's time for another edition of Wise Words, where you get to choose the word that better fits in the blank. Click the link to register your choice.

Weekend reading! The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden is really good so far. Canadians in WW1 & some ghostly weirdness (I'm only 20% in). Next up will be A Portrait of Death by Rhen Garland. #amreading #weekendreading #books #bookstodon

I started reading A Peach Offering for the Imperial Court, a Japanese manga set in.a Chinese fantasy world and its everything I want in Chinese romantasy: a tall scared barbarian woman for the FMC, an MMC who wishes to become emperor so his low born mother doesn't have to suffer any longer and a plot that takes a psychological look at Ancient Chinese court politics.

@bookstodon #manga #amreading

What Austen or the Brontës write about women and their financial standing in the 19th C is still going on in the 21st. Hell, women couldn't get their own credit cards until the early 1970s! #AmReading #AmWriting @bookstodon #books #Bookstodon
#WritingCommunity #ReadingCommunity #Regency #Georgian #EmilyBronte #CharlotteBronte #AnneBronte #Victorian @romancelandia #JaneAusten

An American Civil War spy drama ("epic" but I'm not so sure about that) that kicks off at a Passover seder? Sure, why not. It's timely, that's for sure. The writing is a a little choppy, and the main character seems to be a bit of a schlub, but I think I'll stick with it. #FridayReads #AmReading #Books #Bookstodon #Audiobooks #Fiction #History #CivilWar #Mazeldon @bookstodon

"Read me, Seymour," in the voice of Audrey II. #books #booklovers #amreading #amwriting #sciencefiction #mystery #fantasy #horror

"Pet" by Akwaeke Emezi

This is a very unique YA novel about a girl having to face some difficult truths in a seemingly utopian region.

I had such fun with this book. Enough so that halfway through, I put myself on the library's wait list for several other books by the same author. But then it soured at the very end, when it finished the novel with a karmically disabled / disfigurement as expression of evilness trope. Thanks, I hate it. It's such a waste, because I genuinely loved the book and thought it was very original.

It's also extra disappointing in a book that's trying to show a different way, with people obviously being accepting of all genders, sexualities, ethnicities, neurodiversity, etc. The novel tries to give the message that people who do bad things can look just like everyone else, but then makes a joke of that point with its ending.

I will read another Emezi, but if the next book makes use of ableist tropes again, I'll probably stop for good.

Question 11: Any Romance in the offing? #scotland #ballet #amreading

http://weewritinglassie.home.blog/2025/04/11/the-wee-writing-lassie-and-ailish-sinclair-present-will-the-real-alexander-please-stand-up-question-11-any-romance-in-the-offing/

Found this #shortstory in a brittle old copy of Fantasy and Science Fiction that I've had since I was a kid. I'd never read any Lafferty before. He's a trip. It's absolutely sci-fi—the characters are exploring a new planet—but the language is sensual and florid and the plot nearly hallucinatory. It reads like poetry, or magic realism.
#scifi #sciencefiction #ralafferty #amreading #monly

I checked the website's validity before posting, and it is a nonpartisan UK daily paper, so it's a listicle with better-educated opinions. 2022 Persuasion is on here, which genuinely surprised me, considering all the hubbub, but hey, I also like it!

https://inews.co.uk/culture/television/jane-austen-adaptations-nine-best-3595860

#AmReading #AmWriting @bookstodon #books #Bookstodon
#WritingCommunity #ReadingCommunity #Regency #Georgian #EmilyBronte #CharlotteBronte #AnneBronte #Victorian @romancelandia #JaneAusten

Interesting to me that BrE not only uses the spelling "moustache" but also pluralizes it to indicate a long length, such that a man might "idly stroke his silvery grey moustaches."

I knew of the spelling but not of the pluralization-as-descriptor.

Yeah, I'm back to reading my Victorian-era mysteries.

My newest thing is to be reading three books at a time: a fast-paced book, a slow-paced book, and a non-fiction book.

Book and beer, a winning combination

Read all the books! #books #booklovers #amreading

Question 10: Person he’s learned the most from? #scotland #fiction #amreading

http://weewritinglassie.home.blog/2025/04/10/the-wee-writing-lassie-and-ailish-sinclair-present-will-the-real-alexander-please-stand-up-question-10-person-hes-learned-the-most-from/

I just finished #Oathbound by Tracy Deonn. I knew most of the spoilers already but dang! The ending still had me at the edge of my seat!!! Five stars. (Even with the fairly terrible Scottish accent from one of the narrators. I was wincing a bit in those scenes, but I still give it five stars.) I’ll record a video about it soon. I am obviously Team Throuple, because how could anyone choose between Nick and Sel?! Not me, for sure. #amreading #bookstodon #fantasy

#bookskychat discussion question of the week Who is your absolute favorite book character? Do you think you would be friends with them in real life?

More on what I've been reading lately: Terminal Alliance, first book of the Janitors of the Post-Apocalypse. It's as funny and delightfully absurd as it sounds, but I found it a little frustrating that the Big Twist (that I figured out from reading the book jacket) took way too long to materialize. The loss of human culture (due to said apocalypse) made me really sad, too. Not 100% sure when I'll go back for the sequels.