2025 Reading Part 1

It feels like the first half of the year really encapsulates my reading habits: scifi, horror, and becoming obsessed with finishing a children's book series. It was hard for me as a kid to read an entire series because I didn't have the patience to wait for the next book to become available. I would often skip books and get confused and stop reading, or get bored waiting and forget about the series altogether.

In late May, my husband and I watched the beautiful but poorly written Guardians of Ga'Hoole movie. This movie attempts to adapt the first 3 books in the series, but does so in a way that flattens all characters and confuses plot twists from later in the series. This is pretty typical of children's book adaptations in the mid-2010s, from what I remember.

I was curious about what the movie did wrong, so I started reading the books. By god, there's 16 of them. The author, Kathryn Lasky, published 15 books from 2003 to 2008, only going back to add one more book to the series in 2013 which is pretty impressive. I have a deep dislike for artists who continue going back to "finished" series to make money and a huge amount of respect for any creator willing to really finish a popular work.

I don't read a ton of children's literature, so I don't feel I'm particularly qualified to write on how good or bad the series is. I'm enjoying it and I think Lasky does a good job managing the increasing cast of characters. There are a lot of owls in this book and while some are a bit flat, overall they're well-characterized.

The books are also a bit silly and have phrases like "bingle juice" and "sprink on your spronk." I enjoy reading sentences full of made up lore words to rage bait my husband.

Okay, enough Owl Talk.

I continue to read along with Shelved by Genre, who finished a William Gibson unit and began a post-apocalypse unit. I read (and enjoyed) Dune and will probably devote some time to reading the entire series, eventually. I read 'Victorian Psycho' and 'Hungerstone' which were interesting but a bit obvious to me, but I wonder if that's based on reading a lot of similar work or if they're actually not that deep.

5 Books I Particularly Enjoyed, in No Specific Order:

(That I haven't mentioned already)

  • Becoming Kin Really good book on how to be a better ally for indigenous people and decolonizing your thinking. Even if you won't read this, you should see whose land you live on and think about that.
  • The Witchstone I thought one of the main characters was annoying and not very charming, but then he won me over at the very end in such a spectacular way that I still think fondly of him.
  • The Familiar Extremely cool setting and a straight pairing I cared about (rare)
  • The Buffalo Hunter Hunter Stephen Graham Jones does it again. I also think if you're posting online how cool the Choctaw are in Sinners, you're morally required to read this.
  • Slewfoot Great book with BEAUTIFUL illustrations done by the author. My husband bought it and told me to read it, so it's also a Zeke Recommendation.

Here's my full reading list, updated monthly. (So by the time you're reading this post, maybe I've read more books.)