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M-m-m-monday medialog!
Feb. 10th, 2025 09:07 pmFinished Reading Recently
I did finish Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Mad Scientists (by Kate McKinnon) and while I mostly continued to find it Too Goofy (tm), I did work my way through to the end. I probably won't seek out sequels, but I can definitely see how if I was doing a readaloud to fourth graders it would be a huge success. Mostly it's just making me want to reread A Series of Unfortunate Events, as another version of "the weird orphans have adventures amongst mostly untrustworthy adults".
I was so excited to start Bujold's Ethan of Athos and by _god_ was it good. I am enjoying all of the Vorkosigan books really, but this one --which hardly has Miles at all-- is just exceptional. I am astonished that she could make me care so deeply and so fondly for what I noted in one of my words as "the planet made entirely of GROSS members". And fuck me sideways, that bit of commentary just casually dropped in the middle, where Ethan is being bewildered that any other planet can actually grow their population, it's just so _expensive_ to raise children, and then is flabbergasted to find out that everywhere else does not factor in the labour to do so, and just...somehow something that feels like it should be deeply unsubtle manages to slip across and just latch in your brain in the right kind of way. God this book was good. It was her third?! Incredible.
I also quite enjoyed her novella Labyrinth, which made up for no Miles in the previous by having lots and lots of Miles at kind of his best, with the screaming exception of ~slightly dubious consent stuff~. Like, 16/23 is not the squidgiest of age gaps, but boy, it all still felt...ickier...than I wanted it to. But the heist stuff was great, getting to see a quaddie was *excellent* (yes, I definitely want to slide sideways and get their book sometime soon), and I am always pleased with Miles when he is Causing Problems On Purpose.
While Sam was visiting, we *did* break open the fairy tales. From Grimm's Tales we read Thousandfurs which is one of my favourites, and The Clever Little Tailor which is one of my least favourites (seven at one blow you are _so smarmy_). Then we skipped sideways a bit into Gail Carson Levine's The Princess Test. Which like...reading a fairy tale together out loud is nice because the prose tends to traipse along in a very charming manner, but this one somewhat suffers from the main character being Exhausting. She somewhat can't help it, but Sam and I both agreed we'd've rather seen Prince Nicholas wed to the Crocodile Princess, who sounds a lot more fun.
As a counter to The Princess Test, I read them The Prince and the Pea, by Bruce Lansky. This is the story Lansky wrote for "Newfangled Fairy Tales" volume 1, which he also edited. [This is the part of the entry where I realized I was conflating Bruce Lansky and Bruce Coville into a single person, but also it *is* still confusing that Lansky doesn't have his own wikipedia page]. It's an excellent counter to other retellings, especially in that it at least pays lip service to "and then they were friends for a while and got to know each other better before eventually getting married".
Currently Reading
After finishing the above Vorkosigans, I picked up a small paperback copy of The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy. I bought this one at a used bookstore in Maryland, remembering that Elishka has a strict policy of picking up every used copy of the book they find. It is _delightful_. I am just racing along, and I've very nearly hit the tipping point --I certainly can't read any more tonight, while Austin is visiting, because I definitely won't want to stop reading once I start and that would be rude to him.
I'm also, I suppose, now in the middle of my collected brick of Grimm's Tales --which is not missing any pages, although it is in 2-3 pieces-- and the rest of the Newfangled Fairy Tales anthology. That latter one's quite short, I can probably knock it out quickly.
On my computer I have a number of SCP pages open, including the one Tuesday sent me that caused me to open the rest but I haven't gotten around to reading yet. I'm not sure how this counts as reading or how I should record it, but it is nice to have it to poke at sometimes.
Reading in the Future
Most directly, I have a copy of The Ministry of Time by Kailane Bradley, and The Wolf in the Whale by Jordanna Max Brodsky, both of which were highly recommended at SideQuest books and so I picked up from the public library. I know nothing about either, except that they're skiffy1 of some variety and the former has time travel. I do love me some time travel.
Sam and I were waxing nostalgic about our separate "children have nice little adventures with few adults around" books, and so they might try the Melendy books, and I'm going to crack open Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome, which I've heard various people talk nostalgically about for years and years. (I'm expecting it to be colonialist, but quite good otherwise).
In completely brainless literature, I'm wondering how many Babysitters' Club Books are available through the Minuteman system, and how easy it would be to just...get...a bunch. This might be a fun way to test the limits of how many books I can check out at the same time, although to be fair, I've already tested in the 15-20 range rather extensively, especially when I am nabbing comics.
Books are good and they make me happy!
~Sor
MOOP!
