maharetr

Finished reading
A question of age : women, ageing[,] and the forever self by Jacinta Parson. Mum read this one as an audiobook as her before sleep read, and recced this to me, and I'm really interested to hear what she got out of it. Reading it as a print book was probably much less enjoyable.

As someone who just turned 40, I'm starting to get very interested in engaging with ageing and what it means in our culture, and figuring out what it means to me personally. I am extremely here for whatever the 'forever self' might be. I have no fucking idea what it is, actually, having now read this book.

I'm used to non-fiction books that are either collections of essays with discrete points, or books that are chapters building on previous arguments. This was a book that purported to be the latter, but read like the former, and I found it immensely frustrating as a result. It made some really good starting points in each chapter that then...went nowhere. Seriously, this table of contents (Amazon link to the sample) looks so structured and Going Somewhere and argh. Each handful of pages makes a really entrancing point, that goes fucking hard reset into the next point that will have nothing to do with the one that came before it, or the one that comes after it, and reaches zero conclusions. I expected each element to relate to a time of life, but each introduction resets to her childhood memory of that element and then bounces all over the place.

It feels like this is the first draft of something that needs to have its core points written on sticky notes and reordered into an actual whole, and god, I really really want to read that. I am so sad its not that, and I can't tell if it's my own expectations, or if I'm trying to impose a structure on something that doesn't need it, or what. Ugh.

This is me walking in quietly and sitting in the corner. Much has happened, and is happening, but y'know. Books.

I've finished-read a few things, or read samples a bunch more. We did a bunch of reading a work and I've brought home almost the entire Discworld collection and have it under my bed. I'd read most of the Death books in high school, and many of the Witches books in young adulthood, so now it's time for the City Watch.

Guards, Guards! I think this was a re-read, but t's long enough ago that it barely counts. I was very charmed by this. Epic kudos for the first proper appearance of the dragon over the city -- I felt the weight of that take-off, and the physicality of that dragon, holy hell.

Men at arms which I've just started. I don't think I've read this one at all, which is exciting, but it also seems heavy on the 'white cis guy grappling with the first wave of affirmative action' and oh, boy. I'm not sure I want to read something where I'm likely to be bracing for what are now Very Tired Jokes, and missteps, and, and. Ugh. Is it better than I fear?

I've also sorted a pile of books that have been lurking invisibly in my room for a very long time. Sorted into 'definite keeps', 'op-shop run', and 'read the first fifty pages while on holidays'. I'm so fucking grateful for the holidays, oh my god.

Hi, everyone. It's good to be back. How you all doing?

aaahhh Finally getting back in the saddle, so to speak. Not putting–or trying not to put—pressure on myself to post these regularly, just when I have the cope, I wrote, some months ago. And then the whole pandemic, obviously, and things went even more pear-shaped. I'm letting the Hugos slide by this year, and making peace with that. I don't think the cost of the individual things I might want to read equals the cost of a supporting membership, either.

Finished reading:

• The thousand doors of January by Alix E. Harrow. January is a biracial girl in early 1900s England and Europe, who discovers she can write her desires into existence. I loved this. It was luscious and almost overwritten and I ate every word. It ends somewhat rushed, but I also loved one of the closing paragraphs so much that I took a photo of it before I returned it to the library. It’s on my Hugo nomination ballot, even, such as that is. (Months later update: Yay! It made it! I'm super interested in its nomination numbers post-Hugos now, too.)

• The last unicorn by Peter S. Beagle. Has been on my vague wanna list for forever. I’m surprised at how dark it is so far, honestly, but thoroughly, if slowly, enjoying it. The writing is so skilled and occasionally catch-my-breath amazing. I’d expected to adore Molly Grue based on this gifset, and I came to like her, but it was Smendrick – his bumbling, low-level ineptness as he just tries to keep his head down and stay out of trouble – that was the unexpected star for me. It's such a dark tale, with the carnival – the harpy was genuinely unsettling – and the cursed Hagsville. It's impressively dark, actually. It's also taking me triple the amount of time I thought it would take to read it. I'm butting up against a renewal notice from the library, and that's on a three week loan. Later update: Slogged through to the end, but/and the final pages made it immensely worth it. The last five pages, settled deep in self-aware wryness, were an actual pleasure. I'm glad I read the book, overall.)

