As a fan girl at heart, I love feeling 10x more informed about Tolkien’s lore and hope to pick up more of his supplemental works someday, perhaps starting with the story of Beren and Lúthien.

This is one of those books you can’t examine tooooo closely, but if you just go along for the ride, you’re going to have a really fun time.

Well, I did not expect this novel — about a (female) blob monster who falls in love with a (human) woman and decides she wants to lay her eggs in her body, after which her offspring would devour her from the inside out — to be one of my favorite reads of the year. And yet! What fun this was!

Adrian Tchaikovsky is trying to do a lot here, and insofar as his intentions go, I think he succeeded — Service Model is a funny, voicey book that hits its themes home. Unfortunately, the execution was just not for me.

This is masterful writing and an epic; beautiful story. It’s a slow-paced, aching, intimate, sweeping 700-page book that takes its time, and so must you.

If you’re looking for a quick, hopeful piece of nonfiction filled with interesting facts, look no further. Who Is Government? fits the bill exactly.

What a moving exploration of youth, love, desire, and recovery from trauma. I’m intrigued to see what the sequel holds for these characters!

Ultimately, it’s like this book aaaaaalmost became what it was trying to be. A bit of a bummer, tbh.

I think anyone who loves language or is a creator (or is simply very online) will love this book, but if you’re both of those things, it’s an absolute MUST read.

Maybe I’ve read too many books with a similar setting, character archetype, and mood, but I didn’t feel like this one did anything compellingly new for me; it was just another well-written book in its subgenre.

It took me way too long to read The Tainted Cup — its Hugo nomination tipped the scales — because y’all, this was SO much fun and just so well done.

A wholly original and unputdownable sweeping, epic, magical story for the ages, this is my favorite book I’ve read so far this year and could easily maintain that #1 spot all the way through.

This book is a long adventure that takes its time, but I sank in and never felt frustrated by its pace. I also think this was my favorite Farseer book; the scope of the world and the story expanded so much!

Very glad I read this, and I’m already looking forward to revisiting her advice probably twice a year (fall and spring)!

Searches is a timely, personal, and incredibly smart look at our techological present and immediate past, probing what AI is doing and will do to our lives with a healthy dose of skepticism while holding the giants like Meta, Amazon, etc to task.

I enjoyed my time with this deliberately, consciously slow-paced book about lives in orbit, love in all its forms, and what haunts us.

This is objectively good storytelling that is unfortunately not well aligned with my taste in books — I just don’t love hardcore alien world scifi. So it’s not a new favorite, but I enjoyed it enough to easily finish it!

The Art of Vanishing is a book about a woman who gets a night shift janitorial job at an art museum and, upon realizing she can somehow step inside the paintings, falls in love with one of the subjects. It’s a fast read and very fun — I think it would make a GREAT beach read this summer.

If you love nature writing, you simply must read this, and you must not rush it. Macfarlane’s prose is sumptuous and his sense of wonder is palpable.