I've read almost 50 books this year so far. A few on my list I had been looking forward to since early 2025. Some left me disappointed and others just weren't very memorable or were challenging for me to follow. As an author I know now how challenging it is to write a book and put a piece of yourself into the world. And with that I won't negatively review any book. I am just not the reader for certain books.

So let's break down my top 5 reads of 2026 (so far) in no particular order. Headlights by CJ Leede was a recent read and really shows how much Leede cares about the environment and animals. I love how she focuses on a part of the country with every book. Maeve Fly will always be my favorite of hers. American Rapture wasn't my favorite so I was a bit nervous about reading Headlights. It broke my heart and while CJ did put it back together it was done so in a messy way. It was haunting, heartbreaking, and sad. I'm not sure if I'll reread it as right now I am enjoying reading lighter horror or cozy horror.

Now some may not consider Morsel, Nothing Tastes as Good, and Trad Wife lighter but I do because they have parts in them that are so off the wall. Parts I did not see coming AT ALL and I loved that. I laughed at parts and thought "good for them" numerous times. This is my new favorite genre of horror. Not sure what to call it but for me all of these are in it.

The Caretaker grabbed me from the beginning and I was led through a wild ride. I'd say most of the decisions the MC make are ones I would have made too because money troubles are very relatable. I'm definitely going to read more fantasy and sci-fi this year too. I'm not sure where to start but I'm excited to dive into other genres.

What are your favorite reads of 2026 (so far)?

Reminder that our Count of Monte Cristo chat is scheduled on Discord for 8pm GMT tomorrow!

See you then, Booksworn.

Y'all, I've been distracted.

I have four new parasocial besties, and if NASA does not come out with merch featuring that adorable freaking moon plushie, I may actually cry.

I will go ahead and tag a handful of my favorite space-related reads below (and a couple on my immediate TBR), but just know that precious little reading has happened amidst all of the cuteness.

That said, I DID make a sticker, and if ANYONE wants one, please comment below! I'll email you separately for details of where to send it.

More Bindery love to come this week as I recover from the return to gravity — including a STACK of ARCs I'm offloading that subscribers can nab here first!

To the moon and (safely) back,
Mary

Welcome back to my Director's Cut Reviews! Today we're slicing into the stunning novel Japanese Gothic.

Book: Japanese Gothic

Author: Kylie Lee Baker

Setting: Rural Japan

Genre: Horror

Subgenre/Themes: Samurai, Historical, Dual Timelines, Escaping Fate, Japanese Mythology, Gothic, Liminal

Release Date: 4-14-26

Brief Summary: October 2026: Lee Turner flees New York to his father's house in Japan after killing his roommate. He doesn't remember killing him. The house seems great at first, but something strange is going on. A window is sometimes there. Something strange is happening in his closet. He keeps seeing a woman. Could she be a ghost? Is there life after death?

October 1877: Sen's family lives on edge. Food is scarce. Money is tight. And Samurai's are in exile. Sen lives in fear that soldiers will appear and kill her family. But when she sees a young man outside her window, everything changes.

How will their stories intertwine?

My Thoughts: This story is beautiful. Baker did such an excellent job crafting such a unique story involving Japanese mythology. The way these two characters became intertwined with one another absolutely wowed me. And I loved the house! It felt very liminal with the house changing and the worlds connecting through the closet.

My heart hurt for Sen. The way she desperately wanted to please her father and prove her strength all while her father dismissed her left and right truly hurt. And the way he twists her desperation to hurt those around her was sick. This reminded me a bit of Silent Hill f. Lee's family also has some skeletons in the closet. His mother is missing and presumed dead.

The last 20% got a bit confusing for me. Characters died but then they really did not. I wasn't sure what was real and what wasn't. It felt like a bit of a fever dream for me. I left the novel having many questions that I wanted answers to.

But I loved this book. It's beautiful and gory and heartfelt all in one.

Hello, friends!

So we're going to be doing a Libro.fm Golden Ticket giveaway to honor Indie Bookstore Day on April 25! The Golden Ticket is good for 12 audiobook credits on Libro.fm!

Rules:

1. Follow us on Instagram

2. Follow us on TikTok

3. Share our post about our Bindery account on your story on either platform (tag Ryn or the bookstore account!)

Each share earns you one entry into the giveaway! It runs until April 25 at 11:59pm! I'll draw the winner on April 26. I have posted this giveaway on both Instagram and TikTok, so there will be a large pool of people who can win!

**If you do not have social media, all I ask is that you consider ordering a book through our Bookshop.org shelves, perhaps the upcoming release The Killing Spell by Shay Kauwe? I LOVED IT.

Thanks!

Ryn

My Fools! My Friends!

I apologize for my absence here, especially as it relates to updates on our March books and announcing the April books! Candidly life got away from me as I spent the end of March and beginning of April supporting my darling Mother through a (successful!) hip replacement. More to come re: March & April soon.