1: What, how do you pronounce "sci-fi"?
I did finish Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Mad Scientists (by Kate McKinnon) and while I mostly continued to find it Too Goofy (tm), I did work my way through to the end. I probably won't seek out sequels, but I can definitely see how if I was doing a readaloud to fourth graders it would be a huge success. Mostly it's just making me want to reread A Series of Unfortunate Events, as another version of "the weird orphans have adventures amongst mostly untrustworthy adults".
I was so excited to start Bujold's Ethan of Athos and by _god_ was it good. I am enjoying all of the Vorkosigan books really, but this one --which hardly has Miles at all-- is just exceptional. I am astonished that she could make me care so deeply and so fondly for what I noted in one of my words as "the planet made entirely of GROSS members". And fuck me sideways, that bit of commentary just casually dropped in the middle, where Ethan is being bewildered that any other planet can actually grow their population, it's just so _expensive_ to raise children, and then is flabbergasted to find out that everywhere else does not factor in the labour to do so, and just...somehow something that feels like it should be deeply unsubtle manages to slip across and just latch in your brain in the right kind of way. God this book was good. It was her third?! Incredible.
I also quite enjoyed her novella Labyrinth, which made up for no Miles in the previous by having lots and lots of Miles at kind of his best, with the screaming exception of ~slightly dubious consent stuff~. Like, 16/23 is not the squidgiest of age gaps, but boy, it all still felt...ickier...than I wanted it to. But the heist stuff was great, getting to see a quaddie was *excellent* (yes, I definitely want to slide sideways and get their book sometime soon), and I am always pleased with Miles when he is Causing Problems On Purpose.
While Sam was visiting, we *did* break open the fairy tales. From Grimm's Tales we read Thousandfurs which is one of my favourites, and The Clever Little Tailor which is one of my least favourites (seven at one blow you are _so smarmy_). Then we skipped sideways a bit into Gail Carson Levine's The Princess Test. Which like...reading a fairy tale together out loud is nice because the prose tends to traipse along in a very charming manner, but this one somewhat suffers from the main character being Exhausting. She somewhat can't help it, but Sam and I both agreed we'd've rather seen Prince Nicholas wed to the Crocodile Princess, who sounds a lot more fun.
As a counter to The Princess Test, I read them The Prince and the Pea, by Bruce Lansky. This is the story Lansky wrote for "Newfangled Fairy Tales" volume 1, which he also edited. [This is the part of the entry where I realized I was conflating Bruce Lansky and Bruce Coville into a single person, but also it *is* still confusing that Lansky doesn't have his own wikipedia page]. It's an excellent counter to other retellings, especially in that it at least pays lip service to "and then they were friends for a while and got to know each other better before eventually getting married".
Currently Reading
After finishing the above Vorkosigans, I picked up a small paperback copy of The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy. I bought this one at a used bookstore in Maryland, remembering that Elishka has a strict policy of picking up every used copy of the book they find. It is _delightful_. I am just racing along, and I've very nearly hit the tipping point --I certainly can't read any more tonight, while Austin is visiting, because I definitely won't want to stop reading once I start and that would be rude to him.
I'm also, I suppose, now in the middle of my collected brick of Grimm's Tales --which is not missing any pages, although it is in 2-3 pieces-- and the rest of the Newfangled Fairy Tales anthology. That latter one's quite short, I can probably knock it out quickly.
On my computer I have a number of SCP pages open, including the one Tuesday sent me that caused me to open the rest but I haven't gotten around to reading yet. I'm not sure how this counts as reading or how I should record it, but it is nice to have it to poke at sometimes.
Reading in the Future
Most directly, I have a copy of The Ministry of Time by Kailane Bradley, and The Wolf in the Whale by Jordanna Max Brodsky, both of which were highly recommended at SideQuest books and so I picked up from the public library. I know nothing about either, except that they're skiffy1 of some variety and the former has time travel. I do love me some time travel.
Sam and I were waxing nostalgic about our separate "children have nice little adventures with few adults around" books, and so they might try the Melendy books, and I'm going to crack open Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome, which I've heard various people talk nostalgically about for years and years. (I'm expecting it to be colonialist, but quite good otherwise).
In completely brainless literature, I'm wondering how many Babysitters' Club Books are available through the Minuteman system, and how easy it would be to just...get...a bunch. This might be a fun way to test the limits of how many books I can check out at the same time, although to be fair, I've already tested in the 15-20 range rather extensively, especially when I am nabbing comics.
Books are good and they make me happy!
~Sor
MOOP!
1: What, how do you pronounce "sci-fi"?