The title of this one is no joke by the way.

It's a dark and bleak-toned book.

But it's terrific.

#StephenKing #bookstadon

Two not-so-terribly-helpful ducks, softly illustrated by Nicole Stone. They are white and brown, standing facing each other in front of some bushes and a tree stump. The one on the left is wearing a hat that looks like something Napoleon would wear. I suspect that duck thinks it is in charge!

Check out this lovely picture book about adventure, happiness, friendship, soup and some unhelpful ducks!

It's a collaboration between Human People Nicole Stone (hedgewitch / author / illustrator of Spirits of the Woodland Tarot) and Paul Alborough (writer […]

[Original post on craftgoblin.club]

Original post on gamepad.club

Good Morning Folks. This morning I took a break from gaming and talked about a book that I just finished. Effectively, it is a book with Sexually Rampaging Zombies... but is actually about religious deconstruction.

Yeah, I know... sounds weird, and it was […]

Original post on craftgoblin.club

Check out this lovely picture book about adventure, happiness, friendship, soup and some unhelpful ducks!

It's a collaboration between Human People Nicole Stone (hedgewitch / author / illustrator of Spirits of the Woodland Tarot) and Paul Alborough (writer / rapper / aka Professor Elemental) […]

Want a new sci-fi voice that’s human and introspective and not totally grimdark? My best shorts are on sale so you can poke them with a stick first. inkican.com/smashwor... #scifi #STEM #booksky #Bookstadon #indiescifi #mustread

I made a "starter pack" of my sci-fi so you don’t have to dig through everything I’ve ever written. Curated and shortand on sale because we’re all broke. inkican.com/smashwor... #scifi #STEM #booksky #Bookstadon #BookTok #Bookstagram

Not every sci-fi story needs explosions and a lore wiki. Mine are smaller and kinder and very cheap right now. Great for "I only have 20 minutes." inkican.com/smashwor... #scifi #STEM #booksky #Bookstadon #cozyscifi #amreading

If your attention span now comes in "TikTok size" then I wrote sci-fi for you. Short - quiet - a little weird - and on sale. Start with one and bail anytime. inkican.com/smashwor... #scifi #STEM #booksky #Bookstadon #shortstories #SFF

Algorithm keeps feeding you the same 3 sci-fi authors? Same. Here’s a low-risk escape hatch: short discounted stories from one oddball writer. inkican.com/smashwor... #scifi #STEM #booksky #Bookstadon #specfic #bookrecs

Tired brain? No 900-page space brick here. Just short hand-picked sci-fi you can try on the cheap. Perfect for "one chapter before bed." inkican.com/smashwor... #scifi #STEM #booksky #Bookstadon #ebooks #indieauthor

Trying a new sci-fi author is scary. I made it cheap. Grab my Spring Smashwords deal and test-drive my weird little stories. inkican.com/smashwor... #scifi #STEM #booksky #Bookstadon #reading #amreading

Smashwords – Spring Scifi Sale - Inkican Welcome to the Smashwords - Spring Scifi Sale! My scifi short stories are from March 1 -7, 2026! Hear an amazing story about why stories matter.

Starts tomorrow!

inkican.com/smashwor...

📚💙 #booksky #Bookstadon #bookclub #booklover #books #bookworm #reading #book #bookish #booknerd #bookaddict #bookcommunity

Lost in the pages of A Bond So Fierce and Fragile. 🐉✨ There is nothing quite like a moody atmosphere and a compelling fantasy to finish the week. Sophia St. Germain really knows how to pull you in.
#Bookstadon #FantasyBooks #CompellingFates #CurrentRead #BookSky

Book cover title The Paris Library shows a young woman in a grey 40s suit sitting on a wall with some books beside her as she looks at the city of Paris in the distance. Two war are flying into the title.

A great read if you like libraries, or need a reminder of what the rise of fascism can do to even the best of people, or both.