In an effort to make it up for it, I'm going to be doing a giveaway for Gal Beckerman's new book How To Be a Dissident, out 4/21. Gal writes for The Atlantic and you should definitely check out his work. If you're reading this email, you're already signed up for the raffle, as I'll be drawing names from existing subscribers (at any tier) on Sunday.

Talk more soon!

I know wayyy too many people who can’t stand a serious chunk of their social circle. I wonder if the only reason they continue to be friends with their friends is to have friends?

Perhaps they maintain friends for optics. They see friends as a conduit to status: how else do you get invited to parties? Or accessories: who else is gonna fill out your bridal party? Or maybe friends keep loserdom at bay (your mailman will judge you if you don’t receive any holiday cards).

friendship is a necessary nutrient

People who despise their friends yet continue to socialize with them are baffling because friendship is my primary source of joy. I rely on my friends to keep my life from feeling like drudgery. (I am a joyless, deeply discontent person aka a writer -- writing brings me meaning and fulfillment, not happiness.)

true friendship is taking selfies in the club bathroom while he pees

The peak of my March one of those special nights where you think, This is what life's all about. I was with an old friend (9 yrs friendship**), a newer friend (2 yrs friendship**), and a new friend (<1 year**). New didn’t know Old or Newer. Old&Newer are old friends themselves (that’s how I met Newer). I had no idea how the chemistry would shake out, but it was superb.

** I’m cracking up at typing the # of years I’ve known someone as if it’s their credentials. Sanibel (Penn, 10 yrs friendship). This feels like something that would go on a bridezilla’s wedding planner’s clipboard (“falling out in 2009, friendship re-established 2013 after intervention”).

Conversation 10/10

The socializing at that March dinner was so good that when I got home, I felt like I had accomplished something. The evening was gratifying akin to finishing a challenging book.

It’s impossible to capture this feeling without sounding cheesy: it’s when you’re in a cab going home and you’re so happy that it transforms into gratitude (which never lasts) and you’re like, Life is amazing. What an honor to exist. (It's the type of friendship Stegner paean-ed in Crossing to Safety.)

So why do so many people hate their friends?

The problem is accepting that social life plateaus as you get older. It’s normalized to resent your friends, and for friendship to become a chore. I’ve gotta see xyz person, ugh. Or so-and-so just asked me to get coffee 🙄. Part of the chore-like feeling, imo, is the bias toward old (as in, long duration) friendships. It’s seen as disloyal and ungrateful to end these. Which means many people are keeping friends out of inertia. Or nostalgia.

Nostalgia friendships

“What’s wrong with nostalgia?" was this woman’s comment on my tiktok about friendships that are dragging the bedraggled corpse of “we’ve been friends for 20 years,” death rattle, behind them.

If my friend were to say, “ours is a nostalgia friendship,” I would be deeply offended. This means that the only thing tethering us is something ancient, like the fact that our dads were college roommates. Or we happened to be enrolled in the same ice-skating class at 6yo. Be more hateful, please.

My reply to the idiotic comment is: what’s wrong with doing anything out of inertia is that YOU HAVE FREE WILL. What's wrong with being passive and letting life wash over you? Everything is wrong with that.

Nota bene: Deep meaningful friendships formed over many years are the most valuable. Full stop. “Old friends” sounds like a slur 😓 but old friends are absolutely the best genre of friend. I am not disparaging them whatsoever.

There's a difference between having friends and having friendship

If you're deep in an unsatisfying-comfort-zone-malaise of friends -- it's been the same stale circle for decades, with undercurrents of animosity and tension, lots of prickliness -- it's very possible you have friends but not friendship.

my new theory

is that the healthiest social life is one that exists in many stages of friendship at once. Both in the sense of a mixture of young and old (duration of friendship) friendships and also a mixture of friends whom you can imagine getting close to, and others whom you are content to remain at acquaintance+ level with.

Diversify your friend portfolio.

Has your social life stagnated?

Most people hit a social plateau because there are no longer new infusions of friends. My last infusion was grad school, which was 9 years ago. My MFA friends are now my “old” friends.

Until last year, I only had old friends. Thanks to my book coming out last April, I got introduced to a bunch of authors who were also debuting, and for the first time since grad school, I got a new crop of friends. It felt like college orientation. Or summer camp.

New blood is fun

do you remember this maybe fake, definitely performative kourtney/addison rae friendship?

We went to each others' book launches and stayed out late gossiping about our pub sagas. I went to DC to guest teach a class for a new friend who’s a professor at GW. The shared experience of First Book provided a pretext for all these new friendships—but as the year came to a close I realized there'd be no more book launches, and I couldn’t help but wonder: Would my new friendships fade alongside my debut novel?😙

What I actually couldn’t help but wonder was how to orchestrate regular infusions of new friends into my life.

i feel like i'm arguing for an open relationship

It’s not that I want to cheat on my old friends or replace them – it’s about social complacency. Variety is what makes you appreciate anything (if you’ve ever been a spoiled rich brat on vacation, you know the hell of eating at fine dining restaurants back to back to back when all you want is lamyun or mcdonalds).

