So, it’s been a hot minute, hasn’t it?
If you’ve been keeping up with my social media, you know that in February of 2024, my house caught fire and my husband and I have been scrambling to deal with ::waves:: all that for the past 10 weeks or so. The house is severely damaged, most of our stuff is ruined, and it took us quite a long time to find a rental where we can live while we sort everything out. All humans and animals are safe and sound, thanks to my husband’s quick reaction to the (extremely hot, electrical-wire-melting) flames.
So, if you know me from FBOL, you probably are aware that I read quite a bit, though I haven’t really had the time to read as much as our house was in construction (since June-ish of 2023) and rapid deconstruction (ya know… house fire). But here are the books I have caught up on since the beginning of 2024!
(Please note, this is not a thorough list. These are the hightlights-slash-things I can remember without running upstairs to grab my Kindle.)
The Prodigal Genius: The Life and Times of Honore de Balzac
by Noel B. Gerson
It shouldn’t surprise you at all that I am in the planning stages of a new podcast, called MAD, BAD, DANGEROUS TO KNOW. Inspired by five years of FBOL and its extra content on Patreon, MBDTK is going to be profiles of the most colorful people in history and boy howDEE does Balzac fit the profile.
Some of the perspective on Balzac’s womanizing and politics and all of that is more antiquated than I’d like for a book published in 2021, but if you’re in the market for a surprisingly quick read on someone so prolific and historically important, I’d recommend picking this one up. Gerson has a whole series (George Sand is another!) that I might grab, too.
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary
by Simon Winchester
Pretty sure this tale made its way to DRUNK HISTORY and that’s how I first heard about it, but this covers in good detail how Dr. W.C. Minor, an American held in a British asylum for murder and paranoid delusions, managed to cultivate the great Oxford dictionary, under the at-first-unknowing guidance of Prof. James Murray. CW for graphic self-mutilation, sex crimes, and discussion of mental illness though. Yeeeikes.
Queen of Caprice: A Biography of Kristina of Sweden
by Noel B. Gerson
More from Gerson, whose entire library, I will admit, is on Kindle Unlimited right now. I knew nothing about Queen Kristina before starting this book, and I’m obsessed with her. She was a Grade A asshole, and I would desperately like to cover her for MBDTK at some point in the future.
I had to curtail the modern impulse to try to diagnose this woman with something, and I think I mostly managed to by the end of the biography. I think it would be impossible to accurately explain what was happening in the brain of someone who beleives they were chosen by God in order to become rich and powerful. Megalomania does not even begin to cover it, you guys. Not even CLOSE.
Red, White & Royal Blue
by Casey McQuiston
Truthfully, I’m giving romance novels more of a chance, and I can obviously see why they’re so compelling. Could not put this one down. I love Alex so much and the two women in his trio, June and Nora, I hope get their own spinoffs, though I understand if they don’t. Can I live in this universe? I loved reading a modern romance that just took the idealism to the Nth degree, and I appreciated the aftereward from McQuiston so thoroughly, as an author who struggles to write what I write in the world we live in.
I’m still working on hot to spot romance novels that are more likely to “click” with me– the genre has a lot of, uh, writers in it that view sex and relationships in ways that wholly piss me off, but it’s getting a lot easier.
msemilyedwards.com 
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