Tag: books

2025 Reading List

On By MaryIn RandomLeave a comment

All right! So this past year I was attempting to get to 30 books on BOTM’s reading challenge, so many of the following are books I received through that subscription service. I got a bit derailed (from everything really) in March, but still attempted to keep going, and didn’t really taper off until I hit October. (September and October tend to be my “give up” months for challenges, if anyone hasn’t noticed the pattern). As a warning, many spoilers beyond for all of the books mentioned as I challenge myself to even remember and summarize what I read through the year!

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

Although not as compelling as The Martian, I really enjoyed this one. I didn’t find out until after reading it that there’s a movie on the way as well, and I’m pretty excited about it. The sun is dying, and scientists discover that the reason is because a tiny alien species is devouring it. Tracing a path of dying stars, they find that origin system for the creatures has a healthy star, and they decide to put together a mission to find out why that one in particular has survived. The main character is a science teacher who gets tangled up in the mission as an advisor and trainer for the scientists they plan on sending, until a massive accident results in him being sent along. He wakes in an alien solar system only to find that the rest of the team is dead. Since he’s Earth’s last hope, he doesn’t give up – he works diligently to find out why this star is fine. While there, he meets another intelligent alien, and they begin to communicate with each other. As it turns out, this alien’s home world is also experiencing a similar problem, and he is also there to try to save his home. Similarly, his entire crew died on the way. As it turns out, they didn’t have a full understanding of the dangers of space travel, and they all died because of radiation – as the engineer, the surviving alien was often in a more shielded part of their ship, and thus managed to avoid getting sick. Together, they find out that the reason the tiny sun-devouring aliens haven’t consumed their home sun completely is because they have a natural predator in the environment that keeps their numbers manageable.

Like the Martian, everything is well written, and the character has an amusing enough voice that keeps you engaged throughout. The science in this feels less solid than it did in the Martian, but everything is very reasonable. Throughout the book, the main character is trying to remember how he ended up on the mission, and by the time he’s found out he’s still too devoted to the mission to really do anything about his anger. Him and the alien work through everything, find a solution, and start to return home, but he realizes that his new friend is going to die without his help. He still manages to send his results home, and detours to help the alien, but this means that he’s stranded and unable to return to Earth. He still manages to make a new life for himself in a special habitat the aliens make for him on his friend’s home planet. The ending does almost feel too cutesy, but as far as endings go wasn’t horrible.

This Inevitable Ruin by Matt Dinniman

A holdover from 2024 when I was reading through the entire series. In this one, Carl and Donut are completely in the Faction Wars floor. Instead of players being used by the existing Factions, Carl has managed to become the leader of his own faction, and has also gotten the NPCs a spot of their own as well. The rules have also been changed so that the people outside of the game that have joined Faction Wars are actually at risk of dying. They’ve also got a whole army of volunteers from previous games who have joined to help.

This book also included small snippets of other Dungeon Anarchist Cookbook authors and their “inevitable ruins” – some of them within this present Faction Wars as some of them are volunteers that return to help Carl. It makes a lot of it very bittersweet. Also this is where I caught up with the series – the next book isn’t quite out yet, but I’m looking forward to it quite a bit.

Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe

Margo is a young woman who goes to college and gets pregnant while sleeping with one of her married professors. He doesn’t want to mess up his marriage, so he breaks things off with her and his mom pays her to not mess with him. Her own mother has very little interest in helping to take care of a baby and very vocally tells her daughter so upfront. Her roommates are also college students, and because they did not sign up to live with a baby, they both move out of the apartment. Margo is very ill prepared for motherhood and has no support system. Her boss gives her an ultimatum to take a weekend off and find someone to watch her kid so she can work – she can’t, so she’s fired. Without roommates, the total value of the rent is on her.

At this point, her father re-enters her life. He is an ex-professional wrestler who has been in and out of rehab for addiction. Margo and her mother were always his “other” family – he would come to visit whenever he was doing shows in their town, but always returned to his wife and kids. He’s finally divorced his wife and was going to propose to Margo’s mom, only to find out she has a fiance now, so instead he shows up on Margo’s doorstep and asks for a place to crash. He seems thrilled to help his daughter with a little bit of rent money and taking care of the baby.

Margo hears about OnlyFans and decides to give that a try. She begins pretty good but isn’t making as much as she wanted, so she confesses what she is doing to her dad and asks for his help in coming up with ideas. At first he’s disappointed in her, but eventually comes around to seeing it as a “show” like wrestling, and advises her to create a character and reach out to other content creators so they can make videos where their characters interact. Margo comes up with a weird alien girl who is always doing slightly odd stuff as she learns about Earth.

The videos really take off and Margo begins to make pretty good money, but when the professor finds out that she is making OnlyFans videos he becomes concerned about the environment that his child is in and calls CPS and challenges her for custody. She does get everything worked out in the end though. Oh, there’s also a love story thrown in where one of the dude’s sending money on OnlyFans chats with her and they fall in love and meet. And her dad relapses but they work out a good rehab plan for him.

It’s not too bad of a story, but the main character is so naive at times. Mostly it’s because she’s young, and perhaps a lot of that is very true for someone that age, so maybe I’m having trouble relating because I’m older now. The friendships and party habits were also a bit annoying to me, and the ending felt too neatly tied up for everything that happens within the story. I can’t remember whether the baby even felt relevant beyond set dressing for the story?

Honey by Isabel Banta

The premise is that it’s the late 90’s/early 00’s and a young girl rises to pop star fame, and what that does with her life. Considering the time frame, I was expecting more media frenzy and slut shaming and exploitation, because that was a lot of the problematic issue for young pop stars of that time period (think Britney) and while it briefly touches upon some of that, it wasn’t really the main focus of the story. I think the main focus was her big crush on some guy and trying to get that relationship just to find that it didn’t really fit what she was thinking it would be, and how the love triangle aspect kind of embittered her one important friendship. And a lot of the issues and things described felt more like modern day problems than problems of that time frame.

Anyhow, the main character matures and then develops a relationship with a producer and they make great music together and she gets herself on track or some shit.

The records on the cover are arranged the way they are because her only definable personality trait is big boobs.

Sleep Tight by J.H. Markert

I honestly can’t remember much about this.

There’s a killer. I think the main character is a cop? Her son goes missing? The killer is making it like her dad’s old murders, or like the murders of someone her dad caught? It was pretty generic thriller stuff. I don’t remember liking it or hating it. It just was.

