The blog of Luther M. Siler, teacher, author and local curmudgeon
Two things about June’s books:
This represents genuine progress from last month, believe it or not. Everything I bought in January has been read! February I bought a whole damn lot of books.
What I’m learning, looking at this, is that I should have written more book reviews this month. Because Canticle, We Burned So Bright and Sailing to Sarantium could all be Book of the Month and I only reviewed one of them.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, shelves, whatever. The good news is I’ve cleared out everything I bought in 2025! Let’s pretend that’s an achievement.
Authors, I thought we discussed this last week, but somehow today’s is worse; of the three highly anticipated books I got last Tuesday, I’ve finished one of them (The Last Contract of Isako, which I enjoyed but did not, sadly, set my world on fire) and now you’ve hit me with not only a new Dungeon Crawler Carl but also the second Amina al-Sirafi book and the new Bobiverse? Get your shit together, damn it, and come up with a release schedule. This is nonsense. Have you seen my Unread Shelf?
The good news, I suppose, is I don’t have anything else on pre-order until late June, but still. Damn.
Also, I definitely read the first 100 pages of Horribles before posting this.
These three books were waiting for me when I got home. That’s Sisters of the Lizard, the sequel to my ninth-favorite book of 2025, She Knows All the Names, the sequel to my twelfth-favorite book of 2025, and The Last Contract of Isako, the first book in a new trilogy by Fonda Lee, whose last trilogy was my favorite book of the year three fucking books in a row. And next week I get a new Dungeon Crawler Carl book, the latest book in a series that was first in my list of favorite books of 2025.
Come on, God damn it. Slow down. I read faster than 95% of the entire human race and that may be an understatement, and I can’t keep up with this shit. I need all the writers to get together and put themselves on a schedule. This is crazy.
I put the new bookshelves in place today— two full-size Billys from our friends at Ikea– and … sigh:
Sooooo much to read.
If this looks super light, well, that’s because by my standards it obviously is, but also I started Tom’s Crossing on the last day of March and it was twelve hundred freaking pages long.
Book of the Month is Cursed Daughters, with The Door on the Sea and The Reanimator’s Fate very close behind. I’m enjoying For Whom The Belle Tolls way, way, way more than I thought I would, but I’m not done with it yet so it isn’t eligible.