Monday Media!
Apr. 22nd, 2024 10:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sorcyressOkay so Monday Medialog! Let's do it!
(I have a spreadsheet now and it's gonna make this _so much easier_ and I'm psyched as hell about that!)
Finished Reading Recently:
When last we left our intrepid reader, they were two thirds through Network Effect, the fifth diary by Martha Wells. Did I finish reading it? YES I DID, BASICALLY IMMEDIATELY AFTER WRITING THAT POST FUCK FUCK FUCK SO GOOD!
Anyways, so Elishka says to me they says "also there is a thing a person I don't think you've met yet says later in the book (I forget chapter numbers), and I am very curious if you will react the same way I did to it". Dear reader, of course I did, because we are samebrain friends, and I quoted them exactly the quote they were thinking of because HOLY SHIT, THREE!!!! THREEEEE! I love SecUnit, I enjoyed and appreciated 2.0, but fuccckkkk, three! Yeah.
Anyways, I have two more and I am going to LITERALLY EAT THE BOOKS except they are from the library. This is probably my favourite thing I have read this year, and I don't think anything else comes close.
In California, I didn't have a ton of time to read, but I did manage to do three MG novels, mostly while riding the trains. The first of these was The First Rule of Punk, by Celia Perez, a book I found in the MinLib online catalog while searching for something completely different. I judged it by its cover, favourably, and enjoyed it! It's about a mexican-American tween obsessed with punk rock and figuring out her identity. Totally fun, and I am a complete sucker for any book that mentions Blondie favourably. (more on that shortly).
Next was Harriet the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh. This wasn't a nostalgia reread, it was me closing a gap from my childhood --no one ever actually got me to read this one as a kid. Which is good, I was already weird and sneaky as a child, I really _really_ did not need role models. Most shocking about this one (after how _solidly_ it holds up --like, this is a 60 year old book that feels like it's set in a faraway past-land that doesn't exist anymore, but also like...it's amazingly human and modern and familiar) is how much of the story has to do with The Noun And Verb Of Writing, and yes, yes that gets all-capitals because that is a thing with me. So that was cool as hell.
Filling in another gap was The Lightning Thief, by Rick Riordan. I've never read a Percy Jackson! I hear he's good shit! Honestly, the first one was a perfectly pleasing adventure story, but didn't exactly rock my world. I may be correct in my assessment of "I am too old for these books" --it's not that they're not good (and I'm definitely going to read at least a few more, to see how it all develops), it's just that...look, at age 11 you are going to read a book series that will forever define you and give you a world you dream of for the rest of your life. Mine is Valdemar. I don't have space in my heart to wish I were at camp Half-Blood, not when I've been waiting for nearly two and a half decades to be Chosen.
My last middle grade novel was what I read today, mostly on my long walk to the grocery store and other errands this afternoon. It was called Debbie Harry sings in French, by Meagan Brothers. Johnny is 16 (in 1998 when it's set, and yes, there is a payoff and it's *fantastic* and I sorta think the book could've ended right there and didn't really need one last chapter) and loves Blondie. BOY. THAT UH. FEELS FAMILIAR. The book is queer and intense and lovely and believes in dancing and joy and fuck, I loved this one. I wanna buy a copy for Alys, I think she'd also love it. (My only complaint is dang, I've been reading a fair chunk of books where the weirdo boy gets the hottie, and yeeeah. cool.)
Currently Reading
I am between books! Huzzah! But yeah, I still have bookmarks in all those things I keep saying I'm working on.
Reading in the Future
The only thing I've added recently is considering a reread of the Alice books by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, after a fleeting memory of the scene where Alice looks at her genitals in a hand mirror and my brain being like "what fucking children's book included that scene?!" until I remembered. I loved these books _so hard_ as a middle schooler, so I want to see if I'm still into them or if I find them kinda insipid.
(kinda insipid isn't necessarily a reason to not read them --I read the entire Georgia Nicholson series some years back, and I've loved me many a Wimpy Kid diary! But we'll see.)
Next though is more SecUnit, and maybe the first Modesty Blaise novel.
~Sor
MOOP!
(I have a spreadsheet now and it's gonna make this _so much easier_ and I'm psyched as hell about that!)
Finished Reading Recently:
When last we left our intrepid reader, they were two thirds through Network Effect, the fifth diary by Martha Wells. Did I finish reading it? YES I DID, BASICALLY IMMEDIATELY AFTER WRITING THAT POST FUCK FUCK FUCK SO GOOD!
Anyways, so Elishka says to me they says "also there is a thing a person I don't think you've met yet says later in the book (I forget chapter numbers), and I am very curious if you will react the same way I did to it". Dear reader, of course I did, because we are samebrain friends, and I quoted them exactly the quote they were thinking of because HOLY SHIT, THREE!!!! THREEEEE! I love SecUnit, I enjoyed and appreciated 2.0, but fuccckkkk, three! Yeah.
Anyways, I have two more and I am going to LITERALLY EAT THE BOOKS except they are from the library. This is probably my favourite thing I have read this year, and I don't think anything else comes close.
