📚 Finished reading: Babel by R. F. Kuang. It has a simple world-building conceit, an ending that announces itself from the very title, and fully Hamiltonified (or is it Bridgertonified?) characters. And yet I couldn’t put the 500-plus pages away, because in an alternate but extremely adjacent universe I went off to study languages instead of medicine as I still eat up anything etymology-related.

Of course, had I known a month ago what I know now I would have taken up Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell for a re-read instead: it is a deeper, more thoughtful, and infinitely more interesting take on magic in 19th century England. No powerful messages on colonizers and colonized there, sadly, but those I regularly get elsewhere.