Finished:
Lab Girl, by Hope Jahren
I really enjoyed this one, it was a little self-indulgent in places but Jahren's knowledge and passion enormously comes through and I learned a lot about plant science.

Started:
The Traitor Baru Cormorant, by Seth Dickinson
About fifty pages in, it's slower than I thought it would be. I thought it would be more of an adventure book but it seems like the main character is going to accomplish her goals through...economics? Maybe it will pick up as it goes on.
Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado
I'm enjoying it, but it was way overhyped. It's a solid horror/spec fic short story collection but not the groundbreaking work folks touted it to me as.

I've got less than 100 pages left of The Traitor Baru Cormorant, by Seth Dickinson. This book is so good, I really like the way Seth Dickinson writes.

I'm also supposed to read Galapagos, by Kurt Vonnegut for book club, but it'll have to wait until I've finished Baru.

I’m reading The Traitor Baru Cormorant, by Seth Dickinson. Enjoying it so far, the political and economical aspects are interesting. I’ll probably also start on Galapagos, by Kurt Vonnegut for a book club I’m part of.

Finished:

They Mostly Come Out At Night, by Benedict Patrick. Fantasy inspired by old folk tales, like the Grimm brothers. After reading several books with >400 pages this year I appreciate an author that can write a good story in about 200.

Currently reading:

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith. Almost done with this for my book club. I'm listening to the audiobook, and I'll miss not hearing about Francie's life as I'm doing the dishes or walking to work.

The Traitor Baru Cormorant, by Seth Dickinson. Just started this, but I can already tell that I'll like it.

Finished Boy's Life, by Robert R. McCammon and The Traitor Baru Cormorant, by Seth Dickinson. Started and finished The Freeze-Frame Revolution, by Peter Watts.

Currently reading Kingshold, by D.P. Wolliscroft and Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury.

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Boy's Life was one of my favorite books of the past couple years. Follows the life of a young boy in a small Alabama town in the 1960s. The overall plot arch follows trying to figure out a murder mystery but along the way there are 20 other small trials and events that the boy, his friends or family, or the town have to deal with. Whether it's more mundane school or bully issues, or a flood and a river monster, to dealing with loss, the rise of a convenience store, rock & roll, racism/the KKK, and ways life in a small town were changing in that time period. A few elements of magic and monsters but they're more so as seen through the filter of a boy's imagination. There were laughs, there were tears, there were tense moments. Just an amazing job of story telling and transporting you into a world.

Traitor Baru Cormorant was a good story and the twists and turns were surprising at times. But between knowing just enough hints to be suspicious of what might happen and not getting very attached to Baru or the other characters, it kind of blunted the twists and turns and the bigger shocks.

The Freeze-Frame Revolution was a good, hard sci-fi novella involving the challenges of mutiny on AI-controlled ship when the human crew is in hibernation for most of the trip, sleeping for hundreds or thousands of years at a time, only being woken in shifts for days at a time when needed to assist with tasks. It was a solid concept, my biggest gripe is just that with the short nature of the story, it left a lot of questions. Will have to check out some of the other short stories in this universe and see if more pieces come together.

The Traitor Baru Cormorant, by Seth Dickinson

This is -- at it's heart -- a politico-fantasy in the same vein as ASOIAF and the Imperial Radch series, or the Red Rising series. Actually, it felt a lot like a longer, slower-burning version of Red Rising. You get to know the protagonist a lot more than in Red Rising though. Since this is genre fiction, some tropes: the protagonist fills a "savant youth" trope, with some "boring invincible hero" thrown in, and the structure is basically that of a "battle school" trope. There is no actual overt

Worth noting, the protagonist is a lesbian and there are lots of steamy lesbian bits designed to make you feel devilish. There is a telecasted "must kill her lover" scene designed to tug the heart-strings, which would have been effective regardless of which genders were involved. I think this is very popular because "it speaks to" a lot of people for this reason. So this is kind of a mashup of everything that's pop right now in genre-fic, but is well-written rather than some of the drivel that gets self-published.

Finished Foundryside, by Robert Jackson Bennett and The Black Tides of Heaven, by J.Y. Yang.

70% through Boy's Life, by Robert R. McCammon and 50% through The Traitor Baru Cormorant, by Seth Dickinson.

Started Kingshold, by D.P. Wolliscroft, only 2 chapters into it.

