Reading roundup and book meme
63. Jo Walton (papersky), The Just City -- huh. So, this is the first Jo Walton book I've read, although I enjoy reading her column on Tor.com about other people's books (Rothfuss and Brust in particular). I didn't really know what to expect, and did not realize this had sequel(s), and so was especially puzzled by where the book left off. Even knowing there are sequels (which skip forward considerably, I guess), it's still a weird place to end a book. But then, it is a weird book. I enjoyed reading it, and got through it quickly, but I didn't enjoy it in any of the ways I NORMALLY enjoy fiction -- I didn't love the world (it's interesting, but rather abstract and frequently wrong-headed, which is the point, but still), I didn't get attached to the characters (they all feel rather distant), I didn't get swept up by the plot (there isn't all that much of a plot, really), I didn't bask in the prose (it's quite utilitarian, for good reason, but there you go), and I didn't care about the theme (not a philosophy person). So, what added up to my enjoyment? I'm frankly not sure, but for all that, it worked for me in a way. Not my favorite book ever, but an interesting and fairly successful experiment. Spoilers from here
I was amused to see that shortly after discovering that Bangsian fantasy is a subgenre with its own name, I randomly picked up a book that was basically Bangsian fantasy. The masters aren't literally in the afterlife, but they might as well be -- Athene snatched them away in the moment between their death, and when they die in the Just City, they will come back to their own time as corpses. Anyway, none of the major actors are real people, except Sokrates -- the POV characters certainly are not -- but it was close enough. Also, it's kind of hilarious to read, close together, two books that both talk about the distinctions between the various Greek love words, agape and eros and so on -- although here it was A LOT more pertinent than in Forbidden Parabatai Het. XP
Sokrates was the only one that I really liked as a character (ironically, maybe, since he's not the author's creation wholesale) -- his curiosity and crankiness really was a lot of fun, and I felt fond of him throughout; the whole book picked up for me considerably when he appeared. I was very amused by his excitement about the unfamiliar concept of zero, and being adamant that minds are housed in livers, and so on.
I liked Maia pretty well at the start, when she's in her own time and missing her father / anyone who would talk to her about interesting things and let her look at art, but less so when she came to the Just City. Probably because so much of her arc stopped being about her and started being a vehicle for talking about how the City is put together behind the scenes, which was very interesting, but not conducive to getting to know her further as a character. It doesn't help that the two personal things that do happen in her POV after that are both quite uncomfortable -- her rape by Ikaros and her making the decision to follow Plato's precepts by 'exposing' (i.e. abandoning to die) a baby with a cleft palate. The rape is not gratuitous and there are some very interesting points made around it -- that Ikaros (Pico della Mirandola) not only claims but genuinely seems to think he's doing her a favor, 'liberating' her from stupid Victorian beliefs about sex (which are, admittedly, stupid), that years later he had "forgotten the rape and only remembered the conversation" and the way Maia feels about it, the way the community of female masters deals with it, the way even a male master Maia respects and trusts, Ficino, casually victim-blames her when the subject comes up ("Sometimes it's hard to be one of the women." "You should have stuck to Plato." "I did. It's he who should have."). But it's not, you know, the sort of thing I enjoy reading about, even if thoughtfully and interestingly treated. And Maia's decision with the baby girl made it quite a bit harder to like her after that. I realize this is working as intended, a feature and not a bug, but just... not a feature I particularly wanted.
(Honestly, just too much (significant) rape and near-rape overall; it makes sense because it's actually one of the drivers of the story -- Apollo assumes human form and participates in this thing because he wants to understand better what happened with Daphne, but still -- Maia's rape by Ikaros, the not-rape but dubcon-y elements of Simmea's "marriage" with Kebes, Apollo musing on Daphne and talking about it with Simmea. It's not gratuitous, and I understand the purpose behind it, but still... Rape in fiction doesn't necessarily bother me, but it bothered me here because those scenes, with Maia and Simmea, stand out against the abstract philosophical conversations and amiable discussions, and thus feel much more prominent than their page-time. Again, I'm pretty sure that's intentional, and it works at that, but...)
Of the other POV characters. Apollo is fairly fun, and I do like the idea that an incarnated god would be both awesome and admirable at many things and a dolt when it comes to human interaction, and he has some nice lines, but I never particularly like Apollo among the Greek gods. As for Simmea, there are interesting things done with her -- I appreciated the way her post-partum depression is shown, the way she deals with the "marriage" situation(s) as a survivor, the way she is fairly unfazed when she learns Pytheas is a god and is like, "Oh, now it all makes sense), the way she is aware of her appearance and what people think about it but doesn't feel defined by it -- but I found her hard to connect to, probably most because she had so wholeheartedly bought into the idea of the Just City. I found Kebes interesting, too, the way he was so focused on thwarting the masters and escaping, just as black-and-white in his own way as the masters' beliefs. But none of them were really people that grabbed me as characters.
The plot, such as it is, was surprisingly engaging for how little actually happened / how much of it was just people talking -- and the way the climax is Sokrates debating Athene (which didn't really work for me as a climax, but whatever). I did like the discovery of the workers' sentience, the way Sokrates and the other go about figuring out whether they are sentient or not, and the conversation with Crocus and Sixty-One towards the end.
The writing is odd, in an interesting way. I believe the conceit is that everything is taking place in Greek, but I don't know if that explains the very... clinical way a lot of stuff gets talked about, genitals and rape and "mating". In any case, that was another thing that made it harder to connect with the characters and the goings-on.
Apparently, according to this, a precursor of this was the first novel Walton ever wrote, at 16, so maybe that explains some things about the randomness of the idea/plot. She also references Riverworld in that blurb, so I was not far off on the Bangsian nature of it.
I'm reasonably curious to check out the sequels, and also reasonably curious to check out Walton's other books, although I gather that none of her books are very good predictors for what her other books are like. Still.
64. Kaje Harper, Nor Iron Bars a Cage -- a freebie picked up from egelantier's rec, this was exactly as promised: an adorable original m/m romance in a secondary fantasy world setting. It comes with AO3-like tags and warnings, which was rather weird -- that's a new one even for a indie press (or self-pub) book for me. Even with the rec, I was pleasantly surprised by how good the writing was, and how thoughtfully and carefully the characters and the romance were treated. I finished it in a day and a half, and would happily read more stories with the same characters or set in the same world (which I don't think exist). Spoilers from here!
Anybody familiar with my tastes in fictional men will be utterly unsurprized that I really liked Tobin, the cheerful and gentle soldier. Well, retired soldier, turned king's messenger, but still. Tobin is actually a tad TOO perfect, but the whole thing is told from the other man's POV, so I could explain it to myself as Lyon just being really in love (and I think that's what's intended here, judging by the nuance with which the other characters are drawn). Lyon was definitely OK, too; he is suffering from severe PTSD after some very traumatic events and is living without the use of one hand, but the book makes it very clear that he is coping and working on making himself better, and in general, even when he is angry at himself for not being able to do something or handle something, it's not unremitting and generally short-lived, either because someone else, like Tobin, snaps him out of it (or later on Chief Xan) or, even more satisfyingly, Lyon realizes he's being ridiculous and does so himself, ditto for stuff like him being jealous of the closeness between Tobin and the king. He is not my kind of character, the way Tobin is, but he was well done and a compelling protagonist/POV given circumstances that I think are pretty challenging, so, well done.
The relationship itself was really well written, one I respected and cheered on and just enjoyed seeing unfold, slowly but satisfyingly. Lyon is a survivor of magic-assisted rape and torture, and as a consequence is extremely jumpy about touch, being approached from behind, and a multitude of other triggers, some of which take even him by surprise. I'm obviously not an expert on this stuff, but the way his PTSD was handled worked really well for me, the way innocuous questions or something as simple as a specific bridge triggered him and his reactions, the way he was torn between pushing the relationship further and knowing that he couldn't handle anything more yet. I really, really loved the way Tobin handled all this -- not just with respect and support and backing off whenever that was what Lyon needed, but also just his whole approach to everything having to do with Lyon's condition: asking him what specific aspect wasn't working for him and then trying to accommodate that part specifically, whether it was about getting him to cross a bridge or to the next stage of intimacy. No pointless drama or miscommunications making things gratuitously worse, just two intelligent people working together to the best of their abilities to overcome a real and difficult challenge, whether it's Lyon's agoraphobia, having only one good hand, or PTSD stemming from the rape. Apparently this is a thing I really like! I also enjoyed the way Tobin and Lyon did believably feel like men who were friends as boys, the way they bantered and teased each other in-between the supportive sweetness. And also the way both of them recognized that the other person had obligations to other things -- Tobin his duty to the King, Lyon his responsibility as the only man who could do the trasference with Chief Xan. There were only two things about Tobin and Lyon's relationship, directly and indirectly, that did not work for me -- the use of "fay" as the in-universe term for gay (too close to 'gay', and also makes me think of Faerie, which I think is not intended), and "lion-boy" as the nickname Tobin uses for Lyon, which is just terrible, and not even terrible in an endearing way. But two minor things out of an entire book is really not bad.
Another thing I was very pleased by is the way the plot is not just something there to get the guys together -- I found it genuinely compelling on several levels, both in terms of what it means for Lyon's personal growth -- he eventually volunteers to do a thing that scares him the most, accept a ghost into his mind, and then has to face an even bigger nightmare, and works through it with his own strength and the help of the men he's come to trust -- and the larger scope for the country. They don't magically thwart an invasion, but they do intercept it much earlier and with less bloodshed thanks to Lyon's actions, but it's not a bloodless victory, and it's not world peace from here on out. The magical worldbuilding is not a big focus of the book, but I got the sense that it's well thought out behind the scenes, and enjoyed Lyon talking shop with the mages; there's also a feeling that something larger is going on with magic ebbing out of the world, and I'd love to see a sequel where Lyon helps the mages figure this out. It is a very Clair book, and everyone Lyon interacts with is sensible and competent and trying to do their best, even though they may not trust/want to count on him particularly, like the captain of the king's guard or Firstmage. Every risky step is well thought out and taken only after less risky avenues are attempted or vetted, and with reasonable precautions in place -- this was so refreshing! Oh, and I liked Chief Xan, the ghost, quite a bit, too, and liked that Lyon gives him an honest answer (probably not) when Xan asks him if he would've given the precious cure to his ill child, back in the times of the Plague.
And I like the way everything ends on a happy note, but nobody is magically cured -- Lyon's hand is better, thanks to the healer working on it, but will never be of much use to him; Lyon's PTSD is better, too, but he's still got a long way to go and limitations he can't face, the kingdom is at peace, but nothing is fully resolved with the R'gin.
So, super-sweet and very well written, and as it's free, I highly encourage anyone who enjoys fantasy-setting m/m and isn't put off by the triggers (PTSD, self-harm, flashback to sexual assault) to check it out.
L's English class is reading The Great Gatsby, which is one of those books I've always meant to read and never got around to, and L is enjoying it, so she wanted me to read along with her. So that's what we're doing, a sort of reading pact, where she gives me the additional background and insight from lectures in class, and I point out things I spot, too, and it's being pretty fun. I'm keeping pace with them, which is basically a chapter a week (they're doing it in depth, plus other classwork and outside sources), so I haven't quite decided whether I'll post on it all at once at the end or as with reading pacts, weekly updates. Probably the former, but let me know if anyone's dying for my liveblogging thoughts about The Great Gatsby...
I'm also reading Ursula Vernon's/T.Kingfisher's/ursulav's serial, Summer in Orcus. I've actually only read chapter 1 so far, but the opening couple of paragraphs are AMAZING, and I had to read them both to the rodnets and B (you'll see why if you read them yourself).
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Things tangentially related to books:
- We all took the Pottermore Patronus quiz. Mine was a Scops owl (which L is making fun of me for because it doesn't sound like a very useful Patronus, but whatever), and L and O both got dogs -- bloodhound for O and husky for L. We also got ourselves sorted into Ilvermorny houses -- Horned Serpent for L and me (she's chortling about being a Slytherin-Slytherin, since that does make her a double snake, although the description sounds more like Ravenclaw if anything), and O got Pukwudgie, which sounds like the Hufflepuff equivalent (but is regardless a very silly sounding name; I know it's an actual Wampanoag folklore critter, but that does not make the name sound any less silly in abstraction).
