June reading
Halfway through the year, I’m on pace to read 172 books, though I doubt my Dec. 31 tally will be quite that high—now that I’m reading Nebula and Hugo finalists every year, spring is reading marathon time for me. This month was mostly a mix of Hugo finalists and Seattle Public Library summer book bingo choices.
Root Magic by Eden Royce. SPL Summer Book Bingo, Honorable Mention category. Middle-grade historical fantasy set in 1964 about a pair of 11-year-old twins in the South Carolina Sea Island Gullah Geechee community and dealing with grief, racism, bullying, and the general challenges of growing up along with training in their family legacy of root magic.
Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy by Martha Wells. Hugo finalist, Novelette. I skim-read this one for the emotional beats back when it first came out, but this is the first time I read it carefully all the way through, so I'm counting it as a 2026 read. With that said, the emotional beats are the best and IMHO most important part. I liked getting to see more of Peri/ART's vulnerable side, which from Murderbot's perspective you'd hardly know existed.
The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill. This is the 2017 Newbery Medal winner, and it's a simply gorgeous middle grade fantasy. It's toward the challenging end of children's fiction in both its themes and the complexity of the writing and the plot, but I would've loved it at age 10 or 12, and I think it'd be an especially good book for the many bookish children who read far above their grade level but don't want to and/or shouldn't cross over to reading only adult books.
Liar's Kingdom: How to Stop Trump's Deceit and Save America by Andrew Weissmann. I can only take current events reading in small doses, which this fortunately is. Weissmann speaks as the law professor and former prosecutor he is, recommending ways we could make lies such as Trump's claim that the 2020 election was stolen crimes--if lying to deceive and defraud customers or shareholders is a crime, which it is, why not when the victims are voters and the citizenry as a whole?
The Millay Illusion by Sarah Pinsker. Hugo finalist, Novelette. Atmospheric, almost cozy story of two young performers in a traveling magic show in what feels like the late 19th or early 20th century.
Hell Bent: How the Fear of Hell Holds Christians Back from a Spirituality of Love by Brian Recker. I'm making my way through a mini reading list, a personal syllabus of sorts, on Christian universalism in preparation to preach on Romans 8 next month. This one resonated with me far more than Love Wins, largely because the author's perspective, experiences, and general approach to discussing theology are a better match with my own.
The Girl That My Mother Is Leaving Me For by Cameron Reid. Hugo finalist, Novelette. Wherein two young women fight to make lives for themselves (eventually, together) in a corporate dystopia.
Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Hugo finalist, Novel, and SPL Book Bingo, Outer Space. I wouldn't say I loved this book--for me, "love" is mostly for books with found family, happy endings, and a certain hint of coziness, at least insofar as the ending should include the found family hanging out together, like Murderbot or the Vorkosigan saga. But I sure admired the heck out of it and couldn't put it down.
When He Calls Your Name by Catherynne M. Valente. Hugo finalist, Novelette. A Jolene retelling (yes, as in the song) wherein Jolene is a vampire.
A Terrible Intimacy by Melvin Patrick Ely. Without once flinching from the true evil of Southern chattel slavery, this history explores the messy and contradictory realities of how it was practiced in one Virginia county through the lens of half a dozen court cases involving the interactions between blacks and whites from the 1820s into the early 1860s.
Crow by Boria Sax. SPL Book Bingo, Animal. A quick overview of how corvids are viewed across various human cultures and religions. There are multiple books in this series, and I think I might get more out of the ones that aren't about animals I already know as well as crows.
The Broposal by Sonora Reyes. SPL Book Bingo, Suggested by a Library Worker. A romcom, but one with a lot of dark undercurrents--our heroes' backstories and challenges include family members with substance abuse issues, abusive exes, and one of their immigration statuses.
A Crack in the Edge of the World by Simon Winchester. An interesting exploration, somewhat of a literary memoir almost, of plate tectonics, the North American and Pacific plates, and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. I probably would have enjoyed it more if it had focused more specifically on the quake itself. Also, it bears the marks of being written 20+ years ago--earthquake science has progressed quite a bit in the past two decades, for example.
Moonlight and Mischief by Rhonda Woodward. SPL Book Bingo, HEA/HFN. My favorite so far of the mini-trove of traditional Regency romances I found in a used bookstore last fall, a fine example of a house party story with a rakish earl and a wealthy but nouveau riche young woman (her father made his fortune by owning--gasp!--a woolen mill), who form a quick friendship largely because they consider themselves safe from falling in love, given that she is dead set against her mother's effort to see her married into the aristocracy and he isn't ready to marry yet and therefore doesn't allow himself to catch feelings for eligible single women.
The Place of Tides by James Rebanks. SPL Book Bingo, FIFA World Cup Country. A midlife crisis memoir (which I mean positively, and in a way I found relatable given my own age) wherein a British farmer and writer spends several months on an isolated Norwegian island with two women there for the eider duck nesting and down gathering season.