mid-week reading meme
I just finished a bunch of books at once so it's time for another one of these.
What are you currently reading?
Ebook on my smart phone: Just started Late Eclipses by Seanan McGuire, the fourth book in the October Daye series.
Paper books:
Bears Discover Fire, Terry Bisson. I have only read the titular story so far. It broke my heart. In a good way, but still. I don't know if I will be able to read any of the rest.
Lilith's Brood, Octavia Butler. Am only a few pages in. It's a page-turner.
Everyday Language of White Racism, Jane Hill. Anthropology. Jane Hill is white. I thought I had an OK handle on this subject but Hill points out so many things that I wasn't aware of, and collects them into categories that make sense. She also provides a good description of the split between two theories of racism that cause problems in public conversations about racism. Now that I've read this book, I am seeing more racist language in the culture and seeing it in different ways.
What did you recently finish reading?
Audiobook: Mona Lisa Overdrive, William Gibson. I find Gibson's sentence- and paragraph-level writing style very creative and beautiful. His plots and characters are kind of formulaic. (But that's looking at it from OMG 26 years later. I suppose it's kind of like saying Chuck Berry is formulaic.) But I find it hard to concentrate on the plot of his books, at least in audio form. I had the same problem with the previous book in the Sprawl trilogy. This book has some interesting female characters and has characters that come from a variety of classes and ethnic backgrounds. I'm uncomfortable with the appropriation of Vodou loa, although Gibson does seem to have made some effort to research them.
Ebook on my iPad: Captain Vorpatril's Alliance by Lois McMaster Bujold. The book didn't suck me in the way the Vorkosigan books did. It took me weeks to pick my way through it. Come to think of it, that's been my experience of everything Bujold has written except for the Vorkosigan books. Well except for what I actively dislike (Sharing Knife, ick). I think part of my problem with CVA was that I thought all the other characters were far more interesting than Ivan, and I wanted stories about them, not glimpses of them through Ivan's mind. I felt that way about some of the characters in the Miles books too, but I also thought Miles was interesting.
Audiobook: Keeper of the King, P.N. Elrod & Nigel Bennett. Do you want to read an Arthurian legend? Do you want to read a spy novel? Do you want to read a vampire story? Now you don't have to choose!
But the book doesn't wrap up, it pretty much ends in the middle of a plot. I hate that. Also the audiobook is abridged; I didn't notice that until I'd finished it.
Ebook on my smart phone: The Big Meow, Diana Duane. This is the third book in the Cat Wizards series, which is set in the same universe as the Young Wizards series. The first two books are The Book of Night with Moon, and On Her Majesty's Wizardly Service (UK title)/To Visit the Queen (US title). Duane self-published the third book as an e-book, available here: http://www.the-big-meow.com/ (Buying the e-book theoretically gets you a paperback at some point, but the paperback is over a year later than promised and the web site hasn't been updated for a while so I don't know if that's going to happen.)
This got off a pretty slow start but when the cats traveled back to 1946 Hollywood I began liking it better. She digs around in Aztec mythology quite a bit, and I don't know enough about it to have an opinion whether it's borrowing or appropriation. I feel like it has Christianish tropes too, but possibly not more than the Wizard series in general. I enjoyed it quite a bit.
What do you think you’ll read next?
I want to read An Exchange of Hostages by Susan R. Matthews because she was a guest of honor at FogCon.
This entry was originally posted at http://firecat.dreamwidth.org/805042.html, where there are
comments. I prefer that you comment on Dreamwidth, but it's also OK to comment here.
What are you currently reading?
Ebook on my smart phone: Just started Late Eclipses by Seanan McGuire, the fourth book in the October Daye series.
Paper books:
Bears Discover Fire, Terry Bisson. I have only read the titular story so far. It broke my heart. In a good way, but still. I don't know if I will be able to read any of the rest.
Lilith's Brood, Octavia Butler. Am only a few pages in. It's a page-turner.
Everyday Language of White Racism, Jane Hill. Anthropology. Jane Hill is white. I thought I had an OK handle on this subject but Hill points out so many things that I wasn't aware of, and collects them into categories that make sense. She also provides a good description of the split between two theories of racism that cause problems in public conversations about racism. Now that I've read this book, I am seeing more racist language in the culture and seeing it in different ways.
What did you recently finish reading?
Audiobook: Mona Lisa Overdrive, William Gibson. I find Gibson's sentence- and paragraph-level writing style very creative and beautiful. His plots and characters are kind of formulaic. (But that's looking at it from OMG 26 years later. I suppose it's kind of like saying Chuck Berry is formulaic.) But I find it hard to concentrate on the plot of his books, at least in audio form. I had the same problem with the previous book in the Sprawl trilogy. This book has some interesting female characters and has characters that come from a variety of classes and ethnic backgrounds. I'm uncomfortable with the appropriation of Vodou loa, although Gibson does seem to have made some effort to research them.
Ebook on my iPad: Captain Vorpatril's Alliance by Lois McMaster Bujold. The book didn't suck me in the way the Vorkosigan books did. It took me weeks to pick my way through it. Come to think of it, that's been my experience of everything Bujold has written except for the Vorkosigan books. Well except for what I actively dislike (Sharing Knife, ick). I think part of my problem with CVA was that I thought all the other characters were far more interesting than Ivan, and I wanted stories about them, not glimpses of them through Ivan's mind. I felt that way about some of the characters in the Miles books too, but I also thought Miles was interesting.
Audiobook: Keeper of the King, P.N. Elrod & Nigel Bennett. Do you want to read an Arthurian legend? Do you want to read a spy novel? Do you want to read a vampire story? Now you don't have to choose!
But the book doesn't wrap up, it pretty much ends in the middle of a plot. I hate that. Also the audiobook is abridged; I didn't notice that until I'd finished it.
Ebook on my smart phone: The Big Meow, Diana Duane. This is the third book in the Cat Wizards series, which is set in the same universe as the Young Wizards series. The first two books are The Book of Night with Moon, and On Her Majesty's Wizardly Service (UK title)/To Visit the Queen (US title). Duane self-published the third book as an e-book, available here: http://www.the-big-meow.com/ (Buying the e-book theoretically gets you a paperback at some point, but the paperback is over a year later than promised and the web site hasn't been updated for a while so I don't know if that's going to happen.)
This got off a pretty slow start but when the cats traveled back to 1946 Hollywood I began liking it better. She digs around in Aztec mythology quite a bit, and I don't know enough about it to have an opinion whether it's borrowing or appropriation. I feel like it has Christianish tropes too, but possibly not more than the Wizard series in general. I enjoyed it quite a bit.
What do you think you’ll read next?
I want to read An Exchange of Hostages by Susan R. Matthews because she was a guest of honor at FogCon.
This entry was originally posted at http://firecat.dreamwidth.org/805042.html, where there are
comments. I prefer that you comment on Dreamwidth, but it's also OK to comment here.