![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
This is starting after Book #8 from 2018.
9. Nightmare Stacks: Charles Stross
10. Delirium Brief: Charles Stross
11. Castle of Llyr (reread) Lloyd Alexander
Fun, though the third of the Chronicles of Prydain has the annoying flaw that the book which is supposed to be Eilonwy's has very little Eilonwy in it. But she's still Welsh Princess Leia before there was Princess Leia.
12. Lovecraft Country: Matt Ruff
Really good. If you're Fighting Mythos While Black, shoggoths and sheriffs are both bad news. There are a number of powerful ways of ringing changes on Lovecraft, and one is showing that humans are the worst monsters.
13. A&E $508
14. Cardcaptor Sakura Clear Card #1: CLAMP
15. Black Butler #25
Alarums & Excursions is the gaming apa I write for. Cardcaptor Sakura is at the gentler end of the spectrum when it comes to manga. It's all about love. Black Butler is nearer the opposite end (but nowhere near as extreme as things can get) and if you don't want to read about bad things happening to children, avoid this. I find it mesmerizing because of the combination of supernatural, snark, and art.
16: Devil in Velvet: John Dickson Carr
Delightful mystery, includes time travel and somewhat dated attitudes.
17: Under the Pendulum Sun: Jeanette Ng
Wow. I didn't know what was about to hit me. Recommended.
18. Taran Wanderer (reread): Lloyd Alexander
Probably still my favorite of the series.
19. Whiskarella: Ursula Vernon
More Harriet the Hamster! And the Bat Ambassador is tres chic and cool!
20. Cardcaptor Sakura Clear Card #2: CLAMP
21. Bloody Mary #10
22. Seco Creek Vigilante Committee: Keith Stetson
23. A&E #509
More manga, more Alarums & Excursions, and a short RPG I have yet to play.
24. The High King (reread): Lloyd Alexander
Despite a couple of things I don't love, still holds up rather well (and one of those is a matter of taste).
25. Lincoln in the Bardo: George Saunders
26. Girls Made of Snow and Glass: Melissa Bahardoust
27. Rules of Magic: Alice Hoffman
Yeah, these didn't do it for me. Not to my taste.
28. Cardcaptor Sakura Clear Card #3: CLAMP
29. A&E #510
30. A&E #511
31. Space Opera: Catherynne Valente
Space Opera, on the other hand, was very much to my taste. And then I passed it to mneme, who texted me in mid-read, "Chapter 13!" which I looked up and... so, flat on the page, it struck me as okay. I mean, good, sure, like the rest of the book. But read aloud? Read aloud, it shines. So I took to reading it aloud in filk circles.
32: Snow City: GA Kathryns
I liked this a great deal when I read it. I'm not sure about exactly where it goes, and I'm not sure if I'd like it as much on the reread, but that's all right.
33. Prisoner of Zenda (reread): Anthony Hope
I reread this because of the K. J. Charles title two books down. It holds up well enough. I did not try to reread the sequel. If you have ever read the sequel, you will understand why.
34. The Spy Who Came In Out of the Cold: John Le Carre
I'd seen the movie years ago. There's one exchange I wish had been in the book, but apart from that? Beautifully bleak.
35. The Henchmen of Zenda: K. J. Charles
M/M romp that presumes that Prisoner of Zenda is a highly edited version of the tale.
36. A&E #512
37. Fate of Cthulhu Beta
This got me to get one of the alpha test groups back together to complete the campaign. I'm... not sure if Evil Hat intended to inspire a dark sitcomedy-esque campaign about a bizarre broken-but-beautiful family, but... that's what we got. It helped that we'd been taking full advantage of the idea that you can let years pass between missions. And... whether they were "missions" as such, rather than things that sort of happened is an interesting question.
38. 7th Edition Guide to Cthulhu Invictus
This was probably during the final phase of edits, when I was looking at it in layout.
39. A&E #513
40. The Lawrence Brown Affair: Cat Sebasatian
41. The Soldier's Scoundrel: Cat Sebastian
42. The Ruin of a Rake: Cat Sebastian
Yeah, so, I discovered Cat Sebastian. Hardly a surprise given I like K. J. Charles's books.
