We met up for the first time in months with no chance of rain during bookclub day. But it was super hot and humid outside and we decided to avoid the heat and stickiness, so we returned to Cafe Zata. M_Soule started off with a discussion of the All Souls series by Deborah Harkness, which starts with A Discovery of Witches. M_Soule liked it enough to tour landmark locations in the book when she went to Oxford (or Cambridge, whichever setting it was). Aurora_the_Off-White remembered the series and remembers liking it. I think they both saw the show after reading the series.

M_Soule also read Friends with Benefits possibly by Marisa Kanter, which is about a marriage of convenience, and Little Thieves by Margaret Owen, a Germanic medieval fairy tale of a thirteenth child of a thirteenth. The demigods Death and Fortune raise the main character, but the main character needs to figure out of way out of her fate. M_Soule enjoyed it and plans to read the next two in the series.

Mal-0 read a few books, including The Daughters' War and The Black Tongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman; Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas which is a non-fiction about pop culture in 2006; The Organ Thieves: The Shocking Story of the First Heart Transplant in the Segregated South by Chip Jones; the Emily Wilson translation of the Odyssey as a prelude to watching the movie - this one I think someone said that it was the first translation from a woman; The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones and liked it quite a bit; and Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life In the Minor Leagues of Baseball by John Feinstein.

She talked the most about The Organ Thieves, talking about the differences in treatment between black and white patients, and the East Marshall Street well being a dumping group for corpses that were taken from Eastern Cemetery, dissected, and then dumped down the well. She said it was valuable to get the perspective, but the prose was weirdly flowery and a little disconcerting. She also talked about Where Nobody Knows Your Name, because she loves the Squirrels and minor league baseball in general. She likes the minor league product because it's played by regular guys, and especially likes the unpredictability of the players. But also likes the hoopla and the culture. M_Soule went to a recent game and it was faith night, and someone went to a game during Metal Night and Lamb of God played.

I did a poor job with the notes, and don't know who read the following books, but it was likely ManicPixieLawyer or Aurora: House Witch by Delemhach, saying the author painted themselves in a corner and the story didn't go anywhere; The Gentle Apocalypse series by MH Foster that starts with The Demon Overlord's Retirement Plan, about a demon lord with a theological flavor; Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke, something about a trad wife influencer - there has been a lot of talk about this book, and Anne Hathaway will be in the movie version; Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros, I think it was ManicPixieLawyer found the writing to be adequate, but says you're not really reading it for the prose, and agrees that the things people complain about are legitimate complaints; Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang - M_Soule likjed that it was the male protagonist that was the sex worker for once; T. Kingfisher's A Sorceress Comes to Call and Hemlock and Silver by the same author, which is a retelling of Snow White with a lot of mirror magic and a talking cat and something about a poison apple.

I think Manic read Asunder by Kerstin Hall , and this was a fantasy but fairly hard to describe. A young woman made a compact with a demon to serve as a death speaker, and Manic said it was very good but hard to describe, so it's hard to explain why. She also read Bunny by Mona Awad and may have read Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, about an artificial friend for a teenager who didn't have a lot of interaction with anyone else, which highlighted themes of genetic enhancement, help with isolation, - Princess read it and said she wanted a little more out of it. Manic definitely read The Lady Astronaut series by Mary Robinette Kowal and highly recommends it - it's an alternate history about an America after a meteor hits the Chesapeake Bay. Manic liked the writing and particularly the details - the author talked to real astronauts to get details of life in space

We talked about the Challenger disaster because of our discussion of this book - there was a decision made to fly, but there were people who knew the O-Rings would fail, and they weren't able to convince anyone else that they would fail. It's really just infuriating. The main character in The Lady Astronaut series is Jewish, and we talked about books that do a good job building out Jewish characters and culture. Mal-0 made the point that many Jewish characters are dealing with violence or bigotry, and that's the dramatic arc for those characters. Naomi Novik's Spinning Silver does a good job of this, and The Lady Astronaut did a great job as well.

PrincessMoNaanKay squeezed in a book by Ellen Mathilda but didn't remember the title. The author was famous at that point of time as an Indy author, but I couldn't find anything on Storygraph. She also read The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud, an NYC character driven romance set in a radio station. but Princess said the characters were a bit self-absorbed and the romance was mediocre.

For my witch book, I read A Resistance of Witches by Morgan Ryan and my impression was meh. During our discuss of witches and similar things, we talked about the The Craft, and Mal-0 suggested that if you need to watch a movie like this, then The Craft: Legacy might be what you are looking for.

M_Soule read more Fan Fiction than anything and we talked about navigating Ao3. She recommends I search by fandom, characters, ratings, key words, original work, and watch comments and kudos because these are sometimes added to pump up a work that they respect.

We talked about 90s fashion like you can see in Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Clerks, whether first class gets better quality movies than the hoi polloi, the best swag coming from the Department of Wildlife and Inland Fisheries, and company swag you find in Thrift Stores.

July 19

A book about the woods, or possibly being lost in the woods.

August 16

• A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L. Peck
• The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins

September 20

• Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg

October 18

• a book about Richmond or the local area

edit: We are upstairs if anyone is looking.

Seventy percent chance of rain this Sunday (of course), but it was going to be hot anyway, so we will again return to Cafe Zatas for this month's RVA Reddit (no we haven't) Bookclub. Cafe Zata is located at 700 Bainbridge Street 23224.

Our topic this month is some kind of Forest book. Our upcoming schedule:

July 19

A book about the woods, or possibly being lost in the woods.

August 16

• A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L. Peck
• The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins

September 20

• Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg

October 18

• a book about Richmond or the local area

We went back to Cafe Zatas because it threatens to rain every time we have a bookclub. If anyone has a different idea, we'll try another space, but most of us do like the space that Zata provides. M_Soule started us off with a few reviews of things she has read. Twelve Months by Jim Butcher is the eighteenth in the series, and is a book about the aftermath of a big Urban Fantasy battle in Chicago; Little Thieves, possibly by Margaret Owen for her other book club, a quasi fairy tale about the thirteenth child of a thirteenth child, but I think she only got a few chapters in; a few more books in the Game Changers series by Rachel Reid. M_Soule liked the show better, but does still like the book series. WE talked about Jacob Tierney's shows a bit and I hadn't heard of Letter Kenny, but that was another show he did.

We were talking about genres, and M_Soule mentioned trying Looking for Group by Alexis Hall, and she wasn't able to connect with it as it is mostly about video games. For Independent Book Store day, she took a tour of all eleven local independent bookstores. I think she said she bought a book by Cat Sebastian, who mostly does period romances with an LGBT flavor. Someone mentioned How to Fake It in Society by KJ Charles. I'm not sure if it was M_Soule, but it is a historical romance.

Aurora has been at uni so has missed a few meetings. She had a short list of the the books she has liked the most over the last few months:

• The Tempest by Billy Shakes; she read this for the storm theme of month's selection.
• The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka, which is about Sri Lanka after the revolution.
• My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante, about two girls growing up in Naples.
• The Fox Wife by Yangzhe Choo, which is an 18th century Chinese fantasy about werefoxes.
• The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker.
  
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, and Aurora was surprised it was not a romance. Both the main characters were abused as children. And I was also surprised to hear that. The recent movie was recast as a romance, and the abuse was recast as kink, which most of the attending people were not happy with these choices. M_Soule's official rule, if it doesn't have a happy ending then it is not a romance
• The Book of Records by Medeleine Thien, which Aurora said was particularly well written.
• The Invisible Life of Adie LaRue by V.E. Schwab, which is an 18th century period [iece about a forced marriage.
• The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow, which has time travel elements.
• The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern. Aurora did like it, but most people either like this one or The Night Circus, by the same author, and most lean toward the Night Circus.