- Yuletide tagset is up. Dragaera tagset suggests that someone plans on requesting Adron/Verra, which I'm on board with, and the RoL tagset makes me very happy with the inclusion of Varvara and Kumar (among the usual suspects).
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That new book meme going around
1. What’s the last book you read? What did you think of it?
Last book I finished was Larry Correia's Monster Hunter International. What I think of it in full is here, but in short, it was a reasonably fun approximation of a dumb action movie, exceedingly Gary-Stu-y but definitely not as bad as I thought it might be based on the whole Sad Puppies thing, but not actually my type of story either. (I'm going to try the sequel, as I hear they're better, and I'm willing to believe that with some editorial oversight, they would be.)
2. What’s the worst book you’ve ever read, and why?
I've told this story before: In my English 1B class, which ended up being themed around dystopian narratives (which included things like Eliot's "The Waste Land" (the GSI/grad student teaching the course was an Eliot scholar and built a class around it, basically), Richard III, and Pink Floyd's The Wall, as well as more traditional dystopias, like Brave New World and The Handmaid's Tale) we read this absolutely terrible book, Larry Burkett's The Illuminati. It's a book composed of Christian paranoia and terrible writing, and features such charming tropes like crack babies being harvested for organs thanks to bills suported by liberal Congressmen who are fathering these crack babies and then using the organs, a female president who falls apart at the first sign of pressure and is generally useless, and a half-Jewish/half-Arab character who is the literal Antichrist. Somehow this is all the gays' fault, also, I think? I don't actually remember how that's connected, just that they are obviously Bad. (I'm not even mad at any of this, it's just that kind of book.) Meanwhile, the writing has all the grace and subtlety of a Dan Brown novel, only I had to keep reading it for school.
Apparently he reissued an 'updated' book in 2004, because the original took place in 2001 (I read the original, in 1996). The really scary thing is that this time around I went to see what Goodreads had to say about it, and it is SCARY how many people apparently read it as kids through their (presumably Christian) schools or churches. Oh my god, wow.
You may have the legitimate question about why we were made to read this book at uni, when it is terrible. The GSI wanted to do a unit on didactic dystopias, and wanted to pick something to contrast with The Handmaid's Tale, and this was the 'religious Right' paranoia mirror to the Handmaid's Christian-governed dystopia. I can see the logic, but ugh, what a piece of crap book, and I told her I was embarrassed to be seen reading it on public transit. I don't think she taught it again...
3. A book you found overhyped, and why
Well, at one point, when I was in my early teens, I found Shakespeare overhyped, because school kept pushing Romeo and Juliet at me, and even when NOT read as a tragic love story for the ages, it's not one of my favorite plays. I did grow up to appreciate Shakespeare, with Hamlet senior year and Richard III in the class mentioned above, but I'm still not that fond of R&J. Also, while I'm pooh-poohing the classics, I find Dickens overappreciated even now.
Among my more usual fare, as in, genre, there are a number of books I've found overhyped, but I've kind of learned to write that off as a matter of different tastes / not being on the author's wavelength. I think the first time I remember that happening vividly was with Seanan McGuire's Toby Daye books: I know so many people who love them and think they're the best thing ever, and love everything McGuire writes. Me, I just find myself frustrated by them, because they're like an uncanny valley of book for me -- so close to something I'd be likely to love, and yet not quite... something enough. They don't resonate with me despite superficial resemblance to things that do (Dresden Files, War for the Oaks), and it's just... *shrug* I had similar reactions to everything of Cat Valente's I've ever tried to read, and to N.K.Jemisin's Inheritance books. (Jemisin is actually an encouraging story for me, because after finding her earlier work overhyped and 'irrelevant to my interests' (not in a serious sense; I appreciate what she's doing and am happy to see it done, but in terms of hitting my narrative kinks, I mean), I was genuinely blown away by her latest, so.)
Anyway, the reason I'm willing to give these books "it's not you, it's me" benefit of the doubt is that there are books I really did enjoy and find very well done that fandom finds overhyped -- like Lev Grossman's The Magicians.
There are probably legitimately overhyped books out there -- ones that garner acclaim while being bad books. But I think they mostly tend to be in fields like literary fiction, which I don't read.
4. Ereaders versus physical books is such a false dichotomy. Instead, tell me what other formats (phone apps, tumblr fiction, twitter haikus) you read in
I love the phrasing of this question, but unfortunately don't have an interesting answer for it. I hate Tumblr's format for fiction, although the integration of images is nice. I hate reading on non-dedicated electronics, although I do read on computer for fic. I don't really have the patience for Interactive Fiction, either digital or choose-your-own-adventure -- because I'm a completist who wants to see all the endings, but a really impatient one :P My friend TK is really into, like, non-linear storytelling, and he's given me neat-looking books where you overlay transparent pages on top of non-transparent ones and follow the storylines like this, and it's all very... I feel the same way about it as I do about higher math, basically: wow, that's kind of mindblowing, and I'm glad someone both understands this and cares, but I'm not among their number. I have fond memories of reading serials in Soviet magazines (this was a thing, for both adults and children) -- some story about aliens who left a cypher in the whorls of a peach pit (anybody remember this, folks my age?) and really good sci-fi in back issues of Yunost' which my parents kept in the bookcase. But I've gotten less patient about this, too, as I've gotten older -- I lose track of comic book issues (and only read trades the rare times that I do want to read GNs), and webcomic updates, and WIP fic, and have basically stopped embarking on things that I can't read in novel-sized chunks at least. For years I've vaguely wanted to try the kind of interactive storytelling that you get with D&D or LARP, or heck, even LJ role play, but I think that's not going to happen either (I have enjoyed reading some LJ RPs, but again, they work for me best binging on the backlog, not so much following along). And I find it very hard to focus on things with only an audial component, so I don't do audiobooks or podcasts (I gave WTNV like four episodes, and it was cute, but the demands of the format did not justify my enjoyment from the content, alas, earwax).
What I think might be fun is a kind of game/puzzle storytelling that I remember ambyr writing about a while back, where you get in the mail some newspaper clippings, post card, journal, and so on, and have to puzzle out hidden messages and figure out what's going on -- a mystery story in a box (with, as far as I can tell, actual characters and plot that you get to figure out). So, like, all the things that appeal to me about Escape Rooms, only by myself and in the comfort of my own home and without the need to disassemble toilets or do anything else involving physical dexterity -- i.e. perfect for me XD (The article on ARGs - alternate reality games is really interesting, but I can't figure out what class this sort of puzzle falls under exactly.)
5. Which genre(s) don’t you read? Why not?
I habitually read only fantasy, sci-fi, (non-genre) YA, and occasional mysteries/thrillers. I do read classics, poetry, graphic novels, plays, and non-fiction every once in a while, though generally need some kind of external push (like a Reading Bingo or a reading pact) to get me to do so.
I used to never read romance, but I've tried a couple of the ones enjoyed by the people with whom I share SFF fandoms (so this was Heyer, Courtney Milan) and they were OK. Not my thing, ultimately, but not actively offputting like the Harlequins have always looked. Good self-pub romance seems to have dispensed with some of the things that were least likely to work well for me, and paranormal romance has paved the way for me to try this stuff. I don't mind reading romance stories where other things I like are going on -- SFF or mystery -- but when the plot is JUST romance, it doesn't tend to keep my attention very much. And also, I think one of the reasons romance doesn't work for me as much as other 'iddy' genres is that it does not lend itself to serialization -- if the couple is not together by the end, it feels needlessly drawn out, and if they are, there's no reason to follow them. Stories about loosely connected couples, like Milan's The Brothers Sinister, do kind of get around that problem, I guess, but it's not the same, because the protagonists rotate. Anyway, with romance I'm now at a place where I will read very highly recommended romance if it lands on my lap :P (I am looking forward to eventually reading Rose Lerner's True Pretenses, though, and might even put some effort into acquiring it.)
Another one I don't read is historical fiction. I can enjoy 'period' fantasy (I'm thinking of Guy Gavriel Kay's things, which have a touch of the numinous but are more historical than fantasy a lot of the time, or the Victorian fantasy jag I was on earlier this year), or 'period' mysteries, but reading historical fiction just for the sake of the setting doesn't do anything for me. These things occasionally come up in anthologies (like the GRRM and Dozois edited ones that cross genres but have a particular theme), and I read them, and come away feeling like "and the point of that was?" So I know it's not my thing.
Another genre I've been exposed to a fair bit in anthologies is horror, and it doesn't work for me either -- I get the same "what am I reading this for?" lack-of-impact from it, but while historical fiction tends to just be boring, horror can also be actively offputting to me. I have read, I think, a total of two horror novels in my life -- one when I was in some vacation house with nothing to read, and one because B got it out of the library or found it at a garage sale or something, and I started reading it not realizing it was horror. I did finish both those books, and the first one I remember even reading in the car (something I never do, because I get motion sick) because I wanted to get to the end already. That's just the thing, though -- I can find the plots engrossing, but having finished the book, I don't feel any satisfaction -- just the opposite. Like, why did I put myself through that? I don't enjoy the process of reading horror, the sort of suspense that comes with it, and I don't enjoy having read horror either, so it's basically just lost time for me. (I've tried reading Stephen King, and have gotten various fractions into several of his books, but the fact that he is VERY GOOD at writing horror just means that I enjoy the process of reading it even less, so I've always bailed before I got anywhere.)
Finally, I guess I should mention literary fiction, which I also tend not to read. Or, rather, I suppose it's in the same category as romance for me -- I will read it if highly recommended by people with a lot of known overlap in tastes in my usual reading material, but not "cold". And even then it's better if there's some magical realism going on -- there's a reason two of my favorite 'real' books are Master i Margarita and One Hundred Years of Solitude.
6. If you read in more than one language, is there a difference between the experience of reading in your native language(s) and reading in other languages?
This is a very cool question! The language I read something in definitely affects SOMETHING -- I find that if I read more in Russian (reading in English being my default at this point, though I was a voracious reader in Russian before I ever learned English), I tend to think more in Russian, too, want to code mix in Russian more.
I'm pretty sure I tend to fixate more on different parts of the text in the two different languages, though how much of that is difference between writing convention vs just the fact that all my training in close reading and literary analysis has been in English is debateable. I notice dialogue and word choice more in Russian -- tend to feel them more viscerally, especially when it comes to informal speech, while in English I tend to notice interesting sentence construction, alliteration, descriptive imagery. Reading sex scenes in Russian is SO WEIRD, because it's not been normalized for me at all, by either fic or trashy books, both of which I've read plenty of in English. I'm not a big fan of long, dialogue-less stretches in any language, but have less patience for them in Russian, I think, maybe because a lot of my Russian reading was, after all, children's books that don't tend to have walls of text like that. (I have read a fair chunk of the Russian classics, including War and Peace and some Dostoyevsky, when I was a kid, but I probably also skimmed them a lot... :P
Probably the most notable difference, though, is not related to the text itself but to stuff around it. With my current fannish community on LJ, a huge part of the reading experience is sharing my impression with others, talking about what I read, recs, reading fic -- and all of these things are much harder for me with Russian books. For the most part, I can't rec Russian genre to non-Russian friends; translations mostly don't exist, and when they do, I don't know how good they are. There are so many Firefly fans on my list who I think would get a kick out of the Kosmo~oluhi books... but alas, earwax. Even when translations do exist, and assuming they are decent, it's not always possible to talk about the things I want to talk about with friends who read the books in translation -- for example, one of my favorite things about the Lukyanenko Dozor books are the Strugatsky homage/references -- but those who read them in English just don't have that context, so it's all, "trust me, he's doing something funny/clever here", which is unsatisfying. And like I said above, my vocabulary for talking about books is all in English, so I can't even have a conversation in Russian about the books I read in Russian, but having the conversation in English about a book I read in Russian is weird, too, even if the other person ALSO read it in Russian. It ends up being a weird code-mix-y melange, full of "can you say that in Russian?" on my part (as ikel89 can testify), and it just feels slightly off-kilter at all times anyway. And finally, fic. There is fic in Russian, and thanks to AO3 and Fandom Battles I even know where to find some of it, but Russian fandom conventions are so WEIRD to me, and feel a couple of decades behind the times in the fandoms for Russian-only material, where there is not much cross-pollination with English-speaking fandom, I guess -- like, I read some Man from UNCLE (movie) fic on AO3, and it's pretty much just like normal English fic (and a lot of it is translations, too, so that probably sets the tone). But when I look at Kosmo~oluhi fic, there's all this marking things as AU for anything that's not a missing moments fic, and warning for slach and OOC where there's slash. And of course it's the Russian-canon fandoms where I need the Russian fic in the first place, so it's pretty discouraging. At least fanart doesn't have this issue :P
7. If you’re not a native English speaker, how much do you read in your native language versus how much you read in English? How do you feel about that? // If you’re a native English speaker, go find a book in your second/third/etc language, or in translation, to add to your to-read list
Not enough. :P In Russian, I mean. But it's certainly easier for me to find books in English than in Russian -- unless I want to pirate them, and even then. I mean, it's not like there are a ton of specific Russian books that I WANT to read -- there's Rubina that's been rec'd to me repeatedly, and a couple others in translation where Russian makes more sense than English (Meir Shalev, for example), but on the whole it's just that I would like to read in Russian more so that my Russian doesn't feel stagnated at the level of a precocious fourth-grader, you know?
