CERESUltra

Music Nerd, Author, Yote!

  • She/they/it

30s/white/tired/coyote/&
Words are my favorite stim toy


Let me show you something.

This is a artistic representation of every book we read from 2020 to 2022.

a picture of an empty BBQ pringles can, lid off, laying on a wood floor in front of an oven

You will see I have chosen as a visual aid an empty BBQ pringles can where it fell on my kitchen floor.

Here's every book I've read since january of this year:

a picture of twenty books on a wooden bookshelf. Check post for titles and authors, there is not enough room here.

In order from left to right by position on shelf, not by order read, it's:

  1. LGBTQ Columbus, by Ken Schneck and Shane McClelland
  2. The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy
  3. QOHELETH, by @makyo, book 1 of Post-Self cycle
  4. TOLEDOT, by @makyo, book 2 of Post-Self cycle
  5. NEVI'IM, by @makyo, book 3 of Post-Self cycle
  6. MITZVOT, by @makyo, book 4 of Post-Self cycle
  7. Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir
  8. Harrow the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir
  9. This Is How You Lose the Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
  10. City of Saints and Madmen, By Jeff Vandermeer
  11. Shriek: An Afterword, by Jeff Vandermeer
  12. Finch, by Jeff Vandermeer
  13. A Scanner Darkly, by Philip K. Dick
  14. Ubik, by Philip K Dick
  15. Labrynths, By Jorge Luis Borges
  16. A Cosmology of Monsters, by Shaun Hamill
  17. Destiny 2: The Exotic Collection, Volume 1, by Bungie
  18. The Lathe of Heaven, by Ursula K Le Guin
  19. City of Saints and Madmen, by Jeff Vandermeer1
  20. What Moves the Dead, by T. Kingfisher

I chose today to highlight them, because we are halfway through the year today. I'm going to do a post at the end of the year and also maybe do a short review of each book.

I've still got a sizeable queue, too. Here's what's on the docket:

A stack of books atop the end of a bookshelf. Authors and titles in post below

In planned reading order and physical order, we got:

  1. The Russia House, by John Le Carré (about halfway through)
  2. Veniss Underground, by Jeff Vandermeer
  3. Hummingbird Salamander, by Jeff Vandermeer
  4. Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
  5. A Day of Fallen Night, by Samantha Shannon
  6. The Priory of the Orange Tree, by Samantha Shannon
  7. Foucault's Pendulum, by Umberto Eco

This is what a difference ADHD Meds make in our life. Planners never worked, other managing methods were dangerous to our health, like a near miss and also an overdose that nearly killed us, and other organization methods rarely stick.

ALSO

If any fellow book nerds have any recommendations, I am all ears. Like look at me. I'm a coyote. We are just below fennecs on ears per pound. Double points if it's mechs, Quuer af, headbending shit, spy novels, and a goddamn cake if it's somehow all of them.


  1. I am choosing to count this twice, because this edition has a staggering amount of extra material, all sorts of snippets and art and short stories and basically a book's worth of content on its own that isn't in the 3-in-1 Trilogy version.


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in reply to @CERESUltra's post:

Some recs:

  • Given the books on the shelf, China Miéville's worth a look. On balance, I'd probably recommend trying Embassytown (2011), for its audaciously strange premise, but if you're looking to dip your toes in first, his short fiction should give you a feel for whether he's to your taste.
  • The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000) by Michael Chabon remains a very affecting read for me, albeit one much more squarely in the mainstream of literary fiction.
  • Gun, With Occasional Music (1994) by Jonathan Lethem probably comes closer to "surrealist noir" than any other genre label. It shows that it's Lethem's first novel, in a good way: There's an audacity to its experimentation that more than makes up for its rough edges.

Ah, Mr. Miéville. Someone I've been circling reading for a while. The only thing I have read of his is October, which was spectacular, but I cannot recall if I finished it. I guess this is the kick in the ass I need to start, haha.

And I'm interested in the others as well! Thank you so much!

Adding a third rec for Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch triology & for A Memory Called Empire & its series! Lesbians. Linguistics. What more do you need.

Ada Hoffman's The Outside & its trilogy has some of the best N.D. & autistic rep I've ever seen, and also it's extremely gay.

Also, Le Guin's The Dispossessed, and if you can handle something very dark in a realistic way: Butler's Parable of the Sower/Parable of the Talents.

Double on reccs guarantees those as next purchases, haha

Definitely checking out gay ND rep for sure for sure

I would like to get back into the dispossessed! I remember I started reading it for socialist book club when I was still active in a chapter of the DSA, and loving it. I definitely am procuring a physical copy this time, tho. For all my love of tech and scifi I read physical books so much faster, lol. Growing up in the school library does that.

And I've been meaning to get to Butler! Those seem like a good place to start.

Thank you for all of these!

I was going to send a picture but I don't think I can do that in a comment, haha

But I've read it! I love it! I have the Borne Trilogy and the Southern Reach Trilogy on my other bookshelf, and I think that Strange Bird and Dead Astronauts were actually the last books I read in 2019 before the big pandemic drought.

The two in my "to read" stack are the only novels of Vandermeer's I haven't read yet, save his YA novel, which I'm waffling on anyway.

Still, I could stand to do a reread...