wednesday reads n' things
I am back from a lovely vacation in southern Arizona, where we basked in the sunshine and rode our mountain bikes all over the place. This is how they prepare for the holiday season in Arizona:
And I've put my hats on my icon's little snakies for the season, too!
What I've recently finished listening to:
I finished Station to Station, a fiction podcast by the same outfit that does "Starship Iris". I enjoyed it a lot, though I found it a bit difficult to follow in parts; I really liked the idea behind it, the horror of trying to track down something that erases people from time, without getting erased yourself.
What I'm currently listening to:
The audiobook version of Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen, which B and I listened to on our drive to and from Arizona. We didn't quite finish, so I'm listening on my runs, and hope to finish before my copy expires (it's a library loan). Its (fascinating) thesis is that American high school history classes teach a black-and-white version of American history, with 'heroification' of important figures that ignores nuance, omitting their actual words and any exploration of their ideas in favor of boring names and dates and rah-rah yay America. Unfortunately it's quite dated - published in 1995 - but of course I took high school history in the 70s, so it's relevant to me and illuminates a lot about why I hated history class and thought history was boring until the college history class I was forced to take - and loved.
What I abandoned but might come back to listening to:
We actually started our trip listening to Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller, but two hours in B asked me to switch to something else, and I wasn't really into it, either. It's set in a future climate-disaster dystopia, on a floating city in the Arctic Ocean, which should have been amazing, but it hadn't really cohered by the time we gave up on it. Also, it committed the sin that
ambyr mentioned in a locked post about a con panel: a nonbinary character lectures someone on their preferred pronouns in such a 2010s-English-speaking way that it very much grounded the story in 'now' rather than in 'future', and completely ruined my suspension of disbelief. I do have this in a non-DRM format that won't expire, though, so I might try again sometime.
What I'm currently reading (with my eyeballs):
Still reading The Pale Horseman by Bernard Cornwell, the second Saxon Stories book. Really noticing the differences between the book and the TV series adaptation - Hild, in particular, is much better of a character in the show!
What I'm reading next:
ladysunflow, you'll be happy to know I grabbed a copy of The Last Wish from a Kindle sale! For the rest of you: this is the first collection of Witcher short stories by Andrzej Sapkowski, of which I previously bought the first novel in a similar sale, but was told that this is a better place to start. However, I also noticed that the third of Katherine Arden's Winternight series, The Winter of the Witch, is about to come out, and so I checked NetGalley, saw it was available, and requested it - and amazingly got approved within hours! So I'll be reading that one next, most likely.
Speaking of Kindle sales:
My standard method of buying ebooks that I can't get through small DRM-free publishers is to buy from Amazon, send to my virtual Kindle-on-PC, and then use the calibre program plus Apprentice Alf's plug-ins to de-DRM the .azw file and convert to .epub, which I read on my phone using Moon+ Reader (which I heartily recommend; I bought the paid version because it's inexpensive and awesome, but there's a free version also). It turns out Amazon is now using .kfx, which is not easily convertible, and the solution recommended by mobileread forums was to make sure my virtual Kindle is set to not automatically update to the latest version, uninstall the current Kindle-on-PC program, delete all the files in My Kindle Content, then find, download, and install an older version (1.17) which still uses .azw. It was a pain, but I did it, and now I can buy Amazon books again and convert them to read on my preferred reader, rah. (You may remember my attempt to use Google Play to get books, which turned out even worse. A pox on companies which force you to use their proprietary formats!)
Anyway, consider this a PSA of sorts, if you do something similar: you are going to have to roll back your Kindle program to 1.17. I downloaded from Filesoul and verified by checksum that the download is correct with no viruses, so if you need to do this I'd recommend that site.
What I've recently finished watching:
We finished Marco Polo, and damn, I'm so sad it was canceled after two seasons, because it was such a beautiful show. Plus, yay for something historical set not in Europe! On the other hand, checking up on the actual historical characters has shown me that it's definitely historical fiction.
What I'm watching now:
Finally got to S4 of Halt and Catch Fire. It's such a nostalgia trip for us! We spend a lot of time guessing what the actual companies and products are, that are being presented here in fictionalized form.
