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SUPER late, but I was also out Wednesday, Thursday, Friday nights, so it goes.
Finished reading/put aside:
Crash Override: how Gamergate (nearly) destroyed my life, and how we came win the fight against online hate by Zoe Quinn. Now finished, and everything from my last review stands x2. Highest possible rec.
Provenance by Ann Leckie: I got the book from my local library to give myself longer than the excerpt to see if I settled into it, and only after reading whatever-chunk longer and waiting for the character to get over her birthright/fighting for inheritence thing did I think to read the blurb (I know, I know. Just, starting my reading from a PDF download does that sometimes, apparently), and realised that the whole book is about that and I am so not interested in that narrative. There’s very good odds the narrative is about her actually learning to disregard her ‘birthright’ and forging out on her own, but it feels like it’s going to take way too long for it to get there.
Iain M. Banks by Paul Cincaid. (Read the first two-ish chapters) This is clearly deeply researched, and I imagine an abosolutely fascinating read if you’ve read Banks’ works. I’ve only read a handful, and they were long enough ago that I don’t clearly remember them. I want to be the sort of person who has done the background reading to justify purchasing the rest of this, but alas I’m not. Strong rec, for people who have, though. It looks like a good book.
The art of starving by Sam J Miller. Oh boy. I inhaled the first …fifty pages? And mega, huge trigger warnings for anyone who’s ever had an eating disorder of any kind, pretty much. I’ve not had one, and I also read a fair number of anorexia/ED angsty books as a teen and… thinking back, all of those books were clear enough in their ‘while the character is deep inside their eating disorder, the author is pointing out this is Bad Idea’. There was a level of distance, even while you were inside a sufferer’s head. This is…the author is drawing on his experiences of his own past eating disorder, and it’s SO assured it’s genuinely headfucky, even to someone who’s never actually been there. I’d definitely read more of this author, but I don’t think I can do it myself.
Currently reading
No time to spare by Ursula Le Guin. A compilation of the last decade or so of her blog posts. As always (and now eternally I guess) her turn of phrase is so seemly perfect and effortless. I abruptly want to find like, there’s an archive full of famous authors’ hand edits of their drafts, and I would sell a…something, to be given access to her versions of that. Reading it is still as immensely comforting, laced with bittersweet.
Up next:
I might dip into Sleeping with Monsters: Readings and Reactions in Science Fiction and Fantasy, by Liz Bourke, or back into fiction with In Other Lands, by Sarah Rees Brennan
Finished reading/put aside:
Crash Override: how Gamergate (nearly) destroyed my life, and how we came win the fight against online hate by Zoe Quinn. Now finished, and everything from my last review stands x2. Highest possible rec.
Provenance by Ann Leckie: I got the book from my local library to give myself longer than the excerpt to see if I settled into it, and only after reading whatever-chunk longer and waiting for the character to get over her birthright/fighting for inheritence thing did I think to read the blurb (I know, I know. Just, starting my reading from a PDF download does that sometimes, apparently), and realised that the whole book is about that and I am so not interested in that narrative. There’s very good odds the narrative is about her actually learning to disregard her ‘birthright’ and forging out on her own, but it feels like it’s going to take way too long for it to get there.
Iain M. Banks by Paul Cincaid. (Read the first two-ish chapters) This is clearly deeply researched, and I imagine an abosolutely fascinating read if you’ve read Banks’ works. I’ve only read a handful, and they were long enough ago that I don’t clearly remember them. I want to be the sort of person who has done the background reading to justify purchasing the rest of this, but alas I’m not. Strong rec, for people who have, though. It looks like a good book.
The art of starving by Sam J Miller. Oh boy. I inhaled the first …fifty pages? And mega, huge trigger warnings for anyone who’s ever had an eating disorder of any kind, pretty much. I’ve not had one, and I also read a fair number of anorexia/ED angsty books as a teen and… thinking back, all of those books were clear enough in their ‘while the character is deep inside their eating disorder, the author is pointing out this is Bad Idea’. There was a level of distance, even while you were inside a sufferer’s head. This is…the author is drawing on his experiences of his own past eating disorder, and it’s SO assured it’s genuinely headfucky, even to someone who’s never actually been there. I’d definitely read more of this author, but I don’t think I can do it myself.
Currently reading
No time to spare by Ursula Le Guin. A compilation of the last decade or so of her blog posts. As always (and now eternally I guess) her turn of phrase is so seemly perfect and effortless. I abruptly want to find like, there’s an archive full of famous authors’ hand edits of their drafts, and I would sell a…something, to be given access to her versions of that. Reading it is still as immensely comforting, laced with bittersweet.
Up next:
I might dip into Sleeping with Monsters: Readings and Reactions in Science Fiction and Fantasy, by Liz Bourke, or back into fiction with In Other Lands, by Sarah Rees Brennan
From:
no subject
That is in fact the theme of the book, yes. The protagonist's sibling is a complete dick, and their parent is a complete politician who ultimately is trying to do the right thing as they see it, but is kinda monstrous as well.
I found it a wonderful enriching of the whole Radch universe and counterpoint to the almost purely Radch viewpoint we got in the Breq books. And we're again dumped into a very alien and complex society at the deep end. I don't think they did as good a job at drawing the reader into it as they did with Breq, much as I've loved all of the books so far.
But if that doesn't appeal to you, or you're just not in the right mindset for that sort of thing right now, even, then give it a miss.