Mostly Thanksgiving-break books
Dec. 6th, 2024 09:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sorcyressLet's do Wednesday Books, as always, not on a Wednesday because it's More Fun That Way!
Finished Reading Recently
I actually have a couple of clean-up notes, things that are on my booksheet but I don't think I ever talked about in medialog (or at least, I don't have the entries linked like I do for everything else).
In mid-August I read The Silver Gryphon by Mercedes Lackey, which was indeed my prompt to reread the other two books in its trilogy. I'm not sure why/how I missed it, except that that was an early-October medialog for things read over a month ago, and I'm only sorta organized. Anyways, it's still in my top-three Lackey books and I love it very dearly and that's about all I can say about it.
Also in mid/late August, an offhand mention from my favourite sexblogger had me pick up Nancy Friday's The Secret Garden which is a book from the 70s/80s about "female desire" or more specifically, "what women wank to". It is _fascinating_ as an artifact of it's time, it is _fascinating_ to see what conversations about feminism we're still having and what are new, it is _fascinating_ to see what fantasies were represented on the page and some semi-academic analysis of them. I continue to find sex really neat and even if I didn't agree or like all of this one, I thought it was a good read, albeit a little repetitive through the middle.
More recently, I did indeed finish reading Space Opera by Catherynne Valente, almost immediately after my last post. I think I am forced to admit that I find Valente's stuff very difficult to get into. I'm not sure what I'm bouncing off of --I love her plot concepts and as a long-time Hitchhiker's Fan, this one in particular just kept singing to my heart. But there was no period of time where I was into it and being all "gotta read gotta read gotta keep reading!", which I see in myself when consuming lots of other books. I have a few more of her things to try, but then I may consciously give up on her as an author.
The same day (Thanksgiving Thursday), I read all the way through Richard Peck's Here Lies the Librarian, which I nabbed off Karen's very excellent bookshelf of children's/YA/MG/JFic literature. This was partly to tease SamSam (there was also a copy of "Long Way From Chicago", but we're reading that _together_ damnit, so I couldn't cheat) but mostly because reading the back cover made me go !!!. It was excellent fun! Early 1900s female race car driver/mechanic FUCK YES. Extremely queer-coded librarians FUCK YES. Small town shenanigans and budding ~feminism~ fuuuuuck yes! It was a great choice.
Thanksgiving Friday, I slid into one of the many library books I'd brought with me to Vermont, Lois McMaster Bujould's Barrayar. And then basically spent the entire day reading it, with very brief interludes to have conversations or do a bit of grading. It's nice to return to childhood and slam through a weighty sci-fi novel in a day, it feels _right_. Anyways, the heist portions were *excellent*, of course, and there was slightly? less rape-specific trauma than the other two Vorkosigan books I've read. I think I rank it above Shards of Honor but below Warrior's Apprentice? Happy to have this series to dive through though! I extremely understand why it got the first Best Series Hugo.
Thanksgiving Saturday was a little less reading and a little more socializing, but I did slam through Elizabeth Enright's Gone Away Lake, which is less impressive because it's a much quicker read. I realized most of the way through that this book is really just the Loney M Setnick parody book "The Luckiest Children In The World", and that's okay. The Melendy books are the same way, all Enright's books tend to be fairly thin on plot and are instead stuffed full of jolly children going on happy little adventures in the woods and meeting keen adults who are interesting and interested in being friends. Honestly, I am all the way here for having "not much happen and it's all quite jolly", and wish there was more of that bleeding into the real world.
Currently Reading
Then I returned to the real world on Sunday (lots of driving, no reading) and as mentioned in other posts, got both busy and brainbad. But on Monday I finally cracked spine (metaphorically, it's an ebook) on Chuck Tingle's Bury Your Gays and I'm about halfway through. It is indeed a horror story, which I _knew_ but is somehow still surprising to me? I can't decide if I like it or not, I think it will depend heavily on the ending. I think I will be very sad if this book in specific ends in queer death.
Reading in the Future
I *think* that Vor Games is the next Vorkosigan book in series-chronology so I checked that one out from the library and certainly it's what I'm most excited to read next. I'm getting pretty close to declaring library-bankruptcy, and returning a bunch of unread books, so maybe I should try very hard to read them all first? Who knows! Certainly, I probably should _not_ bring a heap of unread library books with me to Maryland for Chrimbotimes, especially since the house has books in abundance, and trains mean I'm trying to keep my load as light as it is possible for me to keep (not very).
But I did borrow Return to Gone-Away Lake from Karen, so I should read that one sometime soon as well. I expect it'll be nice to have another very jolly happily ever after to focus on.
