en-US Mon, 14 Apr 2025 07:21:45 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 196674628
Smith brings a startling urgency to these poems, their questions demanding a new language, a deep self-scrutiny, and virtuosic textual shapes. A series of “ars poetica�� gives way to “anti poetica�� and “ars america�� to implicate poetry’s collusions with unchecked capitalism. A photographic collage accrues across a sequence to make clear the consequences of American acceptance of mass shootings. A brilliant long poem―part map, part annotation, part visual argument―offers the history of Saint Paul’s vibrant Rondo neighborhood before and after the city decided to run an interstate directly through it.

Bluff is a kind of manifesto about artistic resilience, even when time and will can seem fleeting, when the places we most love―those given and made―are burning. In this soaring collection, Smith turns to honesty, hope, rage, and imagination to envision futures that seem possible.]]> 160 Danez Smith 1644452987 Becket 0 4.43 2024
author: Danez Smith
name: Becket
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: currently-reading, adult, read-in-2025, adult-2024, bipoc, nonfiction, poetry-or-verse, queer-adult, trans-nonbinary-gnc
review:

]]> 39391587 bury it, winner of the 2017 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, begins with poems written in response to the spate of highly publicized young gay suicides in the summer of 2010. What follows are raw and expertly crafted meditations on death, rituals of passage, translation, desire, diaspora, and personhood. What’s at stake is survival itself and the archiving of a lived and lyric history. Laughlin Award judge Tyehimba Jess says “bury it is lit with imagery and purpose that surprises and jolts at every turn. Exuberant, wild, tightly knotted mesmerisms of discovery inhabit each poem in this seethe of hunger and sacred toll of toil. A vitalizing and necessary book of poems that dig hard and lift luminously.�� In this phenomenal second collection of poems, Sam Sax invites the reader to join him in his interrogation of the bridges we cross, the bridges we burn, and bridges we must leap from.]]> 88 Sam Sax 0819577316 Becket 0 4.16 2018
author: Sam Sax
name: Becket
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: adult, read-in-2025, nonfiction, queer-adult, poetry-or-verse, paused
review:

]]> 75646557
While searching for stolen dragon eggs, newly engaged couple Kianthe and Reyna find themselves smack-dab in the middle of a swashbuckling love story.

On one side is Serina, a failed farmer turned river pirate. Her booty? Wheat, grains, and the occasional jar of imported tea leaves. It's quite the embarrassment to Diarn Arlon, the powerful lord of the Nacean River, and he'll conscript anyone to bring her to justice. Especially Kianthe, the elemental mage who just crashed his party, and her somewhat-scary fiancée.

Begrudgingly, the couple joins forces with Bobbie, one of Arlon's constables--who happens to be Serina's childhood friend. Bobbie is determined to capture the pirate before anyone else, but it would be a lot easier if Serina didn't absolutely loathe her now.

As Kianthe and Reyna watch this relation-shipwreck from afar, it quickly becomes apparent that these disaster lesbians need all the help they can get. Luckily, matchmaking is Reyna's favorite past time. The dragon eggs may have to wait.]]> 444 Rebecca Thorne Becket 0 4.15 2023
author: Rebecca Thorne
name: Becket
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: adult, read-in-2025, fantasy, queer-adult, series, unfinished
review:

]]> 22750400 48 Susumu Shingu 1771471301 Becket 3 3.70 2010
author: Susumu Shingu
name: Becket
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/14
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: picture-books, read-in-2025, nonfiction, science
review:

]]> 216634180 An awe-inspiring nonfiction picture book, perfect for animal lovers, that reveals how a mama whale and a mama person care for their young in remarkably similar ways, from the illustrator of Over and Under the Snow.

A little boy and his mother set off on a day trip, meanwhile, a mama whale and her calf swim towards the bay. On the way, both sing, blow bubbles, get lost--and found! Through it all, mama always stays close. The human pair board a sightseeing boat, and as the whales reach the harbor, they all converge in one spectacular scene! With lyrical text and absolutely magnificent art, here's a book that celebrates our connection to animals, and to each other.]]> 48 Christopher Silas Neal 0593812646 Becket 3 4.09
author: Christopher Silas Neal
name: Becket
average rating: 4.09
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/14
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: picture-books-2025, picture-books, read-in-2025
review:

]]> 36212152 40 Dee Romito Becket 4 4.43 2018
author: Dee Romito
name: Becket
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: picture-books, read-in-2025, bipoc, biography-or-memoir, nonfiction
review:

]]> 59237736
Sixteen-year-old Bianca Torre is an avid birder undergoing a gender identity crisis and grappling with an ever-growing list of fears. Some, like Fear #6: Initiating Conversation, keep them constrained, forcing them to watch birds from the telescope in their bedroom. And, occasionally, their neighbors. When their gaze wanders from the birds to one particular window across the street, Bianca witnesses a creepy plague-masked murderer take their neighbor’s life. Worse, the death is ruled a suicide, forcing Bianca to make a choice—succumb to their long list of fears (including #3: Murder and #55: Breaking into a Dead Guy’s Apartment) or investigate what happened.

Bianca enlists the help of their friend Anderson Coleman, but the two have more knowledge of anime than true crime. As Bianca and Anderson dig deeper into the murder with a little help from Bianca’s crush and fellow birding aficionado, Elaine Yee (#13: Beautiful People, #11: Parents Discovering They’re A Raging Lesbian), the trio uncovers a conspiracy much larger—and weirder—than imagined. But when the killer catches wind of the investigation, Bianca’s #1 fear of public speaking doesn’t sound so bad compared to the threat of being silenced for good.

In this absurdist, bizarrely comical YA thriller that is at turns a deceptively deep exploration of anxiety and identity, perhaps the real murder investigation is the friends we make along the way.]]> 384 Justine Pucella Winans 0358721644 Becket 0 4.05 2023
author: Justine Pucella Winans
name: Becket
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/08
shelves: currently-reading, young-adult, audiobook, bipoc, mystery, trans-nonbinary-gnc, queer-youth
review:

]]> 195790876
Stitch up a sweet Blue Jay to keep you company, or brighten your space with a vibrant depiction of the Northern Lights. Flora and fungi enthusiasts will be especially excited to discover patterns like the Balsam Fir, forest floor Mushrooms and The Mighty Oak. With nature as your muse and 25 gorgeous designs to choose from, the possibilities are endless.

So, grab your needle and get started! With this must-have guide, nature’s serenest scenes are just a few stitches away.]]> 160 Max Pigeon Becket 4 4.62 2024
author: Max Pigeon
name: Becket
average rating: 4.62
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/08
date added: 2025/04/08
shelves: adult, read-in-2025, cooking-crafting-diy, nonfiction
review:

]]> 54919775 Fathoms: The World in the Whale blends natural history, philosophy, and science to explore: How do whales experience ecological change? Will our connection to these storied animals be transformed by technology? What can observing whales teach us about the complexity, splendour, and fragility of life? In Fathoms, we learn about whales so rare they have never been named, whale songs that sweep across hemispheres in annual waves of popularity, and whales that have modified the chemical composition of our planet’s atmosphere. We travel to Japan to board the ships that hunt whales and delve into the deepest seas to discover the plastic pollution now pervading the whale’s undersea environment.

In the spirit of Rachel Carson and Rebecca Solnit, Giggs gives us a vivid exploration of the natural world even as she addresses what it means to write about nature at a time of environmental crisis.]]> 13 Rebecca Giggs Becket 3 3.65 2020
author: Rebecca Giggs
name: Becket
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/08
date added: 2025/04/08
shelves: adult, read-in-2025, audiobook, nonfiction, science
review:

]]> 57062743 A deeply moving and insightful collection of personal essays from #1 bestselling author John Green, adapted from his critically acclaimed podcast.


The Anthropocene is the current geological age, in which human activity has profoundly shaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his groundbreaking podcast, John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet--from the QWERTY keyboard and Staphylococcus aureus to the Taco Bell breakfast menu--on a five-star scale.

Complex and rich with detail, the Anthropocene's reviews have been praised as "observations that double as exercises in memoiristic empathy." John Green's gift for storytelling shines throughout this artfully curated collection that includes both beloved essays and all-new pieces exclusive to the book.

Narrated by the author.]]> 10 John Green 0593408535 Becket 5 4.42 2021
author: John Green
name: Becket
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2021/09/29
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: adult, read-in-2021, audiobook, nonfiction
review:

]]> 62952901
All living things must one day die, and Earth’s largest creature, the majestic blue whale, is no exception. But in nature, death is never a true ending. When this whale closes her eyes for the last time in her 90-year life, a process known as whale fall is just beginning. Her body will float to the surface, then slowly sink through the deep; from inflated behemoth to clean-picked skeleton, it will offer food and shelter at each stage to a vast diversity of organisms, over the course of a century and beyond.

Caldecott Medalist Jason Chin’s astonishing artwork enriches and amplifies engaging, well-researched text by Bill Nye the Science Guy writer Lynn Brunelle. Young lovers of the macabre will relish each page of Life After Whale. Meanwhile, those grappling with the hard subject of death will take solace in this honest look at the circle of life, which closes on a young whale enjoying the same waves as her ancestor. Additional back pages offer further info and reading recommendations on whales, whale falls, and ecosystems.]]> 48 Lynn Brunelle 082345228X Becket 4 4.56 2024
author: Lynn Brunelle
name: Becket
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/22
date added: 2025/04/02
shelves: read-in-2025, picture-books, nonfiction, picture-books-2024, science
review:

]]> 207294243 Renowned poet Mary Jo Salter, whose command of verse forms and high intelligence is universally acknowledged, selects the poems for the 2024 edition of The Best American Poetry, “a ‘best�� anthology that really lives up to its title�� (Chicago Tribune).The Best American Poetry series has been “one of the mainstays of the poetry publication world�� (Academy of American Poets) since 1988. Each volume presents a curated selection of the year’s most brilliant, striking, and innovative poems, with comments from the poets themselves offering unique insight into their work. Here, guest editor Mary Jo Salter, whose own poems display a sublime wit “driven by a compulsion to confront the inexplicable�� (James Longenbach), has picked seventy-five poems that capture the dynamism of American poetry today. The series and guest editors contribute valuable introductory essays that assess the current state of American poetry, and this year’s edition is certain to capture the attention of both Best American Poetry loyalists and newcomers to the most important poetry anthology of our time.]]> 240 David Lehman 1982186798 Becket 0 3.66 2024
author: David Lehman
name: Becket
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2025/04/02
date added: 2025/04/02
shelves: browsed, adult, read-in-2025, adult-2024, poetry-or-verse, nonfiction
review:

]]> 49201667
Barrett works "to build / a shelter // of / everyone / [they] meet,�� from aunties to the legendary Princess Urduja to their favorite air sign. More Than Organs tattoos grief across the knuckles of its left hand and love across the knuckles of its right, leaving the reader physically changed by the intensity of experience, longing, strength, desire, and the need, above all else, to survive.

Named by the American Library Association as a Barbara Gittings Stonewall Honor Book in Literature.]]> 96 Kay Ulanday Barrett 1943977747 Becket 4 4.35 2020
author: Kay Ulanday Barrett
name: Becket
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/29
date added: 2025/04/02
shelves: adult, read-in-2025, bipoc, nonfiction, poetry-or-verse, queer-adult, trans-nonbinary-gnc
review:

]]> 211004175
A mind is a terrible thing to erase...

Welcome to the HMS Fairweather, Her Majesty’s most luxurious interstellar passenger liner! Room and board are included, new bodies are graciously provided upon request, and should you desire a rest between lifetimes, your mind shall be most carefully preserved in glass in the Library, shielded from every danger.

Near the topmost deck of an interstellar generation ship, Dorothy Gentleman wakes up in a body that isn’t hers—just as someone else is found murdered. As one of the ship’s detectives, Dorothy usually delights in unraveling the schemes on board the Fairweather, but when she finds that someone is not only killing bodies but purposefully deleting minds from the Library, she realizes something even more sinister is afoot.

Dorothy suspects her misfortune is partly the fault of her feckless nephew Ruthie who, despite his brilliance as a programmer, leaves chaos in his cheerful wake. Or perhaps the sultry yarn store proprietor—and ex-girlfriend of the body Dorothy is currently inhabiting—knows more than she’s letting on. Whatever it is, Dorothy intends to solve this case. Because someone has done the impossible and found a way to make murder on the Fairweather a very permanent state indeed. A mastermind may be at work—and if so, they’ve had three hundred years to perfect their schemes…]]> 112 Olivia Waite 1250342244 Becket 3 3.80 2025
author: Olivia Waite
name: Becket
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/21
date added: 2025/04/02
shelves: adult, adult-2025, read-in-2025, mystery, science-fiction, queer-adult, series
review:

]]> 199349061
You never forget your first shark. For Jasmin Graham, it was a little bonnethead, a type of hammerhead three feet long, gray with a white underbelly, rough-skinned, strongly muscled, and beautiful. Jasmin fell in with sharks, and with science. Though she tried to follow the traditional path to becoming a marine biologist, she soon found that, in a field where it was harder to find other young women of color than the elusive elasmobranchii (sharks, rays, skates, and sawfish) she sought, navigating the choppy waters of traditional academic study was no longer worth it.