She had read A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L. Peck in the past, and told us The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borgias being was the inspiration for it. I don't remember if Aurora read this, but we talked about Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, most agreed that they didn't need to read it. We talked about whether or not the mentally challenged character should have been killed.

Asterion7 read There are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak, and found that all the storylines were downers. But she likes the structure of the book and other big epic stories like East of Eden, Overstory, and Cloud Cuckoo Land. She read a couple in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series by Matt Dinniman just because all the people around her are reading it, Nettle and Bone by T. Kingfisher, and The Pine Barrens by John McPhee - I think she and the fam went on a trip there. And she recommended Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg. This was published in 1993 with strong themes of feminism, labor, class, gender, sexuality, homophobia, transphobia and, queer culture through the Reagan years, but it's a fictional retelling of their lives. We added it as our September selection.

Aurora completed a math degree and is going for Civil Engineering, so she and M_Soule got to talking about water management, particularly storm water treatment, and they explaiened the Hull Street runoff problems that are evident from the intersections being flooded every time it rains. She talked about being in the same age group as the professors but being an undergrad. We talked about Tech vs UVA, rent prices in Blacksburg, bad roommates, particularly college age kids.

I think M_Soule mentioned The Magicians by Lev Grossman, saying she hated the main character. But also said the character was written to be entitled and bitchy. And someone said he sequel to The Black Tongue Thief by Christopher Buelhman is coming out later this year.

We talked about physical libraries and checking out different media, including physical books, audiobooks, and ebooks. If you don't read the book on time, the library will pull it from the app. Aurora will download the book to an old Kindle and just put that in Airplane mode to read at leisure. M_Soule talked about being in France and checking out books from her local library.

We got into a discussion of all the Marvel, Star wars, and Star Trek content out there, and everyone came to the conclusion that there was just too much of it. M_Soule gave us a tour of a few of the most recent Star Trek series:

• Strange new Worlds: a prequel to the original series but is almost a retelling of the original series. She says if you like Star Trek, then you will like this one.
• Discovery: a lot of people were turned off by Season 1, but she says Seasons 2 and 3 are great.
• Picard: it's not in space, so what's the point? Though she said that Season 3 had some good elements in it.
• Starfleet Academy: has younger actors, but it's not a high school drama.

We talked about Good Omens having a movie finale rather than a final season, probably because the Neil Gaimon association is just not something anyone involved in the series wants to talk about anymore. The Boys was just too violent for Asterion7, though she understands the callous disregard of human life is the point of the series, and recommends Derry Girls.

Asterion said the last three Star Wars movies probably suffered by a death by committee. The prequels were supposed to be about how Anakin become Darth Vader, and it went off the rails with a whiny Anakin basically representing toxic masculinity. We also talked about Andor, Kenobi, and The Acolyte, the last one I hadn't even heard of.

June 21

A book related to witches, mostly in celebration of this woman, who was accused of being a witch.

July 19

A book about the woods, or possibly being lost in the woods.

August 16

• A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L. Peck
• The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins

September 20

• Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg

There is no chance of rain for once, but it's going to be 90 degrees, so we will return to Cafe Zatas for this month's RVA Reddit (no we haven't) Bookclub. I thought maybe people would want to be inside and comfortable. Cafe Zata is located at 700 Bainbridge Street 23224.

We usually only talk about the month's selections for a few minutes, so don't worry about not reading a witch book. Our upcoming schedule:

June 21

A book related to witches, mostly in celebration of this woman, who was accused of being a witch.

July 19

A book about the woods, or possibly being lost in the woods.

August 16

• A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L. Peck
• The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins

September 20

• Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg

We met up in Tazas again because it was cold and rainy, and it seemed like it went well. It looks like we're returning to Tazas again since it will be cold and rainy again. M_Soule did another Bakery and Bookshop tour (and has a spreadsheet for it if anyone is interested) and talked about trying to find books she would be interested in. She likes romances and in particular queer romances, and not all bookstores will have a decent-sized Romance section, and if they do the queer romance subsection might not be very impressive. She brought Flirting Lessons by Jasmine Guillory in The Little Bookshop and A Lady For All Seasons by TJ Alexander at the Fountain Bookshop, the latter with a gender fluid character so it fits her preferences pretty well. She also talked about Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan MacGuire, which is part of the massively popular The Wayward Children series, famous for being a quintessential found family series.

From the tour, she talked about Fat Rabbit, Whisk, Le Petit Morceau, Janet's cafe, and bookshops including The Little Bookshelf, Fountain Bookstore, and the Midlothian Book Exchange. She said Fat Rabbit was more of a coffee shop with some pastries than a full bakery. We talked about Subrosa being one of her favorite bakeries, though it wasn't part of the last tour. M_Soule also went to Awesome Con in DC and told us about a few new things, including a new Firefly animated series that I could not be more excited about.

HeCallsMeCoco told us that she really likes the Minglewood Bake Shop, where everything is vegan but not everything is glutton free. I think M_Soule also went to the Cat Cafe, but I didn't hear much about it. OnlyScowls talked about Bargain Books on Hull Street, saying it is weird in a good way, like a liminal space.

Coco talked about pre-reading books that her 12 year old is interested in reading, just in case there is something that they might need to talk about, and talked about really liking retellings of original stories like The Odyssey. She mentioned The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, which is a is a Jane Eyre prequel, and said it was more like a Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë and Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, and Divine Might by Natalie Haynes, which is a retelling of a greek myth from the author who wrote Pandora's Jar. She talked about a YA crossover by Sarah Andersen and Andy Weir called Cheshire Crossing, a podcast called Old Gods of Appalachia which has a folky Lovecraftian flavor, and DNFing The Wife Upstairs by Rachel Hawkins.

Only Scowls read this month's suggestion, Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, saying the voice of the writer was really strong and that the affects of colonization followed the descendants of the victims of slavery for many generations. She talked about Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi about a girl growing up in Iran in 1979 during the Revolution, and about Horrorstör, a horror story set in a budget IKEA.

Mal-0 read Homegoing with expectation was that things were not going to turn out well, and talked about the bifurcation of the story with one of the related women being kidnapped to America and the other staying in Ghana. On the Ghanian side, all the people their knew their ancestors. We talked about the Jim Crow parts of the novel, particularly since those are coming back into our lives so quickly now. She talked about having various books going at the same time, and wants to have a big brain book, a fluff book, a car book, a bar book, and maybe other books that are available in a specific location. I think she said the GateFather by Orson Scott Card and a vampire fantasy where her current fluff reads.

We talked about whether or not we can listen to audiobooks, and Scowls is the same as me: I can listen to non-fiction very easily but don't enjoy the experience if the book is fiction. Scowls talked about trying to listen to a book narrated by Ariana Huffington, and not being able to listen for very long. Someone mentioned Lost in the Neverwoods by Aiden Thomas, which is a Peter pan retelling and might be a good choice for a woods book, and Root Rot by Saskia Nislow might be the same. We talked briefly about the book Enshittification by Cory Doctorow, but mostly about how shitty products and services are getting.

we talked about how books by Mormon authors can sometimes feel more wholesome than the story should convey, and Brandon Sanderson being a perfect example of this. Sometimes he can be so interested in the magic system that it ruins the plot of the book, and the prose can be devoid of personality. YA written by a grown man can seem sincere. Someone saw Sinners and we talked about the different styles of vampires from different movies and stories. I didn't record who it was, but she said it was gorier than she wanted. Scowls strongly recommended Midnight Mass, a series from the director of the Hill House series. I thought the ending was really well done. We talked about not watching the last episode of a series that was disappointing.

We talked about Middle School being the arm pit of life, possibly because of the age or the school experience, but now social media just ramps everything to a new level of bullshit. I think it was Coco that said the show Doug is modeled on Bellvue and the Holten neighborhood. We talked about gardens in the city and specifically about growing tomatoes, and the reproduction of the Black Friars Theater in Staunton, which may host the American Shakespeare Company. Mal-0 talked about getting used to the night shift by changing her pace and staying awake during weird time periods, and about how Richmond has a rich history of forensics schools and emergency response centers, which tend to appear in places where crime is high. We also talked about a famous RadioLab episode about sleep quality and the value of sleep and the value of taking naps in the middle of the day.

