Content Warning: This post discusses death by suicide and sexual assault, specifically sexual assault against an enslaved woman.

I recently finished reading A Haunted History of Invisible Women: True Stories of America's Ghosts by Leanna Renee Hieber and Andrea Janes to try and get in the Halloween spirit. Ghosts have long been a fascination of mine, ever since I was a child, despite the fact that I am and always have been terrified of them. Yet in all of my years of ghost lore, this book, moreso a collection of stories regarding ghosts than a collection of ghost stories (and I maintain that there is a difference), has caused me to see the role that ghosts play in a whole new light. I had never thought about the fact that most ghosts, including the few in my own family, are women, or, as the authors bring up, ghost tours are thereby a continuation of exploiting these women beyond their deaths. Both authors are ghost tour hosts, by the way.

I should mention that I absolutely believe in ghosts. To me, ghost tours aren't so much a fun late-night activity with your friends as they are somewhat a history tour where we learn the stories of our past. Despite my interest in ghosts, I have a healthy respect and fear of them, so there are some places I refuse to step near, let alone visit. The main one, as someone from LA, is the Stay on Main Hotel, previously known as the Hotel Cecil. The other main one though is any plantation, which is why one story that the authors shared stayed with me the most.

Plantation tours, especially ghost tours, feel especially exploitative. These are horrific places where innumerous tragedies occurred, and yet there are people who claim them as part of their heritage and throw weddings and parties there (on a side note, I recommend reading When the Reckoning Comes by LaTanya McQueen for a novel about returning home for a plantation wedding and the erasure of history that said venues do). So the chapter about Molly and Mathilda of the Sorrel-Weed House in Savannah, Georgia really stuck with me. The house's history is often colored with language about "affairs" between Francis Sorrel, the man who owned the house, and Molly, an enslaved woman at the house. People say that he was "caught being intimate" with Molly, as if intimacy is the same as sexual assault. Both Molly and Mathilda, Sorrel's wife, were reported to die by suicide within weeks of each other, with Mathilda apparently doing so after catching her husband with Molly. Molly is considered a direct cause of Mathilda Sorrel's suicide, how horrifying is that?

Of course, both women supposedly haunt the Sorrel-Weed House today. There are a number of reasons why I hate this, one being the minimizing and sanitizing of what Molly endured from Sorrel, and another being that I hope with everything in me that enslaved people are free from plantations at the very least in whatever afterlife exists. Apparently though, Molly, Mathilda, and the Sorrel-Weed House bring a lot of money to Savannah's ghost tourism industry, so much so that I had actually forgotten the name of the Sorrel-Weed House, yet found it easily. All I did was Google "Savannah ghosts" and the first link was a list of "Most Haunted Places in Savannah, Georgia", where I easily found the Sorrel-Weed House and a sanitizied version of Molly and Mathilda's story where they stated "being intimate" instead of being raped and briefly mentioned that she was enslaved. Don't worry though, the author made sure to emphasize that the Sorrel-Weed House is haunted, that people are allowed inside the house to search for ghosts, and that they loved seeing what the house looked like "back in the day". On a side note, I only want to see plantations look like the Noroway Plantation - burnt to the ground.

I wish I could end this post with advice on how to ethically consume ghost stories, the way that many of us are finding ways to ethically consume true crime. I suppose they're one and the same though. There's a quote from author Michelle McNamara that has stuck with me ever since I read her book I'll Be Gone in the Dark.

"I love reading true crime, but I’ve always been aware of the fact that, as a reader, I am actively choosing to be a consumer of someone else’s tragedy. So like any responsible consumer, I try to be careful in the choices I make. I read only the best: writers who are dogged, insightful, and humane."

I think the same applies when it comes to ghost stories, because rarely do we ever hear stories about happy ghosts who lived long and happy lives. Even in A Haunted History of Invisible Women, we start with the story of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory and immediately go into a story of a woman who died by suicide at the Hotel Coronado. Regardless of if you believe in ghosts, these women (for the most part) existed at some point. Even Toni Morrison's Beloved is based on the real story of Margaret Garner, who killed her two-year-old daughter Mary and attempted to kill her other children to spare them from slavery when caught by the slave patrol.

