Hungry Hungry Wyrm's Book Club: August's Discussion and September's Theme

August's Gathering: Beneath the Sturgeon Moon

Welcome back, friends.

Last night, the Sturgeon Moon rose over The Bookwyrm. And this month, the moon decided a regular appearance simply wasn't dramatic enough. We got an eclipse.

I wish I could tell you that I captured some magnificent photographs of it, the sort with every crater crisply visible and the shadow creeping beautifully across the moon.

I did not.

My silly little phone looked at one of the more spectacular celestial events of the year and essentially said, Best I can do is glowing blob. So you'll have to take my word for it: it was incredible.

It was also the middle of the night, which meant standing outside surrounded by Indiana cornfields while my brain helpfully reminded me that I have seen Signs. No aliens appeared between the rows. That I saw.

But watching the moon slowly disappear into shadow and emerge again was worth braving whatever extraterrestrial visitors may or may not have been clicking and lurking in the corn.

And it seems like an especially fitting moon for this month's books, because August's reading ended up being filled with people wrestling with identity, transformation, belonging, and what happens when the world doesn't quite have a place for who you are becoming.

But before we wander any farther...

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A Gentle Book Club Reminder

This is a book club, after all, and eventually we have to actually talk about the books.

That means there may be spoilers ahead for Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Córdova and the Wolves of No World duology, Lobizona and Cazadora, by Romina Garber.

Proceed accordingly, brave reader.

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August's Reading: Hispanic Authors

This month, I borrowed my theme from my friends and their Library & Libations book club, whose August challenge was to read books by Hispanic authors.

Naturally, I immediately went looking for fantasy at my local library, as I remain firmly planted there.

And somehow, between our last gathering and this one, I managed to finish four books, including The Page Turner, which I genuinely wasn't sure I was going to make it through! Though, since The Page Turner wasn't technically part of this month's theme, I'll leave that particular bookwyrm trail unexplored here. If anyone wants to hear my thoughts on it, let me know. Maybe it deserves a little Facebook post of its own.

That leaves three books for our August discussion:

Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Córdova

Lobizona by Romina Garber

Cazadora by Romina Garber

A few of the other Library & Libations readers wandered in completely different directions. Sun of Blood and Ruin by Mariely Lares made an appearance, and two people somehow chose very different books by Isabel Allende, which is its own testament to the range an author can have.

My horrible memory has, unfortunately, eaten the titles. Maybe they'll comment with their reads and thoughts if they pop in the conversation!

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Labyrinth Lost

by Zoraida Córdova

Zoraida Córdova draws from Latin American traditions and her Ecuadorian heritage in Labyrinth Lost, and one of the things I appreciated most was that Alex's cultural identity isn't simply decoration around an otherwise interchangeable fantasy story. It shapes the magic. It shapes her family. It shapes the expectations placed upon her. And ultimately, it shapes the conflict itself.

There were several ideas here that fit beautifully with the Library & Libations theme, but one of the strongest for me was family as both power and pressure. Alex comes from a matriarchal magical tradition. There is strength in that inheritance, but there is also expectation. She isn't simply deciding what kind of witch she wants to be. She is wrestling with what she owes the people who came before her and whether accepting an inheritance means accepting everything that comes with it.

That left me thinking about a question that extends well beyond fantasy: When does tradition give us roots, and when does it begin limiting who we are allowed to become?

There is also something refreshing about seeing matriarchy and female inheritance occupy the center of a fantasy world when so many of the stories we've inherited have historically placed power elsewhere.

And then there is Alex herself. Much of the story revolves around rejecting an essential part of herself without truly understanding what that rejection might cost. By the time she understands the consequences, it seems far too late to simply take everything back. It's a fantasy problem involving magic, certainly. But it's also an extremely human one.

How much of ourselves do we reject because we genuinely don't want it, and how much do we reject because we are frightened of what accepting it might mean?

One Thought I Couldn't Quite Shake

There were moments when I felt the cultural themes were being emphasized very deliberately rather than simply emerging from the story. But the more I thought about that feeling, the more interesting the question became.

How much do we expect authors from underrepresented cultures to explain their culture to us?

We often expect those authors to represent their heritage, teach us about it, explain traditions, explore identity, address discrimination, and somehow carry the weight of cultural representation while also simply...telling a good story.

Maybe sometimes cultural identity feels deliberately emphasized because readers have trained authors to believe it has to be.

And perhaps part of reading more widely is learning to let a story belong to its author before asking it to explain itself to us.

