- N.K. Jemison has a collection of short stories, and while many of them are from earlier in her career, they don’t feel like early, learning-the-craft stories – they are absolutely superb. The collection also opens with an essay about what it is like to write science fiction stories with people who are like us ethnically, and how great it feels to envision futures that include us!
- I Tamed My Ex-Husband’s Mad Dog (graphical fiction) is in chapter 89, and either everyone is going to die, or the main characters will live happily together, or maybe they’ll be happy for a VERY BRIEF TIME before they all die? IT IS SO TENSE! I could barely make it through chapters 87-88, which involved a lot of blood – blood that had belonged to one of the main characters, so they couldn’t make the joke I like so much about it being someone else’s.
- The Broken Ring: This Marriage Will Fail Anyway (graphical fiction) is at chapter 82, and there is some tension building as the main characters are apart, as one of them figures out who the assassination target was during their vacation, and tries to get information on… something that they shouldn’t be able to remember.
- Men of the Harem (graphical fiction) has resumed at full speed, and it isn’t completely clear that Empress Latil is the vampire lord that two of her most handsome fans hope she will be. It also isn’t clear why she can punch vampires and send them flying across a room. Also, magic tools allow some characters to wear the faces of other people, a complication I didn’t need!
- The Remarried Empress (graphical fiction) has also come out of hiatus, and I’m still pleased by how much the art style tightened up over the course of its 187 chapters (so far). While the empress’ remarriage was supposed to be primarily political, her new spouse is so much more fun than her old one! And, because paternity testing science exists, there is a lot of drama in her former palace…
- US Political and World News. There is SO MUCH OF IT right now. And it is a roller coaster.
- Letters. Which my hands have hurt too much to respond to prettily. (I think I understand why there were so many searches combining COVID and arthritis….)
- My Japanese lessons. Oh, the torment of half-remembering a language!
I hope your own reading provides you as much pleasure as mine gives me.