mamajoan

I don't even know where to start when it comes to "bringing this journal up to date," ha ha, so I'm going to ramble a bit about books I've read recently.

Belatedly last week I tried to update my "read in 2026" tag on LibraryThing, but I'm not entirely sure that I remembered everything I've read so far -- and there are some books I can't quite remember whether I read them in January or December so I didn't add them. But the tag currently has 19 books in it, which is pretty good for the end of March even if I'm not missing anything.

(Nine of those 19 are by T. Kingfisher aka Ursula Vernon, whose work is my latest intense obsession, but that's a topic for a different post)

A lot of those were rereads; I've been on a rereading spree over the past year or so and have reread a whole bunch of books/series that I hadn't read in a long, long time. Some of which were quite literally gathering dust on my shelves (*blush*). Among other things, I reread the Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold, the Ancillary series by Ann Leckie, the Jumper series by Stephen Gould, and the delightful "Sorcery and Cecelia" series by Patricia Wrede and Carolyn Stevermer. It has been SO interesting to discover how much, or in many cases how little, I remember about books that I loved in the past!

But the ones I'm going to talk about here are the Kestrel series by Kate Ross, because in that reread I had the unique experience of reading a book where I remembered one particular huge plot twist very clearly, while at the same time remembering absolutely nothing else about the plot!

( This got long-ish so here's a cut. Is it still good etiquette to use cuts for long posts? Also, I'm trying really hard not to spoil much, because you should really read these books. )

I think my next series rereads are going to be the Russell/Holmes mysteries by Laurie King and the Temeraire dragon series by Naomi Novik. Those should keep me occupied for a little bit -- maybe even until the next Murderbot book comes out? (My intense obsession with Murderbot is probably yet another topic for another post....) Meanwhile I *am* also reading some new-to-me stuff, and of course recommendations are always welcome!