Belated reading roundup and book meme
I remembered that I had some books written up for over a month that didn't fit in my last reading roundup post, and I might as well post those because I keep reading more but not writing them up for some reason. But there's no sense in waiting until these fade from my mind even further.
33. Dhonielle Clayton, The Belles -- I actually wasn't going to read this for Lodestar, because I was disappointed in the category as a whole and the description of this book sounded completely boring to me, but then
ambyr started reading it and reported that she found its mix of really fucked up worldbuilding and bog-standard YA fantasy tropes really odd, and I was intrigued enough to request it at the library. And, yeah, this is a weird book! The worldbuilding is very fucked up, in an interesting way, and the YA tropes nonsense is very ridiculous (and not in a good way), and I read the whole thing quite quickly, and may well check ou the sequel, because I'm really curious if it's building up to something or just... a strange mishmash.
So, the fucked up worldbuilding.
ambyr really summarized it best: "On the one hand it's bog-standard first-person narrator X Is Banned And The Government Controls Y dystopia, and [...] what the government controls here is essentially magical plastic surgery, which everyone needs to have done monthly for Reasons." The protagonist, Camellia, is one of the Belles, a group of girls born with the ability to perform magical plastic surgery, and also the only ones who are supposedly naturally pretty, because they are not grey and wrinkly and red-eyed, unlike the rest of the population. The thing that struck me first is that the magical plastic surgery is not just "wave a wand and they're pretty". Spoilers from here It is very much a process, involving powders, brushes, knives, and drawing lines on skin, and so on, although to be honest I never did figure out what roles those things played, beyond making it LOOK more like real-world plastic surgery and showing there was learned skill involved, especially as the Belles seem to be able to do their magic just fine without them. It's also described in a lot of detail, grounded in physicality, base rather than pretty -- there's blood and bone and vomit. Also, the plastic surgery hurts the patients, and there's a natural limit to how much of it they can bear, physically -- a limit which is shown right on the page to a far greater extent that I expected, when Camille and another Belle have a sort of plastic surgery duel via the canvas of a patient -- under duress and as punishment for the woman they're working on, as well as for the Belles -- and actually kill her. But even the early, less dramatic scenes are pretty dark: Camille working on a little girl, at her mother's orders, because the mother has a very particular idea of what her daughter should look like, a woman demanding more plastic surgery than she can physically handle. This stuff is very much at odds with the pretty dresses and endless pastries and teacup giraffes and dragons that are the physical of the book, which creates an interesting tension, although I wish I had a better idea about what this tension was FOR, and how much of the dissonance was intentional. (There are also other things about the worldbuilding that made me really scratch my head, because this is a weirdly steampunky world, which on the one hand has telephones apparently, but most communication is by individual postal balloons, and there is also apparently magical technology that makes headlines move and dresses change shape, but it was not at all clear to me what was powering those things? Or breeding the teacup animals for that matter. At the same time, medicine appears to take the form of leeches, although these people apparently know what proteins are. It's a very odd world, with only a very narrow window onto it through Camille's eyes (which I suppose makes sense, given that she spent her whole life inside a house, focused on one specific thing, and I do wonder if we'll get more of an explanation/exploration now that she's out in the wider world.) Also, I found it neat and believable that the magical plastic surgery was subject to laws, which could be changed but had to be obeyed, but while it made sense to me that people would be OK abiding by laws that stipulated things like the maximum size of breats or the minimum diameter of a waist, I had a really hard time believing that this society would have access to organ rejuvenation and pass laws about not using it for life extension. Like, surely that is a thing you as a society should turn into an export, let alone make available to your own citizens! (Apparently the kingdom does not trade externally, according to one of the headlines? But then, why does it have a navy?) But while some laws seem designed to preserve normal appearance, there are also laws that are very much not egalitarian -- "no man is allowed to be taller than the sitting king", and apparently servants can only get a certain amount of work done, so as not to be more beautiful than the nobles, presumably. Oh, and I also appreciated that through one of the headlines we learned that the Belles could make trans people magically transition, although that only recently became allowed (and I do wonder how this works from an economic standpoint, since presumably like all the other magical plastic surgery this also has to be refreshed every month...)
The standard YA stuff is most evident in the obligatory love triangle which is very perfunctory and also SUPER BAD. Camille encounters and immediately falls for Auguste, who is supposed to be, like, roguishly charming? But really their conversations go *stupid corny line from him* "I giggled and blushed" *stupid statement from her* *both laugh*. (So much tonal whiplash between this nonsense and the really dark stuff above. SO MUCH.) Now, to be fair, he is like the first boy she's ever been allowed to meet, apparently? And he is supposed to be very handsome. And also she might be only a couple of years old, because at least the current generation of baby Belles is aging at an accelerated rate, although it's not clear if that also happened to the present generation of Belles that Camille is part of. It turns out that Auguste as a spy, ferreting out Belle secrets, which actually made all the preceding insipid scenes between him and Camille even worse, because I couldn't even handwave him being besotted and saying stupid things because of that. (I also wonder if Auguste will reappear in the sequel with the idea that actually he's not all bad, and he really does love Camille, and has some Deep Thoughts about beauty, and his betrayal is because his horrible mother made him do it, or he felt he had no choice. In fact, I assume so, but I guess we'll see.) The other part of the love triangle is Remy the awkward guard with a lot of sisters, and his interaction with Camille is also quite painful to read, but at least involves less stupid dialogue which is supposed to be suave banter or whatever. Anyway, the thing about Camille's interactions with both Auguste and Remy is that they have not even 1/100 the chemistry, narrative or otherwise, of Camille's interactions with the significant female characters her age, most notably her fellow Belle/best friend Amber and the evil princess Sophia. OK, the Belles think of each other as sisters, and Amber and Camille did grow up together, so it's not that I was getting shippy vibes from them exactly, but there's a lot of intimacy and physicality between them. Ditto for Camille and Sophia, who is always touching her face, and there was just much more in the way of real tension there than with the nominal love triangle. Now, same-sex relationships exist in this world and don't even carry a stigma -- the queen has a long-term female lover whom everyone knows about, one of Sophia's ladies-in-waiting has a female lover, and while theirs is a forbidden love, because the other girl is a servant, Sophia had apparently considered marrying her off to another woman, so there's even same-sex marriage, just not for people who are required to produce an heir, like the queen. And if it turns out, in a later book, that Camille actually likes girls, she just didn't realize it because all the girls her age she's encountered till now were her sisters, servants, or evil, and that's why the obligatory het was so painfully bad and listless in this book, I'll be impressed. But I'm guessing that's probably not where this arc is going... (And it's not just Camille; the way the other Belles cuddle and clown around together, really, pretty much any time two or more women who are not closely related are in the room together, I felt like there was a lot more chemistry than between any het couple. IDK, maybe Clayton is just really bored by writing het, and didn't feel like she needed to do any heavy lifting because "she's a girl, he's a boy, need I say more?")
There are some interesting things this book is doing! The mystery of the secret Belles -- who don't look as pretty as the ones being paraded about, the way Belle numbers are dwindling (or at least "official" Belle numbers are) from generation to generation, the way the Belles are revealed to be clones -- all that hints at some cool worldbuilding backstory that I'm eager to learn about, either by reading the sequel or hoping
ambyr and
rachelmanija read it. And I actually found Sophia an interesting and compelling (if uneven) antagonist. She is definitely awful: she very cold-bloodedly has a woman murdered-by-proxy, and probably more than just one; she tortures her subjects, physically and emotionally; she's got her mad scientist experiments using siphoned off Belle blood; and also, lest we miss that she is a psychopath, she killed her teacup crocodile because it wasn't the teacup dragon she wanted -- she's clearly bad news. But there were the scenes where Camille empathized with her ambition, and I wonder if there's more to Sophia than just being evil (although I wouldn't be at all surprised if the answer is No). There's also a moment between Camille and Sophia that made me raise my eyebrows but was never addressed afterwards: Camille tries to change Sophia's personality (to make her less terrible), without her knowledge or permission, after reading about how her mother had softened the queen's temper at the queen's request. Now there is some handwavy explanation that seems to suggest Belle's can enhance natural aspects of the person's character, so maybe that's why it worked for the queen -- whom even Camille's magic mirror now reveals as a good person -- but is definitely not an option to make Sophia a more acceptable heir. (Near as I can tell, the queen justifies it by saying "some people can change and some can't"...) But also, altering people's personalities without their consent is a bit not good, and while Camile was afraid that Sophia had found her out, I never felt like the book indicated in any way that her TRYING was maybe slightly morally gray...
But also there are things that didn't make sense to me at all, and I don't think will turn out to be clever twists. There's the part where Camille and Remy apparently accidentally stumble on the place where Edel is hiding in the end -- this does not appear to be intentional on anyone's part, right? There's the scene that made zero sense to me, where Camille uses the comatose princess Charlotte as a hostage against Sophia and for some reason it works -- because Sophia wants to be the one to decide on life or death for her sister, which I actually could buy, but NOT the part where Camille, who has very little clue about how people work, would be able to anticipate and use to her advantage. And actually, given that Camille can apparently work change on people's bodies without any instruments and quite quickly, I kept wondering why she didn't just do THAT, instead of making cut roses grown into vines, when she was being attacked by the douchey prince and later threatened by Sophia. Also, it's pretty ridiculous that Camille would have the Belle book her mother secretly passed down to her, and she would not actually read the whole thing at the first opportunity. Probably a bunch of other things, too, but it's not like rigorous logic is the reason to read this book -- it really runs on atmosphere and #aesthetic
Oh, and this is really minor, but it kept bugging me throughout the entire book: the way the headlines were written just did not sound like headlines at all, and that kept throwing me out of the story every time.
