ARC, Books

Book 1,064: The Fabric We Make – Joe Wilcox

Book cover of "The Fabric We Make"I’ve been knitting off and on for 20+ years, but really got back into it 7-8 years ago after 2-3 years of a little bit more off-and-on. This past November I took the leap and jumped into the knitting/fiber podcasting/vlogging world and haven’t looked back.

After one of my episodes the author, Joe Wilcox of QueerJoe fame reached out about his recently self-published book The Fabric We Make.* QueerJoe is one of the OG knitting blogs and I had recently been there reading about linen stitch and a project bag I was mulling over self-drafting (Instagram preview of the bag). I was like okay it’s a sign I should read this and so Joe kindly sent me a copy. Add in that I’m always looking to expand my nonfiction reading and it was double awesome.

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Book 954: Heat Wave (The Extraordinaries #3) – T.J. Klune

After the cliffhanger of Flash Fire, I wasn’t sure what to expect with this one. I was approved for a copy a few months ago and of course, sat on it for too long and missed the archive date.* Thankfully, I had downloaded a copy so was able to finish it up on the plane flying out to Chicago earlier this week.

The beginning was a little bit rough as there seemed to be a key piece of information missing from the story, but I figured out pretty quickly what was going on. It was all connected to the cliffhanger of Flash Fire so spoiler warning for after the jump.

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Books

Book 885: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce

Ugh—I should’ve given up while I was ahead, or used the same app I used to slog my way through Ulysses. This was the longest 215 pages of my life.

I actually broke down for the last chapter and found an audiobook version from my local library to listen to at 1.25x speed while sorting data and stuff at work. So, at the very least I can say I enjoyed the Irish accents for that portion of it and the Whaley last name shout out about 75% of the way through 😀

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Book 846: The Lavender Menace – Tom Cardamone (Ed.)

UGH. I wanted to like this so much more than I did. I remember the excitement when I stumbled across it seven years ago at PAX East in the LGBT lounge. I guess I either forgot the premise or didn’t really read the full premise of the book so ended up slightly disappointed.

Don’t get me wrong there were definitely a few stories I very much enjoyed (more the redemptive ones) and there was some great writing throughout the novel, but there were some larger issues with the collection that may reflect when it was originally published (2013) and how far we’ve come as a society, and also the background of the editor (cis white gay man).

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Book 827: Flash Fire (The Extraordinaries #2) – T.J. Klune

Holy sh!t balls . . . I knew this one would have a big ol’ cliff hanger and be just as adorable as the last one, but I. Was. Not. Prepared!

This book picks up right after where The Extraordinaries left off. We jump right back into the crazy world that is 16-year-old Nick’s brain. And what a joyous wonderful journey it is. There’s still a bit of fanfic, there’s a lot of awkwardness and internet searching/discovery and there’s the most adorable budding gayby/biby (is that a thing?) relationship that just made me go awwwww so many times.

FULL WARNING – DO NOT GO PAST THIS IF YOU DON’T WANT THE FIRST BOOK SPOILED and trust me you want to read these books!

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