All ghost stories start somewhere, so my hope is that after this, we all take the time to recognize and think critically about the language we use when discussing them, as well as how we may profit off of them (and yes, I am fully aware of the irony that this post is behind a paywall). As always though, the goal of Feminist Book Club is to launch conversations, so please comment below what thoughts that this post brings you. And please take a moment to think about Molly, Mathilda, Margaret, and baby Mary.

Tuesday might be our favorite day of the week! Here are some titles releasing today that we think you should add to your TBR (to be read) shelf.

Let us know in the comments which book release you are most excited for or which release you are grabbing today that's not mentioned!

Two gods strike a bargain that leads them on a journey with devastating consequences in this lush historical fantasy from New York Times bestselling author Ann Liang.

China in the age of brilliance, where gods freely wander the three realms. Amongst them is the cruel and beautiful Death God, who has never failed to collect a soul on time. Until now. For when he seeks out Rujia, the noble god of healing―and the only god he is fated to kill with his own hands―she makes him an offer he can’t refuse: she will help lift the excruciating, century-old curse placed upon him if he gives her a one-month reprieve.

Rujia knows she isn’t as noble as everyone believes. Her deal with Death is merely an excuse to buy herself time while she figures out an escape plan. But when her plan causes the Celestial Palace’s collapse and the beloved crown prince’s disappearance, she and Death are both held responsible. The only way to avoid the wrath of all the other gods is to travel across the realms and safely retrieve the crown prince themselves.

Yet the journey proves far more treacherous than expected. As the unlikely alliance between them blooms into more, and Death’s resolve to kill Rujia weakens by the day, neither can outrun their intertwined fate without devastating consequences: A mysterious plague. An empire-destroying flood. A thousand deaths―and rising―to restore the balance Rujia's disrupted. And if Rujia continues to live despite the will of the Heavens, this is only the beginning...

 From the author of the beloved The Last Days of the Dinosaurs, an imaginative celebration of T Rex from hatching to adulthood

Tyrannosaurus rex is a prehistoric celebrity. Exceeding 40 feet in length and weighing over 9 tons, the largest individuals of this dinosaurian species were intimidating predators capable of crushing bone and consuming more than a hundred pounds of flesh in a bite. But the last of the tyrant dinosaurs had a life beyond ripping and tearing. More than 66 million years ago, T. rex courted each other, nested, watched over their offspring, slept, drank, and explored ancient floodplains inhabited by a fantastic cast of impressive dinosaurs like the huge long-neck Alamosaurus and burly, three-horned Torosaurus. For the first time, the life story of this impressive, sensitive predator is told as if you were there to watch it unfold.

In her latest prehistoric nature walk, bestselling and award-winning author Riley Black follows the life of plucky T. rex Snaggletooth from the time she hatches through her tumultuous adulthood. The prehistoric forest Snag emerges into is full of danger, and yet, as Riley weaves the latest fossil discoveries into the story, the carnivorous dinosaur survives to play, court, fight, sleep, nest, and more as she grows up in Cretaceous North America. She tussles with rival tyrannosaurs, hunts for delectable prey, and finds soft moments of connection in the forest. Even the most die-hard dinosaur fan will come away with a new perspective and appreciation for the Tyrant Lizard Queen.

When Rabbit was ten years old, she was abducted by aliens. Then, it happened again when she was twenty. Now thirty, she’s ready for their next visit. What she isn’t prepared for is her boyfriend callously ending their long-term relationship and ejecting her from their shared home.

As her birthday approaches, the aliens still haven’t arrived. Rabbit descends into a spiral of growing paranoia and bizarre bodily transformations, until soon it seems that even her reflection has a mind of its own. With her only refuge being the chaos of strangers who might not have her best interests at heart, Rabbit worries that her ex’s abandonment not only severed her from his life, but also from her own. Struggling to orient herself within a world growing more topsy-turvy by the day, Rabbit must regain control before her aliens at last return.

Marge Piercy’s final memoir is a testament to her legacy.

After revered poet, writer, and feminist icon Marge Piercy dies in a medical emergency in October 2022, only to be resuscitated, she wakes to create her legacy piece. The Hour of My Death: A Journal of the Year After I Died is a personal narrative in the Japanese Zuihitsu literary form that encompasses diary-style entries, recipes, gardening advice and her luminous poetry, all detailing a joyful year of living in her resurrected old age. 