So Jasmin quit. But that didn't mean abandoning her rather, Jasmin sought to pursue it in another way, joining with three other Black women to form Minorities in Shark Sciences (MISS), an organization dedicated to providing support and opportunities for other young women of color pursuing the fascinating and environmentally essential work of marine studies. Jasmin became an independent a rogue shark scientist, learning how to keep those endangered but precious sharks swimming free—just like her.

Sharks Don't Sink is a riveting, moving, and ultimately triumphant memoir at the intersection of science and social a guidebook to how we can all learn to respect and protect some of nature's most misunderstood and vulnerable creatures—and grant the same grace to ourselves.]]> 224 Jasmin Graham 0593685253 Becket 0 4.11
author: Jasmin Graham
name: Becket
average rating: 4.11
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: currently-reading, adult, adult-2024, bipoc, biography-or-memoir, nonfiction, science
review:

]]> 208512484 The Mythmakers is a graphic novel biography of two literary icons—C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien—following the story of their friendship and creative fellowship, and how each came to write their masterworks

Through narrative and comic panels, Hendrix chronicles Lewis and Tolkien’s near-idyllic childhoods, then moves on to both men’s horrific tour of the trenches of World War I to their first meeting at Oxford in 1929, and then the foreshadowing, action, and aftermath of World War II. He reveals the shared story of their friendship, in all its ups and downs, that gave them confidence to venture beyond academic concerns (fantasy wasn’t considered suitable for adult reading, but the domain of children), shaped major story/theme ideas, and shifted their ideas about the potential of mythology and faith.

The Mythmakers also shows the camaraderie and the importance of the social/literary circle of friends called the Inklings, and how the friendship of these two great men fell apart and came together again. Hendrix concludes describing how the writings of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien had re-enchanted the 20th century, after two World Wars. In writing aimed at scholars, adults, and young people, these two tweedy academics altered the course of storytelling and embraced the concept that fantasy writing for an adult audience was an accepted form of literature.]]> 218 John Hendrix 1419746340 Becket 3 4.60 2024
author: John Hendrix
name: Becket
average rating: 4.60
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/17
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: read-in-2025, young-adult, biography-or-memoir, graphic-format, nonfiction, ya-2024
review:

]]> 213578064
A time travel romance, a speculative spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingeniously constructed exploration of the nature of truth and power and the potential for love to change it Welcome to The Ministry of Time, the exhilarating debut novel by Kaliane Bradley.

In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats�� from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.

She is tasked with working as a “bridge��: living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as ��1847�� or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as “washing machine,�� “Spotify,�� and “the collapse of the British Empire.�� But he adjusts quickly; he is, after all, an explorer by trade. Soon, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a seriously uncomfortable housemate dynamic, evolves into something much more. Over the course of an unprecedented year, Gore and the bridge fall haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences they never could have imagined.

Supported by a chaotic and charming cast of characters—including a 17th-century cinephile who can’t get enough of Tinder, a painfully shy World War I captain, and a former spy with an ever-changing series of cosmetic surgery alterations and a belligerent attitude to HR—the bridge will be forced to confront the past that shaped her choices, and the choices that will shape the future.

An exquisitely original and feverishly fun fusion of genres and ideas, The Ministry of Time asks: What does it mean to defy history, when history is living in your house? Kaliane Bradley’s answer is a blazing, unforgettable testament to what we owe each other in a changing world.]]> 11 Kaliane Bradley 1797176889 Becket 4 3.48 2024
author: Kaliane Bradley
name: Becket
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/13
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves: adult, read-in-2025, adult-2024, romantic, science-fiction, audiobook, bipoc
review:

]]> 214537773 From the acclaimed author of Chef's Kiss, a groundbreaking trans Regency romance that's both delightfully witty and refreshingly iconoclastic.

The notoriously eccentric Lord Christopher Eden is a “man of unusual make�� and even more unusual habits: he prefers to live as far from the prying eyes and ears of the ton as possible, and would rather have the comfortable company of his childhood cook and his aged butler, Plinkton, than the swarm of servants and hangers-on befitting a man of his station.

But Christopher's pleasant, if occasionally lonely life is upended when he receives word from his lawyers that, according to his late father’s will, he must find a wife by the end of the Season if he intends to keep his family's fortune and the Eden's End estate. Christopher cannot imagine a worse fate: as he isn't attracted to women, his chances of making a wife happy are slim. Furthermore, if his quest to marry has any hope of succeeding, he must move to London posthaste and acquire some more suitable staff.

Enter James Harding, Christopher's new, distractingly handsome—if rigidly traditional—valet. After a rocky start, the two strike up a fragile friendship amid the throes of the London Season . . . a friendship that threatens to shatter under the looming shadow of Christopher’s impending nuptials—and the secrets both men are keeping.

With its heady combination of dry wit, slow-burn romance, and a nuanced, complex portrait of trans identity and relationships that’s as relevant now as it was during the Regency era, A Gentleman's Gentleman stands to transform the historical romance genre as we know it.]]> 336 T.J. Alexander 0593686209 Becket 4 4.16 2025
author: T.J. Alexander
name: Becket
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/11
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves: adult, adult-2025, read-in-2025, historical, queer-adult, romance, trans-nonbinary-gnc
review:

]]> 226384416 178 Molly Knox Ostertag Becket 4 4.82
author: Molly Knox Ostertag
name: Becket
average rating: 4.82
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/02
date added: 2025/03/04
shelves: adult, read-in-2025, graphic-format, queer-adult, historical, fandom
review:

]]> 123023430 Graphic novel superstars Gene Luen Yang and LeUyen Pham join forces in this heartwarming rom-com about fate, family, forgiveness, and lion dancing.

Valentina Tran was named after Valentine's Day, which used to be her favorite holiday. But when Val learns the truth behind what happened with her parents and why she's being raised by a single father, she realizes true love is a lie. This is reinforced when she meets the spirit of Saint Valentine, who tells her she and her family are cursed to always be unlucky in love. Val is ready to give into her fate, until one Lunar New Year festival, where a mysterious lion dancer hands her a paper heart, and ZING. Val becomes determined to change her destiny, prove Saint Valentine wrong, and give her heart to the right person.

Meanwhile, lion dancing is the only thing that has given Jae peace after his dad passed away. It's also what keeps him connected to his father's side of the family. Both Jae and his cousin Leslie notice Val at the Lunar New Year festival, and for some inexplicable reason, Jae hands Val a paper heart. But it's Leslie, with his K-Pop good looks, who starts to date Val. Jae still feels this connection with Val and feels it's somehow tied to how he feels about losing his father.

Both Val and Jae struggle with the spirits who haunt them as they are inextricably brought together in a love story that is satisfying, sweet, and moving.]]> 352 Gene Luen Yang 1250908264 Becket 5 4.38 2024
author: Gene Luen Yang
name: Becket
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/28
date added: 2025/03/04
shelves: read-in-2025, young-adult, bipoc, family-stuff, graphic-format, romantic, ya-2024
review:

]]> 214988436 A darkly humorous thriller about the ghosts that haunt the temples of sin and excess we call casino, and people who get caught up in a web resting on high stakes and low odds

Fleeing a recent breakup, Marion Lafournier, a mid-20s Ojibwe, seeks solace in the dim halls of the Hidden Atlantis Lake Resort & Casino, the reservation’s main tourist attraction and source of revenue, where once again he finds himself at a crossroads between worlds and spirits. 
For decades, a dark force has terrorized the Languille Lake reservation. A figure known only in whispers as a sandman in the shadows, he lurks in the casino leeching the dreams and ambitions from its citizens. Drawn by the siren song of the slot machines, Marion soon falls afoul of the sandman barely escaping the confrontation aided by the timely intervention of two casino security guards, his cousins Alana and Cherie. Meanwhile, Glenn Nielan, late out of the closet and aspiring to greatness, hopes to capture the faces of the land for a documentary while experiencing the thrill of a reservation casino again.  But all who choose to play the sandman’s wicked games are in danger of his hold.
We soon learn that Marion and Alana are the last members of the Bullhead clan, a family with ties to a sacred past, and a fierce determination to ensure their future. Alana with her Seven Fire Sight is the only person who grasps the danger the sandman poses. Aware of Marion’s ability to sometimes navigate the spirit world, she enlists his help in defeating this scourge.

But the power and reach of this menace go far beyond what Alana anticipated and she and Marion soon find themselves in a battle for the lives and souls of the reservation’s residents.]]> 272 Dennis E. Staples 1640096876 Becket 0 joey-tbr-horror 3.27
author: Dennis E. Staples
name: Becket
average rating: 3.27
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/04
shelves: joey-tbr-horror
review:

]]> 228046198 Hell's Heart is a queer speculative fiction retelling of Melville's classic story.

Here, a small party go hunting for a giant space creature �� and experience grand adventure, love and loss along the way.

Earth is a ruin, and the scattered remnants of humanity scavenge what they can from the stars. This under the watchful auspices of a grab-bag of collectives, corporations, and churches. These are all that remains of what we once called society. Having long exhausted any conventional sources of energy, life in the solar system is now sustained by a volatile, hallucinogenic substance �� this harvested from the brains of vast cetacean-like Leviathans that swim the atmospheric currents of Jupiter.

Finding herself with no money and little to occupy her groundside, the narrator (“I��) takes a commission aboard the hunter-barque Pequod as it sets out in pursuit of these Leviathans. However, once aboard, she finds herself pulled inexorably into the orbit of the barque’s captain, a charismatic but fanatically driven woman who the narrator names only as 'A'. As the Pequod plunges ever deeper into the turbulent, monster-haunted atmosphere of the gas giant, the narrator begins to lose herself in the eerie world of Leviathan-hunting and the captain’s increasingly insistent delusions. The only thing that might keep her grounded is the bond she develops with Q, a woman from the wreck of Old Earth, whose skin is marked with holographic light and who remembers things others have lost.]]> Alexis Hall 1035060531 Becket 0 to-read 0.0
author: Alexis Hall
name: Becket
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 53154461 An exciting teen coming-of-age epic from author Samuel Teer and debut graphic novel artist Mar Julia, Brownstone is a vivid, sweeping, ultimately hopeful story about navigating your heritage even when you feel like you don’t quite fit in.

Almudena has always wondered about the dad she never met.

Now, with her white mother headed on a once-in-a-lifetime trip without her, she’s left alone with her Guatemalan father for an entire summer. Xavier seems happy to see her, but he expects her to live in (and help fix up) his old, broken-down brownstone. And all along, she must navigate the language barrier of his rapid-fire Spanish—which she doesn’t speak.

As Almudena tries to adjust to this new reality, she gets to know the residents of Xavier’s Latin American neighborhood. Each member of the community has their own joys and heartbreaks as well as their own strong opinions on how this young Latina should talk, dress, and behave. Some can’t understand why she doesn’t know where she comes from. Others think she’s “not brown enough�� to fit in.

But time is running out for Almudena and Xavier to get to know each other, and the key to their connection may ultimately lie in bringing all these different elements together. Fixing a broken building is one thing, but turning these stubborn individuals into a found family might take more than this one summer.]]> 320 Samuel Teer 0358394740 Becket 4 4.27 2024
author: Samuel Teer
name: Becket
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/23
date added: 2025/02/27
shelves: read-in-2025, young-adult, bipoc, family-stuff, graphic-format, queer-youth, ya-2024
review:

]]> 217497829 “Come, and bring the there is justice to be done.��

Discover the magic of the Archipelago...

