What Smack Said #33
Oops, couldn't pick just one title again this month.
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Welcome to the end of the month! (Already??) Loki is doing well and has started to act a little more like his old self—he's more vocal, has enjoyed lying out back in the sunshine, and hops onto his hind legs to see what's going on when we're washing our hands or whatever.
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He's not fully healed yet, but there's visible progress and it's such a relief to see. Hopefully we can take the cone off in the next couple of weeks!
This past weekend was the 2024 San Diego Book Crawl, where 13 of San Diego's independent bookstores join together to give out prizes when participants make purchases of $10 or more at multiple stores. Here are some of the titles I walked away with:
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Lone Women by Victor LaValle
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The Darkness Manifesto: On Light Pollution, Night Ecology, and the Ancient Rhythms that Sustain Life by Johan Eklöf and translated by Elizabeth DeNoma
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A Wolf Steps in Blood and
The Fall that Saved Us, both
by Tamara Jerée
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Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett (see below!)
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Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez and translated by Megan McDowell
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April has been another month where I can't choose between the best books. Here are my top two, though:
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The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid: my god, this was such a fantastic read. The book plays with distance between the narrator and the reader—Evelyn recounts her life as one of the most famous Hollywood actresses from the 60s to the modern day to a journalist who has agreed to write her biography. Evelyn is harsh, complicated, ambitious, and just a little hypocritical. As one of the blurbs says, she makes Liz Taylor look pedestrian.
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Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett: this one starts a little slow but is an absolute delight. It's about a neurodivergent academic who has spent nine years crafting the (not our) world's first complete encyclopedia of all the different types of faeries. She's hypercompetent and
so close to the finish line, but of course there are unexpected obstacles: conversations with subtext, conversations with cultural differences, and conversations with faeries. (She's best at the last one.)
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Plus a rival academic who seems to get all the lucky breaks is probably not human. (Their relationship is hilarious and wonderful.) There are also gems like this:
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"It sounds odd to admit that I find the company of such a boisterous person restful, but perhaps it is always restful to be around someone who does not expect anything from you beyond what is in your nature." |
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Votes: 0
Voting..
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