January thoughts archive

Best of wishes for a 2025 that is full of experiences to make you smile.

I read a fair number of books. Some of those books I appreciate more than others. And some are LGBTQ and some are not, so I don’t normally post those books to this website which is focused on LGBTQ books – particularly m/m fantasy themed books.

But at the moment, I am rereading The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker, as I purchased the sequel to it quite a while back and want to reacquaint myself with the first book. It holds up great for a second read. It explores the very real immigrant experience in New York around 1900 through the lens of two beings of fantasy. It is beautifully written. The theme of becoming aware of one’s default behavior and discovering that you can choose to respond differently, is a powerful message. A golem does not have to smash things when angry, and a jinni does not have to be a solitary being. There is a large cast of characters and each are wonderfully specific. Not an LGBTQ book, but certainly thoughtful and aware of being an other. On this second reading I did notice that when the Jinni was asked about his sexual activities, he specified that he was interested in women but in such a way that it was perfectly normal for Jinnis to have other predilections.

I’ve also recently listened to Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI by Ethan Mollick. There are a lot of questions these days about AI. Some are existential. Will they steal my job? Will AI become sentient and become a danger to mankind? And some questions are more pragmatic. How do I write a prompt? Personally I have very little experience with AI. I don’t think I’m overly afraid, nor do I have no concerns. I’m just trying to educate myself about what it does and doesn’t do. What are its strengths and what are its weaknesses? I found it interesting to learn that how you word your prompt with regard to tone, can significantly change the AI’s response. If you are polite, it will respond in kind. If you are rude and insulting, the AI will pick up on the attitude and can potentially get defensive. It was also interesting to learn that AI gives more interesting responses when assigned an identity alongside the query.

I’ve also been listening to the Queer epic duology, Wolf of Withervale by Joaquín Baldwin. Ultimately I decided to buy the two books instead of listening to library copies. The world is rich, the books are illustrated with maps and imagery, and being a visual person, I just thought with the sheer number of characters and place names and unique vocabulary that it might be easier to see the text rather than listen. It truly is an epic creation. I’m only about 3/4 through the first book at this point. It is a unique spin on the shifter genre and features a hero who has a weakness for curvier guys, which is a welcome notion in queer lit.

I’ve been reading quite a bit of other stuff this month… a vintage baseball romance from Cat Sebastian Luke & Billy Finally Get a Clue, and the longer (and unrelated other than baseball) You Should be So Lucky. Bit by bit I’ll start getting these titles up as well. The reading stack has been and is still quite a tower.