The Poisoned King is the dazzling second book in Katherine Rundell's epic and bestselling Impossible Creatures series.]]> 304 Katherine Rundell 0593809904 Becket 0 to-read 5.00 2025
author: Katherine Rundell
name: Becket
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 23841432 89 Ocean Vuong Becket 4 4.20 2016
author: Ocean Vuong
name: Becket
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/20
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves: adult, read-in-2025, bipoc, family-stuff, nonfiction, poetry-or-verse, queer-adult
review:

]]> 209455852 A prescient literary mystery about corporate espionage, family dynamics, and the follow-up to Jane Pek’s “thoroughly modern twist on classic detective fiction,�� The Verifiers (New York Times Book Review)“Exhilaratingly well-written. I loved it so much that I didn’t want it to end.�� —Emily St. John Mandel on The VerifiersClaudia Lin—mystery novel superfan and, until recently, clichéd underemployed English major—has scored her dream co-running Veracity, a dating detective agency whose mission is to determine if chronically online New Yorkers are telling the truth about themselves to their prospective partners. Unfortunately, along the way, she and her colleagues—tech wizard Squirrel, and the beautiful and intimidating Becks—have uncovered a nefarious AI conspiracy. And the corrupt corporate matchmakers may be resorting to murder to protect their secrets.Luckily, a client’s ex is ready to turn on his employers—slipping Claudia thumb drives and setting up secret meetings to exchange information about what the company is up to behind the scenes. But even as Claudia starts to get a feel for this new genre—just call her Lin, Claudia Lin—she's distracted by the romantic tension with both Becks and a flirtatious and charming target. There’s also the fear that her older brother, Charles, is unwittingly falling into the corporation's deadly web through his consulting work. How can you know who to trust if you are keeping secrets and lying to those you love? How real are the carefully constructed identities we present to the world, online and off? The Rivals simultaneously skewers and celebrates spy stories while also revealing the ways technology is reshaping who we think we are.]]> 416 Jane Pek 059347015X Becket 4 3.62 2024
author: Jane Pek
name: Becket
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/20
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves: adult, read-in-2025, adult-2024, bipoc, family-stuff, mystery, series, queer-adult
review:

]]> 211024867 The New York Times bestselling author of Rest Is Resistance guides us on a discovery of  how to escape from grind culture, wherever we can find it. The systems will never give us rest �� it is something we must create for ourselves and each other. We don’t believe we are worthy of rest unless we burn ourselves out to accomplish it. Our thinking has been limited by disconnection, sleep deprivation and the unattainable call for perfection. From visionary artist and founder of The Nap Ministry Tricia Hersey invites us to imagine a world where we subvert the narrative of productivity at all costs, and the lies of capitalism and white supremacy on which it is built, to recognize the innate divinity in all of us. Inspired by vintage hymnals, prayer books, and abolitionist pamphlets, We Will Rest! is a contemporary take on a sacred object and a liberation manual providing intimate wayfinding to those searching for rest and care. Tricia Hersey weaves together poetry, storytelling, powerful illustrations and resistance wisdom to provoke the creation of refusal strategies and trickster rebellion in the face of worker exploitation and machine-like expectations. There is another way. Focus on the escape. Focus on the transformation. We can just be. We are beautiful. We are enough. We are escape artists. We Will Rest!]]> 160 Tricia Hersey 0316365556 Becket 0 joey-tbr 4.16 2024
author: Tricia Hersey
name: Becket
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves: joey-tbr
review:

]]> 214274126 Father and child become buzzing bees, rustling trees, and more in this delightful make-believe romp from Caldecott Honor winner Shawn Harris.

The only thing better than playing make believe is playing make believe with your favorite grown-up! Especially when that grown-up’s imagination is as big as yours, and you both get to make all kinds of funny sounds. 

Fans of Shawn Harris’s Caldecott Honor-winning debut Have You Ever Seen a Flower? and illustrations in the Newbery Medal-winning The Eyes and the Impossible will find a new instant favorite in Let’s Be Bees. With bright, bold crayon illustrations, lilting, rhythmic words, and endless fodder for playing along, this is a read aloud guaranteed to bring on the giggles and requests to do it all again.]]> 40 Shawn Harris 0823457095 Becket 3 3.81
author: Shawn Harris
name: Becket
average rating: 3.81
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/18
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves: picture-books, read-in-2025, picture-books-2025
review:

]]> 212097589
It's August 1999. For twelve-year-old Michael Rosario, life at Fox Run Apartments in Red Knot, Delaware, is as ordinary as ever—except for the looming Y2K crisis and his overwhelming crush on his fifteen-year-old babysitter, Gibby. But when a disoriented teenage boy named Ridge appears out of nowhere, Michael discovers there is more to life than stockpiling supplies and pining over Gibby.

It turns out that Ridge is carefree, confident, and bold, things Michael wishes he could be. Unlike Michael, however, Ridge isn't where he belongs. When Ridge reveals that he's the world's first time traveler, Michael and Gibby are stunned but curious. As Ridge immerses himself in 1999—fascinated by microwaves, basketballs, and malls—Michael discovers that his new friend has a book that outlines the events of the next twenty years, and his curiosity morphs into something else: focused determination. Michael wants—no, needs—to get his hands on that book. How else can he prepare for the future? But how far is he willing to go to get it?

A story of time travel, friendship, found family, and first loves, this thematically rich novel is distinguished by its voice, character development, setting, and exploration of the issues that resonate with middle grade readers.]]> 5 Erin Entrada Kelly Becket 4 3.86 2024
author: Erin Entrada Kelly
name: Becket
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/15
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves: middle-grade, read-in-2025, audiobook, bipoc, middle-grade-2024, science-fiction
review:

]]> 60466301 Let this book be a celebration of queerness, Blackness, and love. Let these words be a modern church, these poems a holy space.

Rising star and spoken word poet Jae Nichelle debuts her luminous thoughts in God Themselves, a new collection of stirring poetry. Nichelle taps into her experiences of growing up in the South as a queer Black woman to courageously confront the affects of a forced religion and the inherent dangers of living life in a female body. God Themselves is divided into three equally moving sections: Everything, Everywhere, and Love. Nichelle braids her wisdom––as seen in the poem “What to Do When There’s Nothing You Can Do”––and witty generational humor––seen in "Sanctity: An Exposé"––into every poem. If you’ve ever contemplated who, what, and where God is, find comfort in these words.]]> Jae Nichelle Becket 4 4.11 2023
author: Jae Nichelle
name: Becket
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/12
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves: adult, read-in-2025, bipoc, queer-adult, poetry-or-verse, nonfiction, religion
review:

]]> 180724641
Adults ignore the climate crisis. Other kids Ash’s age are more interested in pop stars and popularity contests than in fighting for change. Even Ash’s family seems to be sleepwalking through life.

The only person who ever seemed to get Ash was their Grandpa Edwin. Before he died, he used to talk about building a secret cabin, deep in the California wilderness. Did he ever build it? What if it’s still there, waiting for him to come back…or for Ash to find it? To Ash, that maybe-mythical cabin is starting to feel like the perfect place for a fresh start and an escape from the miserable feeling of alienation that haunts their daily life.

But making the wilds your home isn’t easy. And as much as Ash wants to be alone…can they really be happy alone? Can they survive alone?

From New York Times –bestselling author and illustrator Jen Wang comes a singularly affecting story about self-discovery, self-reliance, and the choice to live when it feels like you have no place in the world.]]> 320 Jen Wang 1250754062 Becket 5 4.15 2024
author: Jen Wang
name: Becket
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/25
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves: tween, young-adult, read-in-2025, graphic-format, queer-youth, ya-2024, trans-nonbinary-gnc
review:

]]> 56179360
Shizuka Satomi made a deal with the to escape damnation, she must entice seven other violin prodigies to trade their souls for success. She has already delivered six. When Katrina Nguyen, a young transgender runaway, catches Shizuka's ear with her wild talent, Shizuka can almost feel the curse lifting. She's found her final candidate. But in a donut shop off a bustling highway in the San Gabriel Valley, Shizuka meets Lan Tran, retired starship captain, interstellar refugee, and mother of four. Shizuka doesn't have time for crushes or coffee dates, what with her very soul on the line, but Lan's kind smile and eyes like stars might just redefine a soul's worth. And maybe something as small as a warm donut is powerful enough to break a curse as vast as the California coastline. As the lives of these three women become entangled by chance and fate, a story of magic, identity, curses, and hope begins, and a family worth crossing the universe for is found.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> 372 Ryka Aoki 1250789060 Becket 0 to-read 4.03 2021
author: Ryka Aoki
name: Becket
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 185767247 336 Rick Bass 1640096302 Becket 4 4.05
author: Rick Bass
name: Becket
average rating: 4.05
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/28
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: adult, adult-2024, read-in-2024, nonfiction, browsed, science
review:

]]> 210669851 1 Tony Keith Jr. Becket 4 4.08
author: Tony Keith Jr.
name: Becket
average rating: 4.08
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/01
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: read-in-2025, young-adult, audiobook, bipoc, nonfiction, biography-or-memoir, poetry-or-verse, queer-youth, ya-2024
review:

]]> 207611551 A wandering fortune teller finds an unexpected family in this warm and wonderful debut fantasy, perfect for readers of Travis Baldree and Sangu Mandanna.

Tao is an immigrant fortune teller, traveling between villages with just her trusty mule for company. She only tells "small" fortunes: whether it will hail next week; which boy the barmaid will kiss; when the cow will calve. She knows from bitter experience that big fortunes come with big consequences��

Even if it’s a lonely life, it’s better than the one she left behind. But a small fortune unexpectedly becomes something more when a (semi) reformed thief and an ex-mercenary recruit her into their desperate search for a lost child. Soon, they’re joined by a baker with a knead for adventure, and—of course—a slightly magical cat.

Tao sets down a new path with companions as big-hearted as her fortunes are small. But as she lowers her walls, the shadows of her past are closing in—and she’ll have to decide whether to risk everything to preserve the family she never thought she could have.]]> 336 Julie Leong 0593815912 Becket 3 3.82 2024
author: Julie Leong
name: Becket
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/24
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: adult, adult-2024, audiobook, fantasy, read-in-2025
review:

]]> 40876250
The brand new series will be available in October 2018 and will focus on Shuri's journey in the face of a tragic event: Black Panther is lost in a mission in space, leaving Wakandans asking questions about who should lead in his absence. As his little sister, and the next in line for the throne, Shuri is pulled from her happy place (her lab full of impossibly genius, high-tech gadgets) and into a much heftier role. According to the official Marvel synopsis, "Shuri is happiest in a lab, surrounded by gadgets of her own creation. She’d rather be testing gauntlets than throwing them. But a nation without a leader is a vulnerable one �� and Shuri may have to choose between Wakanda’s welfare and her own."]]> Nnedi Okorafor Becket 0 to-read 4.05 2018
author: Nnedi Okorafor
name: Becket
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 199531795
Eleanor has always wanted to do everything "right," including falling in love—but she’s never met a boy she was interested in. She’d much rather spend time with her best friend, George, and beloved cousin Charlotte. However, when a new suitor comes to town, she finds her closest friendships threatened, forcing her to rethink what "right" means and confront feelings she never knew she had.

Inspired by Jane Austen and queer history, I Shall Never Fall in Love shines a light on what it means to be true to yourself and rewrites the rules for what makes a happily ever after.]]> 288 Hari Conner 035868238X Becket 4 4.28 2024
author: Hari Conner
name: Becket
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/22
date added: 2025/01/22
shelves: ya-2025, young-adult, bipoc, graphic-format, historical, queer-youth, romantic
review:
With research notes in the backmatter, even! A delight.
]]> 58065392 Introducing a sharp-witted heroine for the 21st century: a new amateur sleuth exploring the landscape—both physical and virtual—of New York in a debut novel about love, technology, and murder.

Claudia Lin is used to disregarding her fractious family’s model-minority expectations: she has no interest in finding either a conventional career or a nice Chinese boy. She’s also used to keeping secrets from them, such as that she prefers girls—and that she's just been stealth-recruited by Veracity, a referrals-only online-dating detective agency.

A lifelong mystery reader who wrote her senior thesis on Jane Austen, Claudia believes she's landed her ideal job. But when a client goes missing, Claudia breaks protocol to investigate—and uncovers a maelstrom of personal and corporate deceit. Part literary mystery, part family story, The Verifiers is a clever and incisive examination of how technology shapes our choices, and the nature of romantic love in the digital age.]]> 358 Jane Pek 0593313798 Becket 4 3.46 2022
author: Jane Pek
name: Becket
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/19
date added: 2025/01/22
shelves: adult, bipoc, mystery, queer-adult, series, read-in-2025
review:

]]> 199532055 A poignant and enchanting novel about a magical bookstore that transports a trans man through time and brings him face-to-face with his teenage self, offering him the chance of a lifetime to examine his life and identity to find a new beginning.

When Darby finds himself unemployed and in need of a fresh start, he moves back to the small Illinois town he left behind. But Oak Falls has changed almost as much as he has since he left.

One thing is familiar: In Between Books, Darby’s refuge growing up and eventual high school job. When he walks into the bookstore now, Darby feels an eerie sense of déjà vu—everything is exactly the same. Even the newspapers are dated 2009. And behind the register is a teen who looks a lot like Darby did at sixteen. . . who just might give Darby the opportunity to change his own present for the better—if he can figure out how before his connection to the past vanishes forever.