Ready or Not by Cara Bastone

This one is a pretty generic love story. Woman gets pregnant by one night stand, finds out the father was just on a break with his ex and is already back together with her, so she’s going the single mother route. Her best friend’s brother, who she’s known her entire life (and – surprise – has always been in love with her) steps up and helps her out along every step of her pregnancy. The father also wants to be a bit involved, but it causes some drama with his girlfriend. The main character helps him to see that his girlfriend is actually a bit too controlling and that he doesn’t really want to be with her. Over the course of the pregnancy, she falls in love with the childhood friend’s brother and they move in together to be a happy family at the end.

I do remember that the main character has author voice sometimes, where it doesn’t quite fit the story to have a certain moralistic liberal idea but the main character decides to lecture people on it so that the author can make it very clear where she stands. I lean liberal, and I don’t mind when the ideas are presented naturally, but I dislike when characters just feel like a mouth-piece for ideology.

Regardless, it’s a cute story and there’s a nice little sex scene in it.

You Like It Darker by Stephen King

Spotted it in the store and decided to take a break from BOTM books. For one, the title is inspired by a song I like, and for another, it’s King. That being said, none of the stories are darker than usual for King. If anything, a lot of it feels like a rumination on getting old and dying alone or with a sense of failure. The opening story especially stood out for me in its contemplation of whether success can be had without at least a core of talent. Another stand out for me was a story that kind of re-does “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Conner, though that might be because I had to read it about three or four times in college. In that story, an old woman gets her son’s family lost and killed by robbers during a road trip. In King’s take, an old man saves his family in a similar situation – it definitely had more a “feel good” feel than most of the rest of the book and its inspiration.

I mean, it’s Stephen King. I liked it.

Dragonfruit by Makiia Lucier

Mixing Western style fantasy with a Pacific Island aesthetic. The main character is a girl who’s father was banished for using a dragon’s egg to save her from death, when it could have been used to save the island’s princess. Her father dies after, and she tries to find an egg to take back to her home. While following a seadragon that is showing signs of laying an egg soon, she ends up back on her home island – she is welcomed back, but there is a little bit of drama. She and the prince go on a mission to find the eggs across the island.

There are some fun ideas at play. For one, there is a certain magic that only works on her island for her own people, where a tattoo appears on their skin that can come to life and aid them in ways throughout, and her own appears at the end of the story. She also has a connection with seadragons because the egg of one was used to save her. I remember that there were also people that were “European” that were visiting as well (in quotes, because it was a fantasy world entirely so they weren’t really European, per se).

It did take me awhile to get through it, because it was easy to put down and not pick back up. But it was a fun story when I was getting into it.

Final Girls by Riley Sager

In this book, there are three women who survive similar horror movie situations where they were the sole survivors. One of them suggests meeting for support, but the other two are reluctant. One day, the initial one that suggested the meeting ends up dead, which prompts the more mysterious person to approach the main character.

It’s a thriller. I guess I’m not as super into them? Sometimes they come together really nicely, and generally Riley Sager is very popular and manages to not make things too predictable or eye rolling most of the time. This is also one of Sager’s more popular novels. I think I had heard so much about it being so great beforehand that I was a little disappointed in the end. I don’t remember a lot of it to be honest, but I do specifically remember the ending as being annoying. The main character hears about a young woman (a teenager, really) that has gone through a horrible thing and has become the sole survivor of that event. She goes through great lengths to travel to her and sneak into her hospital room to introduce herself and offer support as a fellow final girl. And it just struck me as… creepy?

But if you like Riley Sager, you’d like this.

Liquid: A Love Story by Mariam Rahmani

I disliked this one.

The main character is kind of arrogant, an intellectual with a PhD that seems to look down on American culture despite being so obviously entrenched in it. The core love story is obvious – she’s in love with her white college friend, but he keeps breaking up and going back to some other girl. She doesn’t specifically say that she loves him, and he doesn’t reveal until the end that he’s loved her all along, but it’s very apparent that’s who she’s ending up with. She decides she wants to marry rich and as a matter of math, decides to limit herself to 100 dates after which she’ll pick the person from the 100th date and marry them. She goes through a series of dates and one night stands, some kind of awkward, some already married, some not good fits. In the middle of the book, her father gets sick, and she travels to Iran to help care for him. While there, she has a romance with his neighbor, an artist. The artist introduces her to her friend group while they are seeing each other.

Her father dies and leaves her his house and belongings in Tehran. She considers living there at first, but some of the realities of life there begin to hit her. The liberal queer group of her artist are all wealthy and intellectual, but seem to look down on her and treat her like a child, which chafes for her. She attempts to find books to perhaps help with her research in a project she is interested in writing, and the books are banned (she still gets them, just that it becomes a longer conversation wherein the bookseller seems to decide whether it is all right to trust her with the sale). After deeply considering what life there may be liked for her, she decides to end things with her artist girlfriend and returns to the United States, leaving renting the house to an uncle.

Back home, her college bestie seeks her out and reveals his feelings and that the poems he writes are all about her. While it is a very good book, it was hard to tell if the main character absorbed a lesson, but I feel that I might be judging it a bit on the harsh side owing to my general dislike of her.

Five-Star Stranger by Kat Tang

This one has kind of a fun concept – there is an app where people can rent the services of other individuals to arrive and pretend to be a relationship of some sort. If you need someone to go to a funeral and act a certain way, or a charming date to a family gathering, you can use this app to find that person and pay them for a few hours of their time. The main character is a guy who is very highly rated on the app, and he has built his entire life around having an entirely professional demeanor in regards to his job – he doesn’t let personal feelings get in the way, and he doesn’t engage in sex because its serious work for him. One of his regulars is a woman who has hired him to come visit once a week and pretend to be her daughter’s dad – she is a single working mom but wants her child to grow up with a father figure. They’ve concocted an entire story over the years of him having a job that keeps him away for the entire week. The girl is getting older, and he finds himself actually caring for her in a paternal matter. He has also recently taken a job pretending to be the brother of a girl in college. She is attempting to write a fictional story but having trouble relating to her characters, so she hires him to act like the brother acts in her story, to have a “first hand” feel of what it would be like. She also tries to discuss what his job is like with him and learn about him as an individual beyond the role she hired him for.

