Read
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Down Among the Sticks and Bones
Finished
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Lethal White
Finished
Note: please see my 2025 blog post re: Rowling
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I'm Afraid of Men
Finished
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The Stone Sky
Finished
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The Obelisk Gate
Finished
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Give People Money
Finished
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A Simple Favor
Finished
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The Fifth Season
Finished
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The Twilight Wife
Finished
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Indian Summer
Finished
After having just finished [b:Midnight’s Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India’s Partition 22827628 Midnight’s Furies The Deadly Legacy of India’s Partition Nisid Hajari https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1407814080s/22827628.jpg 42381651], I was interested to read this book, which was discussed as a kind of compliment to that book—Midnight’s Furies being a more historical overview, Indian Summer being a bit more of a personal story. I think I enjoyed this book more than that one, for that reason—but I also found myself a bit more engaged here because of the personal stories woven into the history, where Midnight’s Furies at times felt like a long list of incidents of sectarian violence and while I liked that book and felt like I got some idea of the course of the history from it, this book helped me anchor these events in time a bit by connecting them a bit more to the personal stories that shaped them. Both books focused more on Nehru than on Jinnah, on India more than on Pakistan, so I’m curious to find a book that focuses more on the latter, because I feel like while both books appeared to work to be impartial, I only ended up with mostly one side of the story.An interesting subplot of this book was the light with which the author clearly viewed Gandhi, which was a lot less favorable than my (admittedly very broad) impression. He didn’t believe in germ theory and was (by this account) very weird about women! Interesting stuff, even if—as with all nonfiction—it only presented part of the picture.
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Midnight's Furies
Finished
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Seraphina
Finished
Really middle of the road for me. Decently-written, moderately interesting/original world while still being familiar enough to hit that fantasy itch, but never really hooked me. Kind of curious to see how the stuff set up in this book plays out, so I may pick up the next one, but not right away.
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Firewalker
Finished
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Lincoln in the Bardo
Finished
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Trial by Fire
Finished
One of my favorite genre books in a long time. Such an interesting world, magic system, political structure. It’s not particularly literary, focusing more on characters, dialog, and plot than on evocation or atmosphere, and honestly a bunch of its pieces are standard fare for YA with a female protagonist (I don’t know if the author considers this YA but it shares some traits regardless: outcast, “broken” girl is suddenly very important, torn between two boys, etc). Yet it still does a really great job fleshing out this world. I’m really looking forward to the next one.