The In-Between Bookstore is a stunning novel of love, self-discovery, and the choices that come with both, for anyone who has ever wondered what their life might be like if they had the chance to go back and take a bigger, braver risk.]]> 272 Edward Underhill 0063357631 Becket 0 to-read 3.50 2025
author: Edward Underhill
name: Becket
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 209720581 Two video game creators go head-to-head in this delightful, queer enemies-to-lovers workplace romance debut.

Cat Li cares about two things: video games and swoony romances. The former means there hasn't been much of the latter in her (real) life, but when she lands her dream job writing the love storylines for Compass Hollow—the next big thing in games—she knows it’s all been worth it. Then she meets her boss: the infamous Andi Zhang, who’s not only an arrogant hater of happily-ever-afters determined to keep Cat from doing her job but also impossibly, annoyingly hot.

As Compass Hollow’s narrative director, Andi couldn’t care less about love—in-game or out. After getting doxxed by internet trolls three years ago, Andi’s been trying to prove to the gaming world that they’re a serious gamedev. Their plan includes writing the best game possible, with zero lovey-dovey stuff. That is, until the man funding the game’s development insists Andi add romance in order to make the story “more appealing to female gamers.��

Forced to give Cat a chance, Andi begrudgingly realizes there’s more to Cat than romantic idealism and, okay, a cute smile. But admitting that would mean giving up the single-player life that has kept their heart safe for years. And when Cat uncovers a behind-the-scenes plan to destroy Andi’s career, the two will have to put their differences aside and find a way to work together before it’s game over.]]> 320 Tara Tai 1639109935 Becket 0 to-read 4.01 2025
author: Tara Tai
name: Becket
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 204316914 A librarian with a knack for solving murders realizes there is something decidedly supernatural afoot in her little town in this cozy fantasy mystery.

Librarian Sherry Pinkwhistle keeps finding bodies—and solving murders. But she's concerned by just how many killers she's had to track down in her quaint village. None of her neighbors seem surprised by the rising body count...but Sherry is becoming convinced that whatever has been causing these deaths is unnatural. But when someone close to Sherry ends up dead, and her cat, Lord Thomas Crowell, becomes possessed by what seems to be an ancient demon, Sherry begins to think she’s going to need to become an exorcist as well as an amateur sleuth. With the help of her town's new priest, and an assortment of friends who dub themselves the "Demon-Hunting Society," Sherry will have to solve the murder and get rid of a demon. This riotous mix of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Murder, She Wrote is a lesson for demons and murderers.

Never mess with a librarian.]]> 339 C.M. Waggoner 1984805886 Becket 4 3.39 2024
author: C.M. Waggoner
name: Becket
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/30
date added: 2024/12/30
shelves: adult, adult-2024, humor, mystery, paranormal
review:

]]> 200982286 From the New York Times–bestselling author of All Boys Aren’t Blue comes an empowering set of essays about Black and Queer icons from the Harlem Renaissance.

In Flamboyants, George M. Johnson celebrates writers, performers, and activists from 1920s Black America whose sexualities have been obscured throughout history. Through 14 essays, Johnson reveals how American culture has been shaped by icons who are both Black and Queer �� and whose stories deserve to be celebrated in their entirety.

Interspersed with personal narrative, powerful poetry, and illustrations by award-winning illustrator Charly Palmer, Flamboyants looks to the past for understanding as to how Black and Queer culture has defined the present and will continue to impact the future. With candid prose and an unflinching lens towards truth and hope, George M. Johnson brings young adult readers an inspiring collection of biographies that will encourage teens today to be unabashed in their layered identities.]]> 144 George M. Johnson 0374391246 Becket 5 4.24
author: George M. Johnson
name: Becket
average rating: 4.24
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/18
date added: 2024/12/18
shelves: tween, ya-2024, read-in-2024, young-adult, biography-or-memoir, bipoc, queer-youth, nonfiction, browsed
review:

]]> 50680 Publishers Weekly "This is an amazing collection of poetry by . . . one of our best contemporary poets. . . . Her poems are powerful, often political, always lyrical and profoundly moving."��Chuckanut Reader Magazine "What a deep pleasure to encounter Audre Lorde's most potent genius . . . you will welcome the sheer accessibility and the force and beauty of this volume."��Out Magazine]]> 489 Audre Lorde 0393319725 Becket 0 4.44 1997
author: Audre Lorde
name: Becket
average rating: 4.44
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at: 2024/03/21
date added: 2024/12/18
shelves: adult, read-in-2024, bipoc, poetry-or-verse, queer-adult, paused
review:

]]> 220268768 Jason Reynolds tackles it—you know…it—from the guy’s perspective in this stream of consciousness story of a teen boy about to experience a huge first.

Twenty-four months ago: Neon gets chased by a dog all around the parking lot of a church. Not his finest moment. And definitely one he would have loved to forget if it weren’t for the dog’s owner: Aria. Dressed in sweats, a t-shirt, hair in a ponytail. Aria. Way more than fine.

Twenty-four weeks ago: Neon’s dad insists on talking to him about tenderness and intimacy. Neon and Aria are definitely in love, and while they haven’t taken that next big step…yet, they’ve starting talking about…that.

Twenty-four days ago: Neon’s mom finds her—gulp—bra in his room. Hey! No judging! Those hook thingies are complicated! So he’d figured he’d better practice, what with the big day only a month away.

Twenty-four minutes ago: Neon leaves his shift at work at his dad’s bingo hall, making sure to bring some chicken tenders for Aria. They’re not candlelight and they definitely aren’t caviar, but they are her favorite.

And right this second? Neon is locked in Aria’s bathroom, completely freaking out because twenty-four seconds from now he and Aria are about to…about to�� Well, they won’t do anything if he can’t get out of his own head (all the advice, insecurities, and what ifs) and out of this bathroom!]]> 5 Jason Reynolds 1668118688 Becket 5 3.97 2024
author: Jason Reynolds
name: Becket
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/21
date added: 2024/12/18
shelves: read-in-2024, young-adult, ya-2024, audiobook, bipoc, romantic
review:

]]> 63249742
Pedro Martín has grown up hearing stories about his abuelito—his legendary crime-fighting, grandfather who was once a part of the Mexican Revolution! But that doesn't mean Pedro is excited at the news that Abuelito is coming to live with their family. After all, Pedro has 8 brothers and sisters and the house is crowded enough! Still, Pedro piles into the Winnebago with his family for a road trip to Mexico to bring Abuelito home, and what follows is the trip of a lifetime, one filled with laughs and heartache. Along the way, Pedro finally connects with his abuelito and learns what it means to grow up and find his grito.]]> 320 Pedro Martín 0593462289 Becket 4 4.21 2023
author: Pedro Martín
name: Becket
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/07
date added: 2024/12/18
shelves: middle-grade, read-in-2024, tween, biography-or-memoir, bipoc, family-stuff, graphic-format, middle-grade-2023, nonfiction
review:

]]> 61775756 Night of the Living Queers is a YA horror anthology that explores a night when anything is possible exclusively featuring queer authors of color putting fresh spins on classic horror tropes and tales.

No matter its name or occasion, Halloween is more than a Hallmark holiday, it’s a symbol of transformation. NIGHT OF THE LIVING QUEERS is a YA horror anthology that explores how Halloween can be more than just candies and frights, but a night where anything is possible. Each short story will be told through the lens of a different BIPOC teen and the Halloween night that changes their lives forever. Creative, creepy, and queer, this collection will bring fresh terror, heart, and humor to young adult literature.

Contributors include editors Alex Brown and Shelly Page, Kalynn Bayron, Ryan Douglass, Sara Farizan, Maya Gittelman, Kosoko Jackson, Em Liu, Vanessa Montalban, Ayida Shonibar, Tara Sim, Trang Thanh Tran, and Rebecca Kim Wells.]]> 282 Shelly Page 1250892961 Becket 4 3.88 2023
author: Shelly Page
name: Becket
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/22
date added: 2024/12/18
shelves: browsed, read-in-2024, bipoc, young-adult, paranormal, horror, queer-youth, short-stories, ya-2023
review:

]]> 111673245
Chester plans to have a salad for lunch, but in order to do that, he'll need vegetables. So, off he goes to the community garden, except he quickly learns that he won't be dressing a salad anytime soon. Instead, the vegetables start dressing him down. According to them, "vegetables" don't exist!

I know what you are thinking: What the bell pepper? Vegetables are totally real! But here's the thing: Kale is just a leaf, broccoli is a flower, potatoes are roots, and celery...well, stalks. Thanks to a lively, sassy cast of talking "veggies," Chester learns a valuable lesson about categories and how they shape our understanding of the world.

With a slyly informative text and illustrations that will crack readers up, the schooling in There's No Such Thing As Vegetables will be easy to digest and is a total treat.]]> 40 Kyle Lukoff 1250867843 Becket 4 4.00
author: Kyle Lukoff
name: Becket
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/21
date added: 2024/12/18
shelves: picture-books, picture-books-2024, read-in-2024
review:

]]> 221986732
It's been five years since Charlotte Donovan was ditched at the altar by her ex-fiancée, and she’s doing more than okay. Sure, her single mother never checks in, but she has her strings ensemble, the Rosalind Quartet, and her life in New York is a dream come true. As the holidays draw near, her ensemble mate Sloane persuades Charlotte and the rest of the quartet to spend Christmas with her family in Colorado—it is much cozier and quieter than Manhattan, and it would guarantee more practice time for the quartet’s upcoming tour. But when Charlotte arrives, she discovers that Sloane’s sister Adele also brought a friend home—and that friend is none other than her ex, Brighton. All Brighton Fairbrook wanted was to have the holliest, jolliest Christmas—and try to forget that her band kicked her out. But instead, she’s stuck pretending like she and her ex are strangers—which proves to be difficult when Sloane and Adele’s mom signs them all up for a series of Christmas dating events. Charlotte and Brighton are soon entrenched in horseback riding and cookie decorating, but Charlotte still won’t talk to her. Brighton can hardly blame her after what she did. After a few days, however, things start to slip through. Memories. Music. The way they used to play together—Brighton on guitar, Charlotte on her violin—and it all feels painfully familiar. But it’s all in the past and nothing can melt the ice in their hearts...right?]]> 11 Ashley Herring Blake Becket 0 3.46 2024
author: Ashley Herring Blake
name: Becket
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/15
date added: 2024/12/18
shelves: adult, adult-2024, read-in-2024, audiobook, queer-adult, romance
review:
Gonna leave this one unrated because one of the protagonists annoyed the hell out of me for personal reasons unrelated to the writing quality. That said, I still listened to the whole book.
]]> 205977739
Mal and Christopher embark on a wild adventure, racing from island to island, searching for someone who can explain why the magic is fading and why magical creatures are suddenly dying. They consult sphinxes, battle kraken, and negotiate with dragons. But the closer they get to the dark truth of what's happening, the clearer it becomes: no one else can fix this. If the Archipelago is to be saved, Mal and Christopher will have to do it themselves.]]> 368 Katherine Rundell 0593809866 Becket 5 4.13 2023
author: Katherine Rundell
name: Becket
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/15
date added: 2024/12/18
shelves: middle-grade, middle-grade-2024, read-in-2024, tween, fantasy
review:
This book made me cry. Twice. How very dare.
]]> 111673410
The author of the New York Times best-selling Check, Please series, Ngozi Ukazu returns with debut artist Madeline Rupert to bring an energetic young adult story about authenticity, old vs. new, and college failure. It also poses the question: “Is art school worth it?”]]> 288 Ngozi Ukazu 1250193516 Becket 0 to-read 4.10 2024
author: Ngozi Ukazu
name: Becket
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 185767242
Drawing on a rich family archive as well as the anthropological work of her late great-grandmother, Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe explores themes ranging from indigenous identity and stereotypes to cultural displacement and environmental degradation to understand what our experiences teach us about the power of community, commitment, and conscientious honesty.

Unapologetically punk, the essays in Thunder Song segue between the miraculous and the mundane, the spiritual and the physical, as they examine the role of art--in particular music--and community in helping a new generation of indigenous people claim the strength of their heritage while defining their own path in the contemporary world.]]> 256 Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe 1640096353 Becket 0 to-read 4.42 2024
author: Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe
name: Becket
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 208840291 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Braiding Sweetgrass, a bold and inspiring vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world.

As indigenous scientist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most? Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition, and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love.

Meanwhile, the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity, interconnectedness, and gratitude. The tree distributes its wealth—its abundance of sweet, juicy berries—to meet the needs of its natural community. And this distribution insures its own survival. As Kimmerer explains, “Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity, where wealth comes from the quality of your relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency.”]]> 112 Robin Wall Kimmerer 1668072246 Becket 0 to-read 4.39 2024
author: Robin Wall Kimmerer
name: Becket
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 206041532
Aboard are the heirs of the twelve provinces of Concordia, each graced with a unique and secret magical ability known as a Blessing.

