Reading Reality, LLC

01/12/2026

The Sunday Post/Virtual Nightstand for January 4, 2026

This week marked the full return to the daily grind - and Tuna is clearly exhausted by it all! Honestly, so are we. It's always a shock to the system to return to a normal schedule - even when it's welcome. Perhaps especially then.

My wrists are certainly grateful to get a break from , even though I still need to mash a couple of thousand more monsters to get to the final achievement for the season. But I have confidence! I also have time in a couple of weeks. I hope! We'll see.

When's that next holiday?

Here are this week's highlights:
Featured Giveaway: New Year, New You Giveaway Hop
Book of the Week: A Lion's Ransom by Candace Robb
Feature for the Coming Week: Wish Big Giveaway Hop

01/11/2026

The Sunday Post AKA What’s on my (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 1-11-26

Last week, it seemed like there was all the time in the world. This week, not so much. Not nearly so much. Possibly not even enough. And how was your first week back to the full-on daily grind? It's not that I'm not actually enjoying the return to routine - just that's there's so much [...]

01/11/2026

Stacking the Shelves for January 10, 2026

Stacking The Shelves is all about sharing the books you are adding to your shelves, may it be physical or virtual.



This meme is hosted every Saturday by yours truly, - The covers shown here are merely a TEASER! Link to full post in bio to see the pretty covers of ALL the books in this week's stack!

01/10/2026

Stacking the Shelves (687)

Is it just me, or does this whole stack sort of just miss 'pretty'? If I HAD to pick, and I sorta/kinda do, I'd pick A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing and Field Guide for the Formerly Villainous. OTOH, The Black Cat Detectives are adorably cute and Bodies of Work creeps me right the hell out. [...]

01/10/2026

Intergalactic Waste Management, LLC by Ash Bishop

It's a mess, isn't it? That picture, I mean. Studies have been done, and the Earth doesn't just create waste ON the planet, it leaves plenty of garbage in orbit as well. Humans are gonna human, after all.

But there's also a mess in this story, and the beings involved, including the entirely human (as far as he knows so far) former Intergalactic Exterminator Russ Wesley is in the lead in making more of a mess, on more planets, than even his wandering conman of a grandfather ever imagined. Which is, surprisingly, saying something, as chasing after granddad is what got him out into the stars - and nearly eliminated himself multiple times for his troubles.

Troubles that are still following him and his friends around - following so closely that they've changed their name and their mission - just a bit - in the hopes of continuing to outrun those troubles. But there's an evil megacorp (are there any other kind?) after the robot friend Steven, and it's up to the crew of IWM, LLC to save the day again - or at least kick up so much space dust and trouble that they'll live to run another day.

If you like stories about chaos magnets on out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire adventures, Russ Wesley and his friends might be your new reading bestie!

01/09/2026

: Intergalactic Waste Management LLC by Ash Bishop

My Review: I picked this up because I enjoyed the previous book in this series, Intergalactic Exterminators, Inc. Which I reviewed for Library Journal but didn’t here at Reading Reality. I’ve decided that I need to review this second book here just so that I can process it fully inside my own he...

01/09/2026

Sorcerous Plates by Tao Wong

If the dessert pictured in the image isn't the one described in the story - it's certainly close enough to make the viewer's mouth water as much as the delicious descriptions of ALL the dishes served to Mo Meng and his front-of-house manager Kelly at the invitation-only, pre-opening event for the soon-to-be-Michelin-starred restaurant which Mo Meng has decided to attend because the chef was not only one of his proteges, but is using at least one of Mo Meng's recipes as part of the menu.

As tempting as the entire meal sounds, the truly delightful part of this story is the conversation between Mo Meng and his tablemates, the vampire Marilyn, Henry, the mage-assistant to the chaotic jinn whose advent into the 21st century and Mo Meng's own Nameless Restaurant opened the series, and the entirely human, non-magical but utterly fascinated Kelly, who is absorbing every single drop of information about the hidden world as fast as she is every mouthful of the delectable meal. And the reader right along with her, scooping up every detail and salivating over every morsel.

This book, this entire series, is highly recommended, both for its descriptions of the hidden world of magic users and magical beings hiding in plain sight, and its fascinating story of magic returning to a world that has pretended science is everything for centuries. But it also comes with a warning not to read when hungry, or while on the way to the grocery store, because the meals are described in mouthwatering detail on every page!

01/08/2026

A- : Sorcerous Plates by Tao Wong .bsky.social

My Review: The “sorcerous plates” in this fourth entry in the delicious Hidden Dishes series do not, for once, come from the kitchen of Mo Meng, the seemingly immortal mage who owns both the restaurant and chef’s hat at his hole-in-the-wall Toronto restaurant. A restaurant that is called “Th...

01/08/2026

A Lion's Ransom by Candace Robb

This book was on my list for this year, and there was a REASON. This series is fantastic in all the ways. I've been utterly absorbed from the very first book and this one had me from the first page.

Someone has stolen a golden statuette intended to be a present for the new king. The guildmaster ignored all of Owen Archer's suggestions for security and will pay the price of his neglect. That doesn't mean that Archer isn't being pressured on all sides to find the treasure, because that's his job in medieval York and he takes his responsibilities seriously.

But he feels a greater responsibility to discover the identity of the body his wife and daughter found floating in the river. And to investigate the man's murder. And then a second murder. The murders could be linked to the theft, they could be linked to rumors of spies in York looking to sell information about shipping cargoes. The murders could be connected to each other, they could be coincidental, not that Archer believes in coincidence.

And it could be part and parcel of the vacuum of power at the heart of the kingdom, as the old king's supporters jostle for power after the coronation of the new and very young king, Richard II. Whatever the trouble is, Archer knows it will visit his city sooner, or later, or both.

Because it already has.

Anyone who loves historical mystery, who is looking for successors to or , who wants to feel the cobblestones under their own feet while being caught up in multiple absorbing puzzles told through fascinating, complex characters, should look toward and his medieval York. Posthaste!

01/07/2026

Grade A : A Lion's Ransom by Candace Robb .bsky.social .bsky.social

My Review: Owen Archer, Captain of the Guards for the city of York in 1377, takes his responsibilities seriously. But his duties to his family, his city, AND to be the eyes and ears in the North of Princess Joan, the mother of the new and very young King Richard II, often pull him in [...]

01/07/2026

We Will Rise Again edited by Karen Lord, Annalee Newitz and Malka Older

That thing about a picture being worth a thousand words needs to be reversed for this book, because finding a picture that truly embodies a concept or an idea, like social justice, is hard. But the thousands of words in this collection of in dialogue with and does a damn good job of conveying, not just the concept and the meaning, but also how hard it is to keep fighting the good fight while providing a palate of possibilities of times and places where it could be fought outside our own. is also a fantastic (sometimes literally) way of showing what it might look like when good wins. Because we all need hope to keep fighting.

These stories are marvelous, if occasionally outright frightening - as they should be. The interviews and essays respond with real world examples in a way that hasn't been done since , so if you've been looking for more of that, read this and vice versa.

In any case, this collection will make you think, and think hard, about the differences between the way the world works - and the way it SHOULD.

01/06/2026

: We Will Rise Again edited by Karen Lord, Annalee Newitz and Malka Older .bsky.social .bsky.social .bsky.social .bsky.social

My Review: This fascinating collection, edited by Karen Lord, Annalee Newitz and Malka Older, does something that isn’t done often - or perhaps just not often enough. Because it deals with real world issues explicitly through speculative fiction, it deliberately puts the included stories in dialog...