43. Unfit to Print: K. J. Charles
44. Cardcaptor Sakura Clear Card #4: CLAMP
More from authors we already know I like.
45. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: John Le Carre
First, the Dracula Dossier Gaming Group, or at least those who could make it that day, saw the movie in my living room. Then, I watched the BBC version. Then, I read the book. And I made lots of notes for the 1977 Dracula Dossier game, which took 2 sessions. The first was solid. The second... worked well enough, but I made several sub-optimal decisions and am trying to figure out how not to do that.
46. Black Butler #26
47. Crossroads Carnival Ashcan: Kate Bullock
48. Bluebeard's Bride: Book of Lore
49. A&E #514
More manga and apa. One taste of an rpg, and I am hungry for the full game. As for the Book of Lore, that's the Bluebeard tale part of the Bluebeard's Bride RPG. Just the tale, beautifully illustrated.
50. Deep Roots: Ruthanna Emrys
I finished this the day I had my first pollworker assignment. This seems oddly appropriate. Another way of engaging with Lovecraft is challenging his premises. What if we don't assume that folks from Innsmouth were any more evil than folks not from Innsmouth? Or that the various species Lovecraft invented are neither all good nor all bad, any more than humanity is? And what if we take these non-assumptions and look at a 1950s NYC that includes such beings? Also, kudos to Emrys for not giving every human character attitudes from the 21st century and making sure that this matters.
51. Persuasion: Jane Austen
I saw the movie and honestly have no idea whether this was a read or a reread.
52. Monstress #3: Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda
Gulped it down and immediately wanted the next.
53. The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter: Theodora Goss
So, Mary Jekyll meets her half sister Diana Hyde after their father's death, and they decide to spring Beatrice Rappaccini and -- Okay, at that point, I've handed you my money. I might not have gotten to this for a while longer, but I met the author at that year's WorldCon and picked up the second book because she was right there to sign it.
54. Boston Metaphysical Society
Graphic novel, enjoyed it while I was reading it. Would need to reread it to remember details.
55. Undue Influence: Jenny Holiday
M/M Persuasion retelling set in the modern day. I found it okay.
56. RWBY: Shirow Miwa
57. RWBY 1: Red Like Roses: Official Manga Anthology
58. RWBY 2: Mirror Mirror: Official Manga Anthology
More manga, and I've only a vague memory of their contents.
59. A Study of Honor: Claire O'Dell
Gender flipped Holmes and Watson, both Black, in an alternate history that feels uncomfortably insufficiently implausible. I enjoyed it and bought the next in the series.
60. Point of Hopes: Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett
First Astreiant book. Very much up my alley. The world building and leisurely pace sucked me in. Like, there's one chapter where all that happens in one of the two main characters changes his money, checks his weapons, and walks across town, and I'm greedily slurping up how this world works. (Okay, land... OH -- Landames instead of Landlord, because reverse gender status. Guilds are powerful and would as soon have their apprentices homosexual because if they must have sex, no babies that way, gotcah. Points -- that's cops, and cops in the early days. Okay. And... they take the victims' horoscopes... so... noted, yes. And... two suns, which must make that complicated, wow. And... apparently clocks are magical?) Leisurely isn't slow or boring, but I'm not sure how to define what makes one book the one and another the other.
61. Tricks for Free: Seanan McGuire
Aka Seanan gets to put her love of Disneyland into a book. Er, sorry, Lowryland. And more Antimony. Yay!
62. A Face Without a Heart: Rick R. Reed
Sf-y Dorian Gray retelling. I enjoyed this.
63. Point of Dreams: Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett
Second Astreiant book, likewise right up my alley, similarly paced.
64. Bluebeard's Bride: Book of Mirrors
Oh yes. Very much yes. Alternate playsets for Bluebeard's Bride, including one in which you play the aspects of the son. I do wish this one had followed through on that, making the Mother the Father and Animus the Anima. But it continues to scratch a very odd itch I didn't know I had.
