Happy Wednesday, my friends! Today's #DecemberBookRec is The Stars are Legion, by @Kameronhurley. It is an ooey gooey squishy gushy exercise in space opera and body horror, and in my opinion a superlative standalone introduction to the Hurley aesthetic. Do you want to read about people birthing pieces of organic worldships? No, actually, you do. God, this book is so gross. I love it so much.

#DecRecs #Bookstodon #sff #spaceOpera

https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/19dd1886-b72b-4d13-8baa-ea95eb34eae6

What's this? Another day, another #DecemberBookRec? Why yes, indeedy!

Get you some Nicky Drayden in your lives. Escaping Exodus is a wonderful book about massive space beasts and social upheaval and love and rebellion and generation ships with a FASCINATING approach to class and shipboard maintenance.

(It also has something to say about juggling the equally pressing matters of environmental degradation and social injustice.)

((Also queer.))

#DecRecs #Bookstodon

https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/6b6e3065-2add-4e1b-8509-ed0bf571251a

Good morning, shop and followers! Today's #DecemberBookRec is Flyaway, by Kathleen Jennings. It starts out as a sort of moody tale in a young narrator, keenly aware of how to be good and sweet and tidy and domestic, tells us about her life in a way that makes it clear that something terrible happened to her father and brothers, and her mother is controlling her in some way to make sure she never thinks about it or asks questions or remembers what happens.
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Today's #DecemberBookRec is The Mask of Mirrors, by MA Carrick, the pen-name of Marie Brennan and Alyc Helms. This is a wonderful, lush fantasy with a richly built city setting where everything is shaped by the interplay of two cultures that were forced into contact when one conquered the other and built a city on top of them.

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https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/9975504d-8095-49a1-a294-48894047cc2e

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2. Diary of a Provincial Lady, by EM Delafield. Delafield is a writer with enormous range, producing biting social commentary and some very grim books, but Diary of a Provincial Lady is a delight. A 1930s housewife and mother keeps a charming, sharply observant running record of society, household staff, her non-angelic children, and all the obligations that fill her life. A perfect thing to read with a cup of tea on a window seat.

https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/d8c50977-7630-4fbb-a433-7ace55b87a73

#DecemberBookRec #DecRecs #Bookstodon

Oh, no, I forgot yesterday's #DecemberBookRec. Well, that means two #DecRecs for today.

1. Miss Buncle's Book, by DE Stevenson. In this sly, witty, charming novel, an aging spinster in need of cash writes a roman a clef about her small town, laying bare all the secrets and hidden potentials of her neighbours for the world to see. Hijinks ensue when the book becomes a wild success.

(I've heard the ebook is badly formatted, so get the print edition)

https://persephonebooks.co.uk/products/miss-buncle-s-book?_pos=31&_sid=5fb00d15f&_ss=r&variant=31828814692419

#bookstodon

Today I started listening to the fifth Johannes Cabal book on the way to work, which insults everyone who has not yet read the first four, and praises the intelligence, wisdom, and appearance of everyone who has.

So, since no less a personage than @JonathanLHoward himself has assured me that I am smart and wise and of above-average appearance, I thought I would teach you how to be like me.

Start with Joannes Cabal, Necromancer, by Jonathan L Howard.

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#DecemberBookRec #DecRecs #Bookstodon

Hello hello! Today's #DecemberBookRec is A Face Like Glass, by Frances Hardinge. Hardinge writes books mostly classified as YA, but I find them rich and beautiful and complex in ways that many books marketed for adults would be hard pressed to match.

THis is a world where facial expressions must be learned, taught, bought, until they become status symbols. A brilliant conceit--and yet, the rest of the world is equally marvelous. . .

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Today's #DecemberBookRec is The Binding, by Bridget Collins, a tale about books, the ethics of creating them, the ethics of reading them; about memory and magic and love and loss; and a fabulous conceit of worldbuilding that I will not detail here because the experience of reading this book will be all the richer if you go in unknowing.

Suffice it to say that, in this book, becoming absorbed in a riveting story is not an innocent pleasure.

https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/ab13b9b3-2aba-423b-829f-ae61d76206a6

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Happy Monday! Today's #DecemberBookRec is The Traitor Baru Cormorant, by Seth Dickinson, a fabulously twisty political secondary world thriller, about colonialism and resistance and bringing the empire down from the inside and subterfuge and uneasy allies and pirates and clever tax codes and sneaky macroeconomic policy and people being really, really fucking good at what they do.

