march 2025
Finally, after much waiting and worry and sleepless nights, my new 105-year-old house was ready for occupation this month, so i moved! it was horrible. it is still horrible. if i ever say anything about wanting to move ever again, please do me the favor of smothering me in my sleep. But the house is beautiful, and level, entirely lacking in popcorn ceilings, and i look forward to someday being a sane person again. Throughout the process i did a lot of what a friend refers to as “chewing cardboard”—that is, reading a lot of not very challenging things mostly to give my brain something to do. lots of fast-paced gay murder mysteries. i recorded the bulk of them here (i’ve read more since then), if you would also like some cardboard to chew.
catch-up: Sorcery and Small Magics by Maiga Doocy (2024). missed this last month, despite it being probably the best thing i read! this is a fantasy romance (very slow burn eventual romance—this is the first of i believe a trilogy but none of the rest of it exists yet so don’t start unless you’re prepared to sit consumed with lust for the next several years) about 2 (adult) (i promise you it’s not YA) magic students who find themselves the unwitting victims of a curse which is the magic equivalent of being handcuffed together. there’s a lot of tropey goodness to chew on in this book, but the highlight is the writing, which is really excellent, and the curse’s twist, which i genuinely did not see coming. also a great magic house.
read: The Bellingham Mystery Series by Nicole Kimberling (2009-2017). This is a 6 book series collected in two compendiums (volume 1) (volume 2) that follows Peter Fontaine, an investigative journalist in Bellingham, Washington, USA. It’s a cozy series and definitely my favourite of the queer cozies i read this month. Peter is delightful, the city of Bellingham (where Kimberling lives) is a character in itself, and I loved Nick, Peter’s boyfriend who he encounters (naturally standing over a body and covered in blood) in the first book. Nick is older than Peter and a fine artist, two things in particular that I enjoyed.
read: Holmes & Moriarity Series by Josh Lanyon (2016-2018). i read a LOT of Lanyon this month, and this was her standout cozy series for me. Christopher Holmes is a writer of cozy mysteries himself, the author of an extremely long series about an elderly lady sleuth and her cat. At a crossroads in both his personal and professional lives, he attends a conference for mystery writers, where he encounters a body and an old flame. the series follows Holmes’ amateur sleuthing, as well as his romance with fellow mystery writer J.X. Moriarity, and it’s the romance and the characters that really work for me. Holmes is set in his ways, a person naturally resistant to change upon whom a lot of change is being forced. As you might imagine, I whole-heartedly relate to that. Moriarity is crazy about him and is trying so, so hard not to rush him into anything. That core humanness holds everything down while the rest of each book can get pretty wacky (they are cozies, after all). Really good stuff. And a new book in the series is due out at the end of April!
film: Saturday Night (2024). i didn’t have any strong emotions about the existence of this movie. i have always been a casual view of SNL. but i watched this on a plane and found it really, really delightful! the standout performances for me were Rachel Sennott as writer Rosie Shuster and Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase.
read: The Art of Murder Series by Josh Lanyon (2016-2022). Another Lanyon series, this one emphatically not a cozy. I avoided reading these for a long time because in my exploration of Lanyon’s backlist i found that i much preferred her books about amateur detectives and this is about two FBI agents. However, in dual desperation to chew more cardboard and also have something to read on a trip i borrowed the boxset of books 1-3 from the library and found that i liked the series, mainly on the strength of the fact that one of the feds is in the art crimes unit and a passionate art historian. which was a treat for me specifically. his at times opposing instincts between upholding the law and being determined to do what was right for the art itself was relatable and interesting.
visit: Imaginary Books: Lost, Unfinished, and Fictive Works Found Only in Other Books at The Book Club of California. I was in San Francisco for a few days this month, and managed to pay a visit to the exhibition of imaginary books which caused a stir in my section of the internet when it was at the Grolier Club earlier this year. the BCC is much smaller and only open on weekdays, so you have to make an appointment ahead of time. Fortunately, they were able to accommodate me on short notice and i greatly enjoyed the books. My one complaint is i wish there was creator information for each book (present if not necessarily on the book’s placard) because the books are pieces of art, and I wanted to know more about who made them and how!
visit: Dress Rehearsal: the Art of Theatrical Design at the Legion of Honor. the other exhibition in San Francisco which I greatly enjoyed was this at the Legion of Honor, which I’d never visited! It’s a gorgeous place on the very tip of the city and we were lucky to be there on a fantastic day. Dress Rehearsal pulls primarily from the collection of materials relating to the Ballets Russes donated by Alma de Bretteville Spreckels, who also cofounded the Legion. the exhibition was of both prints and books, and I was delighted to see that the Legion has a dedicated exhibition space for library materials. the exhibition consisted of set and costume designs, and because the Ballets Russes (which never actually performed in Russia) was on the forefront of the modern art movement in Europe, there were a lot of exciting pieces.
dog:
cat:
