abgushte

I loved VE Schwab’s Shades of Magic series so this was disappointing.

The cover of VE Schwab’s “Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil”

I really liked the concept of women (specifically: lesbians) using vampirism as a means to freedom from becoming a husband’s possession but falling victim to the rot of immortality and becoming just as toxic as the patriarchy they were trying to escape. But the book was a slog tbh.

⭐️⭐️⭐️. #booksky 📚💙

The cover of The Autobiography of Malcolm X as Told to Alex Haley.

He was right about everything: integration has failed. I wish he had lived to see the Black Panthers and have a chance to examine his own misogyny. In spite of that, he owned his flaws and demonstrated an open mindedness which hold up his legacy rather than tarnish it.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. #booksky 📚💙

Two grapplers engage in a floor-level philosophical debate, with one making a very convincing argument using their arms. The bearded scholar in the leopard-print rashguard with hair piled magnificently atop their head like a curly crown appears to have won the discussion, as their sparring partner can no longer form counterarguments. In the background, a third philosopher contemplates their life choices in the fetal position. The mats are dark, the stakes are high, and someone is definitely tapping soon A Brazilian jiu-jitsu training session on dark foam mats. In the foreground, a muscular nonbinary person with a gray beard and curly hair pulled up into a bun is wearing a black and leopard-print rashguard. They are kneeling over a second person who is on their stomach, pinned face-down to the mat with their back taken — a dominant BJJ control position in which the person on top wraps around their opponent from behind. The person on the bottom is wearing a black rashguard. Natural light streams in through large windows in the background, where a second pair of practitioners can be seen on the mat, one curled low over the other. The overall atmosphere is that of an active grappling class.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Saturdays are for snuggles with the boys

📷: @abgushte.bsky.social

Haunting, beautiful, transformative. The story takes place 1 year after all the white people in America suddenly walk into the nearest body of water and drown themselves. Many folks feel the ending is flat and abrupt, but I thought it was quite poetic.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. 📚💙 #booksky

BUT THE PART WHERE HE PULLS HER UP TO HIM BY HER FRONT CORSET STRINGS 🫠🫠🫠 #wutheringheights

Angela Davis’s “Women Race & Class”

When BIPOC give white latecomers the side-eye and gatekeep resistance movements, the historical events outlined in this book are a big reason why. White people who complain about not feeling welcomed to the party need to read this book immediately.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. #booksky 📚💙

Added some of these to my TBR and picked up Sky Full of Elephants at the store today 📚💙

I actually started reading it last year but quit because the end of part 1 has a lot of tragedy and it was getting to me emotionally 😭 but I’m so glad I stuck it out this time.

Oh she’s BROKE broke

The cover of The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

700 pages of “my god The Big Dragon Boss is coming and he will destroy us all” and 100 pages of actual The Big Dragon Boss Battle plus aftermath. I don’t like that ratio but I loved the journey, the lore, and the characters (except the designated asshole).

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️½. #booksky 🪐📚💙

I understand the impulse to distance yourself from American history. I do. But the atrocities are the actual normal for many communities. And until we confront them as part of a baseline societal flaw and address why they keep happening, they will not stop. They will just continue to shift targets

Taking a nap here.

The cover of The Serpent and the Wolf by Rebecca Robinson.

A sweet, slow burn romance with pretty standard high stakes political intrigue marked with heartwarming community and relationships. There is an agonizing twist at the end, but I’m optimistic that the story will remain strong as a trilogy rather than a longer standalone.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️½. #booksky 🪐📚💙

On a background of a cloudy Bahamas resort grounds through a slightly open patio door, an identified figure sits with their feet propped on a hotel chair and covered in a white down comforter. A book is open in their hand, and on a nearby table lies a bookmark and a to-go cup of coffee.

Gusting winds of 29mph in the Bahamas but still making a little reading nook to treat myself ❤️ Once I finish this one I’ll try Priory of the Orange Tree which I DNF’d last year because it was depressing, but now I’m in vacation mode so that means absorbing myself in it again will be just great???

The original cover of Quicksilver by Callie Hart showing a brooding male with dark wavy hair covered in tattoos and a silver liquid falling from his left eye.