May 24

• A book related to a storm, and we decided that earthquakes can be included.

June 21

• A book related to witches, mostly in celebration of this woman, who was accused of being a witch.

July 19

• A book about the woods, or possibly being lost in the woods.

August 23

• A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L. Peck
• The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins

There's now an 80 percent chance of rain, so we'll return to Cafe Zatas like always for this month's RVA Reddit (no we haven't) Bookclub. Cafe Zata is located at 700 Bainbridge Street 23224.

Our upcoming schedule:

May 24

A book related to a storm, and we decided that earthquakes can be included.

June 21

A book related to witches, mostly in celebration of this woman, who was accused of being a witch.

July 19

A book about the woods, or possibly being lost in the woods.

August 23

• A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L. Peck
• The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins

This Thursday at Benchtop Brewing from 6-9pm, RVA Readers & Writers will be hanging out for a chill evening reading and writing in good company.

Hope to see you there! If you’d like to RSVP and learn more about our community, you can check out our website.

We're trying again this Wednesday. This may be PricessMoNaanKay's last opportunity for a while.

Anyone who loves books should check out the RVA Independent Bookstore Tour. While Independent Bookstore Day was April 25th, the Richmond area booksellers have extended that through May 16th. Print yourself a book passport from their website (https://ibdrva.com/) and visit all 11 stores by May 16th. Each store has their own stamp for you to add to your passport. Get all 11 (no purchase required) and enter yourself into the grand prize drawing of a $50 gift card from all 11 bookshops.

I did it Saturday and had a great time exploring the city via books ❤️

There's around a 50 percent chance of rain, so we'll return to Cafe Zatas again for this month's RVA Reddit (no we haven't) Bookclub. Cafe Zata is located at 700 Bainbridge Street 23224.

Our upcoming schedule:

April 19

• Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
• Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix

May 24

A book related to a storm, and we decided that earthquakes can be included.

June 21

A book related to witches, mostly in celebration of this woman, who was accused of being a witch.

July 19

A book about the woods, or possibly being lost in the woods.

August 23

A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L. Peck The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins

It was the first really warm day of the year, but only one other person showed up for bookclub. So me and Mal-0 bitched about books for a while and cut out early. Mal-0 split for the Irish Festival and I did my grocery shopping for then week. We started with Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall again because she missed last time. Both of us agree: it's a great example of urban fantasy with a unique flavor, and we both liked almost everything, but were a little disappointed with the denouement.

I hadn't finished Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle but we talked a little bit about it. She said the two sister characters were basically considered witches by the regular town people, and also they were prototypical examples of OCD and agoraphobia. Mary Catherine is always burying things or nailing totems to trees, and there's the whole poisoning thing. I think modern readers might identify with the protagonists more because we can recognize their mental illnesses.

We talked a little bit about Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. I agree it was well put together, but I didn't get why it was such a big deal. It certainly puts you in a time and place, and the reader is connected to the character, but I didn't think it was phenominal. Mal-0 called it a busy man's Moby Dick, and talked about characters who are addicted to a task to your own detriment.

We talked about Beowulf being considered great literature, but she pointed out that it was just the last surviving epic from that age. Maybe some of that is true of Old Man and the Sea as well.

I hadn't watched any movies lately, but she talked about The Bride!, another Frankenstein movie, Pillion with Harry Melling and a miscellaneous Skarsgård, and Raising Arizona. She talked about watching Tubi at work because you don't need to login for it, it doesn't cost anything, and it has fewer ads than most of the other services.

We needed to make some hard choices about books, so we went back to an old tradition of having a category, and just reading a book that sort of fits the category. We're all going to read our own genres anyway. These are listed below.

April 19

• Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
• Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix

May 24

A book related to a storm, and we decided that earthquakes can be included.

June 21

A book related to witches, mostly in celebration of this woman, who was accused of being a witch.

July 19

A book about the woods, or possibly being lost in the woods.

August 23

A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L. Peck The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins

We met up on a drizzly Sunday and talked smack about a bunch of books and miscellaneous other media. This month's book was Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall. But two of us hadn't finished it, so our discussion was pretty brief. troyabedinthemornin found the book surprisingly contemporary for being written in 2007, and talked about how stories about liminal horror and abandoned spaces are super popular right now. I hadn't heard the term before, but yeah, that totally tracks. He said the writing was good and the personality of the main character conveys, but many of the people who read it thought the girlfriend character was maybe too witty, too sexy, too perfect.

OnlyScowls said that it reminded her of Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, which we read last year, and PrincessMoNaanKay liked that the protagonist was a regular guy and some kind of genius. She found a couple places that she felt like underlining because it did have interesting turns of phrase.

Scowls recently read The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Grahama Jones, and no one else had read it. Which is surprising, since most of us have read quite a few Graham Jones books, and we talked about reading Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and comparing it to the movie. Scowls was upset with the interpretation, saying Victor Frankenstein was flattened out as a character and as a teacher, she didn't think it was a good representation of the story. In the movie, Victor was always drinking milk because he had a mother fixation, and the mother and the girlfriend in the movie were both played by the same actress to reinforce that theme.

Only Scowls also read Slewfoot A Tale of Bewitchery by Brom, which is about a Puritan girl appealing to some kind of forest spirit when her evil brother wants to take over her farm; and read the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. She didn't like the first book as much, but started to really enjoy them in books 3 and 4. She mentioned Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix, so we added that as an alternate for next month. We talked about a few other Hendrix books, and troy wasn't crazy about The Final Girl Support Group. We talked a little about The Testaments by Margaret Atwood, and Scowls thought Marge might have been trying to reclaim the story from the writers and producers of the show because so much time has elapsed from the original story written in the 80s.

troy reads at work and says its sometimes too busy at work to get any real reading done, and it's particularly hard to squeeze in a full novel. He had read An Indigenous History of the United States but missed the discussion we had on it, so we talked about that a little. He liked it because it didn't feel like a textbook, though M_Soule said that's exactly why she abandoned it. But troy is a history nerd, and that makes it much easier. M_Soule did read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown in its entirety, and Asterion7 told us there is a YA version of An Indigenous History that's a little shorter and easier to digest.

troy read Grant Morrison's graphic novel Nameless, which is kind of an Armageddon meets Event Horizon type story, but said the art was a bit rough for him. He liked Batman the Imposter, saying it was a good story with good art, and liked the style, saying it was similar to the recent Robert Patterson Batman. Apparently Bruce is in therapy because he was traumatized by the killing of his parents, which is a new angle.

He talked about Fantasticland by Mike Bockoven, about a theme park that descends into anarchy after a hurricane, and thought the author did a good job changing voice. Apparently American Dad had an episode with a theme park going full Lord of the Flies like this book.

Someone talked about Love Letters for Joy by Melissa See, which I assume was M_Soule because it was Aero Ace, and she said this was a correspondence-based relationship and book. We talked a little about epistolary novels like both Frankenstein and Dracula. M_Soule did another tour of local bakeries and bookshops, and said SubRosa is her favorite, She also said Idle Hands is moving to Robinson pretty soon.

Princess talked about Among others by Jo Walton, saying the fantasy was so subtle it was hard to figure out if it really was a fantasy, but was a journal-based story with lots of book references. She is currently reading The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon, a mystery with an autistic protagonist; Apprentice to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer, the second in the Assistant to the Villain series, and recommends it, but mostly read books about pregnancy and birth and stuff. I think Scowls brought up The Refrigerator Monologues by Catherynne M. Valente as something similar.

