#good start of 2024 in my books

[natowe]

In the end Ed and Frenchie veto'ed the ship cat, there's no space for two kitties on Revenge, sorry 😔

Happy new year, dears!

//alt text in the image

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Books of 2024: FUGITIVE TELEMETRY by Martha Wells.

Keeping the murder mystery/thriller train going after KILLING FLOOR! It is ALWAYS time for a Bot Reread, honestly, and I love that Bot could Annihilate Reacher.

[lordgolden]

What do I read next. What are people’s thoughts on the Daevabad trilogy bc that’s available on Hoopla right now 👀 I could also continue with RF Kuang and listen to the poppy way. any other series I should read?? I’m not married to the idea or any one series rn

[hopeinthebox]

tagged by the lovely natalia <33 @jiminsproof a bit ago to reveal some "lasts" so, without further ado:

last song: american teenager, ethel cain - song of the year for the second year running, i fear. preacher's daughter you will always be famous

last movie: freaky friday - jamie lee curtis AND lindsay lohan milf performances???? five stars. put pink slip's take me away on spotify immediately

currently watching: house m.d. - binged my way through six seasons already and i'm showing no signs of slowing down. at this point i'm one more character playlist curation away from being institutionalised

currently reading: coded messages that kim taehyung leaves for me in his promotions and mvs. oh and high fidelity

current obsession: jungle's music videos. back on 74 was obviously the catalyst here but they're all phenomenal. additionally i have a pretty serious below deck problem

and there you have it. tagging a handful of favs if you feel so inclined: @cordiallyfuturedwight @aprylynn @pauls-mccharmly @somebodydoeslove @banghwa @monismochi @eoieopda @btscontentenjoyer @letmelovekoo @spicyclematis

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

The Liar’s Knot & Labyrinth’s Heart

books 2&3 in a fantasy trilogy set in a Venetian inspired city full of political intrigue

follows a young woman who conned her way into a noble family, a masked vigilante, and a crime boss, who eventually become allies while juggling multiple identities

and trying to save their people and city by joining a secret society to find origins of a corrupting curse, to eventually destroy the powerful magical objects at the heart of it

tarot magic & sigil/geometry magic, dreamworlds, sentient magical disguises

[starbuck]

in hindsight, following a 600 page book up with an 800 page book was a choice…

[lady-inkyrius]

Sort of had the sudden realisation a few days ago that I'm an adult living by myself and I can do whatever I want in the evenings, and I seem to have understood that as a command to watch more films. I barely ever normally watch films unless I'm going to the cinema – the last one I watched was The Creator back in October or November – but honestly sitting in bed with all the lights off is a pretty decent experience.

Just watched Ghost in the Shell tonight; I think my next few will probably be Saltburn, Rashomon, and Crash but I've got a bunch on my watch list.

[swiftiephobe]

books read in 2024

royal assassin by robin hobb (02/01, epic fantasy) ★★★★★

assassin's quest by robin hobb (06/01, epic fantasy) ★★★★★

my sweet audrina by vc andrews (10/01, gothic horror) ★★★★★

this ragged grace by octavia bright (12/01, memoir) ★★★

nightbirds by kate j armstrong (14/01, historical fantasy) ★★★

the priory of the orange tree by samantha shannon (21/01, epic fantasy) ★★★★

a day of fallen night by samantha shannon (02/02, epic fantasy) ★★★★

nothing more to tell by karen m mcmanus (04/02, mystery thriller) ★★★

death in her hands by ottessa moshfegh (06/02, psychological fiction) ★★

a pale view of hills by kazuo ishiguro (07/02, psychological fiction) ★★★★★

before the coffee gets cold by toshikazu kawaguchi (11/02, magical realism) ★★★★

tales from the cafe by toshikazu kawaguchi (20/02, magical realism) ★★★★

before your memory fades by toshikazu kawaguchi (12/03, magical realism) ★★★

before we say goodbye by toshikazu kawaguchi (14/03, magical realism) ★★★★

[hide-your-bugs-away]

The best day of my life, not gonna lie 🥹💙🎹✨️

[kelliealtogether]

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Books of 2024: KILLING FLOOR by Lee Child.

This isn't a genre I typically read; HOWEVER!: my dream agent was on an episode of the Writing Excuses podcast about beginnings, and they said this one is Very Good, so I borrowed my dad's paperback copy to give it a whirl.

