A defiant TDoV to all. 頑張りましょう.

“Before the gods that made the gods / had seen their sunrise pass, / the White Horse of the White Horse Vale / was cut out of the grass.”

For my money, the best thing Chesterton ever wrote. It makes me cry, it moves me, it lodges in my thoughts, it overcomes its propagandistic subtext completely. “I tell you naught for your comfort / yea, naught for your desire / save that the sky grows darker yet / and the sea rises higher.”

Seven copies of this print run (which had a faux-stucco background for @katrindirim.bsky.social’s gorgeous Lunar art, removed in the current print-on-demand version) were sold. Which means I get to brag about having a signed copy from a set of seven. Praise the Red Goddess!

While reading this for the first time, I realized I was reminded of Arthur Machen’s “The White People,” and I set the book aside to reread Machen on a whim. I would like it on the record that I did this BEFORE the characters read that story together to discuss its relevance to their horror.

Nobody does fantasy quite like Moers, and Rumo was my first introduction to his work. It’s like a surreal dream, if literally everything in the dream was building upon itself for narrative payoff. I need to do a reread soon.

I was introduced to Phyllis Ann Karr with “When the Wolf Pirates Came to the City of Wonders,” and stumbled across Idylls in my FLGS-used-bookstore-and-records-shop. It’s an excellent distillation of her Arthurian short fiction into a murder mystery dripping with dramatic irony and Orkney pain.

Got another like on this while I’m out, so I am grabbing the last book I photographed. The world of SPIRE and HEART unfolded while I was overseas, and my favorite setting element is still the Vermissian, a failed transit system now flooded with magic, where space-time is shattered - and exploitable.

I’d seen the Rankin/Bass adaptation on the cusp of teenagerhood, but I wasn’t prepared for the beauty and mastery of language, of brilliant turns of phrase, that is on display on every page. This copy’s signed, but, alas, to an old name no longer in use.

The book I didn’t know that I wished I’d written until I read it. @catvalente.bsky.social weaves stories into stories like thread on a scarf, telling stories of women, monsters, and monsters who are women. It might be the book I’ve recommended to others the most.

But yeah. Pretty rad.

12, but I believe I am rolling with a masterwork mat.

Here’s my own context for the temple. Photos really don’t do the Buddha justice; he truly is a massive bronzework.

When I returned to the US in 2023, I only owned roughly seventeen of these books physically, despite having a large digital library. But Kickstarters have delivered, and the used book market (and ChaosiumCon ‘24, and some POD from DTRPG) has been good to me.

A selection of some favorites currently in my library. Both The Last Unicorn and The Way of Kings are signed by the authors— but to my deadname, alas.