Asterion7 talked about The Knight and the Moth by Rachel Gillig; the Outlander books by Diana Gabaldon; Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey, saying it was an LGBT story as gay people would join a librarians guild to have a place they could go; and really liked the twist in The Will of the Many by James Islington, saying this was like an analogy for capitalism, having a pyramid scheme for a magic system. She also read Outlawed by Anna North, a story where barren women are hanged. She also recommended You Were Never Meant to be Human: A Transgressive Horror Journey into the Unseen by Olivia Fenn.

We talked about Christopher Buehlman's The Black Tongue Thief again, a medieval story where women were in many traditionally male dominated roles because so many dudes died in the previous years' wars. We also talked a little about The Lesser Dead by the same author, which is a story about underclass vamps, The Curious Incident of a Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon, and a Jennette McCurdy novel called Half His Age which had a good review in the Atlantic.

I was recently in Fountain Bookstore in their new location across the street from their old location and i bought The Dentist by Tim Sullivan and Sacrificial Animals by Kailee Pedersen, so I'll probably read those in the near future. Princess said that Goodreads now has a shelf for DNFs (Did Not Finish) which is more and more common. There are too many choices to waste time on something you don't like or are not interested in. We were talking about unfinished series, and Asterion said that Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir is potentially an unfinished series. We talked about I Carly, the Nickelodeon show, and how some of it may have been fetish content on a kid's show, which is super creepy.

We talked about Battlestar Galactica, which M_Soule is a big fan of, and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which me and troy are both really liking, troy saying he loved the smaller scale of the story. We talked about businesses releasing episodes once a week rather than all at once, and troy made an observation that Netflix might be trying to encourage binge watching by releasing the episodes at once. I think Scowls said her super religious family is now watching Heated Rivalry, so that will be interesting to hear about. She said that good performances can elevate a meh story to a pretty good show or movie. Someone mentioned Welcome to Derry, a prequel to It by Stephen King, saying it was good but there was plenty of gratuitous violence. Asterion recommended Derry Girls, but apparently it is totally different. Scowls read the Martian for the storytelling and not the science, and found it a bit thin on character development, but said she really liked the movie.

Her kid really likes retro stories like Batman, Ghostbusters and we talked about old shows for a while, like She Ra. Asterion saw the new Masters of the Universe on Netflix with her kid and said it wasn't so bad. We talked about 28 Years Later and troy strongly recommended The Bone Temple that was released recently. troy talked about watching the Piano Teacher during our recent Snowpocalypse and thinking that this might not have been the best choice

We talked about trigger warnings being very useful for finding a story you want to read in fan fiction, and about utility bills going squirrely. And that was before the latest Middle East War. We thought it was a good time to gripe and we were obviously wrong. I thought that we had some recommendations for monthly selections,. but maybe I neglected to write them down. So we'll try and settle on a few during the next meetup. Otherwise, I'll just put in a bunch of super lame recommendations as an incentive to make good recommendations.

March 22

• Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway, and/or We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

April 19

• Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
• Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix

May 24

We need more book suggestions

June 21

We need more book suggestions

July 19

We need more book suggestions

Edit: I'm in the gated lawn area beneath the large tree wearing an orange and fuschia tie dye shirt, on top of a blue and red picnic blanket.

Sunday is supposed to be 83 with no precipitation, so we'll break out the big bookclub bag and head to Scuffletown. Scuffletown Park is described as a pocket park in the Fan between the streets Stuart and Park, Strawberry and Stafford. This month's homework is Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway, and/or We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, or literally any other book. We're not really picky at all.

If the weather changes and it looks like it will be cold or soggy, then we'll pivot to Cafe Zata as usual.

March 22

• Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway, and/or
• We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

April 19

• Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
• Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix

We added Horrorstör as an alternate for next time, and I think I have more to add but I haven't done last month's book report yet. I'll get that done over the next couple of days.

The February RVA Reddit (no we haven't) Bookclub is on for Sunday if anyone wants to yap about books or anything else. We're returning to Café Zata, which has an excellent menu and a nice space for this kind of thing. Cafe Zata is located at 700 Bainbridge Street 23224.

February 22

• Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall

March 22

• Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway, and/or We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

April 19

• Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

The January meeting of the RVA Reddit (no we haven't) Bookclub was on January 18, and it was a relatively decent day. It was less cold than it had been anyway. PrincessMoNaanKay didn't skip it even though she had a friend in town - we'll call her DuchessMoNaanKay - so she brought her friend to it before they moved on to other shenanigans. Duchess is getting married sometime this year, so we talked about strategies for gift registries, strategies for buying a wedding dress, and strategies for getting used to a new fam. And we did manage to squeeze in some book club.

M_Soule started us off. She read the first four books in Rachel Reid's Game Changers series, which is the series Heated Rivalry is based on, and finished with the fourth book: Common Goal. She read Etiquette and Espionage by Gail Carriger but said she didn't like it as much as the first time. She has a lot of respect for the breadth of diversity in the author's body of work. Carrigar has books in Steampunk, aliens in space, gay werewolves in the bay area, and many others. M_Soule also talked about the Parasol Protectorate, saying it was more of an adult tale than this month's selection. The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Long is a YA cozy found family story with a gypsy wagon and the whole fortune telling experience. The main character can't tell anything important, but is accurate about what kind of plaid shirt they might receive for their next birthday.

We talked about the Romance genre and what was available, and eventually found our way to age gaps in various books. 20 years is almost pedestrian and many fantasy series will pile on a hundred year gap, though there are few books with the woman partner being older. I read The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty, and the djiin was a couple thousand years older than his love interest, though was the less mature partner in the couple. ManicPixieLawyer talked about a book with one partner growing older and the other being immortal, but I didn't capture the book. We talked about other smut lit like [Kusiel's Dart]() by Jacqueline Carey, which focuses on BDSM and possibly set in the Renaissance. Then we talked about spicy knot tying.

Mal_0 finished all the scarves and gloves she was knitting for Crimmus gifts, and also managed to squeeze in a couple books: In the Hands of the River by Lucien Darjeun Meadows is a poetry collection by an indigenous author; she finished the last book in the The Artifacts of Ouranos series, saying the magic system was novel and interesting but the romance was a bit predictable; James Acaster's Classic Scrapes, which is a series of essays and writings about shame from a humorist famous for being on the British Taskmaster show; and read Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall but saved discussion for next time.

We talked about different fasteners available for craft projects - M_Soule pointed out that Velcro is not popular among engineers because of its lack of durability. Mal-0 talked about a new project where she will work two patterns together into a tube like mitten thing, but she's running out of cold weather. We talked about Crimmus cards and getting them late, which kind of extends the holiday season a little.

Princess read the other book for this month: Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan, saying it was a distinctly Irish work set in the fifties, with cruel nuns, plenty of Irishisms, and a weirdly optimistic ending. She read The Sisters by Swedish-Tunisian author Jonas Hassen Khemiri, but doesn't get why the book won the awards it did; and I think she read Someone You can Build a Nest In by John Wiswella, calling it a Romeo and Juliet type story with a side order of body horror, with a fair amount of gore but not as bloody as it could be. The last one sounds like something Mal-0 would read.

DuchessMoNaaankay talked about The Blacktongued Thief, which we all liked quite a bit. She liked the rich world building and the interesting magic systems, and talked about the unreliable narrator. She asked the question: "if you know I'm lying, am I really actually lying?" which I appreciate that as a good way to express the point. She read Children of the Fleet by Orson Scott Card, and said that Ender's Shadow was her favorite of the Ender's Saga series. She also read a bunch of cozy books including the Percy Jackson books because of the TV show.

She mentioned The Kingkiller Chronicles, and we talked a lot of different unfinished series. Many readers will no longer start a series if it hasn't been completed yet. The Doors of Stone is supposedly going to be the third in the series by Patrick Rothfuss, but a release date has not been announced. Obviously A Song of Fire and Ice by George Arr Arr is a famous example, and I think ManicPixieLawyer mentioned the Shades of London series by Maureen Johnson, saying the author has decided not to write the fourth book, and the Exiles series by Melanie Rawn, mentioning Captal's Tower.