A beloved American progressive activist, feminist, and writer, her seminal work includes Woman On The Edge Of Time; He, She And It, which won the 1993 Arthur C. Clarke Award; and Gone To Soldiers, the New York Times bestseller and sweeping historical novel set during World War II. She has authored fifteen other novels and short story collections, and penned twenty volumes of poetry with poems regularly reprinted in anthologies, on artwork, as song lyrics, and more. Piercy also was a pioneer in the use of gender-neutral pronouns in the 1970s and is a staple in Women’s Studies programs. Marge is now 90 and has completed her final memoir, The Hour of My Death, with her reflections on a life extended and the grace and wisdom that comes with that.

Unsettling and charged, Shelter Is Necessary for Existence is equal parts psychological thriller and social satire that explores the disquieting qualities of a privileged family’s mundane cultural assumptions.

Sue, her husband, Luke, and their children, Caroline and Wheatley, present as a picture-perfect family living the American dream of ascendancy and affluence in their Brooklyn neighborhood. They purchase a brownstone at auction on a coveted tree-lined street with the intention of renovating it and moving in. At once avoidant and consumed by the renovation, Sue is torn between her aspirations to have what those around her seem to possess—from her therapist, Diana, to her alluring, insufferable neighbor Chantal—and her urge to escape the grip of their influences. Sue’s obsession and paranoia grow while the neighborhood becomes a hotbed of pulsating antagonisms.

It is only after moving in that Sue becomes aware of the mysterious deaths of the brownstone’s former residents, a mother and daughter whose voices echo in the silence. The house begins manifesting disturbing signs, such as wounds that bleed, just as Caroline and Wheatley exhibit their own troubling symptoms. Sue’s nightmares proliferate and a vacuous stupor overcomes the family as they struggle to settle into the rhythms of life in what should be their dream home. When information arises that threatens to devastate her family, Sue must finally confront the explosive charge of personal and social reality once laid bare.

With exacting psychological detail and a trenchant atmosphere, Shelter Is Necessary for Existence is a darkly comic and piercing social critique that examines the troubling territory of awareness, the lengths some go to avoid it, and what must be confronted for change to occur.

Polls have closed and the votes have been counted. For November we will be reading:

Adventures of a Decaffeinated Coffee Gremlin by Trash Panda

Written by an Independent Author, this book is promising to be full of hilarity mixed with vulnerability as a coffee addicted creature is forced to quit the hot bean juice cold turkey. Formatted as a diary spanning 30 days, we get to follow along through the caffeine withdrawled madness.

I'm quite excited to read this one, as I'm fond of light-hearted humor, and I'm so excited to discuss it with you in Discord!

Happy Reading.

I love books by Pippa Grant! ♥️

And the mad house is back!! 😍😂 I missed Aunt Pip, Lavender, Mabel, the chicken, the cat. And there are so many new characters 🤌

Ginny is living in a winery with women who have been victims of going viral on social media. Years ago her video of objecting her ex's wedding went viral. Now, her ex's best friend, a previous hockey player, Declan, is there to shoot a documentary. But didn't he hate Ginny, so what has changed now?

The dynamic of Ginny and Declan is so good. Ginny has gone through so much. There are so many elements as to why she went viral. I want to befriend Ginny!

Declan is a green flag. Though resolved in the end, I never understood why so much importance is given to Alex. I would have liked more insight into Declan and Alex's relationship.

I was afraid there was going to be a third act breakup. But thankfully that wasn't the case. The ending is perfect! Declan took the right call! I was so proud 😍🤌

Thank you Pippa Grant and team for this wonderful gifted copy!

Not a lot published today because the latest Sarah J. Maas book is out and taking up all the oxygen in the room. Here is your smaller than usual weekly round-up of brand new, progressive-leaning romances!

If I’ve omitted a title you feel passionate about and think this community will enjoy, please do share it in the comments. Reminder that I haven't read any of these titles yet, so this isn't an official endorsement unless noted. Click through to read the post on Bindery for my full commentary.

The Fall Fix Up by Karmen Lee (Harlequin) — This bi4bi book sounds so refreshing. A mechanic dealing with bad credit and housing insecurity after a fire helps a divorced artist build her home. If you’re craving romances about relatable human beings, Lee’s Peach Blossom series sounds great.

Brown Eyed Earl by Jenny Holiday (Kensington) — The third book in the Earl’s Trip historical rom-com series. A lady’s companion needs to be ruined in order to avoid a forced marriage, and she turns to a scholarly and straight-laced Earl for help. Love this trope.

