(no subject)

[skygiants]

Due to the combo of the ongoing Eight Days of DWJ project and being on the Otherwise judging committee, this has been one of my best years in recent memory for reading actual books and my worst for keeping up with write-ups.


Books read, 2025 (asterisk denotes a reread):

1. Diana Wynne Jones: An Exciting and Exacting Wisdom, ed. Teya Rosenberg
2. Russian Homophobia from Stalin to Sochi, Dan Healey
3. A Month in the Country, J.L. Carr
4. The Vengeance, Emma Newman
5. The Memory Hunters, Mia Tsai
6. Interstellar Megachef, Lavanya Lakshminarayan
7. Magicians of Caprona, Diana Wynne Jones*
8. The White Devil, John Webster*
9. Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare*
10. The Last Command, Timothy Zahn
11. Peasprout Chen: Battle of Champions, Henry Lien
12. Long Live Evil, Sarah Rees Brennan
13. Time of the Ghost, Diana Wynne Jones*
14. The Mark of Merlin, Anne McCaffrey
15. Nine Princes in Amber, Roger Zelazny
16. How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying, Django Wexler
17. this is ridiculous, Qi Ying Jun
18. The Doors of Eden, Adrian Tchaikovsky
19. The Homeward Bounders, Diana Wynne Jones
20. This Brutal Moon, Bethany Jacobs [draft]
21. The Worst Witch, Jill Murphy
22. Amerika: Russian Writers View the United States, ed. Mikhail Lossel and Jeff Parker
23. Witch Week, Diana Wynne Jones*
24. Murder in Old Bombay, Nev Marsh
25. Quest for a Kelpie, Frances Hendry
26. Faraway Wanderers, Priest
27. Asunder, Kerstin Hall
28. Archer's Goon, Diana Wynne Jones*
29. Are You Okay, Qi Ying Jun
30. Local Heavens, K.M. Fajardo
31. Metal From Heaven, August Clarke
32. Just Happy to Be Here, Naomi Kanakia
33. Concealed and Blended, Qi Ying Jun
34. Fire and Hemlock, Diana Wynne Jones*
35. The Shabti, Megaera C. Lorenz
36. The Dawnhounds, Sasha Stronach
37. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis
38. Prince Caspian, C.S. Lewis
39. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C.S. Lewis
40. The Silver Chair, C.S. Lewis
41. The Horse and His Boy, C.S. Lewis
42. The Magician's Nephew, C.S. Lewis
43. The Last Battle, C.S. Lewis
44. The City in Glass, Nghi Vo
45. The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles, Malka Older
46. Howl's Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones
47. The Scapegoat, Daphne du Maurier
48. The Ballad of Sword and Wine, Volume 1, Qiang Jin Jiu
49. A Tale of Time City, Diana Wynne Jones
50. Taiwan Travelogue, Yang Jo-Tzu
51. Death in the Spires, K.J. Charles
52. The Embroidered Sunset, Joan Aiken
53. The Adventures of Sally, P.G. Wodehouse
54. The Lost Land of Lemuria: Fabulous Geographics, Catastrophic Histories, Sumathi Ramaswamy
55. Thousand Autumns: Qian Qiu, Meng Xi Shi
56. Aunt Tiger, Emily Yu-Xuan Qin
57. Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages, Phyllis Rose
58. The Memory Hunters, Mia Tsai*
59. Esbae: A Winter's Tale, Linda Haldeman
60. The Pushcart War, Jean Merrill
61. The Twin Serpents, Ronald Scott Thorn
62. 84 Charing Cross Road, Helene Hanff
63. Gawain and the Green Knight, trans. Simon Armitage
64. Max in the House of Spies, Adam Gidwitz
65. The Twelve Chairs, Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov
66. Freedom and Necessity, Emma Bull
67. The Palace of the Peacock, Wilson Harris
68. Behind Frenemy Lines, Zen Cho
69. The Partisan's Coat, Yehiel Grenimann
70. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald*
71. The Ministry of Time, Kaliane Bradley
72. The Tainted Cup, Robert Jackson Bennett
73. Alien Clay, Adrien Tchaikovsky
74. The Brides of High Hill, Nghi Vo
75. The Butcher of the Forest, Premee Mohammed
76. A Sorceress Comes to Call, Ursula Vernon
77. The Practice, The Horizon, and the Chain, Sofia Samatar
78. Navigational Entanglements, Aliette de Bodard
79. The Tusks of Extinction, Ray Naylor
80. Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets, Svetlana Alexievich
81. The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, Elisabeth Tova Bailey
82. Bodies of Magic, Freya Marske [draft]
83. Hate to Fake It To You, Amanda Sellet
84. The Hearing Trumpet, Leonora Carrington
85. The Last Knight of Camelot: The Chronicles of Sir Kay, Cherith Baldry
86. The Fortunate Fall, Cameron Reed
87. Max in the Land of Lies, Adam Gidwitz
88. Star Wars: The Mask of Fear, Alexander Freed
89. The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo, Zen Cho*
90. The Message, Mai Jia
91. The Bright Sword, Lev Grossman
92. Strong Roots: A Memoir of Food, Family and Ukraine, Olia Hercules
93. Notes from a Regicide, Isaac Fellman
94. The Lives of Christopher Chant, Diana Wynne Jones*
95. Motheater, Linda Codega
96. Butter: A Novel of Food and Murder, Asako Yuzuki
97. The Husbands, Holly Gramazio
98. The Mune, Sue Dawes
99. Daughters of Chaos, Jen Fawkes
100. Showmance, Chad Beguelin
101. The Place of Shells, Mai Ishizawa
102. One Thousand and One Arabian Nights: Volume One, Richard Burton
103. Castle in the Air, Diana Wynne Jones*
104. Luminous, Silvia Park
105. Make Room for Love, Darcy Liao
106. The Forbidden Book, Sasha Lamb
107. Nicked, M.T. Anderson
108. Black Maria, Diana Wynne Jones*
109. Vita Nostra, Maryna and Serhiy Dyachenko
110. The Dispossessed, Ursula K. LeGuin*
111. A Sudden Wild Magic, Diana Wynne Jones*
112. Not Quite a Ghost, Anne Ursu
113. The Loveliest Chocolate Shop in Paris, Jenny Colgan
114. Death on the Cherwell, Mavis Doriel Hay
115. Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism, Sebastian Smee
116. The Mystery of the Blue Train, Agatha Christie
117. Rooftoppers, Katherine Rundell
118. The Queen's Embroiderer: A True Story of Paris, Lovers, Swindlers, and the First Stock Market Crisis, Joan DeJean
119. The King Must Die, Kemi Ashing-Giwa
120. The Female Man, Joanna Russ*
121. Saint Death's Daughter, C.S.E. Cooney
122. Song of Spores, Bogi Takács
123. No Such Thing as Duty, Lara Elena Donnelly
124. The Iron Below Remembers, Sharang Biswas
125. The Dead Withheld, L.D. Lewis
126. The Oblivion Bride, Caitlin Starling
127. A House for Miss Pauline, Diana McCaulay
128. Moonflow, Bitter Karella
129. Two Truths and a Lie, Cory O'Brien
130. Hammajang Luck, Makana Yamamoto
131. Fate's Bane, C.L. Clark
132. Considering The Female Man By Joanna Russ, or, as the bear swore, Farah Mendlesohn
133. The Female Man, Joanna Russ*