Bonus: some interesting discussion and speculation about the worldbuilding in
rachelmanija's DW.
35. Malka Older, Infomocracy -- So after I read the two novellas in the series Hugo nominees I was unfamiliar with, there was only the Centenal Cycle left. An "election thriller" didn't sound like something I'd be interested in, and when I first started reading, it wasn't really grabbing me. But the longer I read, the higher it crept up my ballot, past the not-for-me Xuya, and eventually past the "not sure if want"/frustrating Laundry Files and Toby Daye, which I definitely hadn't expected at the start. I think Terra Ignota sort of prepared the soil in making me realize that I could find social science extrapolation SFF really interesting, when done from the perspective of an expert. This book isn't Terra Ignota (more's the pity): the prose is very straightforward, and not only is there no unreliable narrator, the book is actually told in omniscient (well, mostly sequential 3rd but with some head-hopping within a scene, which bugged me; I hope Older dispensed with this approach in the sequels). There's nothing inherently attractive about this micro-democracy world, unlike the wonders and Sorting Hat aspects of TI -- this future is much closer to our present than TI's, and barely felt science-fictional, though I don't mean that as a criticism.
Similar to TLTL, the characters mainly felt like vehicles for the worldbuilding, although Ken's earnestness and self-aware need for approval did become endearing to me by the end. spoilers from here! (The relationships and attractions never felt like anything more than the author being aware she should probably have some sex and/or UST in her book. I think there's a Ken/Mishima/Domaine triangle being set up or something -- maybe even with the beautiful Liberty spy? -- but it's so superfluous to anything interesting about the book, that I really can't imagine what for.) I did like Mishima's "narrative disorder", though, because not only is it a fun character trait, which can be both a strength and a flaw, and indeed is shown to be both, and also because I now have a name for L's compulsive drive towards spinning narratives about every stranger.
The worldbuilding was worth the price of admission for me though, and is what's going to keep me reading. The way debates and polls and voting assistance and political ads work in this microdemocracy, all the political parties we get to meet, with neat little details like ALL4ONE party changing its logo to ALLFOR1 when they start courting the centenals in Asia. The way micro-governments mean certain city neighborhoods allow liquor and drugs and others don't, how they implement infrastructure in a patchwork way, and how they work together on city-wide things (I did have a hard time believing that things have only been running like this for 20 years -- it seemed like a more established order.) It was also interesting to see the projection of what was a luxury in this future (bananas, honey) and what had turned into a staple (termites, pigeons), and what random bits of daily life look like (male birth control, air beds, interactive dishware, print-on-demand outfits, bidding on things like haircuts), and what barriers still exist (country/centenal specific outlets, self-heating jackets that still need to be recharged to work), what entertainment looks like.
Of course, there was a pretty large emphasis on disaster recovery, which is Older's professional area of expertise, first with the Tokyo earthquake and then with the Information outage. It was interesting to see what aspects of this future, which one can sort of see from here, become problems when daily life is disrupted, like how do you pay for things in a cashless society when Information is down. And I loved the bit where the major Information hubs still had telegraph installed for BCP and the Tokyo office could send its SOS -- that was probably my favorite scene in the book. Although I also loved the bit where people without access to Information are suddenly mangling quotes.
I liked the thriller aspects of this -- the twists and reveals were fun, and it managed tension nicely, although the physical action scenes, the chase with Ken, Mishima jumping on the drone with the bomb, kind of dragged on too long. And, like, I can see the attraction of a katana-vs-flamethrower duel, but personally that's not what I was reading this for.
And I thought the whole thing had a nice mix of optimism and cynicism, which I really hadn't expected. Politics is still a dirty business, with compromises and people looking after their own interests on all sides, but also people genuinely working for public good, and not always agreeing on what that is. Anyway, I'm looking forward to reading book 2 at some point, since I do have the rest of the trilogy on hand, courtesy of the Hugo packet, and I'm especially hoping ikel89 reads this at some point and weighs in with her IR opinions and her thoughts on TI comparisons.
38. Jonathan Kellerman, The Wedding Guest -- I never have a ton to say about these, but they keep being fun reads that I blast through in a day. I picked this up when I was floundering in the middle of a fantasy book after apparently having overdosed on SFF for Hugos homework, and it was just the ticket to wipe the slate clean and put me in the mood to read more genre. The mystery was less satisfying than in some of these because spoiler! the murderer was not a character we'd gotten to see and know, but the mystery is just the vehicle for me, anyway. I liked the unlikable red herring Amanda and that whole side of the family, and the various dogs that we got to meet -- there seemed to be more of them than usual. And maybe because I was reading this on the heels of a bunch of Lodestar titles, I noticed the way random characters here, just regular non-evil characters, were non-PC in petty, believable ways, while being minorities themselves -- like the Middle Eastern strip club owner talking about his (Black) bouncer having "one of those names" and mentioning that he can always tell when someone is gay, and (a different) gay, Black bouncer mispronouncing that guy's "ethnic" last name in a funny, dismissive way, and things like that -- where it isn't making a special point, and nobody has to be a role model or an object lesson; I found it oddly refreshing. I also thought it was interesting that there were several characters in this book voicing opinions about intellectual safe spaces on college campuses, an Asian character complaining about being accused of white male privilege, and Milo and Rick being told that by not getting married they're letting down the movement and stuff like that, along with other things like a Black character being openly distrustful of cops, a fed complaining about California State legislature refusing to cooperate with federal law enforcement on illegal immigrants, the Me Too movement. The reason I notice these things more in this series is that I've been reading these books for 25 years, and Kellerman has been writing them even longer, and in a way they're kind of out of time, but he also manages to make them feel current, which is a neat trick. (I'm glad we left behind the time period where Kellerman kept explaining how internet searches worked :P) On a final random note: this book had an unusual cover for a Kellerman book, I feel like, as I don't think I've seen people on them before? But even weirder was when I realized the image on the cover was the very last scene of the book. Very odd!
Books I still need to write up: Becky Chambers' Wayfarers 2 & 3, the Astounding biography, Dread Nation and Tess of the Road all of them for Hugos/Lodestar; The Epic Crush of Genie Lo, which I finally went back and finished because
isis was reading it, and The October Man (RoL novella, which I've owned since my preorder dropped on May 31 and which it took me over three months to get to, which is a sign of my Hugo homework crunch and burnout), and Grasshopper Jungle, off ikel89's rec. I don't think I've ever been so far behind...
(In non-book media, I also want to at some point write up The Good Place season 3 and White Collar ramblings (I'm up to season 5 and caved in and bought a complete series box set.)
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But for now, let's have that book meme that was going around a little while ago:
01. What is your favourite book and/or book series of all time?
Lord of the Rings. I mean, there are a lot of other books I love, but in terms of informing my life and personality, you can't beat that one.
02. What is the longest book you have ever read? How many pages?
War and Peace. Which I read (at 11!) precisely because it was so long and I wanted to be able to say I'd read it. I don't remember how many pages the Russian edition I read was -- two thick hardcovers -- but according to this Wiki page it's 1,440, which sounds about what I recall. (Another long book on this list I read is To Green Angel Tower, the last of the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy, at 1,083 pages (my edition was split into two paperbacks).
03. What is the oldest book you have ever read? (Based on its written date)
Well, in terms of oldest story, it's got to be The Iliad (which I read in Russian translation and a kid-friendly arrangement) and The Odyssey (which I read in English translation) -- 8th century BCE. In terms of a book that existed as a written text, mmm, probably Bede's History? (890 per Wiki). And in terms of a text I read in the original, probably The Canterbury Tales (14th century).
04. What is a book series that everyone else loves but you do not?
Well, not everybody else, but in terms of having friends (RL and LJ) who are into it but I'm not, probably Sanderson's Mistborn and whatever the whole series is called. Read the first book and a little bit of something else, and was not that impressed, plus my activation energy for series consisting of thick-ass volumes has gone way up as I've gotten older.
Oh, also, pretty much every series by Seanan McGuire is something a lot of people in fandom OMGlove, and I vary from lukewarm (Toby Daye) to meh (Wayward Children) to ugh (the half a book of Discount Armageddon I made it through) on her stuff.
05. What book or book series would you like to see turned into a film/ TV series?
Assuming there magically existed a perfect actor for the lead role (no, not Peter Dinklage): Vorkosigan Saga! I feel like it would lend itself really nicely to a TV series format -- it's a great blend of action, humour, and character development, amazing ensemble cast, plots that could lend themselves to both heist-of-the-week (daring rescues! military standoffs! and later, mysteries!) and longer arcs, fun dialogue, very reasonable special effects demands, and the different books span genres -- mystery and romance and bildungsroman -- so there would be something for everyone.
