​Demon in the Wood, by Leigh Bardugo, illustrated by Dani Pendergast.

This graphic novel is the prequel to Bardugo's Shadow and Bone series. The Darkling, Aleksander (currently using the alias Eryk) is shown as a teenager. He lives nomadically with his mother, frequently changing identities, because the witch-hunters will kill Grisha (people with magical powers). Eryk and his mother both have the rare gift of being able to control shadows. As it turns out, Eryk has a second magical secret as well.

The twist in the story is well done: a surprise at the time, but set up well so that it makes sense in retrospect. Eryk suffers a stunning betrayal, and what begins as self-defense turns into a greater evil that foreshadows his future as the Darkling.

The illustrations are also well done, giving just the right amount of detail to tell the story and bring the emotion home.


Popsugar Reading Challenge: Includes a "shadow daddy" character.
52 Book Club Challenge: Title in a serif font.
Booklist Queen Challenge: Title starts with "D."
This Challenge Killed the Bookworm: Beware of the woods.

The First Four Years, by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Despite the title, this is the last book in the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. The manuscript was found among her belongings after her death. It covers the early years of her marriage to Almanzo "Manly" Wilder.

It's sort of hard to believe that this was sold as a children's book. It contains heartbreak after heartbreak, including the death of their 3-week-old son. (Strangely, to me at least, they never named him.) This incident is passed over as quickly as possible, and he is not mentioned again.

Laura was reluctant to commit to farming, as she'd been through many hardships growing up. Almanzo talked her into trying it for three years, which stretched into four. Each time, the promise of a good crop and prosperity was ruined by one disaster or another. Both Laura and Almanzo nearly died of diptheria. She also describes a startling number of near-miss accidents with their toddler daughter, Rose, to the point where I wondered how any child survived in that era.

There's an improbable-sounding incident where a group of Native men turn up at the farm, they make a show of examining items in the barn, and one asks her to "be his woman" - then she slaps him and they leave, never to return.

Wilder's storytelling is always done in a matter-of-fact tone, emotions seen from a safe distance. The vocabulary is generally at an elementary school level, sometimes with expressions that probably needed no explanation in her era but do now. The Wilders had a "tree claim" that they needed to "prove up," and she seemed to assume young readers would know what that meant. 

Trigger warning for infant death.

Popsugar Reading Challenge: Deals with postpartum.
52 Book Club Challenge: Paired prompt, fiction and nonfiction about the same person. (Will be paired with Prairie Fires by Caroline Fraser.)
Booklist Queen Challenge: Children's book.

Better Living Through Birding: Notes From a Black Man in the Natural World, by Christian Cooper.

Christian Cooper accidentally became famous because of a viral video. While bird-watching in Central Park, he told a woman (ironically, also named Cooper) to leash her dog. The woman became furious, telling him she was going to call the police and tell them "a Black man was threatening her." Cooper addresses the incident in the book, as well as some of the interactions he had with the press afterward. One reporter wanted to stage a sit-down between him and Amy Cooper; since she had not shown remorse or acknowledged the racism in her actions, he refused. Another reporter wanted to film him watching the video of George Floyd's murder, an absolutely bizarre and cruel idea.

Despite the title, this is more memoir than birding book. Cooper describes growing up as a gay Black Pagan nerd with a Star Trek obsession. He talks about his travels all over the world, and the spiritual connection he felt in certain places. He's open about his complicated relationship with both parents, but more reticent about past boyfriends, perhaps because they're still alive.

And of course there's a lot about birding, including tips for novice birders, and vivid descriptions of the joys of birding. There's the beauty of the birds and their music, the chance to enjoy time spent in nature, the fun of puzzle-solving when identifying a bird, and the thrill of adding a new species to his lifetime views. While I read the print version, a friend of mine recommends the audio book, which includes the bird calls.

Popsugar Reading Challenge: About birding.
52 Book Club Challenge: Author has the same first and last initial.
​Booklist Queen Challenge: First-person narrative.

Startlement: New and Selected Poems, by Ada Limón.

Startlement includes selections from six of Ada Limón's previous books, as well as twenty-one new poems. I tend to prefer the later books, especially The Carrying. Her poetic talent is finding the extraordinary in the ordinary, looking at old things in a new way, as in the title poem:

It is a forgotten pleasure, the pleasure
     of the unexpected blue-bellied lizard

skittering off his sun spot rock, the flicker
     of an unknown bird by the bus stop.

To think, perhaps, we are not distinguishable
     and therefore no loneliness can exist here.

Similarly, in "Give Me This," she describes spotting a groundhog stealing and eating tomatoes out of her garden:

     I watched her
munch and stand on her haunches, taking such 
pleasure in the watery bites. Why am I not allowed 
delight?

