iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Tonight during the baseball, I finished Kristin Kobes Du Mez's Live Laugh Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made. Hmmm. Okay, as someone who grew up in this world, I appreciate a lot of what Du Mez did here. The 19th century history is especially good. 💡📚💙

A person's hand holding a tablet showing the cover of Live Laugh Love. Behind it is a tablet playing a baseball game.

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Finished Vol 4 of The Unselected Journals of Emma M Lion on the way back from my trip to New England. It remains diverting; narratives remain oddly loose though getting better, maybe? Or I'm just getting conditioned. 💙📚

A screenshot of the completed audiobook of The Unselected Journals of Emma M Lion Vol 4 in the Libby app.

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

It's October, and I survived my month of deadlines. Time to enjoy fall and also do a bunch of grading. And this is what I've been reading in the meantime. 💙📚

A woman in jeans and a striped shirt walking down a tree lined trail.

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Just grading and watching baseball at 30,000 feet.

A tablet on an plane seat back table showing the Dodgers-Braves game, next to some papers, a pen, and an earbuds case

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

We also painted her office at the church so that it's a nicer space for her to return to once she recovers. Didn't have time to hang the art, but as she said, now she feels motivated to do it because it will all look more vibrant. I've had more fun breaks, but this one felt useful.

A partly painted wall in the process of being turned from the most dismal tan to a pretty teal.

A hand holding a travel mug in front of a beautiful teal wall.

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Coming back from spending fall break in New England, though rather than being a tourist trip, I was helping my sister prep for surgery & didn't take a lot of pretty pictures. But we did have a couple nice walks and I squeezed in a beautiful run (plus lots of coffee, bookstore & gallery breaks).

A woman in jeans and a T-shirt on a trail looking upward, framed by leafy branches.

A fuzzy black and white caterpillar moseying across a forest floor.

A view of a tree lined river shot through the x-shaped truss of a bridge.

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

The text of the article is great too

Everything you've heard about Michigan's U.S. Senate race is true: An extremist is asking voters to send him to Washington, masking an agenda far out of step with Michigan's mainstream under the pretense of normalcy. If elected, this man would urge America down a dark path, changing the shape of our nation, perhaps irrevocably.

But that man is not Abdul El-Sayed.

Read more at: https://www.bnd.com/news/nation-world/national/article317400154.html#storylink=cpy

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Also finished Vol 3 of The Unselected Journals of Emma M Lion. First half really did have a narrative shape; second half not so much. Sense of voice and incident remain charming, it's great to listen to on a run, but... 📚💙

A screenshot of the Libby app showing the completed audiobook of The Unselected Journals of Emma M Lion Vol 3.

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Finished Susan Choi's Flashlight a few days ago. Such an interesting look at loss & memory, and no small trick to write characters who are irritating in such human ways (not as plot contrivance) while also being so heartbreaking. 📚💙

A person's hand holding an ereader showing the cover of Susan Choi's Flashlight.

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

This frog. He was so tiny! So cute! I found out he is called a spring peeper!

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

This month my SF&F book club is reading A Brilliant Void: A Collection of Classic Irish Science Fiction, and I finished it last night. A very fun mix of short stories, from the 1830s to 1960s. Editor Jack Fennell did a great job curating. 🪐📚💙

A copy of A Brilliant Void posed in an empty niche meant for art.

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Froggy might be judging me for how I'm mostly getting through audiobooks only, but grading is happening and I had a writing deadline! I listened to Vol 2 of The Unselected Journals of Emma M Lion mostly while running. Still rather narratively shapeless but charming. 📚💙

A screenshot of the Libby app showing the completed audiobook of The Unselected Journals of Emma M Lion.

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Also finished Robert Jackson Bennett's A Trade of Blood, which (theoretically) wraps his Shadow of the Leviathan books (he is coy about whether it's really the end & there's still narrative road left, though if he stops here it's satisfying). Another fun one & I did partially guess the culprit. 📚💙

The cover of A Trade of Blood, which is maroon and features stylized fungi illustrated in white.

