2023 year in review

The Library Coven

it’s that time again! see below for a massive link round up (some of the books link to our bookshop affiliate page)

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Fiction we couldn’t put down

(Jessie)

• The Only Black Girls in Town by Brandy Colbert
• Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute by Talia Hibbert
• Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree
• Wildfire by Hannah Grace
• The Golden Frog Games by Claribel A Ortega
• Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood
• School Trip by Jerry Craft

(kelly)

• Babel by RF Kuang
• Dead Collections by Isaac Fellman
• Beloved by Toni Morrison
• Everything by Andrea Gibson

Fav re-reads

• (J) The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood (and ACOTAR)
• (k) The Heart Principle by Helen Hoang

New-to-us Authors

(Jessie)

• Chloe Liese – The Wilmot Sister series
• Hannah Grace – Maple Hills series

(kelly)

• Melissa Febos
• Katherine May
• so many substack peeps (in no particular order, and not necessarily new but needed to rec them somewhere)
  • Marcela Onyango, Feel the News
  • Anna Brones, Creative Fuel
  • Jami Attenberg, CRAFT TALK
  • Ayesha Kahn, Cosmic Anarchy
  • Jesse Meadows, Sluggish
  • Bailey Richardson, Art Dogs
  • Margaret Killjoy, Birds Before the Storm
  • Margeaux Feldman, CARESCAPES
  • Becca Lee, The Haunted Librarian
  • Fariha Róisín, How to Cure a Ghost
  • Nate Stevenson, I’m Fine I’m Fine Just Understand
  • Laura K, Normal Island News
  • Fanny Priest, Resourced
  • Marlee Grace, Monday Monday
  • Luca J. Davis, I love love, anything is possible
  • Chris La Tray, An Irritable Métis
  • Raechel Anne Jolie, Radical Love Letters

Fav ships

• (J) The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

#TrueConfessions

• (k) gonna read Ursula K. Le Guin. I’m part way through a lot of things, as is my nature as a reader: for example, How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures by Sabrina Imbler, The Milky Way by Moiya McTier, The Disordered Cosmos by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein.
• (J) really looking forward to Tempest of Tea, which we’re reading for the podcast in 2024. And Ali Hazelwood has a book coming out that’s dual POV called Not in Love, and I’m really interested to see her write a full book in dual POV.

Nonfiction Books We Loved

(kelly)

• Girlhood and Body Work: the Radical Power of Personal Narrative by Melissa Febos
• Wintering and Enchantment by Katherine May
• Motherhood by Sheila Heti
• I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
• Pageboy by Eliot Page
• In the autism subgenre #SpecialInterest…Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity by Devon Price, Neuro Tribes by Steve Silberman, and Neuroqueer Heresies by Nick Walker.
• Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink and Blue by Les Feinberg, infamous transcestor.
• Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice by Raj Patel and Rupa Marya is a staple on my nightstand bookstack, and I’m slowly working my way through it. Cannot recommend enough. Every chapter is a banger.
• Anthology Make the Golf Club a Public Sex Forest – edited by Lyn Corelle and jimmy cooper. Exactly what it sounds like. Creative nonfiction, erotica, historical essays, all in the context of abolishing the depraved scourge on the landscape that is a golf course. I have a vendetta against golf courses, ppl.
• All the Gold Stars: Reimagining Ambition and the Ways We Strive by Rainsford Stauffer
• Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay C. Gibson
• “You Just Need to Lose Weight” and 19 Other Myths About Fat People by Aubrey Gordon.

(Jessie)

• More Than a Glitch by Meredith Broussard
• Not Free, Not for All by Cheryl Knott about libraries in the Jim Crow era
• Financial Feminist by Tori Dunlap
• Revolution in Our Time by Kekla Magoon was a super powerful history of the Black Panther Party written for young adults
• Blackbirds in the Sky by Brandy Colbert was a very insightful history of the Tulsa Race Massacre.
• Racism with Racists by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva which focuses on racism in institutions.

Our favorite shows

(Jessie)

• GBBO and it was one of my favorite seasons, Professionals, the American Baking show, and the holiday eps
• Ramy season 3
• That Damn Michael Che
• Abbot Elementary
• The Last of Us
• Never Have I Ever – final season
• Heartstopper
• Sex Education
• Sex Lives of College Girls
• What We Do in the Shadows
• Good Omens – season 2,
• Call the Midwife – I had like 3 seasons to watch and I watched them all back to back
• The Great
• Queen Charlotte – which, warning, is not as upbeat as the other Bridgerton shows, and had me in tears (and not the happy kind), but it was really really good
• Shadow and Bone season 2 and yes, I am very upset we will not get more of this show and that they’ve cancelled the Six of Crows spinoff
• The Rings of Power
• You season 4 – and no you should not be in love with Joe Goldberg
• House of the Dragon
• Emily in Paris –yes, I know people think it’s trash, but I also do not care
• She Hulk – would have been top tier if there weren’t these weird instances of curly hair being bad hair.

(kelly)

• Lovesick – I finally watched it all! J’s been rec’ing this for AGES
• Sort Of – so glad we got another season. Love Bilal Baig so much.
• Somebody Somewhere – queers in the midwest. Heartfelt and funny, just trust me.
• Our Flag Means Death – the queer pirate show of our dreams!!!!
• The Bear – season 2 was INTENSE
• Reservation Dogs! – the last season
• Everything’s Gonna to Be Ok – Josh Thomas is a new fav.
• We’re Here – drag race meets queer eye

Movies

(Jessie)

• Black Panther Wakanda Forever
• Psych 3
• Last Night in Soho
• Across the Spiderverse

(kelly)

• Nimona
• The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
• Living
• Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
  Fast and Furious 10 (lmao)
• Barbie?
• Across the Spiderverse
• The Menu
• Hannah Gadsby’s Something Special

Podcasts

(J) P1 with Matt and Tommy – even though I disagree with their F1 opinions all the time, it’s fun to listen to 2 friends, who obviously love the sport, talk about F1 throughout the season

(k)

New-to-me shows:

• Maintenance Phase
• Gender Spiral
• The Knew Guys
• Pale Blue Pod

on rotation for a while now:

• Gender Reveal
• For the Wild
• The Red Nation
• The East is a Podcast
• Between the Covers
• Embodied Astrology
• Levar Burton Reads

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Our cover art is by the talented artist nimsby. The podcast theme song is “Unermerry Academy of Magics” by Augustin C from the album “Fantasy Music”, which you can download on FreeMusicArchive.com.

We support #LandBack. The Library Coven is recorded and produced on stolen indigenous land: Arapahoe, Cheyenne, and Ute (kelly) and Chickasha, Kaskaskia, Kickapoo, Mascoutin, Miami, Mesquaki, Odawa, Ojibwe, Peankashaw, Peoria, Potawatomi, Sauk, and Wea (Jessie)