• The goblin emperor by Katherine Addison. (Review from over many, many weeks' reading) I've heard many people adore this one, and I'm interested to give it a proper go. Oh my heart. Maia is the exiled son of the emperor's discarded fourth wife, which makes him approx. 5th in line for the throne and never ever intended to rule. One airship accident later… 

( Read more... )

• A lady's guide to petticoats and piracy by MacKenzi Lee. I really enjoyed her first one, A gentleman's guide to vice and virtue, and this one was…close, but was more of an unrealized potential. There were excellent moments early on: Felicity hanging out with Monty and Percy was an utter, warm, loving joy that I shall cradle to my heart for a long, long time. I want to create that feeling in other people with my writing, even. But many of the other characters – Joanna and Sim, for example, had such nearly-fully-realized potential that I ached at that gap. Also the plot … wasn't. I kept waiting for it to start, honestly, rather than having the characters meander around, and it never quite happened. So I'm delighted to have it on my shelf to read those first few chapters over and over, but the book as a whole didn't quite make it for me. Useful learning reading!

Finally finishing The Goblin Emperor and working my way through Petticoats and piracy marked the start of my pandemic reading. Then I was delighted to stumble across this list https://bookriot.com/feel-good-fantasy-books/. I sampled my way through this list and decided to order about 6 of them.

Didn't finish:

• Witchmark by C L Polk. I wanted to like this so much! And it was close, so close to being good. But while the book laid out an interesting magic/electricity world, and a nice romance, at 130ish/320 pages, I didn't care about the central plot-point murder, and the goodreads reviews I tentatively read said that the book does that debut novel thing of never quite getting deep enough into its themes (trauma healing, magical healing, PTSD, enslavement etc). After slogging through the previous book of not-quite-working, I'm being Strong, Dammit, and putting it aside.

Currently reading:

• A green and ancient light by Frederic S. Durbin. This sample snagged me hard emotionally within the first few sample pages (adults sincerely respecting kids' personhood and internal lives are my absolute weakness), and now re-reading it with the physical book, it's doing it just effectively. I keep hesitating at certain points of reveal, worried that it won't keep being as good, and at about a third of the way through, it's still standing up, I say in part to coax myself to keep reading. The blurb quote bills it as "Mythic in its universality" which it is in fact decidedly not -- it feels very clearly WW2 evacuated-to-British countryside, even if it's very careful not to name itself (or any of the main characters, which feels delightful in a whole other charming way), but I'm still very much loving it.
• The mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart. More distinctly a children's book than I usually read, but fucking delightful and cosy at 30 pages in.

A to-sample-reads list, as haphazard as it might be:
Ash, by Malinda Lo
The girls of paper and fire, by Natasha Ngan

Finished reading:
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood.
Huh. Where to start? I know that some of my reactions to various things were blunted because I'd already processed the things having read surprisingly … not spoilery, but a surprisingly detailed descriptions of some book moments in a review. So, I'll go below a cut.

( No explicit spoilers I don't think, but don't read if you'd rather go in cold to your own read )

We who are about to… by Joanna Russ, published 1976.
A spaceship accident strands a small, disparate group of people on an unknown planet, hundreds of years from rescue. The female narrator isn’t interested in uselessly maintaining humanity. The first half of this was more harrowing reading than The Testaments, actually. For all that Gilead is horrific, and chews people up and spits them out, there’s a structure here, even if it sucks. Like the Joker says: “Everyone stays calm if things are going to plan. Even if the plan’s horrifying.”

Is there a point to surviving? Is there a point to keeping ‘humanity’ going in a place where natural attrition means we’ll die out much sooner rather than later? Russ says no, and while I’m hypothetically inclined to agree, watching the disagreements flare into violence and force and then disintegrate entirely, is grim stuff. I was utterly gripped by the first half. The second half meandered as the character chose to starve, and then gripped me for the last few pages so tightly I barely breathed.

There’s an opacity to Russ’s writing – there’s conclusions reached or ideas formed that seem to be happening just under the surface of the paragraphs, and I can’t tell if that’s the narrative choice to not state them aloud, or if I’m not making the connections. I’m also not sure if it’s a 1970s thing or a Russ thing. I’m pretty sure I found similar issues with the parts of The female man that I read. Glad I read it, if only to have read something from 45ish years ago. Not sure how I felt about it as a novella unto itself.


