Books

Book 854: The Sugared Game (The Will Darling Adventures #2) – K.J. Charles

After thoroughly enjoying Slippery Creatures, I immediately requested the next one in the series from the library and got it faster than expected! I wasn’t really sure where Charles would take the series, and I’m even less sure having finished this one. Wherever it goes I am ready to be part of the journey!

Picking up a couple months after Slippery Creatures, we once again find Will, WWI veteran and bookseller now with his inheritance, and Kim, aristocratic untrustworthy agent-of-some-sort, thrust together at the mercy of the cult-like Zodiac. This time, it’s both more and less straight forward because at least we know Zodiac exists.

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Books

Book 850: Slippery Creatures (The Will Darling Adventures #1) – K.J. Charles

I legit have no clue how this one ended up on my hold’s shelf at my local library. It could’ve been the cover (love it), it could be the description – “MM Romance in the style of Pulp Fiction”, or maybe it was the setting of the bookstore, or maybe the author since I have read something by her previously. Whatever it was, after having extended the hold time twice I finally worked it into my schedule.

I didn’t plan to read it in one sitting, but I got sick and couldn’t sleep so started reading it and just kept going. Next thing I knew I was finished and grinning like a fool.

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Books

Book 840: Saint-Exupéry – Stacy Schiff

This one has been in my TBR pile for over a decade. Seriously, it’s been on my shelf since I heard Schiff speak at the first Boston Book Festival back in 2010. The one I really wanted to purchase at the time was her biography of Cleopatra, but couldn’t afford it.

I ended up waiting to read it until I could get a digital copy (don’t want to mess up that signature) and the last dozen or so times the library had one I either didn’t have the time or was feeling meh about reading a biography. This time however, after building up so many advance posts I figured I had the time and wanted to read some nonfiction so here we are.

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ARC, Books

Book 633: When Brooklyn Was Queer – Hugh Ryan

I’m split on this one. It was better than I thought it was going to be, but not as good as I wanted it to be. I find it very hard for any book to really and truly dig deep into LGBTQ+ history satisfactorily, they’re always scrounging for resources or materials and there are always more questions than there are answers. I reached out to the publisher after I stumbled across this on an LGBT news blog.*

There were times in the book where I kept asking myself, is this really Brooklyn or is it Brooklyn-adjacent or is it “this probably happened” in Brooklyn too (there was quite a bit of this). Ryan was open about there being a lack of primary resources, but I felt that it wasn’t as acknowledged as much as it should’ve been in the introduction and left more to a footnote of the epilogue.
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ARC, Books, Professional Development

Book 507: If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face? – Alan Alda

Only two ARC/Galleys left and I am all caught up! The same publicist who sent me Finally Out reached out about this book and the title had enough humor in it I figured it was worth a shot.* I enjoyed this so much more than I thought I would!

What Alan Alda—I didn’t even recognize him from MAS*H (imdb link), I just recognized his caricature—is doing is what the Plain English Campaign has been trying to do since the late 70s, just through a different venue: improv. Both are trying to get things translated from the indecipherable jargon of science or government into easily relatable language. Alda, has basically made a side career out of this with the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University, where the observations he made from his many years on Scientific American Frontiers are put into practice to teach scientists how to talk to non-scientists.

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