Except one: Ganymedes Piscero - class clown, slacker, and all-round disappointment.

When a beloved heir is murdered, everyone is a suspect. Stuck at sea and surrounded by powerful people without a Blessing to protect him, odds of survival are slim.

But as the bodies pile higher, Ganymedes must become the hero he was not born to be. Can he unmask the killer and their blessing before this bloody crusade reaches the shores of Concordia?

Or will the empire as he knows it fall?]]> Frances White Becket 5 3.86 2024
author: Frances White
name: Becket
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/10
date added: 2024/12/10
shelves: adult, adult-2024, audiobook, fantasy, queer-adult, science-fiction
review:
11/10 audiobook experience. I already knew Nathan Foad was hilarious and talented, but this audiobook is next level.
]]> 61753288
But after an assassin takes Reyna hostage, she decides she’s thoroughly done risking her life for a self-centered queen. Meanwhile, Kianthe has been waiting for a chance to flee responsibility–all the better that her girlfriend is on board. Together, they settle in Tawney, a town that boasts more dragons than people, and open the shop of their dreams.

What follows is a cozy tale of mishaps, mysteries, and a murderous queen throwing the realm’s biggest temper tantrum. In a story brimming with hurt/comfort and quiet fireside conversations, these two women will discover just what they mean to each other�� and the world.]]> 388 Rebecca Thorne Becket 3 3.71 2022
author: Rebecca Thorne
name: Becket
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/06
date added: 2024/12/10
shelves: adult, read-in-2024, fantasy, queer-adult, series, to-read
review:

]]> 12844430
Narrated by the author.]]> 9 Jenny Lawson 1611760852 Becket 3 3.95 2012
author: Jenny Lawson
name: Becket
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2015/11/30
date added: 2024/11/25
shelves: adult, read-in-2015, audiobook, biography-or-memoir, mental-illness, family-stuff, nonfiction
review:

]]> 218477698
Enter: Bea Veracruz and Jorge Barrera. They’re the only two members of Jasmine's middle school's Gay Straight Alliance and they’re already obsessed with all things supernatural. Bea wants to prove herself to her paranormal investigator parents and Jorge is determined to overcome his fear of the beyond. And when Jasmine confesses she’s been tormented by a ghost for years, they not only believe her, they’re thrilled!

Together they set out to prove that Jasmine’s not just acting out after her father’s death–ghosts are real and Jasmine is haunted. But not everyone agrees how to deal with the departed. As Jasmine’s hauntings increase in intensity, her resentment builds. Why is her Mami so secretive about her past? Why is she the center of such a terrible vortex of supernatural activity? And why hasn’t her Papi ever reached out to her since he passed?

In order to face her ghosts—both internal and external—Jasmine must come to terms with her own history.]]> 1 Mark Oshiro Becket 4 4.00 2024
author: Mark Oshiro
name: Becket
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/14
date added: 2024/11/21
shelves: middle-grade, middle-grade-2024, read-in-2024, tween, audiobook, bipoc, grief, paranormal, queer-youth
review:

]]> 57366942
But during the soiree, there’s a crash from inside the house, and when the Marlow Murder Club rush to investigate, they are shocked to find the groom-to-be crushed to death in his study.

The study was locked from the inside, so the police don’t consider the death suspicious. But Judith disagrees. As far as she's concerned, Peter was murdered! And it’s up to the Marlow Murder Club to find the killer before he or she strikes again…]]> 366 Robert Thorogood 0008238316 Becket 0 3.88 2023
author: Robert Thorogood
name: Becket
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/21
shelves: adult, read-in-2024, mystery, series, unfinished
review:

]]> 63007223
“Lucianovic demonstrates a keen, child-friendly understanding of what it’s like to master a new skill. . . The energetic, loosely drawn mixed-media illustrations zing with color. . . It’s swing, hit, and no miss with this rip-roaring charmer.”—starred, Kirkus Reviews

"... legitimately one of my favorites of the year ... Humor and heart. Beautiful art and a smart text. A familiar concept but unfamiliar in a picture book until now. Memorable writing ... It has accessed, by whatever means, the magic required to make a title go from merely good to great." —Betsy Bird, School Library Journal]]> Stephanie V.W. Lucianovic Becket 5 4.40 2024
author: Stephanie V.W. Lucianovic
name: Becket
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/05
date added: 2024/11/05
shelves: picture-books, picture-books-2024, read-in-2024
review:

]]> 201750777 An alien invasion story with a message about what it means to be human. When three mysterious visitors from "Europe" crash-land in Mr. Li's field, he does what any good host he invites them back to his farmhouse and offers to help fix up their "car". No, there's nothing strange about these guests at all. Just like other humans, they "make business", "play sportsball" and "wear hat". As the townsfolk also come to the aid of the visitors and the gathering turns into a little party, interplanetary relations reach an all-time high.]]> 48 X. Fang 1774882027 Becket 5 4.41 2024
author: X. Fang
name: Becket
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/05
date added: 2024/11/05
shelves: read-in-2024, picture-books-2024, picture-books, humor
review:

]]> 195660496
Tall. High as the clouds.
Strong as a horse’s back.
Like a cowboy.

In the early hours before dawn, a young girl and her father greet their horses and ride together through the waking city streets. As they trot along, Daddy tells cowboy stories filled with fun and community, friendship, discovery, and pride. Seeing her city from a new vantage point and feeling seen in a new way, the child discovers that she too is a cowboy—strong and confident in who she is.]]> 48 Stephanie Seales 1419760815 Becket 5 4.18 2024
author: Stephanie Seales
name: Becket
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/05
date added: 2024/11/05
shelves: picture-books, read-in-2024, picture-books-2024, bipoc, family-stuff
review:

]]> 34419228 An "astounding" (Terrance Hayes) debut collection of poems - Winner of the 2016 National Poetry Series Competition

In this ---powerful debut collection, sam sax explores and explodes the linkages between desire, addiction, and the history of mental health. These brave, formally dexterous poems examine antiquated diagnoses and procedures from hysteria to lobotomy; offer meditations on risky sex; and take up the poet's personal and family histories as mental health patients and practitioners. Ultimately, Madness attempts to build a queer lineage out of inherited language and cultural artifacts; these poems trouble the static categories of sanity, heterosexuality, masculinity, normality, and health. sax's innovative collection embodies the strange and disjunctive workings of the mind as it grapples to make sense of the world around it.]]> 96 Sam Sax 0143131702 Becket 4 4.24 2017
author: Sam Sax
name: Becket
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/05
date added: 2024/11/05
shelves: adult, read-in-2024, mental-illness, poetry-or-verse, queer-adult
review:

]]> 202468447 To save both her town and the woman who loves her against all odds, a witch haunted by loss must reckon with her turbulent past.

Even in a family of chaotic necromancers, Daria 'Dasha' Avramov has always been an outlier. An event planner at the Arcane Emporium occult megastore, Dasha is also a devil eater: a rare witch with a natural affinity for banishing demons and traversing the veil.
Still grieving the loss of her parents and plagued by a dangerous obsession with what lies beyond the other side of the veil, Dasha is both fiery and guarded, an expert at dodging commitment. Her one real regret is a devastating breakup with Ivy Thorn.
When they are forced to work together to plan a festival, Dasha hopes that sparks might fly once again. But as they confront the fault lines and passion lingering between them, Dasha and Ivy must also stand against an otherworldly threat unlike anything Thistle Grove has faced before.]]> 336 Lana Harper 0593637984 Becket 3 3.70 2024
author: Lana Harper
name: Becket
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/04
date added: 2024/11/05
shelves: adult, adult-2024, read-in-2024, fantasy, queer-adult, paranormal, romance, grief
review:

]]> 199531723 Murder, She Wrote meets #MeToo in this witty locked room mystery and literary satire by New York Times bestselling team of Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White.

There’s been a sensational murder at historic Castle Kinloch, a gothic fantasy of grey granite on a remote island in the Highlands of Scotland. Literary superstar Brett Saffron Presley has been found dead—under bizarre circumstances—in the castle tower’s book-lined study. Years ago, Presley purchased the castle as a showpiece for his brand and to lure paying guests with a taste for writerly glamour. Now it seems, the castle has done him in…or, possibly, one of the castle’s guests has. Detective Chief Inspector Euan McIntosh, a local with no love for this literary American show-off (or Americans in general), finds himself with the unenviable task of extracting statements from three American lady novelists. 

The prime suspects are Kat de Noir, a slinky, sexy erotica writer; Cassie Pringle, a Southern mom of six juggling multiple cozy mystery series; and Emma Endicott, a New England blue blood and author of critically acclaimed historical fiction. The women claim to be best friends writing a book a historical novel about the castle’s lurid past and its debauched laird, who himself ended up creatively murdered. But the authors�� stories about how they know Brett Saffron Presley don’t quite line up, and the detective is getting increasingly suspicious. 

Why did the authors really come to Castle Kinloch? Is the murder of the long-ago laird somehow connected with the playboy author’s unfortunate demise? And what really happened the night of the great Kinloch ceilidh, when Brett Saffron Presley skipped the folk dancing for a rendezvous with death? 

A crafty locked-room mystery, a pointed satire about the literary world, and a tale of unexpected friendship and romance—this novel has it all, as only three bestselling authors can tell it!���ձ�> 404 Beatriz Williams 0063259869 Becket 0 to-read 3.28 2024
author: Beatriz Williams
name: Becket
average rating: 3.28
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 123284932 A quirky group of seniors attempts to solve one murder while covering up another—with the help of an enterprising tortoise—in this twisty, darkly funny mystery from the author of Three Bags Full.

It has been an eventful morning for Agnes Sharp and the other inhabitants of Sunset Hall, a house share for the old and unruly in the sleepy English countryside. Although they have had some issues (misplaced reading glasses, conflicting culinary tastes, decreasing mobility, and unruly grandsons), nothing prepares them for an unexpected visit from a police officer with some shocking news. A body has been discovered next door. Everyone puts on a long face for show, but they are secretly relieved the body in question is not the one they’re currently hiding in the shed (sorry, Lillith).

It seems the answer to their little problem with Lillith may have fallen right into their lap. All they have to do is find out who murdered their neighbor, so they can pin Lillith’s death on them, thus killing two (old) birds with one stone (cold killer).

With their plan sorted, Agnes and her geriatric gang spring into action. After all, everybody likes a good mystery. Besides, the more suspicion they can cast about, surely the less will land on them. To investigate, they will step out of their comfort zone, into the not-so-idyllic village of Duck End and tangle with sinister bakers, broken stairlifts, inept criminals, the local authorities, and their own dark secrets.]]> 360 Leonie Swann 1641294337 Becket 0 to-read 3.43 2020
author: Leonie Swann
name: Becket
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 212638460 “What if I told you that the feeling we call love is actually the feeling of metaphysical recognition, when your soul remembers someone from a previous life?��

In the year 4 BCE, an ambitious courtier is called upon to seduce the young emperor—but quickly discovers they are both ruled by blood, sex and intrigue.

In 1740, a lonely innkeeper agrees to help a mysterious visitor procure a rare medicine, only to unleash an otherworldly terror instead.

And in present-day Los Angeles, a college student meets a beautiful stranger and cannot shake the feeling they’ve met before.

Across these seemingly unrelated timelines woven together only by the twists and turns of fate, two men are reborn, lifetime after lifetime. Within the treacherous walls of an ancient palace and the boundless forests of the Asian wilderness to the heart-pounding cement floors of underground rave scenes, our lovers are inexplicably drawn to each other, constantly tested by the worlds around them.

As their many lives intertwine, they begin to realize the power of their undying love—a power that transcends time itself…but one that might consume them both.

An unpredictable roller coaster of a debut novel, The Emperor and the Endless Palace is a genre-bending romantasy that challenges everything we think we know about true love.

