Nadine Akkerman, Elizabeth Stuart: Queen of Hearts. Akkerman is very, very opposed to calling her The Winter Queen, which is a shame because it’s one of the most awesome regnal nicknames a person has ever had. Other than that I really liked this, it was very thorough and also told you important contextual things like what Christian IV and Axel Oxenstierna were doing at the time, which a great many histories of British and German people forget to do.
Mary Beard, Emperor of Rome. This is not a chronological study of individual emperors, it’s a conceptual study about the experience and trappings of emperorship in Imperial Rome, which is far more interesting than who poisoned whom which day. There’s a reason she’s one of the big popular historians of antiquity at the moment.
Chaz Brenchley, Radhika Rages at the Crater School, Chapters 17-22. Kindle. We’ve entered the school dramatics phase of the school story trope!
Tim Clarkson, The Makers of Scotland: Picts, Romans, Gaels, and Vikings. A short and straightforward history of first-millennium Scotland and how it coalesced into an actual country, with attention to several major influential groups as listed in the subtitle. Not flashy but fine.
Siddhartha Deb, Twilight Prisoners: The Rise of the Hindu Right and the Fall of India. Kindle. Helpful point of view on history that I lived through on the other side of the planet but was substantially unaware of, really glad to have more context as this seems unlikely to get less important over time.
Joshua S. Levy, Finn and Ezra’s Bar Mitzvah Time Loop. Full disclosure: I wanted this to be a Jewish Sal and Gabi, and that is an unreasonable expectation. Instead it is a very nice middle grade science fiction novel about two boys from very different strands of Judaism sorting out their very important weekend in Groundhog’s Day fashion, a good time.
Robin McKinley, Beauty, Rose Daughter, Spindle’s End, and Sunshine. Rereads. It was interesting to watch her develop her fairy tale novel approach, because Beauty was written when novels based on fairy tales were very rare, and it is a very straight-up retelling. And Rose Daughter is a bit later and has a bit more personality, and Spindle’s End is after that and has a lot more personality. Spindle’s End is more of a fantasy novel with a fairy tale structure, rather than just a fairy tale expanded into a (short) novel form. Sunshine…well, I was glad that I intended to do some baking that day anyway. And it’s still got such a weird ending. But worth it.
Naomi Novik, Buried Deep and Other Stories. I found this to be a very mixed bag, which might mean that there’s something for everybody or might just mean that it’s a very mixed bag. I was surprised by how much I liked the crossover between her dragon universe and Pride and Prejudice, because that is usually the opposite of my sort of thing, and while I can’t say it’s in the running for my favorite story of the year, it was a good time.
Morgan Parker, Magical Negro: Poems. Trenchant cultural commentary in very biting poem form, glad to have read this.
Hache Pueyo, But Not Too Bold. Discussed elsewhere.
Arthur Ransome, Winter Holiday. Reread. The most comfort of comfort rereads. The thing about it is that I haven’t reread this since I learned that winter in England–even in northern England–doesn’t mean what it means here, and it’s all there on the page once you know–the idea that the lake freezing is rare, that they’re incredibly lucky to have this grand adventure. The other thing about this book is that it is so entirely pro-quarantine about infectious disease that the rambunctious children do not try to break quarantine. None of the adults seriously considers sending kids who might have been exposed to mumps (but do not in fact end up having mumps) to school to give it to the other children. This is a plot device, but it’s also a deeply held belief that I think will be something of a relief to some of my friends in the current era.
May Sarton, Collected Poems, 1930-1973. I know there was some May Sarton in an anthology I read and reread as a child, but for the life of me I can’t find it here, it just…didn’t stick. And that’s sort of how the rest of this collection went: I could read it, I wasn’t annoyed reading it, there was a stanza here or there that hit what it was aiming at, but I don’t think Sarton is ever going to be one of the poets I really love. Well. They can’t all be.
Jo Walton, Farthing, Ha’penny, and Half a Crown. Rereads. This…is maybe not the most cheerful time to read an alternate history trilogy about the rise of fascism in midcentury Britain, but also cheerful is not the only thing we need, and the voice in these is so solid. Also though I spent an entire afternoon upset that [redacted] still dies in the last book on this reread.
Alison Weir, Queens of the Conquest: England’s Medieval Queens. Parts of this book drove me absolutely up a tree, parts were fine, and then we got to the last section, about the Empress Maud, and I was absolutely done with Weir, just plain done. Instead of taking into account the absolute hostility many chroniclers had to a woman exercising solo power ever, Weir speculates that maybe the Empress Maud sucked because of menopause. What. What. Stop that.
John Wiswell, Wearing the Lion. Discussed elsewhere.