sorcyress | Entries tagged with medialog

Finished Reading Recently:

This entry is not counting children's books, since I talked about those separately.

It took me longer than expected to read Feet of Clay, by Terry Pratchett, but that happens sometimes, and it spanned the Brain Be Weird part of the month where I was badly crashed out. I quite liked it, obviously. Here's what I wrote on Weds when I finished it:

Okay yeah, Feet of Clay was *really* good. I like the gender part --"we've got extra pronouns here", _be still my heart_ and I really fucking like the golems. And I lovehate Vetrinari so very much, he is such a beautifully sympathetic antagonist. If Vimes ever figures out how much he's been played...actually, I think Vimes would sulk for a bit and then be okay with it.

And then there's Dorfl, and Oh Man. The part of my ~~brain~~heart that loves community and solidarity and the inherent worth of all and trying to make things better for everyone is Very Aware Of How Good This Feels.

I'm obviously going to keep reading, but one of the unexpected things I really like is that I've read three watch books now and each of them is a fully complete story. No cliffhangers! Like, there's obviously more things that _could_ happen, but they feel like opportunities, not like frustrations. It's an astonishing feature of writing, and something I hadn't realized I'd been missing by some of the other fantasy I've read. I love Seanan, for instance, but you read enough Toby books and you know there's unfinished story that hasn't been resolved and it'll nag at you. Which is fine! The story she is telling is a longer one that takes a lot of books to get through! But it's still refreshing to know that I could never read another Discworld book and still feel like I've reached a satisfying end.

After, I dove into Richard Osman's We Solve Murders on a day in which I was going on slow meandery errands that involved lots of hanging out outside in the _almost_ bearable weather. Read from start to finish in about three and a half hours, nearly continuous, and you know? It was real nice to have a book that was both fluffy enough and captivating enough to do so. Osman writes incredibly human characters, with fairly clear good-vs-evil descriptors, and it's pretty fun to find out what they're up to.

On Thursday I read a couple of short works, the first of which was an 1884 Evangelical screed entitled There is no harm in dancing (a title, I want to be clear, that should be read extremely sarcastically). It's about thirty pages explaining how dancing is The Worst Sin That Ever Was and especially being simultaneously victim-blaming and slut-shaming about All Those Horrible Women That Do It And Corrupt Men, and then we get to the crown-jewel part, which says something like "most if not all of these sins can be found at every dance" and precedes to list about thirty sins, a great many of which I have never once seen because I am clearly not going to exciting enough dances. For instance, not once have I been on a dance floor that features "assassination", or "infanticide" although I have to admit, of late "sedition" has been appearing in most of my social experiences. Anyways, it turns out that if you're gonna hate-read something, choose something that's like a century and a half old, it's *way* funnier. And I wish I knew how to cross-stitch so I could make a proper art piece out of that last bit.

I followed it up with the Simple Sabotage Manual, which is neat because a lot of the specifics they offer are out of date, but the concepts feel real clear and lovely. I shouldn't say more about this one.

Thursday afternoon I stumbled into a copy of Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine, which I haven't read in ages, so I grabbed it. It's still a pretty fun book! It is more of a love story than I remember, I think I think of it as "Ella becoming a whole adult" but it really is "falling in love with Char" as the central premise. It's sweet though, it's a damn good romance, and I like all the worldbuilding quite a bit.

Currently Reading:

I have cracked spine on Wyrd Sisters (metaphorically, all my Pratchett is in e-form) but literally only read about three pages. So I'll get to that all in a rush soon.

I don't know if I have properly mentioned, in part because I really don't know how to mark it on my spreadsheet: I have gotten pretty entangled in The SCP Foundation of late, which is several million words of collaborative semi-horror. It just _keeps going_ is what I am finding. It's serving as a nice thing to read when I don't feel like playing video games.

Reading Next

SamSam has never heard of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, and I'm visiting them soon, so that's going to get read aloud I suspect, at least a few chapters worth.

I have the next Vorkosigan book, so I really ought to do that. Also I downloaded like...fifty? eighty! Eighty things from Project Gutenburg. This is how I got the short stuff I mentioned above, but there's Oz and the coloured faerie books, and the complete Poe, and Man of La Mancha, and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and all sorts of stuff.

And Dracula Daily starts in two weeks. Every year I've managed to get a little farther, but this'll be my third year trying it out. Let's see if I can finish the novel this time around!

~Sor
MOOP!

(I began this entry a week ago, which is why it implies today is Wednesday. Obviously it is not)

Tonight is a very special Wednesday Books, both because it's actually on a Wednesday, and because it is from babysitting and reading a great number of books to a very wee child! So here, have some board books and other children's books reviews, in roughly the order that the one particular wee child I look after picked them off the shelf:

Animals in the Snow: This was a children's nonfiction book! At this point removed, I can't remember if it rhymed or not, but it did have very beautiful illustrations and lots of keen information about various forms of animals.I especially liked the two page spread that looked identical to the land behind St. Grandma's house, and the fat-positivity about the woodchuck being able to live off their stored energy.

Raven's Ribbons: A sweet little two-spirit tale, with a couple excellent repetitions, both of which I caught The Toddler quoting to herself. Stomp stomp shuffle shuffle!

Miss Leoparda: This is a charmingly illustrated tale about how much cars suck, and I am absolutely here for it. More pro-transit children's books, hell yes! Although it occurs to me, that really, children are already inherently pro-transit, what kiddo doesn't love a bus? (especially whose wheels go round and round)

Bears in Pairs: This does indeed have the bears paired up! The best part is the strong variety in the illustrations as to what the bears specifically look like.

Touch and Feel: Animals: Do I include books with no literary merit? The point of this book was to feel different textures, and I couldn't even really find an author, possibly because no one was willing to own up to "the koala's fur is soft. the lizard's skin is bumpy" style prose.

The Number Devil: We read one chapter of this, which was _delightful_ as I knew it would be. It's one of my favourite books, and it's impressive that the kiddo was chill to listen through the entire chapter because while it's illustrated, it's really not a classic children's book, it's a chapter book if ever I saw one. I was very happy to revisit this one, it's been a while and I should finish reading the rest to myself sometime soon.
The Girl Who Never Makes Mistakes: I believe I have already reviewed this one. On a second re-read, it's...fine? I like that Toddler identified it with the word "Humbert", referring to the hamster owned by our protagonist.

Corduroy: Someone (EveZed, maybe?) was extolling the virtues of this one recently, and saying that they think every child should have a copy because of how nicely it is a found family/everyone belongs with someone who will love them as they are. It is a very sweet book, without being at all saccharine, and reads out loud extremely nicely.

Goodnight Moon: Another one that is classic for a reason! I really like that the cadence isn't quite as poetically strict while still being extremely good to read.

Mommy Hugs: I remember nothing about this at this point, but it is lots of hugging animals, so that's quite charming?

Pajama Time: Another Boynton, one I'm a little less familiar with, but the rhythm was so good that I actually wound up singing it starting halfway through. She is such a treasure!

The ABCs of Contra Dancing: I own a copy of this as well! It rhymes and the scansion is good! It's a very sweet little board book that does an extremely good job of fitting into its very specific niche.

Hop on Pop: Ah, the first of several Seuss! I don't think I had realized/remembered how late into the book the actual titular hopping occurs, but I also was unsure if the board book version was slightly abridged or rewritten.

The Foot Book: Not Seuss's finest work, but you do get to say feet and foot a lot, which are very good readaloud words.

Ten on a Twig: This was a cute batch of birds, but felt mostly designed around its gimmick (pages of changing length, with the twig crossing over them.

If Animals Kissed Like We Kissed Goodnight: This is the one that's still in my head the next day, and you know what? _that_ is a mark of a well cadenced board book. I had read this one nine years ago to the RBeast, quite a few times I believe, but it holds up pretty nicely to endless rereads.