One line in particular stayed with me:

"'Not all monsters look monstrous... Sometimes they're perfectly normal humans. Sometimes they're so beautiful, you would never suspect.'"

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Lobizona & Cazadora

by Romina Garber

If Labyrinth Lost left me thinking about cultural inheritance and identity, Romina Garber's Wolves of No World duology grabbed those questions and ran straight into the woods with them.

Garber weaves Argentinian folklore and mythology together with the contemporary immigrant experience in the United States, and once again, culture isn't window dressing. It's built directly into the magic system, politics, language, and central conflict of the books.

At the center is Manu, whose very existence breaks the rules. She is an undocumented immigrant in the human world. And in the magical world, she discovers that she is something else forbidden entirely: a hybrid born of a werewolf and a human.

The parallel isn't exactly subtle. But I don't think it is supposed to be.

These books are deeply rooted in what happens when society has created categories for everyone...

…and then someone appears who doesn't fit any of them.

Who Gets to Name Us?

One of my favorite threads running through Lobizona and Cazadora was their fascination with language. Garber uses Spanish throughout the books in several different ways. Sometimes a translation is worked naturally into the surrounding writing. Sometimes it is given directly. And sometimes the reader is simply trusted to understand through context.

Not understanding every word immediately didn't remove me from the story. It occasionally made me experience, in the smallest possible way, what it means to navigate a world where the language around you isn't always designed for you.

But language becomes important on a much larger level, too. The magical society Manu discovers is intensely categorized. People are defined by sex, magical ability, role, law, and tradition.

There are words for what everyone is supposed to be. Until there aren't.

What happens when a person exists for whom your society has no vocabulary? Do you change the language? Change the rules? Or decide that the person must be wrong?

That question stretches far beyond the magical world Garber created. We like categories because they make the world easier to understand. But when our categories fail, sometimes our first instinct isn't to question the box. It's to question the person standing outside it.

And fear often rushes into whatever space understanding leaves empty.

Fantasy With Dirt Under Its Fingernails

I also appreciated that Garber wasn't afraid to write her female characters as people who actually inhabit female bodies. Periods happen. Cramps happen. Hygiene products are necessary.

These aren't glamorous details, and fantasy has historically been very good at pretending they simply cease to exist once somebody picks up a sword or discovers magical powers. Apparently menstruation respects neither magical destinies nor dramatic pacing. Who knew?

But those small details helped ground a story tackling some very large ideas. Immigration. Equality. Gender expectations. Tradition. Language. Law. Belonging.

And perhaps most importantly:

What happens when the rules themselves are the problem?

One of the lines I marked captures that beautifully: "Beliefs are harder to change than laws." Changing a law can happen on paper. Changing the assumptions that created it is another matter entirely.

A few more lines followed me out of these books:

"'You can't let others' closed mindedness impact your mindset. That's the quickest path to failure. The only thing you can control is yourself.'"

"'Go forth and shatter every convention.'"

"'If we don't stand for everyone's rights, we don't stand for any.'"

And one I especially loved:

"'It's easy to long for the life you didn't live... It can never disappoint you.'"

But perhaps the most fitting line for everything these books left me thinking about was this:

“We are the narratives we tell ourselves. But do we shape language, or does language shape us? Do we define words, or do words define us?”

I'm still chewing on that one.

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Looking Back at August

I'm glad I borrowed Library & Libations' theme this month. These three books gave me fantasy worlds filled with witches, brujas, werewolves, magical realms, ancient traditions, and impossible creatures.

But underneath all of that magic were remarkably grounded questions: Who am I? Where do I belong? What do I owe my family and my culture? Which traditions deserve to be preserved, and which deserve to be challenged? Who creates the categories we use to understand one another? And what happens when a human being refuses to fit neatly inside one?

That's one of the reasons I keep finding my way back to fantasy.

Sometimes moving a real-world question into an impossible world lets us look at it from an angle we couldn't see before.

So thank you, Library & Libations, for letting this wyrm wander into your August theme.

What did you read this month? It doesn't have to fit our theme. It doesn't have to be fantasy. It doesn't even have to have been particularly good. Tell me what you've been reading. What did you love? What disappointed you? What are you still thinking about?

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Looking Ahead: September's Harvest Moon

Next month, we're gathering beneath the Harvest Moon. Our September theme is: Harvest & Abundance.

And you can interpret that however you'd like. Harvest can mean fields heavy with food before winter. But it can also mean finally seeing the results of years of work. Abundance can mean wealth and plenty, or family, friendship, knowledge, love, community, creativity, survival, or simply realizing that enough doesn't always mean more.