The Crucible, by Arthur Miller

Finished yesterday. Absolutely FASCINATING topic, but I really dislike Arthur Miller's treatment of it. However, the play itself is riveting and will suck you in emotionally. There's a goodreads review that mostly sums up my own thoughts: Miller made some changes to the topic for the purpose of publishing it as a play which I do not agree with, and which I think change the overall message somewhat.

For those who don't know, The Crucible is written about the Salem witch trials. What Miller changed was the girls motives, which I think is almost the hinge-point of the entire topic. In the play Miller doesn't give the girls a motive, and makes it so that they were actually dancing around at night, seeming to take part in even pretend devil worship, and then they spend the rest of the play acting as some kind of "motiveless malignancy" -- except Abigail, whose motives seem much clearer. In real life the motivation is probably lashing out at their repressive society where they, as young girls, were going to be sold away to another family, or used as a weapon in battles over land and property -- which in and of itself is a topic that I wish the brilliant Arthur Miller had turned his mind towards. So in some ways this play is a disappointment that he didn't attack probably the more interesting aspect, but I suppose that would have made the play 3 times as long. It seems like his main motivation is making light of hypocrisy and dogmatic thought in general, since supposedly he wrote this play in response to The Red Scare and McCarthyism.

Medium Raw, by Anthony Bourdain

Still pecking away at this one. What's not to love.

The Traitor Baru Cormorant, by Seth Dickinson

Started this one today, haven't really gotten into it yet though.

Finished The Genius Plague, by David Walton.

My slow but steady progress on Boy's Life, by Robert R. McCammon continued, about half way through it now. Then started and got through about 60% of Foundryside, by Robert Jackson Bennett.

Will be starting The Traitor Baru Cormorant, by Seth Dickinson today.

The Traitor Baru Cormorant, by Seth Dickinson

Might be my favorite book I've read so far this year, the ending absolutely floored me

Finished: The Traitor Baru Cormorant, by Seth Dickinson. I really enjoyed it, especially how the author is able to portray a main character who is both very talented and very flawed. My one gripe is that I saw the ending coming a mile away, but that was in large part because of the publicity/blurbs that I accidentally saw for the next book in the series. If you want to read this book, avoid any news of the next one!

Started: A Closed and Common Orbit, by Becky Chambers, and I'm almost done with it because I'm enjoying it so much. (Edited on Wednesday: Finished it this morning!) I really loved the first book in this series (The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet), and it's great to be back in the universe. With its relatively light tone and completely different setting, it's a great antidote to the darkness of my last read.

Also started: A Natural History of Dragons, by Marie Brennan. I find that authors' attempts to mimic "Victorian writing" can be hit or miss, so I was a bit skeptical when I first picked this book up, but the style isn't throwing me off too much, and it's reasonably entertaining so far.

I finished The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson and it blew me away. I can't wait for the second book.

I also finished Perfect Chaos: A Daughter's Journey to Survive Bipolar, a Mother's Struggle to Save Her by Linea Johnson and Cinda Johnson. This was a memoir about a young woman's onset of bipolar, told from the alternating perspectives of her own POV and her mother's. It was very relatable to me as I have bipolar disorder and was diagnosed around the same age as Linea. But what gave me the most emotional impact was reading her mom's perspective, knowing my parents had to walk that same frightening path. It was hard to read as her mom called constantly worried, obsessively almost at times, about Linea's well being. I loved that they took the time to humanize the other psych ward patients, showing that they're just people too... Being locked in a psych ward has a way of showing you you're no better than anyone else, it's all a matter of circumstances.

I'm slowly working through The Traitor Baru Cormorant, by Seth Dickinson, which is awesome so far!

The Traitor Baru Cormorant, by Seth Dickinson

Just finished: An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, by P. D. James

Never read any P. D. James before, so I decided to give one of her books a try. I realized about halfway through that I'm pretty sure I had seen at least part of the ITV version (a lot of the plot points were extremely familiar), so that detracted a bit from my enjoyment of the book. It's a fairly straightforward mystery novel, engaging but not especially challenging.

Just started: The Traitor Baru Cormorant, by Seth Dickinson and The Merry Spinster, by Mallory Ortberg.

I started the latter book first and enjoyed the first story (it's a collection of re-told fairy tales), but realized that I wanted to savor them one at a time, rather than just reading all of them at once, so I picked up TTBC, which I've been meaning to read since it came out a few years ago. So far, so good!

Just finished reading The Traitor Baru Cormorant, by Seth Dickinson and it was incredible. Really gripping story, and somehow I think I learned a lot about economics.

Started reading Reincarnation Blues, by Michael Poore and I like it so far.