The Going to Bed Book: More Boynton, and I think one of my unexpected faves? It's not one of the ones I can quote or nearly, but I think I particularly like "when the moon begins to rise, the animals all exercise" and "with some on top and some beneath they brush and brush and brush their teeth". Boynton is just a _really good writer_, okay?

That's Not My Kangaroo: You can't judge this particular line of books on their literary merit, because they have basically none --they're stim toys for babies, with the added bonus of some teaching of physical descriptors. As a stim toy, this one was _okay_. I felt there was a little too much repetition in textures, although the nose-was-too-rough was a particularly good feeling piece of velcro.

There's a Wocket in my Pocket: More Seuss. Another one of his less great works, although it does feel extremely quintessentially Seussian with all its creatures. As a mature adult, I did giggle a bit at the bofa on the sofa.

Max's New Suit: Rosemary Wells is also just really damn good. I love Max and Ruby stories, and associate them very strongly with being at St Grandma's house, so I feel like she must've had several. This one is a board book rather than a picture book, so it's very short, but I still quite liked it!

All the Hippos Go Berserk: Everything Sandra Boynton writes is absolute gold. This is no exception, although as a more refined reader, I can't help but notice that the six hippos are not actually shown leaving, just distraught as the seven hippos head out. But serious bonus points for a counting book that goes ahead and acknowledges that sum of all the numbers we've just counted to.

Moo Baa La La La: Both my mother and I have this one memorized, so it's a cute party trick where you can get one of us to start reciting it, and the other will join in, either chorusing or swapping lines back and forth. Anyways, this might be the single best board book ever written. I am not tired of it yet, and I have read it way more times than most people.

Meena's Saturday: this one feels culturally complicated to write about, because on the one hand it is abhorrently "oh yeah, the boys in the fam all get to chill out while us woman and girls have to constantly work" but on the other hand, it is very clearly about a group of people which I do not belong to, and *also* it feels very much like it does not approve of the status quo and is not willing to accept "boys just get privileges over girls for no good reason". The descriptions of food were delectable though.

The Magic School Bus Learns About Electricity: This was the last book before bedtime, very cleverly chosen as a pretty long one. I only read the core text and would've liked to read all the side notes (which contain puns and tons of extra information). Anyways, the crew goes through a power plant. Having read only the core story, I gotta say MSB is a little weak without any of the extra zjujing you get from the interstitials or the animations. Which is fine, it's got those things under ordinary circumstances!

Whew!

I should write a proper books as well, since I've been reading a fair clip, but that is probably going to wind up as a separate post. Part of me feels like maybe this kind of thing shouldn't count for my medialog, but no, fuck that, books are books. This is part of why I don't track "oh I read a hundred books this year" sorts of things though, because okay, yes, I did read 23 books this evening, but the average word count was probably somewhere in the low hundreds.

I do kinda wish it were acceptable as an adult to go sit in the children's section of a library more often and work through the shelves. I completely understand why I, an un-child-accompanied adult should not be allowed to do this, but I still wish it were occasionally an option. Sometimes you want to explore cadence and rhyme without worrying overmuch about plot!

~Sor
MOOP!

Finished Reading Recently

Months and months ago (like, about a year?) I was working my way through That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon and rather enjoying it, but because it is Big Smut, I got slightly bogged down in "when is it actually appropriate for me to read this" and never finished. So I picked it up again a couple weeks ago, and read my way through, and had quite a nice time! It is very smutty and fun, I'm pretty here for it and will try to get more of Kimberly Lemming's stuff sometime!

(Also to be clear, "when it's appropriate to read" read whatever you want wherever you want, me hearties. But I personally like reading smut more when I'm in a place I can actually do something about it than say, on my lunch break at a workplace chockablock full of minors)

Finished that and then for the last ten days, it has been All Terry Pratchett All The Time (Specifically, Discworld), to which many of you say "fuckin' finally". I burned through Guards! Guards! and Men at Arms in five and two days respectively, and then Equal Rites in the two after that. I am...kinda fascinated to realize that Pterry's Witches are _not_ my favourite theme of his, because you'd think I'd be all about it, but no, the City Watch is apparently the Best Ever and I'm extremely here for both Carrot and Vimes and especially the two of them paired.

Sybil is my favourite forever (she's so competent!!!) but it's a little surprising how delighted I am every time the Patrician sidles onscreen. I don't necessarily think I _like_ him, but as a character he is _fascinating_ and very well done. I pretty deeply appreciate the worldbuilding, which carries a healthy dose of the MST3K rule. How does it work? Magic, just relax!

Currently Reading

Started Feet of Clay today, which is the third City Watch Discworld book, but I'm literally only about three pages in so I don't have much commentary. I had gone sideways from Watch into Witches with Equal Rites above because originally when I had downloaded them all to my ereader, I hadn't bothered to download more'n the first two in each subseries. I went ahead and grabbed them _all_ for thoroughness sake.

(I have all the Discworld in digital --or very nearly all of it?-- because of a Humble Bundle ages ago, back when they were somewhat less dubious)

Reading Next

I mean, obviously, there's like 41 Discworld books, and I've read three in this go-round (and another...6? total? but some of that was in high school?) so that's going to be the foreseeable future.

But I still am holding one Vorkosigan book (and then have bunches after that to go), so that'll get back into rotation soon I hope --it feels guilty to have it from the library too long.

And I'm like 160th in line for the Tainted Cup sequel, so whenever that shows up on my ereader, I'm gonna pounce. Thanks, minuteman public library system! I appreciate your existence!

~Sor
MOOP!

So, it's been a bit more than a month since I last posted one of these. My reading feels like it's been _slow_, although checking on the previous medialog, I'm going to have several things to write about so that's nice.

Finished Reading Recently:

A few days after my previous post, I finished reading The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy. It was fun! I enjoyed Margurite more than I thought I would, her ups and downs felt sympathetic and interesting, and her choices active. The gender politics of this world are restrictive (of course), but it felt like all the characters involved had an impressive amount of agency to move and change the world within those roles. And the language tripped along quiet nicely, with a lovely turn of phrase. I may have to look into some sequels someday, I hear there are several.

I had read one tale out of the Bruce Lansky edited New-Fangled Fairy Tales vol1, I went ahead and read the other nine --they're short! Most of them are...fine. I admit to kinda loving the one about the Prince Charming who's into fashion design. What they have to say is not particularly deep or complex, mostly they're just kinda goofy. Good kids' books, but not anything particularly subversive in the fairy-tale retell space.

Back in February I also read the children's book Enzo Races in the Rain to/with Ruthie and the toddler. It's about a dog who likes to run! It ends slightly disappointingly in the dog at the end trading his love of running for the love of a family. Maybe that's a happily ever after?

Right before heading off on February vacation, I started The Ministry of Time by Kailane Bradley, and I read it very slowly through the back two weeks of February. I've not been doing very much reading at all recently, beyond commuting to work or bells, which I find a little weird and disappointing, but also a little unsurprising given how tired I've been. Anyways, Ministry of Time was a fucking _fantastic_ first half, when it was fish-out-of-water exploration. The back half was interesting and good and a little heavy and complex. I liked the book as a whole, I enjoyed the narrators voice and some of the meta-writing/formatting/how to spiral out the story. But the part I truly adored was that exploration of "what would a nice young man from the 1800s think about modern London?"

I think it was on the plane to California that I also started Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome. It's a very light book, and felt like a nice counterpoint to the everything else in the world.....except that it's also so very embroiled in colonialism. It was a lot of complicated feels while reading it, because I _love_ me a "children have nice adventures together" book (see: Elizabeth Enright), and the depth of these particular childrens' imaginations was Very Good Actually. But jegus, the particulars of so many of their fantasies were.........a little more shocking in 2025 then in 1930. Basically, more pirates, fewer savages please! I might try some of the sequels sometime.