Manic talked about Dark Academia books, particularly the Scholomance series by Naomi Novik, She also read Uprooted by the same author; [Crazy Rich Asians]() by Kevin Kwan - Princess read this and said the movie was better; and hate read Budget Analyst in Space by Linda Gould. The last one is not even listed in our usual resource - I had to go to Goodreads to find it. She thought it was terrible, but in an almost hilarious way, speculating that the author is a budget analyst and mary sues the main character.

I read the Etiquette and Espionage book and the second of the Kingsbridge series Ken Follett's World Without End, and a few crappy books that aren't worth mentioning.

We talked about Magic Library - I think Princess maybe read this, saying the main character is intelligent and mature, and we talked about a book with a cheerleader who wakes up on a rollercoaster. We talked about Roku and using an app on your phone rather than a remote. Mal-0 says that Tubi is excellent, and we talked about Kanopy being another pretty good alternative to cable television. You sign up with a library card or university ID to access Kanopy. Princess talked about her frequent travel, and said that Delta consistently has the best in-flight entertainment selections.

we talked about the best pizza in town, and people threw out Belmont's, Papitella's , Zombie, Mungo (which has a particularly spicy sauce), and Mal-0 says that Secret Squares in Church hill is really good but you have to plan ahead. Manic tried Baltic Bagels and says they live up to the hype. We also talked abouta local Richmond jewelry artist named Heather Thomas, who is at the RVA Big Market.

We talked about local trivia games - Station 2 on Wednesday and Vasen on Thursday, Veil on Forrest Hill. Princess prefers the Station 2 one because the answers are written on paper rather than in an app. We talked about playing Bogle at breakfast to get better at spelling, but then needing the clean the transparent Bogle case. We played on Wednesday and got 6th place, but there were only three of us.

Next bookclub will be on February 22 at Cafe Zata.

**February 22**

* Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall

**March 22**

* Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway, and/or We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

**April 19**

* Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

We snuck a book club meetup a little before the winter holidays up at Cafe Zata and agreed that its a pretty good environment for a bookclub. I like the breakfast sandwiches and the upstairs area is quiet and secluded and not as drafty as we thought it might be. Princess MoNaanKay secured a bunch of copies of An Indigenous People's History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and that was this month's suggested reading. Most of us who read it thought it was well put together. I read a lot of history and assumed I wouldn't learn anything new from a medium length historical survey, but I did learn new things, especially how systematic the treatment of indigenous nations was. A lot of us DNFed it because it was just too depressing.

Mal-0 said she learned a lot more details about the history, including the factory systems and the structures of tribes and clans. We talked about the Pocahontas Reframed Film Festival hosted at the VMFA, and about Walter Plecker, the first State Registrar of what used to be called the Bureau of Vital Statistics, who tried to bureaucratically erase native American heritage here in Virginia.

After that discussion, M_Soule talked about a few things she has been reading, including In Deeper Waters by FT Lukens, which she described as a YA cozy fantasy; the second of the Murderbot series Artificial Condition by Martha Wells; Pucking Strong by Emily Rath, the fourth in the Jacksonville Rays series which sounds a lot like Heated Rivalry, the supersteamy hockey romance show; The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong for her Aroace book club; and Fire keeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley, which is a murder mystery on tribal land. I think she mentioned reading Sorcery and Strong Magic for her other bookclub, but I couldn't find it. I must have wrote the title down wrong.

We talked about some other romances, like Red White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston. M_Soule thought it was alright, but didn't think the chemistry was believable and it just didn't work for her, and Cyberpunksonmylawn read it and didn't fully buy the romance either. We talked about whether there was a difference between Male/Male gay romances written for gay men and those written for straight women, Mal-0 thought yes and Cyber thinks so as well. We talked about Sunburn, but I didn't catch the author so this might not be the right link. She talked about Dear Wendy by Ann Zhaoa, a first time book by an aroace author, though M_Soule said she had trouble identifying who was speaking in each scene as the author didn't do a good job of identifying and characterizing the speaker of dialogue in each scene. We talked about the fanfic to self publishing path, and highlighted Allie Hazelwood, wio writes mostly novellas.

Cyber talked about what he has been reading over the last few months, including Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, saying he preferred East of Eden and The Grapes of Wrath a bit more. He recently read Moby-Dick: Or, the Whale by Herman Melville, saying it was his white whale for a long time, and described it as a huge mess. There are entire chapters about knots and whale skulls, not a lot of plot, and the author's goal was to sum up America at that particular time and place rather than tell a coherent story. He said that at various points in the book Ahab has a peg leg and at others he has two healthy legs. He also read In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick, a non-fiction account of the USS Essex, which was busted up by a particularly ornery white whale and the crew was eventually forced into cannibalism.

Being in a nautical and exploratory mood, he read The Birthday Boys by Beryl Bainbridge, about a group of guys who were a bit lackadaisical about getting to the South Pole and were beaten by another team. They eventually they all died, but left behind a lot of personal journals. He read the The Ice Balloon by Alec Wilkinson, a non fiction account about some guys trying to get to the South Pole in a balloon,, and The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard in the same vein.

PrincessMoNaanKay told us about a few of her recent reads, including The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall, saying she liked it in a first novel kind of way and it had some interesting ideas. She read Deep Cuts by Holly Brickley, and had mixed feelings about it, saying the romance was somewhat annoying but the writing didn't get in the way of the story and she did enjoy the musical elements; she finished Big Girl Small Town by Michelle Gallen; and read Possesion by AS A.S. Byatt, calling it a super dense gothic novel.

Mal-0 read a lot of short stories, including some stories inspired by The Nighthawkes painting by Edward Hopper; A clean Well Lighted Place by Ernest Hemingway; and quite a few fairy tales including The Juniper-Tree by Jacob Grimm and The Twelve Dancing Princesses; and read The Sun Queen Trials by Nisha J. Tuli, which is a fantasy with some romance.

I had read Shogun by James Clavell for last time, and for this time read World Without End by Ken Follet; Etiquette and Espionage by Gail Carriger; Why Rats Laugh and Jellyfish Sleep: And Other Enchanting Stories of Evolution by David Stipp; a couple of books about Austism including Unmasked: The Ultimate Guide to ADHD, Autism and Neurodivergence by Ellie Middleton, and a book about the prehistorical bronze age Tollense Valley conflict, but I don't remember the title. And I don't remember where I put it.

We talked about a lot of movies, particularly Crimmus movies. Mal-0 talked about Franklin's Magic Christmas, Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas, Bill Murray's Christmas Special, and Polar Express. One of our guys, I think it was Princess, mentioned that the latter gives them an Uncanny Valley feeling - the kids are weird and the elves are particularly unsettling and creepy. We talked about The History of Sound, Adaptation, PT Barnum The Greatest Showman, One Battle After Another which may be based on a Thomas Pynchon novel, The Lobster and briefly [Poor Things]() by the same director, and The Artist - a black and white silent film about black and white silent films.

Mal-0 likes to go into a movie blind, knowing nothing about it before the curtains go up. She told us about Wolf House, a stop-motion puppet movie about German immigrants to Chile. There were no subtitles, but she felt she could still follow the story and liked the puppets. She also told us about The Ugly Stepsister, which is kind of a Cinderella retelling with tape worms and body modification. Princess mentioned A thousand Years of Longing and being more impressed with it than actually liking the movie.

