entirely ruined her disposition with books

I have a new obsession that I simply must recommend to you.

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion are the journals of a late Victorian wannabe-bluestocking who relates her her many adventures and misadventures, and I love them with all of my heart. I inhaled all 7 of the (currently existing) journals in a week and I am...overcome with affection that I must share with the world.



Emma is the daughter of a fine lady who ran away to marry a talented Irish painter. After an idyllic childhood, her parents died, and she was left more or less on her own. We join her story in March of 1883, when she's less than a year away from turning 21, becoming an adult, and getting her inheritance, which consists of small living and a house in London called Lapis Lazuli House.

So we open with Emma arriving at Lapis Lazuli House and launching into battle with her crotchety old cousin who has been living in the house for the past twenty years. Lapis Lazuli House just happens to be in St. Crispian's, a (fictional) area in London near Primrose Hill, one that is full of character and whimsy and a touch of magic.

And of course, things are not going to go as smoothly as she'd hoped they would. Complications (some very serious) are introduced right away, but they're accompanied by delights, and we get the joy of watching Emma encounter them all.

Emma is intrepid and plucky and all those other qualities I love in a heroine. She's smart and funny and clever and free-spirited. Through her eyes, we meet all kinds of interesting people and watch her as she gets into (what Anne Shirley would call) scrape after scrape.

The supporting cast is just delightful in every conceivable way. I love EVERYONE! (Except the one or two characters you aren't really supposed to love, and one of them even ends up coming around!) I think it's the wide range of characters, all with their own backstories and motivations, that reminds me most of Ibbotson.

As I told dollsome, these books are me-coded. (And also dollsome_coded.) Think the smart and plucky heroines of L.M. Montgomery and Maud Hart Lovelace. Think the hilarious and delightful details and eye for the ridiculous of Eva Ibbotson’s adult books. Think the eccentric neighborhood of Stars Hollow (St. Crispian's is basically Stars Hollow as Victorian London neighborhood. No one will ever be able to convince me that the writer is not a Gilmore Girls fan). Think of the way that the best classic plucky-heroine-books of our youth (Alcott and Burnett and others) manage to be both warm and fuzzy while also acknowledging the tragedy of the world.

These books are not fluff (I am…not a fan of fluff without ballast). They have weight to them. But at the same time they’re the kind of delightful escape I know I’m going to revisit frequently. They scratch a particular kind of itch which is SO hard to scratch because they just aren’t being written much these days.

Emma deals with so many ridiculous things, but she has has to confront real and profound grief, and the sections that deal with that grief are very moving and realistic. This keeps the whole thing from wandering into the too-twee area that I find a lot of "cozy" books do. Those books are...not for me. They're too much like cotton candy and I hate cotton candy. This is more like a perfect pastry paired with a strong cup of coffee. (Presumably. For people who like coffee. Which I do not.)

There is, of course a romance--one I quite like, as it is actually slow-burn enough for me--but that's not the focus of the books. The focus is on Emma and all her relationships and the world that she lives in, and that's what reminds me of the favorite books of my childhood.

There's also just a touch of the fantastic--think Emily Starr and the flash and her prophetic dreams, etc.--that is honestly just so wonderful to me.

Of course, these books will not be to everyone's taste. Everyone is wittier than people are in real life, which I know drives some people mad. And there's really no queerness to be found (though I hold out hope that there will be later--new characters and elements keep getting introduced). They are completely unconcerned with wider systemic issues (we're in the era of Imperial Britain but that just...doesn't come up much). Like I said, there's a lot about grief and death and some (and more to come) about war, certainly, but there's not much of a look at systemic injustice and imperialism--that's not what these books are for. (Again, think Montgomery/Lovelace.) If any of those things bother you, this series is not for you.

My only real complaint about them (except for the fact that I have to wait in between each one from here on out!) is that the writer is a little too taken with the idea of a girl who's one of the guys. Not that she sneers at feminine things--she does not (she mocks the marriage market, but in an understandable way). Just in that her most important friendships tend to be with her male friends (and romantic interest).

This is a shame because all of the female characters are incredible. Emma, Mary, Arabella, Aunt Eugenia, Agnes, Saffronia, Mrs. Penury, and many others! I adore them all! But Emma ends up forming a little clique with men instead of women and this is where things depart from absolute perfection for me.