And then all my March reading has been more of Lois McMaster Bujould's Vorkosigan saga, which sounds impressive except it's been one short story (Borders of Infinity) and one novel (Brothers in Arms) which I just finished this morning. I liked Borders of Infinity okay, it was nice to see Miles in a somewhat different role, but despite the clear telegraphing, the ending still felt a little too Deus-Ex-Machina-y to me. I do enjoy the twisty way his brain works, and his steadfast insistence that "everyone deserves to live and thrive" which like, for all that Miles is a disaster, he is ultimately also Good.

Brothers in Arms was quite fun, and we're starting to get into more complicated spoilery territory. I like that we introduced a component of the romance plot which is going to have to continue into other books, and I am actually tickled by the central trope and Miles's reaction to it. The ending scenes (everything on the London Dam) felt fabulous and tightly paced, and I _loved_ Galeni as a character. Long-suffering but also ultimately Good, stoic and powerful, I thought he was a marvelous foil to Miles's antics. I hope we get bits of him in the future!

Currently Reading:

Closed the cover to Brothers in Arms this morning, so I'm not, actually.

Reading in the Future:

I have two books out from the library right now, so those are probably priority. One is The Wolf in the Whale (mentioned last entry) and one is the anthology containing Brothers in Arms and whatever happens after that one. I _suspect_ I'm going to keep cruising into Miles's world, one book after the next, but we'll see which goes on the bus with me tomorrow.

I'd like to go through my booklist and figure out some organization for it. I also want to do a skim and figure out what books have sequels that I haven't gotten around to grabbing --my eye specifically fell on Graceling, but I still never finished the last Seraphina/Tess book, and I know there are at least three Steerswomen novels I haven't read.

Feeling stressed and not very able to read is going to drive me back to rereads also. I'm pretty sure the Murderbot books are happening soon, because apparently I just need to read those every six months for the rest of time (this is not a complaint).

~Sor
MOOP!

Finished 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"?

Our power is out! And now it is time for a medialog! I might skip doing formatting, because I am writing this entry on my phone and it's more of a pain in the ass to get all the html brackets. But we'll see!
Editor's note: I wrote the above, and much of the below last night. The power was restored about an hour later, and I had time to finish the post today.

Finished Reading Recently:

I visited Ruthie and the toddler for dinner, and got to read aloud Heckety Peg by Audry Wood (with illustrations by Don Wood. It's a faerie tale! Not one I've ever heard, and I'm not totally sure if it's just from a tradition I don't know or if it's an original tale "in the style of" but I had a nice convo with Ruth about the fact that I grew up consuming a voracious number of faerie tales and retellings, and so could very much appreciate how much this one hit almost all the right beats.

(About the only one it missed was an extremely short "and then the evil witch perished" at the end, which really ought've had some terrible descriptive torture for her. Where are my red hot dancing shoes and getting your beard caught in the chasm you stomped into the ground and barrels studded full of nails.)

As mentioned, I spent most of the month working on Kristin Cashore's Graceling. Fantastic premise (look, it's Xanth but with a little more likely to be useful powers and also when powerful dudes are into ten year old girls that's framed as Bad, so actually, not very Xanth at all) and a quite compelling main character. Most of the book was quite good, and then the last sixth or so was extremely unevenly paced and kept oscillating a little too rapidly between "HAPPILY EVER AFTER" and "OH NO HOW WILL OUR HEROES GET OUT OF THIS ONE?!". There are several sequels, and I look forward to trying them as well.

More recently, I dove headfirst into Django Wexler's How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying, which I really enjoyed. Davi is funny as hell, and doing a pretty good job of being a good person while trying to be the quintessential bad guy dark lord. The last eighth took a bit of a sudden turn, but I'm not mad about the questions it raised...I am cranky that I didn't realize quite how much it's framed as "part one" of a duology, especially given that the second doesn't come out until May. This is a peril-or-maybe-advantage of ereaders, that you never know quite when the end is coming. Even when you keep an eye out on the "page 420 of 496" or whatever, sometimes there's like fifty pages of "coming soon" and "excerpt from the sequel" and "interview with the author" crammed back there to throw off your sense.

But with that one exception, it was a heartily fun fantasy, and a nice sendup of many of the classic tropes. I especially enjoy that Davi gets to be super horny, and very bisexually so --while I haven't heard her use the b-word, there are on-the-page (well, fade to black but...) tumbles with both male and female characters.

Currently Reading

I did get out Michael Schur's How to be Perfec and was startled to find myself actually enjoying a nonfiction book about philosophy, a field I mostly don't care about. I was trucking along and making quite good progress, except for the part where I kept trying to read it while walking out and about in the world....and it has footnotes. So many footnotes. _so many_. My ereader very intentionally has physical buttons so I can use it while wearing the clunky gloves, but footnotes require touching the screen with actual fingers, so it has not actually been a good choice for the cold. Luckily/un, my hold on it expired and I'm back on the waitlist at like...24 weeks or something. I am really interested to find out if my highlighting and notes make it through the have-lose-have process (I hope they do!)

I also started this evening The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science by Kate McKinnon (yes that one). It is...

it is fine? Maybe it's less than fine? I don't think I'm enjoying it at all, which is a shame, because it's trying really hard to be a book I would be into and honestly it's just...trying too hard. It feels like a ~lol random~ twelve year old and to be fair, maybe if I was twelve I would be grooving on this. But wow am I bouncing hard. It's all too much and not clever enough.

I swear there is children's literature that I have read and enjoyed! I loved the Clementine books when I came across those a few years ago. Rachel Hartman's stuff is older YA and I thought it was intense and good and interesting. The first Percy Jackson book was goofy and full of dumb silly kid ideas in the same way as this, but felt much more fun and cohesive. So it's not that I'm too old for all kids' books, it's just that some of them have the je ne sais quoi, and this one...doesn't. I might DNF, but it's short enough that I'm already halfway through after just a couple hours of reading.

Reading in the Future:

Finishing Millicent Quibb (and How to be Perfec when it bounces back to me) means I will have zero library books or holds for the first time in a long while. So I think it's probably time to start trying to go through my Actual Physical Books and reading some of those. I know I have Christmas presents from my seester this year, and certainly have a couple backlogged books from Shan and Lexi as well. (The Three Body Problem! Yellowface! That epic Max Gladstone one!).

Also I just checked and that was a lie --in addition to Perfec, I have holds out on Richard Osman's We Solve Murders and a cooking/lifestyle book called An Everlasting Meal by Tamar Adler that I _think_ someone on Bluesky recommended as a "thinking about food" book. But both of those are slow-moving on long waitlists, so we'll see.

Writing the above about Heckety Peg is kinda making me want to go reread my book of Grimm's Tales, in all its falling apart glory. (I wonder if I even have the whole thing or if a handful of pages are missing forever).

I have the next Vorkosigan book on my ereader, and a bunch of Prachett for when I'm ready to Actually Read Discworld, Damnit. There are sequels to Graceling that I'm excited about, and those might actually churn through my ereader pretty quickly. I've got at least two Queer Horror books on pre-order from Porter Square Books (Moonflow, by Bitter Karella and Lucky Day by Chuck Tingle) and I should go ahead and see what else in the genre I own (besides like, my unread copy of Manhunt, which I should totally get to sooner rather than later). And part of why I'm never sure which of the LB books I've bought is that I've read some of them online from Patreon, and some in person, and some not at all so it might be fun to try and actually get organized about reading through those.

Most immediately though, Ethan of Athos, the next Vorkosigan book. I need something on my ereader that doesn't require clicking through for footnotes!

~Sor
MOOP!