These things are challenging his professionalism. We also get insight into his relationship with his mother when he was younger, and how that affected his ability to form interpersonal relationships. Sex is a weird taboo for him because he relates it to something that caused loss for him before, and now it feels wrong. His entire apartment is composed of just different clothes for the different roles he might have to play. But the relationship with the girl and the fake sister kind of help draw him out of that.

I can’t really remember the ending, but I remember really liking this one. The main character tries to put up very strict boundaries because of his own personal issues he doesn’t want to face, and feels more comfortable playing roles than being himself, and he really grows past that.

A Flicker in the Dark by Stacy Willingham

I don’t really remember this one too well either, but I do remember looking at other books by the same author shortly after, so I must have liked it well enough.

Dearest by Jacquie Walters

So this one is hard for me to say whether I liked or disliked. It starts off slow and almost like a more deep/arty look at postpartum, where a new mom that is home alone waiting for her deployed husband to return begins to experience weird things. She sends an email to her estranged mom, who shows up and helps her a little. She starts seeing her childhood imaginary friend again too.

And then her husband returns and it gets a bit weird because it turns out her mom has been dead all this time. And then it ramps up until there are actually demons and a monster pops out at the end to kill her.

The way the first half is written is so much like it’s going to be about postpartum that the last half threw me. I kind of disliked the first half and that made me unprepared for how it was actually going to go. You spend so much of the first half thinking she’s just in her head that when it’s bam! real monsters, it’s a bit jarring. I have the feeling I would have liked it a lot better if I had taken her mentality at face value rather than trying to read it under a lens, I guess?

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

So I’ve gone on and on about not liking thrillers, but here is one I really liked. A rich family owns a summer camp, and one summer their daughter goes missing at the camp. It turns out her younger brother also went missing years ago, and the person that went to jail for that has recently escaped jail. What follows is a look at the interpersonal dramas of each involved.

I think I particularly liked how this ended also. The idea that the girl’s family was too toxic for her to be around and she wanted to escape before she was a legal age to escape, and the end revealing that she is safe and happy just waiting out her time.

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

This was a re-read because I had a BOTM edition and I wanted to actually read it before giving it the rating to add it to my challenge. I remember really loving this book when I first read it, so much that I immediately recommended it to my closest friends. All of Crouch’s books have been pretty good, but this is probably the best. It starts out with an idea that is fairly stereotypical – two roads diverged, the guy who chose family has been stuck wondering how far he could have got and feels a bit disgruntled with his life, the guy that chose career has made great discoveries and is very successful but wonders “what if” about the other life. He kidnaps and switches spots, thinking he’s doing the family guy a favor. What follows is an interdimensional journey where the one is trying to get back to his family, and we get glimpses of many different worlds.

That in itself is fun. And of course, he gets home. But then what happens?

The story takes it a step further, in a completely logical manner. It’s a multiverse, and there’s many version of him that took different paths and opened different doors on their journeys home, and they’re all arriving to try to get back to his wife and son, and craziness ensues.

There are a lot of stories that would just have had the two guys duking it out, but this took this one logical step further that makes great sense, fits the narrative, and makes it really stand out against other similar stories. And the many variant apocalypses they run across initially are fascinating to see as well.

I loved it then, I still enjoyed it even knowing what was coming. There’s a show, it’s also great. Read it, watch it, I highly recommend all.

American War by Omar El Akkad

I took a brief break from my BOTM books, although I initially found out about this book by browsing the BOTM app. However, it shows as sold out and has never been re-offered by them since I’ve added it to my reading list, so I finally just got it another way to read. It is set in the future, about another American Civil War and some of the specifics of it in relation to the life of a young woman who plays a large role through some of the war, and especially the major events at the end of it. Some of it still feels a bit relevant, though the concerns of the time frame that it was written in kind of date it a bit. That being said, it’s an interesting glimpse into a future where America is collapsing and dividing, and I think the big end event is an engineered virus?

There were bits that were fascinating, but as I mentioned, it feels a bit dated compared to current concerns and some of it was just… boring. Which it seems should have been hard to manage given the subject matter, but it was more concerned with how prescient it could be, I suppose?

Iron Flame by Rebecca Yaros

Second book in The Empyrean. It’s a fun enough series featuring dragon riders and a few smutty scenes. The main argument the characters keep having feels stupid, but anything for tension. He’s graduated but she’s still in school, so there is still the “university” feel to it with training and classes. If it’s your thing, it’s your thing, and if it’s not it’s not.

The Names by Florence Knapp

I loved this one. It opens with a woman taking her son to register his name, and finding herself stuck between three choices – naming the child how her abusive and controlling husband wants, naming the child how she wants, or letting her daughter name the child. The book then diverges showing the life of each child depending on the name that she has chosen, and each is quite drastically different. It was beautiful and contemplative and a little sad. I definitely recommend it.

Yours Truly by Abby Jimenez

There’s less letter writing than you would think for this one. Anyhow, it tries to be enemies to lovers, but like usual, they’re not mutual enemies. The guy, as always, is head over heels first and the girl is just misunderstanding him. Once they get past that, they’re great friends. It turns out he’s a match to be an organ donor for her brother, and because his ex is marrying his brother, he asks her to play the part of his “new girlfriend” that he’s lied to his family about having. They grow closer, and the only misunderstanding that keeps them apart is her thinking that he’s in love with the ex still, which of course somehow doesn’t get explained until the end. Then they happily ever after.

As mentioned, the title suggests more epistolary than it is, but it’s fun and cute. Apparently it is also part of a trilogy, and it does have me interested in reading the others.

Next to Heaven by James Frey

A bit caught up in its artsyness but I didn’t mind it. The characters are wealthy couples in an upscale community who decide to arrange a swinger’s party, but everything about it is all planned from the get go, and a lot of things after are also all part of a plan. It comes together really well, and a lot of pieces are planted with care for it.

Among Friends by Hal Ebbott

Kind of disliked this. So these two guys have been best friends since college, and as a result their families are close and meet together a few times a year. They each have beautiful wives and teenage daughters. During one of these get togethers, one of the guys pins and gropes the other guy’s daughter. The girl keeps it to herself at first, beginning to act out in other ways, but when she gets caught shoplifting she confesses everything to her father. Her father instantly believes her, but everything gets muddled because her mother doesn’t believe her and the guy insists he did no such thing.

