stjust

Spanning many genres! Looking for historical fiction, fantasy and diverse author recs

778 points

0% overlap

My Taste

The Lies of the Ajungo (Forever Desert, #1)

Reading...

Otherlands: A Journey Through Earth's Extinct Worlds

Folklore Rising: An Artist's Journey through the British Ritual Year

Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

stjust commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

alienshe

Why did you pick your username?

Mine is alienshe.

It’s one of my favorite songs from the punk band Bikini Kill but also I feel like an alien who was planted on this hell called earth. 👽🛸👾

359

stjust made progress on...

A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking

T. Kingfisher

53%

stjust made progress on...

Otherlands: A Journey Through Earth's Extinct Worlds

Thomas Halliday

28%

stjust commented on a post

Alanna

Thoughts from 25%

I’m totally fascinated by this discussion of native and non-native plants. I thought these were consistent categories, but I’m shocked to find out that even which plants are considered native to a place is a disputed and politicized category. We humans really do feel like we rule the world, and get to decide what belongs in it, don’t we? 🫠

stjust commented on a post

acidicchaos

Thoughts from 51%

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Post from the A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking forum

stjust

Thoughts from 50%

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stjust commented on lizzyy's update

lizzyy TBR'd a book

The Yellow House

Sarah M. Broom

In 1961, Sarah M. Broom's mother Ivory Mae bought a shotgun house in the then-promising neighborhood of New Orleans East and built her world inside of it. It was the height of the Space Race and the neighborhood was home to a major NASA plant--the postwar optimism seemed assured. Widowed, Ivory Mae remarried Sarah's father Simon Broom; their combined family would eventually number twelve children. But after Simon died, six months after Sarah's birth, the Yellow House would become Ivory Mae's thirteenth and most unruly child. A book of great ambition, Sarah M. Broom's The Yellow House tells a hundred years of her family and their relationship to home in a neglected area of one of America's most mythologized cities. This is the story of a mother's struggle against a house's entropy, and that of a prodigal daughter who left home only to reckon with the pull that home exerts, even after the Yellow House was wiped off the map after Hurricane Katrina. The Yellow House expands the map of New Orleans to include the stories of its lesser known natives, guided deftly by one of its native daughters, to demonstrate how enduring drives of clan, pride, and familial love resist and defy erasure. Located in the gap between the "Big Easy" of tourist guides and the New Orleans in which Broom was raised, The Yellow House is a brilliant memoir of place, class, race, the seeping rot of inequality, and the internalized shame that often follows. It is a transformative, deeply moving story from an unparalleled new voice of startling clarity, authority, and power.

Post from the Wild Dark Shore forum

10h

stjust

Thoughts from 32%

Slight hater - I like most of the narrators on the audiobook, but the one who does Fen is really annoying me.

However, I love the writing and how the story is building, and I absolutely love the vibes of this island. So desolate and beautiful! I have so many questions and am getting slightly impatient at how long it’s taking to get answers, but I think that’s just me wanting more. 😂

stjust commented on a post

10h

Fay_Reads

Thoughts from 20%

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stjust commented on nicheinterest's update

nicheinterest started reading...

10h

Ego Homini Lupus

Gretchen Felker-Martin

Joan is wed without a dowry to a knight without a household. In the cold and dark of 12th-century Northumbria she struggles under the burden of life as his servant and wife, mother to his children, keeper of his hall, and tanner of the wolf pelts he must render to the king in tax each summer. Alone at the end of the world with her husband and his cruel, mercurial sister-in-law, Joan gradually descends into a netherworld of filth and madness as the demands of her new life crush her mind beneath their weight.

stjust TBR'd a book

10h

The Ballad of Perilous Graves

Alex Jennings

Music is magic in this novel set in a fantastical version of New Orleans where a battle for the city's soul brews between two young mages, a vengeful wraith, and one powerful song. Nola is a city full of wonders. A place of sky trolleys and dead cabs, where haints dance the night away and Wise Women help keep the order. To those from Away, Nola might seem strange. To Perilous Graves, it’s simply home. In a world of everyday miracles, Perry might not have a talent for magic, but he does know Nola’s rhythm as intimately as his own heartbeat. So when the city’s Great Magician starts appearing in odd places and essential songs are forgotten, Perry realizes trouble is afoot. Nine songs of power have escaped from the piano that maintains the city’s beat, and without them, Nola will fail. Unwilling to watch his home be destroyed, Perry will sacrifice everything to save it. But a storm is brewing, and the Haint of All Haints is awake. Nola’s time might be coming to an end.

stjust finished reading and wrote a review...

14h

stjust

Dec 15, 2025

4.5

Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

Just a great book all around. The writing is wonderful, you can really get into the minds of both the killers and Capote himself. You feel the entanglement between writer and subject. You can see the small town and its inhabitants. You get to know the victims and their lives. The most compelling part, I think, is how you’re able to follow the descent of these men to the point where they commit the crime. It’s one of the most effective real-life character studies I’ve ever read.

Personally I also like that it’s not completely focused on the details of the crime or investigation, and doesn’t present it as any mystery - those aren’t really the important things here, and I don’t like true crime that dwells on the violent details.

My only dislike here is the amount of time spent on the time in prison. I just don’t think that was really necessary for this book (it was probably necessary for Capote to write, but it might have been better as a separate essay or something like that).

stjust commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

14h

thissillygirlthought

Edited

Short and Sweet! Your best shorts that pack a punch 🥊

I had a few reading slumps this year and occurred to me half way through that short stories may be the way to keep me reading when for whatever reason can’t/won’t! So anything between 0-180 pages is the limit I set and it led me to some incredible stories - especially those that packed a punch 30>

Although the second person writing threw me slightly, the Six Deaths of A Saint by Alix E Harrow really was jaw dropping for me. Considering fantasy is so over saturated now, I thought Alix did an insanely talented job of cramming this whole world that just seemed so vast and full of possibilities (and tragedies) in just 30 pages Wow!

Anyway I read the rest of the anthology (Into Shadows) it was apart of which all again were pretty great reads, as well as some other collections of short stories! So my ask is for recommendations of any short stories I can note down for my reading slumps as it really is my tried and tested hack for ticking me over to still read or drawing me back in to the thicker stories!

stjust commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

15h

YoursEma

Fantasy recommendations

Hello everyone, I am not sure if this is the place for it, but I want to try. I'm looking for some book recommendations for my brother, he is 25 and a physicist, he doesn't read as much but he likes fantasy, especially the classics like LOTR and Eragon. I am looking for books that would be fantasy/sci-fi, but more physics. Magic combined with physics, or science settings. If you have any good books, let me know. Thank you so much ❤️

stjust commented on stjust's update

stjust made progress on...

16h

Wild Dark Shore

Charlotte McConaghy

31%

stjust made progress on...

16h

Wild Dark Shore

Charlotte McConaghy

31%

stjust started reading...