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

First book of September was The Original by Nell Stevens. Thought this would be a little caper about art forgery by a Victorian woman, but it was stranger (in a good way) than I expected, with a possibly fake long dead cousin resurfacing. Very gay (complimentary). 📚💙

A screenshot of the completed audiobook of The Original.

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I know I've been using flowers for most of these posts, but September has really been the month of cute frogs, like this little spring peeper, who showed up with the rain to spy on my reading progress. I have been reading, I swear! Here's some September books. 📚💙

A little tan frog with dark brown markings just chilling on a pane of glass. He is tiny and adorable.

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Did the dialect thing and, well, yeah. That's me alright.

A dialect heat map showing that this person talks most like someone from California and definitely not like someone from the Deep South or, to a lesser extent, the Dakotas.

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

The last book I finished in August was Necessary Fiction by Eloghosa Osunde. Focusing on the LGBTQ community in Nigeria, it's obviously got plenty of heavy stuff in it, but Osunde also insists on queer joy in the mix, too. also a LOT of characters to track through the very episodic structure. 📚💙

An reader in a person's hand showing the cover of Necessary Fiction.

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Felt cute, went to a baseball game. (My sister also came and I do have pics of us together too.)

A woman in a Dodgers jersey and hat and sunglasses with a baseball field in the background.

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Been slacking on posting the audiobooks I've finished, so here are the last two, June Thomas's A Place of Our Own and T. Kingfisher's Paladin's Faith. The first was very interesting, and the second was frivolous fun. 📚💙

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Finished last year's Booker winner, David Szalay's Flesh, this morning. Mulling over what I think of it. On a purely subjective level, it's not my favorite, though it's well-constructed for sure. ✒️📚💙

A dark wicker patio table with a hardback copy of Flesh, a blur plate with a berry tart, and a glass of iced coffee.

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

I also finished Sam Selvon's The Lonely Londoners a few days ago. It's a midcentury novel written in creolised English (Selvon was from Trinidad), of recent emigrants to London (Windrush generation). The prose is beautiful & he captures the way time slips away from us without our noticing. ✒️📚💙

A paperback copy of The Lonely Londoners propped against a pink cushion. The cover illustration is a black and white photograph of a young Black man wearing a jacket and brimmed hat, holding a cue stick.

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Finished Arundhati Roy's The Ministry of Utmost Happiness yesterday. Structurally, it's a weird beast: the various parts are compelling but feel awkwardly stitched together. The prose remains powerful: less stylized than her debut but beautiful. ✒️📚💙

A paperback copy of The Ministry of Utmost Happiness propped against a wooden step.

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Ventured to the big city for a concert last night and also had a lil tapas and reading time first. It was a treat all around. The band was American Patchwork Quartet and they were a delight.

A photograph taken at a bar seat. On the bar is a plate with cutlery, a small serving dish with a few morsels on it, a glass of sangria, and a book.

Four musicians on stage taking a final bow.

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

My friend's sunflowers were looking glorious today.

A gorgeous orange sunflower with a lil bee on the edge of the dark center.

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Finished listening to Tochi Onyebuchi's Harmattan Season a few days ago. I love the vibe, though the plot didn't hold together quite so well for me. But a postcolonial fantasy noir set in an unnamed Francophone African country? Just a great setting and the noir feel was definitely there. 📚💙

A screenshot of the Libby app showing the completed audiobook of Harmattan Season.

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Finished reading Arundhati Roy's Mother Mary Come to Me, her memoir about her mother. Roy's prose remains so dang readable. The whole work drifts at times, but it is an interesting look at a complicated, difficult relationship. A whole other level of bad mom narrative. 💡📚💙

A hardback copy of Mother Mary Comes to Me propped against a pink cushion. The cover image is a young woman with short curly black hair smoking a cigarette.

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

It was a baking day today in addition to being a writing day.

A loaf of sourdough bread and a couple dozen chocolate cherry oatmeal cookies cooling on a wire rack.