Here's my review: https://dampskunk.wordpress.com/2020/07/28/the-traitor-baru-cormorant-2015-by-seth-dickinson/

https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/299846e6-b438-4c45-ab0d-25593b7bef28

#BookRecs #Bookstodon #CompetencePorn

Today’s #DecRecs is Every Man Dies Alone by #HansFallada. It’s a book about a German couple taking a stand against the Nazis in their own way, despite the danger it posed to them. Although this book doesn’t have a fairy tale ending, it reinforces (for me, at least) the importance of doing the right thing in the face evil even if your friends and neighbors are not.

#BookishAdvent #DecemberBookRecs #DecRecs
#BookRecs #DecemberBookRec

Happy Sunday! My fourth installment of #DecRecs, is a hearty endorsement of the brilliance that is @RJBarker 's Tide Childe trilogy, starting with The Bone Ships.

Fabulous nautical secondary world fantasy: ships are built of the bones of massive sea beasts. The matriarchal society is centered around fertility as power, because this world is wildly poisonous, and humans are in decline. The sea beasts are gone, the ships are decaying, war is raging...

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And if, like me, your heart was in your throat during the brutal hours of pursuit through the stormy Antarctic Seas, only to be shocked and astonished at its culmination, you'll be well placed to anticipate tomorrow's #DecemberBookRec, written by a genius who fully understood the claim that good artists borrow, while great artists steal.

The series starts with Master & Commander, but you might have more fun starting at book 2, Post Captain:

https://app.thestorygraph.com/series/1502

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Once you DO get yourself in the vibe you start following along. You feel the desperate danger that comes with a rocky shore too close in the wrong wind. You hold your breath as the crew prepare to tack in heavy seas at just the crucial moment to escape a pursuing ship. You feel the glory of training and skill finally paying off when the gun crews manage to reload and shoot again in under three minutes.

2/3

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Happy morning! Time for a 3rd #DecemberBookRec : The whole goddamn series of Aubrey and Maturin books by Patrick O'Brien. Many of you have seen the movie 'Master and Commander' with Russel Crowe and Paul Bettany, and it was good. I do dearly love me some early 2000s Paul Bettany.

But the books are something else entirely. They demand a lot from the reader: You have to be willing not to understand the nautical jargon and just go with the vibes. But!...
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While everyone is (understandably) reading Trees, Percival Everett has a lot of other great books out there. So today’s #DecRecs is one of his older books, Wounded, which touches on lgbqtia+ and race in sparsely populated Wyoming, and told through Everett’s characteristically strong writing.

#BookishAdvent #DecemberBookRecs #DecRecs
#BookRecs #DecemberBookRec

Happy Friday! Time for a 2nd #DecemberBookRec.

Because I know you all rushed out to read The Prisoner of Zenda last night, you are now prepared to enjoy @kjcharles 's superb love letter to that book, The Henchmen of Zenda! It deploys pitch-perfect attention to all the minutiae of the original, and also a keeps a keen eye on the ridiculous degree of cheese, with many disdainful comments about how absurd the source text was.

Also very spicy!

https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/67af7787-fb35-47cc-b488-f9bffdc6f735

#DecRecs #Bookstodon

I’m going to jump on the #DecRecs train and recommend some (what I feel are under appreciated) books this month.

First up is a gem I read last month: Leonard and Hungry Paul by Rónán Hession. This is a quiet, funny, and understated book about a pair of quiet, yet delightful, friends.

“You may wish to note the above.”

#BookishAdvent #DecemberBookRecs #DecRecs
#BookRecs #DecemberBookRec

Jumping on @stephanieburgis 's #BookRecs train with my #DecemberBookRec: The Prisoner of Zenda, by Anthony Hope. The zaniest, pulpiest, most delightful ball of cheese you ever did see. The OG Princess Switch, only with princes and more moustache twirling. Available for free on project Gutenberg:

Definitely amenable to the queer read, if you like. Look! (Spoilers for the end, but it doesn't really matter. The ending is not really a surprise.)

#DecRecs
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/95