For a moment the book plays with an alternative future where her father separates her from these people in order to ensure her safety and to assure her that he is 100% on her side. But then it cuts back to the reality that he is not wealthy and needs his wife’s support to have the life he has and he doesn’t want to cut off his best friend, so the end of the story shows him dragging his daughter back to another get together with the friend’s family, and nothing is ever done about it.

A lot of the book also just revolves around everyone’s negative thoughts and feelings about each other – about their kids, about their spouses, about their friends. Nobody really likes each other, they’re all annoyed at each other, they’re all miserable people.

It was kind of unpleasant.

Don’t Cry For Me by Daniel Black

This is a series of letters from a father to his son discussing the events of his own life and some of how his relationship with his son was framed by the events of his life and his understanding of the world. He is estranged from his son because of his dissolved relationship with his wife and because of how he could not relate to his child. A lot of that estrangement surrounded his son’s being gay, and how his son failed to be as manly as he had been raised to expect men to be. It is mostly an apology for not being more understanding, because the father is on his deathbed and plans to leave the letters to his son.

I enjoyed it. Sometimes with things like this I always get pulled out a bit because of voice. We’re talking about an older gentleman that was generally illiterate and only took up reading and writing later in life. I don’t mind grammar and spelling being nice enough, but sometimes word choice and how artfully something is shared seems to shift me out and wonder if that is how the character would really phrase these things.

Isaac’s Song by Daniel Black

The follow up to Don’t Cry For Me, Isaac discusses his reaction to finding the letters that his dad left, and his relationship with his father and how it was for him growing up as a young gay black man within the time frame of the late 80’s.

Not bad, it’s quite interesting, some of it is also about finding one’s voice and art. I can’t remember what Isaac’s art that he wants to share is at the end though, there is so much that he does throughout the book (he plays piano, paints, and writes). But he’s got a weird relationship with art because his father never seemed to approve, and so he got a degree relating to computers and works in a cubicle.

Some of it is as much about being black as it is about being gay. I do remember one specific scene where they’re at a work Christmas party and he’s singled out by someone wanting him to get on stage and sing because all black people are musical, right? Right? He hard refuses and him and the other black guy at the party commiserate a bit about the expectations that people have based on race.

Anyhow, shortly after settling his father’s things, he tries to find his relationship with art again. A lot of it involves him speaking to his therapist too.

Play Nice by Rachel Harrison

This isn’t too bad but I do remember thinking that it could have been better if the author had fully committed to fleshing out the book within the book and making it less generic. As it is, the book within the book is just there as a plot device and the bits shared with it feel like they’re just getting information out there. Granted, fully fleshing it out might have expanded the novel quite a bit, but I’m not afraid to read a 500 page book if it’s done well.

It’s a demon haunting tied to a house and a girl. She inherits the house after her estranged mother passes, decides she wants to document her process improving it and flipping it and then selling it at a profit. Weird things begin to happen, because there is an actual demon involved, and she realizes she can’t sell the house.

I liked it. Like I said, I felt like more could have been done with it. I could have liked it better.

Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross

If you’re looking for non smut romance fantasy, this might be up your alley. It has a kind of You’ve Got Mail feel if the characters immediately shipped out to WWI, and if the WWI was a fantasy one involving gods and monsters. The magic is interesting and the world building is great. I quite enjoyed it, and I’m in the middle of the second book at the moment.

The Ten Year Affair by Erin Somers

A man and a woman meet at a baby group after they move to a small town. They become friends and almost have a fling, but realize that would ruin things for their happily-married-with-two-kids lives. So instead they introduce each other to their spouses so they can all be best friends and begin to hang out together. Over the next several years, the woman has a normal friendship with the man but has an entire imaginary world built around them having a torrid affair. One day, the lines actually do cross, and they actually do start to have an affair in real life. The woman’s daydreams begin to focus on reconnecting with her husband and family.

Also, the affair being real is less exciting for her than when it was a fantasy and she finds herself less attracted to her lover. Both marriages suffer a bit when the truth comes out. Her husband implies that he always knew but didn’t want to make a mess by revealing, and the other couple divorces and the wife moves away. I can’t remember if she stays with her husband or not, but she does come to see some of the issues with the guy she’s cheating with, so she doesn’t choose him in the end.

Some of it reflects on living through COVID. I did kind of like this one. I didn’t fully like the characters, but they were relatable.

Butcher & Blackbird by Brynne Weaver

A romantic comedy featuring serial killers. It was written in a manner that made it a fast read, but was kind of disappointing for what I was expecting. I mean, serial killers and smut? Sounds amazing. But the smut doesn’t start until late into the book (although there are more than one smutty scene at least). And the serial killers are just basically Norman Bates, Hannibal Lecter, and Leatherface from Texas Chainsaw Massacre. They’re given new names but the settings and characterizations are basically the same as the movies they’re from, and our lovebird serial killers (serial killers that target bad people and serial killers) are just pitted against them on their playing grounds as part of their yearly game to see who can find and kill the killer first.

It makes it a bit more boring than what I was expecting but I will read the other two books, although from what I can tell they mostly just focus on showing the specifics of the relationships of all the brothers. I’m not in a rush to finish this.

Carrie by Stephen King

So, when it became clear I wasn’t going to be finishing my BOTM reading challenge this year, I took a break and finally decided to do a Stephen King run. I’ve read half of his books, but not all. I decided to challenge myself to read just his novels over the next year, starting chronologically with Carrie.

Carrie is the tale of a high school girl who discovers she has telekinetic powers. She is bullied by her schoolmates and terrorized by her mother, but after being asked to prom, she lashes out at her mother. Prom seems to go well for her until a classmate’s prank causes her to snap and then she walks across town, causing chaos – starting with burning down the gym with half of her class locked inside, then emptying the fire hydrants and opening gas lines causing multiple explosions across town. Her religious mother attempts to kill her.

Most of the story is told through interviews, articles, book excerpts, and reports written after the event. Carrie’s openly strong telekinetic abilities are studied at great length, and it is discovered it is a recessive genetic trait that skips generations in women.

It’s a short fun novel, and it introduced us all to the King.

And I’ll be reading a lot of King this year. I’m skipping Dark Tower, because I want to read the entire series in a row, and I am skipping the short story and novella collections, mostly just going down wikipedia’s list of novels. I also watched the old and new Carrie movies after reading the book. Just finished Salem’s Lot, but that will be part of next year’s write up.

