#reading wrap-up

[brandileigh2003]

February reading wrap-up --- if you find any you love, be sure to let the author know 💙

Many of my fics are from the @old-dogs-fest make sure to check them all out bc I'm not caught up!

(also if I missed tagging an author let me know!)

Monthly word count: 1,279,326

What I read:

•In the Wings by @madefortherain (90k) ballet au, pining, hard of hearing and trans remus

•Professor R. J. Lupin and the Time Machine by lanearoo @shunstanpike (29k mcd)

•Not Quite Dead Yet by @just--vi (20k rated m) bring back black

•Maybe I Waited Too Long - A Marauders Medical AU by YouBlitheringIdiot @blitheringmcgonagall (53k nr) jily & wolfstar as Drs, dual timeline

•The Nine Leggings of Remus Lupin by @emperorem (22k rated e) Remus joins yoga to help with pain and sirius is instructor

•The Weight of the Moon @blackstarrising (39k rated e) Remus' usual supplier of wolfsbane disappears and meet black market potioneer Sirius

•The Wolves of Census Division 23 by @dive-nire (69k, rated e) texting strangers to lovers modern au

•What Grows in the Dark by @madefortherain (33k) strangers to lovers modern au

•Still by @sorealis (22k rated e) older wolfstar, exes to lovers

•The Art of Defence by @caslyra (13k rated t) Sirius wanting to break curse on dada

•taking care by SayAnythingGrace (11k rated e) au modern, pining

•Take Me Home to the Place I Belong by @sliebman10 (13 k, rated e) divergent Remus a farmer, Sirius raising Harry

These are new ones I've started re reading- see list of wips I'm following here

•Would That I By third_crow (185 k rated t 38/70 chapters) no voldy soulmates at Hogwarts (I've technically been reading this since 2022 but just updated after hiatus and I reread it all, so I needed to add it lol)

•Codename: Wolfstar by @sliebman10 (3k rated e 1/? Chapters) older wolfstar in CIA

(I'm certain I've forgotten some! )

•The First Transformation (or: you are what you eat) by @igetje (4k rated t) Sirius becomes padfoot and isn't feeling well

•in our bedrooms after the war by @lavenderhaze (7k rated m) post poa canon divergent

•when the moon was warm by @sorealis (1k rated t)

•The Unexpected Gardener @igetje (2k rated t) Canon divergent from Sirius escaping from Azkaban

•You answer the question I would never even ask myself by waterlilyinclearwater (6k rated t) a gift for me 🥰🤩 bathing prompt for odf.

•wolf moon (come cast your spell on me) by barkatthemoon @barkingatthemooninsteadofwriting (4k rated t) a look at sirius' feelings for remus and trying to make it better around the moon

•And Yet, Here They Are by @caslyra (1k rated t) holidays at grimmauld

•Oh, golden boy, you shined a light on your home And at your best, you were magic by @dorythewritingfish (6k rated t) wolfstar raising Harry

•A Dog in Rat's Clothing by @Igetje (9k rated t) Sirius and Peter switch bodies after animagus potion accident

•The Perfect Present by @tealeavesandtrash (5k rated e) secret Santa pining wolfstar

•Easing into It by @puuvillaa Remus is a new Dom and they explore dynamic

•Things Worth Revisiting by @igetje (1k rated g) domestic wolfstar fluff

•always you by @notmycatsname (1k rated t) wolfstar getting together at grimmauld

•Adagio by @impishtubist (3k rated t) Remus' 65 bday

•secret keeper. by augmenti (4k rated g) Hogwarts era

•side effects by @magicbeings (8k rated e) a drug trial brings wolfstar together

•To the bone by @akhmaleone (8k rated e) canon divergent

•Please Mind The Gap by @aquamyosotis (6k rated g) accidental kid acquisition

•The Gifts of the Animagi by @belljarbrews (3k rated t) wolfstar at hogwarts around Christmastime

•Memories of You (7k mcd rated t) yep. This is mine. Was trying to remind myself that I love my stories. So picked one to make myself emotional

