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took up a lot of my reading time, plus the new Stephen King and a 1980s horror classic that was 900+ pages...which means I didn't have as much time to stumble upon the truly mediocre or bad ones!

The A-List

The Seventh Function of Language by Laurent Binet (A): An investigation into the real-life death of literary critic/philosopher Roland Barthes featuring all the literary theorists of the time. I think a background in academia is needed to understand this one.

Fortunata y Jactina Vols 1 and 2 by Benito Pérez Galdós (A): If Miguel de Cervantes is the Shakespeare (ok to be nitpicky it should be Tirso de Molino because he wrote plays but whatever) of the Spanish-language literary world, Pérez Galdós is the Charles Dickens equivalent. A love triangle in the Madrid of the first Republican of the 1870s. Read in Spanish.

You Like It Darker by Stephen King (A-): An excellent collection of short stories and novellas. Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream was my fave.

Nearly Wed by Nicolas DiDomozio (A-) DiDomozio is quickly becoming a fave of mine, but nothing is as good as his first book Burn It All Down. This is his third and turns more romantic comedy than anything as a gay couple goes on a early moon (pre wedding honeymoon) and have to deal with issues they didn’t even know they had.

Swan Song by Robert McCammon (A-): Nuclear war has destroyed most of the world, but a few survivors are out there, and over the span of the next decade they must deal with Macguffins and deus ex machinas. It’s not quite as good as The Stand for me, but fans of The Stand should like it.

The B-List

The Journey In Between, The Last Englishman, and Balancing on Blue by Keith Foskett (B+ all three). I read them together bound as a “Thru Hiking Trilogy”. Foskett writes of his experiences on the Camino Francés, Pacific Crest Trail and Appalachian Trail. I love reading about thru hikes.

How to ADHD by Jessica McCabe (B+): McCabe writes about how she deals with ADHD and what ADHD is.

Mr. and Mrs. American Pie by Juliet McDaniel (B). The source material for the AppleTV+ show Palm Royale. It was so completely different that basically all that was the same was the characters names. I can’t really compare and contrast them. A Palm Springs (not Palm Beach like the series) 1960s housewife has a meltdown at Thanksgiving dinner when her husband leaves her for his secretary, and she is banished to Scottsdale, Arizona…until she meets a gay male and takes in the neighbours’ kids as her own and creates a whole new family to return to a marriage pageant in Palm Springs to reclaim her throne.

Wide Awake Now by David Levithan (B): It’s probably been 18 years since I read the original, so I didn’t remember it, but this one dealt with current events in a way that was just a nightmare and triggering. I love Levithan, but this one was just too much.

The Bump by Sidney Krager (B-): Much like Nearly Wed but not as good. A gay couple decides to take a road trip before the arrival of their surrogate child and they deal with their issues. It was like creating drama just to have conflict though.

Boy Like Me by Simon James Green (B-): A teenage coming out story during the UK laws where homosexuality couldn’t be discussed at school. Two teens leave each other notes in a secret book the librarian recommends to them and meet each other. I wanted to like it more than I did.