I'm low-key hoping this will help me sort out some Genre Issues™ I suspect I'm having with a writing project, too, which is a nice added bonus! Excited to see how this goes.

[cj-writes-stuff]

Reading Wrap-Up | January 2024

The Witch and the Vampire by Francesca Flores Tournament of Losers by Megan Derr Quest of Fools by Megan Derr Dance with the Fae Prince by Elise Kova That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon by Kimberly Lemming So This is Ever After by F. T. Lukens

This was an okay start to the year; not great, but not the worst month of reading I've ever had. 2023 was basically one big reading slump until I hit December, so I'm trying to make 2024 a year of reading for me.

[mini reviews/ratings below the cut]

The Witch and the Vampire by Francesca Flores ⭐ Rating: 3.5/5

My first read of the year. Think of this book as a queer retelling of Rapunzel with a slow burn, vampire/vampire hunter, friends-to-enemies-to lovers romance. It also deals with a lot of parental abuse and trauma, so if that's triggering for you, I'd skip this one.

It's pretty good. The story follows Ava [a girl turned into a vampire against her will by her mother] and Kaye [a flame witch who hunts vampires]; they used to be best friends before Ava was turned. Ava's desperate to escape her abusive mother and step-father, so she plans an escape into the forest to find a safe haven for vampires. Meanwhile, Kaye has plans to capture Ava and fulfil her duty.

Ava's side of the story compelled me more than Kaye's because of how it handles Ava's relationship to her mother, how repulsed she is by her vampirism, and her desire for belonging. Some of it's hard to read, I won't lie.

The world building in this is strong. I particularly love the forest and the secrets we discover about it. The romance isn't as strong, in my opinion; if anything, I think that's one of the weaker elements of this story. However, the nature of the relationship between Ava and Kaye as vampire and witch and how it develops is an interesting, enjoyable ride. And just because I think the romance between them is a weaker element, that doesn't mean it's bad. I wanted them to end up together, but the ending... personally, I thought the ending was going somewhere else, and then it went in a completely different direction and I didn't like it. I'd recommend it, though, it was worth reading.

Tournament of Losers by Megan Derr ⭐ Rating: 3.5/5

This might be my favorite read of the month, which was unexpected because this is a book I happened to stumble across and got on a whim. It's an indie book, and it definitely has a personality. One that threw me off at first, but quickly reeled me back in.

I love Rath. I want only good things for this man. The guy just wants to live a comfortable life, but his father keeps getting him in debt so he joins the Tournament of Losers; every seventy-five years, commoners compete for the chance to marry into nobility. They're given a stipend to live on while competing, even for Rath to pay off the debt, he's just gotta make it through all the bullshit to get it.

It's a predictable read, but I didn't mind that. Lots of sex mentioned, but it's all fade to black, nothing explicit. It also tackles sex work as that's a way Rath makes money, but I think it covers it in a pretty humanizing way. The romance was good, I enjoyed reading about Rath and Tress together. The tournament is a fun idea. The book takes the time to show how a lot of the nobility cheat but some are legit. Highly recommend.

Quest of Fools by Megan Derr ⭐ Rating: 2/5

With how much I enjoyed Tournament of Losers, this one was just... kinda disappointing. Not bad, but it feels like a filler story rather than any continuation or second installment. Like, I don't really have that much to say about it. Warf is the best part; he's a super endearing main character to follow.

Also there's one explicit sex scene, which I thought was odd given Tournament of Losers wasn't explicit. All of a sudden, dicks were being pulled out and I was not prepared.

Honestly, I don't have much else to say about this one. It exists, and it's a let down after Tournament of Losers. Oh, and this is an indie book, too, but the amount of typos was distracting. I don't remember Tournament of Losers having that problem.

Dance with the Fae Prince by Elise Kova ⭐ Rating: 2.5/5

I hadn't ever read a fae romance before this one. I know it's a popular thing and there are a bunch of them, so I thought I'd give this one a shot and see what the big deal is. This one is inspired by Cinderella, so there's an abusive step-mother [this month really has a reoccurring theme, doesn't it...] and step sister who gaslight and manipulate Katria for parts of the book. It's slow burn, there's one sex scene that I found more funny than romantic or steamy, and has a "happily ever after."