She turns a similarly observant eye on human interactions in "A Good Story," a poem about her stepfather:

     But right now all I want
is a story about human kindness, the way once, when I couldn't stop

crying because I was fifteen and heartbroken, he came in and made
me eat a small pizza he'd cut up into tiny bites until the tears stopped.

Maybe I was just hungry, I said.

She concludes with a new poem, "In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa," dedicated to NASA's Europa mission.

And it is not darkness that unites us,
not the cold distance of space, but
the offering of water, each drop of rain,

each rivulet, each pulse, each vein.
O second moon, we, too, are made
of water, of vast and beckoning seas.

We, too, are made of wonders, of great
and ordinary loves, of small invisible worlds,
of a need to call out through the dark.

Popsugar Reading Challenge: Fruit on the cover or in the title (yes I'm counting the author's name, Spanish for lemon).
52 Book Club Challenge: Diacritical mark (such as an accent mark) on the cover.

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Every Heart a Doorway, by Seanan McGuire.

This is the first book in Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children series. "Wayward," in this case, refers to children who've visited fairy lands or other alternate realities, and then returned. The children in Eleanor West's home are all desperately searching for the doors that will take them "home" to their magical lands. We get glimpses of different worlds: some are "logic," with clear rules, while others are pure "nonsense." Some realms are deemed virtuous, and some wicked, with assorted lesser designations in between. The children who appear as side characters in this book get starring roles in later books. All of them are interesting, unique personalities, including Jack and Jill, a pair of identical twins who are anything but.

17-year-old Nancy spent six years (in human time, six months) serving the Lord of the Dead, and she misses the cool, quiet stillness of the underworld. Her parents think she's had a breakdown, and they send her to Miss West to be healed.

And then the murders start.

As the new arrival from the Land of the Dead, Nancy is the prime suspect. The details of the murders and mutilations are extremely grotesque, and I doubt I'll be continuing the series for that reason. The murders make sense within the story, but were hard for me to read, particularly since the books are about children.

The stories could be seen as an allegory for being neurodivergent. The children experience the world differently than other people, and are often not believed or understood.

Popsugar Reading Challenge: About new beginnings.
52 Book Club Challenge: A book that cost you nothing.
Booklist Queen Challenge: Published in 2016.
This Challenge Killed the Bookworm: Fairies are good.

Patriot: A Memoir, by Alexei Navalny (translated from Russian by Arch Tait with Stephen Dalziel)

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny wrote much of this while imprisoned. Navalny was poisoned in a Siberian prison in February 2024, and the book was published afterward by his wife Yulia. It’s chilling and inspiring by turns.

The book starts with the first poisoning attempt in 2020. Navalny spent several weeks in a coma, and was flown to Germany for treatment. When he returned to Russia in 2021, I remember thinking: does he not know where this is headed? He absolutely did, and was convinced his fight was worth it.

He describes his upbringing the USSR, and the relative freedom of the years after the Soviet breakup. He notes that Gorbachev was quite unpopular, because he promised freedom but only delivered by half-measures. Navalny was an early supported of Boris Yeltsin, only to be disillusioned by the latter’s corruption and alcoholism.

On the latter point, Navalny was convinced that one of the crucial factors in the collapse of the USSR was Gorbachev’s anti-alcohol policy. It lowered the mortality rate, but also made it socially acceptable to criticize the government.

Navalny became involved with anti-corruption activism, publishing exposes online, and eventually running unsuccessful (and illegal) campaigns for Mayor of Moscow and later President of Russia. His description of working with a radical political party was all too familiar: too many people fighting with each other instead of uniting against the common enemy.

The last half of the book is his prison diary. Navalny was arrested immediately upon his return to Russia in 2021, and unsuccessfully fought a number of bogus charges. He pondered what would happen “if they manage to whack me,” then laughed at himself for being dramatic. He was repeatedly overwhelmed with the support he got, people demonstrating to protest his imprisonment, letters pouring in from all over Russia and around the world. Navalny remained convinced that even if he had to pay a high price for his activism, he was making it easier for others who would bring about a better Russia in the future.

One of the hardest parts was the regime “taking hostages:” arresting his brother Oleg and other innocents in an attempt to silence him. Oleg wasn’t especially political, but when he was sentenced to 3 ½ years in prison, he told Alexei not to stop his activism, “or all I have suffered will be for nothing.” Similarly, Navalny’s friend Pyotr Ofitserov was arrested on a trumped-up charge. In the prison transport van, Navalny asked if he had any regrets about not cooperating with the regime against him. Ofitserov’s response:

“Do you really think you are the only one who wants to remain an honest man?”