65. Monsterhearts 2 (reread): Avery Alder
Somehow, it's never redundant to reread this book. It's shorter than the first edition, but I clearly haven't learned everything in it yet.
66. Little Red Rodent Hood: Ursula Vernon
Harriet again! Yay! And her father is starting to grow on me.
67. Point of Knives: Melissa Scott
Third Astreiant book, set between the first two.
68. Nocturne in the City of Lights (Space 1889)
Space 1889 adventure I read because I needed something to wrap my second Kerberos Fate campaign. This wasn't perfect for that, but worked well enough.
69. A&E #215
70. Bend Sinister: K. J. Charles
71. European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman: Theodora Goss
More apa, more K. J. Charles, and the second of Theodora Goss's trilogy, which I read most of during election day when I was on standby. (Got assignment with others in the afternoon to a place all of us could easily get home from by subway, almost as if they tried to set things up that way...)
72. Tachyon Squadron
Yay Tachyon Squadron! Fate RPG. I should reread and write down the questions that flitted through my head because there weren't that many.
73. My Hero Academia Vigilantes #1
74. A&E #216
75. Cardcaptor Sakura Clear Card #5: CLAMP
76. My Hero Academia Vigilantes #2
More manga, more apa.
77. Tremontaine Season 4
The final season on Serial Box. A lot of really good material here. And a lot of material that screamed "We have to wrap things up quickly now!" which I'm very, very mixed on.
78. Our Ladies of Sorrow (reread): Kevin Ross
A Call of Cthulhu campaign trying very different things for its day, which is just after Trail of Cthulhu came out and before Apocalypse World came out. At the time, I liked it, but was skeptical about some parts. Someone who ran it told me how it worked for their group, assuring me that, yes, these parts did work. But it wasn't until 2018-2019 that I had a combination of the right players and enough skill to run it myself. There were bumps, and I'm not thrilled with some of my missteps in the last session, but it also ran very well, especially when I remembered I didn't need to get anywhere in a rush and took my hands off the steering wheel, letting the players go in some very odd directions.
79. A&E #217
And one more issue of Alarums & Excursions.
9. Nightmare Stacks: Charles Stross
10. Delirium Brief: Charles Stross
11. Castle of Llyr (reread) Lloyd Alexander
Fun, though the third of the Chronicles of Prydain has the annoying flaw that the book which is supposed to be Eilonwy's has very little Eilonwy in it. But she's still Welsh Princess Leia before there was Princess Leia.
12. Lovecraft Country: Matt Ruff
Really good. If you're Fighting Mythos While Black, shoggoths and sheriffs are both bad news. There are a number of powerful ways of ringing changes on Lovecraft, and one is showing that humans are the worst monsters.
13. A&E $508
14. Cardcaptor Sakura Clear Card #1: CLAMP
15. Black Butler #25
Alarums & Excursions is the gaming apa I write for. Cardcaptor Sakura is at the gentler end of the spectrum when it comes to manga. It's all about love. Black Butler is nearer the opposite end (but nowhere near as extreme as things can get) and if you don't want to read about bad things happening to children, avoid this. I find it mesmerizing because of the combination of supernatural, snark, and art.
16: Devil in Velvet: John Dickson Carr
Delightful mystery, includes time travel and somewhat dated attitudes.
17: Under the Pendulum Sun: Jeanette Ng
Wow. I didn't know what was about to hit me. Recommended.
18. Taran Wanderer (reread): Lloyd Alexander
Probably still my favorite of the series.
19. Whiskarella: Ursula Vernon
More Harriet the Hamster! And the Bat Ambassador is tres chic and cool!
20. Cardcaptor Sakura Clear Card #2: CLAMP
21. Bloody Mary #10
22. Seco Creek Vigilante Committee: Keith Stetson
23. A&E #509
More manga, more Alarums & Excursions, and a short RPG I have yet to play.
24. The High King (reread): Lloyd Alexander
Despite a couple of things I don't love, still holds up rather well (and one of those is a matter of taste).
25. Lincoln in the Bardo: George Saunders
26. Girls Made of Snow and Glass: Melissa Bahardoust
27. Rules of Magic: Alice Hoffman
Yeah, these didn't do it for me. Not to my taste.
