maharetr

Put aside
Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger. Read the first 30 pages on the bus on the way home, and haven't gone back to it yet, although I do plan to give it the first 50. Most reviews on goodreads adore this, but a handful were like: "this reads much younger than it's actually pitched" and man, it…really does so far. The art style, the voice, the character urgently riding her bike somewhere, and later meeting her friend at the mall… Would make an excellent 14 yr old protagonist, but she's written as 17, and it's throwing me. I'm not yet sold on the 'find the truth of a family member's death' yet either.
Update: never got back to it, and as someone had reserved it, I returned it to the library without much of a pang. Politely leaving off my ballot, I guess.

Finished reading:
Finished-not-really: with one story to go, it's on the backburner while I read library books, so…

Homesick: stories by Nino Cipri. With one story to go, holy SHIT this was SO GOOD. Seven short stories. Several genuinely scary ("Dead air", I'm looking at you), all funny and tightly written. I would read the hell out of "Shape of my name" (time travel! trans character!) as an entire novel. I'd also love to read "Presque Vu" is another one I'd read as an entire novel (spirits/ghosts have started appearing everywhere, and have started haunting people in bizarre ways).

"Presque Vu" also had the amazing moment of a joke that had me (and the main character) laughing out loud as the side character who inadvertently delivered it, blinks and says "wait, why are you laughing?" Like, impressively good shit.


Legendborn by Tracy Deonn. Also finalist for the YA-not-Hugo. Read the first 50 pages, was willing to give it another 50, and now I'm nearly 200 in. I'm genuinely interested in Brianna's story, and finding out what happened to her mother (this 'find the truth of a family member's death' is working for me), being Black in an all-white, old-money, old-magic secret society, and in who her mother was.

I'm interested enough that I'm willing to slog through the "…would they really be telling her allll this Secret Society information?" exposition dumps. There's the occasional motivation silence (it was not at all clear how much she knew and what her initial intentions were when she rocked up to said Secret Society and knocked on the door, for example), but the main character's overarching goal is very clear, and there's enough moments of shining captivation (her meeting her new psych was excellent). I'm not entirely sure I'm going to make it through all 500 pages, but I look forward to picking it up each time which is a feeling I haven't had a while. So far, going on the ballot at the very least.

Updated with about 100 pages to go: It's an impressive debut, and I can see how it'd be a fantastic read if you'd become invested in the secret society, but I really, really wasn't. I was extremely here for Brianna, her grief, her mother, the friend with they/them pronouns, and the whole mother-related storyline, but that felt like less than 200 pages worth of a 500-page book. I'm at a bit of a sad loss as to why it needed to be that long, and that was 500 pages of the smallest published font I've seen in some time. Going on the ballot, though.

Currently reading:
Black sun by Rebecca Roanhorse. WELP, heads up for maiming of a child by a parent. It's the first chapter, and describes how said mentioned-on-the-blurb character became the way he is. It's skip-able if need be, and probably easier to read if you know the shape of it going in, but it was harrowing to come to cold.

21 May Update: I hadn't been hooked by page 50, but the opening had been so harrowingly effective that I decided to give it to page 100, and it finally clicked for me on page 77ish. I'm extremely here for Xiala (bisexual mermaid sea captain!) and Seraipo and the story of the sea crossing. I care not at all about the Sky Temple whatevers, which might be a problem later as those stories are about to collide. But this is a fast, easy read, and I'm happy enough to roll along with it.

Up next:
Cemetery boys by Aiden Thomas has been on my radar for what feels like aaaages (read: a year, but it was 2020, so like, a decade), and now grabbed it from the library because not-a-hugo finalist.

The city we became by N K Jemisin. I feel like I've started the ebook sample several times, and was both entranced but also somehow never finished said sample. I'm hoping the physical book from the library will help.

Finished reading:
Nothing totally finished this cycle, technically. BUT

Currently reading:
Exhalation by Ted Chiang, which half way through has been a rollercoaster of up and down reading.

The merchant and the alchemist's gate. The story that I thought was going to be the hardest to get into turned out to be my overwhelmed-by-feels standout. It's a nested stories-within-a-story, and all of them deftly play to my love of time travel and healing and pieces clicking into place just so. Deeply satisfying.

Exhalation A strange, detailed look at mechanical people investigating themselves in much the same way we try to, but with the advantages of being able to take themselves apart. I'm not entirely sure of the point, per se. I picked up allusions to climate change and the like, I just wasn’t sure what to do with them.

What's expected of us A small unsettling story that I think I read before it was published here. What would you do if it were proved that we had no free will?

