“Beneath the Sugar Sky” by Seanan McGuire

This is the third book of the Wayward Children series I’ve been enjoying (with the first and second books also covered) and I liked it so much more than the second installment. This returns to the cast of the first book, with a new protagonist, but it revisits the location and characters I loved in the original installment that got me hooked.

The book’s main character is Cora who is from an underwater world where she was a mermaid. She loves swimming and is athletic, but it’s implied that she takes her own life in response to bullying about her weight and that’s how she gets to her world. She’s a new arrival at Eleanor West’s house, and her friend is her roommate Nadya who also came from a water world. They are hanging out in the pond when Rini plunges through the water looking for her mom, Sumi. Sumi died in the first book, so they go to get Christopher and Kade to sort this out. All of them first go to find Sumi’s body, then to the Land of the Dead to see Nancy (main character of the first book) to get her spirit, and then finally to Confection to get her Nonsense. Nadya elects to stay in the Land of the Dead in exchange for her spirit, but in the end they successfully return with Sumi after the Baker of Confection bakes her back together.

One of the highlights of the series is the diversity. Having the main character being called fat despite her athleticism, and especially go to a land of sugar and deal with all those feelings, is really cool to read about. You don’t often encounter that perspective in a fantasy novel. Plus the Baker is a girl with a hijab from Brooklyn, and that was interesting as she was originally called a god by some of the characters. She had to clarify that she isn’t particularly religious.

I have to wonder how the series will eventually deal with the potential relationships that spring up between the characters. Kade clearly still likes Nancy, even with her in the Land of the Dead and him stuck at Eleanor’s. Christopher and Cora also appear to be developing a relationship, or at least a crush, which is unfortunate as Christopher keeps proclaiming that he loves the Skeleton Girl. Seems like an unfortunate love triangle to be stuck in.

The logic of these worlds was also developed further here, but I’m still confused about it all. That doesn’t really detract though, half of the characters are confused as well so it does truly feel like a bonus if you’re able to reread and gleam a little more of the organization from the text. For now though, I get enough to get by and I’m pleased with that.

This series is so much fun, I’m really glad to keep going with it. I hope that the rest are similar to this one instead of departing from the setting that got me hooked in the first place.

This Is Beautiful: Soup Night!

 I'm making my friends celebrate my defense and graduation for months, and we did a soup party over the weekend! I do really enjoy cooking and I wanted to cook for folks, plus soup just seemed easier. Plus I've seen a number of soup themed events recently and it just looked like fun. So I made some vegetarian and meat soup and got some bread and cheese and had friends bring things or not. I had a lot of fun! I think sharing food is like the best way to hang out and also be socialist together. Soup night is a success!

“This is How You Lose the Time War” by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

So many different people recommended this book to me that I think it was a victim of its own success. The book is fine, certainly, but after all that hype I definitely expected… a little more.

The book is pretty straightforward, opposing factions of Garden and the Agency (nature versus technology) start up a correspondence. The two send each other letters back and forth through various creative mediums across time and space. Eventually they fall in love, Red (of the Agency) is told to poison Blue (of the Garden). Red warns Blue, but she is poisoned anyways. Red goes back in time and infiltrates Garden to get her an antidote, and the book ends with Blue getting Red out of jail.

There’s a lot to like here, the take on time travel is refreshing in its simplicity and lack of drawn out explanations. Nature vs tech is basically a trope so you really don’t need a ton of explanations to get the dynamic. There is no ethics of what they’re doing either, the entire focus is on the relationship between these women as they develop a fondness for each other separate of their factions.

But that’s also my biggest issue: I don’t feel like I get to know either of them very well. The only characters we meet are basically husks you can project whatever you’d like onto. They don’t have distinctive personalities, and you’d be forgiven for mixing them up.

After all that I just expected… more. A deeper connection. More of character development rather than a single relationship. It is good and it’s at least a quick read, but I do feel I just wanted to speed through it after a certain point.

This Is Beautiful: American Sign Museum

Last weekend we went to Cincinnati to see a concert (also celebrate defending, but that was scheduled after). I hadn't been before, and it was a lot of fun! Best part for me though was the American Sign Museum, it's a museum of just that, signs throughout history. It goes from hand painted to plastic to neon! There's even some candlelight ones we found tucked in a corner. It was honestly a perfect amount of kitsch, and small enough we went through in less than an hour. They also have demonstrations with neon which we couldn't stay for, but sounded really cool as a way to preserve the art form. Definitely would highly recommend, I love niche museums and this was a good one!