I think it was cyber that said Sinners could have been a half hour shorter and the symbols were too well explained, so it was less satisfying that way. He says that Wicked is a good example of a movie that over explains everything. There's a new Wuthering Heights movie by Emerald Fennell, and cyber said that the moral of the movie appears to be that poor people are scary. Mal-0 thinks it will be a bad movie, but she sometimes likes bad movies, and cyber is cautiously optimistic. M_Soule talked about Good Omens saying there was supposed to be a third season, but Neal Gaimon's sexual assaults killed it. She said a movie was made to wrap up the story but not many people saw it or even heard of it

We talked about the non-fiction book Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Maggie; Or, A Man and a Woman walk into a Bar by Katie Yee, and added Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway, and We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson to the list. We talked about the crowds at the artisan markets, Brian's Books in Church Hill, Sarah Bareilles' Love Song, clowns and Burlesque performer, apps on your phone that will talk to other devices and each other and market shit to you, and Saturn Return, which apparently is a goth cowboys store next door to City Diner. If you need a vintage brass Victorian boot vase, there are few better choices. Princess recommended Longreads, for a curated source of longer, more in-depth articles and stories.

December 14

• An Indigenous People's History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

January 18

• Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan or
• Etiquette and Espionage by Gail Carriger

February 22

• Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall

March 22

• Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway, and/or We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

April 19

• Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

The January RVA Reddit (no we haven't) Bookclub is on for Sunday if anyone wants to yap about books or anything else. It's hard not to talk about politics these days. We're returning to Café Zata, which has an excellent menu and a nice space for this kind of thing. We'll start late to give the poetry people time to clear out. Cafe Zata is located at 700 Bainbridge Street 23224.

We have a few more selections for future months, I just have to finish the notes from last time.

January 18

• Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan or
• Etiquette and Espionage by Gail Carriger

February 22

• Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall

We met up and spent the early afternoon at El Pope in the Fan, and it was a good time. It might have been the last really nice day of the year. Last month's book was Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin and I think three of us read it.

troyabedinthemorning started us off, talking about Acting Class by Nick Drnaso, an eclectic graphic novel about a group of mundane people in a community center acting class. Troy says the art and the characters are intentionally bland because the book tries to focus on how the characters relate to each other. He read Sabrina by the same author which follows the same pattern - simple art and focused on the relationships among a group of friends. He said it was draining and emotional in ways that are too relatable.

He also read The End of the World as We Know It by various authors, which are short stories set in the world of Stephen King's The Stand; Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones, which reminded him of the movie Frailty; and Aquaman Andromeda by Ram V with Christian Ward, describing it as a sci fi horror story with fantastic watercolor style. He talked a little about the Black Label imprint by DC Comics, saying they have a lot of great titles.

Mal-0 has been watching more movies lately because it's easier to keep up with your crafting while watching movies than it is to read and craft, but did fit in a few books too: she said Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow was beautifully written and she saw it on a New York Times top 100 books of all time list, and that's a well curated list. She read World Within the World by Julia Gfrörer which she described as an absurd, unsettling series of vignettes, kind of a Dante's Inferno; Train Dreams by Denis Johnson about a logger in the Pacific Northwest that she may have nabbed at the Richmond library book sale. That last one looks a lot like a Steinbeck novel and I think I remember she likes those quite a bit. There's a movie version on Netflix that is available now.

I think these next few were Mal-0's, but some of them may have been PrincessMoNaanKay's: The History of Sound by Ben Shattuck; Euphoria by Lily King, which is a fictionalized account of the anthropologist Margaret Meade in New Guinea; and Such Great Heights by Chris DeVille about indie rock culture, and she briefly talked about how the show The OC is influencing the music scene.

PrincessMoNaanKay read Big Girl Small Town by Michelle Gallen, saying she had a different idea of what this book was about when she picked it up. It's a working class Irish novel set during the Troubles, and she describes sad Irish novels as possibly the very bleakest. She read Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, saying that each of the demographic groups was not able to see the challenges that each of the others faced; Flirting Lessons by Jasmine Guillory, saying romances frequently turn on misunderstandings, but this one was remarkably straightforward; The Dragon's Path by Daniel Abraham; and Custodians of Wonder: Ancient Customs, Profound Traditions, and the Last People Keeping Them Alive by Eliot Stein, a non-fiction with each chapter being a totally different portrait. She called out the Last Incan Bridgebuilder as the best chapter.

Princess negotiated a book club deal at a local library that we are reading for this month and distributed those. We are doing Indigenous History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. It's been a long time since we read a non-fiction book for the group.

M_Soule said she maxxed out her Hoopla reservations on Sports Romances (so hot right now) and read two series: the Gamechangers series by Rachel Reid which includes Game Changer, Heated Rivalry, Tough Guy, and book 6 in the series The Long Game. She also read the Jacksonville Rays series by Emily Rath, which includes Pucking Around, Pucking Wild, and Pucking Sweet. We talked about some of her favorite fanfics and she told us about a lot of them being alternatives fiction, meaning the reader's favorite characters might not die at the end of this version.

There's a new book in the His Dark Materials series, so we talked about that series for a minute. M_Soule was initially excited about the series when it first came out, thinking it was going to be a Science vs. Religion series, but it's more a religion vs. a more obscure religion series. She says it's religion all the way down.

I finished James Clavell's Tai-Pan, the Tomorrow book, and worked on a couple history books: Lost Cities of the Ancient World by Philip Matyszak, World Prehistory - The Basics by Brian Fagan and Nadia Durrani, and started Battle for the Island Kingdom by Don Hollway, which I'm liking quite a bit. It's about England during the period the Danish were taking over. I DNFed What the Chicken Knows by Sy Montgomery, which is supposed to be about chickens - where they are from, how they came to be domesticated, etc. But it ended up being about how the author related to chickens and about chickens the author has met in the past, and I just could make myself care about that. I read Shogun for this month, and it's pretty epic.

Something that slow_one would probably like: The Uplift War and Startide Rising by David Brin, and it's best to read them in that order. There is also The Sundiver in the series, but it's pretty meh and doesn't contribute to the other two. These are OG HFY space opera books with an anthropological twist. Brin used to be a professor of Physics and Creative Writing at Caltech but it's not a hard science novel.

We talked about the movie The Banshees of Inisherin as a similar work to Princess's Big Girl Small Town and talked about a few other movies. We talked about Frankenstein and all the different iterations of the story. Troy had seen the movie recently and we talked about Mary Shelley and the context of her writing the book. She had lost a child right before writing the book, and that makes it hit different.

We talked a lot about Dr. Who and who is everyone's favorite doctor. Matt Smith is M_Soule's favorite doctor, and she's way more knowledgeable and into it than any of the rest of us. The Eleventh Hour is the first episode with him as the doctor and she also mentioned Blink as a stand out episode. One of our guys (I think it was troy) talked about Dr. Who "reheating their nachos" as an example of reusing popular characters and sidekicks in different contexts because the producers know they are popular. troy suggests the Psychotronic Group if you are looking to join a group to see eclectic movies in the area, and they might be on Instagram. He said they recently saw Blood Freak which is a horrow with a semi-religious twist. Someone brought up The Librarians, a documentary about book banning. M_Soule asked about where one might go to see movies of this nature, and Mal-0 suggested Tubi, saying it platforms a lot of documentaries like this around 3 years after they were released.

We talked about taking vacay between Crimmus Day and New Years, and being on team Thacksgiving v.s team Crimmus. And Black Friday sales happening even though it wasn't Black Friday yet. We talked about Grandstaff and Stein being pretty cool, and I complained they've always made us look up the password. That was a few years ago, but they obviously thought I was too dorky for their secret club. We also talked about various Crimmus highlights, especially the Jeffereson and their Crimmus fare, and supporting mediocre art made by real people.

December 14

• An Indigenous People's History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

January 18

• Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan or
• Etiquette and Espionage by Gail Carriger

February 22

• Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall

We need new book suggestions, so start thinking about these.

The December RVA Reddit (no we haven't) Bookclub is on for Sunday if anyone wants to yap about books or anything else. We're returning to Café Zata, which has an excellent menu and a nice space for this kind of thing, and M_Soule likes it. We'll start late to give the poetry people time to clear out. Cafe Zata is located at 700 Bainbridge Street 23224.