Crossposted from isis at Dreamwidth where there are
comments. | Comment at Dreamwidth
And I've put my hats on my icon's little snakies for the season, too!
What I've recently finished listening to:
I finished Station to Station, a fiction podcast by the same outfit that does "Starship Iris". I enjoyed it a lot, though I found it a bit difficult to follow in parts; I really liked the idea behind it, the horror of trying to track down something that erases people from time, without getting erased yourself.
What I'm currently listening to:
The audiobook version of Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen, which B and I listened to on our drive to and from Arizona. We didn't quite finish, so I'm listening on my runs, and hope to finish before my copy expires (it's a library loan). Its (fascinating) thesis is that American high school history classes teach a black-and-white version of American history, with 'heroification' of important figures that ignores nuance, omitting their actual words and any exploration of their ideas in favor of boring names and dates and rah-rah yay America. Unfortunately it's quite dated - published in 1995 - but of course I took high school history in the 70s, so it's relevant to me and illuminates a lot about why I hated history class and thought history was boring until the college history class I was forced to take - and loved.
What I abandoned but might come back to listening to:
We actually started our trip listening to Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller, but two hours in B asked me to switch to something else, and I wasn't really into it, either. It's set in a future climate-disaster dystopia, on a floating city in the Arctic Ocean, which should have been amazing, but it hadn't really cohered by the time we gave up on it. Also, it committed the sin that
ambyr mentioned in a locked post about a con panel: a nonbinary character lectures someone on their preferred pronouns in such a 2010s-English-speaking way that it very much grounded the story in 'now' rather than in 'future', and completely ruined my suspension of disbelief. I do have this in a non-DRM format that won't expire, though, so I might try again sometime.
What I'm currently reading (with my eyeballs):
Still reading The Pale Horseman by Bernard Cornwell, the second Saxon Stories book. Really noticing the differences between the book and the TV series adaptation - Hild, in particular, is much better of a character in the show!
What I'm reading next:
ladysunflow, you'll be happy to know I grabbed a copy of The Last Wish from a Kindle sale! For the rest of you: this is the first collection of Witcher short stories by Andrzej Sapkowski, of which I previously bought the first novel in a similar sale, but was told that this is a better place to start. However, I also noticed that the third of Katherine Arden's Winternight series, The Winter of the Witch, is about to come out, and so I checked NetGalley, saw it was available, and requested it - and amazingly got approved within hours! So I'll be reading that one next, most likely.
Speaking of Kindle sales:
My standard method of buying ebooks that I can't get through small DRM-free publishers is to buy from Amazon, send to my virtual Kindle-on-PC, and then use the calibre program plus Apprentice Alf's plug-ins to de-DRM the .azw file and convert to .epub, which I read on my phone using Moon+ Reader (which I heartily recommend; I bought the paid version because it's inexpensive and awesome, but there's a free version also). It turns out Amazon is now using .kfx, which is not easily convertible, and the solution recommended by mobileread forums was to make sure my virtual Kindle is set to not automatically update to the latest version, uninstall the current Kindle-on-PC program, delete all the files in My Kindle Content, then find, download, and install an older version (1.17) which still uses .azw. It was a pain, but I did it, and now I can buy Amazon books again and convert them to read on my preferred reader, rah. (You may remember my attempt to use Google Play to get books, which turned out even worse. A pox on companies which force you to use their proprietary formats!)
Anyway, consider this a PSA of sorts, if you do something similar: you are going to have to roll back your Kindle program to 1.17. I downloaded from Filesoul and verified by checksum that the download is correct with no viruses, so if you need to do this I'd recommend that site.
What I've recently finished watching:
We finished Marco Polo, and damn, I'm so sad it was canceled after two seasons, because it was such a beautiful show. Plus, yay for something historical set not in Europe! On the other hand, checking up on the actual historical characters has shown me that it's definitely historical fiction.
What I'm watching now:
Finally got to S4 of Halt and Catch Fire. It's such a nostalgia trip for us! We spend a lot of time guessing what the actual companies and products are, that are being presented here in fictionalized form.
Crossposted from isis at Dreamwidth where there are
comments. | Comment at Dreamwidth