The last two years have been a disaster, reading-wise. I blame Harry Potter! Since getting into that fandom, which is rife with excellent fic (by which I mean, stuff that’s excellent by tradpub standards), there’s not been a day when I didn’t read — fic. Consequently, there were far fewer days when I had time to read things other than fic. And little by little, my tolerance for fic that isn’t all that excellent increased, while my tolerance for tradpub stuff that isn’t super-gripping and/or relatable, decreased; so that nowadays, I read even such fic that rates below average on my personal quality scale, and struggle to finish regular books that would’ve given me no trouble a couple years back.
This is not ideal. As someone who considers themselves a writer, I need to drink from a much, much deeper pool of literature. And I’m trying! Just not very successfully. So far, I’ve finished 9 books this year; I dropped one, and I’m currently reading another. That’s really quite sad and does not bode well for my all-year totals. Last year was no better; I finished 10 books, plus one I dropped. In 2024, I finished 12 books, plus one I dropped. Of the 22 books in 2024 and 2025, 6 were the Harry Potter books. 🫠 And I am yet to finish the series! The last book remains, waiting its turn on my ever growing TBR list, even though I’m supposedly a fan? Incredible.
Anyway. Let’s do this.
Books of 2024
I enjoyed this. It’s not the kind of book that I’d pick up outside my normal bedtime reading slot; hardly a page-turner. But it was interesting. It felt fresh. I had mixed feelings about the relatively loud feminist vibes; they didn’t bother me, but they did take me out of the story and into the analysis mode. Later in life, I remembered this book fondly while playing Hades. And I liked it well enough to get my hands on The Song of Achilles, though I’m yet to read that…
Ooof. Is it fair to say a book isn’t very memorable when you can’t recall much about it two years after reading it? I do remember I liked it. I liked the writerly aspect, and the gay aspect, and the humorous, self-deprecating tone of the story. Did it all ultimately revolve around someone not saying “I love you” when they should’ve? Perhaps! Unlike most of the tradpub stuff I read, this is something I might want to return to, some day.
I just love Oates, ever since reading Zombie, the story, and later the novel, too. Evil Eye I listened to as an audio book, which, as I was kind of slow to realize, doesn’t quite provide the same level of appreciation for the prose as actual reading. But it wasn’t prose that captured me with Zombie either: it was the brazen tackling of very dark themes, and the same was true of the stories in this collection.
Okay, here’s one I remember very well! I picked it up after seeing it mentioned as ‘an entire novel taking place in a single scene’. Which isn’t entirely true; the narrative present is indeed all condensed into several hours, spanning perhaps two or three distinct scenes, but there are plenty of excursions into the past, so that, in the end, the structure of the story isn’t too unusual. The story itself is tense, dark, and unflinching. Definitely one of the better things I’ve read this decade.
Risking to repeat myself, KJ Charles is my favorite romance author, and this utterly random pick from her considerable catalog didn’t disappoint. The pace is a bit different than usual, with certain required plot milestones happening earlier than I expected. The kinky aspect was a bit bewildering, but not as much as to damage my impressions. I enjoyed it!
I loved the concept behind this, of an America that was never colonized. But the setting played a marginal role in the story, which could’ve happened pretty much anywhere. The resolution of the murder mystery was a bit ridiculous; the villainy of the perpetrator unfathomable. It’s always better when you can understand why they did it, and no, “they were insane” doesn’t really cut it. The steps towards the resolution were needlessly complicated and burdened with unconvincing forensic detail. All in all, it was a bit of a chore to finish this.
I Did Not Finish this. It just bored me out of my mind. I’m not sure what I expected; the blurb sounded good; the story was unfolding according to what the blurb had promised. I even liked the prose: there was something raw and visceral about it. And yet.
I… am not going to write about these. I read them for research, not for pleasure, and while they were (mostly) not a chore to read, I’m pretty sure I would not have picked them up, let alone enjoyed them, if not for fandom needs. And… rest assured; I did not buy the books. I borrowed them.
It’s strange to look at this one in hindsight. I think that, at the time I picked it up, I wasn’t yet fully aware of JKR’s villainy; and the tragicomic similarities between Tom Felton and Draco Malfoy were yet to come to the fore. Charmed as I was with Draco, I fully imagined him as Tom; and hearing Tom narrate his life’s story, so much of which revolves around Harry (just like Draco’s…) was an emotional, memorable experience. The story itself aside, Tom has a knack for self-deprecating humor that made me snort and laugh more than a few times while listening. Still, today I would probably decide against purchasing this.
