media wednesday
What I just finished reading: Three books; one fiction and two nonfiction, or one audio and two eyeball.
Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho, which was recced by much of my flist. It's been compared to Heyer (whose works I've not read), but what it made me think of was a series of Regency romances, slim hardbacks published for the library market by St. Martin's Press, which I devoured maybe 20 years ago. It's the trope of the young woman who is unfashionably interested in intellectual pursuits that most men feel unsuitable for the fairer sex, except here the intellectual pursuit is magic. (Which I admit made me feel a bit uncomfortable, the translation of male prejudice against women into something fantastical yet totally, alas, realistic given the times.) I'm not really a romance fan, so I didn't love this, but I liked it, certainly, despite the dubious worldbuilding. Though really the only fic I am tempted to write would be about a young girl having a London Season, setting her cap for Paget Damerell - perhaps getting him to go outside with her and then fainting conveniently into his arms, only to be skipinterrupted by his dragon boyfriend, spouting fire indignantly and generally wrecking the ballroom.
Gridlock: Crossword Puzzles and the Mad Geniuses Who Create Them by Matt Gaffney was an enjoyable, quick read. The most interesting parts to me were the discussion of early crossword magazines and the way computerized construction algorithms prioritize different types of words. Entertaining if you're into crosswords, no doubt deadly dull if you're not.
The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation by Drew Westen, read by Anthony Heald, is the audiobook I just finished, and it's quite good. The thesis of this book is that voters make choices based on emotion ("gut") rather than on logical reasoning, and that Republicans understand this and use it to advantage in their ads and speeches, while Democrats, who believe that their policies and stands are the logical ones, emphasize the issues rather than emotions and thus fail. The dissection of political ads to show what worked and what didn't was really interesting, especially when Westen turned to negative ads with implied messages as well as overt ones. I also appreciated the presentation of the results of psychological studies, such as the one on aggression and Southern men, and the studies of unconscious racism, and of the way being reminded of mortality tends to shift attitudes toward the conservative. I have a much longer review here at Goodreads.
What I'm currently reading: I'm not quite halfway through The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison. I'm enjoying it a lot but argh, the names!
What I'm reading next: I've checked out the audiobook of Libba Bray's Lair of Dreams, the sequel to The Diviners. I'm a little annoyed, though, that this particular library download system (OneClick, as opposed to Overdrive which I have through a different library, but didn't have this book) no longer allows downloading, only streaming, so I have to carry my phone while I run and listen, rather than my tiny Sansa Clip+. Boo.
In other media, we finished watching the Ken Burns documentary series on the Roosevelts, which was quite good. Of course it was narrated by Peter Coyote, as all documentaries are apparently required to be, but the various letters were read by a number of famous actors, including most notably (to us) Meryl Streep as Eleanor Roosevelt.
Next up will likely be Mozart in the Jungle, while we wait for S3 of Black Sails.
Crossposted from isis at Dreamwidth where there are
comments. | Comment at Dreamwidth
Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho, which was recced by much of my flist. It's been compared to Heyer (whose works I've not read), but what it made me think of was a series of Regency romances, slim hardbacks published for the library market by St. Martin's Press, which I devoured maybe 20 years ago. It's the trope of the young woman who is unfashionably interested in intellectual pursuits that most men feel unsuitable for the fairer sex, except here the intellectual pursuit is magic. (Which I admit made me feel a bit uncomfortable, the translation of male prejudice against women into something fantastical yet totally, alas, realistic given the times.) I'm not really a romance fan, so I didn't love this, but I liked it, certainly, despite the dubious worldbuilding. Though really the only fic I am tempted to write would be about a young girl having a London Season, setting her cap for Paget Damerell - perhaps getting him to go outside with her and then fainting conveniently into his arms, only to be skipinterrupted by his dragon boyfriend, spouting fire indignantly and generally wrecking the ballroom.
Gridlock: Crossword Puzzles and the Mad Geniuses Who Create Them by Matt Gaffney was an enjoyable, quick read. The most interesting parts to me were the discussion of early crossword magazines and the way computerized construction algorithms prioritize different types of words. Entertaining if you're into crosswords, no doubt deadly dull if you're not.
The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation by Drew Westen, read by Anthony Heald, is the audiobook I just finished, and it's quite good. The thesis of this book is that voters make choices based on emotion ("gut") rather than on logical reasoning, and that Republicans understand this and use it to advantage in their ads and speeches, while Democrats, who believe that their policies and stands are the logical ones, emphasize the issues rather than emotions and thus fail. The dissection of political ads to show what worked and what didn't was really interesting, especially when Westen turned to negative ads with implied messages as well as overt ones. I also appreciated the presentation of the results of psychological studies, such as the one on aggression and Southern men, and the studies of unconscious racism, and of the way being reminded of mortality tends to shift attitudes toward the conservative. I have a much longer review here at Goodreads.
What I'm currently reading: I'm not quite halfway through The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison. I'm enjoying it a lot but argh, the names!
What I'm reading next: I've checked out the audiobook of Libba Bray's Lair of Dreams, the sequel to The Diviners. I'm a little annoyed, though, that this particular library download system (OneClick, as opposed to Overdrive which I have through a different library, but didn't have this book) no longer allows downloading, only streaming, so I have to carry my phone while I run and listen, rather than my tiny Sansa Clip+. Boo.
In other media, we finished watching the Ken Burns documentary series on the Roosevelts, which was quite good. Of course it was narrated by Peter Coyote, as all documentaries are apparently required to be, but the various letters were read by a number of famous actors, including most notably (to us) Meryl Streep as Eleanor Roosevelt.
Next up will likely be Mozart in the Jungle, while we wait for S3 of Black Sails.
Crossposted from isis at Dreamwidth where there are
comments. | Comment at Dreamwidth