A Sicilian Romance, by Ann Radcliffe.

This is a novel written in 1790, with all the Gothic trimmings: a creepy castle with dungeons, intrigues, narrow escapes, swordfights, and a spirited young woman fleeing to avoid a forced marriage. It feels like a very compressed version of Radcliffe's later masterpiece, The Mysteries of Udolpho. As in Udolpho, there are mysterious doings that may or may not be supernatural; we get the explanation in the end.

Despite its brevity, the story manages to have almost every single character presumed dead at one time or another; there are multiple tearful reunions when we learn otherwise. And there's also time for Radcliffe's descriptions of the Sicilian countryside.

"Romance" in Radcliffe's era meant "a story turning upon marvelous or uncommon incidents." But this one is also a love story, which leaves us rooting for the lovers to finally get together, and the villains to get their well-deserved comeuppance.

Popsugar Reading Challenge: Book that makes you want to go to Italy.
52 Book Club Challenge: Takes place in a castle.
Booklist Queen Challenge: Historical romance.

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Game Changer, by Rachel Reid.

This is the first book in the series that became the HBO phenomenon Heated Rivalry. Scott and Kip's story was mostly compressed into a single episode of the TV series, but gets more nuance on the page.

The conflicts are pretty straightforward: Scott Hunter is a famous hockey player who's stayed closeted for his career. Kip Grady is an out-and-proud barista who worries that he's "not good enough" for his famous boyfriend; Kip still lives with his parents after college and is trying to figure out what to do with his life. With the exposition and emotions, I felt the writing had a tendency to tell rather than show. Not so with the sex scenes, which were frequent and very explicit!

A couple of scenes that I wish had made it to the screen: Kip recoiling when Scott offers to pay off his student loans. And Scott showing up unexpectedly on Kip's doorstep to introduce himself to Kip's parents. The story ends with a grand romantic gesture that I won't spoil, but it gets a little more  buildup in the book.

We also get a few tantalizing glimpses of Ilya Rozanov, the bad boy who will star in the following book, Heated Rivalry.

Popsugar Reading Challenge: A book that gives you FOMO.
Booklist Queen Challenge: Book everyone is talking about.

How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women, by Zoe Venditozzi and Claire Mitchell.

This is mostly a history of the Scottish witch hunts in the 16th and 17th centuries, by two Scottish podcasters. I'd known the witch hunts were more savage in Europe than in the American colonies, but holy crap.

The authors note that while the popular image of witch hunts is a mob with pitchforks and torches, the reality was more cold-blooded and legalistic. The rules of evidence for witchcraft were ludicrous, but they gave a veneer of credibility to the process. For instance, any wart or skin tag could be deemed the "devil's mark," and there were professional "witch-prickers" credited with finding them.

The authors walk us through each step: accusation, interrogation (torture, which usually led to confession), trial and execution. The footnotes provide historical detail and some gallows humor.

They note that misogyny played a large role: those accused of witchcraft were likely to be "quarrelsome" women, those who didn't fit the feminine ideal, and the most powerless people, such as widows and impoverished women. They also discuss the famous Salem witch trials in Massachusetts, noting that the first person accused was an enslaved woman.

The authors note that the patterns - misogyny, and targeting the most vulnerable before expanding the attack to others - have, ahem, parallels today.

Trigger warning for torture.

52 Book Club Challenge: 2025 award winner.
Booklist Queen Challenge: Goodreads Choice Award winner.
This Challenge Killed the Bookworm: Witchcraft.

Marathon Man, by William Goldman.

This is a thriller that screams "1970s," starting with an archaic racial slur on the first page. Each time one is used, it's to show that the speaker is a jerk, but it still grates. There's also a painfully stereotypical portrayal of Puerto Rican "gang kids." A more entertaining sign of the era: international spies having to find a pay phone to call in.

It has a common thriller setup: an ordinary guy becomes entangled in intrigues because secret agents wrongly believe that he has crucial information. There are some good twists that I didn't see coming, but they make sense in retrospect. The movie with Dustin Hoffman is fairly faithful to the book, with some crucial details changed for the ending.

I had to wonder about the hiring practices of spy organizations when a group of hired killers can be bested by a guy whose only unusual skill is marathon running. And a spy misplacing his car keys - James Bond would never!

One other sign that it's the 1970s: everyone is clear on the fact that the Nazis are the bad guys.

Trigger warnings for torture and racism.

​Popsugar Reading Challenge: Character runs a marathon.
52 Book Club Challenge: Kangaroo word in the title. (A kangaroo word is a word that contains the letters for it own synonym, like marathon and ran.)
Booklist Queen Challenge: Set in the 1970s.

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Unseen Academicals, by Terry Pratchett.

Terry Pratchett was extremely prolific, and thank goodness. His Discworld fantasy novels are always hilarious, with an underlying seriousness because he's really talking about our world.

The wizard professors of the Unseen University are informed that one of their large donors requires them to form a team and play "foot-the-ball." If there are any students at this university, they are truly unseen, so the team consists of aging, overfed, self-important professors, plus a couple of staff members.

