What I'm Reading: April 2025

Wow, wonder what might have happened to totally blow up my blogging schedule. Well, time to look at the news and—blog posts have been delayed by a month.

Ah shit. Well lemme look at bsky and—blog posts have been delayed by another month.

Fuck. Fuck. I guess I’ll go outside and not use the computer. Blog posts have been delayed by another month, but good this time.

Books

• The Pastel City, by M John Harrison. This is the first of the stories set in Harrison’s Viriconium, apparently a classic of the “so far in the future that everything is Medieval again” genre. In the story, heroic knights must defend the princess of the realm against an evil plot involving brain-stealing killer robots.

  I thought it was okay, but didn’t feel especially compelled to read more. I guess if I’m going to read about guys with swords in the Dying Earth future, and the few women involved don’t really get to be characters, I’d rather be reading Wolfe.

• The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates. This was for mutual aid book club, and I’m a little disappointed I didn’t read it earlier. The reporting and prose in this book is really, really good. Coates is a fucking writer. Politically it left me lukewarm, but that’s fine. Some truly harrowing descriptions of what it is like to cross the boundary between Israel and Palestine.

• Count Zero by William Gibson. This is the sequel to Neuromancer, set 8-ish years after the end of the Straylight Run. I found almost every element weaker than the predecessor, and probably wouldn’t have finished it if not for reading along with Shelved by Genre. (New Jersey mentioned, though).

• How Do We Relationship by Tamifull. I read the last few chapters of this lesbian manga this spring. The manga as a whole follows two young women who start a lesbian relationship in high school (because “we’re the only gay girls each other know, I guess we should date?”). Heart-rending problems of young queer love ensue, set over a period of years.

  This manga is beautifully drawn, the characters are excellently observed, and the emotional range is intense. I’ve laughed out loud and yelped in pain while reading. The whole thing is finished and translated, and you owe it to yourself to read it.

• Tales of Neveryon by Samuel Delany. This is my first exposure to Delany, which maybe embarrasses me. I feel like I should have read someone with his stature a little earlier, but everyone’s gotta start sometime. This novel seems like it’s structured as a series of unrelated short stories in a fantasy setting, each exploring some concept of commerce, slavery, or alienation. The threads begin to twist together in the back half, toward a single story. It was good, but not so compelling that I feel the need to try any of Delany’s famously difficult science fiction yet^[1].

• River of Stars by Guy Gavriel Kay. This is a distant sequel to Under Heaven (the other Kay book I’ve read), both books being set in the author’s China-inspired fantasy world. The first book features hungry ghosts, a revenge quest, a clan of women martial artists, and political intrigue. This one featured… decidedly less of that. It follows a young man as he progresses from village life to outlaw to great general, and a cataclysmic war that sees not-China in the grip of the not-Mongols. Honestly I had a good time (especially as grounded historical fantasy novels go), but don’t feel any of the spark its predecessor inspired in me.

• Little Blue Encyclopedia (For Vivian) by Hazel Jane Plante. This is a book-ass book! We follow a young trans woman writing an encyclopedia for her recently-passed best friend’s favorite TV show. It’s a Twin-Peaks-esque sprawl of characters and concepts, which we glimpse through the encyclopedia entries. Those entries are embedded in a narrative of the narrator’s relationship to and love of Vivian. This one hit close to home for me, in a way that it is statistically improbable to hit close for you, dear reader. Still, I highly recommend it.

• “Infect your Friends and Loved Ones” by Torrey Peters. I finally got around to this Peters story, because it’s a pack-in with her new book Stag Dance. We open in an apocalypse brought about by a disease that destroys human’s ability to produce their own sex hormones. Then we flash back and learn about two trans women’s tumultuous t4t relationship, and how their story is central to this whole apocalypse situation. It also features a disastrous date that ends in the phrase “THE WHOLE WORLD MONITORS AND MOCKS MY EVERY WAKING MOMENT!” Which, like, yeah.

• “The Chaser” by Torrey Peters. This is a new story published with Stag Dance. It features two young men starting a gay(?) relationship, though one of them is likely to transition in the future. I thought it was good, and don’t have much else to say about it.

• Absolution by Jeff VanderMeer. This is a (unasked-for?) prequel to the Southern Reach trilogy (of Annihilation fame). VanderMeer is an intensely hit-or-miss author to me. I think he is for a lot of folks; it’s just pretty rare for two people to agree on which works are hits and which are misses, exactly.

  For me this goes in the miss bucket. Diving deep into the spy drama of Central… to what end, exactly? The setting just feels too bare to me to support this kind of narrative. I gave up after the perspective switch, because the new PoV character used the work “fuck” so I often I found it hard to keep reading.