Unfortunately, this is my most disappointing read of the month. It started out so strong! I was invested for the first chunk of this book before it grabbed me by the throat, said "just kidding!" and then threw me into an entirely different story.

I mean, it starts with the premise of Katria's shitty step mother selling her hand in marriage to a mysterious man who has a set of rules that she must never leave her room at night no matter what she hears, and that Katria must never look at him. So they talk, but she must always have her back to him, or be blindfolded, and it's interesting to read.... and then we take a sharp right turn and I'm left with my face in the dirt like, "but... but... I liked what we had going on before-"

It took a while to get back into after that, but I'm left with a lot of mixed feelings. It was fine, I enjoyed aspects of it, but overall it's disappointing... that being said, I did like it enough to pick up another book in the series, A Deal with the Elf King. Hopefully

That Time I got Drunk and Saved a Demon by Kimberly Lemming ⭐ Rating: 2/5

I mean... how could I not buy this book when I saw it on sale? And I give it a lot of credit for laying out all the explicit content warnings on the first page, which include sex scenes, light bdsm, mentions/threats of sexual assault but none actually take place, and a lot of violence. Books that are upfront with their trigger warnings are always appreciated; I like to know what I'm getting into rather than being surprised.

It's a fun book, incredibly funny, and an overall good time. Lots of sex that I couldn't take seriously. Lots of demon dick to go around. But the worldbuilding was fun, except for when it wasn't and suddenly we're dealing with serious situations and past traumas. That aspect I found more compelling than the steamy bits, to be honest.

Cinnamon's a great protagonist who doesn't want to be the protagonist, but I love her. She's hilarious and brave, and I want nothing but happiness for her and Fallon.

I struggled with rating this because I already have a skewed, personal way with my star ratings where the only star rating that I consider bad is a one-star rating. I would recommend this to anyone looking for an easy read with lots of steamy bits, comedy with a sprinkling of angst her and there, and some fantasy worldbuilding. I enjoyed it, and already bought the sequel, so even though the 2/5 looks bad, it's not.

So This is Ever After ⭐ Rating: 3/5

The best way I can describe this book is it felt like I was reading fanfiction for a fandom I'm not apart of. In fact, it feels like that brand of fanfiction where in canon, the two male best friends were just that, but they're the big ship of the fandom and this is someone's fic pairing them together.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I feel like it's a double edged sword. On one hand, I love the idea of tackling the reality of what happens after the prophecy's fulfilled and now the chosen one, Arek, is to be king when he doesn't want to be king... also, he needs to find a spouse or he'll fade away. Because sure. Even though he's in love with his best friend, Matt, he doesn't believe the feelings are reciprocated, so he turns his attentions to the other members of his party to try and "woo" them in ways that never go right. It's rom-com levels.

But... on the other hand, I feel like I missed out on that actual story. There's a lot of telling rather than showing when it comes to the big journey these characters went on to complete the prophecy. A journey I would've loved to read rather than hear about second-hand. Not only that, but the miscommunication on display here between Arek and Matt is just.... not fun. It's frustrating. It could've easily been avoided.

Also, if Arek could stop talking about his inconvenient boners, that'd be great.

That being said, I did like it a lot. It's a fun read and the characters are well written and compelling to read about. There's one element of the story that involves a diary and how that's wrapped up that I adored. I would recommend it for anyone looking for a fun and magical queer romance.

[luckystrike-x]

books i'm planning to read in 2024

[scootatwoni]

new years resolutions? idk! I usually dont come up with those...they dont really cross my mind much. but uh gun to my head:

eat more fruit (try new fruits!)

finish my sketchbook

get more tattoos

happy new year woo woo!!

[the-cimmerians]

It's 2024. I have been participating in fandom for 40 years. This is a ramble commemorating some history I've experienced along the way.

In 1984, I attended my first convention, and made a beeline for the one long row of covered tables in the Dealer's Room that was, according to the whispered lore of my friends, 'the one'. "um", I said, very suavely and coherently, except for how it was totally the opposite of those things, "I'm here for the... for the, uh. For-"

"Come around here," the man behind the table said with exhausted ennui, so I went around, and he lifted up the table skirt next to him and pointed to rows and rows of boxes underneath the line of tables. "It's all under here."

