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God, I burned out on Hugo reading real hard/early this year, it seems. Or maybe it was right on time, and it's the later con start date that's fritzing things.
Finished reading:
Girls of paper and fire by Natasha Ngan. I inhaled this in a week. The tension really does ratchet up excellently. The romance honestly made about as much sense as the average 'girl falls for mysterious boy', which I can't complain about. I did like Wren as a character. I can't tell if the book is actually disserved by being YA, or if I was just interested in something it was never going to cover, regardless (exploring what intimacy was like after assault).
The galaxy and the ground within by Becky Chambers. My reading of this is so all over the place. It took 100 pages for the story to move out of territory covered the in the blurb, and after it did, I felt like I was sorely lacking for reasons to keep reading. There was a deeply touching moment or two (Tupo and their museum was a particular highlight), but then there were long stretches of not much. Then the denouement hits for each character, and they are (for the most part) breathtakingly perfect, so clearly something worked in the preceding pages, but I'm at a loss to what it was. I want Roveg's story in its entirety, though. And actually, Speaker and Tracker's story, and their people. Thinking back, this felt like a novel-length short story, which is…awkward. Okay! But I wanted to read about these characters in different places than Chambers's wanted to put them.
Avoiding the aging parent trap by Brian Herd. An impulse reserve from the library, by an Australian family lawyer. I'm 60 quick pages in an don't feel like I've learned much, but it's also still in the ground-setting territory, and I'm an only child of an only child, so a lot of the 'bury your sibling hatchet for the sake of your parents' doesn't apply here. It sounds like solid-enough advice for them, though.
Now Finished: Heh. This was somewhat useful. The information about who owns what, and who will get what in which circumstances, was valuable. Also the "get legal advice before you do anything big or even medium-sized in relation to elder care or changing wills or selling anything" advice was very effectively driven home, esp in Australian-specific context. Centrelink doesn't care if you gift away your million dollar lotto win to charity; it still counts as your asset for five years. Ouch.
That said, Big Sky Publishing better be a cover for some guy working out of his study/garage, or I'm gonna be judging them super harshly. The copyediting (children's', ouch) and editing left a lot to be desired, and any half-decent editor should have pulled him up on exposing his biases, and get him to tone down his snideness.
Currently reading:
One last stop by Casey McQuiston. A library reserve, gleefully made while the book was still on order. I've read the first few pages, and it's tight and funny. I'm not sure if I'll be able to keep up with its style for hundreds and hundreds of pages, but I'm keen to have a go.
At p175 or so: This was a really good example of (…upping the ante? I'm not sure what term I'm looking for here). But when characters hit the point that I the reader knew about from the blurb, I had QUESTIONS, (with literally that much wide-eyedness interest), and kept reading. The wheels are starting to spin just a little bit, and the 'oh! I can never tell her how I feel about her!' is starting to grate, but I'm also reasonably sure the ante is about to up again, so I'm interestedly sticking it out.
Up next:
I now have a copy of Witness for the dead (Goblin Emperor companion book) by Katherine Addison. It's slimmer than I realized, and so, so pretty and nice to hold in hardback. I'm technically currently reading it, but it's much, much slower going, and requires much more brain power per page, so I'm just dipping in and out atm.
Finished reading:
Girls of paper and fire by Natasha Ngan. I inhaled this in a week. The tension really does ratchet up excellently. The romance honestly made about as much sense as the average 'girl falls for mysterious boy', which I can't complain about. I did like Wren as a character. I can't tell if the book is actually disserved by being YA, or if I was just interested in something it was never going to cover, regardless (exploring what intimacy was like after assault).
The galaxy and the ground within by Becky Chambers. My reading of this is so all over the place. It took 100 pages for the story to move out of territory covered the in the blurb, and after it did, I felt like I was sorely lacking for reasons to keep reading. There was a deeply touching moment or two (Tupo and their museum was a particular highlight), but then there were long stretches of not much. Then the denouement hits for each character, and they are (for the most part) breathtakingly perfect, so clearly something worked in the preceding pages, but I'm at a loss to what it was. I want Roveg's story in its entirety, though. And actually, Speaker and Tracker's story, and their people. Thinking back, this felt like a novel-length short story, which is…awkward. Okay! But I wanted to read about these characters in different places than Chambers's wanted to put them.
Avoiding the aging parent trap by Brian Herd. An impulse reserve from the library, by an Australian family lawyer. I'm 60 quick pages in an don't feel like I've learned much, but it's also still in the ground-setting territory, and I'm an only child of an only child, so a lot of the 'bury your sibling hatchet for the sake of your parents' doesn't apply here. It sounds like solid-enough advice for them, though.
Now Finished: Heh. This was somewhat useful. The information about who owns what, and who will get what in which circumstances, was valuable. Also the "get legal advice before you do anything big or even medium-sized in relation to elder care or changing wills or selling anything" advice was very effectively driven home, esp in Australian-specific context. Centrelink doesn't care if you gift away your million dollar lotto win to charity; it still counts as your asset for five years. Ouch.
That said, Big Sky Publishing better be a cover for some guy working out of his study/garage, or I'm gonna be judging them super harshly. The copyediting (children's', ouch) and editing left a lot to be desired, and any half-decent editor should have pulled him up on exposing his biases, and get him to tone down his snideness.
Currently reading:
One last stop by Casey McQuiston. A library reserve, gleefully made while the book was still on order. I've read the first few pages, and it's tight and funny. I'm not sure if I'll be able to keep up with its style for hundreds and hundreds of pages, but I'm keen to have a go.
At p175 or so: This was a really good example of (…upping the ante? I'm not sure what term I'm looking for here). But when characters hit the point that I the reader knew about from the blurb, I had QUESTIONS, (with literally that much wide-eyedness interest), and kept reading. The wheels are starting to spin just a little bit, and the 'oh! I can never tell her how I feel about her!' is starting to grate, but I'm also reasonably sure the ante is about to up again, so I'm interestedly sticking it out.
Up next:
I now have a copy of Witness for the dead (Goblin Emperor companion book) by Katherine Addison. It's slimmer than I realized, and so, so pretty and nice to hold in hardback. I'm technically currently reading it, but it's much, much slower going, and requires much more brain power per page, so I'm just dipping in and out atm.