Okay! It has been a chunk of time and also I am in desperate need of some wordcount! That makes conditions right for a book log, something I did not successfully do at any point in December, whoops! Luckily (?) I have not read an unmanageable amount of books since then. Maybe I put a frowny face here? I should get back to reading more, it might be good for me. ANYWAYS.

( It's a long one, so behind a cut! )

Have a nice week, I hope you are reading good things.

~Sor
MOOP!

Let'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!

Speaking 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!

Tonight I went and saw...Assassins! With my beautiful Tuesday and our mutual friend Seramay, at MIT with their Musical Theatre Guild. It is one of my very favourite musicals in the entire world, and getting to see it always feels like a special treat.

MTG is a little rough around the edges (this time the sound was occasionally cutting in and out, and the levels were a bit off) but the actors all did a great job and I was absolutely transfixed. Seramay was my buddy when I saw it at Emerson a year ago, and the two of us behaved Very Well Considering we both could've been total weebs about it. Meanwhile poor Tuesday had never seen the show before, and very kindly put up with us giggling as we counted the number of assassins listed in the program (eight. HMM!) and waving our hands in time to the songs. Kill the part of you that cringes, baby!

(Neither of us sung aloud, or moved our hands in ways that would block the views of other people, or said anything untoward to the actors afterwards --just "you did a great job and we enjoyed it". Czolgosz asked who we had come to see, and when we just said we love the show, seemed very flattered that like ~random folk off the street~ would enjoy their work.)

Standouts this time around were Guiteau, who ate the stage As He Should, but managed a really nice edge of anxiety to the whole thing, like, if I act manic enough, I will forget the bad side. He had actual copies of his manifesto printed out and kept darting into the audience to offer people his book --unfortunately not to any of the three of us, but after the show we oohed and aahed over the one the person behind us had.

Squeaky and Sarah Jane were _so good_ together. I mean, they always are, but these two seemed to be genuine friends and it felt great to watch their camaraderie develop and their frustrations and arguments spiral.

Seramay and I were in agreement that the absolute highlight was Move Your Little Finger, which Czolgosz/Booth/Guiteau/Moore did in flawless four-part harmony. It's not usually one of the songs I listen to on constant repeat, but wow, the layering of this group of voices was lovely!

Zangara was genuinely terrifying. A very different interpretation from when we saw it last, but his body language and sunken-eye makeup made for a staring wild madman in a surprisingly effective way. Their Byck was a skinny little thing, and I actually love the way it looks to have the santa suit dripping off him.

(Of course I swooned. I always do.)

I was a little sad that they underutilized their proprieter, especially since she had a lovely voice and was singing the opening number slightly higher than I'm used to, which was a neat change! I was hoping to see her lurking around the edges more throughout the rest of the show, but they gave the "loom around and cause trouble" role to Booth this time around.

That being said, the Balladeer was _impressively_ All-American Boy Next Door. Handsome in much the same way Aaron Tveit is handsome, with a _great_ voice. And he played the transition well!

It was a fun night and a good time with friends. MTG is running it through next weekend, so if you're local you might want to check it out!

~Sor
MOOP!

Have some books! I was just talking about books with a coworker so here's some more book talk for y'all!

Finished Reading Recently

I finally _finally_ after thirty-five years on this earth, have gotten around to reading any Lois McMaster Bujould. Her stuff is good, it turns out! Miles Vorkosigan is a delight! I read The Warrior Apprentice and then Shards of Honor because I am trying to follow her reading order of "approximately in universe-chronological order", but not quite landing it. About halfway through Warrior Apprentice, I was delighted to realize that this was just a big ol' con game! Of course I was rooting for Miles to win and excited to see how things would get Much Worse before he did! Shards of Honor I found less inherently delightful (especially as I am obviously spoiled for some plot points because it comes chronologically before Warrior Apprentice) but I enjoyed hanging out with all relevant parties and I actually really liked reading them in the order I did, partly prepared for and partly to give context to the later book.

I will throw out a content warning for rape/sexual violence as a minor plot point in Warrior Apprentice and a more major one in Shards of Honor. It's not that I won't read books that have rape in them, but I do like to know ahead of time what I'm getting into (and I prefer books that...you know...don't.) If you want/need more details about that, feel free to ask me (and heck, if you ever want to read a book I mentioned here and want to know about specific content warnings, I am always happy to share!)

I mentioned last post needing to finish Catherynne Valente's The Past Is Red before it poofed...and I did not succeed! I was so annoyed at myself! But I put in a hold request for a paper copy (I am finding physical books come to me faster than digital when the library has both, even with the few days wait time as they travel through the Minuteman) and received that and managed to finish it up a few nights ago. I think I actually really liked it, even though it feels more "literary" and metaphorical than most of the straightforward genre plots I normally read. I want to digest it a bit more and then maybe read it again now that I have the whole story in my head, to be able to actually see all the connections and know what happens.

I did indeed receive Richard Osman's The Man Who Died Twice which I found just as enjoyable as the first Thursday Murder Club book. These are extremely charming murder mysteries, with a satisfying mostly-black-and-white morality where the bad guys get their comuppance and the good guys get their happily-ever-afters, even if bad stuff happens along the way. Fluffy in all the best ways, funny as hell, excessively charming.

Currently Reading

Right now I am halfway through Pretties, Scott Westerfield's sequel to Uglies. I am...I am not enjoying it as much as everyone around me loves it, and I'm feeling a little badly about that. I think I am just....exhausted by how teenaged everyone is, which yeah, obviously, it's a young adult novel about teenagers. The world is designed so that most of everyone in it is inspid and on the one hand, it's written excellently to the brief, but on the other hand, I do not think I like the brief very much. I'm still enjoying it enough to keep going, but I feel disappointed that this is something a lot of people find amazing and I'm not with them there. (this is absolutely an invitation for people who love the series to send me their enthusiasm, although preferably without spoilers/holding off on sharing until I've finished the quadrilogy.)

Reading in the Future

I am currently in possession of or on hold for:

Both Orphan's Tales books (Cat Valente)
Space Opera (Cat Valente)
~~Rootless~~Uprooted (Naomi Novik --which I have heard also carries a CW for sexual violence)
Bury Your Gays (Chuck Tingle)
Comfort Me With Apples (Cat Valente)

all of which I think I have mentioned in the past.

Additionally, I have gotten a copy of The Pairing by Casey McQuiston after SamSam recommended it --they say it starts better than it finishes, but their enthusiasm for the start was quite enough to be worth a try, especially because I do like me a gay romance.

The waitlist between books 3 and 2 was much shorter than 2 and 1, so I already have a copy of Osman's The Bullet that Missed. There's one more ThursMurderClub after that, and then I have to wait until 2025 for the publication of the fifth.

And I keep meaning to swing by JdC's house and pick up Barrayar, which is probably the correct next Vorkosigan saga book to read (given that it apparently picks up directly after Shards of Honor).

I kinda want to try and draw back a little on getting out books from the library, and give my personal bookshelves a good shakedown sometime. I'm pretty alright at paring down my shelves as much as a hoarder-adjacent book lover possibly can, but I'd guess there's probably 20 volumes that I've never read and would like to sometime. A lot of them are gifts from Alys or Shan over the years, and it seems like a good idea to read some of those, especially before Chrimbo when I will presumably get more books they love and want to shove into my face (just as I will do to them).

Booksbooksbooksbooks!

~Sor
MOOP!

Did you know some people manage to update these every week? Wild! But I'll have shorter posts if I don't wait multiple months, at least.

Finished Reading Recently

My friend Beth recommended The Tainted Cup, by Robert Jackson Bennett as a predicted 2024 Hugo Nominee. It's a murder mystery set in a fantasy-dystopia, and it is DELICIOUS. I have been assured by people who know stuff about mysteries that it is not Holmes and Watson but instead Wolfe and Goodwin --regardless, it is a crass, overstimulated, definitely-Autistic-even-if-they-don't-say-the-word brilliant genuis detective who says fuck _so often_ and her extremely put-upon dyslexic super-observent and emotionally deadened no-fun-allowed assistant. I loved them both so much and would happily read a dozen stories. The worldbuilding too was incredible --the novel really well hit the balance between "made-up-fantasy-words" and "still-incredibly-readable-and-understandable".