Comics and graphic novels:
1-4. Skip and Loafer, Volumes 2-5, Misaki Takamatsu
5. Shubeik Lubeik, Deena Mohamed
6. JAJ: A Haida Manga, Michael Nicholl Yahgulanaas
7. The Remarried Empress, Alphatart
8. Skip and Loafer, Volume 6, Misaki Takamatsu
9. The Other World's Books Depend on the Bean Counter, Volume 1, Yatsuki Wakatsu
10-11. Skip and Loafer, Volumes 7-8, Misaki Takamatsu
12. Once and Future, Volume 1, Kieron Gillen
13-15. The Other World's Books Depend on the Bean Counter, Volumes 2-4, Yatsuki Wakatsu
16-17. Skip and Loafer, Volumes 9-10, Misaki Takamatsu
18. The Witch's Egg, Donya Todd
19. Boy Island, Leo Fox

As usual, I'm hoping to write up many of the ones I missed and will probably not in fact actually get around to most of them, so feel free to ask me about any of them -- I'll try to either do a short version here or get myself together for an actual post!

Comments

[osprey_archer]

I feel that since you are talking about the DWJ books in a podcast, even though they are not technically written up you could still count them as Officially Reacted To. Include link to podcast episode perhaps?

I do feel that everyone deserves your write up of The Mark of Merlin because that book was simply Such a book.

I see you reread The Female Man twice? Was this related to your Otherwise award reading, or were you just super in the mood for it?

[skygiants]

That's not a bad notion, I probably should! Once upon a time I had goals and ambitions of doing write-ups to accompany the podcast eps but that very obviously went by the wayside.

It's been so long since I read The Mark of Merlin now but I will do my best ... fortunately I have at least our conversation of the time to draw on.

re: The Female Man, neither, actually, but it was sort of tangentially related to the podcast! Em (my cohost) got invited to a panel on The Female Man and asked if I wanted to read the book along with her just for fun, and then unexpectedly ended up having to step off the panel and suggested that I sub in for her because we had already been reading it, so then I read it again to grab notes and quotes and so on. (Hence also the related critical text, both frantically read in the two days before the actual panel in order to soothe my imposter syndrome.)

[chestnut_pod]

What a year! Do I note a mini-trend of books about Russia?

[skygiants]

You do! likely to continue as well, for research purposes for an original fiction project that may never see the light of day. (Maya Plisetskaya going on the pull list IMMEDIATELY)

[chestnut_pod]

YES, you’ve got to read her; it’s such a dizzying ride. Will be fascinating to hear your thoughts when and if!

[i_wish_to_remain_nameless]

Oh you are on the Eight Days of Diana Wynne Jones podcast? I've really been enjoying that one though I've only been listening to episodes on the books that I have read to avoid spoilers.

[ambyr]

I am always up for talking about The Dispossessed!

[ethelmay]

The first link goes to a private post, looks like. At any rate I can't see it.

[sovay]

35. The Shabti, Megaera C. Lorenz

I would be curious for your thoughts! This one got on my radar somehow last summer and then I never followed up on it because absolutely everything else happened.

[bookblather]

I read The Forbidden Book and I have. Hm. Thoughts? Questions? I should read it again.

[brownbetty]

I wonder if you have anything to say about The Dawnhounds, a book which made me go "Well, that's different!"

[rachelmanija]

I'd especially like to hear about Motheater - Linda Codega, The Husbands - Holly Gramazio, and The Tusks of Extinction - Ray Naylor.

[merit]

It has been some years since I've read any DWJ books - maybe I should start a few in 2026. I loved them as a kid/teen.

Your review made me want to read Asunder more! How did you like Fate's Bane by C.L. Clark?