nothing beats the electric feeling

23 Mar, 2026

...of devouring good literature with only the agility/fortitude of my eyeballs as a limiting factor!

to all shareholders of the vespertine dot bearblog dot dev cooperative gathered before me (and any curious stragglers peeking in), i present the q1 reading wrap-up (:

2026 has not been a great year in many respects—doctrinal classes, job-hunting, personal health, making good on my goal to blog more regularly, impending nuclear tremors of ww3—but it's probably still too early to make any sobering generalizations about the remaining 9 months. however, for what it's worth, i've read nearly as many books over the past 10 weeks as i managed to get through during the prior calendar year¹, and i even discovered a new favorite! small victories, but important nonetheless.

i've organized my review excerpts by star-rating (1 through 5; strangely no 3-stars yet) for ease of viewing, and i hope you might be able to find a few titles of interest amongst my list:

✦✧✧✧✧

• winter in sokcho (2016) by elisa shua dusapin [physical]
  "there was at least one mention of the protagonist's breasts per (woefully? thankfully? short) chapter, and an overabundance of periods cutting off vestigial dependent clauses that seemed to serve no purpose other than to drive me mad." if you're looking for clumsy tiptoeing around daddy issues, disordered eating habits, and aspirations towards white-adjacency, this might be for you.
• firebreak (2021) by nicole kornher-stace [digital]
  "as an author, you shouldn't get to cash in on the the collateral benefits of community organizing when you don't even bother to flesh out the people who comprise that community." just read pathfinding! (the fantastic short story this was based on) instead and imagine what it'd be like if this novel had an entirely different protagonist.

✦✦✧✧✧

• the chalice of the gods (2023) by rick riordan [physical]
  "the thought that i may no longer be part of the target audience for these books makes the crushing reality of adulthood feel all the more cruel and inevitable."
• there is no antimemetics division (2020) by qntm [digital]
  "i wish marion didn't read so much like a woman written by a man who spends too much time on reddit."
• the wild iris (1992) by louise glück [physical]
  "too many heavy-handed biblical allusions. not everything has to be about the fall, and not every garden has to be eden." this technically isn't a "book" in the traditional sense (it's a poetry collection), but i don't care. how can glück be so widely lauded when she brings nothing new to the table!! mary oliver and ada limón could run laps around her with their legs bound together.
• almond (2017) by won-pyung sohn [digital]
  "imo [yunjae's] reconciliation w/ gon could've been just as impactful w/o another gratuitous near-death experience...as deus ex machinas go, it felt incredibly sudden and unearned."
• a drop of corruption (2025) by robert jackson bennett [digital]
  "book 2 had none of the wit or charm of book 1, but i'm determined to see this through to the end, if only for another kepheus cameo." i probably would've given it another star if 1) din hadn't been such a moody little bitch for 85% of the book and 2) kepheus deigned to show his face (even for a paragraph!).
• the strength of the few (2025) by james islington [digital]
  i'm not supposed to say anything substantive about this until book club, but i think this quote from pg. 562 succinctly represents a lot of what went wrong: "i cannot comprehend how fortunate it was that the bizarre harmonic connection i chose to try for the first time, in the heat of the moment, worked." you and me both, my guy....the word "fortunate" is doing an insane amount of heavy lifting here.

✦✦✦✦✧

• the lathe of heaven (1971) by ursula k. le guin [physical]
  "as lotuseatermachinelover69, i was absolutely enchanted by the satin weave of le guin's writing—with reality as warp and dreams as weft, gathered into a shimmering, translucent veil of unwavering, all-encompassing acceptance." forget f. scott fitzgerald—this is the kind of seminal american literature re: cautionary wish-fulfillment we should be teaching 9th-graders in public school.
• notes of a crocodile (1994) by qiu maojin [digital]
  "the epic highs and lows of loving women while hating yourself (in part, because you love women)." qiu's writing is grandiose and violent, yet shatteringly tender and sincere. and above all, there's the shame—the fear of being known, the paranoia that buries itself in your bones under the guise of sensibility. i can't just leave you with my inelegant, half-formed thoughts about this book, so have some direct quotes instead:

"i'd been shown what was off-limits. i didn't have the strength to die, and the one thing i was secretly living for was the very thing that i wouldn't let myself have." (notebook 5, entry 3)

"i have to learn not to need or rely on you so that i can give you what you think you need, but i haven't been doing a good job of it." (notebook 8, entry 4)

• the tainted cup (2024) by robert jackson bennett [physical]
  "this book was brewed in a lab specifically to make me giggle and act a fool—i almost read the entire thing in one sitting, which i've rarely had time for recently." this set impossibly high expectations for book 2, so i can't wholly fault bennett for my disappointment upon reading them back-to-back.

✦✦✦✦✦

• chain-gang all-stars by nana kwame adjei-brenyah [digital]
  "i feel nauseous and complicit and like my heart's been rent apart. every word was a searing new wound; light as a feather, heavy as our collective sin. and so, so beautiful. holy fucking shit. i don't know how to move forward, but we need to figure it out together while we still can." i pulled an all-nighter to finish this book and was so deeply moved that i went out and bought my own hardcover copy as soon as the bookstore opened that day. this is a strong contender for my favorite of the year, and we're only a quarter of the way through. if there's one thing you take away from this post, i hope it's that you should request this book at your local library as soon as practically possible.

as for the books i'm currently reading, the list only seems to grow day by day. i made the mistake of starting each one halfway through reading another, so they're currently all in various muddled states of completion. out of the 16 that i've marked as "currently reading" on goodreads, these are the ones i'll most likely finish within the next month:

• the heaven & earth grocery store by james mcbride [digital; book club pick]
• fair play by tove jansson [physical]
• speedboat by renata adler [digital]
• the winged histories by sofia samatar [physical]
• the penelopiad by margaret atwood [physical]

if you'd like to stay up to date on my sff-reading shenanigans, feel free to friend me on goodreads! i've been thinking about making the switch to storygraph (which seems better in every conceivable way), but none of my friends use it ): which eliminates the enticing social aspect of maintaining an active account on a review-aggregator platform. in other inconsequential news:

• i started rewatching blue lock with my brother after a year-long hiatus from the manga and it's every bit as insane as i remember, complete with the 2008 powerpoint transition-type animation. my brother actually plays club soccer, so he's been able to point out some references that went over my head upon first viewing.
• addison rae has finally infiltrated my spotify playlists and i kinda regret not giving her the benefit of the doubt earlier...to think that i could've been cleaning my apartment to in the rain or high fashion this whole time...
• one of my favorite ayce sushi places soft-opened a new location 10 mins away; the implications this holds for my wallet + mercury levels are not lost on me
• my laptop died no less that four (4) times in the past month, so i'm in the market for a new one for office/schoolwork (': i tried out a refurbished dell latitude 5420 that had pretty good specs (intel i7/32 gb ram/1 tb storage), but i just could not get over the lack of haptic feedback from the mousepad or the odd bezel proportions, so it's back to the drawing board for now
• i learned how to change a flat tire because my front left tire conveniently popped on the highway to my parent's place! i am choosing to view this as a good, much-needed opportunity to pad out my skillset and not another near-death experience ominously timed with the advent of the new year

absentmindedly,

t

#fiction #lists