​The plot is mostly about Nutt, a well-read young goblin who works for the university as a candle-dribbler. Nutt has a crush on Glenda, who runs the night kitchen, and he also has a Big Secret that will eventually have to come out. Some of my favorite side characters include Lord Vetinari (the scheming and genially sinister Patrician), the librarian (a chimp), and Professor Hix (head of the Dept. of Necromancy - excuse me, "Postmortem Communication"), who insists that University tradition not only allows but demands that he cheat.

​Pratchett lovingly spoofs the culture of sports: the obsessive rivalries, obscure rules, silly chants, and games that threaten to turn into riots. Nutt's Big Secret is about to change everything - or is it?

Popsugar Reading Challenge: About college.
52 Book Club Challenge: Inspired by the top-grossing film the year you were born.
Booklist Queen Challenge: Set in a school.
​This Challenge Killed the Bookworm: Dark Academia. 

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Presidential Agent, by Upton Sinclair.

This is the fifth book in Sinclair's Lanny Budd spy series, following Wide Is the Gate. It's 1937, and fascism is on the rise in Europe. Art dealer Lanny Budd, who lives in France, has used his connections and charm to ingratiate himself with powerful Nazis, including Goring and even Hitler. He uses his position to get information from them, which he passes along to socialist resisters. At the start of this book, he becomes an official undercover agent for his new best friend, Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In the previous book, Lanny secretly married Trudi Schultz, a member of the German underground. Now Trudi has disappeared from her Paris hideout. She had warned Lanny about this possibility, and told him not to risk blowing his cover by trying to rescue her. Lanny decides to rescue her anyway, but proceeds at what I can only call a leisurely pace. He's pretty sure of where she's being held, but travels back and forth to Spain and even the United States to recruit people he trusts to help. We're reminded that Trudi is undoubtedly being tortured, and every day adds to the danger that she will break, but the planning stage goes on for months.

As with all the Lanny Budd books, there are touches of spiritualism. Lanny's friends include a medium who claims to channel the dead, and Lanny's experiments leave room for doubt in either direction. There is historical evidence that some high-level Nazis dabbled in the occult, but it seems unlikely that they'd risk participating in the presence of Lanny, an American. And honestly, the spiritualism requires less suspension of disbelief than the way everyone takes Lanny at his word. The Nazis believe anything he tells them. Lanny invites a locksmith to come from the US to France on false pretenses, and the locksmith agrees afterward to help with the rescue. The night watchman accepts Lanny's friendly offer to share a bottle of booze. (Really?) FDR instantly trusts him, even after Lanny admits that in the wake of WW1 he sheltered a German spy who was a childhood friend - and the friend is now a prominent Nazi. Lanny's former mentor vouches for him with FDR, but the mentor last saw him 18 years earlier.

There's also a weird streak of Islamophobia that hadn't been in the earlier books. Lanny repeatedly compares Hitler with Mohammed, apparently just because they're both zealots for their cause. Sinclair normally seems progressive on matters of race, gender, and religion, so this seemed bizarrely out of place.

​I find the series addictive because Sinclair was very observant about how so many Americans and Europeans fell under the spell of fascism (a subject that's unfortunately timely again). He puts us in the scene as Lanny tries to warn world leaders about appeasing Hitler, as they carve up Czechoslovakia, and Kristallnacht breaks out around him.

Popsugar Reading Challenge: A character with a hidden past.
52 Book Club Challenge: A character with a secret identity.
​Booklist Queen Challenge: Over 400 pages.

Six Feet Over: Science Tackles the Afterlife, by Mary Roach.

Apparently there was some trouble deciding on a title for this one. The hardcover is called Spook, and in some versions the subtitle is Adventures in the Afterlife.

Roach explores various ways that people have used science to attempt to communicate with the dead or otherwise prove the existence of an afterlife. She goes with a researcher to interview children believed to be reincarnated. She takes a class for mediums, and goes with ghost hunters who try to capture mysterious sounds that occasionally resemble words. And we get a sampling of the literature on subjects like spiritualism (dead people allegedly speaking through a hypnotized medium).

Roach is a skeptic, but she isn't condescending, and takes a dispassionate look at improbable experiments such as weighing a dying person to determine the weight of the soul. Using radios and tape recorders to talk to the dead sounds ridiculous now, but she notes that the idea arose when telephones and electrical devices were new and must have seemed equally miraculous.

In the end, Roach observes, matters of faith are not provable and it's a question of what you choose to believe. Her writing style is lively and engaging, and the footnotes are frequently the most entertaining part.

Popsugar Reading Challenge: A book that doesn't fit any of the other prompts.
52 Book Club: 3-syllable word in the title.
Booklist Queen Challenge: Discussion-worthy read (because my book club is discussing it).
This Challenge Killed the Bookworm: Working in STEM.

You'll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories About Racism, by Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar.

Sisters Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar co-wrote this book about Lacey, a Black woman living in Omaha, who seems to be a magnet for jaw-dropping experiences of racism. People feel remarkably comfortable announcing their prejudices to Lacey, often couched in assurances that "I didn't mean you, you're different."  Sadly, none of the incidents Amber and Lacey describe are unbelievable, though often infuriating. Somehow, they manage to make even the worst ones hilarious.