•i don't got a thing to lose (if you're not with me) by @barkingatthemooninsteadofwriting (10k rated e) older wolfstar. Pathetic remus meets famous Sirius

•Of Public Erections and Tweed by @toadby (5k rated e) Sirius hot for Harry's teacher

•Sandy brown curls... @dorythewritingfish (1k rated m) Regulus shaves remus' hair for revenge

•of neckties, jazz and lovingly meddlesome older men by @colourful00desert (3k rated g) wolfstar visits Harry's bar

•precious by @heysaykitkat (10k rated e)

•It’s Official by LuminousGloom (3k rated g) different take on Molly trying to get tonks and remus together. Adorable wolfstar

•Stop The Cavalry by BeckettSimpleton

•let's waste time/ chasin' cars/ around our heads by snufki_in (1k rated t) divergent. Remus losing hearing

•An Unholy Hand To Lick by the_prettiest_wolf_star (3k rated t) divergent. Remus adopts a dog and gets a surprise

•Jackets and Jumpers by Nox_inabox (2k rated t) Remus insecure with grey hair and changed his looks

•Boyfriend Try-Outs by ravenclawesome42 (1k rated g) teddy tries out for quidditch team

•Buggering Like an Old Married Couple by @luxalupinlvr (4k rated e) sweet with banter and old man smut

•Pull in Your Horns by grovestep (5k) remus works at ranch, Sirius is new owner

•Etched in the stars (4k rated t) Valentine's Day falls on the day of the full moon, but Remus and Sirius still make it special for each other.

•Divide (3k rated m) angsty 1st war mcd

•Remus Lupin’s guide to falling in love as an old man (new chapter! 15k rated e) nursing home au

[true-bluesargent]

2026 reading wrap-up (so far)!

january

1. the long game by rachel reid - i feel like ive said so much about this already but GOD. what a slog...... it really does suck so bad that rachel reid doesn't give a fuck about shane at all because i DO care about shane. a lot. so this book was not a great time for me 👍 i could say more but honestly i read it so long ago now that i can't really remember what i liked and didn't like

2. the history of everything by victoria evans - this was the first physical book i've taken out from the library in YEARS and it turned out to be the sweetest little graphic novel!!! the art style was so funky and i loved the colours and it was also just a nice coming-of-age friendship story which i found very endearing <3 yay <3

3. the handmaid's tale by margaret atwood - i've read this before (a long long time ago now) and i really enjoyed it then and i really enjoyed it now! it is just so well-written and gripping and intriguing. also, terrifying! because actually in about 2019 when i first read it, the world of gilead honestly felt a lot more far-fetched than it does now. very very scary stuff guys

february

4. hollow by shannon watters - graphic novel number two of the year!! this one was also a lot of fun it was a sleepy hollow inspired kind of deal? i don't know a lot about sleepy hollow actually but the main characters were called izzy crane and vicky van tassel and the headless horseman was involved. i can't actually recall the plot in any detail now but! cool art and it would have been a really good halloween read

march

5. what does it feel like? by sophie kinsella - this was a weird one because it was technically fiction but also very plainly just an autobiographical story with the names changed. i read it all in an evening and it was quite moving (i did cry!) but i don't know how much i loved the writing style. but i was very sad to discover after i'd finished it that the author has passed away in real life because the ending of the book was very hopeful :(

6. pizza girl by jean kyoung frazier - really really liked this one. i was at the library looking for short books and i just picked it up because i liked the cover but it was kind of awesome. like a weird, fucked-up, lesbian juno. in many ways. and also not at all like that but i thought it was so good, even though i don't think it quite stuck the landing with its ending. BUT it's a debut so i'm kind of excited to see what the author writes next!