Currently reading:

The second mountain by David Brooks
Absolutely captivated by his chapters on the valley and the wilderness – those metaphorical (or literal) times when life smacks you off your stable perch and leaves you rattled and questioning everything, and you need to go away for a while to reassess you Everything. Less convinced by his writing on the soul – I think we have one, but I also think animals have souls, too. I am deeply distrustful of any ‘things that separate us from animals!’ spiels at this point. Although I think he’s talking about a moral centre and I’m talking about a life force, so *shrug*. Continuing to read with interest, little bits at a time.

To be taught, if fortunate by Becky Chambers.
Started! I love her concepts SO MUCH. I keep forgetting her writing isn’t as quite as polished and deft in turn. This is still good, twenty ish pages in.


Up next:
Argh, I feel like there’s so many, again, but my brain’s not working.

As I emerge, blinking, from the depths of months of Hugo reading…

Finished reading:

Vox Machina : Origins (I, graphic novel)
I'd heard...not great things? But they were going Cheap, and I'd been hearing Much better things about Origins II that's just rolling off the press now, so.
Vox Machina : Origins I, Issue 1 wow, so Matt Colville really doesn't like Vex, huh? (I don't know the difference between a 'story by' and a 'script' credit, but I'm stubbornly in denial that Matt Mercer might have written Vex that cold) Having said that, the twins banter actually still made me laugh aloud, and the comedic timing with Keyleth was pitch-perfect. So that's rather large something. And I like the art a lot.
Issue 2...it's sort of a problem when I legit feel more for the random nameless paladins and their dead party member, and like Tiberius Stormlord, more than Grog or Scanlan. Like, that's not great. Then on into Issues 3-6 The comedic timing of the twins becomes actual sniping and arguing when they're alone, apparently, and I hate that. The art is still impressive, but I'm feeling like this is a comic that's really only for diehard fans, and I say that as someone who's watched nearly the first quarter of campaign 1. Or it's just not that great. I have more hopes for Origins II, given that's being helmed by the woman who's also writing/helming the animated series. Also I've heard people who've griped about I speak far more warmly about II

The crane wife by CJ Hauser. Okay, it's not a book, but I still want to quietly cup it in my hands and offer it to people. It's a memoir article by a woman who cancelled her wedding a week out from the big day, and why, and how she's grappling with her life, and it's fucking devastatingly good. Content notes for infidelity, but also subtle, brutally effective gaslighting and emotional abuse. It made me cry, and made me feel infinitely fragile and also bigger than I had been before I started it. Set aside ten minutes to read it, and then time after for a quiet sit and a cup of tea, or something.

Currently reading:
Blackout: how is energy-rich Australia running out of energy? by Matthew Warren The 'setting of the basic groundwork' of the early chapters was also 'teetering in the edges of my ability to understand and retain'. A diagram or two might have helped. I'm deep in the chapter on political decisions that got us to now, and all the places that I'm seeing where things could have been achingly different. I didn't know Melbourne was one of the first cities in the world to have a(n embryonic) electricity grid. It's sort of inescapably dry, but still good, necessary knowledge to have.

The gentleman’s guide to vice & virtue by Mackenzi Lee. Well-to-do son of an earl goes on his Grand Tour/1800s gap year. This is charming and queer and well-written, and often deftly funny in that sort of way that looks effortless but takes real skill. It actually reads like quality fanfic (pleasing tropes especially), which I appreciate in spades in a published book. The author does point out racism and sexism, pointedly. I would have also preferred a stab at the colonialism inherent in both the era and the idea of a Tour, but that might have made it a rather different book. As it is, the writing style carries the day. The plot itself wobbles a little on the fact that while alchemy might have been a serious field of study in the 1800s, we still don’t have a cure for (spoiler redacted), so the main impetus falls a little to the side. At 350 of 520 pages, I'm still enjoying myself, though, and I'm really looking forward to the sequel/companion book which focuses on Felicity, who I'm adoring.


Up next:
Not sure. There's a bunch of things that I've either bought (On eating meat, by Matthew Evans), or been gifted (P&P), plus books that are about to come out any second now…(I'm trying to compile a list)

On eating meat, by Matthew Evans – an ethical omnivore’s take on eating meat
The lady’s guide to petticoats and piracy, by Mackenzi Lee
Family of origin – novel by CJ Hauser of above article, which was released two weeks ago.
Growing Up Queer in Australia, edited by Benjamin Law
Quarterly Essay on Safe Schools, Moral Panic 101, by Benjamin Law
Dead Blondes & Bad Mothers: on monsters & the fear of female power, by Sady Doyle, out 13/8/2019
Yes Yes Yes: Australia’s Journey to Marriage Equality by Shirleene Robinson, Alex Greenwich
How powerful we are, by Sally Rugg, out this month. Another marriage equality campaign book, that I’m looking at specifically because there’s apparently a chapter on the impact on queer Australians during the vote, which is not something that I’ve been able to find any sort of data on at all.
The light brigade by Kameron Hurley – still waiting curiously to see if this is going to make it to Australia
Seafire – N C Parker – girl pirates!