28. Cardcaptor Sakura Clear Card #3: CLAMP
29. A&E #510
30. A&E #511
31. Space Opera: Catherynne Valente
Space Opera, on the other hand, was very much to my taste. And then I passed it to mneme, who texted me in mid-read, "Chapter 13!" which I looked up and... so, flat on the page, it struck me as okay. I mean, good, sure, like the rest of the book. But read aloud? Read aloud, it shines. So I took to reading it aloud in filk circles.
32: Snow City: GA Kathryns
I liked this a great deal when I read it. I'm not sure about exactly where it goes, and I'm not sure if I'd like it as much on the reread, but that's all right.
33. Prisoner of Zenda (reread): Anthony Hope
I reread this because of the K. J. Charles title two books down. It holds up well enough. I did not try to reread the sequel. If you have ever read the sequel, you will understand why.
34. The Spy Who Came In Out of the Cold: John Le Carre
I'd seen the movie years ago. There's one exchange I wish had been in the book, but apart from that? Beautifully bleak.
35. The Henchmen of Zenda: K. J. Charles
M/M romp that presumes that Prisoner of Zenda is a highly edited version of the tale.
36. A&E #512
37. Fate of Cthulhu Beta
This got me to get one of the alpha test groups back together to complete the campaign. I'm... not sure if Evil Hat intended to inspire a dark sitcomedy-esque campaign about a bizarre broken-but-beautiful family, but... that's what we got. It helped that we'd been taking full advantage of the idea that you can let years pass between missions. And... whether they were "missions" as such, rather than things that sort of happened is an interesting question.
38. 7th Edition Guide to Cthulhu Invictus
This was probably during the final phase of edits, when I was looking at it in layout.
39. A&E #513
40. The Lawrence Brown Affair: Cat Sebasatian
41. The Soldier's Scoundrel: Cat Sebastian
42. The Ruin of a Rake: Cat Sebastian
Yeah, so, I discovered Cat Sebastian. Hardly a surprise given I like K. J. Charles's books.
43. Unfit to Print: K. J. Charles
44. Cardcaptor Sakura Clear Card #4: CLAMP
More from authors we already know I like.
45. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: John Le Carre
First, the Dracula Dossier Gaming Group, or at least those who could make it that day, saw the movie in my living room. Then, I watched the BBC version. Then, I read the book. And I made lots of notes for the 1977 Dracula Dossier game, which took 2 sessions. The first was solid. The second... worked well enough, but I made several sub-optimal decisions and am trying to figure out how not to do that.
46. Black Butler #26
47. Crossroads Carnival Ashcan: Kate Bullock
48. Bluebeard's Bride: Book of Lore
49. A&E #514
More manga and apa. One taste of an rpg, and I am hungry for the full game. As for the Book of Lore, that's the Bluebeard tale part of the Bluebeard's Bride RPG. Just the tale, beautifully illustrated.
50. Deep Roots: Ruthanna Emrys
I finished this the day I had my first pollworker assignment. This seems oddly appropriate. Another way of engaging with Lovecraft is challenging his premises. What if we don't assume that folks from Innsmouth were any more evil than folks not from Innsmouth? Or that the various species Lovecraft invented are neither all good nor all bad, any more than humanity is? And what if we take these non-assumptions and look at a 1950s NYC that includes such beings? Also, kudos to Emrys for not giving every human character attitudes from the 21st century and making sure that this matters.
51. Persuasion: Jane Austen
I saw the movie and honestly have no idea whether this was a read or a reread.
52. Monstress #3: Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda
Gulped it down and immediately wanted the next.
53. The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter: Theodora Goss
So, Mary Jekyll meets her half sister Diana Hyde after their father's death, and they decide to spring Beatrice Rappaccini and -- Okay, at that point, I've handed you my money. I might not have gotten to this for a while longer, but I met the author at that year's WorldCon and picked up the second book because she was right there to sign it.
54. Boston Metaphysical Society
Graphic novel, enjoyed it while I was reading it. Would need to reread it to remember details.
