Reading Wednesday
Because I actually remembered on a Wednesday for once.
What I've just finished
Two Serpents Rise by Max Gladstone. I really, really loved Three Parts Dead, but this main character didn't quite do it for me the same way. Which was odd, because I typically prefer stories that are in tight third person to stories that jump between narrators (which I suppose could be multiple tight third, but I feel like it isn't "tight" or "close" if you're getting information that a single character wouldn't know from their POV, even if it's because you're jumping POVs), but I vastly preferred the multiple POVs of Three Parts Dead, because it gave me a sense of scope and a lot of extra world-building. Whereas I think it's not a spoiler to say that a lot of the central plot threads of Two Serpents Rise depend on us only having the information that Caleb has.
I also had a weird problem with Two Serpents Rise wherein I read about half-way through and discovered that I felt like it was all over the place and I couldn't hold the plot together in my head, and not in a deliberately wandering, organic way, e.g. Diana Wynne Jones. I just could not hold what was going on in my head. When I picked it up again this week, I started over from the beginning, and I could follow it all the way to the end. I still don't know if that was a problem with the writing or a problem with my brain.
Regardless, I quite liked the book, and when I stumbled on Max Gladstone's blog, I did not shriek in terror (context: white male writer in sci-fi). I am aware that I am actively trying not to enter an idealization/devaluation cycle (yes, I did just spend fifteen minutes trying to remember the term via looking at
staranise's journal) with regards to white male writer in sci-fi who writes women and POC well and has shockingly not-toxic thinky thoughts that are at least ally-adjacent. (I am not sure why my brain needs to idealize a white male sci-fi writer, but I am suspecting it has to do with the MetaFilter emotional labor conversation in the same way that boyslash fanfiction has to do with women fantasizing about men doing emotional labor amongst themselves and doing it well.)
What I'm reading now
I am partway through Daytripper, a graphic novel by Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba, and despite putting it on my TBR list because it was getting rave reviews, I am mostly "meh" about it. Which is why I got it out of the library early in May and am still reading it off-and-on--it's no longer than your standard trade paperback of five to ten comic book issues.
All the rave reviews were about how it conceptualizes life and death, so I suspect the "meh" is coming from feeling like it is not actually saying anything new. I may attempt to finish it before my final auto-renewal at the library on it runs out.
I also picked up the next Craft Sequence book (these are the Max Gladstone ones): Full Fathom Five. So I will probably be in the midst of that in the next day or two.
What I'm reading next
Gang Leader For A Day is sitting in my trunk/coffee table, and Expecting Better came in from the library today. I seem to recall really wanting to read some gang ethnography back in May, but just have not got around to it. And I am not pregnant, but as I have expressed on several people's journals (hat-tip here to
recessional who doesn't realize how much I appreciate the occasional affirming of my narrative around parenting) I am perfectly content to be mostly ambivalent towards having kids, with occasional strong hormonal spurts of desire for babies. When I married T., one of the things I accepted about him is that he's 100% set on having kids, so I knew I was agreeing to being willing to parent. So I am sort of poking into the incredibly reactionary pregnancy advice as part of my ongoing investigation into all sorts of methods of acquiring children to parent. (We know we're going to adopt eventually, and probably foster; so this is more of a "do we also want to have a homemade baby?" investigation.)
ETA: There are now minor spoilers for Two Serpents Rise in the comments.
(
comments at Dreamwidth. Comment there.)
What I've just finished
Two Serpents Rise by Max Gladstone. I really, really loved Three Parts Dead, but this main character didn't quite do it for me the same way. Which was odd, because I typically prefer stories that are in tight third person to stories that jump between narrators (which I suppose could be multiple tight third, but I feel like it isn't "tight" or "close" if you're getting information that a single character wouldn't know from their POV, even if it's because you're jumping POVs), but I vastly preferred the multiple POVs of Three Parts Dead, because it gave me a sense of scope and a lot of extra world-building. Whereas I think it's not a spoiler to say that a lot of the central plot threads of Two Serpents Rise depend on us only having the information that Caleb has.
I also had a weird problem with Two Serpents Rise wherein I read about half-way through and discovered that I felt like it was all over the place and I couldn't hold the plot together in my head, and not in a deliberately wandering, organic way, e.g. Diana Wynne Jones. I just could not hold what was going on in my head. When I picked it up again this week, I started over from the beginning, and I could follow it all the way to the end. I still don't know if that was a problem with the writing or a problem with my brain.
Regardless, I quite liked the book, and when I stumbled on Max Gladstone's blog, I did not shriek in terror (context: white male writer in sci-fi). I am aware that I am actively trying not to enter an idealization/devaluation cycle (yes, I did just spend fifteen minutes trying to remember the term via looking at
staranise's journal) with regards to white male writer in sci-fi who writes women and POC well and has shockingly not-toxic thinky thoughts that are at least ally-adjacent. (I am not sure why my brain needs to idealize a white male sci-fi writer, but I am suspecting it has to do with the MetaFilter emotional labor conversation in the same way that boyslash fanfiction has to do with women fantasizing about men doing emotional labor amongst themselves and doing it well.)
What I'm reading now
I am partway through Daytripper, a graphic novel by Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba, and despite putting it on my TBR list because it was getting rave reviews, I am mostly "meh" about it. Which is why I got it out of the library early in May and am still reading it off-and-on--it's no longer than your standard trade paperback of five to ten comic book issues.
All the rave reviews were about how it conceptualizes life and death, so I suspect the "meh" is coming from feeling like it is not actually saying anything new. I may attempt to finish it before my final auto-renewal at the library on it runs out.
I also picked up the next Craft Sequence book (these are the Max Gladstone ones): Full Fathom Five. So I will probably be in the midst of that in the next day or two.
What I'm reading next
Gang Leader For A Day is sitting in my trunk/coffee table, and Expecting Better came in from the library today. I seem to recall really wanting to read some gang ethnography back in May, but just have not got around to it. And I am not pregnant, but as I have expressed on several people's journals (hat-tip here to
recessional who doesn't realize how much I appreciate the occasional affirming of my narrative around parenting) I am perfectly content to be mostly ambivalent towards having kids, with occasional strong hormonal spurts of desire for babies. When I married T., one of the things I accepted about him is that he's 100% set on having kids, so I knew I was agreeing to being willing to parent. So I am sort of poking into the incredibly reactionary pregnancy advice as part of my ongoing investigation into all sorts of methods of acquiring children to parent. (We know we're going to adopt eventually, and probably foster; so this is more of a "do we also want to have a homemade baby?" investigation.)
ETA: There are now minor spoilers for Two Serpents Rise in the comments.
(
comments at Dreamwidth. Comment there.)