Runtime: 9 hrs 52 min]]> 10 Justinian Huang 1488229929 Becket 4 3.42 2024
author: Justinian Huang
name: Becket
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/20
date added: 2024/10/25
shelves: adult-2024, read-in-2024, adult, audiobook, bipoc, fantasy, historical, queer-adult, romance
review:

]]> 205438866 A courageous, vulnerable, and spellbinding memoir that explores with visceral impact what happens when harm starts at home—and is exalted as God’s will. For readers of Unfollow and Jesus Land, You Lied to Me About God explores spiritual abuse, intergenerational trauma, and weaponized faithAt nine years old, Jamie Marich asked God to end it all.Doing it herself would be an irrevocable an affront to the church and her father’s God. She prayed instead for the rapture, an accident, a passive death—anything to stop the turmoil of feeling wrong in her body; wrong in her desires; wrong in her faith in a merciful God that could love her wholly as she was.You Lied to Me About God explores the schisms that erupt when faith is weaponized, when abuse collides with the push-and-pull of a mixed religious upbringing tyhat tells no matter which path you choose—no matter what you know in your heart to be true—you’re probably damned.With resilience, strength, and gut-punching clarity, Marich takes readers through a tumultuous coming-of-age marked by addiction, escapism, spiritual manipulation, misogyny, and abuse. She shares with unflinching detail the complicity of her mother’s silence and the lengths her father went to assert dominance and control over her body, her desires, her identity—and even her eternal soul—”for her own good�� and with a side of televangelistic hellfire.Hitting a breaking point, Marich embarks on from shrines in Croatia to ashrams in Florida, she reckons with what it means to come home to a faith that heals and accepts her wholly as she in her queerness, in her body, and in her deep relationship to an expansive and loving God.]]> 296 Jamie Marich Becket 0 joey-tbr 3.96
author: Jamie Marich
name: Becket
average rating: 3.96
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/25
shelves: joey-tbr
review:

]]> 8032326
Flavia had asked the old Gypsy woman to tell her fortune, but never expected to stumble across the poor soul, bludgeoned in the wee hours in her own caravan. Was this an act of retribution by those convinced that the soothsayer had abducted a local child years ago? Certainly Flavia understands the bliss of settling scores; revenge is a delightful pastime when one has two odious older sisters. But how could this crime be connected to the missing baby? Had it something to do with the weird sect who met at the river to practice their secret rites? While still pondering the possibilities, Flavia stumbles upon another corpse—that of a notorious layabout who had been caught prowling about the de Luce’s drawing room.

Pedaling Gladys, her faithful bicycle, across the countryside in search of clues to both crimes, Flavia uncovers some odd new twists. Most intriguing is her introduction to an elegant artist with a very special object in her possession—a portrait that sheds light on the biggest mystery of all: Who is Flavia?

As the red herrings pile up, Flavia must sort through clues fishy and foul to untangle dark deeds and dangerous secrets.


From the Hardcover edition.]]> 11 Alan Bradley 0307576434 Becket 3 3.85 2011
author: Alan Bradley
name: Becket
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2012/10/16
date added: 2024/10/21
shelves: adult, audiobook, historical, mystery, read-in-2012, series
review:

]]> 199352366
Time apart has done them good. Theo has found confidence as a hustling bartender by night and aspiring sommelier by day, with a long roster of casual lovers. Kit, who never returned to America, graduated as the reigning sex god of his pastry school class and now bakes at one of the finest restaurants in Paris. Sure, nothing really compares to what they had, and life stretches out long and lonely ahead of them, but—yeah. It's in the past.

All that remains is the unused voucher for the European tour that never happened, good for 48 months after its original date and about to expire. Four years later, it seems like a great idea to finally take the trip. Solo. Separately.

It's not until they board the tour bus that they discover they've both accidentally had the exact same idea, and now they're trapped with each other for three weeks of stunning views, luscious flavors, and the most romantic cities of France, Spain, and Italy. It's fine. There's nothing left between them. So much nothing that, when Theo suggests a friendly wager to see who can sleep with their hot Italian tour guide first, Kit is totally game. And why stop there? Why not a full-on European hookup competition?

But sometimes a taste of everything only makes you crave what you can't have.]]> 432 Casey McQuiston 1250864054 Becket 5 3.86 2024
author: Casey McQuiston
name: Becket
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/27
date added: 2024/10/14
shelves: adult, read-in-2023, queer-adult, romance, adult-2024, trans-nonbinary-gnc, favorites
review:

]]> 43686673 What kind of revisions will make this a world/a story that is concerned with my people’s flourishing? How ought I pay attention, how to register perpetual bad news without letting it fatally intrude? Cameron Awkward-Rich is among the most bracing voices to emerge in recent years, a dazzling exemplar of poetry’s (and humanity’s) possibilities.]]> 80 Cameron Awkward-Rich 0892555033 Becket 5 4.40 2019
author: Cameron Awkward-Rich
name: Becket
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2023/03/22
date added: 2024/10/14
shelves: adult, read-in-2023, bipoc, poetry-or-verse, queer-adult, trans-nonbinary-gnc, favorites
review:

]]> 18406158 Janet and I just watched a NOVA special
and we're explaining to her mother
the age and size of the universe��
the hundred billion stars in the hundred billion galaxies.
Dotty lives at Dominican Oaks, making her way down the long hall.
How about the sun? she asks, a little farmshit in the endlessness.
I gather up a cantaloupe, a lime, a cherry,
and start revolving this salad around the chicken carcass.
This is the best scotch I ever tasted, Dotty says,
even though we gave her the Maker's Mark
while we're drinking Glendronach... Ellen Bass 's poetry includes  Like A Beggar (Copper Canyon Press, 2014),  The Human Line  (Copper Canyon Press, 2007), which was named a Notable Book by the  San Francisco Chronicle, and  Mules of Love (BOA, 2002), which won the Lambda Literary Award.  She co-edited (with Florence Howe) the groundbreaking  No More Masks! An Anthology of Poems by Women  (Doubleday, 1973). Her work has frequently been published in  The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, The New Republic, The Sun  and many other journals. She is co-author of several non-fiction books, including The Courage to A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse  (HarperCollins, 1988, 2008) which has sold over a million copies and been translated into twelve languages. She is part of the core faculty of the MFA writing program at Pacific University.]]> 70 Ellen Bass 155659464X Becket 4 4.42 2014
author: Ellen Bass
name: Becket
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2023/03/22
date added: 2024/10/14
shelves: adult, read-in-2023, poetry-or-verse, queer-adult, favorites
review:

]]> 28015100 Bestiary is a catalogue of creatures--from the whale and ostrich to the pegasus and chimera to the centaur and griffin. Among them too are poems of love, self-discovery, and travel, from "Out West" to "Back East." Lurking in the middle of this powerful and multifaceted collection is a wrenching sequence that wonders just who or what is the real monster inside this life of survival and reflection. Selected and with an introduction by the National Book Award winner Nikky Finney, Bestiary questions what makes us human, what makes us whole.]]> 80 Donika Kelly 1555977588 Becket 4 4.17 2016
author: Donika Kelly
name: Becket
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2023/04/26
date added: 2024/10/14
shelves: adult, read-in-2023, queer-adult, poetry-or-verse, survivors, bipoc, favorites
review:

]]> 44094069 Natalie Diaz’s highly anticipated follow-up to When My Brother Was an Aztec, winner of an American Book Award

Postcolonial Love Poem is an anthem of desire against erasure. Natalie Diaz’s brilliant second collection demands that every body carried in its pages—bodies of language, land, rivers, suffering brothers, enemies, and lovers—be touched and held as beloveds. Through these poems, the wounds inflicted by America onto an indigenous people are allowed to bloom pleasure and tenderness: “Let me call my anxiety, desire, then. / Let me call it, a garden.�� In this new lyrical landscape, the bodies of indigenous, Latinx, black, and brown women are simultaneously the body politic and the body ecstatic. In claiming this autonomy of desire, language is pushed to its dark edges, the astonishing dunefields and forests where pleasure and love are both grief and joy, violence and sensuality.

Diaz defies the conditions from which she writes, a nation whose creation predicated the diminishment and ultimate erasure of bodies like hers and the people she loves: “I am doing my best to not become a museum / of myself. I am doing my best to breathe in and out. // I am begging: Let me be lonely but not invisible.�� Postcolonial Love Poem unravels notions of American goodness and creates something more powerful than hope—a future is built, future being a matrix of the choices we make now, and in these poems, Diaz chooses love.]]> 107 Natalie Díaz 1644450143 Becket 5 4.33 2020
author: Natalie Díaz
name: Becket
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2023/06/14
date added: 2024/10/14
shelves: adult, read-in-2023, bipoc, poetry-or-verse, queer-adult, favorites
review:

]]> 13592222 Honored as a New York Times Book Review "100 Notable Books of 2013"

Honored by Cosmopolitan as the one poetry title on their list of “Best Books of the Year For Women, by Women��

"A heady, infectious celebration."��The New Yorker

"Shaughnessy's voice is smart, sexy, self-aware, hip . . . consistently wry, and ever savvy."��Harvard Review

Brenda Shaughnessy's heartrending third collection explores dark subjects—trauma, childbirth, loss of faith—and stark questions: What is the use of pain and grief? Is there another dimension in which our suffering might be transformed? Can we change ourselves? Yearning for new gods, new worlds, and new rules, she imagines a parallel existence in the galaxy of Andromeda.


Rave reviews for Our Andromeda
“Love is the fierce engine of this beautiful and necessary book of poems. Love is the high stakes, the whip of its power and grief and possibility for repair. Brenda Shaughnessy has brought her full self to bear in Our Andromeda, and the result is a book that should be read now because it is a collection whose song will endure.�� ��The New York Times Book Review
"It is a monumental work, and makes a hash of those tired superlatives that will no doubt crop up in subsequent reviews. But the truth is that I have no single opinion about this collection—how could I? The book is a series of narratives that resist interpretation but not feeling—except that I am certain it further establishes Shaughnessy’s particular genius, which is utterly poetic, but essayistic in scope, encompassing ideas about astronomy, illness, bodies, the family, 'normalcy,' home." ��The New Yorker

"Another Brooklyn poet, Marianne Moore, defined poetry as 'imaginary gardens, with real toads in them.' In Our Andromeda, Shaughnessy has imagined a universe, and in it, real love moves, quick with life." ��Publishers Weekly,starred review

“Brenda Shaughnessy…laments and sometimes makes narratives about the struggle to keep her small family together in the aftermath of a difficult birth. In the title poem, she posits a galaxy far, far away where familial love might overtake all woe and turmoil of the heart and body and mind. Once there, she says to her son, ‘you'll have the babyhood you deserved.�� She also delivers a number of lovely lyrics in a supple, plainly stated line; some merely expressive, some with a philosophically questioning air; on fate, dreams, the present time’s long gaze back at the past �� you know, all the good things poets write about.”�� Alan Cheuse, on NPR’s list ��5 Books of Poems to Get You Through the Summer��



“Brenda Shaughnessy’s work is a good place to start for any passionate woman feeling daunted by poetry. This book explores love and motherhood and the turbulent terrain of grief.”��Cosmopolitan

"Shaughnessy articulates, with force and clarity, the transformation that motherhood has required of her. Her poems are full of regret and ferocity."��Boston Review

"Brenda Shaughnessy explores the possibilities of a second chance in life and what could come of it. Enticing and thoughtful, Our Andromeda is a fine addition to contemporary poetry shelves." ��The Midwest Book Review

Brenda Shaughnessy was born in Okinawa, Japan and grew up in Southern California. She is the author of Human Dark with Sugar (Copper Canyon Press, 2008), winner of the James Laughlin Award and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Interior with Sudden Joy (FSG, 1999). Shaughnessy’s poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Harper's, The Nation, The Rumpus, The New Yorker, and The Paris Review. She is an Assistant Professor of English at Rutgers University, Newark, and lives in Brooklyn with her husband, son and daughter.]]> 131 Brenda Shaughnessy 1556594100 Becket 5 4.06 2012
author: Brenda Shaughnessy
name: Becket
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2023/07/10
date added: 2024/10/14
shelves: adult, read-in-2023, poetry-or-verse, favorites
review:

]]> 199415631
Arthur Parnassus lives a good life, built on the ashes of a bad one. He's the headmaster of a strange orphanage on a distant and peculiar island, and he hopes to soon be the adoptive father to the six magical and so-called dangerous children who live there.

Arthur works hard and loves with his whole heart so none of the children ever feel the neglect and pain that he once felt as an orphan on that very same island so long ago. And he is not alone: joining him is the love of his life, Linus Baker, a former caseworker in the Department in Charge of Magical Youth; Zoe Chapelwhite, the island's sprite; and her girlfriend, Mayor Helen Webb. Together, they will do anything to protect the children.

But when Arthur is summoned to make a public statement about his dark past, he finds himself at the helm of a fight for the future that his family, and all magical people, deserve.

And when a new magical child hopes to join them on their island home—one who finds power in calling himself monster, a name Arthur worked so hard to protect his children from—Arthur knows they're at a breaking point: their family will either grow stronger than ever or fall apart.