06. What is your favourite stand-alone book?
Master i Margarita, probably (which I really ought to reread some time soon)
07. What is a book that you feel glad for not reading?
I thought about this for the "series you're not into" question but then decided to go with a series I tried rather than one I managed to avoid entirely: the Wheel of Time books. A multi-volume series of ever-longer books with a huge cast is exactly the kind of thing I would've gotten myself hooked on in high school, but somehow I missed running into this one until it was already at like 7 very thick books, and the fans I met were getting dispirited at there being no end in sight. And while I know the series was eventually finished, it was also finished by Sanderson, who I have surmised is just not a For Me author, so it's just as well I never got on that ride.
08. What is a book that you feel guilty for not not reading?
Which is to say, what is a book I feel guilty for reading? I don't feel guilty for reading things. I don't even feel guilty for ENJOYING books, whether they be a "guilty pleasure" kind of book (I've read quite a few of my mother's Jackie Collins paperbacks, and also a thing with necrophilia and twincest that I picked up in the lounge of my grandparents' retiree center) or a book/author which is deemed problematic. Like, I'm glad I seem to have broken free of whatever compulsion kept me reading Orson Scott Card's Enderverse books long past the point where I stopped enjoying them (stopped enjoying at: Children of the Mind; kept reading until: Shadows in Flight, which was like six books later) -- but I don't feel guilty for reading any of them, and I still unapologetically love Ender's Game itself. So, yeah, basically I think the question is silly. (Note that I rarely *buy* books, unless I'm super invested in reading them as soon as they come out and/or want to support the author, so me reading "problematic" books is not putting $ in those authors' pockets except very indirectly through library usage.)
09. What is a book you have read that is set in your country of birth?
If we count my "country of birth" as the USSR, we can go with Master i Margarita from above, or, IDK, Monday Starts on Saturday, another book I love. If we want to stick to Ukraine specifically, the first thing that comes to mind is Gogol's Vechera na khutore bliz Dikanki, which I both loved and was frightened of as a kid.
10. What is a book that you own more than one copy of?
I own three copies of LotR personally -- a Russian translation, a to-lend edition, and a pretty box set with Tolkien's art on the cover which never leaves my possession (and B owns an all-in-one omnibus -- well, "owns" in the "possession is 9/10 of the law" sense, as it's his brother's copy that he walked off with so that he could read it and understand the depths of my soul :)
Oh! but actually an even better answer to this is Monday Starts on Saturday: I own my Russian copy I had since I was 11, an English translation I bought for B, three more copies of the English translation that I ordered as soon as it came back into print (I actually bought 5 more, but two have gone to friends I wanted to have the chance to read it), and just the other day I bought a non-sentimental-value Russian copy online because B expressed an interest in reading something not too difficult but more adult-friendly than "Zhivaya shlyapa", and it just arrived. So with six copies, that definitely wins.
11. What horror book made you really scared?
I don't read horror on purpose, but also don't find it scary when I do read books that turn out to be horror-adjacent. So I think the last thing I read (or, rather, had read to me) that really scared me were stories I encountered as a kid, like Gogol's Viy or Wells' The Island of Doctor Moreau.
12. What book do you passionately hate?
At the moment, it's Children of Blood and Bone for winning all the awards while not deserving them. (There are certainly worse books I've read! and even more worse books I haven't read all the way through. But nobody is showering them with accolades.
And a special shoutout to "My Favorite Book That I Hate": The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet.
13. What is the biggest book series you have read? How many books are in it?
I've read quite a few series that went beyond 10 books (Dragaera, Vorkosigan, Dresden Files, etc.), but the longest series distinction goes to Discworld (41 books total of which I've read 40 -- I never did finish Raising Steam), followed by Kellerman's Alex Delaware novels (34 main series novels, but also at least 4, and maybe 6? novels that are set in the same 'universe', with characters who overlap with the Delaware books), so it's close.
14. What book gives you happy memories?
The Hobbit. My mother read it to me -- or, rather, did a translation from Ukrainian to Russian -- and I both remember how cool it was to discover the world of the book and how neat it was to then have coversatios with my mother about how Dwarves reproduced (she said by budding XP). I have a very clear memory of that conversation: we were both on spring break (she was a teacher at the time), and we were walking back from a day at the Kiev zoo, and she seemed prepared to entertain my questions about random aspects of Dwarf worldbuilding.
15. What book made you cry?
I tear up pretty easily at books, but the book that made me cry the most is The Gadfly (which is awfully emotionally manipulative, but does its job well). But a special distinction also goes to Pterry's The Shepherd's Crown, which made me weep on public transit and hide in the bathroom at work to cry.
16. What book made you laugh?
I laugh at books even more easily than I cry, but let's say Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need (most Dave Barry books make me laugh, but that one is a special favorite).
17. What is your favourite book that contains an LGBTQ+ character?
That contains an LGBTQ+ character? I mean, do the Vorkosigan books that have Aral in them count since he is bi? The Fifth Season, which I was enormously impressed by, has both a gay harater I like very much and a trans character who was one of my favorites. I'm not sure the Hexarhate books contain anyone who is NOT LGBTQ+, except possibly the servitors... But I don't think of any of these books as LGBTQ+ books.
So for a favorite book that I do think of as a LGBTQ+ book, I'll go with Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda, because it was adorable and funny, great YA that also was a lot of fun for me as an adult reader, and had a lot of interesting diversity besides the central premise. (I also liked Leah on the Off Beat a lot, though I don't think it's as strong structurally.)
18. Have you read a book with a male protagonist? What is it?
Um, yes? It's not exactly a rarity. XP For example, there are at least four series of more than 10 books each with a male protagonist that I read (the abovementioned Alex Delaware mysteries, The Dresden Files, the Vlad Taltos books, and the Miles Vorkosigan books).
19. Have you read a book set on another planet? What is it?
Yep. As a sci-fi reader, I've read a LOT of books set on other planets. Heck, in the Vorkosigan Saga alone I've read three books titled after the planets they're set on (Barrayar, Cetaganda, and Komarr). But if we want to limit it to REAL planets, let's go with Strugatsky's The Land of Crimson Clouds (which had a Google Doodle! whaaaat) or Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chroniles, or Andy Weir's The Martian. Or, heh, Neznaika na lune, which might have been the first book set on another planet I read, but may also not have been, because I read a lot of my parents' sci-fi as a kid, too.
20. Have you ever been glad to not finish a series? Which?
As I mentioned above, I was happy to have finally broken whatever compulsion kept me reading the Ender books long after I stopped enjoying them. I also wandered away from the Shadowhunter books, and have been happy in this occurrence.
But actually I also have the opposite phenomenon, where I have stopped short of finishing completely a series I love a lot, just so that I can known there's a little bit more of it waiting for me. I've avoided reading "Winterfair Gifts" (a Vorkosigan short story) for this reason, and I think as more of my favorite series wrap up, I'll probably leave such little tidbits as future treats for myself, too.
21. Have you ever read a book series because you were pressured?
ikel89 coined a great verb for this penomenon: "to temeraire", after she pushed herself through several volumes of Naomi Novik's series, growing to progressively hate it, because several of her friends were fans and she had promised to give it a shot. The lesson learned from this is: this is a terrible idea.
So, I have not read an entire series because I was pressured into it -- unless this question means, "picked up the series because a friend liked it and ended up enjoying it". If that IS what the question means, then I'm sure there are a bunch -- ikel89 got me to read the Russian urban fantasy vampire clan books, which were great fun, and
lunasariel got me into Nightrunners, which I reasonably enjoyed, and I'm sure there are lots of other examples.
But if the question is asking about trying series I DIDN'T like, I have those too: I picked up Dune because my sci-fi loving high school friends thought it was amazing (and I was glad to have read the book, but had no desire to continue on, which sounds like a wise call); I read Mistborn (which a lot of my flisters are fans of) and attempted the Alcatraz and the Librarians books (which the rodents liked), before coming thoroughly to the conclusion that I should just leave Sanderson alone.
Or I guess I can say that I was pressured into reading the Binti novellas by Hugos homework? I liked the first one, but I certainly persisted in reading them past the point where I would've naturally stopped.
22. What famous author have you not read any books by?
Dan Brown; I made it through about a page and a half of his prose before noping out. For a genre value of famous, I've not read any books by Octavia Butler, Arthur C. Clarke, or Robert A. Heinlein, or Larry Niven (and I do want to remedy at least the Henlein and th Butler at some point) -- my si-fi classics reading was almost entirely defined by who was translated into Russian, so I got a lot of Asimov and Bradbury, some Simak and Kuttner, but I also have really odd blindspots). My early reading all being in Russian also means that I missed out on a lot of children's classics in English -- I've never read Louisa May Alcott or Laura Ingalls Wilder or E.Nesbit, or Frances Hodgson Burnett, or Lucy Maud Montgomery, or T.H.White. I picked up a few things when my little brother and later the rodents were reading the kiddie classics, but that means I got the early reader books like Dr Seuss and not the independent reader ones.
23. Who is your favourite author of all time?
Tolkien as author in the sense of "sub-creator". Author in the sense of "writer", with emphasis on the craft, would probably be Oscar Wilde or Nabokov. But it's the former meaning that's most important to me.
