mssarahmorgan

[mssarahmorgan]

The world is violent and mercurial — it will have its way with you. We are saved only by love — love for each other and the love that we pour into the art we feel compelled to share: being a parent; being a writer; being a painter; being a friend. We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must save from it, all the time, is love.

Tennessee Williams

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Morning Lighting from the Tres Palos Lagoon, Guerrero, Mexico

Photography: moises levy street

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“They’re trying to convince people they can’t do the things they’ve been doing easily for years – to write emails, to write a presentation. Your daughter wants you to make up a bedtime story about puppies – to write that for you.” We will get to the point, she says with a grim laugh, “that you will essentially become just a skin bag of organs and bones, nothing else. You won’t know anything and you will be told repeatedly that you can’t do it, which is the opposite of what life has to offer. Capitulating all kinds of decisions like where to go on vacation, what to wear today, who to date, what to eat. People are already doing this. You won’t have to process grief, because you’ll have uploaded photos and voice messages from your mother who just died, and then she can talk to you via AI video call every day. One of the ways it’s going to destroy humans, long before there’s a nuclear disaster, is going to be the emotional hollowing-out of people.”

Justine Bateman on AI in this article from The Guardian

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occasionally I am struck dumb by the sublime beauty of the world in the small moments, you know?

egg

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"We had touched, in the only way we could touch. We left it at that."

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Lawyer: How would you like to handle the custody agreement?

Parent: I want my wife to take one of my infant daughters to the UK and I’ll take the other one and we will never see each other again.

Lawyer: You want to fucking what?

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Book 64 of 2025: Wild Ones by Jon Mooallem

This is a book about the conservation of endangered species, which means it's more about people than it is about animals. It basically asks the question why--why try to save a species? What is conservation for? I did find it unsettling at times, and I don't feel like my own personal answer--that animals have just as much right to exist on this planet as we do--was taken seriously enough. But this was a really interesting read, full of fascinating and even moving stories about people who are trying really hard to do something almost impossible.

What to read next: Fuzz, by Mary Roach, for another book about what happens when humans meet other animals.

[mssarahmorgan]

July Book Reviews: Behind Frenemy Lines by Zen Cho

One of my anticipated new releases for this year. In Behind Frenemy Lines, Kriya is a high-powered London lawyer who's just moved to a new firm with her boss. But now she shares an office with the man who has seemed to thwart her at every turn...

A big part of the appeal of romance novels is the familiarity--you know exactly what you're getting. But sometimes, retreading the same old tropes can start to feel overdone. Zen Cho's contemporary romances are a breath of fresh air, and she has a real gift for showing who these two people are and why they're attracted to each other without resorting to tired cliches. I enjoyed that while the romance is a central plot point, Cho spends much of the book detailing what Kriya and Charles' life is like, from Kriya's complex relationship with her controlling boss, to Charles sharing a house with his favorite cousin, to an extensive sideplot on corruption scandals in Malaysia.

I also greatly appreciated that Charles isn't the extremely tiresome aggressive pushy alpha type. He's a sweetheart, ruthlessly good at his job, and more than a little autistic-coded. The reason Kriya dislikes him initially isn't because of some contrived unprofessional grudge. It's because her passing encounters with him have all been terrible, although not due to malice on Charles' part. This includes him telling her that she's at the wrong building for her interview right after she fell and broke her shoe and spilling coffee on her favorite outfit before an important court appearance(And that's not even the half of it!! Poor Kriya.)

Highly recommended if you're a romance reader, and it has enough slice of life outside plot going on that it probably has some crossover appeal if romance isn't your usual thing.

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Book 63 of 2025: Translation State by Ann Leckie

Whoops, I said I loved the Presger translators, and it turns out they are terrifying! But in such a good way. This is a fantastic book. Once again we are in a universe where everyone has to have tea and hire lawyers and also the stakes are unbelievably high. Like, you could melt into goo or space could be turned inside out kind of high. God, I love this universe. I could read a thousand books about the Imperial Radch, the Presger, and the other inhabitants of these worlds.

What to read next: If you like this, and you haven't read Provenance yet, definitely check that one out.

