![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sorcyressSpeaking of books, it's been a month or something, here we go.
Finished Reading Recently:
I finished Westerfield's Pretties right after my most recent post1. It was indeed...fine. I've been assured the last book in the quartet is best, and I'll probably get there eventually? The world building remains fairly interesting, but it all plays a bit simplistic and man, the parts where we are dealing with insipid-on-purpose teenagers are so grating. AND THE LOVE TRIANGLE BULLSHIT jegus shit that was not my favourite. But it is gripping candy, and I did just shoot through it in only a couple days.
Speaking of a couple days, I got the last two Thursday Murder Club books by Richard Osman (#3: The Bullet that Missed and #4: The Last Devil to Die) and read them in about a day each and loved them entirely to death. Partway through the fourth, I was at bells and mentioning to Danielle that it had suddenly pivoted from cozy-murder-mystery to punching one in the gut with some feels, at which point she asked me how far I'd gotten and then said "oh. Uh. Yeah." in a very unconvincing way. It turns out that my feels had merely been punched, and by the end of the book, they were rather on the ground, pummelled mercilessly. I haven't felt so good crying at a book in ages, it was delicious but _man_ does it hit hard in ways that are absolutely foreshadowed from book one. I'm really looking forward to more as they come out.
I had a seven-day-loan on Casey McQuinston's The Pairing because it was new, and so part of why I tore through the murder mystery was because I let Ezri read my library copy first over the weekend. This was a romance recommended to me by SamSam, and it was quite neat reading something that both they and Ezri had read so recently before me, because I could talk about things in quite a timely manner. I found the story absolutely darling, extremely refreshing, enjoyably pornographic and Queer As Shit. I like Theo more than Kit, obviously, and there is definitely some amount of "yeah, forget the unrealistic true love everlasting shit, I would settle for the unrealistic money and being able to afford my feckless life the way I want it" stuff (handwaved by family fortunes). Not worse than your average Hallmark movie with the busy newspaper intern and her fabulous NYC apartment with views of the skyline and three bedrooms, but a little "these people live lives that I do not". It did make me think fondly of my baby sister Alys, which is maybe a weird person to think fondly of, but in my defense, it was the picturesque descriptions of Italy, and not the really hot sex.
Then Sam was reading By the Sword which is my favourite Mercedes Lackey book, and if you want hell-anxiety, let someone you love read one of the books that shaped you and try to be normal about "but it's okay if you don't like it". They didn't hate it, at least, and obviously I started reading along (and quickly shot ahead and finished before them, because it had been like fourteen months since I had last read it, I mean come _on_.) It was a lot of fun to figure out how much lore to actually drop in response to some of their questions (and they went on to read The Silver Gryphon which involved more "I am not going to completely spoil everything by loredumping" but not a reread because I did that in August.)
I recently learned that SamSam had never read Louis Sacher's Holes, which I genuinely consider to be one of the best books ever written, and so with them coming to visit for a whopping four and a half days, I was immediate in my threat of "so I'll read you the entire thing". Which I managed in like, three, which is probably not great for my voice but was a *lot* of fun. There's some repetition and turns of phrase that I'd never properly noticed before reading it outloud, and Sam absolutely enjoyed it. Plus we wound up looking it up, and I got to be mildly smug that ~my~ deeply adored childhood book actually won the 1999 Newberry Medal, while theirs merely won an Honor that year. (summation: '98 was a great year in children's literature).
And speaking of Richard Peck, I very duitifully am *not* reading any of A Long Way From Chicago when I saw it on Karen's shelf here at Thanksgiving2, but it didn't at all feel like cheating to take a different Peck book off the shelf, especially not when it sounded as delightful as the back of Here Lies the Librarian. So that's what I read today, plowed through in between taters and pie and socializing, and I found it _extremely_ good. It helps that it is an ideal predecessor to my favourite-ever LARP character, Greasegun Gamelli, brash heroine of Bottlerocket. Racecars and gender feels and _jegus fuck_ this is a book about lesbians regardless of whether anyone actually says the l word and that might be one of my favourite genres (looking at you Dorothy Sayers.)
Currently Reading
Sometime in mid-October, Austin and I determined that it had been like a year since I had last read him any of The Pushcart War by Jean Merrill, and so we started over. A week ago Monday, I went over to his place and sat on the counter and read like twenty chapters (they are short) while he cooked and cleaned and did some work around the house, and it was _perfect_. We're making quite good progress, and hopefully I will manage to read more of it to him soon! I'd like to actually finish it, because it is one of the greats of children's literature and really feels essential to the NUMTOT experience.
