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Finished reading:
Winter's tale by.Nike Sulway, illustrated by Shauna O'Meara Oh. Honestly, this was a Kickstarter that I'd looked at, thought, 'I'd love that to succeed, I'll help bump them over the line and then retract if they made it okay before the deadline', and then forgot to cancel. I'm glad I forgot to cancel, because this was a genuinely magical, whimsical, captivating read. Winter is a baby and then a child looking for a place to belong, and somewhere to call home. I adore the art style. I'm not sure who the target audience is, exactly – kids in longer term foster care, definitely. But while Winter is about 6, I think, the language rings to an age group several years old. Regardless, gorgeous, and I'm so glad it got made, and that I got to read it.
Exhalation by Ted Chiang as a whole.
( Last of the storie under here )
In sum: really good collection, very glad I read it. Tempted to go read the rest of the stories in the The story of your life now.
The girl who drank the moon by Kelly Barnhill. Huh There's some powerful ideas here, but it was let down by a fairly hefty pacing issue. I was most interested in the villagers rather than the ostensibly-main characters. Antain, for a long time, was actually the most interesting, sympathetic character to me. Xan and Luna (the witch and the girl respectively) should have been, but they were let down by the memory spell blocker maguffin, and the fact that Luna's entire plot-job was to wait until she turned 13 and her magic manifests. Given we first meet her as a baby, this is a problem. The villagers, and the Sisters within it, were all far more interesting to me because they had agency and characterisation and were generally active – trying to have lives and/or make others' lives miseries. The ending wasn't the grand battle of wills and force, but I actually liked it for that. And the final few chapters damn near made me cry. As one goodreads author pointed out, it could have done without a hundred of those pages in the middle, but the rest of those 200 or so were really good.
Currently reading:
Because internet Gretchen McColloch. Purchased! It's easy enough to dip in and out of, pleasingly. I'm learning a new thing every few pages, even. I'm a mix of Old Internet Person and Full Internet, by the look of it – someone who used social media platforms (Full Internet) to make friends that I was unlikely to ever meet (Old internet).
The ten thousand doors of January by Alix E. Harrow. This is a luxurious type of read. Very competent and skillfully done, doubly so for a first novel. It's almost too rich, maybe; I need to have a certain amount of alertness to get into it each read. Having said that, I think on the way home on the train at about page 30 or so, I had my first 'I want to close this book and hug it to my chest' moment. That's a win. I'm deliciously reminded of the "I picked up a pen, I wrote my own deliverance."
Up next:
One of Nalini Sighn's first-of-series, maybe it's about time!
Winter's tale by.Nike Sulway, illustrated by Shauna O'Meara Oh. Honestly, this was a Kickstarter that I'd looked at, thought, 'I'd love that to succeed, I'll help bump them over the line and then retract if they made it okay before the deadline', and then forgot to cancel. I'm glad I forgot to cancel, because this was a genuinely magical, whimsical, captivating read. Winter is a baby and then a child looking for a place to belong, and somewhere to call home. I adore the art style. I'm not sure who the target audience is, exactly – kids in longer term foster care, definitely. But while Winter is about 6, I think, the language rings to an age group several years old. Regardless, gorgeous, and I'm so glad it got made, and that I got to read it.
Exhalation by Ted Chiang as a whole.
( Last of the storie under here )
In sum: really good collection, very glad I read it. Tempted to go read the rest of the stories in the The story of your life now.
The girl who drank the moon by Kelly Barnhill. Huh There's some powerful ideas here, but it was let down by a fairly hefty pacing issue. I was most interested in the villagers rather than the ostensibly-main characters. Antain, for a long time, was actually the most interesting, sympathetic character to me. Xan and Luna (the witch and the girl respectively) should have been, but they were let down by the memory spell blocker maguffin, and the fact that Luna's entire plot-job was to wait until she turned 13 and her magic manifests. Given we first meet her as a baby, this is a problem. The villagers, and the Sisters within it, were all far more interesting to me because they had agency and characterisation and were generally active – trying to have lives and/or make others' lives miseries. The ending wasn't the grand battle of wills and force, but I actually liked it for that. And the final few chapters damn near made me cry. As one goodreads author pointed out, it could have done without a hundred of those pages in the middle, but the rest of those 200 or so were really good.
Currently reading:
Because internet Gretchen McColloch. Purchased! It's easy enough to dip in and out of, pleasingly. I'm learning a new thing every few pages, even. I'm a mix of Old Internet Person and Full Internet, by the look of it – someone who used social media platforms (Full Internet) to make friends that I was unlikely to ever meet (Old internet).
The ten thousand doors of January by Alix E. Harrow. This is a luxurious type of read. Very competent and skillfully done, doubly so for a first novel. It's almost too rich, maybe; I need to have a certain amount of alertness to get into it each read. Having said that, I think on the way home on the train at about page 30 or so, I had my first 'I want to close this book and hug it to my chest' moment. That's a win. I'm deliciously reminded of the "I picked up a pen, I wrote my own deliverance."
Up next:
One of Nalini Sighn's first-of-series, maybe it's about time!
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