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kirk wearing the i am kenough hoodie

a little past the peak of this trend but he really works it

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the thing is that tolkien was right trees really are that great

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ive read the first 6 murderbot books in the last three days is this accurate

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Book 62 of 2025: All Fired Up by M.K. England

So a scientist who studies fire falls in love with a firefighter...That's one possible pitch for this book, but it's more accurate to pitch it as: Nic is back in Seattle after grad school and ready to shoot her shot with her best friend/unrequited crush, Skylar. Only as soon as she gets back to town, Skylar announces that she is...moving to Fiji. For secret reasons. Only Nic and Skylar's new friend, Kira (a firefighter) seem to see this as the disaster-in-the-making that it definitely is. So Nic and Kira decide to team up for hijinks, in order to make Skylar see what a bad idea this is and cancel her plans. Except, whoops, sparks are flying (had to!). This is really delightful--fun and mostly lighthearted, with some real feels about found family, following your dreams, and accepting yourself as worthy of love--definitely check this out if you're looking for a good sapphic romance.

What to read next: Delilah Green Doesn’t Care, by Ashley Herring Blake, for another delightful romance where two women team up to pull some hijinks on a mutual friend.

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Book 61 of 2025: The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. LeGuin

This is a funny one. It's LeGuin, so there's some incredible prose, gorgeous imagery, fascinating ideas about what it means to be human and what is lost when we sever ourselves from the natural world. And yet--it's also a VERY one-for-one allegory, and the POV of Don Davidson (a rah-rah colonial who's super racist and sexist) is just unpleasant to spend time in. You can see LeGuin's genius, of course--the culture of the Athsheans is fascinating, enigmatic, resonant. But the plot structure is just VERY simplistic--bad human colonists burn down the trees, simple-but-wise natives understand something the humans never can with all their science--it's just very black and white in a way that LeGuin's later, greater works have grown beyond.

What to read next: Dark Orbit, by Carolyn Ives Gilman, for a gripping sci-fi mystery about humans exploring a new planet they struggle to understand.

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Book 60 of 2025: Earls Trip by Jenny Holiday

This is super-sweet and tons of fun! It's a historical romance with (as the title indicates) a pretty modern sensibility. Archie takes a trip every year with his two best friends. Only this year, the trip has to start with a detour to rescue Archie's childhood best friend Clementine's sister from an ill-advised elopement. For plot reasons, the ladies end up tagging along with the earls--which forces Archie to confront some new and different feelings he's having for Clementine. I really liked this, it's fun and fast-paced and generally a good time. Would be a good starter historical romance, if you're curious about the genre.

What to read next: Try The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes, by Cat Sebastian, for another delightful historical romance.

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do you have any sci-fi book recommendations?

SO BROAD! I polled the choup grat for variety :D

Murderbot, obviously. Quick reads full of defensive humor.

The Broken Earth by NK Jemisin is a fave of mine. Mind the content warnings, but the world she builds and her writing style is PHENOMENAL.

Firebreak by Nicole Kornher-Stace is like. What if Ready Player One was good. What if, instead of being an 80s wet dream, it actually examined the implications of a world wide MMO that you live in. What if it actually unpacked the dystopian aspect of it all. What if the supersoldiers were brainwashed babies that should've died.

Wayfarers by Becky Chambers is slow and meandering and character focused. It's like an old slice of life scifi show from the 90s. Think Firefly or Star Trek. You don't have to read them in order, but like Discworld some of them play off of each other.

Monk and Robot by Beck Chambers is similar but their feet are on the ground and each one is like 100 pages so it's a smaller commitment for similar fun. These two are often chategorized as "cosy scifi", but they actually deal with their world problems, it's just the problems that we see are more often internal character problems.

Space Opera by Cat Valente is like. What if Hitchhiker's Guide was good and also queer.

Imperial Radch by Ann Leckie, starting with Ancillary Justice. My favorite was actually Provenance which isn't connected to the main trilogy. What if your spaceship loved you so much it started a civil war between one person.

Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee if you want a challenge. I started this two or three times before I got through it all and I ended up enjoying it a lot. I didn't know "strange guy in your head makes decisions for you" was a genre, but here we are.

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine if you like the "annoying guy in your head" genre. This is more a scifi mystery which was nice, and reminded me a lot of Provenance. (or Provenance reminded me of this as I read this first.)

Leech by Hiron Ennes, @bigcats-birds-and-books says it counts as scifi, we both liked it a lot! Won't say much about it, I think it's good to go in not knowing too much :3

This is How You Lose the Time War by Amar El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone if you haven't read it and want something short and flowery. The audio of this was very nice!

The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling if you have a fear of caves :3 A good blend of scifi and horror. The romance is a little bit fucked up too.

Skyhunter by Marie Lu omg a good YA duology! Monsters! Bird people! Found family! Pain! It was very good.