In California, I didn't have a ton of time to read, but I did manage to do three MG novels, mostly while riding the trains. The first of these was The First Rule of Punk, by Celia Perez, a book I found in the MinLib online catalog while searching for something completely different. I judged it by its cover, favourably, and enjoyed it! It's about a mexican-American tween obsessed with punk rock and figuring out her identity. Totally fun, and I am a complete sucker for any book that mentions Blondie favourably. (more on that shortly).
Next was Harriet the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh. This wasn't a nostalgia reread, it was me closing a gap from my childhood --no one ever actually got me to read this one as a kid. Which is good, I was already weird and sneaky as a child, I really _really_ did not need role models. Most shocking about this one (after how _solidly_ it holds up --like, this is a 60 year old book that feels like it's set in a faraway past-land that doesn't exist anymore, but also like...it's amazingly human and modern and familiar) is how much of the story has to do with The Noun And Verb Of Writing, and yes, yes that gets all-capitals because that is a thing with me. So that was cool as hell.
Filling in another gap was The Lightning Thief, by Rick Riordan. I've never read a Percy Jackson! I hear he's good shit! Honestly, the first one was a perfectly pleasing adventure story, but didn't exactly rock my world. I may be correct in my assessment of "I am too old for these books" --it's not that they're not good (and I'm definitely going to read at least a few more, to see how it all develops), it's just that...look, at age 11 you are going to read a book series that will forever define you and give you a world you dream of for the rest of your life. Mine is Valdemar. I don't have space in my heart to wish I were at camp Half-Blood, not when I've been waiting for nearly two and a half decades to be Chosen.
My last middle grade novel was what I read today, mostly on my long walk to the grocery store and other errands this afternoon. It was called Debbie Harry sings in French, by Meagan Brothers. Johnny is 16 (in 1998 when it's set, and yes, there is a payoff and it's *fantastic* and I sorta think the book could've ended right there and didn't really need one last chapter) and loves Blondie. BOY. THAT UH. FEELS FAMILIAR. The book is queer and intense and lovely and believes in dancing and joy and fuck, I loved this one. I wanna buy a copy for Alys, I think she'd also love it. (My only complaint is dang, I've been reading a fair chunk of books where the weirdo boy gets the hottie, and yeeeah. cool.)
Currently Reading
I am between books! Huzzah! But yeah, I still have bookmarks in all those things I keep saying I'm working on.
Reading in the Future
The only thing I've added recently is considering a reread of the Alice books by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, after a fleeting memory of the scene where Alice looks at her genitals in a hand mirror and my brain being like "what fucking children's book included that scene?!" until I remembered. I loved these books _so hard_ as a middle schooler, so I want to see if I'm still into them or if I find them kinda insipid.
(kinda insipid isn't necessarily a reason to not read them --I read the entire Georgia Nicholson series some years back, and I've loved me many a Wimpy Kid diary! But we'll see.)
Next though is more SecUnit, and maybe the first Modesty Blaise novel.
~Sor
MOOP!
no subject
on 2024-04-23 04:01 am (UTC)no subject
on 2024-04-24 01:59 pm (UTC)I'm increasingly looking forward to getting some of these, and the only reason I haven't already nabbed the first one is I'm on (self-imposed) library moritorium until I get my checkout list down to single digits.
~Sor
no subject
on 2024-04-23 02:19 pm (UTC)Strongly recommend reading System Collapse as soon as possible after, as it's not just a sequel. It reads like a coda to Network Effect, in the sense that if you don't remember what went on in Network Effect really well you may be a bit lost, and NE had A Lot of plot.
no subject
on 2024-04-23 06:33 pm (UTC)Have you read _The Ballad of Perilous Graves_? Keeping NoLo and New Orleans straight can be tricky, but it's pretty fun!
no subject
on 2024-04-24 12:40 pm (UTC)that...look, at age 11 you are going to read a book series that will forever define you and give you a world you dream of for the rest of your life
This struck me as startlingly wisely true but I think mine was Diane Duane's Young Wizards books.
no subject
on 2024-04-24 01:58 pm (UTC)I just...I have known enough former eleven year olds with a huge damn soft spot for something that they view as slightly cringey but will defend to the death. Would I recommend Lackey now? Like, maybe, with a bunch of content warnings and maybe therapy advice? And probably not to an 11 year old? Anyways, it seems like a thing.
(And Lackey is a lot less regretable than the amount I loved Harry Potter, fuck you Joanne. And as always "at least I never got into Xanth!")
~Sor
no subject
on 2024-04-24 02:46 pm (UTC)I think I was really into Lackey from about... 14-19? And it had a (mostly problematic) influence on how I thought about myself and how I thought about relationships, maybe not as bad as Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel books, which were more sort of 17-22, but it wasn't the same kind of identity-formative thing maybe because I'd already formed a bunch of identity by then. I had a friend who was into Harry Potter in high school, but for my age cohort that was decidedly "before it was cool", when you had to import the books special from the UK or something.
no subject
on 2024-04-24 03:46 pm (UTC)I only ever read the first Kushiel book, and yeah, I can see how that would absolutely Cause Problems if you're not really aware of how media can influence identity. (this is maybe part of why I am enjoying the Murderbot Diaries so much, because SecUnit actually feels (in some ways) like someone I'd *want* to imprint on, and also because I'm old enough to recognize some of the ways its really fucked up and I should avoid emulating it. To its credit, as the books go on it seems to spend more and more time realizing that as well.)
~Sor