Kristen Meston

@klpm.bsky.social

640 Followers 926 Following

Reader, baker, naturalist with a zoology degree. 90s music store employee. Parent of an autistic young adult. Former book blogger at WeBeReading. Lakers, Storm, Unrivaled 🏀. Seattle-ish. she/her Current read: Royal Gambit

The blue spine of a book being held by a white woman’s hand. The book is A Sudden Wild Magic by Diana Wynne Jones.
I love you, broken ladder.
A manmade agate stone tool, clear on the edges and rust red on the inside. Placed against a remote control for size.
An agate stone tool, clear on the edges and rust red in the middle.
THE PERILOUS LIFE OF JADE YEO by Zen Cho, a white book cover featuring a glamorous young Chinese woman in a red cocktail dress and black shoes, holding a pink cocktail.
A cursed piece of mail
A food packet that says, among other non-related things, Do not eat raw butter.
On the left, What We Are Seeking by Cameron Reed is blue fading to purple with an alien sort of magnolia flower on it in creams and yellows. On the right is And I Do Not Forgive You by Amber Sparks and is is yellow with women’s busts, faces obscured by flowers and red.
A fluffy junco baby with a black head and brown and white tummy and tail, sitting on a branch inside a rhododendron bush with pink flowers. It looks very annoyed.
A man hanging by his ankle from a hole in a ceiling, framed by an internal doorway.
Three book covers and an upside-down puzzle on a maple coffee table. The books are PLATFORM DECAY by Martha Wells with Murderbot on the cover, WHEN WE WERE REAL by Daryl Gregory (pinky-orange with clouds and cloud sheep scattered around), and THE NOH MASK MURDER by Akimitsu Takagi, teal and black with a devilish Noh mask.
A grey, meaty bird with a yellow and black beak and yellow feet. It sits on an orange bird feeder with a tray of seed in front of it and a blue roof above. The background is full of green trees and pink flowers.
A screenshot of the King County Library Libby app where I got to be lucky number 100 on the holds list for The Last Contract of Isako by Fonda Lee. The book cover is a woman with windblown black hair in a red swooshy coat, holding a sword and looking out at a snowy landscape.
A red-headed dinosaur (pileated woodpecker) on a black suet block cage, hanging from a black pole in front of a white-framed window and a green rhododendron.
A round black portable cd player and the cd case of the soundtrack to The Crow, a white album with a crow in shades of grey. They are on a beat-up maple coffee table.
A spotted towhee is a black bird with white spots behind its head, an orange tummy, and red eyes. This one is sitting in a bird feeder next to a green rhododendron bush and across from some evergreens. The sun is perched on its head, making it seem like a very special bird indeed.
A box containing a kit to build a book nook. The box is off-white and has delicate Japanese-style buildings sketched on it. It also shows the Kyoto Gion book nook which has a tiny town with streetlights, cherry blossoms, and ginger cats.
A Northern Flicker male who has everything: a grey body with a brownish cap, a rosy belly with black spots, red cheek patches, and an orange underside to his tail. He is sitting in a snowy rhododendron bush.
A brown Douglas squirrel eating black sunflower seeds in the snow.
A red-breasted nuthatch, sheltering from the snow in a green-leafed rhododendron. The bird is grey with black accents, a reddish orange tummy and a white head with a black Zorro mask. Its beak is a tiny little sword.
The cover of Carpe Jugulum is dark blue with a large white moon and a black silhouette of a coach and horses flying over it on a sparkly trail. The book is sitting on a multi-colored puzzle called Venetian Escape, which would sure be nice right about now.
A Northern Flicker, grey with a black collar and a fancy spotted tummy, on a black cage that houses a delicious (to them) suet block. Don’t look up what suet is. And don’t smell it up close. You will gag.
The cover of MISS WINTER IN THE LIBRARY WITH A KNIFE by Martin Edwards. The actual cover is red, with a vague blueprint drawing, a letter opener, and a pair of dice. This picture is black and white for more DRAMA.
A steaming cup of diner coffee in a dark brown ceramic mug on a scuffed, light brown table. There is a clear plastic glass of ice water on the left, a reddish booth seat behind, and a window in the very back. The end of a metal spoon snuck into the picture on the left.
Two black and white woodpeckers in a leafy rhododendron, the one in front has a red patch on the top of his head. They are waiting out the rain for their turns on a suet feeder. It is slightly blurry as it’s an iPhone photo taken through a window.
An image that says Historical Fiction Set in the 1990s and has a tacky 80s background.
A downy woodpecker, black and white with a red patch on the head, is perched on the side of a suet block in a black metal cage. The background has orangey maple leaves, reddish burning bush and a black driveway.
A DiĂĄ de Los Muertos ofrenda with a candle (pumpkin) for fire, mariposas (black) and banner for wind/air, rain behind the window for water, and a churro chocolate bar for earth (because the pan de muerto is still in progress). There are also fake marigold flowers and a stylized cat plush. In the center are three Jane Goodall books, My Life With the Chimpanzees, written early in her career, In the Shadow of Man (signed) from later, and a celebratory coffee table book Jane Goodall: 50 Years at Gombe. Also included is a Jane Goodall Lego set. All of the colors are bright and happy because she brought light to the world.
A chocolate chip cookie that scarily resembles Aughra from The Dark Crystal.
The album covers of Cyndi Lauper’s She’s So Unusual and Madonna’s self-titled debut, leaning against a white bookshelf. They both feature pictures of the singers.