I picked up Cat Valente's Space Opera on November 7th, and to be fair, it has been kindof a whallop of a three weeks, but man, I think I just need to acknowledge that I find her stuff pretty difficult to read or get caught by, because this is such slow going. Which is a shame twice, because I like her ideas something fierce in the first place and in this specific case, this is so *very* a spiritual successor to The Hitchhiker's Guide that I feel Adams himself would put a stamp of approval on it. I'm almost done! We're in the Grand Finale or so, and just need to determine if we'll have the Happily Ever After the crowd is cheering for.
And as alluded in the footnote, and maybe occasionally in entries past, Sam is reading me A Long Way From Chicago, a chapter at a time, as we manage to be in the same place for a bit. It was extra charming that when we started at Pinewoods, they just had an ebook version, but now they make a point of packing the actual paper copy into their bag when they visit. We've finished the fourth chapter, which means I now know what's on with the cover illustration.
I'm sure I've mentioned at some point that I'm reading To Shape A Dragon's Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose? I'm a bit stalled out, because it's _depressing_ and _hard_ and makes me go :<, but I do rather need to finish it because it belongs to my coworker who is retiring at the end of the semester. I may try and hang on to it through Arisia to get it signed, but I really don't want to accidentally keep her book forever, after she was so nice to share it with me.
Reading in the Future:
After finishing the two things with bookmarks in (Space Opera, Dragon's Breath) I ought to finish the other library books I brought with me to VT: Barrayar (the library did come through!), Extras, Uprooted, and the first Orphan's Tales (by Bujould, Westerfield, Novik, and Valente respectively). Plus Bury Your Gays (Chuck Tingle) came through on my ereader and given how long I had to wait in the queue for *that* I had _better_ read it before it expires!
But then Karen's excellent and thorough YA/JFic library produced the whole Elizabeth Enright Melendy series, which I don't need to read here because I do own them...and Gone-Away Lake and its sequel, which I do _not_. So that's sitting on my nightstand and I'm hoping it gives the same good feelings as the Melendys do. (and if it doesn't, I'll go home and reread Spiderweb for Two and feel rather jolly about it all anyways!)
Books are so good.
~Sor
MOOP!
1: Or hit the medialog tag, it's one of the only things I'm consistent about tagging
2: It's nice to save it and get it a chapter at a time from Sam! We're halfway through, they managed two chapters for me while they were visiting most recent!
Finished Reading Recently:
I finished Westerfield's Pretties right after my most recent post1. It was indeed...fine. I've been assured the last book in the quartet is best, and I'll probably get there eventually? The world building remains fairly interesting, but it all plays a bit simplistic and man, the parts where we are dealing with insipid-on-purpose teenagers are so grating. AND THE LOVE TRIANGLE BULLSHIT jegus shit that was not my favourite. But it is gripping candy, and I did just shoot through it in only a couple days.
Speaking of a couple days, I got the last two Thursday Murder Club books by Richard Osman (#3: The Bullet that Missed and #4: The Last Devil to Die) and read them in about a day each and loved them entirely to death. Partway through the fourth, I was at bells and mentioning to Danielle that it had suddenly pivoted from cozy-murder-mystery to punching one in the gut with some feels, at which point she asked me how far I'd gotten and then said "oh. Uh. Yeah." in a very unconvincing way. It turns out that my feels had merely been punched, and by the end of the book, they were rather on the ground, pummelled mercilessly. I haven't felt so good crying at a book in ages, it was delicious but _man_ does it hit hard in ways that are absolutely foreshadowed from book one. I'm really looking forward to more as they come out.
I had a seven-day-loan on Casey McQuinston's The Pairing because it was new, and so part of why I tore through the murder mystery was because I let Ezri read my library copy first over the weekend. This was a romance recommended to me by SamSam, and it was quite neat reading something that both they and Ezri had read so recently before me, because I could talk about things in quite a timely manner. I found the story absolutely darling, extremely refreshing, enjoyably pornographic and Queer As Shit. I like Theo more than Kit, obviously, and there is definitely some amount of "yeah, forget the unrealistic true love everlasting shit, I would settle for the unrealistic money and being able to afford my feckless life the way I want it" stuff (handwaved by family fortunes). Not worse than your average Hallmark movie with the busy newspaper intern and her fabulous NYC apartment with views of the skyline and three bedrooms, but a little "these people live lives that I do not". It did make me think fondly of my baby sister Alys, which is maybe a weird person to think fondly of, but in my defense, it was the picturesque descriptions of Italy, and not the really hot sex.