7. spidey: freshman year by robbie thompson - this was like a bunch of spiderman comics collected and i don't read a lot of comics at all but this was really FUNNNN i love spiderman. had lots of iconic characters and villains from the spiderman universe and the art style was cool and it was funny and easy to read and i feel like it was very good for a comic novice, which is what i am </3 i love peter parker sooo much #mypeter

april

8. best woman by rose dommu - so i have pretty mixed feelings about this one because i feel like the beginning was so so strong but the second half of the book was.. not so brilliant. so it's a romcom about this trans woman whose brother is getting married and she's going to be his best woman (duh) and it turns out that the maid of honour is the girl she had this BIG crush on in school and in the process of trying to get this girl to like her she sort of accidentally lies and says that her family aren't supportive of her transition. which sounds weird but in the context of the book it definitely made sense it was just one of these spiralling romcom white lie miscommunication things. but it's like the book couldn't commit to being a romance because it was too busy denouncing the concept of monagamy (which. that's fine but it just didn't make sense within this clearly romcom shaped story).. and i wasn't that sold on the romance either particularly... it was more interesting as a story about family and identity and childhood and small towns and stuff. but whateverrrr it's fine i had fun it was sharp and funny and quite sweet at times

9. red flags by sophie jo - okay so young adult romance is a genre that is always so comforting and easy for me to revisit because it used to be my absolute bread and butter and this was just. like comfort food in a book. the romcom set-up was fun; it was basically the plot of how to lose a guy in ten days but it didn't feel derivative or anything! it had povs of both the love interests which i liked, they were both very charming and so were the background characters! i honestly would have read more like i wish it had been longer </3 and i also wish there were fewer mentions of how veiny the male mc's hands were. because there were a lot of those for some reason

10. heartbreak era by sophie jo - so clearly i liked this author so much that i had to try another of her books and like i actually maybe liked this one even more? it was like. it was kind of like solitaire by alice oseman but for normies if that makes any sense at all. and that is to say that the love interest reminded me of michael holden and that it was set in a sixth form and that's really all the similarities but. it was actually more of a coming-of-age character journey for the main character than it was a romance and honestly i don't think it necessarily should have ended in a romance... i think she probably could have done with being single for a while! and she and the love interest had a genuinely lovely friendship. but that's the genre and i wasn't really MAD about it. just that my aro ass will make anything about platonic love

and that's it for the year so far! i fell off making these BADLY in the winter because i just like didn't finish any books😭 so hopefully soon i can get back to doing monthly/bi-monthly wrap-ups again! for an audience of basically just one person... @typingwithmyhandstied your turn now 🙂‍↕️

[crmediagal]

[rosegardendeprofundis]

June 2025 Reading Wrap-Up

📖2025 Reading Goal: 55/100📖

Books Read This Month:

Deep and Dark and Dangerous by Mary Downing Hahn

Lady Macbeth by Ava Reid

A Heart Divided by Jin Yong

Shout by Laurie Halse Anderson

The Night of Wishes by Michael Ende

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden by Joanne Greenberg

Favorite: Shout

Least Favorite: Lady Macbeth

Previous Reading Wrap-Ups: January 2025, February 2025, March 2025, April 2025, May 2025

[eli-zab3th]

My 2023 Reading Year in Review!

For more details, see my Goodreads page or The Storygraph

[ninja-muse]

At last, a month where I feel like I read enough! The trick, clearly, was to pick up graphic novels and other very short things. Will this trend continue in November? Almost certainly not.

Followers might have seen my review for The Dollmakers by Lynn Buchanan last week but that's not actually my top read of the month. That honour goes to Jane Austen's Bookshelf by Rebecca Romney, which I got as an ARC from work, told myself I wouldn't read just yet, then promptly picked up after The Dollmakers and all but burned through. It's about the female authors we know Austen read and why they were bestsellers in their day but are barely known now, with all sorts of publishing and book industry history thrown in, along with a dose of memoir. Needless to say, I was the target audience and I've added a good handful of classics to my TBR. (It's out in February, in case you're interested.)

The rest of my top reads are there for just being solidly good. The Disappearing Spoon gave me all the fun science history I wanted. The Angel of Indian Lake gave me a good horror trilogy ending. The Tropic of Serpents gave me more Lady Trent adventures. And so on. I only really had two misses: The Aeronaut's Windlass, which felt very by-the-books epic fantasy without pushing boundaries, and Wordhunter, which I'm actively recommending people don't read. It was utterly average and kind of trying too hard to be edgy, and then it needlessly introduced sexual violence against women and children and handled both badly. How a book that lets a pedophile off with a warning got published in 2024, I will never understand.