Your book might celebrate abundance. It might question it. It might explore what happens when abundance becomes excess. Or perhaps it takes place during an actual harvest and you're here purely for pumpkins and excellent autumnal vibes.

All are welcome beneath this moon.

Need Help Choosing?

Ask yourself:

What does it mean to reap what we sow? Look for stories about consequences, long efforts finally bearing fruit, legacies, revenge, redemption, or choices coming home to roost.

What does “enough” mean? Try a story about wealth, poverty, simplicity, greed, gratitude, contentment, or the pursuit of more.

What do we gather and preserve? Consider stories about food, traditions, memories, knowledge, family histories, seeds, communities, or preparing for difficult times.

What grows when we tend it? Look for books about relationships, gardens, communities, businesses, families, skills, healing, or rebuilding.

What must be released after the harvest? Try a story about endings, changing seasons, aging, grief, transformation, or letting go.

Who gets a place at the table? Choose something about hospitality, food, community, inequality, generosity, found family, or belonging.

Or do you simply want September? Pick something filled with orchards, farms, harvest festivals, kitchens, golden fields, changing leaves, crisp evenings, or the first unmistakable whisper of autumn.

There really isn't a wrong answer.

A Few Paths Into the Harvest

If you're looking for somewhere to begin, here are books from several corners of the shelves that could fit our theme:

Cozy Fantasy | Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree Abundance through community rather than possessions, and a lovely story about planting something new and watching it grow.

Fantasy | The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow Inheritance, sisterhood, knowledge passed between generations, and reclaiming what others tried to take away.

Magical Realism | Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen Food, gardens, family inheritance, belonging, and the strange things that grow when we finally put down roots.

Classic | The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck Land, harvest, prosperity, scarcity, ambition, and the complicated relationship between having enough and wanting more.

Historical Fiction | The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah A harsher interpretation of the theme: failed harvests, scarcity, survival, migration, and what remains when abundance disappears.

Science Fiction | A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers A quieter exploration of enoughness, purpose, work, rest, and whether productivity should determine the value of a life.

Memoir / Nature | Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer Reciprocity, gratitude, the natural world, Indigenous knowledge, and the difference between taking from the earth and participating in a relationship with it.

Food Writing | Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver A year spent eating locally and seasonally, making this perhaps the most literal journey into harvest on the list.

Children's Classic | The Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder Harvesting, preserving, preparing for winter, seasonal rhythms, family, and the abundance found in making use of what you have.

Middle Grade | The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street by Karina Yan Glaser A different sort of abundance: home, neighbors, family, community, and the richness created by people who care for one another.

And these are only starting points.

Maybe your Harvest Moon book will be about a farmer bringing in crops. Maybe it will be about someone finally achieving a lifelong dream. Maybe it will be about greed. Maybe it will be about famine. Maybe it will be about a family gathered around an impossibly crowded dinner table.

Choose the kind of abundance you want to explore.

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The Moonlit Question

Before we wander off beneath another moon, we have one last bit of unfinished business.

Last month's Moonlit Question was:

If you could trust one fictional character to recommend your next book...who would you choose?

My answer?

Sarah Dove from The Book Charmer. For seemingly obvious reasons.

When someone's particular brand of magic involves books quite literally telling her who needs to read them, it feels foolish not to take advantage. Why gamble on an algorithm when I could simply walk into Dove Pond, ask Sarah what I should read next, and trust that the book itself has apparently already discussed the matter with her?

I'd probably also have several follow-up questions about what exactly the book knows about me, but we'll cross that slightly unsettling bridge when we get there.

This Month's Moonlit Question is:

Have you ever finished a book and wished there were just one more secret chapter? What book would it be, and why?

Maybe you desperately need to know what happened after the final page. Maybe there's a character who deserved a little more time. Maybe the ending was perfect, but you weren't ready to leave yet. Or maybe there is one unanswered question that has been living rent-free in your brain for years and you would very much like the author to explain themselves.

And, more importantly...

What would you want that secret chapter to reveal?

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Until the Harvest Moon...

Our next moonlit gathering will be September 27, the day after the Harvest Moon.

Between now and then, find something to read. Something that grows. Something that ripens. Something that asks what enough really means.

And when the moon rises again, we'll gather here and see what everyone brought back from the harvest.

Until then, keep reading, keep wandering, and keep an eye on the cornfields. Just in case.

The tea is steeping, and the book hoard awaits.

The Wyrm