Look, I get the author's idea that, "Wouldn't it be wonderful if there were a bunch of truly wonderful and good men who all adored and appreciated me?" Like, I would also like to live in that world! But it just feels a wee too self-indulgent to me. I don't like it when the writer's id intrudes quite so much. I want to have to read a bunch of their books and pick up on things slowly in order to recognize their kinks.

But the male characters are wonderful (I have developed a truly gargantuan crush on one of them. It's the vicar. No one should be surprised. If I were 14, I would be writing self-insert fic where he finds in love with me) so this just a small complaint. I'm hopeful that in the future we'll get more time spent on the female relationships. Like I said: they're there, and they're incredible. (Aunt Eugenia in particular is right out of a Montgomery book, truly! Think Rachel Lynde meets Aunt Nancy Priest meets Miss Cornelia meets Valancy's mom! I am truly so glad I do not know her, but as a character, she is STERLING. Oh and Mrs. Penury definitely definitely wandered over from Montgomery too!)


I can afford to be very hopeful about the future because there are...so many books still to come. Just so many. And I will read all of them. Nay, I will buy them!

That's right, I love these books enough to buy them in hard copy! I actually broke my own rule and signed up for a couple of months of (discounted) Kindle Unlimited so I could read them, but never fear: the writer will be getting my money. As soon as I move since the last thing I need is more books for the movers to have to struggle with.

I also will definitely be requesting this series for Yuletide and possibly other exchanges in the future. There's so much room to explore! The one single way it reminds me of Harry Potter is just the feeling that there is so much room to explore characters and the world, and that is quite impressive for a (technically) non-fantasy series. It isn't that often that I praise the worldbuilding of a non-speculative piece of fiction, but I will gladly do it here. St. Crispian's is so real and detailed--there's even a map!--and I want to live in it.


I am yearning for a friend or two to talk about these with, so if any of you read them, please come yell at me! They are shortish--I read three in one day last Saturday--and so very readable so hopefully I won't have to wait terribly long before one of you will have been bullied into reading them.

Dec 12:

I realized I hadn't done one today, so I'm adapting another post into a rec!

Tam Lin by Pamela Dean is a unique fantasy novel.

The title leads you to think it's going to be a retelling of the ballad, and it...kind of is, at the end, anyway. But most of the book is just about a bunch of undergrad literature/Classics majors running around a small liberal arts college in the 1970s while vaguely supernatural things happen around them. It's a very odd book but I love it lots.

Dec 13:

If you ever found yourself going, "Wtf was going on in D.C. on January 6, 2021???" then have I got the podcast series for you.

Straight White American Jesus did a series called Charismatic Revival Fury that focuses on the New Apostolic Reformation, a contemporary US religious movement that does not get much attention but that is HUGELY influential on US politics.

It's 8 episodes long and gives you all the background you need to understand this very weird, very scary, very powerful strain of white American Christianity.

Dec 14:

I am super excited that Onew's Circle (link goes to the whole album on YouTube) got named the best Kpop album of the year by Billboard. Because it is and also because I love seeing my faves acknowledged.

I am Ron Swanson: "I think all awards are stupid, but they'd be less stupid if they went to the right people."

It's one of the world's great injustices that it took this long for SM to finally let him release a full album, but it was worth the wait. It's so perfect and whether we ever get another one after this, I am just glad we got this one.

Thanks, Jinki!

Dec 15:

White Christmas is an 8-episode Korean drama that aired on KBS in 2011. For those of you for whom this means something: it was written by Park Yeon-seon who also wrote another of my favorite kdramas Age of Youth (streaming on Netflix as Hello, My Twenties).

But this show is tonally nothing like Age of Youth. It's a psychological thriller and not a slice-of-life drama, but I love it as much as I love Age of Youth.

The premise: It's Christmas break for Susin High, an elite private school--so elite, in fact, that only the top 1% of students in the country can get in. Susin is already a place of cut-throat competition and a bad environment for anyone who cares about mental health. But things are about to get a lot worse.

In the days leading up to Christmas break, seven students receive black envelopes containing a threatening and ominous message, asking them to stay behind at the school over break.