Welcome back to Marsyas Island. This is Arthur's story.]]> T.J. Klune 1250331609 Becket 4 4.10 2024
author: T.J. Klune
name: Becket
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/01
date added: 2024/10/03
shelves: adult, adult-2024, read-in-2024, audiobook, family-stuff, queer-adult, series, fantasy
review:

]]> 26067882
A new book from a poet whose work is "wild with imagination, unafraid, ambitious, inventive" (Jorie Graham)

Located in a menacing, gothic landscape, the poems that comprise A Woman of Property draw formal and imaginative boundaries against boundless mortal threat, but as all borders are vulnerable, this ominous collection ultimately stages an urgent and deeply imperiled boundary dispute where haunting, illusion, the presence of the past, and disembodied voices only further unsettle questions of material and spiritual possession. This is a theatrical book of dilapidated houses and overgrown gardens, of passageways and thresholds, edges, prosceniums, unearthings, and root systems. The unstable property lines here rove from heaven to hell, troubling proportion and upsetting propriety in the name of unfathomable propagation. Are all the gates in this book folly? Are the walls too easily scaled to hold anything back or impose self-confinement? What won't a poem do to get to the other side?]]> 96 Robyn Schiff 0143128272 Becket 3 3.88 2016
author: Robyn Schiff
name: Becket
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/03
date added: 2024/10/03
shelves: adult, read-in-2024, poetry-or-verse
review:

]]> 205307173
Readers are invited to The Pink Agave Motel, where brutality and intimacy ooze across the pages, exploring the depths of the unhinged imagination and how human desire unlocks the impulse to bite. Castro’s voice, influenced by Mexican folklore and a feminist perspective, illuminates a deeper view of how unrequited love affects every type of being alike.

The titular story focuses on Valentina, the proclaimed leader of a creature cohort, who manages hotel guests, until she is enlightened to a carnivorous death on the property. To avoid exposure that threatens her existence, she partners with (the hauntingly handsome) grieving friend of the dearly departed to solve the murder. Further within these tales, discover a woman who is a fish out of water drinking at a seaside honky tonk, the trapped guests who undergo sexual liberation, and aliens who find the sexiest of disguises.

These short stories evoke an alluring voice, sure to make the reader shiver in arousal and horror, never quite knowing what could happen next. Castro pushes past the limits of gothic terror and fantasy to carve a dangerous path of lust and violence, all throughout the reader’s charming stay at The Pink Agave Motel.]]> 244 V. Castro 1960988301 Becket 0 joey-tbr-horror 3.33
author: V. Castro
name: Becket
average rating: 3.33
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/03
shelves: joey-tbr-horror
review:

]]> 18487177
Now fierce Evaline and logical Mina must resolve their rivalry, navigate the advances of not just one but three mysterious gentlemen, and solve murder with only one clue: a strange Egyptian scarab. The stakes are high. If Stoker and Holmes don’t unravel why the belles of London society are in such danger, they’ll become the next victims.]]> 356 Colleen Gleason 145212986X Becket 0 3.68 2013
author: Colleen Gleason
name: Becket
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at: 2013/09/20
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves: ya-2013, read-in-2013, tween, young-adult, action-adventure, fantasy, historical, paranormal, series, steampunk, unfinished
review:
I can see the appeal for tweens and teens--lots of fun steampunk details, an interesting odd couple of heroines, a wild and multifaceted plot--but it just didn't have enough depth to keep me engaged.
]]> 33019405 Think of Sherlock Holmes and you think of mysteries, John Watson…and bees. While Arthur Conan Doyle sent the great detective to tend hives in retirement, here bees are front and centre in stories of love and romance, war and hope, of honey on the tongue and a sting in the tail. In tales of rare nectars, secret diaries, and the private language of lovers, bees may be the buzzing heart of the story…or as ephemeral as a murmur. What you'll find in every tale are John Watson and Sherlock Holmes helping one another, wanting one another, loving one another. To encourage a world where such love is seen for the precious thing it is, profits from "A Murmuring of Bees" will be donated to the It Gets Better Project.

]]> 194 Atlin Merrick 0993513670 Becket 0 4.62 2016
author: Atlin Merrick
name: Becket
average rating: 4.62
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at: 2021/05/04
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves: adult, read-in-2021, fandom, historical, short-stories, romantic, mystery, queer-adult
review:

]]> 53808128
But America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father—despite his hard-won citizenship—Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day.]]> 404 Malinda Lo 0525555269 Becket 4 4.23 2021
author: Malinda Lo
name: Becket
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2021/02/24
date added: 2024/09/24
shelves: read-in-2021, ya-2021, young-adult, bipoc, historical, queer-youth
review:

]]> 58864196 From the New York Times bestselling author of One Last Stop and Red, White & Royal Blue comes a romantic comedy about chasing down what you want, only to find what you need...

Chloe Green is so close to winning. After her moms moved her from SoCal to Alabama for high school, she’s spent the past four years dodging gossipy classmates and the puritanical administration of Willowgrove Christian Academy. The thing that’s kept her winning valedictorian. Her only prom queen Shara Wheeler, the principal’s perfect progeny.

But a month before graduation, Shara kisses Chloe and vanishes.

On a furious hunt for answers, Chloe discovers she’s not the only one Shara kissed. There’s also Smith, Shara’s longtime quarterback sweetheart, and Rory, Shara’s bad boy neighbor with a crush. The three have nothing in common except Shara and the annoyingly cryptic notes she left behind, but together they must untangle Shara’s trail of clues and find her. It’ll be worth it, if Chloe can drag Shara back before graduation to beat her fair and square.

Thrown into an unlikely alliance, chasing a ghost through parties, break-ins, puzzles, and secrets revealed on monogrammed stationery, Chloe starts to suspect there might be more to this small town than she thought. And maybe—probably not, but maybe—more to Shara, too.

Fierce, funny, and frank, Casey McQuiston's I Kissed Shara Wheeler is about breaking the rules, getting messy, and finding love in unexpected places.]]> 368 Casey McQuiston 1250244463 Becket 5 3.95 2022
author: Casey McQuiston
name: Becket
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2021/12/19
date added: 2024/09/21
shelves: read-in-2021, young-adult, mystery, queer-youth, romance, ya-2022
review:

]]> 35604658
Why did Gandhi hate iodine (I, 53)? How did radium (Ra, 88) nearly ruin Marie Curie's reputation? And why did tellurium (Te, 52) lead to the most bizarre gold rush in history?

The periodic table is a crowning scientific achievement, but it's also a treasure trove of adventure, greed, betrayal, and obsession. The fascinating tales in The Disappearing Spoon follow elements on the table as they play out their parts in human history, finance, mythology, conflict, the arts, medicine, and the lives of the (frequently) mad scientists who discovered them.

Adapted for a middle grade audience, the young readers edition of The Disappearing Spoon offers the material in a simple, easy-to-follow format, with approximately 20 line drawings and sidebars throughout. Students, teachers, and burgeoning science buffs will love learning about the history behind the chemistry.]]> 240 Sam Kean 0316388289 Becket 4 3.79 2010
author: Sam Kean
name: Becket
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2018/11/05
date added: 2024/09/20
shelves: browsed, read-in-2018, middle-grade-2018, middle-grade, tween, nonfiction, science
review:

]]> 39983671 A photographic exploration into the science of light.
The wonder of light has fascinated readers for ages. Walter Wick's mesmerizing photographs paired with simple text and scientific observations help readers understand the secrets and complexity of light.

You will learn what light is made of and how it fits alongside everything else in the world. Walter introduces readers into the mystery behind incandescence, light waves, the color spectrum, and iridescence as well as how we perceive light in our world and beyond.]]> 40 Walter Wick 0439165873 Becket 4 3.95
author: Walter Wick
name: Becket
average rating: 3.95
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2019/03/07
date added: 2024/09/20
shelves: read-in-2019, middle-grade-2019, picture-books, middle-grade, nonfiction, science
review:

]]> 62585992 A behavioral ecologist's riveting account of his decades-long obsession with octopuses: his discoveries, adventures, and new scientific understanding of their behaviors.

Of all the creatures of the deep blue, none is as captivating as the octopus. In Many Things Under a Rock, marine biologist David Scheel investigates four major mysteries about these elusive beings. How can we study an animal with perfect camouflage and secretive habitats? How does a soft and boneless creature defeat sharks and eels, while thriving as a predator of the most heavily armored animals in the sea? How do octopus bodies work? And how does a solitary animal form friendships, entice mates, and outwit rivals?

Over the course of his twenty-five years studying octopuses, Scheel has witnessed a sea change in what we know and are able to discover about octopus physiology and behavior—even an octopus's inner life. Here he explores amazing new scientific developments, weaving accounts of his own research, and surprising encounters, with stories and legends of Indigenous peoples that illuminate our relationship with these creatures across centuries. In doing so, he reveals a deep affinity between humans and even the most unusual and unique undersea dwellers.

Octopuses are complex, emotional, and cognitive beings; even as Scheel unearths explanations for the key mysteries that have driven his work, he turns up many more things of wonder that lurk underneath. This is the story of what we have learned and what we are still learning about the natural history and wondrous lives of these animals with whom we share our blue planet.]]> 320 David Scheel 1324020695 Becket 2 3.70 2023
author: David Scheel
name: Becket
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2023/08/08
date added: 2024/09/20
shelves: adult, adult-2023, read-in-2023, audiobook, nonfiction, science
review:

]]> 60769830 How Far the Light Reaches is a book that invites us to envision wilder, grander, and more abundant possibilities for the way we live.]]> 263 Sabrina Imbler 0316540536 Becket 5 4.10 2022
author: Sabrina Imbler
name: Becket
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/18
date added: 2024/09/20
shelves: adult, read-in-2024, bipoc, biography-or-memoir, queer-adult, nonfiction, favorites, science
review:

]]> 183577328 Queen of Teeth.

What really happened to Cabrina Brite?

Ivory's life changes irrevocably when she discovers the body of Cabrina Brite on the sands of Cape Morning, along with a mysterious poem. How did she die, and why does it seem she was trying to swim to Ghost Cat Island, the centre of so many local mysteries?

Desperate to uncover the answers surrounding Cabrina's death, and haunted by her discovery, Ivory begins to see the pale ghost of Cabrina, only to shake it off as a mere hallucination. But Ivory is not alone. Cabrina's closest friends have also seen a similar apparition, and as they toy with occult possibilities, they begin to unravel the truth behind Cabrina's death.

Because Cape Morning isn't a ghost town, but a town filled with ghosts, and Ivory is about to discover just what happens when you let one in.]]> 447 Hailey Piper Becket 0 joey-tbr-horror 3.44 2024
author: Hailey Piper
name: Becket
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/17
shelves: joey-tbr-horror
review:

]]> 831807 Mules of Love illuminate the essential dynamics of our lives: family, community, sexual love, joy, loss, religion and death. The poems also explore the darker aspects of humanity—personal, cultural, historical and environmental violence—all of which are handled with compassion and grace. Bass’s poetic gift is her ability to commiserate with others afflicted by similar hungers and grief. Her poem "Insomnia" concludes: "may something/ comfort you—a mockingbird, a breeze, rain/ on the roof, Chopin’s Nocturnes, the thought/ of your child’s birth, a kiss,/ or even me—in my chilly kitchen/ with my coat on—thinking of you."

Ellen Bass is co-author (with Laura Davis) of the best-selling The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse (HarperCollins 1988, 1994), which has sold more than one million copies and has been translated into nine languages. She has also published several volumes of poetry, and her poems have appeared in hundreds of journals and anthologies, including The Atlantic Monthly, Ms., Double Take, and Field. In 1980, Ms. Bass was awarded the Elliston Book Award for Poetry from the University of Cincinnati. Last year, she won Nimrod/Hardman’s Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, judged by Thomas Lux. She was nominated for a 2001 Pushcart Prize. She lives in Santa Cruz, where she has taught creative writing for 25 years. She has also taught writing workshops at many conferences nationally and in Mallorca, Spain.]]> 96 Ellen Bass 1929918224 Becket 4 4.28 2002
author: Ellen Bass
name: Becket
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/13
date added: 2024/09/13
shelves: adult, read-in-2024, poetry-or-verse, queer-adult
review:

]]> 48617519 Ban en Banlieue (2015) a 'Literature that is not made from literature.' During that time Kapil has established herself as one of our most important and ethical writers, whose books often defy categorisation, as she fearlessly engages with colonialism and its ongoing and devastating aftermath. Always at the centre of her books and performances are the experiences of the body, and, whether she is exploring racism, violence, the experiences of diaspora communities in India, England or America, what emerges is a heart-stopping, life-affirming way of telling the near impossible-to-be-told.

How To Wash A Heart, Kapil's first full-length collection published in the U.K., depicts the complex relations that emerge between an immigrant guest and a citizen host. Drawn from a first performance at the ICA in London in 2019, and using poetry as a mode of interrogation that is both rigorous, compassionate, surreal, comic, painful and tender, by turn, Kapil begins to ask difficult and urgent questions about the limits of inclusion, hospitality and care.]]> 52 Bhanu Kapil 1789621682 Becket 5 4.16 2020
author: Bhanu Kapil
name: Becket
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/04
date added: 2024/09/06
shelves: adult, read-in-2024, bipoc, poetry-or-verse, queer-adult
review:

]]> 55655346 A prim and proper lady thief must save her aunt from a crazed pirate and his dangerously charming henchman in this fantastical historical romance.

