Jessica Woodbury

I would like to start by saying that I do not hate read very often. I don't have the patience for it. And actually a good hate read is even harder to find than a good joyful read. Joy itself is satisfying, hate isn't. For a

So you know how a few weeks ago everyone was losing their minds over the new Persuasion adaptation on Netflix? The one that is in period costume but where no one speaks in a period way? I never watched it so I don't have much of an opinion

I have not been writing much. Sorry about that. This newsletter was a way to feel like I did not always have to Do Book Stuff All the Time, where I could just get kind of messy and honest instead of putting on the good face you tend to need

It is Pride month. Like most queers I don't really like Pride month. The internal queer discourse always turns toxic. There's never enough attention on the real help our community needs and instead everyone gets mad about something stupid. I saw days of arguing about some

Ok look on paper I think pandemic novels are terrible. Just like 9/11 novels were terrible. (Remember when that was very briefly a thing and they were all just so very bad? And they all came far too soon? And it was just a whole mess? I still have

I know I disappeared for a while. There are a lot of reasons! February and March were very light on new releases, so I didn't have much to write about. Plus I've reached a new stage in post-book-job life where I am really luxuriating in not

I am doing some awards reading, which is always tricky because I need to keep quiet about it but I also log all my books so it's a weird tension. But lucky you, that means I will have less reviews in the What I'm Reading Right

I have very little to say about faithful adaptations. Like The Lost Daughter, a fantastic movie based on a fantastic book, a relatively close adaptation all things considered. I could not write a whole newsletter about it. But I can about Station Eleven. I read the novel in April, 2014.

I listen to a lot of audio, about a third of my books last year. I am trying to get better at figuring out when a book is right for audio. This has become more important with my more-frequent reading slumps during pandemic that are almost always print reading slumps.

DNF is one of those words of the bookternet that may not be recognizable to people who run outside of it. It stands for Did Not Finish, and it means exactly that, a book that you put down before it was over and never came back to. I DNF a