Wow, does it feel like I burned out on Hugo reading early this year. I stalled out on The city we became, and am now craving something to curl up with and savour slowly over a long period of time, with zero deadlines.
Finished reading
Frog and Toad's storybook treasury by Arnold Loebel. I sought this one out based on the charming Frog and Toad Twitter bot. I started by reading it silently to myself, but that felt much too fast. I switched to reading it aloud to![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
black_samvara over several nights, and that was absolutely the way to do it.
The Frog and Toad series is an early reader for 6-7 year old kids, and I'm surprised—probably shouldn't be—but am so impressed by now good it is at that. The word choice, the ways to create repetition and the gentle themes that also legit made me laugh out loud…goddamn.
Knowing that Loebel was queer makes the underlying theme ache all that much sweeter. They were together. They were happy. They were happy together. It low-key destroys me when I think about it too much.
Homesick by Nini Capri. Finishing off the final story, in this case a novella. It's character-strong, rather than plot or concept, which is making for some heartstring tugging moments but is also making it slow going. I finally, finally finished it, and it took me a while to realise why the last one dragged so long while I finished all the other stories At Speed: this particular novella (novelette?) didn't pose me any questions that I wanted answers to. The rest offered immediate, urgent: 'what the fuck is going on?' 'what the fuck is going to happen?' The rest of them, in fact, keep the last one from dragging the collection down; still a 5/5 read.
Currently reading
Girls of paper and fire by Natasha Ngan. Impulse library pickup, for the pretty cover and the Goodreads memory that it was queer, written by an author of colour, and dealt sensitively with its grim, fantasy-shaded themes of sexual assault. I'm about 80 pages in, and it's a compelling, smooth read so far.
Up next:
I desperately want to get my hands on The witness for the dead by Katherine Addison (companion to The goblin emperor), but it's in the expensive hardback import category.
Much closer to home is The galaxy and the ground within, Becky Chambers's last in the Wayfarer series. I've reserved the library copy, which is overdue, which makes it so close and so far…
Finished reading
Frog and Toad's storybook treasury by Arnold Loebel. I sought this one out based on the charming Frog and Toad Twitter bot. I started by reading it silently to myself, but that felt much too fast. I switched to reading it aloud to
black_samvara over several nights, and that was absolutely the way to do it.The Frog and Toad series is an early reader for 6-7 year old kids, and I'm surprised—probably shouldn't be—but am so impressed by now good it is at that. The word choice, the ways to create repetition and the gentle themes that also legit made me laugh out loud…goddamn.
Knowing that Loebel was queer makes the underlying theme ache all that much sweeter. They were together. They were happy. They were happy together. It low-key destroys me when I think about it too much.
Homesick by Nini Capri. Finishing off the final story, in this case a novella. It's character-strong, rather than plot or concept, which is making for some heartstring tugging moments but is also making it slow going. I finally, finally finished it, and it took me a while to realise why the last one dragged so long while I finished all the other stories At Speed: this particular novella (novelette?) didn't pose me any questions that I wanted answers to. The rest offered immediate, urgent: 'what the fuck is going on?' 'what the fuck is going to happen?' The rest of them, in fact, keep the last one from dragging the collection down; still a 5/5 read.
Currently reading
Girls of paper and fire by Natasha Ngan. Impulse library pickup, for the pretty cover and the Goodreads memory that it was queer, written by an author of colour, and dealt sensitively with its grim, fantasy-shaded themes of sexual assault. I'm about 80 pages in, and it's a compelling, smooth read so far.
Up next:
I desperately want to get my hands on The witness for the dead by Katherine Addison (companion to The goblin emperor), but it's in the expensive hardback import category.
Much closer to home is The galaxy and the ground within, Becky Chambers's last in the Wayfarer series. I've reserved the library copy, which is overdue, which makes it so close and so far…