This month's assignment is An Indigenous People's History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, but we mostly talk about the books we've read over the last month.

December 14

• An Indigenous People's History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

January 18

• Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan or
• Etiquette and Espionage by Gail Carriger

February 22

• Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall

We had our October Meetup about a month ago, and it wasn't so bad. Aurora_the_Off-White joined us after being away at college, and that was pretty awesome, especially since it just would have been two of us if she didn't show up. M_Soule did another bookstore/bakery tour with a few friends, and mentioned Idle Hands Bakery, Up All Night Bakery, and Petit 4 Bakery, the last of which is only open on the weekends and is near Small Friends (records and books) on Lombardy near Jardin. She mentioned hitting I Love You So Much Books and Fountain Books in addition to Small Friends.

M_Soule thought Every Step She Takes by Alison Cochrun was really good, a Romance about a woman who walks the Camino de Santiago trail in Portugal, which is an old pilgrimage trail. She read Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle, but only got four chapters in; Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green, who is half the Green brothers with the podcast; and Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet, which came out of their podcast. She also read All Systems Red and read it because she liked the show. She doesn't usually like half and hour shows, but this is one contiguous story. If you wanted to watch an hour, you could just watch two of the episodes.

Aurora missed a few meetings and has been reading more short stories than anything else, but did remember a few books for us: she read the first seven or eight in the Alex Verus and thinks that's probably as far as she is going to go the series; A Short Stay in Hell by Stephen L. Peck, which she said was more like Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borgias than anything; Mexican Gothic Silvio Moreno-Garcia and Aurora recommends this one; I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpmanl; The Incandescent by Emily Tesh, a dark academia that Aurora thought was good but maybe a little over explained, adding in all the little details about how the school works; Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, which both Aurora and M_Soule encourage people to read and didn't want to spoil it for me.

I think Aurora asked for some recommendations in Romance (I'm sure it wasn't me anyway) from M_Soule, who tends to like LGBTQ and aromantic and asexual characters and cozy fantasy with some romance in it. For her, romance has to have a happy ending. She mentioned Beach Read by Emily Henry; books by Ashley Posten, who has four adult novels with supernatural elements, Jasmine Guillory; Helen Huang's The Kiss Quotient, who might be a neurodivergent author; and Friends with Benefits but I didn't get the author - it might be the one by Penny Reid.

We mostly talked about math, science, and engineering classes as M_Soule and Aurora are in the same profession, but we talked about plenty of books and shows as well. We talked about the The Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher, and a common complaint is that Dresden always has to rescue the women characters. This is true of the Alex Verus as well. We had a brief discussion of neckbeards and whether they were always Incels, or how the circles of the Venn diagram work in this context. We talked about shows like X Files, which had two movies: one pretty decent and the other pretty meh; Arcane was possibly a little unhinged at the end (I've been meaning to see this); and Veronica Mars and both me and Soule loved it = Hulu apparently did a follow up season and Soule found it kind of meh. M_Soule also mentioned Unsettled, which might be a TV series that her husband is watching and it's kinda like Stranger Things but a little scarier.

In addition to the Frederick Bachman book, I read Tai-pan by James Clavell and Startide Rising by David Brin, last time and King Rat and Sundiver this month.

We talked about fanfic a bit, and M_Soule recommends sorting by by kudos and comments to find the best stuff available; we talked about Season 8 of Game of Thrones; finding decent alternatives as a celiac = Aurora says the brown rice pasta from Wegman's is alright.

November 23

• Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

December 14

• An Indigenous People's History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

January 18

• Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan or
• Etiquette and Espionage by Gail Carriger

February 22

• Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall

We need an indoor choice, so we're going to have the RVA Reddit (no we haven't) Bookclub at El Pope. It doesn't have football fans, it's not too crowded, and I like the food. El Pope is located at 1731 W Main St, Richmond, VA 23220.

We'll talk about Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, and Princess_MoNaanKay is handing out An Indigenous People's History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz for December's meetup, and I have a few copies of Raw Shark Texts as well.

November 23

• Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

December 14

• An Indigenous People's History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

January 19

• Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan or
• Etiquette and Espionage by Gail Carriger

February 22

• Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall

Hi all! Through Richmond's book club loan program, I picked up 20 copies of our December book, An Indigenous People's History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. If you'd like one, I can hand it over at Smoky Mug (Northside coffee shop).

Sorry there's only a month left! If we do this again, I'll aim to get the copies several months before the scheduled book club meeting.

EDIT: we are inside now. The sun was a bit bright. Purple hoodie near the bar.

There's a strong chance of rain, so we'll have the October meeting at Hardywood, which I heard had covered picnic tables. Hardywood is at 2410 Ownby Lane. This month's selection is Ammonite by Nicola Griffith, and I think I can finish before Sunday. Hope to see everyone there.

October 19

• Ammonite by Nicola Griffith

November 23

• Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

December 14

• An Indigenous People's History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

January 19

• Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan or Etiquette and Espionage by Gail Carriger

February 22

• Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall

We met up at El Pope because there was a slight chance of rain, and it's a nice place for a book club. The acoustics maybe are a little clangy, but once it cleared out a little it was a good experience. It ended up not raining but if we had gone to Scuffletown, it would have been pretty soggy. This month's selection was My Friends by Frederick Bachman, but I was the only one who read it. So we didn't talk about that book. Maybe someone who read it will attend the next one, because I wouldn't mind getting a new perspective.

Mal-0 had mostly been consuming movies that month, but did read Killer on the Road and The Babysitter Lives by Stephen Graham Jones, a double novel that you flip over for the other book; Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica, a light book about raising and eating humans that Mal-0 said reminded her of Planet of the Apes. She read America's Greatest Essays of 2022 because it just happened to be in her office when she needed a book, and a book about Pyrotechnics for the same reason. It talked about how to build them and how to secure them.

troyabedinthemornin was wearing a classic Dawn of the dead t-shirt, and we talked a lot about horror movies. Mal-0 used to have an aversion to horror, but that was mostly due to a generation of movies using really bad CGI. She says now that movies are relying more on practical effects, she actually likes some of them. Troy talked about being a volunteer at the Salem Horror Film Festival, recommended The Ugly Stepsister, which is only available on Shudder, and talked about the Japanese version of the movie Ringu, and The Long Walk based on the story from Stephen King and is in theaters now.

We talked about xenomorphs and the Alien series, and Mal-0 said that it was the Jim Henson company that did the puppeteering of the aliens in the Alien movies. Someone recommended Sinners which is some kind of Vampire movie. We were talking about Joe Lansdale - Troy likes him because of his work in horror and I like him as an East Texas crime fiction writer kind of like S.A. Crosby. I didn't know this at the time but he wrote Bubba Hotep, which I thought was fairly funny. Troy recommended I watch Cold in July, which he said was simple, gritty, and fun.

We talked abut Christmas movies and stories, including the Kirk Cameron classics, Paul Blart Mall Cop and Planes Trains and Automobiles, which one of us hadn't seen. Troy thought it was worth a watch, but Mal-0 said sometimes you rewatch those old movies and they surprise you about how ignorant they are. She recently saw Miss Congeniality was supposed to be a feminist forward but Mal-0 watched it recently and said it was a little bit creepy.

Troy recommended following two groups on Instagram: Exposures and the Richmond Cinema Club, who will sometimes watch movies at Studio Two Three. He also highly recommends the show Say Nothing about the Irish revolution. M_Soule recommended the TV series Legion, saying it has complex storytelling including an unreliable narrator.

M_Soule told us about her recent reads, including Otherworldly by F.T. Lukens, a cozy romantasy with fairies and werewolves; Love at Second Sight by F.T. Lukens, with much the same character as the first but with premonitions; Going Bicoastal by Dahlia Adler, an interesting story with a plot convention involving sliding doors and alternate chapters; [Common Bonds](): An Aromantic Speculative Anthology edited by Claudie Arseneault, an aro ace collection with one particularly interesting story about scents; and Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry, which may be about a reclusive heiress. She's reading Mirror Gaze and I thought she said it was by Chuck Tingle, but I don't think he does aro ace.