8. The book you read when you’re stuck in bed sick
I don't really have a go-to comfort read. When I was little, sick in bed was when I'd take out all my Murzilkas (children's magazine) and leaf through them. These days I'd probably pick something cozy to reread, which, because I don't reread much, would be likely a fluffy Vorkosigan (say, A Civil Campaign) or a fun (and non-Paarfi, because who can deal with Paarfi when sick) Dragaera book, like Taltos, or something else low-impact and familiar, like a Harry Potter book (1, 3, or 6).
9. Fiction or non-fiction or both? In what ratio? Where do you draw the line between the two?
Left to my own devices, 100% fiction, although I really enjoyed all of the non-fiction books I've read in recent years, under the direct or indirect influence of Reading Bingos. But non-fiction just reads in a different way and doesn't scratch the story / hanging out with characters itch of fiction, so I don't reach for it on my own.
Where do I draw the line between the two? Uh, the fiction I read tends to be VERY fictional, set in universes that don't exist, and non-fiction I read mostly tends to be of the pop-science variety, so not very storylike. I like biographies, too, which I guess tend to be a bit more blurry in nature, but am not interested in fictionalized biographies (because see historical fiction). And I've read one or two "based on a true story!" books (Alias Grace was the most recent one I think, but that one was very very clearly fictional).
10. The book(s) you bought because the cover was pretty, and whether it was worth it
The only books I've bought purely on a cover-driven whim like that have been (a) those coffee-table type books like Dragonology, which are mostly for looking at rather than readin anyway, and also some children's picture books back when the rodents were small, which, pretty much ditto. In particular, there was this fabulous book about an anteater which had a sticky tongue and googly eyes, and that's basically all you need to know about it (the story I think was fairly cute, too?) The tongue was pretty quickly coated in dust and lost its stickiness, but L still fondly remembers this book, as do I, so, TOTALLY WORTH IT.
As for books for actual reading, I think the closest I've come was being swayed to buy the first Temeraire book because of the cool dragon on the cover (cool dragons on the cover are kind of a theme....), despite being uncertain about the naval setting and Napoleonic Wars backdrop. That was definitely a good decision.
11. The worst book hangover you’ve ever had
Probably the one for Dragaera, which started when I read Iorich at the start of 2011, and then spent the next four months reading all the Dragaera books I'd missed, rereading all the Dragaera books I'd already read, and searching LJ/DW/the internet for any semblance of Dragaera fandom, read Tiassa as soon as I could get my hands on it, then spent the next 3.5 years subsisting on memes and rereads of books and meager fic and accosting people in dark alleys with copies of Taltos I offered to lend them, until Hawk came out. I'm still not actually over the hangover and want to cross over Dragaera with everything and manifest a fandom into existence by sheer force of will, but it's down to manageable levels, at least.
The other notable book hangover would probably be for Rivers of London, after Broken Homes. The thing about RoL is, I got into the books in March 2013, which meant that I could read the first three at once, and then had to wait until the summer for book 4. And book 4 had several things happen: it ended on a huge plot twist with no character resolution, it (re)introduced a secondary character who became one of my favorites, and it ended up becoming my favorite book in the series. (egelantier aptly described my 2013 books roundup as as "Rivers Of London And Some Other Books I Guess" XD) And then there was no more for over a year. So I filled up my 2013 and 2014 by reading books that I hoped would furnish me with ersatz RoL -- all the 'magical London' fantasy I could find -- Felix Castor books, Matthew Swift books, Alex Verus books, and tried a couple of others, and my main complaint for some of them came down to "not RoL". So, yeah, that was some hangover.
The interesting thing to me about these two examples is, RoL was fairly normal as far as book hangovers go -- I discovered a new series, fell in love, couldn't get enough. But Dragaera! I'd been a low-key fan for years, over a decade, I think, before I read Iorich, and it's not even that I like Iorich itself that much -- it's not one of my favorites at all. But SOMETHING happened, like I'd exceeded some threshold of cumulative dosage, and there was just no turning back. So odd!
12. Do you have to finish one book before you start the next one, or do you read multiple books at the same time?
I happily read multiple books at once, though now that I have a Kindle, I'm less likely to have a bedstand book, a bathroom book, and a backpack/commute book, because the Kindle is pretty portable and easily read in all of those places. But I still usually have a Kindle book and a backup hard copy in my backpack, at least (in case the Kindle dies), and sometimes a book or two at home, also. Currently my Kindle book is The Just City, my backup hard copy book is back to being Witcher (since I've finished The Darkest Part of the Forest), and my bedstand book is Tell the Wind and Fire (with Book of Jhereg underneath, when I start missing Dragaera too much, see above). But really I'm only actively reading the Kindle at the moment.
13. The fictional character you want to believe you resemble and the fictional character you actually resemble
Character I'd like to believe I resemble -- probably Olenna Tyrell. She's become a character I really identify with, and I like her combination of savviness, protectiveness, and snark. But I'd probably not live nearly as long in Westeros, LOL. (Other acceptable characters: Cordelia Naismith, Granny Weatherwax, etc.)
Character I actually resemble: probably Kragar :P I'm definitely the trusted lieutenant type, and although I'm capable of acting in a leadership role, I'd much rather be someone's right-hand person instead, take care of the preparations and detail work, and snark at them from the sidelines.
14. The book that, in hindsight, really should have clued you in to the fact that you’re _________ (queer/in love/doomed to be an academic/etc)
This is a great question, but I'm honestly stumped. I don't feel like there have been any great revelations about my character or interests, and none of them via reading? My reading and fannish tastes have certainly stayed very consistent, for the most part, but they don't translate into RL things. For example, from an early age I would latch onto villains in stories, in part because they frequently featured in hurt/comfort type scenarios -- well, more hurt than comfort, but still -- and I still love reading hurt/comfort in fic, but have no interest in actual BDSM or anything adjacent personally. Professionally, I'm pretty far from the kind of characters I most eagerly read about, pirates and explorers and detectives. So I'm not sure what's left... Maybe my early tendency to get attached to villains and mysterious loners explains marrying a misanthrope? :P
The other thing I can think of, and a sort of different note, is just being doomed to literary analysis/thinking too hard about books. When I was ten, I read Master i Margarita, my first grown-up book, and not only did I love the characters (by which I mean Woland and his entourage; I didn't really care about Margarita or the Master or the mortals in general for the most part, except maybe in the Pilate thread) and the setting and the quotes, but I was really intrigued by the structure of the book, the Evangelie/gospel thread and the Woland + general mayhem thread and the Ivan/affected mortals thread (and, OK, fine, Margarita), the way the characters met and separated and reappeared. I remember sitting in the living room in Kiev with a piece of paper and mapping it out by chapter, which character was present where and how their threads braided together.
15. The book that you reread over and over again and get new things from every time
I'm not much of a rereader, in general, and the one book I do/have reread a ton -- Monday Starts on Saturday -- I almost know by heart, so I don't find much new in there. But I do always find something new in my Vlad Taltos rereads -- I've reread them in various order, and often the book I read just before will throw something I'd missed into relief, or cause a "Wait... what?" moment. The other author where I find new things, mostly via people's posts, though, not through rereading, is Pratchett. A lot of his jokes turn out to have more layers than I'd first realized... (Like "Casanunda" -- it's pretty obviously a reference to Casanova, and I got that part, but had totally missed the pun -- it's "unda" [under] rather than "ova" [over] because he's a Dwarf and thus short, get it? OK, maybe not the funniest joke, but one I distinctly remember never even questioning, and then reading a post about it and going, "....AH XD")
16. The book that you don’t dare reread for fear it won’t be the same any more
Oh so many. My entire childhood, basically, is suspect, because there's communist propaganda lurking in a bunch (most?) of them, and I'm not really sure which, and would hate to have that sour my happy memories. So I've basically not reread anything except the kidlit in translation. I actually have one of my very first favorite books, Olesha's The Three Fat Men -- I was obsessed with this book as a kid, and had such a crush on Tibul -- visit -- sitting on our shelf, I made sure to buy it in Israel on my firstbut it is literally a revolutionary fairy tale, so I'm scared to see what's in there... I'd also been afraid to reread "Respublica Sh.K.I.D.", though I have it on good authority that it holds up well, and "Konduit i Shvambraniya"...
17. Preferred bookshelf organisation scheme
LOL, on my physical bookshelf = "where can I wedge this in so other stuff doesn't topple" XD I mean, theoretically the top shelf is Tolkien + other classic fantasy, second shelf is sci-fi + more recent fantasy series, stand-alones, and anthologies, third shelf is mythology, poetry, literary anthologies. and other non-genre books, and bottom shelf is dictionaries and reference, mainly from my occult phase, while there's a standalone shelf of writing references (my Superior dictionary, thesaurus, Tolkien references, etc.), everything liberally festooned with tchotchkes. But this order holds a couple of days at most.
The shelves in the living room stays in better order because they're less used, and are organized as: large format books (art and huge children's anthologies), children's hardcovers (Russian), reference and non-fiction, English classics, Russian books, SFF and poetry and past English Lit textbooks (three separate shelves, same principle) that's not sufficiently dear to me to live in my office. (The rodents have their own shelves they fill as they see fit, and B has a whole bunch of shelves in his office and in the garage, so these are mostly my books and books it makes sense to keep accessible to everyone, like atlases, encylopedias, etc.
My Kindle "shelves" meanwhile are organized into "Discworld", "classics", "references", "rodents" (not as subject, as audience), and a giant bucket that's just "read". This worked when I was mostly checking out library books that would disappear off my Kindle eventually, but at this point there are 75 things in "read" and I should probably come up with a better scheme... I'm just not sure of a further useful division, since most of it is fantasy...
18. Do you theme your monthly/yearly/etc reading (eg Year of Reading Women)?
No. That seems like a great way to make reading feel like a chore, even though I applaud the motivation. I've found that Reading Bingos are the only way for me to diversify my reading without feeling constrained and unhappy about it -- because I can tell myself I'm just going for a bingo, and there are tons of way to accomplish that. And even if I go after a blackout later, bingo is more flexible because it allows you to read other things, even if they don't check off any squares.
19. That book with a twist that felt like a blow to the chest. Tell me about it. (But warn for spoilers if necessary!)
Zelazny does some great twists in Chronicles of Amber (the first ones anyway, the second ones are just... weird), which are the kind that make me want to stop and go reread the whole book. My favorite of these is the [spoiler for Chronicles of Amber]Ganelon reveal (in I forget which book, honestly. But those are mostly the kind of twists that make me go, "Ooh, wow, cool." For a twist that felt like a blow to the chest, I'd go with the one at the end of Broken Homes -- [Broken Homes spoiler] Lesley! It's really well done, because it seems to come out of nowhere, just like for Peter, but if you look back over the earlier part of the book, there are comments and exchanges that take on a different light and you can see the groundwork laid, but it's still ambiguous enough that a full book and, what, two years later I still don't know what I believe... And for a very recent example, there's a reveal in The Fifth Season that is just OUCH. Unlike the other two cases I talked about, there it's something that the protagonist is aware of but the reader is not -- [Fifth Season spoiler] when it becomes clear that Syenite and Essun are the same person and you see Syenite smother Coru, her child, so as to keep him out of the Fulcrum's hands -- the way that throws into very different light the point at which Essun started out in this story, over the dead body of her toddler son, murdered by husband/his father, her feelings of guilt for that death, her determination to kill her husband in vengeance for what he did. It is a tragic situation to begin with, but to layer on a whole differen AXIS of tragedy, without even saying anything, just through the structure of the story and the way the narrative threads come together -- damn impressive, that.