55. Undue Influence: Jenny Holiday
M/M Persuasion retelling set in the modern day. I found it okay.
56. RWBY: Shirow Miwa
57. RWBY 1: Red Like Roses: Official Manga Anthology
58. RWBY 2: Mirror Mirror: Official Manga Anthology
More manga, and I've only a vague memory of their contents.
59. A Study of Honor: Claire O'Dell
Gender flipped Holmes and Watson, both Black, in an alternate history that feels uncomfortably insufficiently implausible. I enjoyed it and bought the next in the series.
60. Point of Hopes: Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett
First Astreiant book. Very much up my alley. The world building and leisurely pace sucked me in. Like, there's one chapter where all that happens in one of the two main characters changes his money, checks his weapons, and walks across town, and I'm greedily slurping up how this world works. (Okay, land... OH -- Landames instead of Landlord, because reverse gender status. Guilds are powerful and would as soon have their apprentices homosexual because if they must have sex, no babies that way, gotcah. Points -- that's cops, and cops in the early days. Okay. And... they take the victims' horoscopes... so... noted, yes. And... two suns, which must make that complicated, wow. And... apparently clocks are magical?) Leisurely isn't slow or boring, but I'm not sure how to define what makes one book the one and another the other.
61. Tricks for Free: Seanan McGuire
Aka Seanan gets to put her love of Disneyland into a book. Er, sorry, Lowryland. And more Antimony. Yay!
62. A Face Without a Heart: Rick R. Reed
Sf-y Dorian Gray retelling. I enjoyed this.
63. Point of Dreams: Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett
Second Astreiant book, likewise right up my alley, similarly paced.
64. Bluebeard's Bride: Book of Mirrors
Oh yes. Very much yes. Alternate playsets for Bluebeard's Bride, including one in which you play the aspects of the son. I do wish this one had followed through on that, making the Mother the Father and Animus the Anima. But it continues to scratch a very odd itch I didn't know I had.
65. Monsterhearts 2 (reread): Avery Alder
Somehow, it's never redundant to reread this book. It's shorter than the first edition, but I clearly haven't learned everything in it yet.
66. Little Red Rodent Hood: Ursula Vernon
Harriet again! Yay! And her father is starting to grow on me.
67. Point of Knives: Melissa Scott
Third Astreiant book, set between the first two.
68. Nocturne in the City of Lights (Space 1889)
Space 1889 adventure I read because I needed something to wrap my second Kerberos Fate campaign. This wasn't perfect for that, but worked well enough.
69. A&E #215
70. Bend Sinister: K. J. Charles
71. European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman: Theodora Goss
More apa, more K. J. Charles, and the second of Theodora Goss's trilogy, which I read most of during election day when I was on standby. (Got assignment with others in the afternoon to a place all of us could easily get home from by subway, almost as if they tried to set things up that way...)
72. Tachyon Squadron
Yay Tachyon Squadron! Fate RPG. I should reread and write down the questions that flitted through my head because there weren't that many.
73. My Hero Academia Vigilantes #1
74. A&E #216
75. Cardcaptor Sakura Clear Card #5: CLAMP
76. My Hero Academia Vigilantes #2
More manga, more apa.
77. Tremontaine Season 4
The final season on Serial Box. A lot of really good material here. And a lot of material that screamed "We have to wrap things up quickly now!" which I'm very, very mixed on.
78. Our Ladies of Sorrow (reread): Kevin Ross
A Call of Cthulhu campaign trying very different things for its day, which is just after Trail of Cthulhu came out and before Apocalypse World came out. At the time, I liked it, but was skeptical about some parts. Someone who ran it told me how it worked for their group, assuring me that, yes, these parts did work. But it wasn't until 2018-2019 that I had a combination of the right players and enough skill to run it myself. There were bumps, and I'm not thrilled with some of my missteps in the last session, but it also ran very well, especially when I remembered I didn't need to get anywhere in a rush and took my hands off the steering wheel, letting the players go in some very odd directions.
79. A&E #217
And one more issue of Alarums & Excursions.