24. How many bookshelves do you own?
There are... about 11 in the house? (4 in B's office, I think, 2 in the living room, 2 in the dining room, 2.5 in my office, and 1 large one in L's office. Only 3.5 of them have my books on them, though.
25. How many books do you own?
I dunno, not planning to count them XP Also, a growing number of them actually live on my Kindle account. My account there lists 319 items, but a lot of those are expired library borrows, so it's less than that on Kindle.
26. What is your favourite non-fiction book?
It might actually be Arika Okrent's In the Land of Invented Languages. It's a great combination of a topic I'm fascinated by, a book that was written in a really fun way, from which I learned a ton of neat stuff I didn't even realize I wanted to know, and a style that makes me think sitting down to chat with the author would be a really enjoyable way to pass the time. I've read a number of non-fiction books that nail several of these categories, but not a lot hit all of them.
27. What is your favourite children’s/middle-grade book?
I'm very, very fond of Deniskiny rasskazy -- this was the first Russian kids book I absolutely wanted to make sure the rodents read. (When I was a kid, my favorite was probably Tri tolstyaka, but I haven't reread that one, and the rodents were not interested beyond the first chapter. I'm not sure it's aged as well as 'Deniska'...)
The English-language children's books (that modern children grow up on; I read Mary Poppins and Winnie the Pooh in Russian translation, and the Russian version of Wizard of Oz, but I'm guessing most modern kids know those by the movies, not the books) I experienced through my brother, who did grow up in the US, and later my rodents. Shel Silverstein is probably the biggest favorite (the poems, NOT The Giving Tree), but I also really love Whose Mouse Are You? (in this exact edition), which I discovered when L was tiny.
28. What is your next book on your TBR?
After A Memory Called Empire, I think K and I are planning to sync read Verdigris Deep, since our Hardinge sync reads have worked pretty well so far.
29. What book are you currently reading?
A Memory Called Empire, for actual enjoyment, and Children of Blood and Bone in small increments fueled by spite.
30. What book are you planning on buying next?
I have the next collection of Rivers of London comics, Action at a Distance, on pre-order (November 12). But I will probably buy Hexarchate Stories before that. But even more likely is that the next book I buy will be something marked down to $1.99 on Kindle -- like, I bought Reaper Man the other day, and An Informal History of the Hugos and The Poppy War, all of which I had already read, as library copies, because they were on sale.
31. What was the cheapest book you bought?
I have some digital freebies and hard copy books I found for free at the curb or on public transit. Oh, or free books for signing up for books-of-the-month clubs, back when those used to be a thing. Cheapest book I actually paid for is harder... I'm sure there were some used books I picked up for less than $1 when I used to go on used bookstore crawls, but I'd have to check all the individual covers, and I'm way too lazy to do that. I definitely have books I bought for $1, both on Kindle and in hard copy, but I don't remember offhand what they are.
32. What was the most expensive book you bought?
Probably a coffee table gift for someone... I don't own any fancy antique editions.
33. What is a book you read after seeing the movie/ TV series?
This is not something that happens a lot, because I read a lot more books than I watch movies, and if I know a movie is based on a book, I will usually make a point to read the book before I see the movie. But one case in which I did watch the movie first is Cloud Atlas. I didn't like the movie very much, and liked it even less after I read the book, because it turned out to have changed a lot of interesting things. (I did like the book.)
34. What is the newest book you have bought?
Newest as most recently bought? Reaper Man. Newest as most recently released? T.Kingfisher's Minor Mage (which I haven't read yet, but it looks adorable!) with the July 30 release date.
35. What three books are you most looking forward to reading this year?
False Value, the next RoL novel (November 19). I can't think of two more, tbh, because the books I'm really looking forward to reading don't come out till 2020, like Perhaps the Stars, or at some unspecified point in the future, like Tsalmoth. I guess I'm looking forward to the Poppy War sequel (which is already out), but not enough to have bought a copy, so.
36. What is a book you love that has a terrible trope? (Love triangle, etc)
There are probably lots with stupid romance stuff in genre books I otherwise like... Oh! True Pretenses, which is the only romance novel I actually loved, has fake marriage, which I generally dislike as a trope (but it WORKS here! and nobody is lying to anyone! ...Anymore.) But there are other examples, too. Dragaera is a sci-fi/fantasy mix, which I used to be categorically against. My beloved LotR has the "science is evil" vibe that really bothers me in most things.
37. Have you read a book in a different language? What was it?
I've read lots of books in Russian. I probably read some books in Ukrainian? don't remember what they were, though -- it would've been back in 4th grade. I have ATTEMPTED at least one book in Italian, but I'm not sure if I've ever actually finished a short one. And it's possible that I memorized enough of the rodents' Hebrew board books to be able to "read" them the way a toddler does, but I definitely couldn't do that anymore.
38. What is a book you’ve read that is set in a time period before you were born?
How about Pride and Prejudice. And Anna Karenina, and stuff. And for a more recently read example, The Green Glass Sea, which is set in the 40s.
39. What book offended you?
It's fairly easy to find badly written books that just, like offended my sensibilities and/or came from batshit perspectives (like Larry Burkett's The Illuminati, which is the worst book I have ever read, probably). But I'm going to name books that I otherwise enjoyed which offended me for a specific reason: Jacqueline Carey's treatment of the Yeshuites in the Kushiel books (she did so much excellent research! ...and then made her Jews Christans for some reason. Jacqueline Carey, WHY), and, for similar reasons, a book which I don't think anyone on my flist has read. It's set in fantasy !Russia, and there's an oppressed minority of darker, secretive people -- who use blood magic for evil ends. Like, not all of them are evil... but I was getting blood libel vibes to an uncomfortable degree.
40. What is the weirdest book you have read?
I haven't read any of the TRULY weird books that repeatedly show up on "weirdest books" lists that I googled. But this was a much longer list, and I finally netted some. I don't think Heart of a Dog is all that weird, but Geek Love is certainly one I can agree on. Also, Borges has some delightfully weird short stories.
41. What is your favourite duology?
Duologies are hard! I think maybe Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda/Leah on the Off Beat may qualify as a favorite (and is definitely a duology so far, I think?) Does Seraphina/Shadow Scale qualify even though Tess of the Road is a sort-of sequel to them? Oh, and I remember liking The Hero and the Crown and The Blue Sword a lot, back when I was the actual target audience for YA.
42. What is your favourite trilogy?
Lord of the Rings if we count it as a trilogy (even though Tolkien did not). A lot of my favorite trilogies have since grown additional books (e.g. Earthsea, Memory Sorrow and Thorn, Deed of Paksenarrion). Even Machineries of Empire is no longer a pure trilogy, with the release of Hexarchate Stories. So let's go with the Broken Earth books. Those seem pretty solidly a trilogy and I expect will remain one... and they are brilliant.
43. What book did you buy because of its cover?
I don't buy books based on covers very often, but I did buy a Dennis McKiernan book because his books had really pretty covers and this one was cheap and had a dragon on it.
44. What is a book that you love, but has a terrible cover?
ALL THE VORKOSIGAN BOOKS. It's not even funny! I think this one is probably the most terrible, for my money.
45. Do you own a poetry anthology? What is your favourite poem from it?
I own quite a few: complete poems of Yeats, Auden, Larkin (also Dorothy Parker, but intermixed with her prose, so it probably doesn't count); a nice two-volume hardcover box set of American poetry; collections by Frost, Elizabeth Bishop; Esenin and Balmont in Russian; several Romantics anthologies; volumes of Milton, John Donne, Metaphysical Poets, Blake, and the Norton Anthology of Poetry from my college classes, and probably more than I'm forgetting (plus a bunch of children's poetry in Russian). My favorite anthology, though, is Top 500 Poems, which was one of those book club freebies I got when I was in high school. My favorite poem from it, which is aso my favorite poem of all time, is Philip Larkin's "Aubade".
46. Do you own any colouring books based off other books?
No. I actually don't get the attraction of coloring books, tbh. Never did as a kid, and still don't.
47. Do you own any historical fiction?
Not a lot. I own a couple of books that were gifts, like The Physician, which was a gift from my friend R that I still haven't read. But I can't think of any historical fiction books that I've bought for myself.
48. What book made you angry?
I assume that, unlike the "offended" question above, this means angry in, like, a good way? angry WITH the book, instead of AT the book? If so, let's say Frances Hardinge's The Lie Tree. I've liked all of the Hardinge books that I read a lot, but The Lie Tree was the one that most affected me emotionally, and that emotion was rage on the protagonist's behalf.
49. What book has inspired you?
LotR spurred me on to write over a thousand pages of Magnum Opus, so that's going to be hard to beat. And the last book I read that inspired me to create a fanwork was Raven Stratagem, or, if we're talking about unprompted fanworks, the Rivers of London series.
50. What book got you into reading?
I don't remember a time before I could read, and even then I got retold stories from books. But the first book I remember fannishly obsessing about to the tune of play-acting its main character for an entire summer was Strugatsky's Roadside Picnic, and the first book that got me to obsess over its structure and HOW it was doing what it was doing was Master i Margarita.