2025 in Review: The Books Good Morning Folks. As I often do, the start of a new year is a time for reflection back upon the previous one. While I never can seem to keep exactly the same rhythms anymore, I figured I might branch out and start what are hopefully a new series of yearly “in review” posts. 2025 was one of those years where I had to lean on distractions heavily, and those distractions came in many forms. Some of them were comfort gaming, others experiencing new anime, and an awful lot were the books that I read. This morning I am going to talk about some of the more significant books that I enjoyed. I set my goal for 30 books and ended up reading 38. For those curious, I use both Bookwyrm and Storygraph to track my reading journey. Bookwyrm is a federated client so it is very easy to share on Mastodon if the mood strikes me and I want to write a proper review of a book. Storygraph I mostly use because it has a really good recommendation algorithm, that has fed me a few books that I otherwise would not have paid attention to. ## My Best Friend’s Exorcism Probably my favorite single book of the year was My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix. This was my entry into this author’s work and at some point I want to check out more books. I read Witchcraft for Wayward Girls and it did not quite land the same for me. I think that might be in part because so much of this is my adolescent years bottled and packaged up into a novel form. It takes place in the 80s that I remember so vividly, and the pair remind me a bit of two of my friends who were always together but similarly somewhat mismatched. There is a made for amazon movie for this book… but I could not get through it. It just did not capture any of the magic of this book for me about demon possession and undying friendship. ## Dungeon Crawler Carl If we are not talking about single books, then my highlight of the year is reading the entirety of what has been published so far in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. This was my first foray into RPGLit and while I loved it… I am not sure if the larger genre is really my thing. In truth it takes a few books for this series to really reach its stride, and I think part of that is Matt Dinniman shuffling off the normal constraints of the genre and leaning into the best aspects of this cast of amazing characters. Specifically I LOVE the voice acting of Jeff Hayes, and if you have read these in text form, you owe it to yourself to listen to the audio books as well. Right now A Parade of Horribles is supposedly slotted for release in May and I am literally almost thrumming with excitement for it. ## Murderbot Series Another series that I fell in love with this year is Murderbot. In the months ahead of the release of the television series, I burned through these books and they are really comfortable reads. Each of them is very short and very focused, with a fast moving narrative that is just a delight. This will be another one of those series that I consume happily whenever a new book comes out, and at some point I should really dive out into the other things Martha Wells has written. Reading these books has made me realize that I might be slightly on the spectrum, just because the running internal monologue of Murderbot feels so god damned familiar to me. ## News Flesh Series In the column of… I should have read this decades ago… we have the Newsflesh series. Legitimately I remember seeing Feed at borders so many times and almost picking it up. I love Seanan McGuire, and I had no clue that Mira Grant was a pen name until earlier this year when I dove down this rabbit hole. This series is so damned good that it is almost painful that I did not read it before now. So many great characters delivered with only the level of sass that Seanan can. At some point I am going to start the October Daye series, because I am fully on board with anything crafted by this author I think. If you like zombies and honestly a kind of fresh spin on them, or at least fresh for the time in which these books came out. I highly suggest giving these a read. They go pretty quickly. In the biggest disappointment or the year… we have Space Oddity by Catherynne M. Valente. I loved the adventures of Decibel Jones in Space Opera last year so freaking much, that I was rather excited to read this sequel. The problem is… this book is a bit of a meandering mess. It eventually does find its heart and lands the plane safely… but holy shit are you going to have to wade through a lot of nonsense to get there. More than anything it feels like this author was pressured to write a sequel and had zero fucking clue how they wanted to do this thing. The entire first half of the book could essentially be removed and you would still have a reasonable plot. It just sort of feels like stalling until inspiration hit and then rushing to the finish line. ## Camp Damascus Camp Damascus from Chuck Tingle is the book that almost broke me. I had never read a Chuck Tingle book before, but this is very much not the usual “pounded in the butt by” book. This book is bleak… really fucking bleak. It is extremely well crafted and does a phenomenal job of exploring the themes of “gay conversion” camps through the lens of horror. Sure this is horror and sure there are fantastical elements, but the core of this narrative is all too real. It is well worth a read but it was a bit of a suckerpunch that left me reeling for awhile. I finished the book on March 27th, and it was not until July 23rd that I even attempted to read another book. Sure I had a really fucking bad July… for reasons I have gone into at length in so many posts… but this book drained me of the will to keep reading for awhile. ## Sworn Soldier Series Another series that I really enjoyed last year was the Sworn Soldier series by T. Kingfisher. Essentially this is the Gothic horror of Poe, Shelly and Stoker for a modern audience. Each of these books is pretty short, similar to the Murderbot books and are extremely easy reads. What Moves the Dead is effectively a re-imagining of the Fall of the House of Usher, and from there we get more interesting snippets of nature gone wrong, and eldritch horror in the other two novels. Alex Easton is an immediately likeable protagonist, and the books are just enjoyable. Well worth your time if you enjoy unknowable horrors. ## Cerulean Chronicles At least for me, as I have found out what a regressive shitbag that J.K. Rowling has turned out to be… I struggle with the Harry Potter series. I will always love the characters because those books meant so much to me as I was reading them, but I want zero of my dollars to ever go toward supporting her quite frankly evil causes. I’ve read that TJ Klune set out to write the Cerulean Sea series as an unabashedly clear wizarding tale, and one of love and warmth and acceptance. They succeeded in this and the two books are a joy to read. I happened to be turned onto this series just as the sequel was coming out, so I was able to read them back to back. The first novel is really tight and clearly focused, but the second one takes a little bit to get started but has a rousing finish. If you crave some intentionally queer friendly wizarding worlds… I suggest you also dive into this series. You can always see the full list of everything that I read in 2025 over on my Bookwyrm goals page, as that is probably the easiest and most concise way to see it. You can also follow me on Storygraph to see what I am actively reading there. I occasionally write reviews there, but fairly rarely as most of my content ends up here on the blog. What were some of your favorite books that you read in 2025? Would love to hear of anything that you think I should read so I can add it to my 2026 list. ### Share this: * Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon * Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit * Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr * Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email * Click to print (Opens in new window) Print * More * * Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest * Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window) Pocket * Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X * Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn * Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook * Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window) Telegram * Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window) WhatsApp * ### Like this: Like Loading... ### _Related_

Good Morning Folks! Starting a bit of a 2025 in Review series on my blog, as this morning I talked about some of the important books that I read from last year.

aggronaut.com/2026/01/02/2025-in-revie...