The Rain and the Light by Louise Mayberry (Indie) — A marriage of convenience historical romance between an abolitionist school teacher and a lawyer set in 1842 in Wisconsin Territory. This hist-rom has depression and chronic migraine representation, and asks us what it means to be an ally in the fight for justice.

Eight Ways to Say I Love You by Amanda Elliot (Berkley) — Set over eight years, this childhood friends-to-lovers Hanukkah romance is by the author of Love You a Latke.

Reminder that there is still time to submit questions for Betty Corrello, the author of Back For Seconds, 32 Days in May, and Summertime Punchline! You can do so here.

Why, hello there!

I'm sitting here with my ghosty mug of coffee, my freshly washed hair in a towel (which I'm pretty sure we're told not to do?), getting ready for my work day. I'm working on some creative projects in the early mornings and evenings, but something I'm excited about is that Curses Dance with Bourbon is up for pre-order! How neat is that?

I got my acknowledgments in to my publisher just this week and we signed off on last edits a few weeks ago.

Before it's released I'm going to share a little, from my heart, what writing the second Lost Souls novel meant to me. I don't share much about my personal life, as that's something I protect, but there is a bit more of me in this book than the first.

I hope you are all enjoying the fall, even though here in Indiana we have a high of 79, (what). It's a time of reflection and releasing heavy things, getting ready to hunker down for a season of rest. Think of what you need to release.

I look forward to more time with you ;)

Preorder for March is below if you're interested

Hello coven!

It's been a few weeks; thank you for your patience. A book release and traveling with events took a lot out of this perimenopausal woman.

How are you? I've been thinking a lot about how we as women connect and what we give each other when we do. There's a sanctity there, isn't there? When women come together and the stars align, it can be alchemy.

I had the opportunity to sit with an incredible woman, a documentarian, who created a documentary on the untold origins of women. I'll get into this incredibly important documentary in another post, but talking with Dominique, me in my living room and her in her kitchen, it felt like breathing calmly. There's something about intentional time we take with other people, especially women, the questions we ask, the answers we give, what we leave behind.

As an author and as a woman, I want a lot of things in this world, but I love to write beautiful stories, and I love helping create beautiful spaces where women can breathe and feel seen.

A book I have been reading bits and pieces of is an anthology called The Book of Women's Friendship. It's a collection of poetry, letters, bits of fiction, all gathered into the skirt of a bound pages for you to leaf through and feel like you're peeking into the heart of women. I love a good anthology because it's something I can come and go from, like a little decadent treat here and there.

Would you be interested in an online event meeting women and chatting? A simple meet-up to talk and drink a cozy beverage and possibly make new friends? It's something I've been noodling on for a while. Let me know! Excited to be back :)

Book below if you're interested :)

Happy Tuesday, mis internet amigxs!

We have VERY few Latinx releases this week, but I had a few reminders before we got to them.

First of all, thank you so much for your grace with postponing our chat with Cleyvis Natera last week. I'll get it rescheduled this week and send out a new invite.

The LibroFM BOGO sale ends on Thursday! Have you picked your selections? LET ME HELP

BOOK CLUB

We're finalizing You Should Have Been Nicer To My Mom by Vincent Tirado and Latinx Guide to Liberation by Vanessa Pezzo.

On Sunday, November 1st, we begin reading Beginning Middle End by Valeria Luiselli. This book also happens to be a finalist for the National Book Awards on November 18th. Should we watch the awards together on Discord? Let me know in the comments.

Will be pausing our nonfiction sidequest during the last few months of the year and I'll be running some polls in the interim to see if we should start back up in the new year.

DISCORD

In addition to our reading/productivity sprints on the second Monday of every month, in November, we're adding a couple of programs.

On November 19th, Discord resident journal expert, Angie, will be leading a discussion on 2027 planner planning(?) session.

In addition, we had our innaugural Bien Creativos event where we crafted and chatted on Discord. I've been running some polls and it appears it'll be a monthly offering on Discord. Will be running more polls to figure out when is best for everyone soon.

SUPPORT BIEN LEIDOS

Supporting Bien Leidos not only helps me keep uplifting Latinx authors in this era of reading monoculture, but it also keeps you in the know...first. Your support helps me continue to push through, even when I feel like I'm ready to give up.

And now, onto our Latinx releases this week...