This entry was originally posted at https://hamsterwoman.dreamwidth.org/1111786.html. Comment wherever you prefer (I prefer LJ).
33. Dhonielle Clayton, The Belles -- I actually wasn't going to read this for Lodestar, because I was disappointed in the category as a whole and the description of this book sounded completely boring to me, but then
ambyr started reading it and reported that she found its mix of really fucked up worldbuilding and bog-standard YA fantasy tropes really odd, and I was intrigued enough to request it at the library. And, yeah, this is a weird book! The worldbuilding is very fucked up, in an interesting way, and the YA tropes nonsense is very ridiculous (and not in a good way), and I read the whole thing quite quickly, and may well check ou the sequel, because I'm really curious if it's building up to something or just... a strange mishmash.
So, the fucked up worldbuilding.
ambyr really summarized it best: "On the one hand it's bog-standard first-person narrator X Is Banned And The Government Controls Y dystopia, and [...] what the government controls here is essentially magical plastic surgery, which everyone needs to have done monthly for Reasons." The protagonist, Camellia, is one of the Belles, a group of girls born with the ability to perform magical plastic surgery, and also the only ones who are supposedly naturally pretty, because they are not grey and wrinkly and red-eyed, unlike the rest of the population. The thing that struck me first is that the magical plastic surgery is not just "wave a wand and they're pretty". Spoilers from here It is very much a process, involving powders, brushes, knives, and drawing lines on skin, and so on, although to be honest I never did figure out what roles those things played, beyond making it LOOK more like real-world plastic surgery and showing there was learned skill involved, especially as the Belles seem to be able to do their magic just fine without them. It's also described in a lot of detail, grounded in physicality, base rather than pretty -- there's blood and bone and vomit. Also, the plastic surgery hurts the patients, and there's a natural limit to how much of it they can bear, physically -- a limit which is shown right on the page to a far greater extent that I expected, when Camille and another Belle have a sort of plastic surgery duel via the canvas of a patient -- under duress and as punishment for the woman they're working on, as well as for the Belles -- and actually kill her. But even the early, less dramatic scenes are pretty dark: Camille working on a little girl, at her mother's orders, because the mother has a very particular idea of what her daughter should look like, a woman demanding more plastic surgery than she can physically handle. This stuff is very much at odds with the pretty dresses and endless pastries and teacup giraffes and dragons that are the physical of the book, which creates an interesting tension, although I wish I had a better idea about what this tension was FOR, and how much of the dissonance was intentional. (There are also other things about the worldbuilding that made me really scratch my head, because this is a weirdly steampunky world, which on the one hand has telephones apparently, but most communication is by individual postal balloons, and there is also apparently magical technology that makes headlines move and dresses change shape, but it was not at all clear to me what was powering those things? Or breeding the teacup animals for that matter. At the same time, medicine appears to take the form of leeches, although these people apparently know what proteins are. It's a very odd world, with only a very narrow window onto it through Camille's eyes (which I suppose makes sense, given that she spent her whole life inside a house, focused on one specific thing, and I do wonder if we'll get more of an explanation/exploration now that she's out in the wider world.) Also, I found it neat and believable that the magical plastic surgery was subject to laws, which could be changed but had to be obeyed, but while it made sense to me that people would be OK abiding by laws that stipulated things like the maximum size of breats or the minimum diameter of a waist, I had a really hard time believing that this society would have access to organ rejuvenation and pass laws about not using it for life extension. Like, surely that is a thing you as a society should turn into an export, let alone make available to your own citizens! (Apparently the kingdom does not trade externally, according to one of the headlines? But then, why does it have a navy?) But while some laws seem designed to preserve normal appearance, there are also laws that are very much not egalitarian -- "no man is allowed to be taller than the sitting king", and apparently servants can only get a certain amount of work done, so as not to be more beautiful than the nobles, presumably. Oh, and I also appreciated that through one of the headlines we learned that the Belles could make trans people magically transition, although that only recently became allowed (and I do wonder how this works from an economic standpoint, since presumably like all the other magical plastic surgery this also has to be refreshed every month...)
The standard YA stuff is most evident in the obligatory love triangle which is very perfunctory and also SUPER BAD. Camille encounters and immediately falls for Auguste, who is supposed to be, like, roguishly charming? But really their conversations go *stupid corny line from him* "I giggled and blushed" *stupid statement from her* *both laugh*. (So much tonal whiplash between this nonsense and the really dark stuff above. SO MUCH.) Now, to be fair, he is like the first boy she's ever been allowed to meet, apparently? And he is supposed to be very handsome. And also she might be only a couple of years old, because at least the current generation of baby Belles is aging at an accelerated rate, although it's not clear if that also happened to the present generation of Belles that Camille is part of. It turns out that Auguste as a spy, ferreting out Belle secrets, which actually made all the preceding insipid scenes between him and Camille even worse, because I couldn't even handwave him being besotted and saying stupid things because of that. (I also wonder if Auguste will reappear in the sequel with the idea that actually he's not all bad, and he really does love Camille, and has some Deep Thoughts about beauty, and his betrayal is because his horrible mother made him do it, or he felt he had no choice. In fact, I assume so, but I guess we'll see.) The other part of the love triangle is Remy the awkward guard with a lot of sisters, and his interaction with Camille is also quite painful to read, but at least involves less stupid dialogue which is supposed to be suave banter or whatever. Anyway, the thing about Camille's interactions with both Auguste and Remy is that they have not even 1/100 the chemistry, narrative or otherwise, of Camille's interactions with the significant female characters her age, most notably her fellow Belle/best friend Amber and the evil princess Sophia. OK, the Belles think of each other as sisters, and Amber and Camille did grow up together, so it's not that I was getting shippy vibes from them exactly, but there's a lot of intimacy and physicality between them. Ditto for Camille and Sophia, who is always touching her face, and there was just much more in the way of real tension there than with the nominal love triangle. Now, same-sex relationships exist in this world and don't even carry a stigma -- the queen has a long-term female lover whom everyone knows about, one of Sophia's ladies-in-waiting has a female lover, and while theirs is a forbidden love, because the other girl is a servant, Sophia had apparently considered marrying her off to another woman, so there's even same-sex marriage, just not for people who are required to produce an heir, like the queen. And if it turns out, in a later book, that Camille actually likes girls, she just didn't realize it because all the girls her age she's encountered till now were her sisters, servants, or evil, and that's why the obligatory het was so painfully bad and listless in this book, I'll be impressed. But I'm guessing that's probably not where this arc is going... (And it's not just Camille; the way the other Belles cuddle and clown around together, really, pretty much any time two or more women who are not closely related are in the room together, I felt like there was a lot more chemistry than between any het couple. IDK, maybe Clayton is just really bored by writing het, and didn't feel like she needed to do any heavy lifting because "she's a girl, he's a boy, need I say more?")
There are some interesting things this book is doing! The mystery of the secret Belles -- who don't look as pretty as the ones being paraded about, the way Belle numbers are dwindling (or at least "official" Belle numbers are) from generation to generation, the way the Belles are revealed to be clones -- all that hints at some cool worldbuilding backstory that I'm eager to learn about, either by reading the sequel or hoping
ambyr and
rachelmanija read it. And I actually found Sophia an interesting and compelling (if uneven) antagonist. She is definitely awful: she very cold-bloodedly has a woman murdered-by-proxy, and probably more than just one; she tortures her subjects, physically and emotionally; she's got her mad scientist experiments using siphoned off Belle blood; and also, lest we miss that she is a psychopath, she killed her teacup crocodile because it wasn't the teacup dragon she wanted -- she's clearly bad news. But there were the scenes where Camille empathized with her ambition, and I wonder if there's more to Sophia than just being evil (although I wouldn't be at all surprised if the answer is No). There's also a moment between Camille and Sophia that made me raise my eyebrows but was never addressed afterwards: Camille tries to change Sophia's personality (to make her less terrible), without her knowledge or permission, after reading about how her mother had softened the queen's temper at the queen's request. Now there is some handwavy explanation that seems to suggest Belle's can enhance natural aspects of the person's character, so maybe that's why it worked for the queen -- whom even Camille's magic mirror now reveals as a good person -- but is definitely not an option to make Sophia a more acceptable heir. (Near as I can tell, the queen justifies it by saying "some people can change and some can't"...) But also, altering people's personalities without their consent is a bit not good, and while Camile was afraid that Sophia had found her out, I never felt like the book indicated in any way that her TRYING was maybe slightly morally gray...
But also there are things that didn't make sense to me at all, and I don't think will turn out to be clever twists. There's the part where Camille and Remy apparently accidentally stumble on the place where Edel is hiding in the end -- this does not appear to be intentional on anyone's part, right? There's the scene that made zero sense to me, where Camille uses the comatose princess Charlotte as a hostage against Sophia and for some reason it works -- because Sophia wants to be the one to decide on life or death for her sister, which I actually could buy, but NOT the part where Camille, who has very little clue about how people work, would be able to anticipate and use to her advantage. And actually, given that Camille can apparently work change on people's bodies without any instruments and quite quickly, I kept wondering why she didn't just do THAT, instead of making cut roses grown into vines, when she was being attacked by the douchey prince and later threatened by Sophia. Also, it's pretty ridiculous that Camille would have the Belle book her mother secretly passed down to her, and she would not actually read the whole thing at the first opportunity. Probably a bunch of other things, too, but it's not like rigorous logic is the reason to read this book -- it really runs on atmosphere and #aesthetic
Oh, and this is really minor, but it kept bugging me throughout the entire book: the way the headlines were written just did not sound like headlines at all, and that kept throwing me out of the story every time.