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

This morning I also finished Robert Jackson Bennett's A Drop of Corruption. I'm a touch mixed on how well it works as a murder mystery, but as a fantasy novel it remains immensely fun. It gets off to a quicker start than The Tainted Cup since the worldbuilding is already in place. 📚💙

An iPad showing a Dodgers game next to a paperback copy of The Tainted Cup and a person's hand holding a copper moscow mule cup.

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress was my book club's book sometime last fall. I didn't finish it in time, only got back around to it now. TEDIOUS. 🪐📚💙

A picture of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress on a wicker table. The cover is searingly yellow and tree an illustration of the moon in the ball part of a ball and chain shackle. The shackle is snapped.

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

I finally jumped on The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion bandwagon. Beth Brower does a great job with narratorial voice here: Emma is instantly interesting, sincere but also lightly self-mocking & deft with observations/occasional jokes about her fellow humans. 📚💙

A screenshot from the Libby app of the completed audiobook of The Unselected Journals of Emma M Lion

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

It's August and the days that remain for being outside and free of semester-time obligations are fewer and fewer. But outside is great. And sometimes, so are the books I'm reading. Here's what I'm getting through in August. 📚💙

A view of a grassy expanse surrounded by various conifer trees. It's a beautiful sunny day with blue skies and some white shreds of clouds.

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Wrapping up July reads, here are three works of nonfiction, all read for work, that were none of them as good as I wanted them to be. First, My Name Is Bridget by Alison O'Reilly, a weak treatment of a subject that deserved better. A Mail Online reporter is not up to the task. 💡📚💙

Three books laid out on an off white cushion: My Name Is Bridget, The Fallen, and Natality: Toward a Philosophy of Birth.

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Finished Jessica Traynor's New Arcana today. A collection full of heartache, broader meditations on loss prompted by the death of a childhood friend by suicide (referred to throughout as Lydia Deetz). Tarot imagery, including Traynor's idea for New Arcana, are laced throughout. 📚💙

A person's hand holding a copy of New Arcana. The cover illustration looks like a tarot card, but the figure is a dark haired woman in a red dress walking through fire and ice, a sword stuck in the ground to one side.

Tiger

When the tiger comes to tea
and eats all your sandwiches
the unspoken rule is
you can't ask him to leave
until the devastation is complete -
till he's eaten all the packages in the cupboard
and worse
drunk all daddy's beer.
But the child in your kitchen
keeps running to him,
twining his tail round her neck -
boa snake scarf -
and you wonder
what will he do to her
if you tell him he has to go.

The Tower

Lying awake, a fizzing on the plains of my skull. I draw the tower

and feel the lightning enter me cauterising as it goes

until my bat heart has no purchase in the hole of my chest.

Underneath the cards' laminate the two of us are falling, in flames.

We are burning and we are falling and we are stuck.

The Thief

While you were sleeping
I took: a page from every
one of your books
your full stops
all the green letters
from your name

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Here's one from the backlog: I finished Leni Zumas's Wolf Bells a week or so ago. There's a lot I liked in this story about communities of care & failures of care, but it all felt a little unfinished. Not that resolutions must be tidy, but it felt like the ideas got left on the table in a jumble. 📚💙

A screenshot of the Libby app showing the completed audiobook of Wolf Bells. The cover illustration is of a sprawling Victorian house with red, yellow and green lights shining out of a window like a spotlight.

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

I really enjoyed Katherine Arden's The Unicorn Hunters, a historical fantasy centered on Anne of Brittany and Breton faeries and a whiff of Arthurian legend. Anne, in Arden's hands, is a resourceful young woman desperately fighting for her land's sovereignty & some sovereignty of self, too. 📚💙

A dark wicker patio table with a tablet showing the cover of The Unicorn Hunters, next to a large stainless steel Dodgers travel cup.