In happier news, my book haul! Two books this month: Sorcery and Small Magics, sent by the publisher, and another volume of The Unwritten, meaning I only need to find one and I've got the full run. Hurray! (If you ever spot Vol. 9, folks, lemme know.)

All that reading means that I haven't done much writing. I need to get back to that, but at least I know what was blocking me and am working to rectify the situation. I am, however, starting to get seriously envious of authors who were able to write during the pandemic and are now getting those novels published. I stopped writing entirely for a year and a half, for various reasons, and now I feel like I've fallen behind.

Someday I might return to the Not-Quite-Urban Fantasy but I'm still too raw to handle the edits even now.

Oh, the worlds of might-have-been!

And now I've gone and left this on a down note. There'll be more positivity next month, I promise. In the meantime, here’s my list of everything I read this month, in the rough order of how glad I was to have read them.

Jane Austen’s Bookshelf - Rebecca Romney

A rare book dealer explores the literary histories of Austen’s favourite female authors, and how they didn’t make the English canon the way Austen did. Out in February.

8/10

reading copy

The Disappearing Spoon - Sam Kean

An entertaining history of chemistry, atomic physics, and the elements of the periodic table.

8/10

library ebook

The Tropic of Serpents - Marie Brennan

Isabella Camherst travels south to Bayembe to study savannah dragons, but finds herself caught in politics and sent on a mission to the swamp of Mouleen.

7.5/10

African-coded secondary characters, 🏳️‍🌈 secondary character (asexual)

library book

The Dollmakers - Lynn Buchanan

When Shean of Pearl receives, and refuses, an artisan dollmaker license, she sets off for a remote village to prove she and her dolls have what it takes to be guards against the Shod. If this means luring the monsters in, so be it.

7.5/10

reading copy

The Angel of Indian Lake - Stephen Graham Jones

Jade Daniels, now Proofrock’s history teacher, has put slasher cycles behind her. Except it’s looking like another one’s started anyway.

7.5/10

Blackfoot protagonist, 🏳️‍🌈 protagonist (sapphic), Black secondary characters

warning: blood, gore, death, murder

reading copy

Reluctant Immortals - Gwendolyn Kiste

Lucy Westrena and Bee Rochester are trying to get through the days in 1967 LA when their exes return in San Fransisco.

7/10

🏳️‍🌈 secondary characters (sapphic), Jamaican-British secondary character

warning: abusive relationships

reading copy

Bury Your Gays - Chuck Tingle

After Misha refuses to kill off his queer leads for the season finale, he finds himself stalked by horror villains he created.

7/10

🏳️‍🌈 protagonist (gay), 🏳️‍🌈 secondary characters (bi, aroace), 🏳️‍🌈 author

warning: death, murder, torture, homophobia, child abuse

library book

Ms. Marvel, Vol. 7 - G. Willow Wilson with Mirka Andolfo (Illustrator), Takeshi Miyazawa (Illustrator)

Kamala Khan faces two difficult foes: gerrymandering and a sentient computer virus.

6.5/10

Pakistani-American protagonist, Muslim protagonist, Pakistani-American secondary characters, Muslim secondary characters, 🏳️‍🌈 secondary character (sapphic), Black secondary character, secondary character with limb damage and a cane, Muslim author

warning: outing

off my TBR

Paladin’s Grace - T. Kingfisher

Stephen is a paladin whose god has died. Grace is a perfumer trying to keep her past buried. Witnesses to a failed assassination, they now must work together to navigate a world of intrigue, poisoners, and zealots. It’s a good thing they like each other.

6.5/10

off my TBR/ebook

Plain Jane and the Mermaid - Vera Brosgol

When Jane’s potential fiancé is kidnapped by a mermaid, she descends into the depths to rescue him even though she can never hope to compete with true waifish beauty.