It was all under there. Along with about five older ladies with glasses, graying hair, cardigans. Flipping through slash zines and chatting in whispered voices like old friends (which of course they were). I noticed one of them had the good sense to be wearing kneepads. I was still too young and ablebodied to need kneepads when crawling on a carpeted floor, but I immediately found her preparedness skills to be both impressive and hot. "You're new," one of the ladies whispered to me--a bit warily, which made sense. "Are you sure you're in the right place?"

In the faint light (the kneepads lady had also come prepared with a flashlight, additional practicality hotness points for her) I grabbed a comb-bound book with a heavy line art piece on the cover, featuring a musclebound Captain Kirk getting righteously and enthusiastically plowed by a stern-yet-ebullient Spock. "This," I said, pointing helpfully at the cover, like I was trying to make myself understood in a language I had only the vaguest knowledge of. "I'm here for this."

Outside at the convention, most of the attendees were wearing large homemade circular pins that shrieked 'K/S is BS!!!'1. But underneath the table, we reveled in the forbidden.

***

In 1985, I fell very hard for Starsky & Hutch fandom. Which was simply referred to at the time as 'the other fandom', because there were only two. We were upstarts. Many fannish elders predicted that it was just a phase.

***

The 'circulating library' was a massive stack of barely-legible pages that smelled strongly of mimeograph ink. When you were on the list, you would write stories while you waited for your turn, and when the big box was mailed to you, you would read everything (new finds, old favorites), add your own sloppily-typed or hastily-mimeographed stories, and then mail the whole thing to the next person. For me, at the time, it was an extremely expensive indulgence--but my favorite one.

***

By 1990, slash fandom had grown enough that I no longer knew everyone in it, which was both thrilling and a bit daunting. A young woman at a convention waited for me after a panel I was part of (I think it was 'writing impactful smut' or something like that), and said she had a question she didn't want to ask in a group setting. I'd heard that before. I said that's fine, go ahead and ask; and she came out with: "Why do you have to be gay?"

I blinked. "Is... that a problem?"

She looked annoyed. "Yes, because your stories are on all the recommendation lists and in all the top zines, but if you're gay and I read something you wrote and I get hot from it that makes me gay, and I'm not gay."

"Wow." I grinned, I couldn't help it. It probably made me look very predatory-dyke-about-to-score-a-toaster. Whatever, it was enough to make her back away from me fast.

When I thought about it later that night, I wondered what it would be like not to be the only queer person in slash fandom.

***

By 1997, slash started appearing on the internet. Many fannish elders claimed it was the death knell of slash fandom, or dismissed it as 'just a phase'.

***

Anyway, I wrote all this for myself as a commemoration of sorts, but if you took the time to read it--thank you. Love you, fandom. I always will.

1 In those days, m/m fandom was known as 'slash', which grew from the fannish shorthand where 'K&S' meant a story of Kirk and Spock having adventures or tribulations or what have you, and 'K/S' meant a story of Kirk and Spock getting it on (Kirk divided by Spock or Spock into Kirk--it was mathy fannish humor and I was into it then and I still am now). Slash was decidedly unpopular in the fannish world in 1984, and there was a concerted effort to force slash authors, artists, and fans out of 'mainstream' fannish public life. Hence, under the table.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Prison-tech company bribed jails to ban in-person visits

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in BOSTON with Randall "XKCD" Munroe (Apr 11), then PROVIDENCE (Apr 12), and beyond!

Beware of geeks bearing gifts. When prison-tech companies started offering "free" tablets to America's vast army of prisoners, it set off alarm-bells for prison reform advocates – but not for the law-enforcement agencies that manage the great American carceral enterprise.

The pitch from these prison-tech companies was that they could cut the costs of locking people up while making jails and prisons safer. Hell, they'd even make life better for prisoners. And they'd do it for free!

These prison tablets would give every prisoner their own phone and their own video-conferencing terminal. They'd supply email, of course, and all the world's books, music, movies and games. Prisoners could maintain connections with the outside world, from family to continuing education. Sounds too good to be true, huh?

Here's the catch: all of these services are blisteringly expensive. Prisoners are accustomed to being gouged on phone calls – for years, prisons have done deals with private telcos that charge a fortune for prisoners' calls and split the take with prison administrators – but even by those standards, the calls you make on a tablet are still a ripoff.