I suspect some of the experiences will be familiar to many Black people. Having people grope her hair without asking. Doctors dismissing her concerns. Being told her natural hair looked "unprofessional." Retail workers brushing her off because they were sure the item she wanted was "too expensive" for her. White guys on dating sites waxing lyrical about having "a taste for chocolate" (including one with a Confederate flag in his profile). Being mistaken for pretty much any other Black woman, including co-workers, celebrities, and in one confusing interaction, Harriet Tubman.

An ugly recurring theme was being suspected/accused of theft, starting when she was a small child and the teacher noticed that she had fancier crayons than the other children. At a Christian youth gathering, a White woman announced her car keys were missing, and the pastor corralled the few Black teens present (all too young to drive) and harangued them to "do the right thing" and return the keys. Yes, of course it turned out the woman had left the keys in the car her damn self.

Then there was the co-worker who routinely addressed Black female staff by a derogatory term. This was the rare instance where the right people got fired: both the racist jerk and the supervisor who tried to scuttle the HR investigation. 

My favorite moment: an acquaintance casually remarked that she wouldn't feel safe in North Omaha because of all the "diversity". Just then a friend happened by and asked Lacey how her book was going. "Great, I just got a new item for it." Naturally everyone else wanted to know about the book she was writing. "It's about the crazy racist things people say to me." Lacey and Amber recommend that all Black people claim to be writing a similar book. 

Popsugar Reading Challenge: A character with curly hair.
52 Book Club Challenge: Author's bio mentions their dog.
Booklist Queen Challenge: Yellow cover.

Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves, by Sophie Gilbert.

This book starts with a quote from Andrea Dworkin: "Woman is not born; she is made." Gilbert traces the rise of misogyny in music, fashion, TV and movies from the 1990s through the 2010s. She didn't set out to write a book on porn, but it turned out to provide the perfect template. The ideal woman - maybe the only acceptable woman - was portrayed as young, thin, preferably white, subservient, and sexually available. "Empowerment" came to be defined as pleasing men.

In music, the term "girl power" originated with riot grrrl groups; it's now mostly associated with the apolitical Spice Girls. Rom-coms were replaced by sex farces where the woman was merely an obstacle between a man and his rightful sexual conquest. And celebrity culture normalized bizarre phenomena like paparazzi lying on the ground in hopes of getting "upskirt" photos to shame female celebrities. There were "countdown clocks" to when the Olsen twins and other child stars would be "legal."

In the workplace, the fight for better material conditions (equal pay, child care, stopping harassment) gave way to Sheryl Sandberg's doctrine of "Lean In," telling women to adjust themselves better to the male-dominated workplace. As Sarah Wynn-Williams noted in Careless People, Sandberg's women employees tell a very different story than Sandberg did.

Gilbert maps out some important points on the timeline: the media hostility toward Hillary Clinton during her presidential campaigns (2008 and 2016), the organized harassment campaign against women in the video game industry (2014-2015), and the rise of #MeToo (2017). Girl on Girl came out before the latest releases of the Epstein files, which show a depressingly predictable overlap between Epstein associates and people who publicly argued that #MeToo had "gone too far."

The final chapter notes some positive developments: recent TV and movie portrayals of women as whole human beings, and some actual consequences for predators like Harvey Weinstein because of #MeToo. Gilbert mentions a theory by social scientist Alice Evans, suggesting that the status of women in a society correlates with whether that society values romantic love (as opposed to seeing women solely in terms of sex and breeding). I'm not sure I buy it; it seems to me that women's status correlates with whether and how women are valued as individuals, not in connection with a man. It's clear we have a long way to go.

Popsugar Reading Challenge: "Pop" or "sugar" in the title.
​52 Book Club Challenge: Has a dust jacket.

Spent, by Alison Bechdel.

For many years, Alison Bechdel had a niche sort of fame in the LGBTQ+ community for her comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For.  Some people heard of her via the Bechdel Test, which grew from a throwaway line in the comic. But it was her graphic memoir about her funeral director father, Fun Home, that brought her mainstream fame, eventually becoming a Broadway musical.

​Spent is a satirical version of what celebrity did to Bechdel's life. Although the main characters are Bechdel and her wife Holly, the story is clearly fictionalized. Fun Home is now Death and Taxidermy, the story of her taxidermist father, which becomes a TV show. Bechdel is flabbergasted by the way her memoir has been changed, including adding...dragons? Bechdel's friends in Spent are characters from Dykes to Watch Out For, including an aging couple who decide they want a bisexual throuple with the woman they've both been fantasizing about.

However much the details may be fudged, the heart of the story is undoubtedly real: the struggle between wanting success and not wanting to sell out. How to sell a book critiquing capitalism on Amazon, a company she skewered mercilessly in her comics? Like Mo in Dykes to Watch Out For, our heroine wants to singlehandedly save a world that doesn't necessarily want to be saved.

Popsugar Reading Challenge: Sapphic comic.
52 Book Club Challenge: Grumpy/sunshine.
​Booklist Queen Challenge: About female friendship.