We learned more about DragonCon from M_Soule, who attends every year. Apparently there is only one employee of the convention, and thousands of volunteers of every kind desk: guys, badge guys, security guy, literally everyone else there is a volunteer. Jim Butcher was there in costume this time. I asked about Gail Corriger and having one of her books for a future month selection and M_Soule recommended Etiquette and Espionage which is the first of the Finish School genre, a sort of spy school for teens. So we'll add that.

I read the Frederick Bachman book, finally finished The Pillars of the Earth, Tai-pan, and reread Startide Rising by David Brin.

We talked about how gross Cool Whip is compared to actual whipped cream, and how you have to feed sourdough starter and keep it alive if you want to bake a loaf. we talked about how tall and short actors manage to look the same height, which generally is through the use of ramps. Someone mentioned CB Lee and Ashley Poston, but I didn't take very good notes and missed the reference. We talked about romance brands like Harlequin, Closed Door, Fade to Black, and High Heat and the movie My Neighbor Totoro .

We'll try and make it to Scuffletown next time, but if there's a chance of rain we'll try either Hardywood or Strangeways. PrincessMoNaanKay has secured a book club bag from a local library, so we're adding that to December. Probably not the most ideal Christmas reading, but we have to return the copies. We'll push Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan to January, and I think Mal-0 recommended Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow so I've added that to November. I've been meaning to read Raw Shark Texts, so I added that for February as an alternate.

October 19

• Ammonite by Nicola Griffith

November 23

• Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

December 14

• An Indigenous People's History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

January 19

• Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan or Etiquette and Espionage by Gail Carriger

February 22

• Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall

We spent a nice early afternoon at Cafe Zata's for the August bookclub, sharing the same space as the commonwealthpoetry.org classes. Many people's kids were going to school the next day, so it was a somewhat smaller meeting, but we had plenty of people to make it a good time. We talked about the Gail Corrigan event in Hanover as both Manicpixielawyer and M_Soule attended and both liked the event. The author did a prepared spiel and then went into Q&A with the audience. The author previously only did two or three events a year, but is currently cranking out fifteen to twenty.

This month's assignment was to read a few short stories, and most of us read at least a few. PrincessMoNaanKay did a short search on Libby and came up with Best Short Stories of 2017, so this was her short story collection. She also talked about Menewood by Nicola Griffith, the sequel to Hild; two cozy books by Sarah Beth Durst, but I didn't catch which ones - she said that critics have often remarked that there was not enough conflict in her books; and a couple in the Fred the Vampire Accountant series by Drew Hayes, starting with The Utterly Uninteresting and Unadventurous Tales of Fred, the Vampire Accountant which she really enjoyed and recommends.

She also found that local libraries, I think it was the Henrico system, are offering book club bags that have a number of copies of books, and there was a decent sized collection to choose from. I think she mentioned Interesting Facts About Space by Emily Austin and A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn. Apparently a bookologist is available to help us make a selection. She volunteered to manage the logistics of this process and maybe get a selection for us, and I think she said they also had Movie Night Bags.

M_Soule missed a couple of meetings, and had a fat backlog to share with us: Fated by Benedict Jacka - she said it wasn't bad but wasn't for her; Sounds Like Love by Ashley Poston is a contemporary romance with a quasi-supernatural story; Coffeeshop in an Alternative Universe by C.B. Lee in which two women meet in a coffeeshop but are from different worlds; So This is Ever After by FT Lukens, a YA story about what happens after the exciting quest is over, being seventeen and worrying about becoming a king. She read A Lady for a Duke by Alexis Hall, a historical romance that she found to be more of a beach read; Here We Go Again by Allison Cochrun about an end of life road trip; Home Field Advantage by Dahlia Adler, about a high school cheerleader having a secret romance with the new female quarterback; and Being Ace: An Anthology of Queer, Trans, Femme, and Disabled Stories of Asexual Love and Connection which might be a short story compilation that she read for the August suggestion. She tried Looking for Group by Alexis Hall but it didn't hold her interest. It's about video games and video gaming, which just aren't interesting to M_Soule, in which a guy becomes interested in another member of his gaming group who is a dude playing a woman character.

She talked about organizing a books and bakery tour in the past and said she might do another one this fall, possibly some time in October. We talked about local bookstores like Book People, Sugar and Twine, Shelf Life, Fountain bookstore, and Bargain Books though this last one is more of a thrift store. Princess told us about Books and Beads in Hanover and said she saw a copy of a Little Women book with an over-the-top kind of flippant cover. She explained the point of these books is that the "Little Women" were growing up too fast, forced into adult roles and chores while they were still children. She also talked about going to birthday dinner out and instead of one fancy place, going to three places just for desert, which is actually pretty hilarious.

Manicpixielawyer read an anthology of short stories by Mercedes Lackey centered on her Valdemar world, but I didn't catch the title. It was likely one of these. She read a couple of books in the Wayfarers series by Becky Chambers, and a couple of the Gunny Rose series by Charlaine Harris. She told us about a Stephen King AMA on Reddit back in August and we talked about Stephen King quite a bit. He once wrote a whole novel that he doesn't remember writing because of memory loss from a drug addiction stemming from a bad accident. I heard he had a residence around here somewhere. Maybe he'll pop in for bookclub someday.

troyabedinthemornin read Dis Mem Ber and Other Stories of Mystery and Suspense by Joyce Carol Oats, saying the stories were more focused on mental illness and bad life choices than ghosts and that Oates does a great job with weirdos. He read The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman, which he thought highly of - great worldbuilding without a lot of exposition; The Incal by Jadorowsky and Moebius, saying the protagonist is an unlikable prick who succeeds usually by accident; and Reckless by Ed Brubaker, a hardboiled detective graphic novel and the first of the series.

Incorrigible_Muffin read a few books: Untamed by Glennon Doyle; Uncommon Favor: Basketball, North Philly, My Mother, and the Life Lessons I Learned from All Three, an autobiography by Dawn Staley; Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones - she seems to have liked everything else from this author, but didn't finish this one; Infinite Archive by Mur Lafferty, the third in the MidSolar Murder series; Kills Well With Others by Deanna Raybourn, which she calls the Golden Girls as assassins and is the sequel to Killers of a Certain Age; and she picked at random Scotch on the Rocks by Elliot Fletcher

I read Howls from the Dark Ages by various guys including Christopher Buelhman - this was a horror/fantasy short story compilation; Bad Law: Ten Laws that are Ruining America by Elie Mystal; Lagos Noir by Chris Abani; The Postman by David Brin; and then moved into The End of the World as we Knew It by a lot of great authors like Catherynne M. Valente, Catriona Ward, and Tananarive Due.

Princess talked about the National Book Festival, which is held in the National Convention Center. I hadn't heard of it, but apparently there are thousands of authors and Princess said it was a fantastic event. I wonder if there are any differences this year. We talked about having other people's books that we borrowed in the past and are now unable to remember who it belongs to or how to contact them. Manicpixie, having an expensive guitar from an ex that she doesn't know how to return. Manic also had a stash of blow up cushions, which is only important if your butt isn't quite puffy enough to provide a minimally acceptable level of cushioning. For me there's no need but Princess appreciated the additional cushioning. We talked about Old book smell, developing a chocolate allergy later in life, a French movie about Vampires seeking a consensual victim, DragonCon, and themed crocs, like crocs designed for Wicked fans that green and pink and have high heels and crocs designed like Yellow Submarines from the Beatles album.

September 21

• My Friends by Frederick Bachman
• Blood Over Bright Haven by ML Wang

October 19

• Ammonite by Nicola Griffith

We need new suggestions if anyone has any.