March reading
The Nebula finalist list came out this month, so as predicted I picked up my reading pace, finishing a total of 16 books. (OK, some were novellas or novelettes, but that’s still a lot of reading.) Overall, this was a great reading month, before and after diving into the Nebula list.
Imposter Syndrome and Other Confessions of Alejandra Kim by Patricia Park. A YA coming-of-age story about a high school senior who, as a scholarship student at a prep school and the ethnically Korean daughter of immigrants who came to America from Argentina doesn't feel like she really fits in anywhere.
There Will Be Fire by Rory Carroll. I was 13 when the IRA bombing/attempted assassination of Margaret Thatcher happened, so I must've heard about it at the time--my family watched the NBC Nightly News religiously--but it didn't make enough of an impression on me that I remembered it. Carroll managed to make me feel empathy will all sides, which is remarkable, given that I'm not prone to compassion for terrorists or, for entirely different reasons and on a different level, Thatcherite Tories.
Ruby Finley vs. the Interstellar Invasion by K. Tempest Bradford. Just a charming middle grade novel about a sixth grade aspiring entomologist who finds a strange bug that's maybe not of this world...
The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin. Basically an 1830s travelogue by an uncommonly smart, observant, and probably some flavor of neurospicy young man who readers know will later go on to develop the theory of evolution. He's already very much the scientist, though from his observations on geology and geography I'm almost surprised he didn't stumble upon plate tectonics, and he also flirts with germ theory on occasion.
The Wind's Twelve Quarters by Ursula K. Le Guin. I expected to like this better than I did, since Le Guin was an acknowledged master of a genre of fiction that forms the majority of my fiction reading and all of my current writing. But most of the stories in this collection left me a bit cold--they just left me feeling distant, like an observer rather than a sort of vicarious participant. "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" deserves every bit of its reputation as a classic, though.
Nobody's Baby by Olivia Waite. Second in a series of cozy and delightful space mysteries set aboard a generation ship. (Full disclosure: the author is a friend of mine.)
Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space by Adam Higginbotham. I thought I knew almost everything there was to know about what led to the Challenger's destruction. We even studied the Morton Thiokol engineers' attempt to get the launch canceled as a Harvard Business School case study in a business ethics class my senior year in college! But this book shows just how deep the technological and especially cultural/management problems were, and of how long a duration. I finished the book amazed that NASA has only lost three crews...but also with just a hint of nostalgia for the child I once was, watching shuttle launches in school, visiting the Marshall Space Flight Center on field trips, and dreaming of maybe becoming an astronaut.
A Radical Act of Free Magic by H.G. Parry. I absolutely adored this book (the second in an alternate history duology that began with A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians), partly for its theme of fighting on in the face of apparent hopelessness, but mostly for the characters and their bonds with each other, particularly the friendship between Williams Pitt and Wilberforce that's the beating heart of the story.
Blessings and Disasters by Alexis Okeowo. Memoir/history/current events journalism by an author who grew up in my own home state of Alabama, though she's a bit over 10 years younger than me and grew up in Montgomery as the child of Nigerian immigrants while I grew up in a rural area not far from Birmingham as a child of mostly Scots-Irish descent whose family showed up around 1820. It's a good book, and I found truth in how she describes Alabamians as simultaneously and genuinely both kind and generous and cutthroat and ruthless.
A Bride's Story, Volume 15 by Kaoru Mori. Latest in this gorgeously illustrated historical manga series.
Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins. I begin my marathon of 2025 Nebula finalist reading with this finalist for the Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction. Collins is an excellent writer, and this book would've kept me turning the pages even if I weren't embarking upon a speed-reading marathon, but I hated the fact that I knew everything was going to end so horribly given that this is the story of Haymitch Abernathy's Hunger Games. Sort of like watching Rogue One that way.
Never Eaten Vegetables by H.H. Pak. Book two in the Nebula marathon is a novelette about a colony ship carrying embryos and one of the embryos in question as a young woman of 26. It took me a few pages to get into the rhythm of the alternating timelines, but I found this quite lovely and moving.
Sour Cherry by Natalia Theodoridou. Nebula reading continues with this Best Novel nominee. This is a gothic horror retelling of the Bluebeard story. I can tell it's excellently done, creepy and disturbing, but I'm not as much of a horror fan as I am science fiction and fantasy, particularly with books like this one which are unrelentingly bleak.
The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar. This Nebula Novella finalist was just...chef's kiss...for me. Beautiful writing, satisfying story.
Uncertain Sons by Thomas Ha. Nebula finalist, Novelette category. This one felt old-school to me, and I don't mean that in a bad OR a good way. It just had the feeling of a horror-infused SF adventure that I wouldn't have been surprised to find in, say, a collection of top-quality SF from 1985 instead of among 2025 award finalists.
Wearing the Lion by John Wiswell. Nebula finalist, Novel category. This one is a sheer delight from beginning to end, humor and heart balancing genuine grief and a touch of horror in a tale alternating between the POVs of a sweet-natured himbo Heracles and a Hera showing divine excess in both vengeance and repentance.