The Queen of Swords by Jazmina Barrera and translated by Christina Mcsweeney

Thousands of Eyes by Maximiliano Barrientos and translated by Thomas Bunstead

Xo,

Carmen

Hi, everyone! We were supposed to meet tonight for our first Chain Gang All Stars bookclub conversation, but over half of the people who previously said they could come have told me they can no longer make it! So I’m moving it to this Friday, one of the other popular times! Same time: 7pm cst!

Here is the updated link: https://us05web.zoom.us/j/83792331566?pwd=gbtzzDkWJ5jMymkwAlAnZdWn4P0wWf.1

Reminder, this one is the book club discussion so everyone is invited. We will discuss the entire book.

Our other two meetings will be discussing abolition itself. Those will take place on November 13th and December 4th! Links to come!

See you Friday!

Hello to all of you founding Apothecary members! I just wanted to take a minute to thank you all so much for joining up on this new membership tier. I know some of you are former Dark Travelers who upgraded, some of you are free members who upgraded, and some of you are new to the platform. You have no idea how much I appreciate you all supporting me and joining our community, and I am excited to make something really fun for everyone! I was honestly overwhelmed (in a good way) to see how many people jumped on this, so thank you again!

If you are new, you will find we are a laid back, kind, supportive community of readers who love talking about books, Legos, and whatever else comes to mind over on Discord. As Apothecary members who sign up before November 15, 2026, you will all be getting the inaugural January 2027 Fantasy Box. However, your Dark Traveler benefits start now! You will all be seeing posts for your exclusive weekly reading update vlog, early YouTube video access, the Dark Traveler Discord channel (should you choose to join Discord), and are all eligible to participate in our monthly pick a book for me.

You all have an exclusive channel on Discord as well, separate from the Dark Traveler channels, where I will post some teasers and keep some chatter about the book box going, but I will also post everything here through Bindery if you're not a Discord person. If you do want to give the Discord a try, here's a link!

In the meantime, especially if you are new, I am very open to feedback and requests. If you have any ideas to make the membership better for you, or have anything you may want to request for the boxes, do let me know - I'm always open to ideas!

Again, welcome, thank you, and I'm so excited to start working on this! Happy reading!

I got a new favorite history book plus I started a series by one of my favorite authors... here's everything I've been reading plus some other news. Feel free to hit me up in the comments with your plans for the week!

READING

REVIEW

A PEOPLE'S TRAGEDY: THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 1891-1924 by ORLANDO FIGES (narrative popular history)

Progress: 421/824

Holy hell balls y'all this, so far, is up there with some of my favorite THICC BOI history books. For those of you that read The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard J. Evans when it was a book club pick, the format and style will feel very similar. The main difference is Figes is more opinionated than Evans, but that's also a product of the topic and all of the competing interpretations of events (Nazi history doesn't need to be as spicy, they damn themselves quite clearly in every way).

Figes has such command as a writer and flows from top-down to bottom-up history smooth as hell, plus he has a great eye for the interesting bits and engaging stories. Only halfway through but I can't see my opinion of it changing much. It bangs.

THREE ASSASSINS by KOTARO ISAKA (dark thriller)

Progress: Finished

This was trying to be both a dark comedy and a psychological thriller and I'm not sure it was very good at either but ultimately it was a fine time, even if I will never think about it again.

20TH CENTURY BOYS by NAOKI URASAWA [The Perfect Edition Vol. 4] (manga/seinen thriller)

Progress: Chapter 11 of 22

This continues to be killer stuff from top to bottom. Every plotline, new character, and big set pieces hit. It's like if Stephen King's Stand by Me (aka The Body) was also a global conspiracy thriller spanning multiple decades. I'm currently in the middle of The Big F'n Event and I'm completely hooked.

DRAGON KEEPER by ROBIN HOBB [Rain Wild Chronicles #1, The Realm of the Elderlings #10]

Progress: Page 80/473

This is considered by many to be the weakest of RotE but I don't give a damn about all that I'm just vibing with Hobb like I always do. No clue what to think yet other than I quite like the stuff with the dragons (super high brow commentary there).

PREVIEW

The Wolves of War by John Gwynne is locked in for the Fiction Sickos Book Club in November, with the History Sickos Book Club vote looking like Yakuza by Andrew Rankin is running away with it.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• Publication News: Hoping that very soon I will be able to reveal who the cover artist for our second book will be! We were very spoiled for choice so I'm sure y'all will love 'em.