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

I have a backlog of finished books to post but today I finished Zakes Mda's The Heart of Redness. It's a sort of magical realist fable about South Africa & how to chart a path forward out of the suffering of the past. ✒️📚💙

A copy of The Heart of Redness. The cover shows two faces superimposed on each other, one a stylized folk art rendering like a mask, and the other a detailed realistic painting.

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

Made it home for porch and baseball time. The baseball was...okay. (That was some weird base running, lads, luckily it all worked out in the end.) The Mexican mule was delicious.

A tablet showing Dodger player Freddie Freeman, next to a copy of the book A Drop of Corruption and a person's hand holding a Moscow mule copper cup.

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

In the interest of Doing Things, went to the botanical garden for their Fourth Friday after hours time, so I had a little picnic in the evergreen garden & went on the hydrangea tour. The flowers were very good.

A view from a gazebo of an open green space bordered by all kinds of evergreens and conifers. It's a beautiful sunny afternoon.

An oak leaf hydrangea with deep pink flowers.

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Pretty cluster of soapwort along the trail today.

Cluster of dainty little five petaled pinkish white flowers next to a fence post

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

There was a power outage while I was gone, and my bedroom air purifier must have automatically turned on when power was restored because it was running when I got home. And given that Detroit looked like this when I landed, I am not mad about the purifier running a bit extra.

A view of the Detroit air traffic control tower through a profoundly smoky haze. The sky looks cloudy but it is probably all smoke.

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Waiting for a flight and the gate agent put on a rock/paper/scissors tournament, with the winner getting s voucher and the rest of the top 4 getting a candy bar and swag bag. Somehow I made it to the final?? I lost, but the candy bar and bag clip were definitely worth the 10 minutes of my time.

A blue polyester bag and some loot, including a Southwest branded water bottle and bag clip and luggage tags, a mini hand sanitizer, a king size Twix, a miji pack of Oreos.

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

For my fellow Shel Silverstein kids out there: I found it.

A sign on a metal railing at a curb which says "SIDEWALK ENDS". There is indeed no sidewalk past that point.

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

First thing finished: A. D. Sui's Iron Garden Sutra. A scifi novel in which a monk (Buddhist-flavored) comes aboard a long-lost ship to lay the dead to rest. The academics already there start dying, but who is killing them, etc. Fun, though definitely could see where it was going throughout. 🪐📚💙

A screenshot of the cover of Iron Garden Sutra. The cover yellow, the title and author in white. The illustration is circles orbiting around a stylized spaceship. Below is a skull in a black hat with red vines growing around it.

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

It's July, I'm in California (for a bit longer anyway), and still reading books. Here are some of my beloved California poppies and also what I've been reading. 📚💙

A field with golden-orange California poppies blooming throughout.

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

This bitch went to a Dodgers game on her birthday (several days ago) and they won and it was pretty great.

A baseball diamond, seen from upper level seats just left of home plate,.on a beautiful summer evening.

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

The Remembered Soldier, by Anjet Daanje, is my final book for June, probably. A long novel about a Belgian soldier, post-WWI, who has lost his memory, & the wife who claims him, but may not really be his wife. Strange & sad & intense even though the action is mundane life. ✒️📚💙

A tablet showing the cover of The Remembered Soldier. The cover is green, and two hands are touching. One hand is a realistic photograph, and the other is a silhouette that is filled in by an image of a WWI soldier holding an old fashioned camera.

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

I finished Yume Kitasei's The Stardust Grail a couple days ago. I love a heist, and this is a sci-fi heist, which Kitasei uses to suggest/consider issues of colonialism etc but with a degree of removal from our own context, as good SF can. Stronger, I think, than her debut Deep Sky. 🪐📚💙

A tablet propped up and showing the cover of The Stardust Grail, which has a reddish nebula cloud and some blue tentacles visible in a gap.

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E. A. Fredericks @efredericks.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

I also finished listening to Kate Riley's Ruth, which follows the life of a woman in an Anabaptist community in America. It's a quiet novel reflecting on the tension between the desire for community vs individual happiness, & never really privileges one or the other. ✒️📚💙

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