Equal Opportunity Reader

06/19/2026

-- Jazz chapters 3-5, y'all. Nothing too heavy here, just some observations.

Also, I went looking through Namwali Serpell's book On Morrison hoping to gain some insights, but there isn't a chapter solely on Jazz! Drats.

I don't feel like I'm saying enough about this book but I think it operates a bit like Sula does, where the full import of everything we've read will hit us in the last four pages or so.

Also real talk--the writer herself said this was about couple love but I see very little of that here.

Chapters 6 and 7 for next week!

06/16/2026

So today JD Vance's memoir of faith, Communion, is set to come out.

I think it'd be interesting if we got bell hooks' Communion, about feminine love and emotional growth, to be a bestseller again instead.

After all, she was a real Appalachian.

If you don't have a go-to bookstore, nab it from mine at the link.

The Female Search for Love

06/15/2026

This is both deeply annoying and true.

~Fangoddess

06/15/2026

- Yesteryear, by Caro Claire Burke

Tradwife influencer Natalie Mills seems to have it all. She shows off her successful organic farm, cheerful children, home-cooked recipes and redblooded provider of a husband to millions on social media, proving that the conservative American dream can be a reality.

Of course, real life is very different. The husband is a redpill b**b, the children neglected, and the real work done by hired hands, nannies, and a pink-haired liberal producer. When Natalie suddenly wakes up in 1855 and has to be a tradwife for real, things get even more complicated.

This book has been riding high on the wave of a very timely concept and Anne Hathaway-helmed film option. It's sparked some nteresting discussion, and has a particularly nasty plot twist meant to drive it's Aesop home hard.

But I can't shake the feeling that ultimately this book hates women just as much as the people it's satirizing.

Every woman in this book is miserable, whether liberal or conservative. Every man is rich, dumb and unpunished. No one is given the courtesy of a viewpoint specific enough to feel truly meaningful. Natalie is a generic caricature of a conservative rural white lady from an unspecified but tacitly ridiculous religion. (Geographically she should be Mormon but seems evangelical? But also has no church, just sourdough and platitudes.)

By the time we get to the twist (spoiler alert: it's a psychotic episode, no real time travel) Natalie is more punching bag than person. She exists for people to feel superior to, rather than as a reflection of the attitudes and existence of conservative white women. She's a revenge fantasy, and a mean-spirited one, too.

Also, it goes without saying, but this is *super* white. I hoped to gain some insight on what's happening in America's cultural bubbles, both right and left. Instead, I got a 400-page treatise on self-righteous mean-girlism.(Maybe that IS what's happening?) Never been so glad to be Black and weird and womanist in my life.

Also, you absolutely cannot knit with sewing needles and that part almost got the book returned.

Names in the Burn Book for Yesteryear.

ID and tags in comments.

06/13/2026

- So dramatic, and for what? I wish a 9000 year old magic man would whine at me like this.
(No really, I do.)

(Also reading together fam--I'm having a hard time condensing my thoughts on chapter 4.of Jazz. Go ahead and read chapter 5 and I'll do a mega video next week. Sorry!)

06/12/2026

Oh, this is sad. She left a lot of wonderful work in the world.

Jane Yolen (1939–2026) https://locusmag.com/2026/06/jane-yolen-1939-2026/

06/10/2026

Any leads, fellow readers?

"A search is under way for two le***an grandmothers who inspired a new children’s book after a chance encounter with a pantomime dame at Blackpool Pride.

The women, whose names are not known, attended a reading by the popular performer Mama G in 2021, complaining to her about the lack of diversity in young literature.

Mama G said she had been reading books to children at Blackpool’s Winter Gardens when the women asked if there were any featuring le***an grandmothers.

The question left her stumped. “I was like, erm, no. I don’t actually think I’ve ever seen le***an grandmothers in a story, not even as a subsidiary character,” she said. One of the women, clearly disappointed, told her it was “so hard to find yourself represented in books”."

Mama G wants to dedicate her book, The Proudest Bird in the World, to pair after chance Blackpool Pride encounter

06/08/2026

Y'all. I am ten minutes in to The Vampire Lestat's premiere and...

06/07/2026

Congrats to all the Nebula winners! I found this one particularly exciting! (Let's read it together in August.)

And the Nebula Award for Novel goes to... 👀

THE BUFFALO HUNTER HUNTER, by Stephen Graham Jones (Saga; Titan UK)

Congratulations to Stephen, and ALL the finalists on this brilliantly wide-ranging list.

You are remaking worlds, and reminding us we all can.

06/07/2026

- Another old vid I'm reposting.

But for real tho, what do you MEAN you don't know what to do? It's a book--find a weapon! The plot will work itself out from there!