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Posted by jwz

https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/07/i-agree-with-this-message-6/

https://jwz.org/b/ykr-

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/07/i-agree-with-this-message-6/

https://jwz.org/b/ykr-

Posted by jwz

https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/07/8647/

https://jwz.org/b/ykr8

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/07/8647/

https://jwz.org/b/ykr8

Title: Someone You Can Build a Nest In
Author: John Wiswell
Genre: Fiction, fantasy, romance

A+ Library is my bit where I review books with asexual and aromantic characters.

Went on a weekend trip with the squad this weekend and we had to stop at the local Barnes and Noble (It's been a while since I was in one that big! Ours in my town is now in the mall, so it's quite small.) where I spent too much and picked up some things on my TBR plus my own copy of Our Wives Under the Sea. We had some downtime on the trip and I managed to finish the first of the new books while we were there. This was Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell.

I wanted so much to like this book, and not just because I was charmed by the purple-themed Barnes and Noble-exclusive cover and edging. It landed on my TBR for being an asexual romance (sapphic, if you take Shesheshen for female, which you don't have to do), and I enjoyed the plot concept. Unfortunately, I did not like the book. If I had not paid for it I probably would not have finished it. The following review is not to say it's a bad book—it has an average rating of 4.05 stars on StoryGraph based on over 6,000 reviews, so obviously people like it—but to say that it specifically had a number of things that made it a big thumbs down for me.

The character: Shesheshen, asexual; Homily, asexual

Final verdict: Thumbs down

Previous read: To Be Taught, if Fortunate

Went for what turned out to be an hour-long walk around the neighborhood and visited five Little Free Libraries– and found some great books!

The majority were full of kids books, which makes sense I suppose as people tend to load up on those at thrift stores and whatnot, so they’re easy to pass along.

My favorite LFL was #119554, not least because I found two books which look really good! It also had the best design, with one box for adult books and one for children’s books, a separate dog treat library and even a water bowl. Super cute!

As far as I can tell, all these libraries are the pre-built ones from the LFL website.

LFL Visited

1. LFL #89560 “Elm Tree Little Library” – Ann Arbor, MI – Took Square Foot Gardening.
2. LFL #119554 – Ann Arbor, MI – Took Climate Resilience and Seasons of the Wild.
3. LFL #135682 “Barking Dog Library” – Ann Arbor, MI – Took Moby-Duck.
4. LFL #177207 – Ann Arbor, MI.
5. LFL #178758 – Ann Arbor, MI – Took Paradise Rot.

🌟 All LFLs Visited

Crossposted from Pixietails Club Blog.

Some book reviews that have lately crossed my line of sight.

Andrea Ringer. Circus World: Roustabouts, Animals, and the Work of Putting on the Big Show:

Ringer is not interested in the perceived glitz and glamour of big top spectacles. Rather, she presents the golden age circus as a site of working-class labor, where both humans and beasts toiled from day till night under the near-constant gaze of thrill-seeking visitors.
....
_Circus World _is the sort of book that will captivate (and, in some cases, horrify) a great many readers. It's a
must-read for anyone interested in the history of the modern circus; the same is true for historians of animal entertainment and industry. Gender studies scholars will appreciate Ringer's fresh insights into the ways circuses amplified colonial and patriarchal notions of race, gender, and family. Plus, the book's short length and bite-sized
chapters make it ideal for classroom use. Above all, _Circus World _succeeds as a work of labor history, one that takes nontraditional work and nontraditional workers seriously.

Dominic Pettman. Telling The Bees: An interspecies Monologue. Possibly a bit twee/poncey?

Weary of the insistent demands and disappointments of online life in the early 2020s, Dominic Pettman turned to a very old practice: Rather than commenting on current events by posting for his followers on social media, he would tell the bees instead. The record of this experiment is _Telling the Bees: An Interspecies Monologue_ (2024). "Indeed, this time-honored activity--practiced in villages all over Europe, for centuries--seems much healthier to me than confessing things to the digital ether, the anonymous world via social media," he writes early in the journal (p. 2).
....
In Pettman's case, as a resident of New York City, he doesn't have much access to actual, in-the-flesh bees. The apartment co-op won't let him have a hive on the roof, for one thing. At the start he makes do by talking to "wild" bees he encounters on his walks in Central Park, but as the seasons change and the threats of COVID-19 force
ever smaller spaces of interaction, Pettman conjures and speaks to virtual bee--"the memory of bees," as he calls it, prompting a wry rejoinder from a waggish colleague: "These bees ... Are they in the room with us now?" (p. xi).
Readers seeking a journal of material human entanglement with physical bees will not find that here. Pettman's virtual bees are much more akin to the "virtual animal totem" [.]

This one does involve actual encounters with the beasts in question, it would appear: Leslie Patten. Ghostwalker: Tracking a Mountain Lion's Soul through Science and Story.

Patten then combats history and myth with a series of case and site studies in Montana, Wyoming, New Mexico, Colorado, and California, and interviews with mountain lion experts of every stripe--from trackers, hunters, and houndsmen (people who hunt with dogs) to wildlife biologists and conservation management specialists. Along
the way, Patten nimbly debunks so many myths about cougars--that they are isolate, cold-blooded killers who need to be managed to keep them from pets, livestock, and small children and that legal hunts are an effective way to manage and stabilize populations.

Hedgehogs in fact are ambiguously situated: Laura McLauchlan. Hedgehogs, Killing, and Kindness: The Contradictions of Care in Conservation Practice.

In the UK, hedgehog conservation is both necessary and supported by the public: Population numbers are in steady decline, while the animals themselves occupy a fond place in the British consciousness. The second section details her fieldwork in New Zealand at pest-control initiatives, including outreach events and community pest-control groups, conservation initiative Zealandia (a completely fenced ecosanctuary in Wellington dedicated to restoring
native flora and fauna), and her own "guerrilla" care for local hedgehogs. In New Zealand, hedgehogs are thriving despite their status as an invasive species, provoking widespread public animosity.