Bookmarked 2026 Week 22: Cozy Spaces, Summer Reading Challenges, AI and a Weekly Reading Recap

How was your week? What are you reading? Here’s a look at what I read last week and 10 links I bookmarked this week.

What I Read

I’m still working my way through 15 Award Award Nominated Novellas in 2026 and finished 3 more this week – Psychopomp & Circumstance, Eden Royce, The Summer War, Naomi Novik and Making History, K.J. Parker.

Psychopomp & Circumstance is described as “Southern gothic historical fantasy” and it was such a delight to read. I loved the main character, Phee, the daughter of the Reconstruction, born to a family of free Black business owners in New Charleston. Royce does such a wonderful job bringing both Phee’s personality and her complicated relationship with her overbearing mother to life.

After her aunt passes away, Phee finally gets the chance to prove herself by organizing the “pomp” – making the funeral arrangements and guiding the family through the traditions surrounding death. I loved where the story ultimately went and especially enjoyed watching Phee’s relationships develop throughout the novella.

The Summer War has a fairytale quality and it’s done so well. It reminded me a lot of Spinning Silver and Uprooted which are 2 of my favorite Naomi Novik books.

Celia accidentally curses her brother and becomes determined to reverse it, but the story expands far beyond that premise. There’s family drama, political tension, power struggles with the king and the fae, and plenty of twists that kept me completely invested. Even in novella form, it felt like a full, immersive fantasy story.

Making History was the only novella that didn’t fully work for me. It spends a lot of time in the technical details surrounding a group of scholars attempting to construct a “fake” ancient city to satisfy the political whims of the First Citizen.

Each scholar has their own specialty, and honestly, some of the minutiae nearly lost me. Still, it’s short, and once the story shifted into stranger territory in the second half, I found myself much more interested.

Outside of novellas, I also finished listening to the audiobook of The Diamond Eye, Kate Quinn. Quinn is the GOAT of historical fiction novels – no one can convince me otherwise! The Diamond Eye tells the story of Mila Pavlichenko, a real-life female Russian sniper during World War II, and Quinn captures every imaginable detail of Mila’s life before and during the war. We see her marriage, family life, and the ordinary world she inhabited before everything changed.

The result is a deeply detailed, emotional, and compelling historical fiction novel that was incredibly hard to stop listening to.

Currently Reading

This week I’m hoping to finish the remaining 9 Award Award Nominated Novellas. I’ve already started on Murder by Memory, Olivia Waite, a cozy sci-fi murder mystery set aboard an interstellar generation ship.

Welcome to the HMS Fairweather, Her Majesty’s most luxurious interstellar passenger liner! Room and board are included, new bodies are graciously provided upon request, and should you desire a rest between lifetimes, your mind shall be most carefully preserved in glass in the Library, shielded from every danger. Near the topmost deck of an interstellar generation ship, Dorothy Gentleman wakes up in a body that isn’t hers just as someone else is found murdered. As one of the ship’s detectives, Dorothy usually delights in unraveling the schemes on board the Fairweather, but when she finds that someone is not only killing bodies but purposefully deleting minds from the Library, she realizes something even more sinister is afoot.

BookMarked

⮕ Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, translated by Lin King, has won the International Booker Prize 2026. I also updated the 2026 Major Literary and Genre Fiction Book Awards Calendar if you’re tracking award winners and nominees this year.

⮕ Are you participating in the seasonal seasonal Spring reading challenge on Goodreads? I usually keep my annual reading goal fairly low and achievable, then treat the seasonal challenges as a fun bonus. I only completed 5/12 prompts for Winter, but I’m currently sitting at 7/12 for Spring.

⮕ Have you ever planned a solo date Book Crawl? This is where you move between multiple cozy locations throughout the day – like cafes, parks, bookstores, or wine bars – while reading a set amount at each stop. It’s basically a pub crawl, but for book lovers. Love this!

⮕ CEO James Daunt says Barnes & Noble will stock AI-generated books … “as long as it doesn’t masquerade or pretend to be something that it isn’t, and that it has an essential quality to it, and that the customer, the reader, wants it.” Personally, I struggle to imagine many readers actively seeking these books out, but maybe there’s a market for them. I’m definitely not the target audience.

⮕ Summer reading guide season has officially begun, even if I’m resisting the urge to dive fully into summer mode yet. I am, however, building my reading list, or what I will refer to as my Summer Curriculum, because I’m looking forward to participating in 20 Books of Summer #20BOS26, #SummerScares, Summer of Horror 2026 and Big Book Summer Challenge.

⮕ For new book releases this summer check out The Goodreads Guide to Summer Reading, which is really comprehensive, as is Amazon’s Most Anticipated Books of Summer 2026: part one and part two. Which of your favorite authors have new books coming out?

⮕ Sometimes I joke that my hobby is having hobbies. I love trying new things. Sometimes they stick, sometimes they don’t. Either I don’t have time, or I lose interest. These 20 ideas and habits for a multi-passionate life give ideas on how to manage when you love to do all the things! … “stop demanding equal attention from every interest. not every passion needs a season at the same time. some are daily, some are annual, some disappear for six months and return as though no time has passed.”

⮕ A beginner’s guide to using AI properly is useful as a baseline to learn a little bit about AI before diving in – or even if you’ve aleady invested. I think having a baseline understanding of how these systems work is useful. I’ve personally been experimenting with Claude recently — not deeply yet, mostly just exploring and learning what feels genuinely useful versus what feels like noise.

⮕ Seems like everyone is talking about “whimsy” these days … which is essentially the same as the other trend of romanticizing your life and embracing slower living. I’m not necessarily interested in turning life into an aesthetic, but I am interested in making life more joyful. Creating time and space for the things you genuinely love matters. Advice for Making Life More Whimsical & Joyful and My S-L-O-W Summer Manifesto has some good ideas. Also 10 habits that make adulthood feel less exhausting.

⮕ Are you on bookstagram or any other bookish social media? Does it sometimes seem too negative or too much drama? I’m not really on it much, but it’s interesting how it has been shaping new reades, and sometimes frustrating existing ones. Here’s an interesting look at When Disconnecting from Bookish Social Media Makes Reading More Fun.

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Have you started to think about summer yet? Do you have seasonal reads? —- That’s it from me. Cheers to the week ahead!