A receipt showing purchase of The Shamshine Blind so that Paz Pardo and I can legally be internet friends. I also preordered Midnight Timetable by Bora Chung (translated by Anton Hur) which comes out next week and We Will Rise Again which comes out in December. All were bought on Bookshop.org and support a small, diverse indie bookshop!
A large black and blue bird at a small bird feeder with large evergreen trees and a huge green rhododendron in the background.
The sprayed edge of KATABASIS by R. F. Kuang has orange and red flames and flowing turquoise water and a badge in the center that says Hell is Other People. The book is sitting on a new puzzle from Thames and Hudson called The Story of Rome in 1000 Pieces but it’s really The Aeneid. It matches the book perfectly and features many mini-scenes.
A DVR recording with the description “The Marlow Murder Club on Masterpiece, season two, episode one. A princess steals the heart of American President Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War 2.”
The cover of Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz has a large bowl of noodles and some small robots, all above some San Francisco elements. It is bright teal and orange and purple and red and full of friendship (and noodles).
A blue and black Steller’s jay stands on a suet feeder, below a hummingbird feeder that is stuck to the window the photo was taken through. There is a curtain reflection on the left.
A grey circle with pink legs and feet, standing on an orange perch in front of a tray of seeds and grain. It is labeled Mourning Dove. 🐦
The cover of a book reads The Dead Come to Stay. It is a medium blue with neon green flowers and building accents. The two Lino prints are 1) a black octopus on blue and green overlapping rectangles and 2) a Mola mola colored in pink and orange gradient.
A flight tracker screen shot that shows a circular pattern for one flight. My house is directly on that circle path.
The cover of INFINITE ARCHIVE by Mur Lafferty is in fluorescent pink, yellow and turquoise and has a woman in white on the front and lots of cat silhouettes. LUMINOUS by Silvia Park has a multicolored tiger on it.
A hummingbird stops by the bird feeder to see what this finch is up to. It is blurry but looks like it is light grey with darker spots, a red throat patch, and a yellow, black, and white tail.
Two books with bookmarks tucked in. Top left is THE POTENCY OF UNGOVERNABLE IMPULSES by Malka Older which is purple and magenta and has a large planet, two silhouetted women, and a cityscape. The bookmark is a blue Sherlock Holmes felt number. The bottom right is THE INTERMEDIARIES: A WEIMAR STORY by Brandy Schillace, tan with fancy art deco designs and a small photograph. This is, of course, paired with a handmade cloth bookmark representing the trans flag.
Busy bees visiting a green hedge with white flowers. A small copper birdbath is on the right and a driveway and street are at the top in an overgrown yard.
A book page that says DAY ELEVEN with a picture of the moon behind it and then Madison, Wisconsin | The Fromagery. The rest is the text of the chapter that is cut off on the sides.
An overgrown green rhododendron with pink flowers and a tiny baby Anna’s hummingbird in the top right on a thin branch.
Bowie’s Bookshelf is a bright red-orange and has a picture of David Bowie reading with an open shirt and cigarette between his lips.
A brown cardboard mailer that is almost circular with a paperback-sized raised area in the center. The rectangle has a lovely crease down the center. The background is a smoke shop with an over-abundance of small neon signs in the windows.
The covers of two books by Tomihiko Morimi. The one on the left is TATAMI GALAXY, which is cream-colored and features a young woman with short black hair and a blue sailor dress who is looking into binoculars. There are also a couple of young men on the cover and tiny, colorful bears. The book on the right is THE TATAMI TIME MACHINE BLUES. It’s blue-green and has (possibly the same) young woman with a video camera to her eye this time.
A me-made giant Hostess Cupcake Cake, dark chocolate with a white marshmallow cream filling, chocolate ganache, and a white marshmallow cream icing swirl pattern on top. Recipe at King Arthur Baking if you need one too.
A blue rectangle with a white dog in the middle and a black, dog-shaped constellation, featuring Sirius outlined in green. Random symbols surround these two shapes.
The dust jacket for the book is on the left and features a black woman in profile. The book cover has the same color palette (turquoise and coral) but has a robot on it instead and the title RUSTED ROBOTS.
Two large moths, posterior to posterior. One is various shades of gray and the other has rosy accents.
A lime green cover featuring a pair of hands holding a black top hat and various currency. Coins and bills are scattered across the cover.
The Oxford edition of Man and Wife by Wilkie Collins. It has a painting of a man obviously pestering a woman (she is leaning far away from him and looks very sad) in the foreground and a man showing a paper to a woman in the background. Her body language also seems to show that she is not happy. There is a red wall in the background and one more group of people that might be gambling?
A list of mostly bad 90s songs. You don’t wanna know.
A screenshot from a weather station app that says “Humidity, 99 percent”.
The cover of The Shamshine Blind by Paz Pardo has a paint-by-numbers look, picturing a woman in front of the Golden Gate Bridge with a car passing by and a chalk outline on the ground by her feet. The words are each in the middle of a blast of color—blue, yellow, pink, and orange.
Portrait of a Murderer by Anne Meredith. A snowy village with a narrow dirt path in front. A small person is standing or kneeling in the middle.
A woman in her 70s, wearing a red outfit, sits on a wooden bench in front of a wood fence and holds a six month old boy. He is holding her sunglasses.
The beautiful orange 1970s cover of Betty Crocker’s Cookbook, featuring pictures of foods that might taste good but pretty much all look gross thanks to color and presentation.