• The Fabric of Civilization by Virginia Postrel. Nonfiction book about textile history. After one too many snide remarks, I got the feeling the author’s politics were incompatible with mine (Wikipedia confirms this). Plus I wanted a little more technical description, or a little more high-level history; this book hit right in the unhappy middle for me. DNF.

• The Hades Calculus by Maria Ying. Extremely over-indulgent and way too long? Why, that’s table stakes for self-published fiction! (I kid, I kid. But it is too long). This is a science-fictional, mecha-infused take on the Hades and Persephone myth. It’s also extremely trans, extremely lesbian, and extremely horny. If I had a nickel for every mecha trans-lesbian web novel where I had the same criticisms (that I won’t publish here) of the sexual dynamics at play, I’d have two nickels, but it’s weird that it happened twice. Overall pretty good.

• Woodworking by Emily St. James. This is a novel following a few different PoVs, most notably a thirty-something high school teacher who has just realized she’s trans… and the only trans girl she knows, a 17-year-old trans student in her class. Yes, the friendship has to be kept secret to avoid outing the teacher. Yes, this leads to lots of sitcom-esque misunderstandings. The characters are the main attraction here, with propulsive plot and totally workable prose. A really good debut novel.

  I’m a little sad that the author needed to set it in 2016 to justify the (relatively) low ambient transphobia, but I’m more sad that I agree with her decision to do so. It’s a good period piece, though, as someone who was in fact the age of one of the protagonists in 2016.

• The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. This is a novel about a disastrous Jesuit first-contact mission to an alien world. I was interested in how the novel might play with questions of faith and contact, and was disappointed that wasn’t really the focus. Instead the focus is on the traumas visited on our main characters to shape them into the people who are suited for the expedition, and the utterly broken state one of them returns from the expedition in. Our narrative jumps back and forth between the late 2010s-and-early-2020s and the 2060s, before and after the expedition. Eventually (after quite a lot of book) we’re working with during-the-expedition and after-the-expedition.

  The alien society depicted is pretty interesting, but nothing lives up to the build of the mystery in the first half. You’re waiting and waiting to find out how things went quite so badly… and the answer tumbles out in a rushed third act, in ways that don’t really feel satisfying to me. I’m not exactly mad that things come to a brutal and horrifying point (which you are prepared for from the 2060s segments), but I feel like the need to tie up the plot leads to brushing off most of the themes and questions of the novel. There’s a sequel, and I’m torn about whether I want to read it or let it lie.

  The brutal and horrifying part is no joke, by the by. I had a couple nightmares reading this book and occasionally thinking about it makes bile come up in my mouth. So… I guess that’s an endorsement of the writing ability, but maybe an anti-endorsement for reading it.

Movies

I visited my grandma in Florida and watched two movies, one on the way there and one on the way back. The flight was short enough that I didn’t have time to try Dune 2 or Wicked, which was probably a blessing on both counts.

• Conclave (2024). RIP Pope Francis, I guess? Between Kill James Bond’s Jesuit-heavy season, The Sparrow, Conclave, and my upcoming reread of A Canticle for Leibowitz (for the next season of Shelved By Genre) I’m having a bit of a Catholic moment. I was a little worried this movie would be impenetrable to a nice Jewish girl such as myself (Christian media sometimes assumes you’re already steeped in the mythos). To my relief, the entire process was perfectly legible to me. Dramatically the movie hung together excellently until the denouement.

  Politically… I mean, this movie feels like it was slated to come out in 2016. Like… “jihadi terrorists are prompting us to vote: racism or good, open-hearted liberalism? And then we’re gonna win with a speech about how racism is wrong?”

  I do want to say if you’ve heard anything about the end of the movie: this isn’t really a movie that you spoil. I think a full plot summary would barely have decreased my enjoyment. Watch it, and then you can pretend to understand what’s up with Cardinal Pizzabella or whomever.

• Erin Brockovich (2000). This movie is part legal drama, part biopic, and part finger-wagging scold of the working woman. This might be an of-its-time thing but I was a little surprised that the cinematic language is so clearly against Erin’s working at the law firm on the chromium case. Sure, she can’t spend as much time with her kids or partner, but that’s true of plenty of men who work to support a family. The movie swings from “isn’t she such a bad mom because of the poverty?” to “isn’t she such a bad mom because of the job?” with such ease. Maybe I’m being ungenerous, but it feels like the movie is saying “lean in” and “ew, get back in the kitchen” in the same breath. Still a good watch overall.