20. The coolest bookshop you’ve ever been to
This is a great question, but I don't know if I have a great answer for it... Powell's Books in Portland is probably the most notable bookstore I've been to -- it's enormous, and claims to be the largest independent bookstore in the world. And even if not, at least it's on this list. It's actually TOO big for me to have loved it, though.
I'm also very fond of Green Apple Books, the original location on Clement. While we in college, R lived on Clement not far from there, and when I visited her, we'd go browse there. It's also a tad too big, and there are huge walls of books, but it's sort of the quintessential SF used bookstore for me, and it had a great occult section, back when I was interested in that sort of thing.
I'm also glad to have been able to visit The Other Change of Hobbit when it was still in Berkeley, on Shattuck. It was actually a tad too overpriced for me to buy anything there, but it was a really cool place to visit, for the name and the history. (I like all of Berkeley now mostly-defunct bookstores. Ned's was my favorite of them, and I spent so many hours browsing there.)
I also would be remiss not to mention Oxford bookshops, given how much time I spent browsing them on my first visit. I went to Blackwell's as a matter of course, but actually most of my time was probably spent in a chain store whose name I don't remember -- I have a visual for it, a tall building on the corner, right in the center, but I forget what it was called. I also don't remember which bookstore it was, but I remember feeling all verklempt when I spotted a shelf that was labeled "Tolkien".
21. The book you gave up on, and the reasons why
When I was young and silly, it was a point of pride with me to finish a book I started, no matter how little I was enjoying it. Not sure if this came from tackling books I was too young for, because it seemed like the thing for a precocious reader to do (and it's not like there was the glut of children's titles in the USSR at that time -- I'd read all of the children's staples and had to move on to something else, basically), or just my normal stubbornness and completism, or what. But at some point, probably around college, I realized that life was too short to read books I was not enjoying when I was reading for leisure, so I started giving up on books much more readily, even if I was already halfway through.
I think the quickest I've noped out of a book was with The Da Vinci Code, where just the first two pages of the paperback were enough to make me shudder in revulsion and give up on it forever. Another top contender is some book by W.E.B. Griffin that my mother was reading, the police ones -- I like detective fiction, but his writing was not for me.
Of course, leaving books unfinished means I have the opportunity to go back and finish them when I can actually enjoy them -- sometimes. I stalled out on Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell at 300 pages (about a third in) shortly after the book came out, but went back 10 years later and read it all the way through and really liked it. And I'd started Catch-22 several times and didn't get very far in any of them, until I formed a Reading Pact with deeplyunhip and a couple of other folks, and we both made it all the way through.
22. The book you finished even though you hated it, and the reasons why
Well, I finished some books that I hated for school -- The Illuminati above, and then I had one (terrible) class in high school where we could pick a bunch of books from a list to read on our own and write essays about, and I just went with whatever I could find at the library most readily, which turned out to be Tom Clancy's Patriot Games, which I strongly disliked, but at least got to eviscerate in my report. (Those are really the only books I read and actually disliked. There were others I wouldn't have kept reading on my own, maybe, but still got some enjoyment out of, like The Faerie Queene or The Scarlet Letter or the abovementioned Romeo and Juliet and Oliver Twist.
But books I didn't HAVE to finish and did anyway are rarer in recent memory. There was the godawful To Kill a Warlock (which was at least short, so I knew the end was nigh and I could laugh about it afterwards). But the first book this question made me think of was atually Tigana. I'm sorry, I know it's a formative and in many cases most beloved GGK book for people -- and I like his other work I've read, and even love some of it (Lions of Al-Rassan, although I'm a bit scared to reread it in case I've reached some kind of point of diminishing returns with GGK). Anyway, I got to Tigana towards the end of my GGK acquaintance, and I just... disagreed with it rather vehemently on a lot of things. There are still things about it I enjoyed -- Brandin, mostly, and the tragic tableau at the end -- but I'd gone in expecting to like it, based on the author and the description and the setting, and it just rubbed me the wrong way. You can read my vitriol about it in situ here, but apparently the reason I kept on reading it (it is so long, soooo long if you're not enjoying it) was partly that I wanted to see if it got any better, and partly to see if I was able to crystallize my dislike of it, which I think I must've succeeded in. It also helped me crystallize a distaste for several tropes (e.g. Rightful King Returns played straight for anyone writing after Tolkien). Anyway, I think a lot of what I had trouble with in this book was a question of execution -- this is one of the early GGK's, and he still hadn't figured out how to actually write some of the stuff he wanted to write here -- or at least not well enough for them to work for me; where there is meant to be nuance, I saw apologism and shoddy logic, where there was meant to be connection, I saw random WTF. But ah well.
23. The book you expected to hate, didn’t, and then got angry about not hating
...why would I be angry about not hating a book? Like, that I'd wasted a lot of time not reading it, thinking I would hate it? This is a weird question.
Anyway, I do kind of have an answer, except for the getting angry part. I had fully expected to hate Wuthering Heights, and then I actually read it, and it was not what I'd expected at all. I had picked up -- from YA books? general osmosis? -- this idea of Heathcliff as a Byronic hero (debatable, but I disagree) and the plot being a tragic love story... but it's not? Like, at all. Heathcliff is reprehensible and pathetic far more than he is tragic (I mean, he drew a crappy hand in life, admittedly, but there is no crappiness that justifies ANY of what he did), and Cathy is somewhat less terrible by virtue of being dead for a good chunk of the book, and NONE OF THIS IS ROMANTIC -- or meant to be.
So I guess I did get angry when I read the book and turned out not to hate it -- mad at the way it's construed as a romantic story, somehow, enough for me to have picked up that expectation by osmosis.
24. The book that you got into because of the movie/TV series/etc, and the relative merits of each version
I'm not sure there's ever been a case where I first heard of something by watching a movie/TV show, saw that, then went back and read the book BECAUSE of the movie/show. I tend to be much more of a reader than a watcher anyway, so usually if it's a story relevant to my interests, I'll read it first, before they even make a movie out of it. And if it's something older or obscure or the movie is fast-tracked, I might hear they're making a movie before I've read the book, but then I'd want to go and read the book before watching the movie, to set my own impressions (this is what I did with The Martian, for example.)
There are cases where I've seen the movie but never felt compelled to go and read the book(e.g. Jurassic Park), and cases where I did watch the movie first and then read the book, but not BECAUSE of the movie -- e.g. I watched Divergent because L wanted to, and read the book because she'd been on me to read it for ages (the book is better; having Tris's thoughts was a big help to not finding the whole thing ridiculous, because she's AWARE of how absurd everything is, while the movie just seems to be playing the factions straight), or I watched Cloud Atlas because I was on a plan with not a lot of other choices, and then read the book for a bingo square (the book is better, and it made me retroactively hate the Sonmi storyline choices in the adaptation; ugh! And I can't say I even cared about the makup magic, although there are some nice visuals here and there.).
I think maaaaybe I read Minority Report because I'd already seen the movie? But I was also trying to catch up on classic sci-fi and reading other things by Philip K. Dick anyway. (I don't remember the book version at all, and from the movie version I mainly remember the thing with the eyeballs in the fridge, which for years I'd pantomime at B to freak him out, so... sorry XP)
25. The only book care question that actually means anything: do you write in your books? If so, in pen or in pencil?
Nope. I don't write in books (or underline or highlight them, though I do dog-ear) -- one of the reasons the Kindle is so great is that I can do all this without damaging the book or obscuring anything. But I never even wrote in my textbooks in school/uni; if I wanted to write something, I used those little transparent flags with adhesives, and wrote on those.
26. Do you read reviews of books? Before or after you read the books themselves? Why? Why not?
Yes, and kind of both. I don't seek out reviews of books on purpose, but read them as they come up on my flist. I'll read reviews before I read the book in a couple of cases -- if it's a book I don't know much about to just sort of get a feel for it; if it's a book I've heard of but am on the fence about picking up and am trying to collect enough data to make the call; and if it's a book I already know I'm going to read and am looking forward to, but want to prepare myself for spoilers or disappointments. (There are some books for which I avoid spoilers, but they are in the minority, and my self-control usually only lasts long enough if it's a book I've got on pre-order to my Kindle XP) I also read Amazon and Goodreads reviewes when deciding on a new-to-me book/author if I don't know whether anybody on my flist has read them -- like on some of those Amazon Kindle deals or Humble Bundles.
After I've read a book, I'll go and reread the reviews on my flist that I'd seen of it (although I need to figure out a better way to keep track of where I saw something...) And if I loved it or hated it or am intrigued by something or conflicted about something, I'll go and seek out other reviews for it, too, check out Goodreads and Amazon and see if I can find reviews on blogs, meta about it, etc.
27. The book you’re embarrassed to admit you’ve read
I personally have no shame about my reading habits, but L is embarrassed on my behalf for Captive Prince XP (Not that CP is at all the worst I've read; she just doesn't know about those other things.)
I'm not embarrassed to have read The Gadfly (Ovod), but I *am* embarrassed over the hours I spent weeping about it (in my defense, I was in my teens).
28. The one where the fanfic was better than the original (and the relevant AO3 links, pls)
I don't tend to read fic for books that I don't find good to begin with. I know there's interesting Twilight fic out there, but I've got no interest in reading Twilight, and I know there's fix-it fic in general, but I don't tend to crave fix-it fic -- if I dislike something, I mainly just want to move on, I guess? Anyway, one thing fic CAN do better is justsheer breadth -- different POVs and interesting AUs and exploring aspects of canon that the canon either flubbed or wasn't interested in engaging with. Harry Potter fandom is the perfect example for this, because it's so vast, and you have thoughtful explorations of decent Slytherins and Harry/Ginny written much more engagingly than in canon and Marauders era fic, and all kinds of wonderful things.
29. Your vacation reading habits
This is why I caved in and got the Kindle, actually, though it gets way more use than that -- 'cos I used to go on vacation with 3-4 hardcopies, and either I would read them quickly and then lug them around like dead weight, OR I wouldn't have time to read and would be lugging them around as dead weight without even reading them, both of which felt like stupid things to do. So I got the Kindle, and that makes vacation reading super-easy -- all my books come with me. I still bring a hard copy book or two just in case the Kindle runs out of juice where I can't recharge it or gets commandeered by the rodents, but no longer have to count on JUST that. And I even got brave enough to take the Kindle to the beach and other outdoor places, a couple of years back.
My actual reading on vacation tends to be sporadic. When we're doing a lot of new stuff, I don't read much (like on my sabbatial), especially now that planes all come with personal entertainment screens and I can play with those (I get a lot more book-time than TV/movie-time in day-to-day life). But this past summer we mostly went to places we had already been to and had a more relaxing vacation, and I read quite a bit. And I read quite a bit at safta's, too, since there's not much else to do, although less so now that she has WiFi and we travel with two laptops, so I can use that time to catch up on LJ instead.
The rodents read in the car as we drive around, but I can't do that (motion sickness, though I'm just fine on planes, trains, and buses). Me, I mostly read in the evening and, like, when taking a bath or something (this is the other reason hard copy books come in handy; I haven't gotten THAT brave with the Kindle). The reading time is good for me, actually, because it gives me some alone time even when the four of us are sharing close quarters, and I really need that when we travel.
30. The book you read the blurb of, constructed a version of in your mind, and were promptly disappointed by once you finally got around to actually reading it
I don't know that I've ever had that happen with just a blurb -- a blurb is not hefty enough to have soured me on the whole book if the book is disappointing, and not memorable enough for the disappointment to stick around if I did enjoy reading the book after all. There are certainly odd and misleading blurbs, but I don't tend to remember them for very long; like, cyanshadow and I were talking about how The Darkest Part of the Forest has a blurb that makes it sound like it's much more about defeating the scary monster at the heart of the forest than it really is, bug I doubt I will remember this a few months from now.