Happy New Year!

Week 6 Post 1: axiomatic

On By MaryIn 2025, WritingLeave a comment

It seems that dreams grow duller with age, or maybe that is more the case of a common mind over an uncommon one (because I would never presume to be special in any way at this point in my life – not middle-aged I). So many of my dreams are little things, average things, work related and slice of life, so different than the vividness of past dreams. When I was younger, my dreams always had a sense of adventure (skeletons, giant spiders), or a desire to escape. Faceless pursuer dreams. They never run, like straight out of an 80s slasher flick. They never have to run, do they? They always know they’ll catch up, and somehow, they always do. In one instance, I turned and shot one such until it was nothing but a rainbow goop, and as I watched it reformed, liquid terminator style.

It makes me hanker for a good nightmare – the kind that jolts you awake, leaves your heart pounding. Makes you question your safety, even in a place where you’re as safe as you can expect to be. (but are we ever really safe?)

I have only ever had one sleep paralysis nightmare.

I once had a bedroom that had windows down most of one wall, and a large counter-like ledge lining them. My bed was pushed into the corner beneath them. I am laying in bed, waking – it is bright light out, but strange dark in the room. Something comes down from the upper far corner of the room, a shadow, spindly, clawed. It creeps, moving on all fours, somehow unnaturally, down the wall and across the corner desk and onto the extended window ledge. It approaches slowly. I try to move, but can’t – terror exalts. It climbs from the window ledge onto the bed, until it is hovering over me. I want to scream, or cry for help, or run away, but I am completely paralyzed, unable to move. It leans down towards me, and suddenly the terror is accompanied hand-in-hand with pure outrage. Nothing pisses me off more than helplessness. I strain, lifting my head to put my face into its face, and express myself in the only way I am able. I hiss. Like a goddamn cat.

When I wake up it’s early – the light quality of the room is completely different – the dark grey of barely dawn. Nothing is there.

It would be nice to say that the dream is a reflection of my awesomely brave self, but I’ve also had dreams of me cowering in buildings while a giant monster (Godzilla, it was pretty much Godzilla) threatened to kill people I loved if I didn’t come out to face it. And I didn’t because I was a coward.  

We’re all a little like that, I think.

Anyhow, axiomatic is mind because of a short story I just finished reading that pokes at the desire to be successful at the thing (the writing, the painting, the music playing) but the success can’t be granted, the core of it has to actually be there. Depressing? Uplifting? A bit of both?

2024 Reading in Review

On By MaryIn RandomLeave a comment

All right, so similar to how I wrote a short synopsis of the books I read in 2023 to test my memory, I’m doing the same thing again. Although it occurs to me it would be more of a challenge if I attempted 2023 now, and then saved 2024 for next year. Then I really won’t remember what the hell I read at all. My memory is woefully short. As before, loads of spoilers for what I do remember, and also a fair warning that it may all be wildly inaccurate owing to my fucked memory.

I also realize while looking over my list of reads that I did not read the 4th Harry Potter book. I had planned to read one a year every year until I finished the series, and I just… forgot.

Did I mention the woefully short memory thing yet?

Well, without further ado:

I did finish Loop, which I ended with last year. Can’t remember if I said very much about it. I vaguely remember it twisting the story from Ring and Spiral and making the events of those books part of a virtual world simulation. Sadako becomes a virus that infects the world because of how she proliferates by the end of the second book, and somehow her virtual “cancerization” of the simulation spreads into the real world and causes an untreatable and quickly spreading cancer that threatens the entire world. The main character (who’s name I can’t now remember) goes on a journey to find the origin and the cure, and ends up having to sacrifice himself. It also turns out that he’s basically Ryoji from the previous books. All of the Ring books were a bit harder for me to read – in fact, I kind of found that many of my re-reads were a bit of a slog for me. I don’t know if that means I have changing tastes or what?

The next book I read was part of the Sidequests, if I remember right. I asked a friend for a sci fi story recommendation and read the first book of the Expeditionary Forces series. Earth is taken over by aliens, who basically pull us into an intergalactic war that’s been ongoing for a long time. I remembered thinking it was kind of Mass Effect’y in some ways. Skippy is an AI that pops up halfway through the book and mostly drives the story from that point. It was fun and I might get around to the rest of the story at some point.

A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor was next. It is the follow up book to An Absolutely Remarkable Thing that I read in 2023. I remember it being not quite as good as the first book – it was still an examination of political divides and the way fame effects people, this time spread across more of the main character’s friends instead of focusing just on her (which makes sense because she’s assumed dead the first part of the book). It’s worth reading to finish out the story from the first book and have an actual conclusion that feels like a conclusion, though at this point I don’t remember too much from it. Rivalry alien intelligences, one trying to help humans and one trying to destroy us because of the events of the first book? Something like that?

I read Birthday next. It’s related to the Ring series as well. It contains a set of 3 shorter novella sized stories all set in The Ring universe, and all surrounding the theme of birth with central female characters. I think one story is set around Sadako’s viewpoint, though I don’t remember it. One is set around the death of the girl that rebirths Sadako in the second book, and shows her thoughts right before she dies. And the third is the love interest of the main character of Loop, who gets to briefly see her lover in the scene that ends out that book. It’s worth it if you’re dedicated to seeing everything related to the Ring.

And similarly, while trying to get that book I also found out there was a newer related book to the series by Koji Suzuki called S – in this book, the main character specializes in CGI and is tasked with determining whether a video that shows a man committing suicide is real or not. I really don’t remember very much of this one? I know it involved Sadako spreading herself again, in a newer fashion. The man has a girlfriend who is pregnant and is being threatened in some way by all of this. I think it follows up the main character from Loop trying to reverse the Sadako cancerization of the simulated world since he lives in it now? But from the point of view of a new character trying to figure out what’s going on.

I also spent some time on some art history. While visiting a Van Gogh virtual exhibit in Tulsa, I picked up Vincent Van Gogh: The Complete Paintings. It was 700’ish pages discussing Van Gogh’s life and works, but I did read it all and found it intriguing. I would have liked it better if the paintings they were discussing were placed closer to the pages that were discussing them – I had to flip around a lot to find the painting in question. I did have a smaller book, so I don’t know if there is a version that aligns it better. I liked the formatting of the book from Taschen, so I looked into some of their other art books and also picked up HR Giger. It was a shorter read, and had the same sections repeated in a few different languages. Less comprehensive than the Vincent Van Gogh book, but there were lovely full page spreads of Giger’s art, which I enjoy.