I mentioned lastpost that I had been seized with a brainweird and grabbed the entirety of Novik's Scholomance Trilogy to reread and see if they are still good when you just read them four months ago and know what happens. Dear reader, they are. I cried at the end of both 2 and 3, not only cried, but like...god, the end of two gave me *revelations*. I sobbed and wrote and had my entire history of media consumption used to stab me in the heart and it was SO GOOD and fuckin' dang. The Last Graduate (book 2) is definitely the standout of the trilogy --I really love and appreciate the back half of three but I find the front half to be draining and kinda boring, and one is a solid setup but doesn't really give the Hella Payoffs until you get further along. So yeah, at this point, I'm going to have to buy copies of these books, or ask for them for Chrimbo or something, because they are incredible and I would like to own them.

After that I took a break for a few days, because reading 1200 pages in three days while also having a job is...uh...a lot. But over the weekend I started Scott Westfield's Uglies which I found annoying and also enjoyed so much I immediately checked out the next book in the series. I think the parts that annoy me are just the parts that are clearly for a very different target audience --I am not a teenager! I have theoretically matured past teenaged problems! And while I do read and enjoy a lot of YA, there have definitely been things I've read that I could tell would've hit _so different_ if I'd picked them up at a younger age. That being said, I am fascinated by the worldbuilding (and FASCINATED by the deeper worldbuilding as we get little teases, what do you mean a virus that affects oil!?) and like I said, the cliffhanger ending totally _totally_ worked on me. Maybe all I needed was for Tally to grow up a little more for me to enjoy it --she spends most of the book being, well, really young and immature. Her becoming more mature is what sold me on trying more.

Currently Reading

On the way to dance yesterday, I broke out Catherynne Valente's The Past Is Red, which I believe I have to finish _today_ lest it go poof from my ereader forever and I have to go back on the waiting list. I'm about 13% in, and enjoying the vibes, but really not sure where the story is going or what exactly is going on. Why is Tetley allowed to be such a universally despised whipping girl? That feels bullshit! I'm quite sure I will learn the answer if I get far enough, but I am not feeling endlessly gripped to Keep Reading At All Costs, so we'll see.

A part of this project that I hadn't realized until now is to increase my ability to recognize when I do or don't like things, and what I do or don't like about them. This is partly an important ADHD journey in general --I can and will play stupid phone games that I am not enjoying for a REALLY LONG TIME just because I opened them, so learning better regulation and transitioning skills is kinda important. I have a pretty deep completionist streak, which can make it rough about books --I almost always finish, in part because I read so dang fast in the first place!

So like, some of what I'm trying to pay attention to are things like "how urgently do I want to continue once I have started". And that's not a 1:1 corrollary to enjoyment --I remember feeling desperately gripped by the few Dresden Files books I read, but I don't recall feeling particularly starry-eyed about them otherwise. Some stuff wants to be read slow. But reluctance to continue a book is definitely an interesting warning sign, and especially if I can tease out whether it's because I'm not invested (I only kept reading through the beginning of The Golden Enclaves because I knew eventually I'd get to The Good Shit) or whether I'm *too* invested (despite my complaints above about Tally's immaturity in Uglies, the transition from part 2 to part 3 made me put it down for a tick because I was really worried about what was happening and needed breathing space before I could find out.).

Yeah, media literacy is hard, and being good at knowing why you like things is Definitely Hard.

Reading in the Future

According to Libby, I have one ticking timebomb hold left --Bujold's The Warrior Apprentice is due back in four days. Then I should have a few weeks of breathing space before getting The Man who Died Twice (Richard Osman, sequel to Thursday Murder Club), Bury Your Gays (Chuck Tingle), or Comfort Me With Apples (Cat Valente). In the meantime, I have a handful of paper books as well --Valente's Orphan's Tales duology and Space Opera, and Novik's Uprooted.

I also received in the mail my copy of the complete Lackadaisy, a webcomic about 1920s speakeasy culture but with anthropormorphic cats. Everyone has been raving about this one for like fifteen years now oslt, and I've never actually read it, so I'm excited to do so via these big beautiful comic books. It might also prompt me to try and actually go through and manage the rest of my bookshelf, see what's there that I've not gotten around to. Certainly multiple book-presents from both Shannon and Alys from the last few Chrimbos, and it would feel very nice to see them this year and be able to give some yay-or-nays on those! It also might be nice to know what unread books on my bookshelf are not actually worth keeping and should be tucked into some Little Free Library along the path.

I glanced at my spreadsheet and was all "oh, I haven't read that much since my last post, but I still got a thousand words out of the five full-length novels I've read in the last two weeks, so maybe I just have a very weird sense of what normal book consumption is. (my mother, who has had periods of their life in which they averaged greater than 365 books a year, is absolutely responsible for this.)

Hope you're well, and finding media you like!

~Sor
MOOP!

It's been over a month! Maybe I should do some medialogging? But of course, it's also been the first five weeks of school and heyo, big surprise, my reading has gone waaaaay down. I'd like to get back into the swing of walking to work and reading while I do, but it's enough faster to bike that I've been doing that instead.

Finished Reading Recently

For the first time since probably college, I read the other books in Mercedes Lackey's gryphon trilogy. (For context, I read The Silver Gryphon approximately once a year or more). The White Gryphon was about what I remembered --like all Lackey books that lean hard on sexual trauma, it sure was that. I _adore_ the parts about Skan and dancing, obviously, and Iike the murder-mystery-detective-work bits of it. Not gonna enter my regular rotation, but unlike the last time I read the Mage Winds, I don't feel like I never need to touch it again. The Black Gryphon was surprisingly enjoyable, despite being such a bleak book about war. Amberdrake is kinda the good sort of exhausting, and it is enjoyable to watch Skan in action. Same verdict as White, but glad to have additional context for Tad and Blade whenever I reread Silver Gryphon next.

My general interest in murder mysteries and Taskmaster brought me Richard Osman's The Thursday Murder Club which is _adorable_. Anarchist labour organizers!!! Charming little old ladies who bake cakes!!! Definitely a former spy!!! I enjoyed the heck out of this, and of course, since it has recently been made into a Netflix series or something, the wait list for the sequel is ages and ages.

When last we checked, I was working my way through some Daniel Pinkwater, and I got two more of his books done that I'd never read before. Once Upon a Blue Moose is a trifecta of Blue Moose volumes under one cover. It is very silly, in a way that is extremely charming. Lizard Music is also extremely charming, although I found myself faintly disappointed by the ending. Maybe because it has strong portal fantasy vibes, without actually being a portal? I always feel sorry for those who return from the fantastical and have to put up with whatever remains.

Everybody and *everybody* was reading Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevon last summer. I remember seeing it on the school library board as a "books set locally!" and having my brain go "oh cool" about it. That might've even what made me take out the hold, meaning it would've been percolating from June until early September until it got to me. The hold arrived, I was busy, it was the last day before expiring and I had a flight to Maryland. Sure, reading a book on a plane is a fine use of a plane.

I could hardly put it down, desperate to finish before midnight and expiration. *Luckily* I learned that as long as I do not exit the book on my kobo, try to go back to the home screen for ANY REASON, it will not kick me out of the book while I'm in the middle. Thank god, because I was legitimately trying to work out with my mother borrowing her kindle while I was in town so I could finish and luckily I did not need to. It was a wham-bam ride of a book, and I'm not positive I loved it, but I am positive that I _devoured_ it. Parts of it hurt sublimely, other parts felt like everything I've ever known, like all the stories my father has ever told me of college and just after. Delicious, fascinating, beautiful. I guess if this is what LitFic can be like, maybe I will stray out of genre more often.