The closest I have to an answer to this question is something that was much more prolonges than a blurb -- the Gothic Tuesday (or whatever day it was) that Sarah Rees Brennan was doing in preparation for release of the Lynburn Legacy books. I'm not a Gothics person, but I enjoyed her columns, and was intrigued by the nature of the book she was writing -- as it came across to me in thos posts -- a subversion of the "psychic bond = true love" trope. When it turned out that the trilogy was not, ultimately, that, I was not only disappointed, I felt baffled and weirdly betrayed. I might've felt similarly even without the LJ posts, because I do think the first book sort of sets up the same expectation as those posts? But I guess we'll never know...
31. Bonus question: rec me something!
Sure! Comment asking for a rec, and I shall :)
I was going to do the "me in 3 characters" meme, too, but it didn't fit, so, next post, I guess.
I was amused to see that shortly after discovering that Bangsian fantasy is a subgenre with its own name, I randomly picked up a book that was basically Bangsian fantasy. The masters aren't literally in the afterlife, but they might as well be -- Athene snatched them away in the moment between their death, and when they die in the Just City, they will come back to their own time as corpses. Anyway, none of the major actors are real people, except Sokrates -- the POV characters certainly are not -- but it was close enough. Also, it's kind of hilarious to read, close together, two books that both talk about the distinctions between the various Greek love words, agape and eros and so on -- although here it was A LOT more pertinent than in Forbidden Parabatai Het. XP
Sokrates was the only one that I really liked as a character (ironically, maybe, since he's not the author's creation wholesale) -- his curiosity and crankiness really was a lot of fun, and I felt fond of him throughout; the whole book picked up for me considerably when he appeared. I was very amused by his excitement about the unfamiliar concept of zero, and being adamant that minds are housed in livers, and so on.
I liked Maia pretty well at the start, when she's in her own time and missing her father / anyone who would talk to her about interesting things and let her look at art, but less so when she came to the Just City. Probably because so much of her arc stopped being about her and started being a vehicle for talking about how the City is put together behind the scenes, which was very interesting, but not conducive to getting to know her further as a character. It doesn't help that the two personal things that do happen in her POV after that are both quite uncomfortable -- her rape by Ikaros and her making the decision to follow Plato's precepts by 'exposing' (i.e. abandoning to die) a baby with a cleft palate. The rape is not gratuitous and there are some very interesting points made around it -- that Ikaros (Pico della Mirandola) not only claims but genuinely seems to think he's doing her a favor, 'liberating' her from stupid Victorian beliefs about sex (which are, admittedly, stupid), that years later he had "forgotten the rape and only remembered the conversation" and the way Maia feels about it, the way the community of female masters deals with it, the way even a male master Maia respects and trusts, Ficino, casually victim-blames her when the subject comes up ("Sometimes it's hard to be one of the women." "You should have stuck to Plato." "I did. It's he who should have."). But it's not, you know, the sort of thing I enjoy reading about, even if thoughtfully and interestingly treated. And Maia's decision with the baby girl made it quite a bit harder to like her after that. I realize this is working as intended, a feature and not a bug, but just... not a feature I particularly wanted.
(Honestly, just too much (significant) rape and near-rape overall; it makes sense because it's actually one of the drivers of the story -- Apollo assumes human form and participates in this thing because he wants to understand better what happened with Daphne, but still -- Maia's rape by Ikaros, the not-rape but dubcon-y elements of Simmea's "marriage" with Kebes, Apollo musing on Daphne and talking about it with Simmea. It's not gratuitous, and I understand the purpose behind it, but still... Rape in fiction doesn't necessarily bother me, but it bothered me here because those scenes, with Maia and Simmea, stand out against the abstract philosophical conversations and amiable discussions, and thus feel much more prominent than their page-time. Again, I'm pretty sure that's intentional, and it works at that, but...)
Of the other POV characters. Apollo is fairly fun, and I do like the idea that an incarnated god would be both awesome and admirable at many things and a dolt when it comes to human interaction, and he has some nice lines, but I never particularly like Apollo among the Greek gods. As for Simmea, there are interesting things done with her -- I appreciated the way her post-partum depression is shown, the way she deals with the "marriage" situation(s) as a survivor, the way she is fairly unfazed when she learns Pytheas is a god and is like, "Oh, now it all makes sense), the way she is aware of her appearance and what people think about it but doesn't feel defined by it -- but I found her hard to connect to, probably most because she had so wholeheartedly bought into the idea of the Just City. I found Kebes interesting, too, the way he was so focused on thwarting the masters and escaping, just as black-and-white in his own way as the masters' beliefs. But none of them were really people that grabbed me as characters.
The plot, such as it is, was surprisingly engaging for how little actually happened / how much of it was just people talking -- and the way the climax is Sokrates debating Athene (which didn't really work for me as a climax, but whatever). I did like the discovery of the workers' sentience, the way Sokrates and the other go about figuring out whether they are sentient or not, and the conversation with Crocus and Sixty-One towards the end.
The writing is odd, in an interesting way. I believe the conceit is that everything is taking place in Greek, but I don't know if that explains the very... clinical way a lot of stuff gets talked about, genitals and rape and "mating". In any case, that was another thing that made it harder to connect with the characters and the goings-on.
Apparently, according to this, a precursor of this was the first novel Walton ever wrote, at 16, so maybe that explains some things about the randomness of the idea/plot. She also references Riverworld in that blurb, so I was not far off on the Bangsian nature of it.
I'm reasonably curious to check out the sequels, and also reasonably curious to check out Walton's other books, although I gather that none of her books are very good predictors for what her other books are like. Still.
64. Kaje Harper, Nor Iron Bars a Cage -- a freebie picked up from egelantier's rec, this was exactly as promised: an adorable original m/m romance in a secondary fantasy world setting. It comes with AO3-like tags and warnings, which was rather weird -- that's a new one even for a indie press (or self-pub) book for me. Even with the rec, I was pleasantly surprised by how good the writing was, and how thoughtfully and carefully the characters and the romance were treated. I finished it in a day and a half, and would happily read more stories with the same characters or set in the same world (which I don't think exist). Spoilers from here!
Anybody familiar with my tastes in fictional men will be utterly unsurprized that I really liked Tobin, the cheerful and gentle soldier. Well, retired soldier, turned king's messenger, but still. Tobin is actually a tad TOO perfect, but the whole thing is told from the other man's POV, so I could explain it to myself as Lyon just being really in love (and I think that's what's intended here, judging by the nuance with which the other characters are drawn). Lyon was definitely OK, too; he is suffering from severe PTSD after some very traumatic events and is living without the use of one hand, but the book makes it very clear that he is coping and working on making himself better, and in general, even when he is angry at himself for not being able to do something or handle something, it's not unremitting and generally short-lived, either because someone else, like Tobin, snaps him out of it (or later on Chief Xan) or, even more satisfyingly, Lyon realizes he's being ridiculous and does so himself, ditto for stuff like him being jealous of the closeness between Tobin and the king. He is not my kind of character, the way Tobin is, but he was well done and a compelling protagonist/POV given circumstances that I think are pretty challenging, so, well done.
The relationship itself was really well written, one I respected and cheered on and just enjoyed seeing unfold, slowly but satisfyingly. Lyon is a survivor of magic-assisted rape and torture, and as a consequence is extremely jumpy about touch, being approached from behind, and a multitude of other triggers, some of which take even him by surprise. I'm obviously not an expert on this stuff, but the way his PTSD was handled worked really well for me, the way innocuous questions or something as simple as a specific bridge triggered him and his reactions, the way he was torn between pushing the relationship further and knowing that he couldn't handle anything more yet. I really, really loved the way Tobin handled all this -- not just with respect and support and backing off whenever that was what Lyon needed, but also just his whole approach to everything having to do with Lyon's condition: asking him what specific aspect wasn't working for him and then trying to accommodate that part specifically, whether it was about getting him to cross a bridge or to the next stage of intimacy. No pointless drama or miscommunications making things gratuitously worse, just two intelligent people working together to the best of their abilities to overcome a real and difficult challenge, whether it's Lyon's agoraphobia, having only one good hand, or PTSD stemming from the rape. Apparently this is a thing I really like! I also enjoyed the way Tobin and Lyon did believably feel like men who were friends as boys, the way they bantered and teased each other in-between the supportive sweetness. And also the way both of them recognized that the other person had obligations to other things -- Tobin his duty to the King, Lyon his responsibility as the only man who could do the trasference with Chief Xan. There were only two things about Tobin and Lyon's relationship, directly and indirectly, that did not work for me -- the use of "fay" as the in-universe term for gay (too close to 'gay', and also makes me think of Faerie, which I think is not intended), and "lion-boy" as the nickname Tobin uses for Lyon, which is just terrible, and not even terrible in an endearing way. But two minor things out of an entire book is really not bad.
Another thing I was very pleased by is the way the plot is not just something there to get the guys together -- I found it genuinely compelling on several levels, both in terms of what it means for Lyon's personal growth -- he eventually volunteers to do a thing that scares him the most, accept a ghost into his mind, and then has to face an even bigger nightmare, and works through it with his own strength and the help of the men he's come to trust -- and the larger scope for the country. They don't magically thwart an invasion, but they do intercept it much earlier and with less bloodshed thanks to Lyon's actions, but it's not a bloodless victory, and it's not world peace from here on out. The magical worldbuilding is not a big focus of the book, but I got the sense that it's well thought out behind the scenes, and enjoyed Lyon talking shop with the mages; there's also a feeling that something larger is going on with magic ebbing out of the world, and I'd love to see a sequel where Lyon helps the mages figure this out. It is a very Clair book, and everyone Lyon interacts with is sensible and competent and trying to do their best, even though they may not trust/want to count on him particularly, like the captain of the king's guard or Firstmage. Every risky step is well thought out and taken only after less risky avenues are attempted or vetted, and with reasonable precautions in place -- this was so refreshing! Oh, and I liked Chief Xan, the ghost, quite a bit, too, and liked that Lyon gives him an honest answer (probably not) when Xan asks him if he would've given the precious cure to his ill child, back in the times of the Plague.
And I like the way everything ends on a happy note, but nobody is magically cured -- Lyon's hand is better, thanks to the healer working on it, but will never be of much use to him; Lyon's PTSD is better, too, but he's still got a long way to go and limitations he can't face, the kingdom is at peace, but nothing is fully resolved with the R'gin.
So, super-sweet and very well written, and as it's free, I highly encourage anyone who enjoys fantasy-setting m/m and isn't put off by the triggers (PTSD, self-harm, flashback to sexual assault) to check it out.
L's English class is reading The Great Gatsby, which is one of those books I've always meant to read and never got around to, and L is enjoying it, so she wanted me to read along with her. So that's what we're doing, a sort of reading pact, where she gives me the additional background and insight from lectures in class, and I point out things I spot, too, and it's being pretty fun. I'm keeping pace with them, which is basically a chapter a week (they're doing it in depth, plus other classwork and outside sources), so I haven't quite decided whether I'll post on it all at once at the end or as with reading pacts, weekly updates. Probably the former, but let me know if anyone's dying for my liveblogging thoughts about The Great Gatsby...
I'm also reading Ursula Vernon's/T.Kingfisher's/ursulav's serial, Summer in Orcus. I've actually only read chapter 1 so far, but the opening couple of paragraphs are AMAZING, and I had to read them both to the rodnets and B (you'll see why if you read them yourself).
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Things tangentially related to books:
- We all took the Pottermore Patronus quiz. Mine was a Scops owl (which L is making fun of me for because it doesn't sound like a very useful Patronus, but whatever), and L and O both got dogs -- bloodhound for O and husky for L. We also got ourselves sorted into Ilvermorny houses -- Horned Serpent for L and me (she's chortling about being a Slytherin-Slytherin, since that does make her a double snake, although the description sounds more like Ravenclaw if anything), and O got Pukwudgie, which sounds like the Hufflepuff equivalent (but is regardless a very silly sounding name; I know it's an actual Wampanoag folklore critter, but that does not make the name sound any less silly in abstraction).
- Yuletide tagset is up. Dragaera tagset suggests that someone plans on requesting Adron/Verra, which I'm on board with, and the RoL tagset makes me very happy with the inclusion of Varvara and Kumar (among the usual suspects).
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That new book meme going around
1. What’s the last book you read? What did you think of it?
Last book I finished was Larry Correia's Monster Hunter International. What I think of it in full is here, but in short, it was a reasonably fun approximation of a dumb action movie, exceedingly Gary-Stu-y but definitely not as bad as I thought it might be based on the whole Sad Puppies thing, but not actually my type of story either. (I'm going to try the sequel, as I hear they're better, and I'm willing to believe that with some editorial oversight, they would be.)
