#blackcurrant fool

[agardenandlibrary]

do you swear your sword, your heart, and your hand in fealty to your best friend who has saved your life, your sanity, and your soul, or are you normal?

[taryo88]

The trials and tribulations of one Mr. Peregrine Dart often show up in the form of one Mr. Jemis Greenwing

[e-b-reads]

Books of the month: May 2026

Honestly astonished that I read so much in what was certainly the busiest month of my year - finished up class for the semester, then we had constant field trips at the camp where I work plus lots of maintenance and logistical prep for the summer - but I think what happened is that most days I came home, collapsed and read for a while, then went to bed. And I managed to keep finding enough interesting things to have my next 2-3 reads always lined up, which helped. Here's my choices for my books of May:

The Sleeping Partner (Madeleine E. Robins): This is book 3 in a series, so don't start here, but I was so so happy to find it. This is the Sarah Tolerance series - alternate Regency England (George III never recovered from the first madness - queen has been regent) focused on a woman who works as an inquiry agent and is really really good with a sword. Kind of bait for me specifically, but I also think genuinely well done. Author cites as inspiration: noir detectives (Sarah gets to be the noir hero), regency romances (but grittier), and Wimsey for the slow growing relationship. I reread books 1-2 in May and finally got my hands on book 3 - could not be found for love or money when I first started this series a few years ago! Now there is a new-ish book 4 which no library in my state seems to have, but I have requested via out-of-state ILL so we'll see.

Like, Follow, Subscribe: Influencer Kids and the Cost of a Childhood Online (Fortesa Latifi): I wrote about this one here! Really interesting and very readable nonfiction. I appreciate that it's a nuanced view of family influencers without condoning putting your kids online.

Blackcurrant Fool (Victoria Goddard): Stuff sure does keep happening to Jemis, huh? I do really enjoy these while I read them, following the twisty plots and reveals, but there's always still more things left unrevealed so I feel like I need to wait to say more until I read yet another book in the series. Lots of fun, though.

About the B'nai Bagels (E. L. Konigsburg): Wrote about this one here as well. I spread it out a little over a couple evenings, which I think was a good move, cause it isn't long, but it is full of good stuff. Just one boy's journey over a Little League season of working out how to be a good teammate, brother, son, man.

Buried in a Bog (Sheila Connolly): First in a cozy mystery series. Interesting because I've tried out some other series by the same author and they're fine but not gripping. Something about this one has kept me reading. I think I like that the main character isn't too inept or innocent, even if she is in a totally new place (from Boston, moved to rural Ireland where her grandmother grew up). The setting is clearly based on personal experience with it, and maybe just fun because it's rural Ireland. Plots have been overall fun so far. I read 4 of the series in May and will read at least a couple more.

On Trails (Robert Moor): This was interesting! Read slowly over the month. (Actually I think it's been a couple months since I started.) Nonfiction about trails and how animals and people make and use them, and have over history. I particularly liked that Moor went out and did things and wrote about them - not just hiking (he through-hiked the AT long before starting the book) but herding sheep, going out to look for fossils with scientists, etc. Did somewhat make me want to through-hike the AT someday, but doesn't have to be right away. Maybe when I retire.

[myriad-rainbows]

Love that Victoria Goddard really went hard on the highly specific academic wish fulfillment fantasy in Blackcurrant Fool. What if the argument you made in your extremely niche obscure literary analysis thesis was not only TOTALLY RIGHT (and you got direct experiential proof!), but also the key to saving your own and your friends' lives? What if you not only got to meet the long-dead author of the poem you analyzed (and she was COOL!), but also she told you that art isn't finished until it's experienced and interpretation is generative and she is deeply moved by how much you cared about her work??? Fantastic.

[shsenhaji]

📚 December Reading Round-Up 📚

I was able to read a good amount of books this month, and I also had a lot of fun tearing through the Greenwing and Dart Series by Victoria Goddard (I re-read the books I’d already read and finished the ones I hadn’t gotten to yet). I also continued my foray into the Vorkosigan Saga (though I skipped ahead in the chronological reading order). I also finally got around to reading At the Feet of the Sun by Victoria Goddard (the sequel to The Hands of the Emperor, which I highly recommend)!

- Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik (an amazing fairytale retelling, lyrical, haunting, great characters and themes, loved the ending, achingly beautiful)

- Stargazy Pie (re-read, delightful, emotional, made more sense the second time around)

- Fullmetal Alchemist Fullmetal Edition Volume 4 by Hiromu Arakawa (hilarious, fun, understated and dark humour, Izumi being awesome, the parallels!!!)

- Labyrinth by Lois McMaster Bujold (not as stressful as I’d initially thought, beautiful at times, Miles being Miles)

- Komarr by Lois McMaster Bujold (gripping, emotional, funny, a little tragic, loved the outsider POV, great characterization, loved the ending)

- Bee Sting Cake by Victoria Goddard (re-read, hilarious and heartfelt, healing, loved all the clues and allusions to future books and past relationships)

- Whiskeyjack by Victoria Goddard (fun, cathartic, almost cried at the end, very emotional, loved the references and allusions)

- Blackcurrant Fool by Victoria Goddard (half of a re-read, funny, emotional and compelling, great character work, fun plot twists, loved the last quarter, much of the foreshadowing paying off, fealty!, the ending!!!!)