“How to Hold a Grudge: From Resentment to Contentment – the Power of Grudges to Transform Your Life” by Sophie Hannah

This is another book where I am not sure how it ended up on my reading list. But it was very different from what I thought it’d be going in!

First of all, this book is fun! It’s a delightful read! Hannah is not shy about her own grudges as she goes through them, and she is very understanding about wherever you are in your journey with grudges. She talks about her decision to write the book and how she used to be a people pleaser and that informed her decisions here and obsession with grudges. Even if you aren’t 100% in, it’s amusing to read and such a fun ride.

It also is laid out very clearly. There’s chapters dedicated to how to evaluate your grudges, and how to even just think about grudges. It ends with how to be a good grudge holder and try to minimize yourself as a grudgee. You have to be responsible about having grudges and recognize that you are the subject of other grudges too.

What is really nice too is that Hannah isn’t a therapist, but there are two experts that weigh in occasionally about her thoughts. So you do get how an expert thinks about things. Of course these are all positive comments, but I found it reassuring that experts were indeed consulted in the process of this book.

I think my really only complaint is that this process seems so… involved. And this process is laid out, but you also have to navigate Hannah’s grudge stories and interjections to really lay out “ok this is what I have to do.” And the fact that all that is super daunting is really what stops me from going all in on this methodology right now. Don’t get me wrong, I will absolutely be using elements of this book that work for me and implementing advice for new grudges, but I don’t think I’ll be as organized about it as the author is. Which is fine, but I kinda wish the activation energy was smaller.

Hannah has turned this into a podcast! It looks like it ran from 2018-2024, I’m excited to check those episodes out as well to keep thinking about all of this.

This is Beautiful: I'M A DOCTOR

 I successfully defended my PhD last week! It was a little anticlimactic since I was so well prepared and ready to just do this thing and also because my committee is awesome, but still a load off of my shoulders. I finally did the thing! It was also so nice to see everyone joining on the zoom call, in person, at the celebration afterwards, and all of the texts I've been getting non-stop. It certainly feels, well, beautiful.

“Technically You Started It” by Lana Wood Johnson

This book hit so perfectly for me. I think I truly was the ideal audience going in. At first I thought I was reading it because the whole thing is written as a text conversation. Which is so creative and unique, so I figured that was why I was interested. Then turns out that the main character is demisexual, and so is the author. And then I realized oh no, that’s probably how it first got on my radar.

The book’s premise is pretty simple, Martin Nathaniel Munroe II texts Haley to see which question she picked on an AP U.S. History exam. The rest of the book consists of the conversations between the two of them as they get to know each other. Only issues is that there’s two Martin Nathanial Munroe II’s and Haley doesn’t know which one it is. He clarifies “The good one” and she thinks she knows, but she gets it wrong, and he doesn’t realize until it’s too late.

Eventually, Martin wants to clear things up and date Haley, but they keep being prevented from meeting. First Haley gets into a fight with a friend, then Martin falls and bangs his shoulder up. At that point, their mutual friend Jack grabs his phone and reveals what’s been going on to Haley. She feels let down, but eventually it gets sorted out and they start dating as Martin confesses his love over text and intention to sort things out in person. The book ends with Martin telling Haley to quit looking at her phone so he can kiss her.

This all super worked on me. I loved that you gradually got to know the characters as they got to know each other. They tell each other about parent stuff, friend stuff, teenage stuff, and to facilitate this they pretend that the other person is a random internet friend. The author definitely gets how teenagers talk while making the format work, there’s probably a few too many friends for me to keep track of, but that honestly isn’t essential to the plot. Thankfully the multiple Martins thing is clarified on the inside jacket, so going in blind might be a different experience but I enjoyed picking up on Martin trying to befriend Haley while she texts him thinking she’s texting his cousin.

There’s also a really great way it deals with their orientations. As internet friends, they discuss how they feel about crushes and attraction and all that. Haley doesn’t feel the spark until after, if at all. Which is why she broke up with Jack. Martin reveals that he’s bisexual, and talks about how his attraction for men vs women is different for him. It’s nice in that it goes in depth not just for the demisexual Haley, but also for the much more common bisexuality of Martin.

Yes it’s fluff, yes it’s cute. No I don’t care, I loved reading this. It was an easy read and I tore through the last 100 or so pages because I just wanted to know that they’d end up ok. If anything, I wish it kept going longer so that I could see them in a relationship, but it makes more sense for the story to stop there with this format. But a great way to show the asexual spectrum and an interesting format!