Then Sam was reading By the Sword which is my favourite Mercedes Lackey book, and if you want hell-anxiety, let someone you love read one of the books that shaped you and try to be normal about "but it's okay if you don't like it". They didn't hate it, at least, and obviously I started reading along (and quickly shot ahead and finished before them, because it had been like fourteen months since I had last read it, I mean come _on_.) It was a lot of fun to figure out how much lore to actually drop in response to some of their questions (and they went on to read The Silver Gryphon which involved more "I am not going to completely spoil everything by loredumping" but not a reread because I did that in August.)
I recently learned that SamSam had never read Louis Sacher's Holes, which I genuinely consider to be one of the best books ever written, and so with them coming to visit for a whopping four and a half days, I was immediate in my threat of "so I'll read you the entire thing". Which I managed in like, three, which is probably not great for my voice but was a *lot* of fun. There's some repetition and turns of phrase that I'd never properly noticed before reading it outloud, and Sam absolutely enjoyed it. Plus we wound up looking it up, and I got to be mildly smug that ~my~ deeply adored childhood book actually won the 1999 Newberry Medal, while theirs merely won an Honor that year. (summation: '98 was a great year in children's literature).
And speaking of Richard Peck, I very duitifully am *not* reading any of A Long Way From Chicago when I saw it on Karen's shelf here at Thanksgiving2, but it didn't at all feel like cheating to take a different Peck book off the shelf, especially not when it sounded as delightful as the back of Here Lies the Librarian. So that's what I read today, plowed through in between taters and pie and socializing, and I found it _extremely_ good. It helps that it is an ideal predecessor to my favourite-ever LARP character, Greasegun Gamelli, brash heroine of Bottlerocket. Racecars and gender feels and _jegus fuck_ this is a book about lesbians regardless of whether anyone actually says the l word and that might be one of my favourite genres (looking at you Dorothy Sayers.)
Currently Reading
Sometime in mid-October, Austin and I determined that it had been like a year since I had last read him any of The Pushcart War by Jean Merrill, and so we started over. A week ago Monday, I went over to his place and sat on the counter and read like twenty chapters (they are short) while he cooked and cleaned and did some work around the house, and it was _perfect_. We're making quite good progress, and hopefully I will manage to read more of it to him soon! I'd like to actually finish it, because it is one of the greats of children's literature and really feels essential to the NUMTOT experience.
I picked up Cat Valente's Space Opera on November 7th, and to be fair, it has been kindof a whallop of a three weeks, but man, I think I just need to acknowledge that I find her stuff pretty difficult to read or get caught by, because this is such slow going. Which is a shame twice, because I like her ideas something fierce in the first place and in this specific case, this is so *very* a spiritual successor to The Hitchhiker's Guide that I feel Adams himself would put a stamp of approval on it. I'm almost done! We're in the Grand Finale or so, and just need to determine if we'll have the Happily Ever After the crowd is cheering for.
And as alluded in the footnote, and maybe occasionally in entries past, Sam is reading me A Long Way From Chicago, a chapter at a time, as we manage to be in the same place for a bit. It was extra charming that when we started at Pinewoods, they just had an ebook version, but now they make a point of packing the actual paper copy into their bag when they visit. We've finished the fourth chapter, which means I now know what's on with the cover illustration.
I'm sure I've mentioned at some point that I'm reading To Shape A Dragon's Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose? I'm a bit stalled out, because it's _depressing_ and _hard_ and makes me go :<, but I do rather need to finish it because it belongs to my coworker who is retiring at the end of the semester. I may try and hang on to it through Arisia to get it signed, but I really don't want to accidentally keep her book forever, after she was so nice to share it with me.
Reading in the Future:
After finishing the two things with bookmarks in (Space Opera, Dragon's Breath) I ought to finish the other library books I brought with me to VT: Barrayar (the library did come through!), Extras, Uprooted, and the first Orphan's Tales (by Bujould, Westerfield, Novik, and Valente respectively). Plus Bury Your Gays (Chuck Tingle) came through on my ereader and given how long I had to wait in the queue for *that* I had _better_ read it before it expires!
But then Karen's excellent and thorough YA/JFic library produced the whole Elizabeth Enright Melendy series, which I don't need to read here because I do own them...and Gone-Away Lake and its sequel, which I do _not_. So that's sitting on my nightstand and I'm hoping it gives the same good feelings as the Melendys do. (and if it doesn't, I'll go home and reread Spiderweb for Two and feel rather jolly about it all anyways!)
Books are so good.
~Sor
MOOP!
1: Or hit the medialog tag, it's one of the only things I'm consistent about tagging
2: It's nice to save it and get it a chapter at a time from Sam! We're halfway through, they managed two chapters for me while they were visiting most recent!