Recent reading
Apr. 20th, 2025 08:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
troisoiseauxRead A Gallery of Rogues by Beth Lincoln, sequel to The Swifts: A Dictionary of Scoundrels, collectively a rollicking middle-grade series about young Shenanigan Swift and her sprawling extended family of nominatively-determined eccentrics— and, in this one, the Swifts' estranged French relatives, the Martinets. And a gang of theatrical art thieves! And an Interpol agent who is the long-standing ~nemesis~ of Shenanigan's uncle Maelstrom! Once again, this book feels like was written specifically to appeal to my 10-year-old self - it somehow reminds me of a whole bunch of memorable MG books circa the mid-2000s, including The Mysterious Benedict Society, Lemony Snicket, The Willoughbys (by Lois Lowry, apparently??), and Roxie and the Hooligans, with the added bonus of being casually, joyfully LGBT-affirming and diverse - but I don't actually begrudge it for arriving two decades late.
Read The Novices of Lerna by Ángel Bonomini (translated from Spanish by Jordan Landsman), a collection of short stories I picked up after hearing about the titular novella, in which a young man is offered a secretive academic fellowship alongside - it turns out - his twenty-three doppelgängers. I'd actually gotten my wires slightly crossed and assumed that this book was only the titular novella - which I had also assumed was, like, an actual novel? - so the short stories were a surprise, but they were great: lyrical, atmospheric, and strange, with a tendency to end on an abrupt, unsettling note that rattled around my head for a while afterwards.
Read The Novices of Lerna by Ángel Bonomini (translated from Spanish by Jordan Landsman), a collection of short stories I picked up after hearing about the titular novella, in which a young man is offered a secretive academic fellowship alongside - it turns out - his twenty-three doppelgängers. I'd actually gotten my wires slightly crossed and assumed that this book was only the titular novella - which I had also assumed was, like, an actual novel? - so the short stories were a surprise, but they were great: lyrical, atmospheric, and strange, with a tendency to end on an abrupt, unsettling note that rattled around my head for a while afterwards.
