Scariest: Adiche's Americanah. This is not a horror book. But the narrators have such incisive insights about America and its culture and people that I read it in perpetual fear of the scathingly true things they may say about me.

64 books once I finish the last two in progress. Good neat number.

Classic Read of the year: Le Guin's Lathe of Heaven. I fearfully admit that I've tried a handful of Le Guin's works and tend to bounce off them. But Lathe completely held me.
HM: Gaskell North and South. Thought it was a modern Bronte-like revival, nope, just from that era. Good read though.

Unexpected fave: @olgaravn.bsky.social's The Employees. Needed something to read after the Last Hour debacle, and this showed up as available in Libby, picked it up on a whim. Short, touching, bizarre, hits that SCP/Control spot but in such a human way by focusing on the people.

Looking forward to the sequel: @mattdinniman.bsky.social's Dungeon Crawler Carl. Cannot wait to get the rest of these, I suspect I'll devour them as fast as the first.
Will there be a sequel?: @kashinggiwa.bsky.social's Splinter in the Sky. Great read, it ends well but there's so much more to see!

Favorite finished series: @genevievecogman.bsky.social's Invisible Library. Very competitive list for me, but I'd been working away at this for a few years and loved every installment. Never got tired, kept trying new genres and stories, wonderful end. Her Fae are my favorite version of that trope.

Favorite non-fiction: Shashi Tharoor's Inglorious Empire. I am reading up on my Indian history, and this one really refused to pull any punches. It's too frequent that historians focus on chronology, and his themed chapters make the case so well.

But the painful hernia I now clutch,
came from winning a trophy, so as such,
Earned hurts sting half as much.

The entire thing is free, by the way.

It helped set up the First Opium War and arguably a century of history after. Both China and Europe wanted to control more of the silver and the balance of trade to protect their economies. Globalization was happening early, and you have a pretty wild piece of its history here!

Opium was introduced to take back the trade deficit so Europe could keep more of this silver. The weakening of silver production following the Mexican War of Independence led to more opium and a severe recession in China. Silver was the currency of taxes, so its rising value crushed the economy.

You've already got some good answers, but it's worth adding how weirdly important this thing is (sorry for the long post). Silver was among the only thing China wanted from European trade, so it was pouring into the country largely via Mexico. It contributed to China's booming economy in the 1700s.