The next book I read was FantasticLand. I read something somewhere that compared it to Lord of the Flies set in a theme park that’s been isolated due to a severe hurricane, told in a World War Z fashion of an interviewer compiling the events from different POVs. Wow, that sounds great. But the result was a kind of chaotic slog that never really grips the way that either Lord of the Flies or World War Z does. It lacked the shock and violence that makes Lord of the Flies question human decency, and it lacked the pathos and humanity that World War Z manages. It might be interesting to someone, but I disliked reading it.

Next was one of my BOTM picks. I’ve been holding off on reading them because I want to hit 30 books for their reading challenge this coming year, so I’ve been building a backlog. But I figured I would go ahead and read Annie Bot anyways. A little high brow so if that’s not your thing you can skip it, but I found it fascinating. Annie is a robot, and as she becomes more aware and learns more about herself and the world around her, she becomes more uncomfortable in her position and her relationship with her owner/boyfriend. And the more realistic and personlike she becomes, the less her owner seems to really enjoy her. It’s an interesting examination of power dynamics and relationship ideals. I remember really liking it, and it wasn’t very long so it was a quick read.

Next I read Shit My Dad Says. You remember the early days of twitter when someone would post some short funny thing that went viral and eventually they got book deals and TV shows and such? Shit My Dad Says was basically a twitter feed that blew up. The book tells different stories from the author’s life in regards to his relationship with his dad, mostly funny, and then kind of attempts a poignant end to wrap things up. It’s a fun read at least, especially if you ever enjoyed that twitter feed. But if you did, you’re very old by now. You’re welcome.

After that, I decided to give in and read one of the romance fantasy novels that are so popular lately. I started with Fourth Wing. The writing style was very easy to read. While it was a fantasy world, a lot of their speech and other things had a very modern manner, so it’s not quite hardcore fantasy – it’s like fantasy-lite, which makes it very accessible for people that aren’t super into fantasy novels. There were a few things that seemed kind of silly, but it wasn’t bad and I do plan to read the other books eventually. The main character, Violet, is forced to enroll to become a dragon rider, which is a school/life path that is considered especially dangerous and results in the most deaths/failures, despite having spent most of her life preparing for a different path. She stubbornly insists on completing and manages to win 2 dragons. There’s a love triangle and a kind of enemies to lovers thing. The book has very sexually open minded characters but there’s only one spicy scene, which was a bit disappointing since the entire sell is that these are supposed to be smutty? (Is it me? Am I the perv?)

I read another BOTM pick after that, The Husbands. This one was a lot of fun. The main character is a single woman who comes home after a bachelorette party with her friend only to find a stranger in her house who claims to be her husband. As she adjusts to finding out that she’s apparently married and that her house and everything in her world reflects that as a truth, he goes into the attic for something and then another man comes down. After that, she goes through a series of husbands, her home and her life changing each time to reflect the differences in each life. Every time a husband goes into the attic, a different husband comes down, and it’s like she ends up in a different universe. She eventually meets a man who has been going through a similar thing – when he locks himself into a space, he comes out to find he’s married to a different person (male or female, he’s bi). They decide they’re not for each other and continue to search for a perfect spouse separately. It’s a story that makes you think about all the possibilties and life choices that we make and where they lead us.

In the end, she realizes she becomes too obsessed with finding perfection and realizes that pattern has to stop. After confirming that certain things that she can’t lose in her life are present (her niblings, her sister being safe, and that she’s not in an abusive relationship), she sends her husband on an errand out of the house before she can see him and make any snap judgements about him, and then she burns down the flat so that she can proceed with living her life. It was an interesting way to finish the book – she has to live with the choices, and can no longer keep slipping in and out of husbands and different lives. I liked it quite a lot. It was also well written and despite the subject doesn’t come across as high brow at all.

Speaking of high brow, I read Roundabout next. There were a few bits that made me laugh out loud. The entire novel skirts around using the letter E at all, which allowed for some creativity but also made it very strained and obvious what it was doing in some parts. I could read some bits quite quickly, and then the rest was kind of a slog.

I re-read House of Leaves. It’s an interesting experimental novel that tells a couple of different stories, although the one that always sticks with me is the haunted house portion. There’s also a frame story about a drug addict obsessing over the story as it was “researched” by an old man that had recently died. It’s not as scary as they say – there are a lot of hidden messages, most of which I have never bothered to hunt down myself although I notice the patterns enough to tell they’re there. It runs a bit overlong to me in some places and can be easy to put down, but what it attempts is very impressive and I do kind of love it.

I also decided to re-read the Animorphs books, but only got through the first 7. In the Invasion, the group of kids meet an Andalite who gives them the ability to change into different animals if they manage to touch them. They’re given this ability so they can attempt to stop the secret invasion of Earth by an alien parisitic species called Yeerks, which are slugs that take over and control bodies. In The Visitor, they investigate one of the Yeerks they know about to try to continue their mission, by using their morph ability to sneak into their Assisstant Principal’s house. I can’t quite remember the Encounter – I think it involved them finding where one of the Yeerk ships source their fresh water from, and they try to infiltrate that ship. Then in The Message, they have a shared dream that leads them to finding the last living Andalite on Earth and rescuing him, only to find that he’s a kid that’s as lost as they are. In The Predator, Marco almost quits (again) until he finds out his Mom (disappeared presumed dead) is actually alive in space as one of the Yeerk leaders. The Capture involves Jake almost being caught by a Yeerk, but his friends manage to starve it out of him – it turns out it’s the same one that inhabited his brother previously as well. The Stranger introduces the Elimist, if I remember right?

In general, the kids are fighting a guerilla war, attempting missions with very little resources or information or back up. They often aren’t fully successful, only managing to be nuisances to the Yeerks, and suffering from PTSD as a result of a lot of the things they go through.

I actually really loved reading the books as a kid, and only finished collecting the entire series as an adult. I’ll probably read them a bit between BOTM books next year.

After that, I re-read The Hobbit, for Hobbit Day. It always surprises me how much I forget from that book, but it is a classic. Very much a child’s introduction to the world that Tolkien created, but still quite fun to read.

