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Finished reading:
Dead blondes and bad mothers by Sady Doyle. Loved it. Had tiny quibbles (it wasn't immediately clear if the work she referenced at the start of one chapter was fiction or non, for example), but that doesn't stop it from being a brutal 4.5 out of 5 in-the-end hopeful stars.
Put aside:
The light between worlds by Laura E. Weysmouth. British children during the Blitz are sucked away to a portal fantasy land, and then returned. This is, in theory, the story of their lives after. In practice…ehhhhh. For context, I am d e s p e r a t e for narratives that talk about what it's like After you get back from years of growing into power/adulthood in your fantasy world, to be thrust back into your child/teenage body like nothing has happened, and how you cope, and what you do. I'm also desperate for a fictional narrative that interrogates Narnia's "the humans are here! We are saved and shall be subservient!"
This…wasn't that. And it's not at all fair of me to judge a book by what it isn't, but I'm still also finding myself judging it for what it is doing, from a writing POV. The present day narrative had no hooks, or momentum for me, and the portal-fantasy chapters didn't have any relationship to the present day. They also jumped forward considerably, and didn't do anything to negate the 'this is already over and done with' in-the-past effect. I had no questions, aside for why the main character and her sister weren't talking, and that was not actually enough to keep me reading past page 100. Alas.
Currently reading:
On eating meat by Matthew Evans. The prologue was a bit lurchy, but the book has promise for when I'm feeling mildly fortified.
Up next:
SO MANY books are coming out Very Soon, and I don't have brain to list them atm.
I tentatively borrowed David Brook's The second mountain from the library, and am just as tentatively considering reading it.
Dead blondes and bad mothers by Sady Doyle. Loved it. Had tiny quibbles (it wasn't immediately clear if the work she referenced at the start of one chapter was fiction or non, for example), but that doesn't stop it from being a brutal 4.5 out of 5 in-the-end hopeful stars.
Put aside:
The light between worlds by Laura E. Weysmouth. British children during the Blitz are sucked away to a portal fantasy land, and then returned. This is, in theory, the story of their lives after. In practice…ehhhhh. For context, I am d e s p e r a t e for narratives that talk about what it's like After you get back from years of growing into power/adulthood in your fantasy world, to be thrust back into your child/teenage body like nothing has happened, and how you cope, and what you do. I'm also desperate for a fictional narrative that interrogates Narnia's "the humans are here! We are saved and shall be subservient!"
This…wasn't that. And it's not at all fair of me to judge a book by what it isn't, but I'm still also finding myself judging it for what it is doing, from a writing POV. The present day narrative had no hooks, or momentum for me, and the portal-fantasy chapters didn't have any relationship to the present day. They also jumped forward considerably, and didn't do anything to negate the 'this is already over and done with' in-the-past effect. I had no questions, aside for why the main character and her sister weren't talking, and that was not actually enough to keep me reading past page 100. Alas.
Currently reading:
On eating meat by Matthew Evans. The prologue was a bit lurchy, but the book has promise for when I'm feeling mildly fortified.
Up next:
SO MANY books are coming out Very Soon, and I don't have brain to list them atm.
I tentatively borrowed David Brook's The second mountain from the library, and am just as tentatively considering reading it.
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