Another quick note on House With Good Bones - the mother of the POV character is approximately my age and I do not know how to feel about that.

Re: The House With Good Bones, my friend Eleanor at Borderland books is running a Creepy Girl Book Club for women who like disturbing horror.

I got to meet one of the young participants, Rebecca, and she was really fun.

I recommended the early 00s horror movie May by Lucky McKee and when I started to describe it, I said, "It's kind of a riff on the Frankenstein theme about this young woman who's a Vet Tech..."

And she interrupted, "OMG, I'm a Vet Tech!"

Later the conversation turned to the fling I had with my boss when I moved to Boston, and I was talking about her childhood saying, "Apparently in Filipino families it's not unusual for one daughter to obviously be The Favorite and everybody says that part out loud..."

And she said, "OMG, I'm filipino!" That makes her sound a little Valley Girl which she is not. She's tall and pretty with a bit of kauai style and a deadpan snarky humor.

Whenever she comes in we ask her how many castrations she's done that day, usually accompanied with a "snip snip" sound and hand gesture. "So much for the patriarchy" we all agree.

Re: Dark Academia, Eleanor is also a huge fan of this genre and has put up display shelves devoted to it, so I can easily get some recs from her.

I enjoyed City of Brass and that series and I believe the pirate are related somehow. It sounds even more fun!

I just finished The City of Brass a couple weeks ago and immediately bought The Kingdom of Copper and The Empire of Gold, though I haven't had time to read them yet.

I'm apparently in a fantasy con artist space right now because the previous books I read before The City of Brass were The Mask of Mirrors by M.A. Carrick and the first two books of The Gentleman Bastards series by Scott Lynch.

The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty.

Susan, I *just* bought this and can't wait to get to it. Buckle my swash.

I LOVED "The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi"! I loved the characters, the plot, the snark, the humor — so much fun! I truly hope she writes the sequels the ending hints at.

Finally listened to Firewatch. I don’t think I am emotionally equipped to go right into Doomsday Book like I planned.

There are a couple dozen mass market Doctor Who novels at the bookstore today that I’m having a hard time convincing myself I don’t need to buy. They’re in near perfect condition.

If you are looking for something...kind of ambitious(and have some time, because it's long), you could do worse than "Mount Chicago."

I have downloaded a sample of that to check out, sounds interesting

I had been putting off reading the last two (last as in most recent, not last as in there won't be any more) InCryptid novels because they are Alice-centric and Alice is not my favorite. I was kind of grumbling to myself all the way through that there was too much Prices and not enough cryptids in these. However, the last one also has a bonus story that is partly from the POV of an Aeslin Mouse and the Aeslin Mice *are* my favorite, so it's all worthwhile and thought I'd better say so here in case anyone else might need that story. Bonus Novella: Where His Waffles Went in Backpacking Through Bedlam

I'm 4 books behind on the InCryptid novels. I missed both Sarah novels and both Alice novels. But they're on the TBR list.