Not a lot of reading generally in August. It was a very busy month, with two weeks in the UK with Rainstorm, including attending IneffableCon. Then there was a very sad goodbye, returning to Texas (😭), adjusting with jet lag and illness and all the rest. Blogging completely fell by the wayside, as did writing, reading, and anything other than the most immediate of things. Anyway, here are the two fics I read this month.

First: at the airport terminal by bearwonder. This short little fic is really cute. Speed-run relationship – a bit intense in terms of too much too quick, but I didn’t mind the suspension of disbelief too much.

Second: Social organization and adaptability in Xenoerpeton anthropoides: transference of social bonding habits and mate selection by Liquid_Lyrium. Heh – yes, that’s the full title. I loved this one. It’s absolutely nothing that I thought I would love, or that I thought I would ever read, and yet, I fell in love with it. The aziracrow duo is presented as a researcher (Az) and a merlotl (mer-axolotl) (Crowley) who become bonded when Az falls through a sinkhole and is trapped in a cave system for several weeks, getting progressively weaker as his supplies run out. This goes into a lot of details about zoology, ethics, tandem evolution, metamorphosis, intelligence, human-centric research, psychology, and moral dilemmas. Again, not something I ever thought I’d end up reading, but honestly this is the sort of book that could easily be dissected in a college course. It’s so well-researched and carefully written. Def my favorite of the month and high up on my list of faves for the year.