Finished reading:
Wonder woman: warbringer by Leigh Bardugo. Okay, I'm now officially a Leigh Bardugo fan. I love this SO fucking much. I'm really glad I persisted with it. It simultaneously didn't read grippingly, at yet I found myself inhaling sharply at tense moments, so something was Really Working. Also the dialogue is sharp and funny, and made me either snicker out loud on the train, or make me hug the book to my chest. It's queer- and fat-positive, and there are So Many Women all over the place, doing things and getting shit done. The ending could have been hokey but Bardugo stuck the landing and it came off as deeply satisfying. Nim is the BEST no-big-deal fat, queer, Indian character, I love her, and also I love Diana So Much. Just like the movie, the 'fish-out-of-water' trope could have been used for cruelty-humour and just like the movie it really, really wasn't, and it's all intrinsically and inalienably feminist and I flail with love.

"I shouldn't have called you names," Theo said. "You're not fat or ugly."
Nim cut him a glance. "I am fat, Theo, and far too hot for your sorry ass." Just. YES, GOOD. I am so glad this book exists.

Currently reading:
My grandmother asked me to tell you she's sorry by Fredrik Backman. Just started. Ella is seven going on eight. She's not very good at it. (Adults think she's too immature, or too mature, depending on which adult you ask, when). Grandmother is seventy-seven going on seventy-eight. She's not very good at it either. Yeah, okay, I’m smitten.

A hundred pages from the end, and it’s simultaneously charming and hokey, and pat, and weirdly compulsive all at once (that might be my own compulsion to finish things kicking in, but I’ve definitely put books down before, so w/e). I’m pretty sure I can see the denouement coming, and it still feels satisfying. Also it turns out this is a translated novel, and I’m wildly impressed by Henning Koch’s work here. I’ve not read many translations, to be fair (the only other one I can think of reading was attempting Girl with a dragon tattoo and dear god that was wooden), but this reads superbly well.

Up next:
Was going to be Kameron Hurley’s new one, but that’s taking a few weeks to travel through physical space, as things are wont to do. Maybe looking at Charlie Jane Anders’ new one?

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 by Stef Penney: 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 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 it was probably a good first novel, it…should have varied its tenses, dammit. *has judgey feelings, plus I really like tense changes*

Bone witch Rin Chupeco: gorgeous cover, interesting premise, and witches! But then we started getting to "people get a heart jewel necklace that fill with colour to show their True Selves/Destinies" and I'm so Done with rigid pre-destination stories. Returned to library.

Finished
a record of a spaceborn few by Becky Chambers. I liked it - all of the many characters had time to breathe and got satisfying arcs - but I cannot overstate how little plot there is. It is not necessarily a bad thing: Chambers clearly wanted to do a character novel, and that's fine, but there was very little narrative drive as a result. This is my second favourite of the three novels (the second being my most favourite) but I'm still very keen to see what she comes up with next.

My Candlelight novel by Joann Horniman. This is the sequel/companion novel to the novel of my heart (Secret Scribbled Notebooks). I was delighted to find it in a second-hand bookshop and to own a copy of both. I love it still even if I'd rewritten some parts of it in my memory in the intervening years. Queer (bisexual) YA.

Woman world by Aminder Dhwaliwal. 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. A 10-year-old boy, Danny, and whatever (tragic) thing happened to his twin brother, Finn.
(Having now finished) This was a wonderful, perfectly-distilled-10-year-old voice that makes some really incisive points about grief and feelings, and I was very impressed. I'm not sure what the actual significance of the last page or so was, but that doesn't stop me from reccing this highly.


Currently reading:

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 don't quite have the brain for atm, so pausing it for a few days to read The thing with Finn. Going to open it up and try again.

Up next:
I'm really hoping that Mandy by Julie Andrews actually exists in Dymocks' warehouse somewhere.

I fell off the wagon for a while there. In retrospect I burned out hard on reading Hugo works.