7.5/10

warning: body shaming

library book

Sorcery and Small Magics - Maiga Doocy

Leovander Loveage and Sebastian Grimm get along like oil and water—which makes it all the worse when Leo's hit with an illegal curse and they must work together to break it.

6.8/10

🏳️‍🌈 protagonist (achillean), 🏳️‍🌈 secondary character (achillean), 🏳️‍🌈 minor character (ungendered), minor character with dark skin, minor character who uses a cane

gifted by publisher

Dictionary of Fine Distinctions - Eli Bernstein

Illuminating and illustrated definitions of commonly confused words.

7/10

library book

Days at the Morisaki Bookshop - Satoshi Yagisawa

When Takako finds herself adrift in life, she accepts a room in her estranged uncle’s bookshop.

7/10

Japanese cast, Japanese author

library book

Wordhunter - Stella Sands

A spiky forensic linguistics student is tapped by her local PD to help find a kidnapped teen, but that brings up a missing person’s case from her own past. Too close, too soon.

2/10

Black secondary character

warning: drug use, alcohol abuse, rape and an odd attitude towards its aftermath, pedophiles given a pass

library book

Picture books

All the Books - Hayley Rocco

Piper loves books so much she takes her whole collection everywhere, but when her wagons tip over in the rain she discovers … the library!

9/10

DNF

The Aeronaut’s Windlass - Jim Butcher

The cold war between Spires Albion and Aurora is heating up, and something uncanny is showing itself. Caught in it all are Captain Grimm, late of the Predator, a handful of trainee guards, and a prince of cats.

library ebook

Currently reading

The Price of the Stars - Debra Doyle and James D. MacDonald

When Beka’s politician mother is assassinated, her father gives her his warship in exchange for her tracking the assassins down. But when someone has it in for your family, sometimes one must take drastic measures.

off my TBR

The Empress Letters - Linda Rogers

A mother in the 1920s writes her life story in a series of letters to the daughter she’s searching for in China.

🇨🇦, Chinese secondary characters

warning: fetal remains, anti-Chinese racism

off my TBR

Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century - Richard Taruskin A history of early written European music, in its social and political contexts.

The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle Victorian detective stories

disabled POV character (limb injury), occasional Indian secondary characters

warning: racism, colonialism

Monthly total: 14 + 1 Yearly total: 106 Queer books: 3 Authors of colour: 2 Books by women: 9 Authors outside the binary: 0 Canadian authors: 0 Classics: 0 Off the TBR shelves: 3 Books hauled: 2 ARCs acquired: 3 ARCs unhauled: 4 DNFs: 1

January February March April May June July August September

[roseunspindle]

What I Read in July 2025

could have done without the rape-fantasies chapters... but I liked the blips into their lives after other than that.

Cute ^_^

communication girls!

Shima....

Also hate the pig scientist so much

Code names/leadership/community service ^_^

So cute. And keeping with Clamp tradition very gender-queer

Esther learning the ropes

Oooh... replace gothic mansion with tropical island! Loved this book. Made my mom read it too. Only downside is I really don't care for the owlcrate cover at all. The original cover was much better.

good basic overview, obviously for kids but also for anyone who just wants a quick glance idea of "what was going on"

I liked getting to properly meet Saya. Though her death still...ugh!!!!

Cute shorts

This book wandered from my mom's shelves to my tbr pile and has been there years. Finally got around to reading it and really liked it! Kinda philosophical feeling with some epic poem-esque tendencies. Yet still told a full story in such a short amount of time.

Both sides kept uno-reversing each other.

[therefugeofbooks]

[3.09.24] 12/50 days of booklr

I love some graphics!! I'm late as usual, because I think this was implemented a few months ago, but I finally have graphics to show! I never update the dates that I start the books, so the calendar option doesn't reflect my reading chaos yet.

Finally finished rereading The Vampire Lestat, and my love-hate relationship with Lestat is the same. Bury Your Gays was amazing, and A Magical Retires and Transmuted were both novellas that left me pleasantly surprised.

How was everyone's reading month?