The entire reading month of September feels like it can be summed up in weekends, with barely a page turned the rest of the week. I don't like it, and I'm trying to see if I can rebalance that as October turns, maybe partly by drowning myself in check-outs. So after the wedding weekend, I had a very quiet weekend at home, and chats with SamSam led me to revisit some favourite fanfics. The Paladin Protocol by SpaceAnJel is a Big Bang Theory fix-it-fic shipping Penny and Sheldon, and before you say ugh, recall that I hardly ever bother reading fanfic for properties I adore. It's still solid as hell, there's a lot for me to relate to. Unpretty's Christmas in Kansas is still one of the best works by the best author. What *would* happen if Clark Kent had his work buddies Bruce and Diana come home with him for the holiday?

And then our final September weekend, and as I'm headed out the door for whatever it was I managed to do on Saturday (a grocery run, I think?) I grabbed my extremely well-worn copy of Squire by Tamora Pierce. This is not the first book to be put twice on my booksheet¹, but it is probably the least surprising one. Reading it as I walked to the grocery store felt like all the best reasons to read, it is a marvelous slice of home. Keladry is my favourite of Pierce's girls, and the one I most want to be like when I grow up. I finished the book early on Sunday, and Lady Knight followed over the few days after.

Currently Reading

When SamSam was visiting most recently, they read me a chapter and a half² of A Long Way From Chicago by Richard Peck. I asked after if I should find a copy to finish on my own or if they'd keep reading it to me, and they said the latter, so I suspect this will be in the "currently reading" category for quite some time.

Back in...oh god, December of last year probably? One of my favourite coworkers spied me reading something keen, and was eager to pass on a recent favourite of hers...which happened to be my buddy Moniquill's first novel! To Shape a Dragon's Breath has been getting all the acclaim lately, and from the first dozen chapters or so, it feels deserved. Unfortunately, this book is Srs Bsns enough that it's been a struggle to keep reading --too much anxiety not knowing what'll happen! Aforementioned coworker is retiring at the end of the semester though, so that's my deadline for getting it back to her.

On Facebook, my friend Beth does a lot of recommendations of Hugo candidates, which is the first place I really heard of The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett. I dropped it onto the hold list, waited for my name to churn to the top, and have been giving it a go --it's good! I continue to really like me a murder mystery, it turns out, and mad genius is a trope my heart flutters for. I'm about 20% through, according to Talia³.

Reading Soon

All of my holds are popping at once! I am trying to prioritize ebooks, because then they expire, so Tainted Cup first, then Uglies by Scott Westerfield, and [~~All Systems Red~~The Past Is Red, really, no one in two weeks noticed that?] by Catherynne Valente all of which have shown up in the last week. My brain gave a nudge about Cat Valente in general --I adore the Girl Who books, and I remember really enjoying Palimpsest-- so I've also got physical copies of Space Opera (which I've heard some good things about and I *love* the premise for) and the two Orphan's Tales books.

It is...frankly absurd that I've never read the Orphan's Tales, I could probably tell you a number of relevant plot points...or more accurately, sing those plots, because my dearly beloved SJ Tucker has written a couple of companion albums for these books. So that'll be fun, and it'll be fascinating to hear parts of it as I read.

And then I happened to be standing in the library in a moment of BrainWeird and I happened to check the catalog, and into my bag goes the three Scholomance novels again. Someone in my discord server just read them and was talking about them a bit and I now have a passionate urge to see what El is like when I know the whole of her story laid out. It might not be as good but it might be *better* instead.

Oh yeah, and I'm also holding a copy of Novik's Uprooted from the NESFA library, my very first checked out book with that card. I hear a lot more about Spinning Silver, but my brain understands them as a series (of retold fairytales, perhaps?) and so that means going through them in order.

So like I said, October is going to need to get back into the habit of reading on my way to and from work again, or else I'm pretty doomed. There are worse fates, I suppose.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: I *think* that All Systems Red gets that honor, having read in both February and July of this year, and then of course the rest of the diaries.

2: ...less than that. I was awake and eager for the first chapter, and then later we tried the second and I fell asleep almost immediately. I think Sam is okay with that.

3: I feel complicated when I use names for my electronics without clarifying, so as a reminder, Talia is my kobo ereader, because my electronics are almost always named for Excellent Fictional Women, and if you want one of those who is also a Reader, well, the Arrows trilogy has a lot of flaws but Talia as a character is not one of them.

OKAY HELLO HI!

It is actually Wednesday again, and that's fine, I can do Wednesday books on a Wednesday sometimes. I should probably give other updates sometime --short version, the woods were very nice and I was glad to dance in them-- but let's do books! Because it's been two months and I've actually read some books!

( It's nearly 2000 words, so to spare your reading list, let's cut )

~Sor
MOOP!

Been a few weeks, but I have actually been trying to read some things!

Finished Reading Recently:

Almost immediately after my last entry, I re-upped my Slipshine subscription since David Willis dropped another Pornographique for Dumbing of Age. So I read or reread all of those that exist, and then went ahead and reread all of xxxenophile which is there (which is _not_ all of xxxenophile, although I think I can only remember one specific story that hasn't been posted). It was a good run of smut, and especially the latter reminded me how _joyous_ sex should be.

At some point while SamSam was visiting over memorial day, I went and got The Pirate's Mixed Up Voyage by Margaret Mahy, to read some passages aloud. Oh right, it was the gingerbread bits, because we were making some (although not nearly as hot as CashCash gingerbread). I let the book languish out for a few days (I was busy with Sam watching Sailor Moon) but it has been a clip and sure enough I charged right through it on the Monday while they were still visiting.

Then post-memorial day was the sudden "oh fuck, we only have three weeks left of school" and everything got REAL BUSY and I had to stop all my projects for a clip. I am still hopelessly behind on emails and _mad_ about it, there are like 200+ emails I have to sort through just to get back caught up! Anyways I wasn't reading for a bit, but then one of my many-week holds on my ereader popped and I had a copy of Naomi Novik's A Deadly Education.

So I read a bit during the dull parts of graduation (I listen and applaud to student names and to any speech by a student, but I cannot admit to thinking fondly towards adults talking) and found it decent, and stumbled into LCFD weekend at Pinewoods and doing a bit more reading during mealtimes and on the paths and then just as I got hooked I also got the warning that I only had one day left on the checkout and then it would go back into the hopelessly long waiting list and it'd be another 12 weeks or whatever before I could finish.

That will not do.

Charged through the rest of it on Monday of this week. Was so _flabbergasted_ by the last line that I desperately went pawing through the app for digital holds, gnashed my terrible teeth, and requested that physical copies be brought to the library branch closest to work, where I normally get things. And then that evening, swung by a different library branch on the way to dance because I'd seen they had them, and I was literally setting up chairs for the dance AGM one handed with my nose buried in a hardback.

(A brief aside, on Monday I also reread Boy Meets Boy, by David Levithan, because goddddd I need some queer joy in my life right now. I fuckin' sobbed at That One Part that I'm pretty sure I've always sobbed at. The book holds up surprisingly well for a queer high school story written in 2003 --like, it's definitely _dated_ but it's only cringey for being foolish high schoolers (and that's never going to change) and not particularly for being out of touch.)

I was so drained by the AGM and then by the complicated (and, it turns out, well deserved) dread about TMC, and also by the huge amount of finals grading I have to do that I didn't read at all yesterday.

And so today I brought a 75% unread book, and went to field day, and absolutely participated with gusto for the first two hours but eventually trailed off to a corner of grass in the sunshine and started reading.

And went up to my classroom for lunch and continued reading.