Bonus: some interesting discussion and speculation about the worldbuilding in
rachelmanija's DW.
35. Malka Older, Infomocracy -- So after I read the two novellas in the series Hugo nominees I was unfamiliar with, there was only the Centenal Cycle left. An "election thriller" didn't sound like something I'd be interested in, and when I first started reading, it wasn't really grabbing me. But the longer I read, the higher it crept up my ballot, past the not-for-me Xuya, and eventually past the "not sure if want"/frustrating Laundry Files and Toby Daye, which I definitely hadn't expected at the start. I think Terra Ignota sort of prepared the soil in making me realize that I could find social science extrapolation SFF really interesting, when done from the perspective of an expert. This book isn't Terra Ignota (more's the pity): the prose is very straightforward, and not only is there no unreliable narrator, the book is actually told in omniscient (well, mostly sequential 3rd but with some head-hopping within a scene, which bugged me; I hope Older dispensed with this approach in the sequels). There's nothing inherently attractive about this micro-democracy world, unlike the wonders and Sorting Hat aspects of TI -- this future is much closer to our present than TI's, and barely felt science-fictional, though I don't mean that as a criticism.
Similar to TLTL, the characters mainly felt like vehicles for the worldbuilding, although Ken's earnestness and self-aware need for approval did become endearing to me by the end. spoilers from here! (The relationships and attractions never felt like anything more than the author being aware she should probably have some sex and/or UST in her book. I think there's a Ken/Mishima/Domaine triangle being set up or something -- maybe even with the beautiful Liberty spy? -- but it's so superfluous to anything interesting about the book, that I really can't imagine what for.) I did like Mishima's "narrative disorder", though, because not only is it a fun character trait, which can be both a strength and a flaw, and indeed is shown to be both, and also because I now have a name for L's compulsive drive towards spinning narratives about every stranger.
The worldbuilding was worth the price of admission for me though, and is what's going to keep me reading. The way debates and polls and voting assistance and political ads work in this microdemocracy, all the political parties we get to meet, with neat little details like ALL4ONE party changing its logo to ALLFOR1 when they start courting the centenals in Asia. The way micro-governments mean certain city neighborhoods allow liquor and drugs and others don't, how they implement infrastructure in a patchwork way, and how they work together on city-wide things (I did have a hard time believing that things have only been running like this for 20 years -- it seemed like a more established order.) It was also interesting to see the projection of what was a luxury in this future (bananas, honey) and what had turned into a staple (termites, pigeons), and what random bits of daily life look like (male birth control, air beds, interactive dishware, print-on-demand outfits, bidding on things like haircuts), and what barriers still exist (country/centenal specific outlets, self-heating jackets that still need to be recharged to work), what entertainment looks like.
Of course, there was a pretty large emphasis on disaster recovery, which is Older's professional area of expertise, first with the Tokyo earthquake and then with the Information outage. It was interesting to see what aspects of this future, which one can sort of see from here, become problems when daily life is disrupted, like how do you pay for things in a cashless society when Information is down. And I loved the bit where the major Information hubs still had telegraph installed for BCP and the Tokyo office could send its SOS -- that was probably my favorite scene in the book. Although I also loved the bit where people without access to Information are suddenly mangling quotes.
I liked the thriller aspects of this -- the twists and reveals were fun, and it managed tension nicely, although the physical action scenes, the chase with Ken, Mishima jumping on the drone with the bomb, kind of dragged on too long. And, like, I can see the attraction of a katana-vs-flamethrower duel, but personally that's not what I was reading this for.
And I thought the whole thing had a nice mix of optimism and cynicism, which I really hadn't expected. Politics is still a dirty business, with compromises and people looking after their own interests on all sides, but also people genuinely working for public good, and not always agreeing on what that is. Anyway, I'm looking forward to reading book 2 at some point, since I do have the rest of the trilogy on hand, courtesy of the Hugo packet, and I'm especially hoping ikel89 reads this at some point and weighs in with her IR opinions and her thoughts on TI comparisons.
38. Jonathan Kellerman, The Wedding Guest -- I never have a ton to say about these, but they keep being fun reads that I blast through in a day. I picked this up when I was floundering in the middle of a fantasy book after apparently having overdosed on SFF for Hugos homework, and it was just the ticket to wipe the slate clean and put me in the mood to read more genre. The mystery was less satisfying than in some of these because spoiler! the murderer was not a character we'd gotten to see and know, but the mystery is just the vehicle for me, anyway. I liked the unlikable red herring Amanda and that whole side of the family, and the various dogs that we got to meet -- there seemed to be more of them than usual. And maybe because I was reading this on the heels of a bunch of Lodestar titles, I noticed the way random characters here, just regular non-evil characters, were non-PC in petty, believable ways, while being minorities themselves -- like the Middle Eastern strip club owner talking about his (Black) bouncer having "one of those names" and mentioning that he can always tell when someone is gay, and (a different) gay, Black bouncer mispronouncing that guy's "ethnic" last name in a funny, dismissive way, and things like that -- where it isn't making a special point, and nobody has to be a role model or an object lesson; I found it oddly refreshing. I also thought it was interesting that there were several characters in this book voicing opinions about intellectual safe spaces on college campuses, an Asian character complaining about being accused of white male privilege, and Milo and Rick being told that by not getting married they're letting down the movement and stuff like that, along with other things like a Black character being openly distrustful of cops, a fed complaining about California State legislature refusing to cooperate with federal law enforcement on illegal immigrants, the Me Too movement. The reason I notice these things more in this series is that I've been reading these books for 25 years, and Kellerman has been writing them even longer, and in a way they're kind of out of time, but he also manages to make them feel current, which is a neat trick. (I'm glad we left behind the time period where Kellerman kept explaining how internet searches worked :P) On a final random note: this book had an unusual cover for a Kellerman book, I feel like, as I don't think I've seen people on them before? But even weirder was when I realized the image on the cover was the very last scene of the book. Very odd!
Books I still need to write up: Becky Chambers' Wayfarers 2 & 3, the Astounding biography, Dread Nation and Tess of the Road all of them for Hugos/Lodestar; The Epic Crush of Genie Lo, which I finally went back and finished because
isis was reading it, and The October Man (RoL novella, which I've owned since my preorder dropped on May 31 and which it took me over three months to get to, which is a sign of my Hugo homework crunch and burnout), and Grasshopper Jungle, off ikel89's rec. I don't think I've ever been so far behind...
(In non-book media, I also want to at some point write up The Good Place season 3 and White Collar ramblings (I'm up to season 5 and caved in and bought a complete series box set.)
*
But for now, let's have that book meme that was going around a little while ago:
01. What is your favourite book and/or book series of all time?
Lord of the Rings. I mean, there are a lot of other books I love, but in terms of informing my life and personality, you can't beat that one.
02. What is the longest book you have ever read? How many pages?
War and Peace. Which I read (at 11!) precisely because it was so long and I wanted to be able to say I'd read it. I don't remember how many pages the Russian edition I read was -- two thick hardcovers -- but according to this Wiki page it's 1,440, which sounds about what I recall. (Another long book on this list I read is To Green Angel Tower, the last of the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy, at 1,083 pages (my edition was split into two paperbacks).
03. What is the oldest book you have ever read? (Based on its written date)
Well, in terms of oldest story, it's got to be The Iliad (which I read in Russian translation and a kid-friendly arrangement) and The Odyssey (which I read in English translation) -- 8th century BCE. In terms of a book that existed as a written text, mmm, probably Bede's History? (890 per Wiki). And in terms of a text I read in the original, probably The Canterbury Tales (14th century).
04. What is a book series that everyone else loves but you do not?
Well, not everybody else, but in terms of having friends (RL and LJ) who are into it but I'm not, probably Sanderson's Mistborn and whatever the whole series is called. Read the first book and a little bit of something else, and was not that impressed, plus my activation energy for series consisting of thick-ass volumes has gone way up as I've gotten older.
Oh, also, pretty much every series by Seanan McGuire is something a lot of people in fandom OMGlove, and I vary from lukewarm (Toby Daye) to meh (Wayward Children) to ugh (the half a book of Discount Armageddon I made it through) on her stuff.
05. What book or book series would you like to see turned into a film/ TV series?
Assuming there magically existed a perfect actor for the lead role (no, not Peter Dinklage): Vorkosigan Saga! I feel like it would lend itself really nicely to a TV series format -- it's a great blend of action, humour, and character development, amazing ensemble cast, plots that could lend themselves to both heist-of-the-week (daring rescues! military standoffs! and later, mysteries!) and longer arcs, fun dialogue, very reasonable special effects demands, and the different books span genres -- mystery and romance and bildungsroman -- so there would be something for everyone.