• Game of the Week: Hmmmmm...

• Show of the Week: Starting S4 of Slow Horses and am almost done watching the new limited series of East of Eden (love all the Cathy, she's the best).

• Movie of the Week: I watched The Invite over the weekend on a whim and Olivia Wilde really directed the shit out of that thing. Very anxiety inducing, not at all what I expected, and pretty damn awesome.

I have had such a great time over here on Bindery. I love what the publishing side of the company does, and I have really enjoyed the platform. Being able to provide longer form content, and build a great community of book lovers has been so much fun! Over the last few months, I have seen some great growth with my current membership tier, The Dark Travelers. I knew I wanted to offer a new membership tier, and I wanted it to be something that would offer something cool, while hopefully helping out less known authors or books, as well as some local businesses.

So after some thought, I figured out a great way to do these things that I am really excited about. Allow me to introduce the Apothecary Tier, a quarterly book box that gives you all the great benefits of the Dark Travelers, while also getting you a quarterly themed book box!

As you can see above, each quarter will be a different theme and genre. Each box will come with a book that is a lesser known book or author (or both!) within the genre noted that month, as well as some extra goodies to enjoy while reading! If possible, I will buy the books direct from the author, and when not possible through my local independent bookstore. Items included will also be from local businesses as much as possible! And in addition to the book box, you get all the benefits of the Dark travelers: a weekly reading update vlog, early access to the weekly YouTube video, private Discord channels, and the ability to pick a book for me to read each month!

Now, of course, there will be some rules, so here is the fine print!

• Obviously, you need to be comfortable sharing a shipping address with me!

• You need to be a member for 2 months before the first book ships. For the January Fantasy box, memberships need to be in by November 15! All members get immediate Dark Traveler status on signing up.

• No skips are available - I am a one man show here, and this is already a lot of logistics! If you already have the book, or are not interested, you will be getting a new book that you can resell, donate, or give away!

• I am initially offering this internationally, with the initial shipping from the US being covered by me. However, any extra duties, tariffs or taxes that are charged in your country will be up to you. If shipping becomes prohibitively expensive I will address that later, but I did want to at least offer this to start.

• Cancellation follows the same policies as any Bindery membership tier.

The schedule will be as follows starting in January 2027, with books shipping mid month:

• January: Fantasy Book

• April: Sci Fi Book

• July: Surprise book and genre!

• October: Horror Book (nothing too extreme!)

This is super exciting, and I am really pumped to offer this and have more members join our community while supporting authors, artists, and indie bookstores! If you have any questions please let me know, and I hope to see some of you sign up! Happy reading!

Today is the last day to upgrade your membership and get an arc of Cracks, the next book from our publishing imprint.

Why do paid subscribers get arcs?

The community membership fees go into the production of our books and community support is what helps us compete with Big 5 publishers. It only makes sense that you, our biggest supporters, get to read the book early! We know you won’t stop shouting about it!

You are the champions of diverse stories. We are constantly reminded that publishing needs to be more diverse. Our work here helps get these necessary stories into the world! Your early reviews are so important.

In addition to arcs, paid subscribers also get the book tea early (secrets incoming!) , access to exclusive posts and snail mail club is going monthly for $12 and up subscribers starting in Jan!

Today and is a great day to support indie publishing!

I want to share some more early reviews of Cracks!

Okay, let me know if you’ve already preordered below!

Voting for November reads are now live! As always, I think these are some pretty banger choices… I hope you guys are just as excited as I am! Voting will end on 10/31 and everyone will get two votes, one vote for fantasy and one vote for thriller/horror!

I'm not looking forward to all the ACOTAR fever this week. If you too would rather read a book by a marginalized author than the latest release from an author who has unapologetically used a Black woman's death to promote her work, here are some recommendations!

She Isn't Herself Tonight by Hailey Piper 4.5/5 stars

Put this on your TBR if you enjoy weird girl lit with horror elements. This was my first Hailey Piper, but it definitely won't be the last. I loved the exploration of how we are pushed to become who others want us to be instead of being loved as we are.

Venus Vanishing by Rebecca Birrell 4.5/5 stars

Put this on your TBR if you enjoy sapphic historical fiction. Our main character is an artist who is just trying to live and make art in a society that is increasingly hostile to her (1930s Germany).