Sure, there are some prisoners for whom money is no object – wealthy people who screwed up so bad they can't get bail and are stewing in a county lockup, along with the odd rich murderer or scammer serving a long bid. But most prisoners are poor. They start poor – the cops are more likely to arrest poor people than rich people, even for the same crime, and the poorer you are, the more likely you are to get convicted or be suckered into a plea bargain with a long sentence. State legislatures are easy to whip up into a froth about minimum sentences for shoplifters who steal $7 deodorant sticks, but they are wildly indifferent to the store owner's rampant wage-theft. Wage theft is by far the most costly form of property crime in America and it is almost entirely ignored:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/15/wage-theft-us-workers-employees

So America's prisons are heaving with its poorest citizens, and they're certainly not getting any richer while they're inside. While many prisoners hold jobs – prisoners produce $2b/year in goods and $9b/year in services – the average prison wage is $0.52/hour:

https://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2024/0324bowman.html

(In six states, prisoners get nothing; North Carolina law bans paying prisoners more than $1/day, the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution explicitly permits slavery – forced labor without pay – for prisoners.)

Likewise, prisoners' families are poor. They start poor – being poor is a strong correlate of being an American prisoner – and then one of their breadwinners is put behind bars, taking their income with them. The family savings go to paying a lawyer.

Prison-tech is a bet that these poor people, locked up and paid $1/day or less; or their families, deprived of an earner and in debt to a lawyer; will somehow come up with cash to pay $13 for a 20-minute phone call, $3 for an MP3, or double the Kindle price for an ebook.

How do you convince a prisoner earning $0.52/hour to spend $13 on a phone-call?

Well, for Securus and Viapath (AKA Global Tellink) – a pair of private equity backed prison monopolists who have swallowed nearly all their competitors – the answer was simple: they bribed prison officials to get rid of the prison phones.

Not just the phones, either: a pair of Michigan suits brought by the Civil Rights Corps accuse sheriffs and the state Department of Corrections of ending in-person visits in exchange for kickbacks from the money that prisoners' families would pay once the only way to reach their loved ones was over the "free" tablets:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/03/jails-banned-family-visits-to-make-more-money-on-video-calls-lawsuits-claim/

These two cases are just the tip of the iceberg; Civil Rights Corps says there are hundreds of jails and prisons where Securus and Viapath have struck similar corrupt bargains:

https://civilrightscorps.org/case/port-huron-michigan-right2hug/

And it's not just visits and calls. Prison-tech companies have convinced jails and prisons to eliminate mail and parcels. Letters to prisoners are scanned and delivered their tablets, at a price. Prisoners – and their loved ones – have to buy virtual "postage stamps" and pay one stamp per "page" of email. Scanned letters (say, hand-drawn birthday cards from your kids) cost several stamps:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/14/minnesota-nice/#shitty-technology-adoption-curve

Prisons and jails have also been convinced to eliminate their libraries and continuing education programs, and to get rid of TVs and recreational equipment. That way, prisoners will pay vastly inflated prices for streaming videos and DRM-locked music.

The icing on the cake? If the prison changes providers, all that data is wiped out – a prisoner serving decades of time will lose their music library, their kids' letters, the books they love. They can get some of that back – by working for $1/day – but the personal stuff? It's just gone.

Readers of my novels know all this. A prison-tech scam just like the one described in the Civil Rights Corps suits is at the center of my latest novel The Bezzle:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

Prison-tech has haunted me for years. At first, it was just the normal horror anyone with a shred of empathy would feel for prisoners and their families, captive customers for sadistic "businesses" that have figured out how to get the poorest, most desperate people in the country to make them billions. In the novel, I call prison-tech "a machine":

a million-­armed robot whose every limb was tipped with a needle that sank itself into a different place on prisoners and their families and drew out a few more cc’s of blood.

But over time, that furious empathy gave way to dread. Prisoners are at the bottom of the shitty technology adoption curve. They endure the technological torments that haven't yet been sanded down on their bodies, normalized enough to impose them on people with a little more privilege and agency. I'm a long way up the curve from prisoners, but while the shitty technology curve may grind slow, it grinds fine:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware

The future isn't here, it's just not evenly distributed. Prisoners are the ultimate early adopters of the technology that the richest, most powerful, most sadistic people in the country's corporate board-rooms would like to force us all to use.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/02/captive-customers/#guillotine-watch

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