Culture recently consumed, February 13th edition
I feel like doing another "culture recently consumed" which is like an expanded version of Reading Wednesday, and is again not happening on Wednesday. Doesn't really matter. Here's what I've been reading, listening to, and watching lately.
Books
I finished Tasha Suri's Realm of Ash and loved it as much as I loved her first novel, Empire of Sand, which is to say, a lot. Both books are gorgeous, medieval-India-inspired fantasy with awesome and complex female characters, male love interests I actually like and m/f romances I enjoy, plenty of plot other than the romance, and lots of stuff around identity, culture, empire, oppression, empowerment and other amazing stuff. Going on my Hugo nominations list. (Yay, finally read another 2019 novel besides A Memory Called Empire that I want to nominate! For clarification, there are tons of 2019 novels I haven't read yet, I absolutely don't mean that others aren't good, and there are many I'm really interested to read.)
Other things I've recently finished include some poetry in Finnish and some non-fiction things which had been hanging in the "near-finished" state for quite some time.
I'm currently reading The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon, which I bought in e-book after I had to return the physical library book I had. It's definitely easier to carry around or read in bed in this format, though its harder to flip back when I've forgotten something from a past chapter. The book is huge and epic, also very good. I also started the fourth InCryptid book by Seanan McGuire, because I needed some entertaining comfort reading and I figured that series should work well and I'd been missing reading it.
Podcasts
(Fiction, don't have the energy to do the nonfiction ones as well now)
So, I continued EOS10 and finished Season 3 in the span of a few days, and since then I've just been flailing so much. I'm sure anyone who's listened to S3 knows why. Just, *gestures*, that season. I haven't been managed to continue yet because I need a break. Dammit, I wasn't supposed to get emotionally involved! *flails some more*
I've been slowly continuing S2 of The Penumbra Podcast, and am now stalled in the middle of Juno Steel and the Stolen City because I feel like I can't go on before I have time for Juno-induced emotional breakdowns, and I don't yet. Juno, I know you're a disaster and I love you, but do you have to be quite so disastrous? On the upside, I feel well-adjusted in comparison.
I finished S1 of The Pilgrimage Podcast and have some complicated feelings about it. We'll see if I have to write them in a spoiler-cut post, though I don't think anyone I know listens to it so probably nobody cares...
I've finished by re-listen of Kaleidotrope and continued my re-listen of Midnight Radio. I also started re-listening to The Far Meridian since S3 doesn't seem to be here yet and I want to write fanfic.
In terms of new shows, I've listened to most of S1 of Diary of a Space Archivist, which is an adorable little one-person podcast about a space archivist. I've listened to the first two episodes of Seren, another one-person podcast which only has those two episodes out; it's about Seren (Welsh for Star) who has to go out to a space colony as a punishment for something, accompanied by only an unsympathetic AI. She complains a lot, but she has good reason to. I've also listened to the prologue episode of This Planet Needs a Name but not more than that, yet.
Hmm, what else? There was a new bonus episode of Moonbase Theta, Out. I liked it. I feel like I've forgotten something, but I guess I've listed quite many things already.
I've also listened to a few short stories in podcasts of SFF zines; I particularly liked Kij Johnson's Noah's Raven (Lightspeed) and Annalee Newitz's When Robot and Crow saved East St. Louis. Incidentally, they both have smart corvids. I love corvids.
TV
Just the recent Doctor Who S12 episodes. I haven't posted about the newest one yet. It's been a bit controversial, I think - I did like it, but it wasn't emotionally the easiest episode for someone like me to watch, and also I shouldn't have watched it late at night, I was kind of scared to go to sleep after that...
This entry was originally posted at https://auroracloud.dreamwidth.org/141317.html. Feel free to comment on either site.
Books
I finished Tasha Suri's Realm of Ash and loved it as much as I loved her first novel, Empire of Sand, which is to say, a lot. Both books are gorgeous, medieval-India-inspired fantasy with awesome and complex female characters, male love interests I actually like and m/f romances I enjoy, plenty of plot other than the romance, and lots of stuff around identity, culture, empire, oppression, empowerment and other amazing stuff. Going on my Hugo nominations list. (Yay, finally read another 2019 novel besides A Memory Called Empire that I want to nominate! For clarification, there are tons of 2019 novels I haven't read yet, I absolutely don't mean that others aren't good, and there are many I'm really interested to read.)
Other things I've recently finished include some poetry in Finnish and some non-fiction things which had been hanging in the "near-finished" state for quite some time.
I'm currently reading The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon, which I bought in e-book after I had to return the physical library book I had. It's definitely easier to carry around or read in bed in this format, though its harder to flip back when I've forgotten something from a past chapter. The book is huge and epic, also very good. I also started the fourth InCryptid book by Seanan McGuire, because I needed some entertaining comfort reading and I figured that series should work well and I'd been missing reading it.
Podcasts
(Fiction, don't have the energy to do the nonfiction ones as well now)
So, I continued EOS10 and finished Season 3 in the span of a few days, and since then I've just been flailing so much. I'm sure anyone who's listened to S3 knows why. Just, *gestures*, that season. I haven't been managed to continue yet because I need a break. Dammit, I wasn't supposed to get emotionally involved! *flails some more*
I've been slowly continuing S2 of The Penumbra Podcast, and am now stalled in the middle of Juno Steel and the Stolen City because I feel like I can't go on before I have time for Juno-induced emotional breakdowns, and I don't yet. Juno, I know you're a disaster and I love you, but do you have to be quite so disastrous? On the upside, I feel well-adjusted in comparison.
I finished S1 of The Pilgrimage Podcast and have some complicated feelings about it. We'll see if I have to write them in a spoiler-cut post, though I don't think anyone I know listens to it so probably nobody cares...
I've finished by re-listen of Kaleidotrope and continued my re-listen of Midnight Radio. I also started re-listening to The Far Meridian since S3 doesn't seem to be here yet and I want to write fanfic.
In terms of new shows, I've listened to most of S1 of Diary of a Space Archivist, which is an adorable little one-person podcast about a space archivist. I've listened to the first two episodes of Seren, another one-person podcast which only has those two episodes out; it's about Seren (Welsh for Star) who has to go out to a space colony as a punishment for something, accompanied by only an unsympathetic AI. She complains a lot, but she has good reason to. I've also listened to the prologue episode of This Planet Needs a Name but not more than that, yet.
Hmm, what else? There was a new bonus episode of Moonbase Theta, Out. I liked it. I feel like I've forgotten something, but I guess I've listed quite many things already.
I've also listened to a few short stories in podcasts of SFF zines; I particularly liked Kij Johnson's Noah's Raven (Lightspeed) and Annalee Newitz's When Robot and Crow saved East St. Louis. Incidentally, they both have smart corvids. I love corvids.
TV
Just the recent Doctor Who S12 episodes. I haven't posted about the newest one yet. It's been a bit controversial, I think - I did like it, but it wasn't emotionally the easiest episode for someone like me to watch, and also I shouldn't have watched it late at night, I was kind of scared to go to sleep after that...
This entry was originally posted at https://auroracloud.dreamwidth.org/141317.html. Feel free to comment on either site.