The lifecycle of software objects Digients (essentially very advanced tamagotchis) are raised in virtual worlds. I wanted to love this story. Reading the author notes afterwards, I really wanted to love the story he said he was inspired to write, but the story he actually wrote was…hmm. He chose to write it in a very distanced, telling-not-showing style, which was jarring. And then the digients spoke like toddlers, even after years and years of literal schooling, and it was abrading my nerves long before the topic of essentially selling them for sex work was raised, at which point it started grating through my nerves into rage. This was…possibly the goal? But I feel like either he or I missed the point, if it was.

Dacey's patent automatic nanny A beautifully-voiced museum interpretation of an automated nanny: the horrible, 'rational' misogynistic man who thought up such a device, and the adult son who used it on the grandchild, and it was all deeply unsettling and very well done.

Up next:
The rest of Exhalation.

The girl who drank the moon by Kelly Barnhill which is on hold for me at the library.

Because internet which I've not bought yet, despite my excitement.

Finished:
To be taught, if fortunate by Becky Chambers.
This was a very companionable read. It’s the sort of plot of a road trip novel in space, if the road trip had been funded by earth crowdfunding, which is sort of what’s happened here. The writing is a slight step below spectacular maybe (which is still head and shoulders above most works), but the world building is top notch, as is the feel of the science, and the depictions of the wonders – and traumas – of space and other planets. I found myself very faintly impatient with the ending while I was reading it, and then while I was drifting off to sleep that night, I found myself thinking of the ‘discoveries’ my mind thought we’d just learned we’d made, and then thinking ‘yes. Go on. Yes.’ – the story felt that real that it had just gently settled itself into my consciousness, and that’s unsettlingly cool. The quote that the title comes from was written at the end, and is fucking amazing.

Currently reading
The second mountain by David Brooks. Still reading. I feel like it’s starting to spin its wheels a little, 100 pages in, so I’m hoping for new material and ideas soon. ETA: true to form, the chapter ‘Vampire Problems’ was not at all what I thought it was going to be about (how to stop say, toxic people dragging you down), and was in fact about how to make a choice that was going to entirely change your identity and selfhood, when you only have previous/current self’s knowledge on how to make that choice. Fantastic concept, that then also slid back into repetitive examples. In theory persisting, in practice I’m putting off reading it, but I also feel like I’m putting off reading anything at the moment, so grain of salt.

The big book of post-collapse fun by Rachel Sharp. I was deeply charmed by what I read in the sample, and wanted to curl up in this world, with this character, enough to buy the book. The rest of the book is slightly more wobbly than that, but I’m reading along, gamely enough.

Time lapse (The 13th doctor short story) by Naomi Alderman. This reads very much like an episode. That’s…not a bad thing, I guess? And it’s a neat premise for an episode – everyone on the planet has forgotten the year 2004 – but I’d been hoping for a written story, something that showed me the inner thoughts of a particular character, say. I read an interesting post about point of view, and how basically ‘camera length’ away from the characters POV is an entirely valid point to write from, and it might be! It’s just not the version I prefer, and it’s the version I’m trying to write myself away from. There’s so little feeling or intimacy with it, and that’s what I realise I’m craving in my fiction.

Up next:
Um. Maybe T Kingfisher’s horror story? I dunno how wise a choice that is, though…

Have finished:
My grandmother asked me to tell you she's sorry by Fredrik Backman. Finished, with a few tears on my part, and some low-key odd ableism on the author's part (not naming the 'boy with the syndrome', ever? Really?), and some tiny puzzlements, but still satisfying and I'm glad I read it. Was very similar to Extremely loud and extremely close from some years back, but I liked it much, much better. It felt like it was much less about making a Grand Point, and more about telling a cosy story about a group of people.

Strange waters Samantha Mills. OH GOD. So each year I mean to do at least some reading of the works rounded up by Asking the wrong question's Abigail Nussbaum as Hugo nominations in time to actually add my nomination. This year at least, I got around to reading one or two at all, never mind the long-past deadline *cough*. But HOLY GOD, I hope this short story made it. (ETA: sad it didn't, but so it goes) I love time travel stories So Much, as a preface, and this one both mashed my buttons and is also, I think, devastating in its own right. 6000 or so words and highly recced.

Currently reading:
Spindle's end by Robin McKinley. Despite my frustrations with Beauty, the things I loved about it were enough to sway me into picking up the next available (to me) one. I'd actually read the first page a few times over the last few years, and kept bouncing off it for whatever reason, but apparently cosy domestic magic is 1000% what I'm about right now, because yup here for needing to de-magic your teakettle and asking bread to stay bread, very much. A hundred or so pages in and it strikes me as a deeply leisurely read, and one that I don't wan to rush through for the sake of having read it, so I'm putting it aside for a few months probably because...

Up next:
Clearing the decks because the Hugos are here! The Hugos are here!