Hello PBees 🐝

Since we had some fun casting predictions for the 2026 Summer Readalong (see 🔗previous post), I thought we could do it again for the Fall one!

So the main question is: If you were to read all the books, what do you think your top for the 2026 Fall Readalong would be?

I don't think I'll go for the sparkly badge this time, but we never know, prepping for this post made me more interested! So here is my prediction:

1. 🪄 The Incandescent
2. ✍️ Death of the Author
3. 🐦 The Ornithologist's Field Guide to Love
4. 🐺 How to be Eaten

• You can cast your prediction even if you don't plan on aiming for the sparkles! In fact, don't push yourself too much for it, the goal is to enjoy reading and having fun discussions first of all!
• You can also participate if you've already read them all (I see you speedy peeps 👀🏃‍➡️) Just retroactively list what you thought it could have been going in!
• If you have already read a book, add a ✅green check at the end of the line. That way, we can see if you are going in blind or already have a good idea of whether you've liked some!

We will be doing a retrospective at the end of the Readalong to compare what we thought vs what was actually our final top! (The Summer one is coming next week! Just waiting for the last rush to pass, for people like me who procrastinate until the last minute 🫣)

i am aware most people are not as into spreadsheets as i am, but if anyone is interested in it (or just likes making things as structured as possible), i'm sharing my rating spreadsheet below

this is what i actually use to rate most books (i don't use it always, specially with older / classic books, because i think the categories don't quite reflect what's actually relevant in classics). overall, though, it really helps me organize my feelings and think of an evaluation that better reflects my opinion on each book

it's super simple: there's 5 categories, each worth 1 star. every category has then 3 possible ratings: zero, half, and 1 whole star. just check whichever option makes more sense and the spreadsheet adds up the numbers automatically ❤️ and provides you with the final rating in the bottom ❤️ magic. seriously, how can people not appreciate the beauty of spreadsheets? /j

i came up with the qualitative descriptions to help assign a rating to each category, but if you want to use this template, you can write them however you'd like, of course. i mostly wrote what made sense to me. use it however you want!

🔗 my book rating spreadsheet - view only | 🔗 my book rating spreadsheet - make a copy

it has two different color options in case you have beef with green+pink. to edit the template, make a copy :)

and follow me for more oddly specific sheet(s) 😘 lol

i am aware most people are not as into spreadsheets as i am, but if anyone is interested in it (or just likes making things as structured as possible), i'm sharing my rating spreadsheet below

this is what i actually use to rate most books (i don't use it always, specially with older / classic books, because i think the categories don't quite reflect what's actually relevant in classics). overall, though, it really helps me organize my feelings and think of an evaluation that better reflects my opinion on each book

it's super simple: there's 5 categories, each worth 1 star. every category has then 3 possible ratings: zero, half, and 1 whole star. just check whichever option makes more sense and the spreadsheet adds up the numbers automatically ❤️ and provides you with the final rating in the bottom ❤️ magic. seriously, how can people not appreciate the beauty of spreadsheets? /j

i came up with the qualitative descriptions to help assign a rating to each category, but if you want to use this template, you can write them however you'd like, of course. i mostly wrote what made sense to me. use it however you want!

🔗 my book rating spreadsheet - view only | 🔗 my book rating spreadsheet - make a copy

it has two different color options in case you have beef with green+pink. to edit the template, make a copy :)

and follow me for more oddly specific sheet(s) 😘 lol

Right now I am working on a Star Wars fanfic, the FMC's (ex-Imperial Pantoran turned bounty hunter) parts being written in second tense, and I am contemplating writing the antagonist's (a nonbinary Hutt major domo) parts in past tense/third person. I wanted to see if folks have ever read any books/novellas/short stories with that kind of split between POVs, OR if they think it would work, OR if it would make more sense to keep it to one tense?

Years of playing TTRPGs has made present tense almost the go-to writing style for myself having been a DM for...like...over a decade, but third person I feel like is still the most common narrative method across literature. I am not really planning on doing much other than just writing it for fun and sharing with a couple friends, but I was just curious to hear peoples' thoughts.