06. What is your favourite stand-alone book?
Master i Margarita, probably (which I really ought to reread some time soon)
07. What is a book that you feel glad for not reading?
I thought about this for the "series you're not into" question but then decided to go with a series I tried rather than one I managed to avoid entirely: the Wheel of Time books. A multi-volume series of ever-longer books with a huge cast is exactly the kind of thing I would've gotten myself hooked on in high school, but somehow I missed running into this one until it was already at like 7 very thick books, and the fans I met were getting dispirited at there being no end in sight. And while I know the series was eventually finished, it was also finished by Sanderson, who I have surmised is just not a For Me author, so it's just as well I never got on that ride.
08. What is a book that you feel guilty for not not reading?
Which is to say, what is a book I feel guilty for reading? I don't feel guilty for reading things. I don't even feel guilty for ENJOYING books, whether they be a "guilty pleasure" kind of book (I've read quite a few of my mother's Jackie Collins paperbacks, and also a thing with necrophilia and twincest that I picked up in the lounge of my grandparents' retiree center) or a book/author which is deemed problematic. Like, I'm glad I seem to have broken free of whatever compulsion kept me reading Orson Scott Card's Enderverse books long past the point where I stopped enjoying them (stopped enjoying at: Children of the Mind; kept reading until: Shadows in Flight, which was like six books later) -- but I don't feel guilty for reading any of them, and I still unapologetically love Ender's Game itself. So, yeah, basically I think the question is silly. (Note that I rarely *buy* books, unless I'm super invested in reading them as soon as they come out and/or want to support the author, so me reading "problematic" books is not putting $ in those authors' pockets except very indirectly through library usage.)
09. What is a book you have read that is set in your country of birth?
If we count my "country of birth" as the USSR, we can go with Master i Margarita from above, or, IDK, Monday Starts on Saturday, another book I love. If we want to stick to Ukraine specifically, the first thing that comes to mind is Gogol's Vechera na khutore bliz Dikanki, which I both loved and was frightened of as a kid.
10. What is a book that you own more than one copy of?
I own three copies of LotR personally -- a Russian translation, a to-lend edition, and a pretty box set with Tolkien's art on the cover which never leaves my possession (and B owns an all-in-one omnibus -- well, "owns" in the "possession is 9/10 of the law" sense, as it's his brother's copy that he walked off with so that he could read it and understand the depths of my soul :)
Oh! but actually an even better answer to this is Monday Starts on Saturday: I own my Russian copy I had since I was 11, an English translation I bought for B, three more copies of the English translation that I ordered as soon as it came back into print (I actually bought 5 more, but two have gone to friends I wanted to have the chance to read it), and just the other day I bought a non-sentimental-value Russian copy online because B expressed an interest in reading something not too difficult but more adult-friendly than "Zhivaya shlyapa", and it just arrived. So with six copies, that definitely wins.
11. What horror book made you really scared?
I don't read horror on purpose, but also don't find it scary when I do read books that turn out to be horror-adjacent. So I think the last thing I read (or, rather, had read to me) that really scared me were stories I encountered as a kid, like Gogol's Viy or Wells' The Island of Doctor Moreau.
12. What book do you passionately hate?
At the moment, it's Children of Blood and Bone for winning all the awards while not deserving them. (There are certainly worse books I've read! and even more worse books I haven't read all the way through. But nobody is showering them with accolades.
And a special shoutout to "My Favorite Book That I Hate": The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet.
13. What is the biggest book series you have read? How many books are in it?
I've read quite a few series that went beyond 10 books (Dragaera, Vorkosigan, Dresden Files, etc.), but the longest series distinction goes to Discworld (41 books total of which I've read 40 -- I never did finish Raising Steam), followed by Kellerman's Alex Delaware novels (34 main series novels, but also at least 4, and maybe 6? novels that are set in the same 'universe', with characters who overlap with the Delaware books), so it's close.
14. What book gives you happy memories?
The Hobbit. My mother read it to me -- or, rather, did a translation from Ukrainian to Russian -- and I both remember how cool it was to discover the world of the book and how neat it was to then have coversatios with my mother about how Dwarves reproduced (she said by budding XP). I have a very clear memory of that conversation: we were both on spring break (she was a teacher at the time), and we were walking back from a day at the Kiev zoo, and she seemed prepared to entertain my questions about random aspects of Dwarf worldbuilding.
15. What book made you cry?
I tear up pretty easily at books, but the book that made me cry the most is The Gadfly (which is awfully emotionally manipulative, but does its job well). But a special distinction also goes to Pterry's The Shepherd's Crown, which made me weep on public transit and hide in the bathroom at work to cry.
16. What book made you laugh?
I laugh at books even more easily than I cry, but let's say Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need (most Dave Barry books make me laugh, but that one is a special favorite).
17. What is your favourite book that contains an LGBTQ+ character?
That contains an LGBTQ+ character? I mean, do the Vorkosigan books that have Aral in them count since he is bi? The Fifth Season, which I was enormously impressed by, has both a gay harater I like very much and a trans character who was one of my favorites. I'm not sure the Hexarhate books contain anyone who is NOT LGBTQ+, except possibly the servitors... But I don't think of any of these books as LGBTQ+ books.
So for a favorite book that I do think of as a LGBTQ+ book, I'll go with Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda, because it was adorable and funny, great YA that also was a lot of fun for me as an adult reader, and had a lot of interesting diversity besides the central premise. (I also liked Leah on the Off Beat a lot, though I don't think it's as strong structurally.)
18. Have you read a book with a male protagonist? What is it?
Um, yes? It's not exactly a rarity. XP For example, there are at least four series of more than 10 books each with a male protagonist that I read (the abovementioned Alex Delaware mysteries, The Dresden Files, the Vlad Taltos books, and the Miles Vorkosigan books).
19. Have you read a book set on another planet? What is it?
Yep. As a sci-fi reader, I've read a LOT of books set on other planets. Heck, in the Vorkosigan Saga alone I've read three books titled after the planets they're set on (Barrayar, Cetaganda, and Komarr). But if we want to limit it to REAL planets, let's go with Strugatsky's The Land of Crimson Clouds (which had a Google Doodle! whaaaat) or Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chroniles, or Andy Weir's The Martian. Or, heh, Neznaika na lune, which might have been the first book set on another planet I read, but may also not have been, because I read a lot of my parents' sci-fi as a kid, too.
20. Have you ever been glad to not finish a series? Which?
As I mentioned above, I was happy to have finally broken whatever compulsion kept me reading the Ender books long after I stopped enjoying them. I also wandered away from the Shadowhunter books, and have been happy in this occurrence.
But actually I also have the opposite phenomenon, where I have stopped short of finishing completely a series I love a lot, just so that I can known there's a little bit more of it waiting for me. I've avoided reading "Winterfair Gifts" (a Vorkosigan short story) for this reason, and I think as more of my favorite series wrap up, I'll probably leave such little tidbits as future treats for myself, too.
21. Have you ever read a book series because you were pressured?
ikel89 coined a great verb for this penomenon: "to temeraire", after she pushed herself through several volumes of Naomi Novik's series, growing to progressively hate it, because several of her friends were fans and she had promised to give it a shot. The lesson learned from this is: this is a terrible idea.
So, I have not read an entire series because I was pressured into it -- unless this question means, "picked up the series because a friend liked it and ended up enjoying it". If that IS what the question means, then I'm sure there are a bunch -- ikel89 got me to read the Russian urban fantasy vampire clan books, which were great fun, and
lunasariel got me into Nightrunners, which I reasonably enjoyed, and I'm sure there are lots of other examples.
But if the question is asking about trying series I DIDN'T like, I have those too: I picked up Dune because my sci-fi loving high school friends thought it was amazing (and I was glad to have read the book, but had no desire to continue on, which sounds like a wise call); I read Mistborn (which a lot of my flisters are fans of) and attempted the Alcatraz and the Librarians books (which the rodents liked), before coming thoroughly to the conclusion that I should just leave Sanderson alone.
Or I guess I can say that I was pressured into reading the Binti novellas by Hugos homework? I liked the first one, but I certainly persisted in reading them past the point where I would've naturally stopped.
22. What famous author have you not read any books by?
Dan Brown; I made it through about a page and a half of his prose before noping out. For a genre value of famous, I've not read any books by Octavia Butler, Arthur C. Clarke, or Robert A. Heinlein, or Larry Niven (and I do want to remedy at least the Henlein and th Butler at some point) -- my si-fi classics reading was almost entirely defined by who was translated into Russian, so I got a lot of Asimov and Bradbury, some Simak and Kuttner, but I also have really odd blindspots). My early reading all being in Russian also means that I missed out on a lot of children's classics in English -- I've never read Louisa May Alcott or Laura Ingalls Wilder or E.Nesbit, or Frances Hodgson Burnett, or Lucy Maud Montgomery, or T.H.White. I picked up a few things when my little brother and later the rodents were reading the kiddie classics, but that means I got the early reader books like Dr Seuss and not the independent reader ones.
23. Who is your favourite author of all time?
Tolkien as author in the sense of "sub-creator". Author in the sense of "writer", with emphasis on the craft, would probably be Oscar Wilde or Nabokov. But it's the former meaning that's most important to me.