I remember this remarkably well for something I read more than a year ago. During and after the reading, I was… unimpressed. Interested enough to keep going, for sure, and as invested in the gay romance as I usually get with tradpub fiction. I thought it was okay. But in hindsight, I think it was actually quite good. The plot is cleverly organized around issues that are as far from life-and-death, or, gods forbid, end-of-the-world, as they get. I really enjoyed that! And I enjoyed the prose, which was mostly invisible, with a few strikes of brilliance that stayed with me a long while. But for all that, the story failed to rouse the elusive feels, which is probably why my initial judgement was lukewarm.
Books of 2025
Ahhh. Here’s one of those books I wish I could forget reading so I could have the pleasure of reading them for the first time once more. I had an inkling of what to expect. Alice Winn is a famous and beloved author of Harry/Draco fanfiction (some of the best out there), who has broken my heart and put it back together several times before doing so with In Memoriam too. I loved every part of this, and I can’t wait to indulge in it again. 🥹
I had such high expectations of this. I was disappointed. For a study of grief over a mother that passed away, a topic I’m intimately familiar with, it failed entirely to move me. I did appreciate the unusual format, the beautiful prose, and the depth of thought. But I struggle to evoke anything but the vaguest memories of the reading experience.
This book affected me hugely, and I gobbled it up in several sittings. The queerness of it, the wonderful, messy world of teenage life and love, then the limp regrets of the adult, it all rang so true, hit so close to home. I was a bit disappointed by the climax, which seemed needlessly extreme, if not outright melodramatic. But otherwise… it’s one of the few books I felt I might write fic for! In the end, I didn’t, but I daydreamed about it for a long while. So very glad this exists and I had the good luck to come across it.
Following a friend’s recommendation, I didn’t try too hard to understand these poems. I just wallowed in them. Some were more given to it than others; from entirely unintelligible, to vaguely disturbing, to frightening or wondrous, they covered most of the stunted spectrum of my ability to comprehend poetry. I’m glad I’ve read them. I might read more.
This is another book written by a hugely admired and beloved Harry/Draco fanfic author who crossed over to traditional publishing, and in this case, even made it to the Booker Prize shortlist! And not only that; Yael van der Wouden is a friend of Alice Winn. So it was impossible to not make a comparison. And… yes, it is clear to me why this book got more attention and earned more praise in the world of literary fiction. But I enjoyed In Memoriam more, because it’s closer to what I love, and to what I find in fanfiction (and often miss outside of it). The Safekeep had only very distant echoes of that. Still a huge pleasure to read.
Ohhh, this one was deliciously odd. In a glorious feat of magical realism, trolls are introduced as an elusive, endangered and vaguely sapient species with many strange traits. The story, which is about some guy accidentally adopting a troll, is interspersed with articles and other epistolary materials rendering a chillingly realistic portrayal of an ever so slightly alternate contemporary world. The story itself was, at moments, shocking! Which is rare for me to think. It isn’t something I’d want to return to, but I enjoyed it immensely.
I had this book for a long time. It was recommended to me as something similar to As Meat Loves Salt in terms of pathos and impact. And, yeah. I agree. I could see it from afar, and then I thought I identified it around the half-mark, but no; it was only at the very end that the full and dreadful truth of it came to the fore. Yet another book on this listing for which I seriously considered writing fic! Again, in the end, the drive wasn’t strong enough. But yeah. If you’re a fan of AMLS, this is a must.
This was the second, and final, chance I gave to Calvino. I dropped it before I reached the half-mark, for much the same reasons I’d dropped Invisible Cities in 2020. Despite the occasional moments of insight and brilliance in the prose, it was just incredibly boring.
As usual with Stephenson’s books, it took me ages to read this. But I enjoyed it! It’s basically a fully developed quantum mechanical theory of magic, with a generous serving of satirical insight into contemporary entrepreneurship and governmental corruption. The female lead is refreshingly solid: active and capable, but not obnoxiously, screamingly so; this also goes for the rest of the significant female cast. There’s even a bit of a love story in there. All in all, hardly something I’d consider re-reading (unlike Anathem), but definitely a step up from Seven Eves and Cryptonomicon.
And that is it! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