#Books #AmReading #Bookstadon #books2025 #2025books

The best kind of winter burn: white hot scifi. Smashwords event through Jan 1 - free indie stories, no registration required. inkican.com/smashwor... #amwriting #Bookstadon

Warm your circuits with hope, hard science, and human stories. Smashwords White Hot Scifi Winter features free indie sci fi till Jan 1. inkican.com/free-sam... #Bookstadon #specfic

Feeding Friday - real authors feed each other with support. We believe in you! Post here if you have a book coming out, an event we need to boost, a blog post to Like. Make sure you give back, too! ❤️

#FeedingFriday #writingcommunity #booksky #books #bookreview 📚🖋️#bookstadon

Merry Christmas 2025 from The Bargain Sleuth! #BookSky #BookThreads #BannedBooks #ReadingRainbow I am very happy that the Dumpster Fire that was 2025 is almost over. If you've followed The Bargain Sleuth for any length of time, but especially this year, that I read a lot of non-fiction books. This year, I've made a concerted effort to be part of the solution to many things, and that means reading about it. In a country where our First, Fourth, 13th, 14th, and 19th Amendments are under attack, my reading and writing this year has been decidedly Pro-Democracy, Pro-Environment, Pro-Human Rights, Pro-Education, and Anti-Fascism.

It's a review-less day, but I wanted to take the time to wish all my friends in the Bookish Community a very Happy Christmas with my very Bookish tree! #Bookthreads #BookSky#Bookstagram #Bookstadon #BannedBooks #ReadingRainbow #MychalThreets #LeVarBurton #PBS #Christmas2025

It's just be around a month since I switched to a radio alarm clock.

The mobile phone charges downstairs overnight, and I've managed to finish the book I've been reading since summer 2023, and 2 others...

#DigitalHigiene #disconnect #bookstadon

Feeding Friday - real authors feed each other with support. We believe in you! Post here if you have a book coming out, an event we need to boost, a blog post to Like. Make sure you give back, too! ❤️

#FeedingFriday #writingcommunity #booksky #books #bookreview 📚🖋️#bookstadon

Feeding Friday - real authors feed each other with support. We believe in you! Post here if you have a book coming out, an event we need to boost, a blog post to Like. Make sure you give back, too! ❤️

#FeedingFriday #writingcommunity #booksky #books #bookreview 📚🖋️#bookstadon

Feeding Friday - real authors feed each other with support. We believe in you! Post here if you have a book coming out, an event we need to boost, a blog post to Like. Make sure you give back, too! ❤️

#FeedingFriday #writingcommunity #booksky #books #bookreview 📚🖋️#bookstadon

Smashwords sales event picture - a nice lady reading a book!

Starting Saturday, #Smashwords is going their month-long book giveaway program. Let's support each other, authors - what are you giving away so we can start supporting you? #bookstadon #booksky 📚💙 #writing #writer #writingcommunity #writerscommunity #creativeprofessional #creative

Feeding Friday - real authors feed each other with support. We believe in you! Post here if you have a book coming out, an event we need to boost, a blog post to Like. Make sure you give back, too! ❤️

#FeedingFriday #writingcommunity #booksky #books #bookreview 📚🖋️#bookstadon

Feeding Friday - real authors feed each other with support. We believe in you! Post here if you have a book coming out, an event we need to boost, a blog post to Like. Make sure you give back, too! ❤️

#FeedingFriday #writingcommunity #booksky #books #bookreview 📚🖋️#bookstadon

Original post on mstdn.social

Misjudged the bus time and got into town an hour before my dentist appointment. Of course I bee-lined to Waterstones to kill some time. Of course I impulse bought a manga. Spent a good half hour sat in the waiting room reading the first Witch Hat Atelier volume :blobcatbook: #Bookstadon #BookSky […]

Feeding Friday - real authors feed each other with support. We believe in you! Post here if you have a book coming out, an event we need to boost, a blog post to Like. Make sure you give back, too! ❤️

#FeedingFriday #writingcommunity #booksky #books #bookreview 📚🖋️#bookstadon

Mi ĵus finlegis la libron "Enshittification" de @pluralistic. Oni legus ĝin, ĉar ĝi enhavas multajn bonajn ideojn kaj iom da espero

#enshittocene #BookStadon

Feeding Friday - real authors feed each other with support. We believe in you! Post here if you have a book coming out, an event we need to boost, a blog post to Like. Make sure you give back, too! ❤️

#FeedingFriday #writingcommunity #booksky #books #bookreview 📚🖋️#bookstadon