And Away We Go!

Well, 2026 is in full batshit swing and… yeah. I think anyone who comes here regularly can agree our mantra for the next eleven and a half months, if not longer, is a loud and unrelenting, “Chinga la migra.” If that isn’t a philosophy you subscribe to, don’t let the door hit you where Mithra split you.

What does that have to do with books? A lot. Everything? The books you choose to read say a lot about who you are. Does that mean you can’t read light, fluffy fun? It does not. You deserve that. Everyone deserves that. But even light fluffy fun means something. If you read that purple romance garbage that’s coming out soon, I might actually build a trebuchet and launch you into one of thee three rivers we have running through this town and they’re frozen right now, so that’s not going to be very much fun for you.

It’ll be fun for me, though.

Like I said, you know where the exits are.

As it happens, all of my reading was overtly political this week, which doesn’t mean the books weren’t incredible novels; they were. They were fantastic stories that kept me locked in and caring about the characters, riding narrative waves that surprised me, enthralled me, and (one of them) even reopened a lot of old wounds in my psyche and then healed them back up again by reminding me that I’m not alone in my life experiences and that even knowing a stranger in the great wide world I’ll likely never meet understands is a comfort.

But all of these books mean something. beyond what’s on the page as well, something vital, something not only timely but timeless, a fundamental point of social order we took for granted until our forgetfulness, our complacency, rose up to bite us in the ass. Interested? Good. Here we go:

I come here today to scream about Indigenous horror once again and I am sure I will continue to do so in the coming years because, damn. And I know I’ve said this before as well, but no one does the Shirley Jackson, people are the worst monsters sub-genre like Nick Medina, Stephen Graham Jones, Jessica Johns, Carson Faust and now, I’ve discovered, Brandon Hobson (to name just a few).

As a mom, this one hurt; watching a kid left behind to be shuffled through a system that doesn’t have an inkling of who he is or what he needs, that has no idea of how it’s affecting him until he’s too late hurt my heart. It hurt as a nurse who worked in youth corrections as well, one who did her idealistic best in a bad situation, knowing she didn’t really know enough, or have the resources, to do lasting good. Especially in a state that gave zero shits about incarcerated youth, at a facility that was a stopgap between understaffed detention centers and adult corrections, where 95% of her charges would end up for the majority of their lives.

Is hope dead? No. But it’s a lot like Tinkerbell fading away and no one’s clapping. Instead, they’re sending ICE to grab people who were here long before anyone’s colonizer parents or grandparents or great grandparents. They’re cutting funding for the crappy programs that do exist, denying desperately needed money for new ones that should, and have you seen the statistics on missing and murdered indigenous women, girls, and two spirit individuals? Take a look and if you’re not horrified, then honestly, you have no soul.

Read this book. Think about it. Admit what you don’t know. Then read another one. Learn more. Use that shame you feel as an impetus to become more educated. Ask questions. Read another book. Ask more questions.

Ignorance is only another kind of monstrosity.

Orbit’s horror imprint, Run for It, is taking no prisoners and I am 100% here for it.

The premise on this one is way, way out there, even for me, and I got the solicit three times before I decide to go for it because a dating service where they send you a corpse? Eh…

Here’s what For Human Use turned out to be, however: a commentary on human greed. On instant gratification. On hipster nonsense and hear-me-out-culture and mansplaining and self-aggrandizing back-slapping. On look-at-me desperation, on refusal to take responsibility for one’s own actions.

On leopards eating faces.

And on attraction. Love. On what it can do to the object of our affections and what it can do to the person who is in love. Why we settle. Why we don’t. Why obsession isn’t, and can’t ever be, love. What we'll do for what we think is real love and what we’ll do for what is actually real love.

This is a book about human nature viewed through the lens of the dead and for that, as well as its humor, grace, and honesty, it is remarkable.

You don’t have to be a mother to appreciate this book but if you are a mother, especially if you are a daughter who had a sometimes rocky relationship with your own mother, you will appreciate this book not only for its concept but for the way it makes literal every time you’ve curled into a ball to hide your weird, every time you’ve gritted your teeth against saying something you’re afraid would out you as different, clenched your fists so you didn’t haul off and punch someone hurling mean girl insults at you. And when you went to your mother for comfort she told you to, “Calm down, get yourself together,” and, like those mean girls, “be more normal.”

This one is for the monsters who have daughters and want a different world for those daughters than the cruel ones they grew up in. A world where she can be herself, whatever that self is, whomever she is.

But it’s also a book for moms of trans kids and non-binary kids. A book for moms of all kids. And their kids’ friends. The world is a shitty place for anyone who’s different right now. For anyone who isn’t white and blonde and willing to conform to, frankly horrific, beauty standards (listen, I’m usually a live and let live person as far as looks are concerned but Mir-a-lago face? No. Just… no. And I will not allow heroin chic to be a thing again. Not in my lifetime, not as someone who weighted 97 lbs at 5’8” my senior year of college, no thank you).

I loved Tantrum so. Much. Because it reminds us that while we con’t control other people’s actions, we can control our own and we are within our rights to tell people who are toxic and damaging and cruel to GTFO. That we aren’t stuck with the families we’re born into, that we can make a family with people who share our values and philosophies and who love our kids with open arms and open hearts even if those kids do, occasionally, decapitate a chicken.

And that’s what the world needs right now.

We protect each other. We protect our communities. We protect our families and we protect our kids. They can’t stop us if we stick together.

That’s this week in my books. How about yours?