Scorpion Deep by CG Drews 4/5 stars

Put this on your TBR if you enjoy gothic coming of age stories and/or stories with asexuality rep. I think this was actually my least favorite CG Drews books, but that's just because so many of their other works were homeruns for me.

First Generation by Meghana Karanjkar 3/5 stars

Put this on your TBR if you enjoy stories about being an outsider. I really enjoyed the first story that featured a character trying to make it home for a family holiday but being forced to keep up with the daily grind as her coworkers don't celebrate that holiday. The other stories weren't as memorable for me.

And a few that I can't wait to get my hands on:

Public Access Afterworld by Jane Schoenbrun

Why this interests me: it seems to be technology horror and also queer.

Savage Lake by Nick Medina

Why this interests me: it features a haunted cabin in the woods.

You're No Better by Andrew Joseph White

Why this interests me: it's an Andrew Joseph White work...that was enough to get me to preorder. This one features the child of a serial killer trying to outlive that legacy.

I have seen YOU CAN SEE EVERYTHING and I am here to add to the discourse. This will be full of spoilery thoughts, and I do think that if you're planning to see it, you should try to go in as fresh as possible. Save this and come back when you've seen it. This will probably be a bit rambling, as I'm still gathering my thoughts. Let us explore them together!

I spent a lot of the runtime of this film trying to square the Elizabeth Holmes on the screen with the one I knew from dozens of interviews and profiles about her as the founder of Theranos. Previously, she leaned in (lol) to the girlboss aesthetic that was on the rise at the time. Here, she's a naive, misunderstood girl, exactly the image she and her husband Billy want to project. Or is she?

The movie starts off as a fairly standard documentary, out to answer the question "Is Elizabeth Holmes a liar?" However, it very quickly starts to feel like you are stuck in an M.C. Escher drawing. Absolutely every scene has you trying to figure out if she's for real or not. There are many shots of Nathan Fielder visibly trying to do this math in his head, which then cut to an extreme closeup of Holmes smiling, wide-eyed, back, inviting you to scrutinize her for any minute tell. You won't find any. The first thing I told my spouse after leaving the theater was, "I think she believes she did nothing wrong."

And that's the key. SHE believes it, so you believe in when she's telling you so. Then you leave that conversation and you wake up again in reality, where there's no possible way that's true. But she believes it so openly! Maybe I'm wrong? Let's talk about it again.

All this, however, turns out to not really be the main point of the documentary. Well, it is, but it isn't (do you see what I mean about Escher yet?) About an hour and a half in, I discreetly looked at my phone and wondered how we could only be halfway through. What more could there possibly be to show? And that is basically where the beat drops in this film.

Throughout the first half, there were glimpses of Holmes' husband, Billy Evans, and how deeply engrained in her life he is. At first he seems like a random chud, but as the movie rolls on, it becomes clear that he is in control.

At the same time, we discover that that Fielder has been keeping some important information from the audience. He shares the details with Amanda Seyfried, who played Holmes in "The Dropout." (We'll get there in a minute, I promise!)

Now, we have not one but two men trying to steer Holmes' life story in a way that will best suit them. But only one is presented as a villain. Certainly, what Evans is doing is orders of magnitude worse. Yet Fielder seems shocked when Seyfried points this out to him, though not in such direct words. He asks why he would try to protect Holmes, in nearly a mirror image of the shot where Holmes asks him why she would lie to him.

Holmes has been publicly paired with a man for the entire time she has been in the public eye. We already knew about Sunny Balwani, her former romantic and business partner at Theranos, and the questions about how much of Theranos was under his control vs Holmes'. Midway through the documentary, Holmes' father rather casually says everything went off the rails when Holmes was raped as a young woman, and this is never referenced again. Now, we have Evans and Fielder vying for narrative control.

Has Holmes' entire life and career trajectory been shaped by controlling, abusive men? Is that on purpose, using them as a shield? We are back in the Escher drawing. There's a woman-to-woman urge to tell her to get the fuck out, and there's a (feminist?) urge to insist she is actually playing them all. Again, when she is speaking to you directly, you 100% believe what she is saying. Then the scene cuts, and you aren't so sure anymore.