24. How many bookshelves do you own?
There are... about 11 in the house? (4 in B's office, I think, 2 in the living room, 2 in the dining room, 2.5 in my office, and 1 large one in L's office. Only 3.5 of them have my books on them, though.
25. How many books do you own?
I dunno, not planning to count them XP Also, a growing number of them actually live on my Kindle account. My account there lists 319 items, but a lot of those are expired library borrows, so it's less than that on Kindle.
26. What is your favourite non-fiction book?
It might actually be Arika Okrent's In the Land of Invented Languages. It's a great combination of a topic I'm fascinated by, a book that was written in a really fun way, from which I learned a ton of neat stuff I didn't even realize I wanted to know, and a style that makes me think sitting down to chat with the author would be a really enjoyable way to pass the time. I've read a number of non-fiction books that nail several of these categories, but not a lot hit all of them.
27. What is your favourite children’s/middle-grade book?
I'm very, very fond of Deniskiny rasskazy -- this was the first Russian kids book I absolutely wanted to make sure the rodents read. (When I was a kid, my favorite was probably Tri tolstyaka, but I haven't reread that one, and the rodents were not interested beyond the first chapter. I'm not sure it's aged as well as 'Deniska'...)
The English-language children's books (that modern children grow up on; I read Mary Poppins and Winnie the Pooh in Russian translation, and the Russian version of Wizard of Oz, but I'm guessing most modern kids know those by the movies, not the books) I experienced through my brother, who did grow up in the US, and later my rodents. Shel Silverstein is probably the biggest favorite (the poems, NOT The Giving Tree), but I also really love Whose Mouse Are You? (in this exact edition), which I discovered when L was tiny.
28. What is your next book on your TBR?
After A Memory Called Empire, I think K and I are planning to sync read Verdigris Deep, since our Hardinge sync reads have worked pretty well so far.
29. What book are you currently reading?
A Memory Called Empire, for actual enjoyment, and Children of Blood and Bone in small increments fueled by spite.
30. What book are you planning on buying next?
I have the next collection of Rivers of London comics, Action at a Distance, on pre-order (November 12). But I will probably buy Hexarchate Stories before that. But even more likely is that the next book I buy will be something marked down to $1.99 on Kindle -- like, I bought Reaper Man the other day, and An Informal History of the Hugos and The Poppy War, all of which I had already read, as library copies, because they were on sale.
31. What was the cheapest book you bought?
I have some digital freebies and hard copy books I found for free at the curb or on public transit. Oh, or free books for signing up for books-of-the-month clubs, back when those used to be a thing. Cheapest book I actually paid for is harder... I'm sure there were some used books I picked up for less than $1 when I used to go on used bookstore crawls, but I'd have to check all the individual covers, and I'm way too lazy to do that. I definitely have books I bought for $1, both on Kindle and in hard copy, but I don't remember offhand what they are.
32. What was the most expensive book you bought?
Probably a coffee table gift for someone... I don't own any fancy antique editions.
33. What is a book you read after seeing the movie/ TV series?
This is not something that happens a lot, because I read a lot more books than I watch movies, and if I know a movie is based on a book, I will usually make a point to read the book before I see the movie. But one case in which I did watch the movie first is Cloud Atlas. I didn't like the movie very much, and liked it even less after I read the book, because it turned out to have changed a lot of interesting things. (I did like the book.)
34. What is the newest book you have bought?
Newest as most recently bought? Reaper Man. Newest as most recently released? T.Kingfisher's Minor Mage (which I haven't read yet, but it looks adorable!) with the July 30 release date.
35. What three books are you most looking forward to reading this year?
False Value, the next RoL novel (November 19). I can't think of two more, tbh, because the books I'm really looking forward to reading don't come out till 2020, like Perhaps the Stars, or at some unspecified point in the future, like Tsalmoth. I guess I'm looking forward to the Poppy War sequel (which is already out), but not enough to have bought a copy, so.
36. What is a book you love that has a terrible trope? (Love triangle, etc)
There are probably lots with stupid romance stuff in genre books I otherwise like... Oh! True Pretenses, which is the only romance novel I actually loved, has fake marriage, which I generally dislike as a trope (but it WORKS here! and nobody is lying to anyone! ...Anymore.) But there are other examples, too. Dragaera is a sci-fi/fantasy mix, which I used to be categorically against. My beloved LotR has the "science is evil" vibe that really bothers me in most things.
37. Have you read a book in a different language? What was it?
I've read lots of books in Russian. I probably read some books in Ukrainian? don't remember what they were, though -- it would've been back in 4th grade. I have ATTEMPTED at least one book in Italian, but I'm not sure if I've ever actually finished a short one. And it's possible that I memorized enough of the rodents' Hebrew board books to be able to "read" them the way a toddler does, but I definitely couldn't do that anymore.
38. What is a book you’ve read that is set in a time period before you were born?
How about Pride and Prejudice. And Anna Karenina, and stuff. And for a more recently read example, The Green Glass Sea, which is set in the 40s.
39. What book offended you?
It's fairly easy to find badly written books that just, like offended my sensibilities and/or came from batshit perspectives (like Larry Burkett's The Illuminati, which is the worst book I have ever read, probably). But I'm going to name books that I otherwise enjoyed which offended me for a specific reason: Jacqueline Carey's treatment of the Yeshuites in the Kushiel books (she did so much excellent research! ...and then made her Jews Christans for some reason. Jacqueline Carey, WHY), and, for similar reasons, a book which I don't think anyone on my flist has read. It's set in fantasy !Russia, and there's an oppressed minority of darker, secretive people -- who use blood magic for evil ends. Like, not all of them are evil... but I was getting blood libel vibes to an uncomfortable degree.
40. What is the weirdest book you have read?
I haven't read any of the TRULY weird books that repeatedly show up on "weirdest books" lists that I googled. But this was a much longer list, and I finally netted some. I don't think Heart of a Dog is all that weird, but Geek Love is certainly one I can agree on. Also, Borges has some delightfully weird short stories.
41. What is your favourite duology?
Duologies are hard! I think maybe Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda/Leah on the Off Beat may qualify as a favorite (and is definitely a duology so far, I think?) Does Seraphina/Shadow Scale qualify even though Tess of the Road is a sort-of sequel to them? Oh, and I remember liking The Hero and the Crown and The Blue Sword a lot, back when I was the actual target audience for YA.
42. What is your favourite trilogy?
Lord of the Rings if we count it as a trilogy (even though Tolkien did not). A lot of my favorite trilogies have since grown additional books (e.g. Earthsea, Memory Sorrow and Thorn, Deed of Paksenarrion). Even Machineries of Empire is no longer a pure trilogy, with the release of Hexarchate Stories. So let's go with the Broken Earth books. Those seem pretty solidly a trilogy and I expect will remain one... and they are brilliant.
43. What book did you buy because of its cover?
I don't buy books based on covers very often, but I did buy a Dennis McKiernan book because his books had really pretty covers and this one was cheap and had a dragon on it.
44. What is a book that you love, but has a terrible cover?
ALL THE VORKOSIGAN BOOKS. It's not even funny! I think this one is probably the most terrible, for my money.
45. Do you own a poetry anthology? What is your favourite poem from it?
I own quite a few: complete poems of Yeats, Auden, Larkin (also Dorothy Parker, but intermixed with her prose, so it probably doesn't count); a nice two-volume hardcover box set of American poetry; collections by Frost, Elizabeth Bishop; Esenin and Balmont in Russian; several Romantics anthologies; volumes of Milton, John Donne, Metaphysical Poets, Blake, and the Norton Anthology of Poetry from my college classes, and probably more than I'm forgetting (plus a bunch of children's poetry in Russian). My favorite anthology, though, is Top 500 Poems, which was one of those book club freebies I got when I was in high school. My favorite poem from it, which is aso my favorite poem of all time, is Philip Larkin's "Aubade".
46. Do you own any colouring books based off other books?
No. I actually don't get the attraction of coloring books, tbh. Never did as a kid, and still don't.
47. Do you own any historical fiction?
Not a lot. I own a couple of books that were gifts, like The Physician, which was a gift from my friend R that I still haven't read. But I can't think of any historical fiction books that I've bought for myself.
48. What book made you angry?
I assume that, unlike the "offended" question above, this means angry in, like, a good way? angry WITH the book, instead of AT the book? If so, let's say Frances Hardinge's The Lie Tree. I've liked all of the Hardinge books that I read a lot, but The Lie Tree was the one that most affected me emotionally, and that emotion was rage on the protagonist's behalf.
49. What book has inspired you?
LotR spurred me on to write over a thousand pages of Magnum Opus, so that's going to be hard to beat. And the last book I read that inspired me to create a fanwork was Raven Stratagem, or, if we're talking about unprompted fanworks, the Rivers of London series.
50. What book got you into reading?
I don't remember a time before I could read, and even then I got retold stories from books. But the first book I remember fannishly obsessing about to the tune of play-acting its main character for an entire summer was Strugatsky's Roadside Picnic, and the first book that got me to obsess over its structure and HOW it was doing what it was doing was Master i Margarita.
This entry was originally posted at https://hamsterwoman.dreamwidth.org/1111786.html. Comment wherever you prefer (I prefer LJ).