- Love-in-a-Mist by Victoria Goddard (Beginning made me laugh, cozy murder mystery, many reveals, characters coming into their own, loved the discussions of fashion)

- Plum Duff by Victoria Goddard (A bit more quiet but in the best way, still a lot of adventure, many revelations, more mysteries, characters fully coming into their own, lots of promises for future books)

- At the Feet of the Sun by Victoria Goddard (Brilliant, funny, starts off with a bang, all the connections and feels, emotional and made me cry, doesn’t wrap everything up, some Thoughts but overall very positive)

[e-b-reads]

Some things about some books - May 24, 2026

It's about to be books-of-the-month time soon but first here's some more rambling thoughts on some recent reads. (I wish this photo of my stack of library books and my cat represented my plans this past chilly, rainy long weekend, but alas, I was leading lifeguard training at the camp where I work. Mild hypothermia for everyone.)

Below: vaguely connected thoughts on Like, Follow, Subscribe -> About the B'nai Bagels, and the Jazzi Zanders mystery series -> Blackcurrant Fool, Chalice, Piranesi. (More on some than others.)

Like, Follow, Subscribe is a nonfiction book about influencer families, and how being posted online from a young age affects kids. It was incredibly readable; these days, I usually have a nonfiction book or two on the go as something to read a few chapters of in the evenings, so it'll take me a few weeks to finish one nonfiction book. I read this one in a day or two. Latifi, who appears to have written the whole book while less than a year post-partum herself, is very kind overall to the mommy bloggers and momfluencers who she profiles and interviews, and is very understanding towards those who do subscribe. (And she makes it easy for the reader to understand the appeal, as she describes being exhausted with a newborn herself, scrolling to try to find a little resonance or sympathy from someone on the internet.) Her conclusion, though, is that despite the anecdotal potential positives of posting your kid all over the internet, she never ever would.

I really understood Latifi's point that people want to follow influencer families because they want to see how other "normal" people live their lives. Although I try to steer away from internet content with kids I don't know, I have certainly enjoyed a vlog or two giving a glimpse of someone's - foreign to me, mundane to them - everyday life. But I was also a little baffled at the idea of always turning to real people on the internet for this, because when I've wanted to get a glimpse of someone else's life, I have always been able to pick up a book instead. Not fantasy - that's good for other stuff, though maybe "cozy fantasy" is a little about wanting to see day-to-day details - but things set in this world. Ever since I was a kid, I knew I could go to E. L. Konigsburg for some realistic fiction that would give me a glimpse of how other kids might be living out there, and About the B'nai Bagels is still very good for that, even though it was published in the late 1960s.

Bagels (as I wrote already in another reblog) is about the very specific experience of being a 12-year-old Jewish boy whose mother decided to manage your Little League team this year, and yet it is still so so good to read as a 30ish adult who has never been Jewish or a boy (or in Little League). I would like to post quotes but would end up posting half the book. One thing that has stuck with me forever since first reading is the narrator (the 12-year-old) describing a pair of twins on his team by saying, "It wasn't as if they were each one half making a whole; it was like one and one making two, and two is a good number to face the world with. As a matter of fact, I think that's why so may people get married, and as a matter of fact, I think that's the reason I wanted to get Hersch back." (Hersch being a former best friend who moved.) But this is just one of the crumbs of wisdom.

While reading some new stuff, and starting on some rereads of very good standalones, I also have reread the first four Jazzi Zanders mystery books, which are perfectly fine books but not on the level of Bagels. However, they also have a lot of detail about day-to-day life - Jazzi and her family and friends solve mysteries, but we also get detail about the house renovating she and her cousin are doing (they're house flippers), the shopping trips with her partner, the meals she cooks for her family. I think every meal is described in these books, at least in passing. Which, again, is great when I'm in the mood to just think about the everyday lives of people with slightly different ones.

And then there's the books that are in completely different worlds. I guess in my recent reads, that's Blackcurrant Fool (Greenwing & Dart 4), and Chalice, and Piranesi though of course that has some of this world too. I'm enjoying the Greenwing and Dart books a lot because they aren't at all predictable; it's nice to dip back into some fantasy where literally anything can happen. (I mean, they're appropriately foreshadowed; I won't say I was entirely surprised, after the amount of time Jemis spends thinking about a famous poem about being imprisoned in a famous prison, when he and his friends ended up in that prison. But the exact mechanisms for everything are always a surprise.) And Chalice is familiar to me, now, but it's a nice way to immerse totally into a very different world with its own consistent logic and vibe. As for Piranesi, I only just finished rereading it before writing this post, but my first thought on finishing was: the whole book exists so that the last two pages can hit the way they should as not-Piranesi/not-Matthew walks through the park. The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite.

[agardenandlibrary]

Has anyone suggested to Jemis that with a law degree he could take Jack Lindsary to court for libel? Maybe he'd be more inclined to the law degree with that in mind

[myriad-rainbows]

also while we're on the topic of great opening lines:

"It was precisely twelve and a half days since I had learned my father had returned from the dead for the second time."