~Sor
MOOP!
Finished Reading Recently
I actually have a couple of clean-up notes, things that are on my booksheet but I don't think I ever talked about in medialog (or at least, I don't have the entries linked like I do for everything else).
In mid-August I read The Silver Gryphon by Mercedes Lackey, which was indeed my prompt to reread the other two books in its trilogy. I'm not sure why/how I missed it, except that that was an early-October medialog for things read over a month ago, and I'm only sorta organized. Anyways, it's still in my top-three Lackey books and I love it very dearly and that's about all I can say about it.
Also in mid/late August, an offhand mention from my favourite sexblogger had me pick up Nancy Friday's The Secret Garden which is a book from the 70s/80s about "female desire" or more specifically, "what women wank to". It is _fascinating_ as an artifact of it's time, it is _fascinating_ to see what conversations about feminism we're still having and what are new, it is _fascinating_ to see what fantasies were represented on the page and some semi-academic analysis of them. I continue to find sex really neat and even if I didn't agree or like all of this one, I thought it was a good read, albeit a little repetitive through the middle.
More recently, I did indeed finish reading Space Opera by Catherynne Valente, almost immediately after my last post. I think I am forced to admit that I find Valente's stuff very difficult to get into. I'm not sure what I'm bouncing off of --I love her plot concepts and as a long-time Hitchhiker's Fan, this one in particular just kept singing to my heart. But there was no period of time where I was into it and being all "gotta read gotta read gotta keep reading!", which I see in myself when consuming lots of other books. I have a few more of her things to try, but then I may consciously give up on her as an author.
The same day (Thanksgiving Thursday), I read all the way through Richard Peck's Here Lies the Librarian, which I nabbed off Karen's very excellent bookshelf of children's/YA/MG/JFic literature. This was partly to tease SamSam (there was also a copy of "Long Way From Chicago", but we're reading that _together_ damnit, so I couldn't cheat) but mostly because reading the back cover made me go !!!. It was excellent fun! Early 1900s female race car driver/mechanic FUCK YES. Extremely queer-coded librarians FUCK YES. Small town shenanigans and budding ~feminism~ fuuuuuck yes! It was a great choice.
Thanksgiving Friday, I slid into one of the many library books I'd brought with me to Vermont, Lois McMaster Bujould's Barrayar. And then basically spent the entire day reading it, with very brief interludes to have conversations or do a bit of grading. It's nice to return to childhood and slam through a weighty sci-fi novel in a day, it feels _right_. Anyways, the heist portions were *excellent*, of course, and there was slightly? less rape-specific trauma than the other two Vorkosigan books I've read. I think I rank it above Shards of Honor but below Warrior's Apprentice? Happy to have this series to dive through though! I extremely understand why it got the first Best Series Hugo.
Thanksgiving Saturday was a little less reading and a little more socializing, but I did slam through Elizabeth Enright's Gone Away Lake, which is less impressive because it's a much quicker read. I realized most of the way through that this book is really just the Loney M Setnick parody book "The Luckiest Children In The World", and that's okay. The Melendy books are the same way, all Enright's books tend to be fairly thin on plot and are instead stuffed full of jolly children going on happy little adventures in the woods and meeting keen adults who are interesting and interested in being friends. Honestly, I am all the way here for having "not much happen and it's all quite jolly", and wish there was more of that bleeding into the real world.
Currently Reading
Then I returned to the real world on Sunday (lots of driving, no reading) and as mentioned in other posts, got both busy and brainbad. But on Monday I finally cracked spine (metaphorically, it's an ebook) on Chuck Tingle's Bury Your Gays and I'm about halfway through. It is indeed a horror story, which I _knew_ but is somehow still surprising to me? I can't decide if I like it or not, I think it will depend heavily on the ending. I think I will be very sad if this book in specific ends in queer death.
Reading in the Future
I *think* that Vor Games is the next Vorkosigan book in series-chronology so I checked that one out from the library and certainly it's what I'm most excited to read next. I'm getting pretty close to declaring library-bankruptcy, and returning a bunch of unread books, so maybe I should try very hard to read them all first? Who knows! Certainly, I probably should _not_ bring a heap of unread library books with me to Maryland for Chrimbotimes, especially since the house has books in abundance, and trains mean I'm trying to keep my load as light as it is possible for me to keep (not very).
But I did borrow Return to Gone-Away Lake from Karen, so I should read that one sometime soon as well. I expect it'll be nice to have another very jolly happily ever after to focus on.
~Sor
MOOP!
Nancy Friday
on 2024-12-06 07:16 pm (UTC)