Hosting my Salon and meeting so many people has reminded me how fun it is to connect with someone anew. Making new friends uses similar muscles to dating. If you’re married AND you have an established friend group, those muscles are bound to weaken.

SRG Salon is the best friend-making vehicle I could've dreamt up

Ask me to RFK an ideal friendship pyramid: I'd design it to be 60% long term friends, 20% people that are most likely becoming long term friends, and 20% new/casual friends. Call me an ethical friendship slut.

BTW

This is not a rah-rah “put yourself out there and make new friends” self-help post (because if you wanted to you would). This is, instead, a year of realizing post about how I unconsciously, unthinkingly resigned myself to the notion that these 20-or-so-people are my friends *fixed mindset* and that is that. This finite group (of wonderful people) are mine to hold on to (or not) for the rest of my life, lest I become one of those people whose only friend is their spouse.

It's not true. Plateaus are not permanent. This is a philippic against inertia 😇

Good morning, mis internet amigxs!

It's finally here! Bien Leidos first annual Read-A-Thon weekend!

If you're on Bien Leidos Discord, just find the #Readathon channel. It has a cute pink flower emoji and is in the Bookish Discussions section.

Are you a Bien Leidos member who's NOT on Discord yet? Now is the perfect time to join!

If you haven't subscribed to Bien Leidos yet, now is the time! Subscribers at ALL MEMBERSHIP TIERS get access to Discord and the Readathon this weekend.

What is the Readathon? Well, quite simply, we'll be reading at home all weekend while chatting our current reads AND...competing for prizes!

Cole has put together bingo cards for the weekend and each day there will be 1 book winner each day and 1 mug/stickers (all pictured below) each day! So come for the readathon and stay for bookish chit chat!

We'd love to have you join Bien Leidos Discord! xo, Carmen

If you follow my blabbing on threads or know me personally, you’re probably aware I’ve been making a conscious effort to read/recommend books by authors who I genuinely respect.

This is really important to me and sometimes feels very challenging because I have strong convictions yet always want to give folks the benefit of the doubt. I feel so bummed out when I find out someone is not who I thought they were. But I guess that’s life. That’s social media and public platforms.

Here are 7 books by authors who I will always stand behind and 7 books by authors I will no longer be recommending (*weeps a little*).

If you have book recs by stand up authors (subjective, I know) I’m always looking for more! :)

Now for the discussion of the second section of Good People by Patmeena Sabit (Things Secret and Open, pages 91-192). I felt like this section really reminded me why I liked this book when I read the ARC in November and why I thought it would make for a great discussion.

That said, I also struggle to talk about this section. Some of you know that I spent my first 39 years in the evangelical church, where I was taught problematic beliefs about Islam. One of the common statements was how Islam is bad for women. I now see the irony of being taught this in a patriarchal institution that also perpetuated to harm women. All that to say, I feel it's important to focus on dismantling the patriarchy I participated in rather than pointing the finger at others. But I will also listen and amplify own voices of women in other patriarchal cultures.

The use of the title really struck me: "Good people, as soon as their daughters know right from left, teach them one thing: That a girl's reputation is like a cloth of pure white. The tiniest fleck of dirt--the tiniest fleck anywhere--and the whole thing is ruined." (p.139)

Sounds familiar.

So for some discussion questions:

• How have your thoughts of the Sharaf family changed with the additional commentary?

• How do you square the two very different perspectives on how Zorah was parented?

• Where do you think the story is going? What prejudices and/0r assumptions are leading you to think that?

It’s April. We’re 1/4 of the way through a four year life sentence, and this chaos fae is tired.

The Riven Altar by D. M. Randall sweetly calls my name from my Kindle Library… Building up my author account has been slow and clunky. So what else would I do when I have a mountain of ARCs giving me the side eye and responsibilities to other authors as an editor? Obviously ignore most of that and work on editing Bad Ends. What did you think I was going to say? Make a schedule and work through it systematically? Pffft. That’s not how I roll!

Then it popped into my head to share my editing process with y’all visually. If you would be interested in a more detailed description of how I edit/revise, make sure to let me know below or on the Discord. (Did you know we have a Discord? It’s quiet. Come make noise over there with me!)

—🩷 Emerson

Let's talk bookmarks! How do you mark the page? For me, I love using a standard bookmark. I have a big collection and I like to match my bookmark to the book I'm reading whether it be the theme of the book or its cover color.

1. Dog ear (or fold) 

2. A standard bookmark

3. Anything I can find (Receipt, paper, etc.)

4. Other (Let us know in the comments!) 

5. No preference