Another BOTM pick was The Boyfriend by Freida McFadden. I didn’t really care for the characters that much, and at first it seemed the story would be pretty basic, but the end twist was really well handled and turned around what I felt about the book. Which is what a thriller should do, generally. It was a pretty quick read as well.

The next BOTM pick that I decided to read before 2025 was Again and Again. It was a little hard for me to tell whether I hated or loved this one – it is poignant, a bit on the high brow side. I liked parts of it, and there were parts that didn’t quite make sense for me. When the character finally comes clean and tells the true story of his life, it feels so tragic and empty, and when he finds out what legacy he has left behind, it doesn’t feel full so much as like more tragedy. There is still a bit of a sense of hope to it, I guess. It was a good read, but I could see it being hard to get through for some.

After that, I got sucked into the Dungeon Crawler Carl books by Matt Dinnaman. So far I like them quite a lot. They blend humor and drama well, and the two main characters are a lot of fun. The world is taken over by aliens who are there to harvest a certain element from it, most of humanity is killed and the remainder is offered a chance to enter a dungeon. This dungeon is set up and run like a game show where people across the galaxy watch the participants on a live feed. Carl ends up in the dungeon with his ex girlfriend’s cat, who ends up becoming sentient and acknowledged as a fellow crawler. Together, they’re attempting to survive the dungeon. Donut the cat is fun and smart allecky, and Carl has plenty of attitude as well. I’ve finished the first 6 books and I’m working on the 7th right now. They have just entered the 9th floor, out of a possible total of 18(?) floors. Each floor has a different challenge and environment. The entire game is run by an AI system that is becoming more aware and belligerent (and really into Carl’s feet) as it develops.

Although there are fantasy elements because of the dungeon environment, there is a heavy sci fi undertone. In each book, you learn more and more about the reasons why Earth was harvested/targeted and how the galaxy is run and some of the inequities of the system in place in the outside world. So far, I’m really enjoying this series, and I’ll definitely pick up each book as soon as it’s immediately available.

Which catches me up on 2024.

And into 2025.

Happy New Year!

Sidequests Week 20

On By MaryIn SidequestsLeave a comment

The sidequests for this week included going for a walk around the neighborhood, selling or donating something I don’t use anymore, and reading a chapter form a new book.

The book one was a little hard in interpreting – does the book only need to be new to me? Or new as in just recently published? But since I’ve still got my BOTM subscription, I decided to read my book from the previous month, so that would make it both new to me and a book published in April of this year. I started reading The Husbands by Holly Gramazio, and finished reading it by Wednesday night. I enjoyed it a lot, but we’ll see what I still remember when I do my reading write up at the beginning of next year.

I finally decided to put my treadmill on facebook’s marketplace. Mostly I had been putting it off because I dislike interacting with people, but I haven’t used the treadmill in over a year and I don’t keep myself on it for any significant amount of time when I do use it. I have better luck just going to a gym. (although admittedly, I haven’t done that in a long while either)

It was only up for a few days, with a couple of people expressing interest, but mostly they just kept asking me to bring the price down. Finally found a person that seemed interested in looking at it in person and said that he didn’t intend to ask for me to reduce the price, but when I went to eat with my parents for Sunday, they offered to buy it instead. I apologized to the guy, collected the money from my parents, and then helped Dad get it into and out of his truck and situated at their house. Then I showed them how to use it. My Dad kept saying he felt more comfortable having it because Mom likes to go for walks, which made him worry. Lots of people in our town own dogs that they don’t keep very well contained, so it’s not unusual to see some happy-go-lucky fucker waltzing around enjoying some freedom. Most times they’re friendly, and it’s not like dog attacks are common place. But I have seen a few while living here, and Dad has had to fend off an aggressive dog on his walks before, hence his apprehension.

Don’t know if it will get much more use, but Mom does like to walk.

I also did sort through a few drawers and come up with some more clothes to donate, though I haven’t taken them to Goodwill yet.

And then the last one – for for a walk around the neighborhood. Rather than going around the neighborhood, I decided to walk down to a neighborhood feature I never realized was there before. On my drive to work, there is a park that is tucked in behind some houses. I only started using this route to drive to work once I moved into my current home, so I was unaware that the park existed. It’s usually abandoned, though still semi-maintained with the grass being mown regularly. It’s actually very expansive too – when I started walking along its length, I realized that it actually extended all the way back up towards my house. It kind of awkwardly looks into a lot of people’s backyards, and the entrances to the park are very narrow. There are a lot of places were water obviously stands after it rains.

And despite the regular grass cutting, the actual equipment isn’t maintained. The benches rusting, and the playground equipment looked like it was rusting as well, even though I think it had been plastic at one point. The swings were pretty good though. A bit further back was a tennis court, but the metal fencing on one end was completely absent, and there was no net. Even further back was some more tall metal fencing, but I couldn’t tell the purpose – maybe at one point it had been part of a baseball field? Closer to the ditch, set under some trees was some concrete. I think maybe a picnic bench may have sat there before, but now it was just a random patch of concrete in the shade. I didn’t see anyone else, just a rabbit and dogs in their back yards.

I suppose there would almost be some temptation to blame the condition on kids not wanting to go outside anymore, but in this case I think it was purely poor positioning. The park is tucked so awkwardly behind people’s houses that you feel a little like you’re out of place or invading privacy. I’ve lived near this neighborhood since I was a kid and didn’t even know the park was back there. Despite the size of the grounds, there’s zero parking available. And there’s plenty of other play options in our neighborhood, which has two elementary schools. So it just sits back, out of sight, out of mind.

The week was fairly quiet otherwise – due to work scheduling, it ended up being a 6 day work week, and I spent the day off cleaning. I did get a response from my penpal and have already mailed a reply.

51. Cassandra (WIP)

On By MaryIn 2023, WritingLeave a comment

Okay, so instead of an actual full chapter I’m posting a kind of half assed chapter and some brief summations of things I intended with it, and I’m going to kind of skip this part to move on to the remainder of the story and finish it out. Part of the reason for this is that there are whole sections involving this part that are going to be completely rewritten. When I work on my rewrites, the Interludes are going to be more frequent and involve the tensions between Cassandra and Jennifer’s relationships as parent/child.