Finished reading
Six of crows by Leigh Bardougo. This was like a rich, meaty stew. Seriously, for some reason all the metaphors I can think of are related to food. A heist novel set in a fantasy-magicked Victorian London. This has fantastically dense, chewy (see?) worldbuilding, which made for slower but more rewarding reading. I liked many of these characters in their flawed way, although six was possibly slightly too many to keep in the air (or maybe just in my head) at once. Very well-realised...basically everything, although I tend to drift once we get into the nitty-gritty of the actual heists and trust the author will flag when things are/aren't working properly. Legit interested in reading the sequel – this book did a fair job of wrapping up the current plot while leaving enough tempting hooks for next book. I'd heard whispers about queer rep, which was why I picked it up to be honest, and it's there in secondary characters, and both subtle and correspondingly utterly unremarked, and I liked it for that.

Currently reading
Terra Nullius by Claire G. Coleman. Set in an Australia of Settlers vs Natives, of early Protectionist days. I really want to like this, but the writing style is taking some getting used to – the grammar is waving back and forth between being 'non-standard' to being flat out 'that sentence has wandered away and gotten lost'. But the more I read the more I adjusted and settled into it, I'm keen to keep reading, and glad I stuck with it.

Up next
Jessica Jones vol 1
Wool Vol. 1
Both impulse grabs from the local library.

THEN The house of shattered wings by Aliette de Bodard. I've heard good things about this and am v interested.

Finished reading:
All systems red by Martha Wells. I genuinely expected to like this, and I’m still not sure why it didn’t hook me. I’m there for So Many of those tropes: ‘what happened to the earlier crew?’; people being kind to those that most people aren’t kind to; people who aren’t considered people. Also I realise belatedly that this novella is the one I've seen many raving about. And yet I was never hooked – I read the first third? Half? And then jumped forward to read the last chapter, absently, and while I’m glad for the main character, I wasn’t interested in seeing them get there. It wasn’t bad by any stretch, it just never pinged me. *emoji shrug*

Down among the sticks and bones by Seanan McGuire. I was immensely frustrated by the first published in this series, to the point where I nearly didn’t read this prequel. But oh my god, I was utterly transfixed by this. I felt like there was a glorious depth now that she only needed to focus on two characters, and I loved the world and how creepy-as-ordinary it was. This is actually in all seriousness doing battle with And then there was (n-one) for first place on the novella ballot. I did not expect that at all.

Put aside (much less harsh than did not finish)
River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey (Tor.com Publishing): the writing is skilled, the premise (America starts farming hippoes in the south) is inspired, there’s an agender (they/them) character who is also desired by the main protagonist \o/. I really liked this … except for the act of vicious mutilation-then-murder by the main protagonist really close to the start. And okay, probably he’s being positioned as an anti-hero, but when the main (apparent) antagonist is dealing out less violence with more 'cause' than the antagonist…nope. I’m really bummed. : (

The Black Tides of Heaven by JY Yang (Tor.com Publishing): I also really wanted to like this one. A culture where gender is not decided until the early teens means we have two they/them pronouned twin main characters, which kudos, dude. But the writing was not quite tight enough, or the emerging plot quite interesting enough to hold me for the entire novella.

Luminescent threads A series of people's love and appreciation letters to Octavia E Butler ten years after her death and just after 45 got elected. It's unsettling somehow that just enough time has passed that we now have books referencing the 45th presidency. It makes for an amazing moment-in-time book, triply so because this moment is in the process of unfolding right now. The letters are gutting and heartfelt, and I'm really glad this book exists, but having only read one of Butler's books, I'm not feeling the urge to read the entire thing.

Currently reading
Crash Override: how Gamergate (nearly) destroyed my life, and how we came win the fight against online hate by Zoe Quinn. Her publishers were kind enough to give an excerpt of the entire first half of the book in the voters pack, and I went and spent $20 on the ebook unhesitatingly to reward that and also give Quinn money. The first half is a harrowing read of what her Ex and co put her through. The second half is what she’s doing after, and examining the haters (who are us, who are all of us in the ‘right’ conditions), and spent the first half horrified and what I’ve read of the second shouting “YES, THAT. Jesus.” A lot. She provides really good advice on digital protection, and what to do if you get in someone’s crosshairs, and how to help someone when you’re a friend or bystander. I wish she’d provided references, but this is still really, really good and really important. Strong rec.

Up next: Maybe Iain Banks, maybe Ursula Le Guin.