Cecilia Bassingwaite is the ideal Victorian lady. She's also a thief. Like the other members of the Wisteria Society crime sorority, she flies around England drinking tea, blackmailing friends, and acquiring treasure by interesting means. Sure, she has a dark and traumatic past and an overbearing aunt, but all things considered, it's a pleasant existence. Until the men show up.

Ned Lightbourne is a sometimes assassin who is smitten with Cecilia from the moment they meet. Unfortunately, that happens to be while he's under direct orders to kill her. His employer, Captain Morvath, who possesses a gothic abbey bristling with cannons and an unbridled hate for the world, intends to rid England of all its presumptuous women, starting with the Wisteria Society. Ned has plans of his own. But both men have made one grave mistake. Never underestimate a woman.

When Morvath imperils the Wisteria Society, Cecilia is forced to team up with her handsome would-be assassin to save the women who raised her--hopefully proving, once and for all, that she's as much of a scoundrel as the rest of them.]]> 0 India Holton 0593411900 Becket 3 3.48 2021
author: India Holton
name: Becket
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/05
date added: 2024/09/06
shelves: adult, read-in-2024, audiobook, fantasy, series, romantic, historical, humor
review:

]]> 60098288 From the notorious Lizzie Borden to the innumerable, haunted rooms of Sarah Winchester's mysterious mansion this offbeat, insightful, first-ever book of its kind explores the history behind America's female ghosts, the stereotypes, myths, and paranormal tales that swirl around them, what their stories reveal about us--and why they haunt us...

Sorrowful widows, vengeful jezebels, innocent maidens, wronged lovers, former slaves, even the occasional axe-murderess--America's female ghosts differ widely in background, class, and circumstance. Yet one thing unites them: their ability to instill fascination and fear, long after their deaths. Here are the full stories behind some of the best-known among them, as well as the lesser-known--though no less powerful.

Tales whispered in darkness often divulge more about the teller than the subject. America's most famous female ghosts, like New Orleans voodoo priestess Marie Laveau, and Bridget Bishop, the first person executed during the Salem witchcraft trials, mirror each era's fears and prejudices. Yet through urban legends and campfire stories, even ghosts like the nameless hard-working women lost in the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire --achieve a measure of power and agency in death, in ways unavailable to them as living women.

Riveting for skeptics and believers alike, with humor, curiosity, and expertise, A Haunted History of Invisible Women offers a unique lens on the significant role these ghostly legends play both within the spook-seeking corners of our minds and in the consciousness of a nation.

Foreword by Bram Stoker Award-winning author Linda D. Addison]]> 368 Leanna Renee Hieber 080654158X Becket 0 joey-tbr 3.66 2022
author: Leanna Renee Hieber
name: Becket
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/03
shelves: joey-tbr
review:

]]> 53351612 231 J Mase III 1678197610 Becket 0 joey-tbr 4.50 2020
author: J Mase III
name: Becket
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/03
shelves: joey-tbr
review:

]]> 199533606 The Other Black Girl�������ٲ���Midsommar in this spine-chilling, propulsive psychological adult debut from highly acclaimed author Vincent Tirado, in which a married couple moves into a gated “community�� that slowly creeps into a pervasive dread akin to the social horror of Jordan Peele and Lovecraft County��We Came to Welcome You cleverly uses the uncanny to illuminate the cultish, shocking nature of systemic racism.

Where beauty lies, secrets are held…ugly ones.

Sol Reyes has had a rough year. After a series of workplace incidents at her university lab culminates in a plagiarism accusation, Sol is put on probation. Dutiful visits to her homophobic father aren’t helping her mental health, and she finds her nightly glass of wine becoming more of an all-day—and all-bottle—event. Her wife, Alice Song, is far more optimistic. After all, the two finally managed to buy a house in the beautiful, gated community of Maneless Grove.

However, the neighbors are a little too friendly in Sol’s opinion. She has no interest in the pushy Homeowners Association, their bizarrely detailed contract, or their never-ending microaggressions. But Alice simply attributes their pursuit to the community “Invest in a neighborly spirit”…which only serves to irritate Sol more.  

Suddenly, a number of strange occurrences—doors and stairs disappearing, roots growing inside the house—cause Sol to wonder if her social paranoia isn’t built on something more sinister. Yet Sol’s fears are dismissed as Alice embraces their new home and becomes increasingly worried instead about Sol’s drinking and manic behavior. When Sol finds a journal in the property from a resident that went missing a few years ago, she realizes why they were able to buy the house so easily��

Through Sol’s razor-sharp tongue and macabre sense of humor, Tirado explores the very real pressures to assimilate with one’s surroundings to “survive,�� while also asking the question: Is it survival when you’re no longer your true self? Because in Maneless Grove, either you become a good neighbor—or you die.]]> 384 Vincent Tirado 0063383187 Becket 0 joey-tbr-horror 3.06 2024
author: Vincent Tirado
name: Becket
average rating: 3.06
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/03
shelves: joey-tbr-horror
review:

]]> 199793628 From the bestselling author of the Truly Devious books, Maureen Johnson, comes a new stand-alone YA about a teen who uncovers a mystery while working as a tour guide on an island and must solve it before history repeats itself.

The fire wasn’t Marlowe Wexler’s fault. Dates should be hot, but not hot enough to warrant literal firefighters. Akilah, the girl Marlowe has been in love with for years, will never go out with her again. No one dates an accidental arsonist.

With her house-sitting career up in flames, it seems the universe owes Marlowe a new summer job, and that’s how she ends up at Morning House, a mansion built on an island in the 1920s and abandoned shortly thereafter. It’s easy enough, giving tours. Low risk of fire. High chance of getting bored talking about stained glass and nut cutlets and Prohibition.

Oh, and the deaths. Did anyone mention the deaths?]]> 384 Maureen Johnson 0063255952 Becket 4 3.71 2024
author: Maureen Johnson
name: Becket
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/02
date added: 2024/09/03
shelves: read-in-2024, ya-2024, young-adult, queer-youth, mystery
review:

]]> 58597066
In poems that speak using the grammar and logics of sickness, Purcell offers a dizzying collision of word and image that is the language of pain alongside the banality of living on. Beginning by reading his own life and body closely and slowly zooming out to read illness in the world, Purcell comes to how might a sick, queer body forgive itself for a natural reaction to living in a sick world and go on toward hope? In Swollening , Purcell coughs up his own poetics of illness, his own aesthetics of pain, to form a tender collection that lands straight in the gut.]]> 112 Jason Purcell 1551528851 Becket 3 4.07 2022
author: Jason Purcell
name: Becket
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/30
date added: 2024/09/03
shelves: adult, read-in-2024, disability, queer-adult, poetry-or-verse
review:

]]> 51591596 2022 L.A Times Book Prize Finalist

Poet and novelist Hiromi Goto effortlessly blends wry, observational slice-of-life literary fiction with poetic magical realism in the tender and surprising graphic novel Shadow Life , with haunting art from debut artist Ann Xu.

When Kumiko’s well-meaning adult daughters place her in an assisted living home, the seventy-six-year-old widow gives it a try, but it’s not where she wants to be. She goes on the lam and finds a cozy bachelor apartment, keeping the location secret even while communicating online with her eldest daughter. Kumiko revels in the small, daily decorating as she pleases, eating what she wants, and swimming in the community pool. But something has followed her from her former residence―Death’s shadow.

Kumiko’s sweet life is shattered when Death’s shadow swoops in to collect her. With her quick mind and sense of humor, Kumiko, with the help of friends new and old, is prepared for the fight of her life. But how long can an old woman thwart fate?]]> 368 Hiromi Goto 1626723567 Becket 0 to-read 4.21 2021
author: Hiromi Goto
name: Becket
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 203956647 A brand new series. An iconic new detective duo. And a puzzling new murder to solve...

Steve Wheeler is enjoying retired life. He does the odd bit of investigation work, but he prefers his familiar habits and routines: the pub quiz, his favorite bench, his cat waiting for him when he comes home. His days of adventure are over: adrenaline is daughter-in-law Amy’s business now.

Amy Wheeler thinks adrenaline is good for the soul. As a private security officer, she doesn’t stay still long enough for habits or routines. She’s currently on a remote island keeping world-famous author Rosie D’Antonio alive. Which was meant to be an easy job...

Then a dead body, a bag of money, and a killer with their sights on Amy have her sending an SOS to the only person she trusts. A breakneck race around the world begins, but can Amy and Steve stay one step ahead of a lethal enemy?

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 059365322X.]]> 400 Richard Osman Becket 4 4.07 2024
author: Richard Osman
name: Becket
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/23
date added: 2024/08/23
shelves: adult, adult-2024, read-in-2024, mystery
review:

]]> 196047032
Today is a day of excitement—it’s time to move! As a young Cherokee girl says goodbye to the swing, the house, and the city she's called home her whole life, she readies herself for an upcoming road trip. While her mother drives, she draws in her sketchbook the changing landscape outside her window. She looks forward to the end of their journey, where she'll eat the feast her extended family prepared, play in the creek with her cousins, and settle into the new rhythm of home.

With warm, expressive artwork and spare, lyrical prose, the story of a young girl’s move towards rather than away from home unfolds.]]> 32 Traci Sorell 1984816039 Becket 4 4.10
author: Traci Sorell
name: Becket
average rating: 4.10
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/20
date added: 2024/08/20
shelves: picture-books-2024, picture-books, read-in-2024, bipoc
review:

]]> 195719736 92 Rebecca Bach-Lauritsen 1592704018 Becket 3 3.81
author: Rebecca Bach-Lauritsen
name: Becket
average rating: 3.81
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/20
date added: 2024/08/20
shelves: picture-books, read-in-2024, picture-books-2024
review:

]]> 125094582 A love letter to the hustle, the bustle, the joy, and the grit of city life by debut author and Bronx native, Janelle Harper, and two-time Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award winner, Frank Morrison.

"My block looks like
a collision of cultures
a melting pot of cool
a burst of life
my favorite groove

. . .No matter what happens
I’ve seen it for myself
my block looks like
the coolest place
I’ve ever been."

A lyrical and proud picture book that recognizes the beauty of the bodegas, subways, and playgrounds that characterize everyday life in the Bronx and pays homage to the ways that its residents have shaped pop culture through music, visual art, and dance. Perfect for fans of I Am Every Good Thing and Last Stop on Market Street, My Block Looks Like offers kids a reaffirming message to celebrate and uplift their communities in an energetic text that begs to be read aloud.]]> 41 Janelle Harper 0593526325 Becket 4 4.18
author: Janelle Harper
name: Becket
average rating: 4.18
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/20
date added: 2024/08/20
shelves: read-in-2024, picture-books, picture-books-2024, bipoc
review:

]]> 177721378 A master of the wordless form imagines a futuristic Noah’s Ark in a luminous sci-fi parable for our changing world.

The Earth has flooded. The only signs of humankind are the waterlogged structures they left behind. Peeking out from the deluge are the remnants of a zoo, home to rare and endangered animals, survivors of long neglect. Tender-hearted NOA is a construction robot who’s found new purpose as the caretaker of the zoo’s beleaguered inhabitants. Bracing for the next storm, NOA builds an ark from the wreckage in search of new land and a new home, only to discover something even more profound. With boundless compassion and sweeping scenes of sea and sky punctuated by detailed wordless panels to pore over, Caldecott Honor–winning creator Aaron Becker delivers a timely and concrete message about the rewards of caring in even the most difficult of times that is sure to inspire the dreamers among us.]]> 40 Aaron Becker 1536227684 Becket 5 4.23 2024
author: Aaron Becker
name: Becket
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/20
date added: 2024/08/20
shelves: picture-books, picture-books-2024, read-in-2024
review:

]]> 195820893
Sashiko is a young girl with very big feelings. When her mother teaches her about her namesake—the traditional Japanese practice of mending through embroidery—she finds an outlet for some of those emotions. With each stitch, the dark cloud around her lightens, until her big fears begin to feel less scary. As she heals tears in the fabric, she begins to find a sense of calm and hope.

This deeply resonant picture book explores the transformative power of creative expression, as Sashiko finds threads of peace in her newfound craft. Children and parents alike will take away an appreciation for this beautiful artistic tradition, and for the great potential creative practices have to help us cope with difficult emotions.  
���ձ�> 40 Sanae Ishida 1546005331 Becket 5 4.58
author: Sanae Ishida
name: Becket
average rating: 4.58
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/20
date added: 2024/08/20
shelves: picture-books, picture-books-2024, read-in-2024, bipoc
review:

]]>