2. What’s the worst book you’ve ever read, and why?
I've told this story before: In my English 1B class, which ended up being themed around dystopian narratives (which included things like Eliot's "The Waste Land" (the GSI/grad student teaching the course was an Eliot scholar and built a class around it, basically), Richard III, and Pink Floyd's The Wall, as well as more traditional dystopias, like Brave New World and The Handmaid's Tale) we read this absolutely terrible book, Larry Burkett's The Illuminati. It's a book composed of Christian paranoia and terrible writing, and features such charming tropes like crack babies being harvested for organs thanks to bills suported by liberal Congressmen who are fathering these crack babies and then using the organs, a female president who falls apart at the first sign of pressure and is generally useless, and a half-Jewish/half-Arab character who is the literal Antichrist. Somehow this is all the gays' fault, also, I think? I don't actually remember how that's connected, just that they are obviously Bad. (I'm not even mad at any of this, it's just that kind of book.) Meanwhile, the writing has all the grace and subtlety of a Dan Brown novel, only I had to keep reading it for school.
Apparently he reissued an 'updated' book in 2004, because the original took place in 2001 (I read the original, in 1996). The really scary thing is that this time around I went to see what Goodreads had to say about it, and it is SCARY how many people apparently read it as kids through their (presumably Christian) schools or churches. Oh my god, wow.
You may have the legitimate question about why we were made to read this book at uni, when it is terrible. The GSI wanted to do a unit on didactic dystopias, and wanted to pick something to contrast with The Handmaid's Tale, and this was the 'religious Right' paranoia mirror to the Handmaid's Christian-governed dystopia. I can see the logic, but ugh, what a piece of crap book, and I told her I was embarrassed to be seen reading it on public transit. I don't think she taught it again...
3. A book you found overhyped, and why
Well, at one point, when I was in my early teens, I found Shakespeare overhyped, because school kept pushing Romeo and Juliet at me, and even when NOT read as a tragic love story for the ages, it's not one of my favorite plays. I did grow up to appreciate Shakespeare, with Hamlet senior year and Richard III in the class mentioned above, but I'm still not that fond of R&J. Also, while I'm pooh-poohing the classics, I find Dickens overappreciated even now.
Among my more usual fare, as in, genre, there are a number of books I've found overhyped, but I've kind of learned to write that off as a matter of different tastes / not being on the author's wavelength. I think the first time I remember that happening vividly was with Seanan McGuire's Toby Daye books: I know so many people who love them and think they're the best thing ever, and love everything McGuire writes. Me, I just find myself frustrated by them, because they're like an uncanny valley of book for me -- so close to something I'd be likely to love, and yet not quite... something enough. They don't resonate with me despite superficial resemblance to things that do (Dresden Files, War for the Oaks), and it's just... *shrug* I had similar reactions to everything of Cat Valente's I've ever tried to read, and to N.K.Jemisin's Inheritance books. (Jemisin is actually an encouraging story for me, because after finding her earlier work overhyped and 'irrelevant to my interests' (not in a serious sense; I appreciate what she's doing and am happy to see it done, but in terms of hitting my narrative kinks, I mean), I was genuinely blown away by her latest, so.)
Anyway, the reason I'm willing to give these books "it's not you, it's me" benefit of the doubt is that there are books I really did enjoy and find very well done that fandom finds overhyped -- like Lev Grossman's The Magicians.
There are probably legitimately overhyped books out there -- ones that garner acclaim while being bad books. But I think they mostly tend to be in fields like literary fiction, which I don't read.
4. Ereaders versus physical books is such a false dichotomy. Instead, tell me what other formats (phone apps, tumblr fiction, twitter haikus) you read in
I love the phrasing of this question, but unfortunately don't have an interesting answer for it. I hate Tumblr's format for fiction, although the integration of images is nice. I hate reading on non-dedicated electronics, although I do read on computer for fic. I don't really have the patience for Interactive Fiction, either digital or choose-your-own-adventure -- because I'm a completist who wants to see all the endings, but a really impatient one :P My friend TK is really into, like, non-linear storytelling, and he's given me neat-looking books where you overlay transparent pages on top of non-transparent ones and follow the storylines like this, and it's all very... I feel the same way about it as I do about higher math, basically: wow, that's kind of mindblowing, and I'm glad someone both understands this and cares, but I'm not among their number. I have fond memories of reading serials in Soviet magazines (this was a thing, for both adults and children) -- some story about aliens who left a cypher in the whorls of a peach pit (anybody remember this, folks my age?) and really good sci-fi in back issues of Yunost' which my parents kept in the bookcase. But I've gotten less patient about this, too, as I've gotten older -- I lose track of comic book issues (and only read trades the rare times that I do want to read GNs), and webcomic updates, and WIP fic, and have basically stopped embarking on things that I can't read in novel-sized chunks at least. For years I've vaguely wanted to try the kind of interactive storytelling that you get with D&D or LARP, or heck, even LJ role play, but I think that's not going to happen either (I have enjoyed reading some LJ RPs, but again, they work for me best binging on the backlog, not so much following along). And I find it very hard to focus on things with only an audial component, so I don't do audiobooks or podcasts (I gave WTNV like four episodes, and it was cute, but the demands of the format did not justify my enjoyment from the content, alas, earwax).
What I think might be fun is a kind of game/puzzle storytelling that I remember ambyr writing about a while back, where you get in the mail some newspaper clippings, post card, journal, and so on, and have to puzzle out hidden messages and figure out what's going on -- a mystery story in a box (with, as far as I can tell, actual characters and plot that you get to figure out). So, like, all the things that appeal to me about Escape Rooms, only by myself and in the comfort of my own home and without the need to disassemble toilets or do anything else involving physical dexterity -- i.e. perfect for me XD (The article on ARGs - alternate reality games is really interesting, but I can't figure out what class this sort of puzzle falls under exactly.)
5. Which genre(s) don’t you read? Why not?
I habitually read only fantasy, sci-fi, (non-genre) YA, and occasional mysteries/thrillers. I do read classics, poetry, graphic novels, plays, and non-fiction every once in a while, though generally need some kind of external push (like a Reading Bingo or a reading pact) to get me to do so.
I used to never read romance, but I've tried a couple of the ones enjoyed by the people with whom I share SFF fandoms (so this was Heyer, Courtney Milan) and they were OK. Not my thing, ultimately, but not actively offputting like the Harlequins have always looked. Good self-pub romance seems to have dispensed with some of the things that were least likely to work well for me, and paranormal romance has paved the way for me to try this stuff. I don't mind reading romance stories where other things I like are going on -- SFF or mystery -- but when the plot is JUST romance, it doesn't tend to keep my attention very much. And also, I think one of the reasons romance doesn't work for me as much as other 'iddy' genres is that it does not lend itself to serialization -- if the couple is not together by the end, it feels needlessly drawn out, and if they are, there's no reason to follow them. Stories about loosely connected couples, like Milan's The Brothers Sinister, do kind of get around that problem, I guess, but it's not the same, because the protagonists rotate. Anyway, with romance I'm now at a place where I will read very highly recommended romance if it lands on my lap :P (I am looking forward to eventually reading Rose Lerner's True Pretenses, though, and might even put some effort into acquiring it.)
Another one I don't read is historical fiction. I can enjoy 'period' fantasy (I'm thinking of Guy Gavriel Kay's things, which have a touch of the numinous but are more historical than fantasy a lot of the time, or the Victorian fantasy jag I was on earlier this year), or 'period' mysteries, but reading historical fiction just for the sake of the setting doesn't do anything for me. These things occasionally come up in anthologies (like the GRRM and Dozois edited ones that cross genres but have a particular theme), and I read them, and come away feeling like "and the point of that was?" So I know it's not my thing.
Another genre I've been exposed to a fair bit in anthologies is horror, and it doesn't work for me either -- I get the same "what am I reading this for?" lack-of-impact from it, but while historical fiction tends to just be boring, horror can also be actively offputting to me. I have read, I think, a total of two horror novels in my life -- one when I was in some vacation house with nothing to read, and one because B got it out of the library or found it at a garage sale or something, and I started reading it not realizing it was horror. I did finish both those books, and the first one I remember even reading in the car (something I never do, because I get motion sick) because I wanted to get to the end already. That's just the thing, though -- I can find the plots engrossing, but having finished the book, I don't feel any satisfaction -- just the opposite. Like, why did I put myself through that? I don't enjoy the process of reading horror, the sort of suspense that comes with it, and I don't enjoy having read horror either, so it's basically just lost time for me. (I've tried reading Stephen King, and have gotten various fractions into several of his books, but the fact that he is VERY GOOD at writing horror just means that I enjoy the process of reading it even less, so I've always bailed before I got anywhere.)
Finally, I guess I should mention literary fiction, which I also tend not to read. Or, rather, I suppose it's in the same category as romance for me -- I will read it if highly recommended by people with a lot of known overlap in tastes in my usual reading material, but not "cold". And even then it's better if there's some magical realism going on -- there's a reason two of my favorite 'real' books are Master i Margarita and One Hundred Years of Solitude.
6. If you read in more than one language, is there a difference between the experience of reading in your native language(s) and reading in other languages?
This is a very cool question! The language I read something in definitely affects SOMETHING -- I find that if I read more in Russian (reading in English being my default at this point, though I was a voracious reader in Russian before I ever learned English), I tend to think more in Russian, too, want to code mix in Russian more.
I'm pretty sure I tend to fixate more on different parts of the text in the two different languages, though how much of that is difference between writing convention vs just the fact that all my training in close reading and literary analysis has been in English is debateable. I notice dialogue and word choice more in Russian -- tend to feel them more viscerally, especially when it comes to informal speech, while in English I tend to notice interesting sentence construction, alliteration, descriptive imagery. Reading sex scenes in Russian is SO WEIRD, because it's not been normalized for me at all, by either fic or trashy books, both of which I've read plenty of in English. I'm not a big fan of long, dialogue-less stretches in any language, but have less patience for them in Russian, I think, maybe because a lot of my Russian reading was, after all, children's books that don't tend to have walls of text like that. (I have read a fair chunk of the Russian classics, including War and Peace and some Dostoyevsky, when I was a kid, but I probably also skimmed them a lot... :P
Probably the most notable difference, though, is not related to the text itself but to stuff around it. With my current fannish community on LJ, a huge part of the reading experience is sharing my impression with others, talking about what I read, recs, reading fic -- and all of these things are much harder for me with Russian books. For the most part, I can't rec Russian genre to non-Russian friends; translations mostly don't exist, and when they do, I don't know how good they are. There are so many Firefly fans on my list who I think would get a kick out of the Kosmo~oluhi books... but alas, earwax. Even when translations do exist, and assuming they are decent, it's not always possible to talk about the things I want to talk about with friends who read the books in translation -- for example, one of my favorite things about the Lukyanenko Dozor books are the Strugatsky homage/references -- but those who read them in English just don't have that context, so it's all, "trust me, he's doing something funny/clever here", which is unsatisfying. And like I said above, my vocabulary for talking about books is all in English, so I can't even have a conversation in Russian about the books I read in Russian, but having the conversation in English about a book I read in Russian is weird, too, even if the other person ALSO read it in Russian. It ends up being a weird code-mix-y melange, full of "can you say that in Russian?" on my part (as ikel89 can testify), and it just feels slightly off-kilter at all times anyway. And finally, fic. There is fic in Russian, and thanks to AO3 and Fandom Battles I even know where to find some of it, but Russian fandom conventions are so WEIRD to me, and feel a couple of decades behind the times in the fandoms for Russian-only material, where there is not much cross-pollination with English-speaking fandom, I guess -- like, I read some Man from UNCLE (movie) fic on AO3, and it's pretty much just like normal English fic (and a lot of it is translations, too, so that probably sets the tone). But when I look at Kosmo~oluhi fic, there's all this marking things as AU for anything that's not a missing moments fic, and warning for slach and OOC where there's slash. And of course it's the Russian-canon fandoms where I need the Russian fic in the first place, so it's pretty discouraging. At least fanart doesn't have this issue :P
7. If you’re not a native English speaker, how much do you read in your native language versus how much you read in English? How do you feel about that? // If you’re a native English speaker, go find a book in your second/third/etc language, or in translation, to add to your to-read list
Not enough. :P In Russian, I mean. But it's certainly easier for me to find books in English than in Russian -- unless I want to pirate them, and even then. I mean, it's not like there are a ton of specific Russian books that I WANT to read -- there's Rubina that's been rec'd to me repeatedly, and a couple others in translation where Russian makes more sense than English (Meir Shalev, for example), but on the whole it's just that I would like to read in Russian more so that my Russian doesn't feel stagnated at the level of a precocious fourth-grader, you know?
