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Wednesday reading meme from the last of 2018, cobbled together from mostly-finished drafts that I never got around to posting. I did a rough count, and with some arsey counting [all the hugo short stories as a single novel, for eg], I read a Solid Lot of books by my standards, evening out to a book a fortnight, which is pretty great, and more than I thought I'd done. Yay tracking!
Put aside:
A tenderness of wolves: Picked up because the title had a “is this a classic?” ring to it, and the first page was fantastic, as was the setting and the premise (Woman goes out into Canadian winter wilderness to try and clear her son’s name, or at least find out wtf he did, from memory). But I found myself getting frustrated with it very early on – it’s told in aggressively present tense, even the flashbacks when it ‘should’ have been past tense or past perfect. Artistic licence and all that, but this was a first novel and while it was probably a good first novel, it…should have varied its tenses, dammit. *has judgey feelings*
Bone witch: gorgeous cover, interesting premise, and witches! But then we started getting to “people get a heart jewel necklace that fills with colour to show their True Selves/Destinies” and I’m so Done with rigid predestination McGuffin stories. I don’t even care enough to see if this gets subverted in the end. Returned to library.
Seraphina by Rachel Hart. A book that’s been on my radar for years, and finally picked up. It’s a legit lovely fantasy story of humans and dragons forging an uneasy truce, but it’s also somewhat dense and just enough second-world that I didn't quite have the brain for it so put it aside.
Finished reading:
My own devices by Dessa. Read sometime back, but I forgot to record. I love her rap music, and pre-ordered her memoir. It's more of a collection of loosely connected essays than an autobiography, and once I realised that I liked it a lot more. She's unsurprisingly really good at putting several disparate concepts in proximity, seemingly rambling about them and then pulling them into an impressive gut-punch at the end of many of the essays/chapters. Do rec.
Pirate queen by Morgan Llywelyn. Short telling of the life of (Grace O’Malley) and the conflicts between England and Ireland in the 1500s. Loved it, despite the weird writing, and the lack of any further glossary/bibliography/maps/useful details. I’m desperate for more information about her, but all the biographies I’ve looked up seem to be typo-ridden messes according to reviews, much to my surprise.
Woman world a webcomic(?) in book form. Men die out, right down to the Y-chromosome-sperm in the sperm banks, leaving a world of women. An interconntected series of comics strips with the lightest of narratives strung together with jokes rather than a ‘actual’ story, which wasn’t what I’d expected and threw me for the first half. But I also found myself chuckling out loud quite a lot, so I’m not sure what to make of it. Charming, and A+ for diversity of ages, races, and disabilities.
The thing with Finn by Tom Kelly. Younger YA. Picked up because of the title, the charming art of the cover and the first few pages of excellent first person narrator voice that I wanted to curl up with and learn more about. 20 pages in and I’m delighted by 10-year-old Danny, and wanting to see him process whatever (tragic, I’m assuming) thing happened to his twin brother, Finn. (Finished many months ago, and I can remember that there were some devastatingly good lines about feelings and grief as processed through a child’s eye and/or at a child’s level, but I foolishly didn’t write them down). Do rec.
Mandy by Julie Andrews. A darling, sweet story of a girl who lives in an orphanage, and who comes across a cottage in the woods and fixes up the garden and tends to her little patch of the world. I expected this to hit my emotional buttons much more than it actually ended up doing, and I can't quite put my finger on how and why it missed me. Possibly because she doesn't actually ever live in the cottage? It was well written, it just never hooked me, and I'm legit not sure why.
Put aside:
A tenderness of wolves: Picked up because the title had a “is this a classic?” ring to it, and the first page was fantastic, as was the setting and the premise (Woman goes out into Canadian winter wilderness to try and clear her son’s name, or at least find out wtf he did, from memory). But I found myself getting frustrated with it very early on – it’s told in aggressively present tense, even the flashbacks when it ‘should’ have been past tense or past perfect. Artistic licence and all that, but this was a first novel and while it was probably a good first novel, it…should have varied its tenses, dammit. *has judgey feelings*
Bone witch: gorgeous cover, interesting premise, and witches! But then we started getting to “people get a heart jewel necklace that fills with colour to show their True Selves/Destinies” and I’m so Done with rigid predestination McGuffin stories. I don’t even care enough to see if this gets subverted in the end. Returned to library.
Seraphina by Rachel Hart. A book that’s been on my radar for years, and finally picked up. It’s a legit lovely fantasy story of humans and dragons forging an uneasy truce, but it’s also somewhat dense and just enough second-world that I didn't quite have the brain for it so put it aside.
Finished reading:
My own devices by Dessa. Read sometime back, but I forgot to record. I love her rap music, and pre-ordered her memoir. It's more of a collection of loosely connected essays than an autobiography, and once I realised that I liked it a lot more. She's unsurprisingly really good at putting several disparate concepts in proximity, seemingly rambling about them and then pulling them into an impressive gut-punch at the end of many of the essays/chapters. Do rec.
Pirate queen by Morgan Llywelyn. Short telling of the life of (Grace O’Malley) and the conflicts between England and Ireland in the 1500s. Loved it, despite the weird writing, and the lack of any further glossary/bibliography/maps/useful details. I’m desperate for more information about her, but all the biographies I’ve looked up seem to be typo-ridden messes according to reviews, much to my surprise.
Woman world a webcomic(?) in book form. Men die out, right down to the Y-chromosome-sperm in the sperm banks, leaving a world of women. An interconntected series of comics strips with the lightest of narratives strung together with jokes rather than a ‘actual’ story, which wasn’t what I’d expected and threw me for the first half. But I also found myself chuckling out loud quite a lot, so I’m not sure what to make of it. Charming, and A+ for diversity of ages, races, and disabilities.
The thing with Finn by Tom Kelly. Younger YA. Picked up because of the title, the charming art of the cover and the first few pages of excellent first person narrator voice that I wanted to curl up with and learn more about. 20 pages in and I’m delighted by 10-year-old Danny, and wanting to see him process whatever (tragic, I’m assuming) thing happened to his twin brother, Finn. (Finished many months ago, and I can remember that there were some devastatingly good lines about feelings and grief as processed through a child’s eye and/or at a child’s level, but I foolishly didn’t write them down). Do rec.
Mandy by Julie Andrews. A darling, sweet story of a girl who lives in an orphanage, and who comes across a cottage in the woods and fixes up the garden and tends to her little patch of the world. I expected this to hit my emotional buttons much more than it actually ended up doing, and I can't quite put my finger on how and why it missed me. Possibly because she doesn't actually ever live in the cottage? It was well written, it just never hooked me, and I'm legit not sure why.