So when everyone else packs up and leaves for the holiday, those seven students and one teacher/chaperone are left in this glass labyrinth of building in the mountains, miles away from the nearest town. A stranded stranger survives a car wreck nearby and stumbles to the school to ask for shelter.

And then, of course, there's a snowfall, trapping them there until New Year's Day.

And people start dying...

The characters are (almost) all damaged teenagers who have tons of baggage--the school bully, the school prankster, the model student, the school sweetheart who's turned into a bad girl, the neurodivergent kid, etc. All of them are interesting and compelling and all of them are really hurting. They're smart, smart enough that sometimes you forget how young they're supposed to be, and then they'll do or say something that reminds you, "Oh, yeah, these are just kids." I love to make jokes about my murder babies, but I sincerely love all of them. (Me earlier that day: I never cared for Mooyul.)

And the modus operandi of the villain (if this show can be said to have something as conventional as a villain) is to use each kid's trauma against them. They're trapped in this labyrinth with their own pain and with the question that hangs over everything: are monsters born or made?

The plot is twisty, in a "look what human beings will do" kind of way. The suspense comes mostly from asking what people are willing to do to survive. It's an ensemble and each character gets a moment to shine, but it's got the benefit of being short, especially for a kdrama.

The downsides: This show skews WAY more male than it really needs to. There are two female characters, both of whom are very cool (for certain values of the word "cool"), but I really don't understand why it's so boy-heavy since it doesn't seem to be saying all that much about gender (except that, you know what? It really sucks being the girl that everyone has a crush on. It really does).

It's also dark. Not that dark--it's not graphic, there's no real sexual violence, the trauma that the kids are carrying around is more alluded to than explored deeply. But it does contain themes of suicide and self-harm and there is some blood, so it's definitely not one you should watch in a fragile moment.

The final episode has some plot holes...but they're just plot. The ending is (to my mind) incredibly emotionally satisfying despite them.

Warnings for: Suicide, self-harm, drug abuse, medium-intensity violence.

Dec 16:

A movie this time!

The Vast of Night is an indie scifi film from 2019. Set in New Mexico in the 1950s, it's about a series of UFO sightings and it is SO GOOD.

Per wikipedia: "The film follows young switchboard operator Fay Crocker and radio disc jockey Everett Sloan as they discover a mysterious audio frequency that could be extraterrestrial in origin."

There's so many things I like about this film--the characterization, the ten-minute-long tracking shots, the plot + worldbuilding that are rooted in the American myth of UFOs in a way that feels familiar but not stale, the Twilight Zone homage of it all.

This movie all the proof you need that budget size isn't what matters: it's all about the passion and talent of the people making the film. I truly can't wait to see what the writer/director Andrew Patterson does next!

Dec 17:

I've been trying to stick with things that might get overlooked or that aren't super popular. So here's a book I wish more people would read because I think they'd really enjoy it.

The Steel Seraglio by Mike Carey, Linda Carey, and Louise Carey is a unique fantasy novel.

From GoodReads: "The sultan Bokhari Al-Bokhari of Bessa has 365 concubines - until a violent coup puts the city in the hands of the religious zealot Hakkim Mehdad. Hakkim has no use for the pleasures of the flesh: he condemns the women first to exile - and then to death. Cast into the desert, the concubines must rely on themselves and each other to escape from the new sultan's fanatical pursuit. But their goals go beyond mere survival: with the aid of the champions who emerge from among them, they intend to topple the usurper and retake Bessa from the repressive power that now controls it."

This book is SO MANY WOMEN! Different kinds of women! Who care about each other!

Dec 18:

So let's do #DecRecs and I will recommend another book!

The Dazzle of Day is a science fiction novel by Molly Gloss (who happened to be a close friend of Ursula K. Le Guin).

It's a generation ship story that explores the time before the ship, during the ship, and after the ship through a variety of characters.

What makes it different than most science fiction is a) the more "literary" writing and b) the fact that this particular group of spacefarers are Quakers and Gloss is ACTUALLY INTERESTED in the specifics of how their religion would manifest in their community-building, mostly through the process of consensus-making.

I am quite sure a lot of people would find this book boring or slow, but I love it. It's so rare to find any kind of good [religion]-in-space fiction, and this one also has a believable approach to how people would react upon reaching a planet after living their whole lives on a spaceship.