8. The book you read when you’re stuck in bed sick
I don't really have a go-to comfort read. When I was little, sick in bed was when I'd take out all my Murzilkas (children's magazine) and leaf through them. These days I'd probably pick something cozy to reread, which, because I don't reread much, would be likely a fluffy Vorkosigan (say, A Civil Campaign) or a fun (and non-Paarfi, because who can deal with Paarfi when sick) Dragaera book, like Taltos, or something else low-impact and familiar, like a Harry Potter book (1, 3, or 6).
9. Fiction or non-fiction or both? In what ratio? Where do you draw the line between the two?
Left to my own devices, 100% fiction, although I really enjoyed all of the non-fiction books I've read in recent years, under the direct or indirect influence of Reading Bingos. But non-fiction just reads in a different way and doesn't scratch the story / hanging out with characters itch of fiction, so I don't reach for it on my own.
Where do I draw the line between the two? Uh, the fiction I read tends to be VERY fictional, set in universes that don't exist, and non-fiction I read mostly tends to be of the pop-science variety, so not very storylike. I like biographies, too, which I guess tend to be a bit more blurry in nature, but am not interested in fictionalized biographies (because see historical fiction). And I've read one or two "based on a true story!" books (Alias Grace was the most recent one I think, but that one was very very clearly fictional).
10. The book(s) you bought because the cover was pretty, and whether it was worth it
The only books I've bought purely on a cover-driven whim like that have been (a) those coffee-table type books like Dragonology, which are mostly for looking at rather than readin anyway, and also some children's picture books back when the rodents were small, which, pretty much ditto. In particular, there was this fabulous book about an anteater which had a sticky tongue and googly eyes, and that's basically all you need to know about it (the story I think was fairly cute, too?) The tongue was pretty quickly coated in dust and lost its stickiness, but L still fondly remembers this book, as do I, so, TOTALLY WORTH IT.
As for books for actual reading, I think the closest I've come was being swayed to buy the first Temeraire book because of the cool dragon on the cover (cool dragons on the cover are kind of a theme....), despite being uncertain about the naval setting and Napoleonic Wars backdrop. That was definitely a good decision.
11. The worst book hangover you’ve ever had
Probably the one for Dragaera, which started when I read Iorich at the start of 2011, and then spent the next four months reading all the Dragaera books I'd missed, rereading all the Dragaera books I'd already read, and searching LJ/DW/the internet for any semblance of Dragaera fandom, read Tiassa as soon as I could get my hands on it, then spent the next 3.5 years subsisting on memes and rereads of books and meager fic and accosting people in dark alleys with copies of Taltos I offered to lend them, until Hawk came out. I'm still not actually over the hangover and want to cross over Dragaera with everything and manifest a fandom into existence by sheer force of will, but it's down to manageable levels, at least.
The other notable book hangover would probably be for Rivers of London, after Broken Homes. The thing about RoL is, I got into the books in March 2013, which meant that I could read the first three at once, and then had to wait until the summer for book 4. And book 4 had several things happen: it ended on a huge plot twist with no character resolution, it (re)introduced a secondary character who became one of my favorites, and it ended up becoming my favorite book in the series. (egelantier aptly described my 2013 books roundup as as "Rivers Of London And Some Other Books I Guess" XD) And then there was no more for over a year. So I filled up my 2013 and 2014 by reading books that I hoped would furnish me with ersatz RoL -- all the 'magical London' fantasy I could find -- Felix Castor books, Matthew Swift books, Alex Verus books, and tried a couple of others, and my main complaint for some of them came down to "not RoL". So, yeah, that was some hangover.
The interesting thing to me about these two examples is, RoL was fairly normal as far as book hangovers go -- I discovered a new series, fell in love, couldn't get enough. But Dragaera! I'd been a low-key fan for years, over a decade, I think, before I read Iorich, and it's not even that I like Iorich itself that much -- it's not one of my favorites at all. But SOMETHING happened, like I'd exceeded some threshold of cumulative dosage, and there was just no turning back. So odd!
12. Do you have to finish one book before you start the next one, or do you read multiple books at the same time?
I happily read multiple books at once, though now that I have a Kindle, I'm less likely to have a bedstand book, a bathroom book, and a backpack/commute book, because the Kindle is pretty portable and easily read in all of those places. But I still usually have a Kindle book and a backup hard copy in my backpack, at least (in case the Kindle dies), and sometimes a book or two at home, also. Currently my Kindle book is The Just City, my backup hard copy book is back to being Witcher (since I've finished The Darkest Part of the Forest), and my bedstand book is Tell the Wind and Fire (with Book of Jhereg underneath, when I start missing Dragaera too much, see above). But really I'm only actively reading the Kindle at the moment.
13. The fictional character you want to believe you resemble and the fictional character you actually resemble
Character I'd like to believe I resemble -- probably Olenna Tyrell. She's become a character I really identify with, and I like her combination of savviness, protectiveness, and snark. But I'd probably not live nearly as long in Westeros, LOL. (Other acceptable characters: Cordelia Naismith, Granny Weatherwax, etc.)
Character I actually resemble: probably Kragar :P I'm definitely the trusted lieutenant type, and although I'm capable of acting in a leadership role, I'd much rather be someone's right-hand person instead, take care of the preparations and detail work, and snark at them from the sidelines.
14. The book that, in hindsight, really should have clued you in to the fact that you’re _________ (queer/in love/doomed to be an academic/etc)
This is a great question, but I'm honestly stumped. I don't feel like there have been any great revelations about my character or interests, and none of them via reading? My reading and fannish tastes have certainly stayed very consistent, for the most part, but they don't translate into RL things. For example, from an early age I would latch onto villains in stories, in part because they frequently featured in hurt/comfort type scenarios -- well, more hurt than comfort, but still -- and I still love reading hurt/comfort in fic, but have no interest in actual BDSM or anything adjacent personally. Professionally, I'm pretty far from the kind of characters I most eagerly read about, pirates and explorers and detectives. So I'm not sure what's left... Maybe my early tendency to get attached to villains and mysterious loners explains marrying a misanthrope? :P
The other thing I can think of, and a sort of different note, is just being doomed to literary analysis/thinking too hard about books. When I was ten, I read Master i Margarita, my first grown-up book, and not only did I love the characters (by which I mean Woland and his entourage; I didn't really care about Margarita or the Master or the mortals in general for the most part, except maybe in the Pilate thread) and the setting and the quotes, but I was really intrigued by the structure of the book, the Evangelie/gospel thread and the Woland + general mayhem thread and the Ivan/affected mortals thread (and, OK, fine, Margarita), the way the characters met and separated and reappeared. I remember sitting in the living room in Kiev with a piece of paper and mapping it out by chapter, which character was present where and how their threads braided together.
15. The book that you reread over and over again and get new things from every time
I'm not much of a rereader, in general, and the one book I do/have reread a ton -- Monday Starts on Saturday -- I almost know by heart, so I don't find much new in there. But I do always find something new in my Vlad Taltos rereads -- I've reread them in various order, and often the book I read just before will throw something I'd missed into relief, or cause a "Wait... what?" moment. The other author where I find new things, mostly via people's posts, though, not through rereading, is Pratchett. A lot of his jokes turn out to have more layers than I'd first realized... (Like "Casanunda" -- it's pretty obviously a reference to Casanova, and I got that part, but had totally missed the pun -- it's "unda" [under] rather than "ova" [over] because he's a Dwarf and thus short, get it? OK, maybe not the funniest joke, but one I distinctly remember never even questioning, and then reading a post about it and going, "....AH XD")
16. The book that you don’t dare reread for fear it won’t be the same any more
Oh so many. My entire childhood, basically, is suspect, because there's communist propaganda lurking in a bunch (most?) of them, and I'm not really sure which, and would hate to have that sour my happy memories. So I've basically not reread anything except the kidlit in translation. I actually have one of my very first favorite books, Olesha's The Three Fat Men -- I was obsessed with this book as a kid, and had such a crush on Tibul -- visit -- sitting on our shelf, I made sure to buy it in Israel on my firstbut it is literally a revolutionary fairy tale, so I'm scared to see what's in there... I'd also been afraid to reread "Respublica Sh.K.I.D.", though I have it on good authority that it holds up well, and "Konduit i Shvambraniya"...
17. Preferred bookshelf organisation scheme
LOL, on my physical bookshelf = "where can I wedge this in so other stuff doesn't topple" XD I mean, theoretically the top shelf is Tolkien + other classic fantasy, second shelf is sci-fi + more recent fantasy series, stand-alones, and anthologies, third shelf is mythology, poetry, literary anthologies. and other non-genre books, and bottom shelf is dictionaries and reference, mainly from my occult phase, while there's a standalone shelf of writing references (my Superior dictionary, thesaurus, Tolkien references, etc.), everything liberally festooned with tchotchkes. But this order holds a couple of days at most.
The shelves in the living room stays in better order because they're less used, and are organized as: large format books (art and huge children's anthologies), children's hardcovers (Russian), reference and non-fiction, English classics, Russian books, SFF and poetry and past English Lit textbooks (three separate shelves, same principle) that's not sufficiently dear to me to live in my office. (The rodents have their own shelves they fill as they see fit, and B has a whole bunch of shelves in his office and in the garage, so these are mostly my books and books it makes sense to keep accessible to everyone, like atlases, encylopedias, etc.
My Kindle "shelves" meanwhile are organized into "Discworld", "classics", "references", "rodents" (not as subject, as audience), and a giant bucket that's just "read". This worked when I was mostly checking out library books that would disappear off my Kindle eventually, but at this point there are 75 things in "read" and I should probably come up with a better scheme... I'm just not sure of a further useful division, since most of it is fantasy...
18. Do you theme your monthly/yearly/etc reading (eg Year of Reading Women)?
No. That seems like a great way to make reading feel like a chore, even though I applaud the motivation. I've found that Reading Bingos are the only way for me to diversify my reading without feeling constrained and unhappy about it -- because I can tell myself I'm just going for a bingo, and there are tons of way to accomplish that. And even if I go after a blackout later, bingo is more flexible because it allows you to read other things, even if they don't check off any squares.
19. That book with a twist that felt like a blow to the chest. Tell me about it. (But warn for spoilers if necessary!)
Zelazny does some great twists in Chronicles of Amber (the first ones anyway, the second ones are just... weird), which are the kind that make me want to stop and go reread the whole book. My favorite of these is the [spoiler for Chronicles of Amber]Ganelon reveal (in I forget which book, honestly. But those are mostly the kind of twists that make me go, "Ooh, wow, cool." For a twist that felt like a blow to the chest, I'd go with the one at the end of Broken Homes -- [Broken Homes spoiler] Lesley! It's really well done, because it seems to come out of nowhere, just like for Peter, but if you look back over the earlier part of the book, there are comments and exchanges that take on a different light and you can see the groundwork laid, but it's still ambiguous enough that a full book and, what, two years later I still don't know what I believe... And for a very recent example, there's a reveal in The Fifth Season that is just OUCH. Unlike the other two cases I talked about, there it's something that the protagonist is aware of but the reader is not -- [Fifth Season spoiler] when it becomes clear that Syenite and Essun are the same person and you see Syenite smother Coru, her child, so as to keep him out of the Fulcrum's hands -- the way that throws into very different light the point at which Essun started out in this story, over the dead body of her toddler son, murdered by husband/his father, her feelings of guilt for that death, her determination to kill her husband in vengeance for what he did. It is a tragic situation to begin with, but to layer on a whole differen AXIS of tragedy, without even saying anything, just through the structure of the story and the way the narrative threads come together -- damn impressive, that.
20. The coolest bookshop you’ve ever been to
This is a great question, but I don't know if I have a great answer for it... Powell's Books in Portland is probably the most notable bookstore I've been to -- it's enormous, and claims to be the largest independent bookstore in the world. And even if not, at least it's on this list. It's actually TOO big for me to have loved it, though.