And got some students settled with making up their final exams, squeezing out a few more points, and continued reading.

And went to the staff awards and again read during the dull bits and paid attention and applauded for the actually congratulating people bits and had nice conversation with Clayton and some of the art teachers and then went back into my classroom for the end of the day and finished book two, The Last Graduate.

I'm not stupid, I already had book three checked out, gotten at the same time and library on Monday. But I forced myself to bike home before cracking spine, and managed to pause to call my mom for 45 minutes, and was only half an hour late to my date with mek and look, I finished The Golden Enclaves in about six hours including interruptions.

They're pretty fucking great, and I enjoyed them a lot.

Currently Reading:

I see that my ereader _just_ popped another of those multiple week holds, so it looks like it's gonna be trying again to actually read Swordspoint, by Ellen Kushner

I am also reading final exams. It is not enjoyable.

To Be Read Next:

I dunno, it's about to be ~Pinewoods~ and ~summer~ and all these things that are gonna give me weird schedules. I was recommended Sir Callie and the Champions of Helston by a 13 year old I know and like, so I gotta pick that one up. Maybe try a second Percy Jackson book? I have a sneaking suspicion I am quite close to a full or semi-full Toby Daye reread --pretty sure last time I did that I was tracking all the different magics and species on just like...scraps of paper which probably means it predates my having a brain-organizing discord server.

And maybe I say "okay Novik, you have earned the fuck out of this trust" and go pick up some of the Temeraire books, especially considering I used to have several paperbacks and I'm not positive I've gotten rid of those yet.

But I have a sneaking suspicion that my favourite genre in the entire world is "angry Heralds", between certain parts of Murderbot and now El in the Scholomance, so if you have any recommendations there...

~Sor
MOOP!

I am thrilled to announce that Middleman, some 16 years after it came out, still holds up pretty gosh-darn well!

DnD friend Scoop has been watching it with me --because he's recently Boston (re)based, we have now twice managed to do collective DnD from my place with bonus watching Middleman afterwards. Today we watched episodes 3-5 and I just really enjoyed it!

One of my observations is that the episodes seem to do a lot more recap/exposition than I think of these days when I think TV. I'm not sure how much is specifically part of Javi's quick-paced all-references-all-the-time-(including-to-itself) style, and how much is a feature of television from an era where it wasn't assumed that someone is watching the entire season in a few days.

My other observation is that I'm probably now older than EmmEmm and oh gods. I don't know if I'm ready to handle that. Maybe not quite? Maybe we're the same age?

Anyways, if you need any proof that the form of my attraction has gotten steadily queerer as I've aged, there you have it. I will always have a soft spot for clean-cut Matt Keesler('s arms), but oh dear, he is so rather too cishet for me. We'll see if I change my mind when we get to episode eight.

I did wind up saying something to Scoop about how the second DVD (eps 5-8) are when the show gets *really* good. We've got trout zombies, boy bands, the titanic, and sorority ghosts and let me just say _fuck yes_ to all of them. I explained it as the first four episodes need to set up and dwell on Wendy's background trauma so that we know what's up with her, but by now we've got it all understood and can just move forward into The Good Shit.

Anyways, I have seen The Pilot Episode Sanction some twenty or thirty times across my life, and I'll happily do that more, so hmu if you need to enjoy this with me sometime. Maybe in the fall if covid numbers are good I'll try and do another Middleman party or something...

~Sor
MOOP!

It's a Monday Medialog! Been a good chunk of time since I last did one of these, mostly because I flamed out pretty bad and stopped reading. Also because the weather got just barely better enough that I'm biking to school again and not taking the bus or walking, which were my major reading times. Also because it's the end of the year and I'm just massively burnt out and depressed. Anyways!

Finished Reading Recently

(where recently is "since April 22nd" since it looks like that's the last time I did one of these, which is honestly less bad than I thought it would be).

I finished reading all the currently published murderbot diaries by Martha Wells! Absolutely the best books I've read since starting this "try and read more" project last summer. Fugitive Telemetry is slightly temporally displaced (6th book published, but takes place between 4 and 5) and it is A FUCKING DELIGHT! It is a TRUE CRIME BOOK but set in the future and with a hero who is my extremely beloved SecUnit with all its crankiness and sarcasm. What an excellent palette clenser between books 5 and 7 because...

Hahhahahaha System Collapse is really hard to read for obvious reasons if you've read it. It's not bad --it is, like basically everything else in this series, excellent, but it's...it's hard to read. My poor SecUnit. I want to take it home and pet its hair, by which I mean never ever touch it in any way ever and just chill next to it and watch media.

I think, having read them all, my top three goes Exit Strategy (#5, "the long one"), Fugitive Telemetry (#6, "the one where SecUnit solves a crime") and Artificial Condition (#2 "the one where we meet ART").

Oh hey! Finally Sideways Stories from Wayside School (by Louis Sacher) worked its way to me off the waiting list, and I was able to complete my all-Wayside-all-the-time reread! This is the first of the series, and it's pretty alright! Good goofy children's chapter book.

While I was in VT for the Eclipse, someone said something that made me go "that's a Leftover Soup reference, and so I've been jonsing to reread that comic by my Favoured (Tailsteak!) ever since. I did so in one big Friday where there was not a lot happening in my classes, in between the students doing make-up work or whatever and then for several hours straight after school. It's a little more dated than it used to be, but that's probably a good sign, that both artist and audience are growing up. I still have an extremely ill-advised crush on Jamie, but he feels a lot more of a disaster now that we're not both 22. Max is the best and I will stand by my "dude that's me" feels for her, and yes, I reccognize that's also ill-advised.

As mentioned I got linked It's a Sunny Day by Spider Robinson by someone in LB, and I thought it was a really delightful little read. Robinson is maybe the epitome of my newest simplified poltiical stance "Community is Good", and after reading that one, I dug out a copy of God is an Iron. And while I was good that night and went to bed, I did grab my copy of the omnibus first-three Callahan's books to read over the next couple days.

Callahan's Crosstime Saloon (et al) is important as hell to me, and has been since the beginning. In my little discord server, we've got channels straight up named "shared-pain-is-halved" and "shared-joy-is-doubled" as places to share what needs sharing. While I'll never not be a little wistful about the weird golden-age sexist idealization of women they do, they're a damn sight closer than most at recognizing the universal humanity in all of us. And while I can't get all the puns (just because I've traveled too far in time from the source), I definitely have picked up some of the slang (this is almost definitely where I picked up fin for a fiver, and I should remember to use sawbuck more often for a ten).

And I thought that was all, but then this weekend in the middle of everything being burnt-to-a-cinder-out, I needed something very simple and familiar and beloved. So I grabbed The Adventures of Blue Avenger by Norma Howe to fill the brief. It remains all of those things, although again, I'm now enough older than our 16-year-old protagonist to find myself rolling my eyes some of the time at his shenanigans. Omaha Nebraska Brown is still a _fuckin' kickass_ name for a heroine though (and yeah, I know Blue would wrinkle his nose at my use of explatives, but he can look back at himself and cringe later just like I do.)

Currently Reading

So I've alluded to the fact that I'm working on the Great Inbox Zero Project in which I try to not have five figures worth of unread emails in my inbox? Anyways, that's been happening lately. It's going much better than any previous time I've tried it, and I'm making the numbers drop substantially enough to ACTUALLY FEEL PRETTY GOOD about it all.

This is relevant because one of the things I archived was two years of failing to read Dracula Daily, just in time to...actually read Dracula Daily? I've definitely gotten farther this year than either of the two previous! This book be spooky! Jonathan is in some Deep Shit, let me tell you!

So that's what I'm reading. Simply thousands of old emails, but specifically these ones about Dracula, sent in pace with the dates of the novel.

