The Honey Month by Amal El-Mohtar, is a delightful little book where every day, for 28 days she tastes a honey sample sent by her friend. She not only ends up capturing the color, aroma, and flavor notes but also adds little patchwork pieces of poetry or prose to each honey she tries. Though pithy, those little micro fictions were beautiful and evocative, enriching the experience of reading her about journey. I read this as she worked through it. One honey per each chilly February day. I think this book is perfect for people who like: birdsong, the tinkling of a windchime, the way fountain pen ink pools in places.
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I ended up binging The Murderbot Diaries, devouring books 2-7 and the 3 short stories. I started the series with the intention of reading one book every few weeks to space it out, but I kept wanting to return to that world. There is something about the series that makes me feel safe. Like I read SecUnit's thoughts and feel there is no subtext to unravel or decipher and that its logic is not dissimilar to my own. And don't get me started on ART!!! I adore ART. I might have mentioned that once, twice, or a dozen times now :p I never thought I'd get so attached to a spaceship, but Martha Wells is good like that. She also somehow accomplished to make me get all soft and uwu whenever the drones appeared. Five out of five consistently for me. I do feel that the first arc (books 1-4) were more leaning found family vibes while the second tackles the responsibility we feel to those we love and the fallout of unprocessed trauma. This one of the rare books/series that I read in my adulthood that can make my top reads of my life. I swapped the order for books 5 and 6 and wove in reading the short stories based on what I saw recommended (Coalescence after book 1, Home after book 4, and Rapport after book 5).
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Doughnuts Under a Crescent Moon is a super sweet yuri manga about a woman who turns to beauty to make herself as appealing as possible in the hopes of being feeling like she deserves love, and her stoic colleague, who is so focused on taking care of her young sister to ponder on what love is. It’s a slow burn (my fave type of romance), is a beautiful example of asexual representation, and a thoughtful meditation of how love can be mean many things. Is love wanting to kiss? Hold hands? Is it the warmth and safety of sharing a doughnut under a moonlit sky? A cozy, lovely series and a future reread for sure!
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Audition for the Fox is Martin Cahill's debut. A slim novella, it does a good job in building the world without feeling heavy via vignettes of storytelling to handle exposition. I think with the way things have been, this story is a reminder to empower ourselves as a society to build a better future. I like T’sidaan too. A trickster god with a heart of gold, T’sidaan brought more of warmth to the narrative than if they had been less nuanced. It's a fantasy, but I think more David the Gnome than Lord of the Rings with the vibes. There is an earthy, down to earth quality to it that I though made it a nice late winter read.
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Portrait of a Body by Juli Delporte was written after the other graphic novel of hers I read recently, This Woman's Work. It's deeply relatable and intimate exploration of her sexuality as she explored her path to realizing that she is queer. The handwritten text and the colored pencil art gave the feeling of reading her journal. I adored the natural theme of many of the drawings, especially in how they juxtaposed with her opening up about her feelings about being with men, embracing women, and the vulnerability of coming to terms with being a victim of sexual violence. I wasn't sure what to expect when I started reading her work, but I am now a fan. Art is often a way to feel seen, and I feel somehow a sense of being validated and understood every time I take in Juli's words and illustrations. It's a gentle type of healing, a bit like floating in very warm salt water.
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It was excruciating.
That kid felt so ashamed that I couldn't even get close to her. She thought herself unworthy of anyone's love.
Maybe the sense of being cut of from others comes from the deep hole of that shame.
– Juli Delporte (Portrait of a Body)