I'm also very fond of Green Apple Books, the original location on Clement. While we in college, R lived on Clement not far from there, and when I visited her, we'd go browse there. It's also a tad too big, and there are huge walls of books, but it's sort of the quintessential SF used bookstore for me, and it had a great occult section, back when I was interested in that sort of thing.
I'm also glad to have been able to visit The Other Change of Hobbit when it was still in Berkeley, on Shattuck. It was actually a tad too overpriced for me to buy anything there, but it was a really cool place to visit, for the name and the history. (I like all of Berkeley now mostly-defunct bookstores. Ned's was my favorite of them, and I spent so many hours browsing there.)
I also would be remiss not to mention Oxford bookshops, given how much time I spent browsing them on my first visit. I went to Blackwell's as a matter of course, but actually most of my time was probably spent in a chain store whose name I don't remember -- I have a visual for it, a tall building on the corner, right in the center, but I forget what it was called. I also don't remember which bookstore it was, but I remember feeling all verklempt when I spotted a shelf that was labeled "Tolkien".
21. The book you gave up on, and the reasons why
When I was young and silly, it was a point of pride with me to finish a book I started, no matter how little I was enjoying it. Not sure if this came from tackling books I was too young for, because it seemed like the thing for a precocious reader to do (and it's not like there was the glut of children's titles in the USSR at that time -- I'd read all of the children's staples and had to move on to something else, basically), or just my normal stubbornness and completism, or what. But at some point, probably around college, I realized that life was too short to read books I was not enjoying when I was reading for leisure, so I started giving up on books much more readily, even if I was already halfway through.
I think the quickest I've noped out of a book was with The Da Vinci Code, where just the first two pages of the paperback were enough to make me shudder in revulsion and give up on it forever. Another top contender is some book by W.E.B. Griffin that my mother was reading, the police ones -- I like detective fiction, but his writing was not for me.
Of course, leaving books unfinished means I have the opportunity to go back and finish them when I can actually enjoy them -- sometimes. I stalled out on Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell at 300 pages (about a third in) shortly after the book came out, but went back 10 years later and read it all the way through and really liked it. And I'd started Catch-22 several times and didn't get very far in any of them, until I formed a Reading Pact with deeplyunhip and a couple of other folks, and we both made it all the way through.
22. The book you finished even though you hated it, and the reasons why
Well, I finished some books that I hated for school -- The Illuminati above, and then I had one (terrible) class in high school where we could pick a bunch of books from a list to read on our own and write essays about, and I just went with whatever I could find at the library most readily, which turned out to be Tom Clancy's Patriot Games, which I strongly disliked, but at least got to eviscerate in my report. (Those are really the only books I read and actually disliked. There were others I wouldn't have kept reading on my own, maybe, but still got some enjoyment out of, like The Faerie Queene or The Scarlet Letter or the abovementioned Romeo and Juliet and Oliver Twist.
But books I didn't HAVE to finish and did anyway are rarer in recent memory. There was the godawful To Kill a Warlock (which was at least short, so I knew the end was nigh and I could laugh about it afterwards). But the first book this question made me think of was atually Tigana. I'm sorry, I know it's a formative and in many cases most beloved GGK book for people -- and I like his other work I've read, and even love some of it (Lions of Al-Rassan, although I'm a bit scared to reread it in case I've reached some kind of point of diminishing returns with GGK). Anyway, I got to Tigana towards the end of my GGK acquaintance, and I just... disagreed with it rather vehemently on a lot of things. There are still things about it I enjoyed -- Brandin, mostly, and the tragic tableau at the end -- but I'd gone in expecting to like it, based on the author and the description and the setting, and it just rubbed me the wrong way. You can read my vitriol about it in situ here, but apparently the reason I kept on reading it (it is so long, soooo long if you're not enjoying it) was partly that I wanted to see if it got any better, and partly to see if I was able to crystallize my dislike of it, which I think I must've succeeded in. It also helped me crystallize a distaste for several tropes (e.g. Rightful King Returns played straight for anyone writing after Tolkien). Anyway, I think a lot of what I had trouble with in this book was a question of execution -- this is one of the early GGK's, and he still hadn't figured out how to actually write some of the stuff he wanted to write here -- or at least not well enough for them to work for me; where there is meant to be nuance, I saw apologism and shoddy logic, where there was meant to be connection, I saw random WTF. But ah well.
23. The book you expected to hate, didn’t, and then got angry about not hating
...why would I be angry about not hating a book? Like, that I'd wasted a lot of time not reading it, thinking I would hate it? This is a weird question.
Anyway, I do kind of have an answer, except for the getting angry part. I had fully expected to hate Wuthering Heights, and then I actually read it, and it was not what I'd expected at all. I had picked up -- from YA books? general osmosis? -- this idea of Heathcliff as a Byronic hero (debatable, but I disagree) and the plot being a tragic love story... but it's not? Like, at all. Heathcliff is reprehensible and pathetic far more than he is tragic (I mean, he drew a crappy hand in life, admittedly, but there is no crappiness that justifies ANY of what he did), and Cathy is somewhat less terrible by virtue of being dead for a good chunk of the book, and NONE OF THIS IS ROMANTIC -- or meant to be.
So I guess I did get angry when I read the book and turned out not to hate it -- mad at the way it's construed as a romantic story, somehow, enough for me to have picked up that expectation by osmosis.
24. The book that you got into because of the movie/TV series/etc, and the relative merits of each version
I'm not sure there's ever been a case where I first heard of something by watching a movie/TV show, saw that, then went back and read the book BECAUSE of the movie/show. I tend to be much more of a reader than a watcher anyway, so usually if it's a story relevant to my interests, I'll read it first, before they even make a movie out of it. And if it's something older or obscure or the movie is fast-tracked, I might hear they're making a movie before I've read the book, but then I'd want to go and read the book before watching the movie, to set my own impressions (this is what I did with The Martian, for example.)
There are cases where I've seen the movie but never felt compelled to go and read the book(e.g. Jurassic Park), and cases where I did watch the movie first and then read the book, but not BECAUSE of the movie -- e.g. I watched Divergent because L wanted to, and read the book because she'd been on me to read it for ages (the book is better; having Tris's thoughts was a big help to not finding the whole thing ridiculous, because she's AWARE of how absurd everything is, while the movie just seems to be playing the factions straight), or I watched Cloud Atlas because I was on a plan with not a lot of other choices, and then read the book for a bingo square (the book is better, and it made me retroactively hate the Sonmi storyline choices in the adaptation; ugh! And I can't say I even cared about the makup magic, although there are some nice visuals here and there.).
I think maaaaybe I read Minority Report because I'd already seen the movie? But I was also trying to catch up on classic sci-fi and reading other things by Philip K. Dick anyway. (I don't remember the book version at all, and from the movie version I mainly remember the thing with the eyeballs in the fridge, which for years I'd pantomime at B to freak him out, so... sorry XP)
25. The only book care question that actually means anything: do you write in your books? If so, in pen or in pencil?
Nope. I don't write in books (or underline or highlight them, though I do dog-ear) -- one of the reasons the Kindle is so great is that I can do all this without damaging the book or obscuring anything. But I never even wrote in my textbooks in school/uni; if I wanted to write something, I used those little transparent flags with adhesives, and wrote on those.
26. Do you read reviews of books? Before or after you read the books themselves? Why? Why not?
Yes, and kind of both. I don't seek out reviews of books on purpose, but read them as they come up on my flist. I'll read reviews before I read the book in a couple of cases -- if it's a book I don't know much about to just sort of get a feel for it; if it's a book I've heard of but am on the fence about picking up and am trying to collect enough data to make the call; and if it's a book I already know I'm going to read and am looking forward to, but want to prepare myself for spoilers or disappointments. (There are some books for which I avoid spoilers, but they are in the minority, and my self-control usually only lasts long enough if it's a book I've got on pre-order to my Kindle XP) I also read Amazon and Goodreads reviewes when deciding on a new-to-me book/author if I don't know whether anybody on my flist has read them -- like on some of those Amazon Kindle deals or Humble Bundles.
After I've read a book, I'll go and reread the reviews on my flist that I'd seen of it (although I need to figure out a better way to keep track of where I saw something...) And if I loved it or hated it or am intrigued by something or conflicted about something, I'll go and seek out other reviews for it, too, check out Goodreads and Amazon and see if I can find reviews on blogs, meta about it, etc.
27. The book you’re embarrassed to admit you’ve read
I personally have no shame about my reading habits, but L is embarrassed on my behalf for Captive Prince XP (Not that CP is at all the worst I've read; she just doesn't know about those other things.)
I'm not embarrassed to have read The Gadfly (Ovod), but I *am* embarrassed over the hours I spent weeping about it (in my defense, I was in my teens).
28. The one where the fanfic was better than the original (and the relevant AO3 links, pls)
I don't tend to read fic for books that I don't find good to begin with. I know there's interesting Twilight fic out there, but I've got no interest in reading Twilight, and I know there's fix-it fic in general, but I don't tend to crave fix-it fic -- if I dislike something, I mainly just want to move on, I guess? Anyway, one thing fic CAN do better is justsheer breadth -- different POVs and interesting AUs and exploring aspects of canon that the canon either flubbed or wasn't interested in engaging with. Harry Potter fandom is the perfect example for this, because it's so vast, and you have thoughtful explorations of decent Slytherins and Harry/Ginny written much more engagingly than in canon and Marauders era fic, and all kinds of wonderful things.
29. Your vacation reading habits
This is why I caved in and got the Kindle, actually, though it gets way more use than that -- 'cos I used to go on vacation with 3-4 hardcopies, and either I would read them quickly and then lug them around like dead weight, OR I wouldn't have time to read and would be lugging them around as dead weight without even reading them, both of which felt like stupid things to do. So I got the Kindle, and that makes vacation reading super-easy -- all my books come with me. I still bring a hard copy book or two just in case the Kindle runs out of juice where I can't recharge it or gets commandeered by the rodents, but no longer have to count on JUST that. And I even got brave enough to take the Kindle to the beach and other outdoor places, a couple of years back.
My actual reading on vacation tends to be sporadic. When we're doing a lot of new stuff, I don't read much (like on my sabbatial), especially now that planes all come with personal entertainment screens and I can play with those (I get a lot more book-time than TV/movie-time in day-to-day life). But this past summer we mostly went to places we had already been to and had a more relaxing vacation, and I read quite a bit. And I read quite a bit at safta's, too, since there's not much else to do, although less so now that she has WiFi and we travel with two laptops, so I can use that time to catch up on LJ instead.
The rodents read in the car as we drive around, but I can't do that (motion sickness, though I'm just fine on planes, trains, and buses). Me, I mostly read in the evening and, like, when taking a bath or something (this is the other reason hard copy books come in handy; I haven't gotten THAT brave with the Kindle). The reading time is good for me, actually, because it gives me some alone time even when the four of us are sharing close quarters, and I really need that when we travel.
30. The book you read the blurb of, constructed a version of in your mind, and were promptly disappointed by once you finally got around to actually reading it
I don't know that I've ever had that happen with just a blurb -- a blurb is not hefty enough to have soured me on the whole book if the book is disappointing, and not memorable enough for the disappointment to stick around if I did enjoy reading the book after all. There are certainly odd and misleading blurbs, but I don't tend to remember them for very long; like, cyanshadow and I were talking about how The Darkest Part of the Forest has a blurb that makes it sound like it's much more about defeating the scary monster at the heart of the forest than it really is, bug I doubt I will remember this a few months from now.
The closest I have to an answer to this question is something that was much more prolonges than a blurb -- the Gothic Tuesday (or whatever day it was) that Sarah Rees Brennan was doing in preparation for release of the Lynburn Legacy books. I'm not a Gothics person, but I enjoyed her columns, and was intrigued by the nature of the book she was writing -- as it came across to me in thos posts -- a subversion of the "psychic bond = true love" trope. When it turned out that the trilogy was not, ultimately, that, I was not only disappointed, I felt baffled and weirdly betrayed. I might've felt similarly even without the LJ posts, because I do think the first book sort of sets up the same expectation as those posts? But I guess we'll never know...
31. Bonus question: rec me something!
Sure! Comment asking for a rec, and I shall :)
I was going to do the "me in 3 characters" meme, too, but it didn't fit, so, next post, I guess.