*Dreamy sigh* All the tropes I love woven into an exciting plot that never tires. I have heard the second book is a hot mess rushed by the publisher, but I’m gonna try to plow through it anyway!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. #booksky 📚💙

The cover of “The Fisherman: A Novel” by Josh Langan.

Part 2 takes up over half the book and is a very necessary story-within-a-story(-within-a-story) that goes on forever. The fishing parts didn’t fit smoothly but still accomplish a decent open & close to the story. I just really hated the hokiness…

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ still because it was pretty epic. #booksky 📚💙

The cover of A Forgery of Fate by Elizabeth Lim.

A solid YA mythical fantasy adventure with a heartwarming family and a cozy enemies-to-lovers + marriage contract romance. A wholesome read for sure.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. #booksky 📚💙

The cover of Slewfoot: A Tale of Bewitchery by (Gerald) Brom. The illustration by the author is a painting of a woman with long red hair in a flower crown sitting astride a broom with the legs of a goat peaking out under her loose, torn chemise. She has holding the skull of a goat in her lap that is wearing a matching flower crown. An image of a full orange moon takes up the entire background with the witch centered in the foreground.

Even as a satisfying revenge fantasy, the story made me explicably angry and outraged, especially as it’s rooted in historical facts. And yet I still came away feeling connected to Abitha, Samson, and Mother Earth.

Also: another paperback destroyed by my greasy hands 🤣

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️¾. #booksky 📚💙

Playground satire Even The Cat in the Hat had a political edge. In Jonathan Cott’s 1983 collection of interviews, Pipers at the Gates of Dawn, Seuss said in response to the suggestion that some of his books are subversive: “I’m subversive as hell! I’ve always had a mistrust of adults… Hilaire Belloc, whose writings I liked a lot, was a radical. Gulliver’s Travels was subversive, and both Swift and Voltaire influenced me. The Cat in the Hat is a revolt against authority, but it’s ameliorated by the fact that the cat cleans up everything in the end.” Spiegelman finds a precursor to the cat’s red-and-white striped hat in the headgear on the bird Seuss drew to depict the US in his political cartoons.

According to Seuss The Cat in the Hat was just subversive, not about specific political figures. Other Seuss books are truly depicting political figures or concepts, e.g. Yertle had a Hitler mustache in the original art.

The youth don't even know how to use an abacus anymore, we used to be a proper dynasty 😪

User Storygraph stats: 50 books 19,056 pages Top genres - fantasy, romance, LGBTQIA+, historical, science fiction Top authors - Naomi Novik, Hannah Nicole Maehrer Average rating 4.14

All 50 books I read. No I will not be listing them.

#2025inreview #storygraph

A collage of 12 books: A Deadly Education Uprooted The Bear and the Nightingale Thorn Hedge A Power Unbound The Black Tides of Heaven A Monsoon Rising Buffalo Hunter Hunter Buried Deep Legendborn Death of the Author Deep End

I hit my 2025 reading goal of 50 books 🎉 here are some of my favorites. Obviously it was a good year to discover Naomi Novik. I joined two book clubs this year and stretched myself outside my comfort zone on my own as well, and I’m hoping next year’s list will be more diverse. #booksky 📚💙

That’s next on my Naomi Novik list!!

Naomi Novik’s novel “The Golden Enclaves”, 3rd in the Scholomance trilogy

I was expecting to not like this book as well as the others, but the only note I have is that there’s a LOT of plot in this book packed into 2 weeks that I would have liked to see deepened into 2 books, but perhaps not at the expense of extending the series into 4 books.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. #booksky 🪐📚💙

Knocking off a quarter point for the HIGH STAKES cliff hanger ending, otherwise *chef’s kiss*

One more book until I meet my 2025 reading goal 🎉

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️¾. #booksky 🪐📚💙

I don’t care if you woke libs cancel me for it but it’s pronounced HarKONnen not HARKonnen.

Now that’s what I call dark academia! No notes. The only negative thing I’ll say is that the paperback is now absolutely riddled with my greasy fingerprints 😂

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. #booksky 🪐📚💙

A Charmed Life by Dianna Wynne Jones

I really wanted to love this book, so maybe my expectations were too high. I loved the world, but hated the characters and how much the mystery hinged on miscommunication/withholding information for not a very good reason imo. I don’t think I’ll be continuing the series.

⭐️⭐️⭐️¾. #booksky 🪐📚💙