Back to Seyfried for a minute. Seyfried and Holmes don't actually look all that much alike, but when she is doing reenactments with Fielder, you can practically feel reality slipping, two lenses coming in and out of focus. I had to actively remind myself who was on screen. In the non-reenactment scenes, she is not letting these men off the hook. No matter how defensive and evasive they are, she pushes. She doesn't always make headway, but her astonishment - and occasionally anger - are a relief after Fielder's stone-faced approach.

Oh my god, this is already so long and we haven't even talked about the "Who's on First" scene. I am gonna think about that scene for the rest of my life. Fielder shows Holmes and Evans the classic comedy routine, and Holmes simply...doesn't get it. But that can't be possible, right? It's so simple, that's why it's funny. But Fielder has to explain it to her, and she seems to just accept the explanation without grasping it.

This scene ties back to one where Holmes is trying to explain that everything that went wrong at Theranos was a misunderstanding over the word "can." As in, everyone thought she meant the machine can do all these things right now, and she meant it theoretically can do all these things. Like, Holmes and Evans really want us to believe that this misunderstanding persisted through hundreds of interviews and profiles and no one spotted it, no one tried to correct it. Holmes mind "just works differently," they insist. They are trying to ask why you would punish a neurodivergent person, but without actually using that word. So, there's another layer on the question of how in charge of her own life Holmes is. Maybe she doesn't understand that these men are taking advantage of her, if she's autistic? They let that hang there for you to grapple with, along with all the other concerns about her agency.

At the end of the film, however, the biggest question for me was, why was she the one who was punished for this? Out of every Silicon Valley CEO who has made big promises that turned out to be half truths or complete lies, why is she the only one in jail? Why is she the one who lost control of her narrative and her life? Everything we saw in the film answers these questions and also evades them entirely, making this all perfectly Elizabeth Holmesian.

Okay, on to the book reviews for the week. As always, books marked with an * were gifted to me by the publisher.

Punished by Ann-Helén Laestadius, translated by Rachel Willson-Broyles* - This is a story about a people I know nothing about - the Sámi people indigenous to what is now Sweden. It is told in dual timelines: the 1950s, when Sámi children were forced to go to a "nomad school," and the 1980s, when those children are adults grappling with the abuse they faced at school. The prose is pretty stark, leaving the reader nowhere to hide from the pain. Although the characters are all from the same village and went to the same school, they had different experiences and drastically different reactions to it. Nearly a week later, I'm still thinking about particular scenes - not necessarily the most violent ones, but the most emotionally complex ones.

Espíritu by Aiden Thomas* - Yay, we are back with Yadriel and Julian, yay! I loved how this book expanded on Cemetery Boys, both in terms of the lore of the world and in the emotional fallout of the events in the first book. I particularly liked new character Angel. Let more queer characters make bad choices! Let them be messy! My one concern with this book is that the characters felt younger than 17 to me. I can't recall if Cemetery Boys felt like that or not, but I was definitely reading thinking they were like 14 or 15.

Wolf Worm by T. Kingfisher* - A perfect Halloween season read. What a great twist on existing lore, bringing in the creep factor of the post-Civil War rural south. It is pretty intense on the gore - I had to do some deep breathing to get through a few passages, as I always find body horror worse on audio than in print. At the same time, the descriptions of the critters and the MC Sonia's paintings of them were often quite lovely. I liked how Sonia was depicted as smart and capable and still way out of her depth (I mean, who could possibly be in their depth in these situations, really). I thought the mystery element was pretty obvious, but I still wanted to know how they were going to get out of everything.

There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm* - How do you fight an enemy you can't remember? Repeatedly, it turns out. At first, this book seems like lightly connected vignettes, but then everything coalesces into the big bad and we're off to the races. I loved our no nonsense main character Marie Quinn and her commitments to both bureaucracy and refusing to let humanity die. Unfortunately, the story got confusing toward the end, and the final battle was kind of anticlimactic.

One Good Thing

Washington Spirit vs Gotham FC

The Spirit are in the playoffs! We've now entered the time of year when an unhealthy percentage of my mental health rests on how well 11 women kick a ball around. Yay sports!

Anyway, here's Donut trying to claim my latest order of mica pigments for himself.

Donut the orange and white cat laying on a pile of small bags of powdered pigments.

It’s me. I know. I’m reading reviews of Cracks again. Here for the second to last time to remind you that the last day to upgrade to secure your arc of our next book, Cracks is tomorrow! (And be the first to find out which of my very favorite authors blurbed!)

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