Popsugar Reading Challenge: Book I meant to read in 2025.
52 Book Club Challenge: Set in the Arctic or Antarctic.
Booklist Queen Challenge: European author.

Heated Rivalry, by Rachel Reid.

I like this book significantly better than the previous one, Game Changer, and I had to think about why. The characters are more compelling, the conflicts more complex, the emotions examined rather than bluntly stated.

Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov are rival hockey players, stars of their respective teams. Shane is a tightly wound Canadian with a wholesome image; Ilya is a swaggering, playful Russian on a US team. What starts as a onetime hookup turns into an enemies-with-benefits arrangement. When love  threatens to break through their defenses, both struggle with the emotional vulnerability as well as the risk of getting caught. As with all the books in this series, there's a lot of explicit sex. Their encounters chart a journey toward intimacy.

My favorite moment: Ilya calls Shane from Moscow, where he's dealing with his father's death. He can't find the words in English for what he's feeling, so Shane suggests, "Say it in Russian. I won't understand you, but maybe it will help." Ilya reveals more than he'd been willing to admit, even to himself.

Reading this book and the next one, I'm enjoying the author's world building. Game Changer introduced Ilya and hinted that he might not be as straight as he pretends. That book ended with a grand romantic gesture between its main characters, which served as a catalyst for Shane and Ilya. Heated Rivalry introduces Ryan Price, the main character in the next book, Tough Guy, and Shane and Ilya play a small but crucial role in that book.

Speaking as someone with very little interest in hockey, I can't wait to check out the rest of the books in the series - especially The Long Game and the forthcoming Unrivaled, which once again center Shane and Ilya.

Popsugar Reading Challenge: A love story that defies social boundaries.
52 Book Club Challenge: Related to the word "nemesis."
Booklist Queen Challenge: Becoming a movie or TV show in 2026.
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A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking, by T. Kingfisher.

On page 1, the narrator discovers a dead body in the bakery. Things get worse for her from there. This is a YA fantasy with touches of horror, like a character whose magical power is to animate dead horses.

Mona is a 14-year-old baker with minor magical abilities that only affect dough or baked goods. Wizards in her town are being murdered by the mysterious Spring Green Man. Then a government official demands that all wizards register with the government or be deemed traitors. Mona soon finds that she's the only wizard left who hasn't been killed, arrested, or fled. So she's the only one available to help when the town comes under attack. Having nothing to work with but dough, she'll have to get creative.

I'm particularly fond of Mona's familiars: a sourdough started with an attitude, and a gingerbread man who communicates really well for a creature with no power of speech. The latter reminds me a bit of the magic carpet in Disney's Aladdin.

And while it's never fully answered, Mona at least asks the right question for these teenager-saves-the-day stories: why didn't the adults do their freakin' jobs instead of dumping all this responsibility on a kid?

Popsugar Reading Challenge: Includes a "granny hobby."
52 Book Club Challenge: Title contains "guide to."
Booklist Queen Challenge: Underdog story.
​This Challenge Killed the Bookworm: A book by T. Kingfisher.

I got an honorable mention from "On the Premises" in their latest mini-contest (25-50 word story). Theme was "Circles."

You Are My Joy and Pain: Love Poems, by Naomi Long Madgett.

Naomi Long Madgett was the Poet Laureate of Detroit. Her best-known poems are about the Civil Rights Movement, but this book concentrates on her love poems. Both formal and free verse are included. The poems are accessible and usually pretty straightforward, but still feel fresh. For instance, it's hard to find a new way to compare love with a flower, but Madgett does it in the opening poem, "Heart-Blossom:"

First love came timidly and full of fear -
love, the late bud that felt its time to grow
was past and shuddered in December's cold.
But then, when warmer turned the ripening year,
up from the seed my heart had dared to sow
burst the full blossom, colorful and bold.

The book's first section, "A Promise of Sun," contains poems of joy. The second section, "Trinity: a Dream Sequence," is a 20-part poem with imagery from the Bible and Greek mythology:


8.
I will be your Eve, 
fulfill your need of conscience for a name
and thereby give you peace.

Brand this I give you Apple of Destruction,
Lure of the Golden Death;
it may be so.

The final section, "Stormy Weather," contains poems of lost love and regret, like "Discards:"

I emptied your wastebasket the other day
and found the star I gave you once
​when we went walking on air.

Popsugar Reading Challenge: A book set in Michigan, or by an author from Michigan.
52 Book Club Challenge: Started on the 26th of the month.
Booklist Queen Challenge: A book that makes you happy.
​This Challenge Killed the Bookworm: Pretty cover.
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