Reading in the Future:

I am going to return all my unread library books, because I've had most of them since February and the minuteman system is, uh, not thrilled with me. It's not exactly an amnesty so much as a reset --I can figure out what I actually want to read (probably In the Serpent's Wake? Possibly more Percy Jackson or Callahans?) and check just those out.

Bringing an ereader to Pinewoods has some very exciting potential. Maybe I will not bring One Hundred Books with me! Or I will, they'll just fold up extremely flat.

~Sor
MOOP!

I reread God is an Iron (CW: rape, drug use, suicide), after someone from LB linked a different Robinson story, and fuck, I love Spider's work so so so much.

God is an Iron is a very specific short story for me, because I read it first...my memory says on the flight to London with my girl scout troop, but would mom've let me drag her copy of Time Travelers Strictly Cash across the ocean? Who knows. Anyways, in 2006. I remembered it being dark and funny but completely shut out any details. And then in 2015, I was working tech at Worldcon and wound up helping out with lights for a stageplay rendition of it.

There is a pretty fuckin' significant piece of Kat-lore that happened between those two events, and it meant encountering the story the second go-round fuckin' _shattered_ me. Haaaaa, going back and rereading words for then --because it's one of the times in my life where I was doing words before the longtime, bless-- shows that jegus fuck shit there was a lot of other stuff going on that weekend too, but dang and blast, it is hard to read.

But the really _really_ good thing about Robinson is that he is the most human motherfucker in all of science fiction. Does he have flaws? Yeah, absolutely. Will I defend the central conceits of Callahan's to the death? Yes. Yes I will.

(Am I gonna wind up rereading the first three books tonight? That would be a terrible choice, since I need sleep. That's not the same as a no.)

And God is an Iron has a theme of a just horrific amount of pain, pain that I recognize --not the same, but similar. But it has a core of love, and joy, and us taking care of each other, best we can. I've been using it as a mantra in the back of my mind a few months now, my new uber-simplified political stance: community is good.

Community is good.

~Sor
MOOP!

Okay 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!

editor's note: pretend all the book titles are underlined, I lost the html in transit and can't be arsed to put it back since I'm typing this on my phone.

Anyways, my original goal was to take a break from Network Effect, which is excellent but stressful, and write my words before I get too sleepy, so that when I land in Portland for my very long late-night layover, I can upload them from the computer and not have to have done typey-typey on my phone. My secondary goal was to do a medialog post, because it's been over a week and I've been busy!

Finished Reading Recently:

I went on vacation for like 3.5 days, where my only goals were "see eclipse, make out with partner, read books" and I met all three of those goals in spades. Last week on Wednesday, I finished the first cycle of Murderbot Diaries (by Martha Wells) by completing Exit Strategy and making all sorts of wibbly faces about SecUnit and its feeeeeeeelings. I was all ready to dive into Network Effect, but a well-timed warning from Elishka told me I didn't want to be reading that one in the morning on the way to school, and unable to read it straight through. This turned out to be a really good warning, more about that later.

On Friday and Saturday, I read one of the many books recommended by the Unshelved book club. It's a graphic novel omnibus called "The PLAIN Janes" (Cecil Castelluci and Jim Rugg) and it's about art and trauma and high school and the suburbs. It feels familiar to me in nostalgic sorts of ways, these are the sorts of things the Lesley University Chaos Club would've done if we'd gotten properly off the ground.

Sunday was for re-reading Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn (which I was amused to find on Sam and Bean's shelves as well --I needn't have brought a library copy after all!). It's interesting, the first read of this particular book was stellar, an experience I'd recommend to anyone, especially if you pause for pangram practice somewhere in the middle. But the re-read felt rather more lukewarm. I find the romance plots trite and uninteresting, the political upheaval does not have the weight it should, and the prose is -intentionally! to great effect!- fairly overwrought. Maybe I just need to go longer between re-reads? Unclear, and disappointing.

Sometime on Monday I started Exit Strategy, and got like...a chapter and a half in, just enough to say suddenly and decisively "oh yep, this is stressful as shit". So I set that back down and focused on working with SamSam to see if we could connect bonus overdrive/libby accounts to Talia, so she can check books out from other places than just the minuteman. (verdict: sorta, but it seems likely I'd have to fully log out and in again to switch books, and that seems irritating and also not definite. The more likely outcome is that I will do that Libby-linking on my phone (much easier) and just read non-minuteman books there?

Anyways, between stressful book and brain-hard tech work, I needed something mindless and fluffy, so I finally actually picked up The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna. It is delightful candy! I think the cover blurb says "a warm witchy hug of a book" and yes definitely that! No stress, lovely worldbuilding, a very satisfying happily ever after (for now), and a gay supporting character who I am definitely picturing as Ian McKellen in glitter boots. I think this marks the first time I have ever officially finished reading a romance novel, so good job, turns out I like this genre too!

Currently Reading:

I have just started chapter 15 of Network Effect, and if you give me spoilers I will kill you. I was able to really pick it back up on Thursday, sorta gently forcing myself through the really intense first eight and a half chapters. And my timing worked out shockingly perfect, because Thursday was the day of eight thousand things happening in my brain and I couldn't cope with all of them, but I got to the phrase "in case of emergency, run" just about the time the train was pulling into Haymarket station on my way to surprise-Thursday-bells and ohhh, I was literally bouncing up and down and giggling with mad glee.

The rest of the book has been normal SecUnit stressful, just longer.

I'm not actually in the middle of anything else except that Squirrel Girl GN I keep poking at, and That Time I Got Drunk And Threw A Love Potion At A Demon, neither of which I've actually done any reading for recently, but both of which I'm in the middle of and intend to return to. (Love Potion is hard, because I know now that it really works for me, which means I don't wanna read it in spacetimes where I'm not willing to be horny.)

Oh, and Unshelved is still open on my work computer, but I'm intentionally taking a break from it to try and cut back on my TBR pile and return some of my library books. Progress is being made tho! I think I'm down to like..22. Oh. No. Still 28. Whoops. Maybe this week I will manage to wipe some more of them out? At any rate, at least two are now officially overdue and I won't be able to check out more until I return those, so that's useful.

Reading in the Future:

Books I am bringing with me to California: Modesty Blaise, Debbie Harry Sings in French, In the Serpent's Wake, two Squirrel Girls, and a nonfiction book about zines. Plus everything on the ereader.

I saw a Halligan(iv...) bar over the weekend and got so excited that I reread like two dozen Leftover Soup comics, and now I'm itching to binge that archive.

I have a spreadsheet now, because I successfully realized that LibraryThing is great and I should go back to it sometime, but spreadsheets are easy and my one true love. It notes Cat Valente's Space Opera (recommended by So'n'So) and Orphan's Tales (not specifically recommended by anyone, but I saw two volumes of them on Sam and Bean's shelves, and was reminded that I really ought to read the novels that are for the companion album(s)). Sam was surprised to learn I've never read any NK Jemison --valid thing to be surprised at, and JoshZed was aghast and agog when I said I hadn't read any of the Young Wizard series. So they're all on the docket!

Goodnight!

~Sor
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Katarina Whimsy

April 2025

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The Rantings of a Terminal Optimist

Entries tagged with medialog

Wednesday Sundays

Books for children!

Short books

Thursday Books are Late at Night

M-m-m-monday medialog!

Monday and also Tuesday are for Wednesday Books

meeeeedialog!

Mostly Thanksgiving-break books

"the best part of Thanksgiving is rushing through the meal so we can all eat our pie and read"

I am going to the Lordy, I am so glad

Halloween Books!

Friday, Friday, gonna read books on Friday!

F-f-f-friday books!

Wednesday(?!) books

Oh shit! I have fucked up! It is actually Wednesday books!

A show of multiple shades and dimensions

Monday Medialog!

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Monday Media!

Is this FridayBooks or Saturday? No one really knows!