Dec 19:

If you miss a day of a meme or writing or any other project...just don't worry about it. That's my rec.

Dec 20:

Actually, you know what? I'm reccing it for #DecRecs

It's a Wonderful Life has a reputation for being saccharine, but that's a shame. It's actually a film about the importance of small lives lived decently & with love & generosity.

It actually becomes very dark at times--it doesn't flinch away from the darker parts of life & the heartbreak of broken dreams. There is a content warning for a suicidal character, though suicide does not happen.

It's also an anticapitalist film in a very explicit way. The villain of the film is the ultimate capitalist and he's depicted as selfish, greedy, & grasping.

It's so cathartic--I always end up SOBBING at the end, but in the best way. Roger Ebert used to say that it isn't sadness that made him cry in movies, but goodness. I'm the same way, and this movie is about goodness that is earned and worked for. It's one of my favorite movies of all time.

Don't let its reputation as a Christmas film scare you away--it really isn't. It's for any time.

Dec 21:

Another podcast I enjoy that I think is very underrated: Mobituaries, hosted by Mo Rocca. whom I know from writing Wishbone, being a talking head on various VH1 "I Love the [Decade]" shows, and Wait Wait Don't Tell Me.

Each episode is a medium-dive into a figure or phenomenon in American life told with his characteristic mixture of humor and sincerity.

Some favorite episodes include the ones on John Denver, Soccer the Dog (aka Wishbone), Laura Branigan, Anna May Wong, the Gros Michel banana, and Jim Thorpe. The one about the end of the "miscegenation ban" in the US made me cry. But all of them are worth listening to.

I love a host who genuinely finds people so interesting and is so compassionate towards them. Mo never sacrifices accuracy for humor either. I really don't understand why this podcast doesn't have a bigger following than it does!

Alright, I've finished The Guest and loved it and now I need something new to watch. I've been out of the kdrama loop for several years now, so I don't know what's been good the past few years.

I'm looking for:

+ something serious. no comedies, please.

+ but not melodrama

+ really good relationships of any kind (romance, family, found family, whatever)

+ good female characters

+ contemporary

+ Sticks the landing at least decently

+ bonus points if it includes a prickly, difficult to love woman who nonetheless gets loved

Also somebody tell me if Save Me is any good; cults are definitely my thing but it looks too dude-heavy.

My favorite kdramas of this kind: White Christmas, Healer, The Guest, Shut Up! Flower Boy Band (look, I know, but it's serious enough to be on this list there is so much crying in that drama), Beyond Evil, Mawang, City Hunter

Other kdramas that aren't really of this kind but that are my faves: Age of Youth, Queen In-Hyun's Man, Coffee Prince, Replies 1997 and 1988, It's Okay Not to Be Okay, Flower Boy Next Door, Crash Landing on You

I am not an email newsletter person (I mostly find them annoying), but I absolutely love the Tor.com newsletter. They do a great job of covering all speculative fiction interests (mostly books, but also movies and TV and some comics), not just stuff they themselves publish. And in almost every edition, there's at least one thing I want to read. Sometimes it's Jo Walton's list of the books she read that month, sometimes it's a celebration of a Robin McKinley book I haven't read since I was a teenager (there was recently one about The Door in the Hedge that inspired me to reread it, sometimes it's about queer representation or the ways that black characters are always sidekicks and never heroes of their own stories in the specfic world. I originally signed up because they send you out a free ebook link once a month, but I'm so glad I did because it's such a rich resource.

Yesterday's edition just happened to have an article about Martha Wells' Books of the Raksura series, the first book of which, The Cloud Roads, I recently read. That in itself was a serendipitous delight, but I really enjoyed the content of the article! "You Can’t Eat Something That Talks: People and Cultures in Martha Wells’ Books of the Raksura" is a celebration of the marvelous, exciting world-building in the series and sums up the characters in the book with: None of them are human. All of them are people. Which I think is just perfect.

Also, if you like short fiction (I am not so much a short fiction person, but I know a lot of you are!), there is always at least one piece of short original fiction in the newsletter. If you are into speculative fiction at all, I really recommend going to Tor.com and subscribing!