#personal-reads

[umi-ananda]

Just Arrived

February 7, 2026

A small book haul and a very happy mood. Three new companions arrived this week, with a fourth — Praisesong for the Widow — delayed but on the way! It feels good to be expanding my personal library with books that honor the stories of our mothers, whisper the wisdom of the land, and carry the weight of ancestral hands.

[umi-ananda]

When the Goddess Is Not a Metaphor

January 31, 2026

"The words of the goddess, those written on her belly. First they were spoken by the elders in the old tongue, and now they are echoed by all. Eat of my deep earth, drink of my living streams, for I am your Mother. Your heart is my wild drum, your breath my eternal song. If you would live, dance with me! Somewhat obscure in meaning, but I'm told that's an accurate translation. These people expected us tonight. Our arrival was foretold down to the exact hour."

— Cybele's Secret, Juliet Marilier I finished the book this morning and was quite pleased. Cybele’s Secret is the sequel to Wildwood Dancing.

What stayed with me most is how easily life reroutes us. A journey chosen for one reason opens into something entirely different — and somehow more necessary. We set out thinking we know what we want, what will be useful, what makes sense. And then the road offers something else: a reckoning, courage we didn’t plan for, or a truth we didn’t know we were missing. The story feels like a quiet reminder that what arrives unexpectedly is often not a detour at all, but the very thing we were meant to meet.

I tend toward novels that honor maternal nature, ancestral ties to land, and the keeping of traditional folklore, and I find that Juliet Marillier weaves these threads together beautifully.

[umi-ananda]

The Island of Missing Trees

January 12, 2026

If families resemble trees, as they say, arborescent structures with entangled roots and individual branches jutting out at awkward angles, family traumas are like thick, translucent resin dripping from a cut in the bark. They trickle down generations.

They ooze down slowly, a flow so slight as to be imperceptible, moving across time and space, until they find a crack in which to settle and coagulate. — Fig Tree

My reading of The Island of Missing Trees has been intentionally slow. This has not a book to rush through, as intrigued as I may become sometimes while reading through pages. I linger with it — letting the language settle, letting the customs speak. Part of the slowness comes from the brief stepping into Turkish and Cypriot culture, which feels both intimate and unfamiliar, like overhearing something sacred.

What draws me most is the choice of witness: the story told, in part, through the voice of a fig tree. There’s something quietly disarming about that perspective — ancient, patient, unhurried. A tree remembers what people cannot. It holds the weight of history without needing to justify it. Through its eyes, grief and inheritance feel less dramatic and more inevitable, much like seasons passing through the body. The book also reads like a journal — as though you’re seated in the ground, giving ear to the tree’s own unsettled conversations with itself.

This book feels rooted — in land, in memory, in what is passed down whether we want it or not. I’m moving through it the way one walks through an old grove: letting the story lead, not the other way around.

[umi-ananda]

Wildwood Dancing

January 6, 2026

This one turned into my comfort book. I’ve always been quietly intrigued by the forest folk — fairies, elves, gnomes, and the mysterious otherworldly sounds heard behind forest branches. Wildwood Dancing struck such a chord that I found myself immediately scrutinizing whether or not to purchase its sequel, Cybele’s Secret.

What stayed with me most was the loving bond between the five sisters — each so distinctly herself, yet inseparable in the way only sisters can be. Their differences are woven beautifully together, becoming the very thing that keeps the household alive. One listens, one acts, one dreams, one remembers, one critiques, but they always protect the home and remain loyal to each other.

There’s a warmth threaded through the story that feels almost old-fashioned now — a lived-in house, a rhythm of seasons. Set against the shadowy forests of Transylvania, with its dark lovers and unseen alliances. I’ve always loved stories where friendship runs beneath the surface, unnoticed by others but utterly real — and this one settled into me like something remembered rather than discovered.

I'm several chapters into its sequel now! 😊

[umi-ananda]

Saltwater Still on My Skin

November 26, 2025

We hope they will see him and tell others of the dangerous women who discovered a way to save themselves.

The linger of this book stays with me. I kept seeing the three of them slipping into the forest, leaving even their supplies behind — as if the old world no longer had a claim on them. There’s a deeper knowing in their steps, a quiet trust that the land will hold them. They never say it, but I feel it: the Mother pulling them forward, the forest gathering them in, guiding them through the unknown already echoing in their bones.

Between these pages — and even alongside The Lost Apothecary, which I’m currently reading — I feel the same tug of old knowing rising. The sense that women have always known how to walk away from what diminishes them and toward what remembers them.

[umi-ananda]

Where Magic Meets Memory

November 12, 2025

Two stories, each carrying what women pass down. Weyward held pain gently, like earth cradling new shoots — full of quiet magic and slow healing. Sula carried a weight that settled deep — the kind of tired that lives in bones and silence.

Both stayed with me in different ways.

[umi-ananda]

The Quiet Pull of a Good Book

October 29, 2025

I’ve finished The Siren, and I still feel its ripples. What began as a slow current turned into a steady, irresistible pull — the kind that keeps you reading long past the hour you meant to stop. Once I caught the rhythm of Emilia Hart’s voice, I couldn’t quite step away.

There’s a quiet, unwavering intrigue that runs through the story — not loud or dramatic, but deep and constant, like the hum beneath still water. I love how the women in the book feel alive — connected by something unseen yet familiar, their instincts and impressions reaching across generations. It’s rare to find a story that captures that kind of psychic inheritance so gently, without ever naming it outright.

It’s a story that lingers — reverberating through time and culture, echoing the stories of so many women. I’ll be carrying it with me for a while, and I’m already looking forward to Weyward.