User Profile

Blackberry Jim

worshipthesquid@bookrastinating.com

Joined 1 year, 6 months ago

@worshipthesquid@weirder.earth on mastodon. Use yr favourite pronouns, or mix it up.

Trying to get back into reading light & easy books to relax instead of scrollin’! I like mysteries, fantasy & sci fi (of the shorter & sillier variety), and the odd non-fiction book, mostly on foraging or history. I tend to pick up my books from free piles or the library so mostly older titles.

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2024 Reading Goal

Blackberry Jim has read 0 of 18 books.

Sadia Bies, Banana Chan: Suburban Consumption of the Monstrous (Hardcover, Pelgrane Press) 4 stars

Uncover the secrets that teem beneath the surface of your happy home...

Suburban Consumption of …

tasty and fun!

4 stars

Content warning spoilers? horror - dysfunctional families

Naomi Novik: The Golden Enclaves (EBook, 2022, Random House Publishing Group) 4 stars

The one thing you never talk about while you’re in the Scholomance is what you’ll …

:)

5 stars

Aw, I just really like this series. Thoroughly recommend it. I keep expecting it to be less polished, because a lot of Temeraire feels less polished and more, like, thematically aimless to me, but it‘s very well-thought-out I think. I enjoy how the protagonist‘s perspective on the world changes, and we get to see some of this world‘s politics and the inequities thereof. There‘s also a very effective horror scene in this book. Mostly it‘s really nice to read a well-executed series that leads the reader inexorably toward the necessity of working with others to change the systems of global & institutional inequality, in ways that will be frustrating and incomplete but are worth doing - what this rekindled in me is a sense of powerful urgency & drive to join others in this work, which seems like a sign of a successful series to me. Themes of personal development …

Nagata Kabi: My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness (2017, Seven Seas Entertainment) 4 stars

The heart-rending autobiographical manga that's taken the internet by storm! My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness …

I saw @lapis@bookwyrm.social recommended this series, and it turns out my host has this volume & was happy for me to read it! Read it in one go without meaning to. Really interesting and it‘s nice to see this voice in a longer form comic, talking thoughtfully and sensitively about her experience of having very bad social skills, isolation, purpose and seeking unconditional love. I think (even though I would probably never run into it) this would have been really good for me to read as a teenager, and it‘s still good to read now.

Katherine Addison: The Grief of Stones (Hardcover, 2022, Tor Books) 4 stars

In The Grief of Stones, Katherine Addison returns to the world of The Goblin …

:)

5 stars

I like this series a lot. This was a strong entry I think! I can’t try and be objective because it really hits a lot of things I enjoy and others may not. I read it in two big gulps, not wanting to put it down at any point; two chapters in onward I was grinning and feeling very delighted as I read. Light spoilers (nothing plot relevant) time:

  • A book that spends a couple of pages at least dealing with the mundane process of finding directions in a city where maps are maintained by two organisations with different priorities is a book that has probably already won my heart. Lots of little things like that in here, never at a Les Miserables level or anything - the protagonist is actually, e.g., changing lines twice on the tram in order to get to the other side of the city, or …
Austin Chant: Peter Darling (2017, Less Than Three Press) 4 stars

Ten years ago, Peter Pan left Neverland to grow up, leaving behind his adolescent dreams …

A friend who’s very into Peter Pan recommended this, and I am really enjoying it so far. I expected it to be fun but not that good, because that’s what my experience with a lot of self-published fantasy has been, and I was wrong! It’s pretty great. I’m listening to the audiobook as usual and, although it’s slightly less polished than many audiobooks, the sound quality is good, it’s clear and engagingly read, and the voice the narrator does for Hook especially is imo fantastic.

:)

4 stars

I enjoyed this! I was not expecting a lot of it! It’s very surprising that it came out last year bc I’m just trawling my library audiobook collection :3 I think it successfully told a beautiful and broad-ranging story about love, romantic, familial, complicated. The audiobook is also good, with two readers tackling chapters from different perspectives.

I probably will look out for more by this author - it didn’t blow me away and fill me with awe, but it was definitely more engaging and I think more skilful than most light historical fiction/light fantasy I read.

Alright, spoilers ahead.

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I think the parts in the seraglio sometimes dragged on a bit. Also, it’s been two months & I am not equipped to do this atm, but there is probably much to say about race in this book, especially in relation to it as historical …

avatar for worshipthesquid Blackberry Jim boosted
Olivia Laing: The lonely city (2016) No rating

"You can be lonely anywhere, but there is a particular flavor to the loneliness that …

What is it about masks and loneliness? The obvious answer is that they offer relief from exposure, from the burden of being seen — what is described in the German as Maskenfreiheit, the freedom conveyed by masks. To refuse scrutiny is to dodge the possibility of rejection, though also the possibility of acceptance, the balm of love. This is what makes masks so poignant as well as so uncanny, sinister, unnerving.

The lonely city by 

Octavia E. Butler: Parable of the Sower (Paperback, 2000, Warner Books) 4 stars

In 2025, with the world descending into madness and anarchy, one woman begins a fateful …

I am enjoying this book so much. I guess I was ready to think about a lot of its themes, because it feels like scratching an itch even when it’s uncomfortable. Trying to tease out what this book thinks about individualism and community & power, & what I think.

The audiobook I’m listening to is great. I’m taking a break just now because wow, it’s getting heavier! But this definitely makes me want to read more of Octavia Butler’s work and see what the themes are, and if the other books have more things for me to think about. (Also it’s fun reading a science fiction book that starts in 2024.)

Umberto Eco: The Name of the Rose (Paperback, 1994, Harcourt) 4 stars

The year is 1327. Benedictines in a wealthy Italian abbey are suspected of heresy, and …

the audiobook for this is very soothing. Short chapters just the right length to fall asleep to… monks with different voices played by the same guy… long lists of different fabulous gargoyles or heresies or whatever… sections of untranslated latin, which I mayyybe might be able to puzzle out in text but spoken are white noise… arguments about biblical interpretation, basically ditto… for all I know the book is a very good mystery but it is also very good at lulling me comfortably to sleep, 5 stars, will borrow again

Natalie Zina Walschots: Hench (Hardcover, 2020, William Morrow) 4 stars

maybe my standards are too high

3 stars

Content warning proper spoilers - also this is less edited than normal sorry

reviewed Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho

Zen Cho: Sorcerer to the Crown (AudiobookFormat, 2015, Recorded Books, Inc. and Blackstone Publishing) 4 stars

Magic and mayhem collide with the British elite in this whimsical and sparkling debut.

At …

:)

5 stars

I posted mid-book & it’s late, so I will say: ending did not disappoint! Enjoyed this a lot, will definitely seek out other books by this author.

The main thing I want to say is that I listened to the audiobook, by Recorded Books, and it was Great. Really polished and that voice actor seems to really know their stuff.

I am a sucker for light comedy of manners/Wodehousey kind of banter, so the diversions into this were welcome for me. If you aren’t a fan of polite and not very substantial regency back-and-forth then I can see those bits dragging a bit.

Spoilers below: . . . . . . . The romance conclusion was very sweet. I do love Prunella throughout this book and how she’s neither ‘not like the other girls’-d or made normal - she stays ambitious and confident and expresses emotions Prunella-ly.

The sacrifice of …