I didn't buy John Wiswell's debut novel, Someone You Can Build A Nest In, when it came out, despite seeing a lot of buzz about it from people whose opinions I generally respect, because I suspected it might edge a bit too close to horror for me, but I kept seeing more and more buzz and it got nominated for awards and Wiswell seems like the kind of author I want to support financially, so in the end I bought a copy.

Surprisingly enough, it turned out to be a bit too close to horror for me (I just can't do amorphous tentacled blobs and viscera), though I can see why people with a higher gore-tolerance than me loved it - despite the horror elements it's basically a very sweet, extremely queer romance, using monstrosity to stand in for a lot of things about difference and othering.

I Overcame My Autism And All I Got Was This Lousy Anxiety Disorder - Sarah Kurchak

This autism memoir has the best title ever, and I found it really interesting and relatable. I picked it up because kaberett mentioned it, and would definitely recommend it to anyone wanting to read more about autistic experiences.

A Phoenix First Must Burn, ed. Patrice Caldwell

A collection of YA SFF (mainly fantasy) short stories by Black writers featuring Black girls as protagonists. Some really good stories here, particularly the ones by Rebecca Roanhorse (set in New Mexico in the 1880s, with a lesbian protagonist), Justina Ireland (a really funny fantasy story featuring a plus-size Black heroine who triumphs over the wizards trying to take over her country), Patrice Caldwell (a lovely vampire story) and Charlotte Nicole Davis (another f/f story, inspired by the water contamination incident in Flint, Michigan).

Menewood - Nicola Griffith

The sequel to Hild is an incredible immersive experience of a book. I decided to read it now because I was on holiday in Yorkshire where much of it is set, and Griffith's evocation of the landscape meshed with the real landscape around me to such an extent that I felt like I was walking around with the seventh century overlaid on the twenty-first. This chapter of Hild's story takes her from terrible losses to a new beginning; it's a book about grief and recovery, about living in harmony with the natural world, and about leadership and negotiation and an extraordinary woman (and the only slightly less extraordinary women around her) trying to live and prosper in a world full of violence and danger. It's brilliant, and I really hope there will be more of Hild's story soon.

The fourth of the Campion mysteries, and the last of the early ones that I didn't re-read last year as part of Kate Davies' yarn club. Generally entertaining enough, though the dénouement involved a plot twist that was quite breathtaking in its blatant racism (even where presented as the view of An Older Generation). Also, the title is a misnomer, as there are several deaths and inquests but no actual funerals, with or without police presence.

This morning, I went to an "EDI Roundtable" event on the subject of neurodiversity and, allegedly, how we make the university a more neuroinclusive place.

The event was in a very new lecture theatre in one of the colleges. It was (a) incredibly steeply raked, so that the top of the theatre felt absolutely vertiginous; (b) weirdly lit, with fairly bright ceiling lights and windows at the top of the walls, meaning that the level where the speakers were was dimmer than the space above the top of the screen; and (c) horrendously echoey. The chairs were also really uncomfortable, there wasn't enough legroom even for a shortarse like me, and the foldout desk things were so close to the seats that mine was actually touching my stomach while I was sitting with my back against the backrest of the chair. And I am a very average size 16-18ish. Rarely have I been in a room that was that much of a sensory nightmare.

Of the four solo speakers, one (an academic colleague of mine) was neurodivergent. The others were: a Professor of Autism Research (not bad, apart from making me feel uncomfortably like a research subject and not a person); a GP (ok); a political philosopher who appeared to know nothing about neurodivergence and care less, opined that he didn't like the term "neurodivergent" because it implied a "neurotypical" and he thought everyone should just do as they would be done by and it would all be fine, and made a stupid joke about rejection sensitive dysphoria ("that's why I don't submit to peer reviewed journals any more") which made me want to throw things. All three neurotypical speakers came across very much as if they were addressing a default neurotypical audience, rather than a neurodiverse audience. And then there was a panel discussion with three neurodivergent people (two students and a student support worker), all of whom seemed incredibly ill at ease and at least two of whose microphones were not picking up their voices well.

I do think that the cause of improving neuroinclusion would have been better served by giving space to more neurodivergent voices. And the two-hour event used up all of today's spoons.

The seventh in McGuire's October Daye series, urban fantasy about a half-fae PI turned general hero in San Francisco. I really like this series, and the way the characters are growing and developing, but my goodness, Toby's knack of finding half a dozen new ways to get herself almost killed every book is bad for the blood pressure.

My mother lent me this French crime novel from 1966 (translated, obviously). I approached it with a certain amount of trepidation, but actually it had an interestingly twisty (if somewhat far-fetched) plot and a fascinating heroine, and was a compelling read which felt a bit like a cross between Mary Stewart (strange crime-related events happening to a young woman driving alone through France) and Patricia Highsmith (the more psychological thriller aspects).

This is a gentle epistolary fantasy, full of bickering academics, with multiple queer characters, a main character with OCD and at least one other who feels very autism-coded. Oh, and it's mostly set under the sea. Obviously, I adored it.

I picked this up because a lot of people have been talking about Tanith Lee recently, and I've been meaning to read more of her work (I know I read some in my teens, and liked it, but I don't remember much about it). I am pretty sure I did actually read this once, sometime between 35 and 40 years ago, but I remembered almost nothing about it. I enjoyed it this time round - an interesting take on parallel-worlds fantasy, using the concept of the sacrificial king in a matrilineal society to look at the inherent problems of concentration of power in the hands of one gender. I should definitely read more of her work.

Near-future YA SF about a teenage girl living on a libertarian seastead and starting to discover the unpleasant realities underpinning her home. I enjoyed it, but the main character sometimes felt a bit too hypercompetent for a 16-year-old (but what do I know, after all, it's a long time since I was 16). I liked it a lot, but not as much as I have enjoyed some of Kritzer's other work, in particular her novella The Year Without Sunshine and earlier YA novel Catfishing on CatNet.

Today was my non-working Friday, and I got up, and left the house, and got a bus to town, and went to the Bodleian where they have an exhibition about divination, which was interesting.

And then I bought a book in the gift shop, and a coffee and cake in the cafe, and went to get the bus home and discovered I'd dropped my Loop earplugs in the cafe when I was paying, and went back calmly to retrieve them and then actually got the bus home and crashed out for the afternoon. It may have been the tiniest of tiny adventures, but apparently it took quite a lot of energy.

I won't be swimming this weekend, because it probably actually is too cold (there is a non-zero chance of the lake actually being frozen, and while we have broken ice to swim before we were way more acclimatised then). I might go for a walk instead.