There were also a few things that were supposed to happen before this point that I simply forgot to add in. Most significant being that Jennifer was supposed to hear Asterollan reveal Cassandra’s diagnosis and then she was supposed to sit and decide whether to read or not read the letter (I have not decided yet whether she will at this point or not). Which of course informs a lot of her interactions with Cassandra in this chapter. And since I flubbed all that, I can’t expand on it here. So basically within this chapter, Cassandra and Jennifer are supposed to defeat the bad aliens, save the day, return to Earth.

Since I’m also already blabbing on about intentions for the story, I’ll go ahead and discuss something that I was saving for when I finished to give an idea of next steps. I’ve been taking notes on things I definitely plan to expand upon when I do my rewrites. The notes are as follows:

  • Lucas will start off awkwardly calling Peyton “Miss Hobbs” because calling her by her first name sounds too informal, and he will kick himself in the head for it immediately because he knows it sounds dumb, but stubbornly stick to it for more than half the book.
  • Add show instead of tell where possible.
  • No clear baddie at first beyond the “idea” of a bad guy, need to impress stakes upon the characters from an earlier point
  • Have Cassandra see her goddess out of the corner of her eye from earlier, and maybe even the bad guy?
  • Show more interlude bits of Jennifer reacting to the feeds. These are likely to be shorter insets anyways
  • Evil being = god ascendant?
  • Change Peter to Parker?
  • When Lexie has her god meeting, she should start to display fiery properties to her aura when she reaches for her magic. Her god grants her full power earlier after all.
  • Play up awkward for Lucas and anxious for Cassandra.
  • Expand upon the characters and world a bit and have them stay a bit longer in a few places. Greyjon should have celebrated and well known military accomplishments that people comment on when they meet him, etcetc.

So when I actually go through and do the edits, a lot of the minor characters are going to become more important, places are actually going to get named, history is going to be built in, and themes are going to be strengthened. My next rewrite will be shameless expansion and bloat and worldbuilding. And then my third rewrite will be trimming that back down and tightening everything into place.

So all that in mind, here is my sloppy writing to stand in place for Chapter 51, and then next week I will move on to Chapter 52, which switches back to Lucas.

As we freed the prisoners, I worked on ripping out the dampeners and healing the small remaining wounds one at a time. Despite the tedious and tiring nature of the work, the blaring alarm kept me on high alert, my system coursing with adrenaline. As the crowd of freed prisoners grew, I felt my indignation grow as well. There were so many people here – some were of the same race, prisoners from the same world, but still the variety accounted for well over a dozen worlds. And all these worlds had been destroyed? Just like these aliens planned to do to Earth…

Even as worn out as I felt, I was swept up with the group as someone led us toward the main deck of the ship. I’m not sure if anyone had an actual plan or if they were just spurred by anger and revenge. The alarms grew louder as we moved through the halls, and soon the sound of fighting reached my ears. Those at the front of the group sped into a jog, and soon all of us were sprinting towards whatever lay ahead, toward the cacophony.

It was as chaotic as it sounded. An entirely separate group of freed prisoners were in the middle of fighting across the control deck. They had somehow managed to gather weapons, but despite that advantage they still faced one major disadvantage – they lacked their magical abilities. I gaped as I watched the strange abilities of the tripod-things as they cast their spells – they shifted through space, turned invisible, and easily deflected projectiles by redirecting them through small holes in space. As a result, the entire room was a chaos of unpredictable weapons fire and screaming.

I paused outside the doorway as everyone else charged into the fray, watching as the new group of prisoners that could use magic began to channel their own strange abilities. It was obvious that magic was going to be a deciding factor in this fight. I leaned against the wall outside the door, my brow furrowing as I considered what I could do. I needed to remove all the magic dampeners in the other prisoners… after having removed so many individually, could I sense them without placing hands on each individual?

I squeezed my eyes shut, focusing hard, pushing out with my magic searchingly. I focused first on finding the small pieces of metal but couldn’t seem to focus on something so small across so many different bodies.

I took three deep breaths and reoriented myself. I focused on the room, on all the life forms in the room. I could sense them. I instantly got a sense for how many people were in the room fighting. I could feel their injuries, their illnesses, the strains on their bodies. I frowned hard, realizing some of them were human even, but then forced myself to focus past that…

I couldn’t focus on finding the little pieces of metal that I had hoped to find. But I realized that so many people on our side were injured… perhaps I could at least get them back in the fight.

I cast a healing spell across the entire room.

For a brief moment, everything got louder as those that were on the brink of death launched themselves back into the fight. But casting so much and so continuously since I had arrived finally wore me out. I slumped against the wall, my head pounding and the world spinning as I got alarmingly close to passing out.

A blurry figure knelt in front of me. I blinked to clear my vision, and remembered that without glasses, it would never be fully clear. I squinted. “Cassandra,” a familiar voice said, the tone a cross between gently maternal and sternly cross.

“Mom?” I said, feeling so confused I was certain that maybe I had passed out and started dreaming. She repeated my name again, telling me to get up. “What are you doing here?” I mumbled. She stared at me for a long moment and then hugged me. I hugged her back, still confused. “What’s going on?” I wondered out loud, not really sure what to think anymore.

“We’re going to blow up the ship,” she announced.

I stared at her in confusion. “What?!”

She pulled me along behind her, gripping my arm tight. I was still dizzy from expending so much power. “The aliens you freed were the last of the prisoners from the other prison wing. The ones I was working with know what the plan is – they’ll get them out,” she reassured me as we walked. “On our way up to the deck, we found the fuel system for the ship, and the energy source and be overloaded.”

“Mom, wait. I don’t even know why you’re here.”

She flashed me a mildly annoyed look. “I came out of retirement after you disappeared and the Stream started?”

“Stream?” I mumbled.

Ignoring my question, she said, “Once we overload the system, we’re going to have to make a quick escape. So stay close to me.”

“Why are we doing this exactly?” I asked as I finally pulled my arm out of her grip. I kept pace with her as she continued to half-jog down the hall.

“The aliens that run this ship are starting their invasion of Earth. From the various aliens I’ve talked to, they apparently stage everything from this ship. Even if the invasion is already underway, if we destroy their base, they won’t have anywhere to return and regroup.” I nodded like I understood, but I was tired. I was homesick for Earth, but also homesick for Lyre, and a part of me wanted to find a dark and quiet room to curl up and cry in undisturbed until the cancer killed me.