(no subject)
Guys, I went out and got my passport photos today, and I didn't look like a zombie axe murderer in them. I am shocked and stunned and amazed! And if my passport photos end up being the best photo I have ever taken I will laugh forever. I am the least photogenic person on the planet.
Married to the Mouse: Walt Disney World and Orlando by Richard E Foglesong, about Disneyworld's history with local government. Pretty interesting, but really dry and kind of hard to follow because I realized midway through that I had no clue about city and county government, not even to have a general philosophy of what their long term goals should be (or if they should even have any) so...really I need to read more urban planning books. Also man, Disney's a shitty neighbor, and if I were in Florida government I'd be trying to strip their capacity to act as their own government on general principles.
Midnight Never Come by Marie Brennan, about Queen Elizabeth's court, and her fairy queen mirror's court. Really well done, really feels historical, really portrays Elizabeth well, and...somehow I'm disappointed that there's a sequel because the first one wraps things up so well I just don't want one. That happens sometimes when I have a really good book idek. I really liked having the book be about two courtiers, oddly enough. In most books, courtiers are dismissed as meaningless butterflies who concentrate on the unimportant things, and I really actually enjoyed the focus on two very skilled and dedicated courtiers who made no bones about playing for their queen's favor for their own ambitions. I thought Lune felt nicely inhuman in the tradition of fairy for most of it, while still being close enough to human to sympathize with, although I thought that wavered near the end. I like well-done characters who don't feel quite human.
The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden by Catherynne Valente, a book of fairy tales. I...really loved it, but I'll never finish it! The writing is absolutely gorgeous, the tales are all interesting, and the characters feel both real and interesting and...I'll still never finish it because I don't like my tales that deeply nested in their parent tales. It felt like I was going through one of those Russian matryoshka dolls, and I didn't like it. Partially because fairy tales are pretty much the only form of anthology where I like reading in chunks rather than straight through (especially with how dense her writing is), and I just couldn't keep track of four stories at once when reading intermittently and reading four other books at the same time, and partially because it started feeling contrived. On the other hand, if she ever writes a shorter, less intricate tale collection, gets it awesomely illustrated, and binds it in leather and sells it as a special collector's edition, it's one of the few books I would actually buy to collect because her writing's pretty enough that it would feel worthy of that kind of elaborate binding.
Dying Bites and Death Blows by DD Barant, human profiler gets kidnapped to an alternate universe where the vampires and werewolves took over while humans are rapidly becoming extinct, because vampires and werewolves don't suffer from mental illness any more than they do physical illness and they can't profile when they start getting a serial killer. Really fun, actually! Just about the right amount of depth for this kind of thing, and I like the main character and the way she deals with suddenly being a discriminated minority was interesting. I didn't like the second one as much, partially because it dealt with comic book geekery rather than the Cthulhu mythos, and despite the fact that I've never read much of the source of either I'm more comfortable in Cthulhu fanfiction than I am comic book fanfiction.
Spider's Bite and Web of Lies by Jennifer Estep, assassin's job goes bad and she seeks revenge. Fun! It avoided the worst of the assassin cliches, has lots of awesome badassery and I am probably a bad person for shipping the assassin and her worst enemy. This surprises no one. The world needs more assassin lesbian hatesex guys.
Every Patient Tells A Story: Medical Mysteries and the Art of Diagnosis by Lisa Santers. Interesting, but I can't even sum it up because it rambled so badly. I guess I'm not surprised that the art of physical examination is becoming less well-trained, but I was hoping for more interesting medical stories and strange methods of diagnosis. (Actually I was hoping for something about smell in diagnosis, because I read that some very experienced people can smell some diseases, and it made me want to know more about how sick bodies generate a different smell. I tend to look out for stuff about the sense of smell precisely because it's so overlooked. But that was probably too much to ask for! Alas.)
Rosemary and Rue and A Local Habitation by Seanan McGuire, San Francisco changeling PI knight solves mysteries for her fairy ruler. Really fun, actually! It's well-written and does some creative things with modernizing fairy. And the second book actually struck me as slightly better than the first, which always gives me hope for the future of a series. ...You can tell I read this a while ago now and don't really remember it now all that well, can't you?
...And I know I'm missing books, but I'm not sure which and I'm too lazy to figure out what. OH WELL.
This entry was originally posted at opusculus @ DW. There are currently
comments over there. Feel free to talk over there.
Married to the Mouse: Walt Disney World and Orlando by Richard E Foglesong, about Disneyworld's history with local government. Pretty interesting, but really dry and kind of hard to follow because I realized midway through that I had no clue about city and county government, not even to have a general philosophy of what their long term goals should be (or if they should even have any) so...really I need to read more urban planning books. Also man, Disney's a shitty neighbor, and if I were in Florida government I'd be trying to strip their capacity to act as their own government on general principles.
Midnight Never Come by Marie Brennan, about Queen Elizabeth's court, and her fairy queen mirror's court. Really well done, really feels historical, really portrays Elizabeth well, and...somehow I'm disappointed that there's a sequel because the first one wraps things up so well I just don't want one. That happens sometimes when I have a really good book idek. I really liked having the book be about two courtiers, oddly enough. In most books, courtiers are dismissed as meaningless butterflies who concentrate on the unimportant things, and I really actually enjoyed the focus on two very skilled and dedicated courtiers who made no bones about playing for their queen's favor for their own ambitions. I thought Lune felt nicely inhuman in the tradition of fairy for most of it, while still being close enough to human to sympathize with, although I thought that wavered near the end. I like well-done characters who don't feel quite human.
The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden by Catherynne Valente, a book of fairy tales. I...really loved it, but I'll never finish it! The writing is absolutely gorgeous, the tales are all interesting, and the characters feel both real and interesting and...I'll still never finish it because I don't like my tales that deeply nested in their parent tales. It felt like I was going through one of those Russian matryoshka dolls, and I didn't like it. Partially because fairy tales are pretty much the only form of anthology where I like reading in chunks rather than straight through (especially with how dense her writing is), and I just couldn't keep track of four stories at once when reading intermittently and reading four other books at the same time, and partially because it started feeling contrived. On the other hand, if she ever writes a shorter, less intricate tale collection, gets it awesomely illustrated, and binds it in leather and sells it as a special collector's edition, it's one of the few books I would actually buy to collect because her writing's pretty enough that it would feel worthy of that kind of elaborate binding.
Dying Bites and Death Blows by DD Barant, human profiler gets kidnapped to an alternate universe where the vampires and werewolves took over while humans are rapidly becoming extinct, because vampires and werewolves don't suffer from mental illness any more than they do physical illness and they can't profile when they start getting a serial killer. Really fun, actually! Just about the right amount of depth for this kind of thing, and I like the main character and the way she deals with suddenly being a discriminated minority was interesting. I didn't like the second one as much, partially because it dealt with comic book geekery rather than the Cthulhu mythos, and despite the fact that I've never read much of the source of either I'm more comfortable in Cthulhu fanfiction than I am comic book fanfiction.
Spider's Bite and Web of Lies by Jennifer Estep, assassin's job goes bad and she seeks revenge. Fun! It avoided the worst of the assassin cliches, has lots of awesome badassery and I am probably a bad person for shipping the assassin and her worst enemy. This surprises no one. The world needs more assassin lesbian hatesex guys.
Every Patient Tells A Story: Medical Mysteries and the Art of Diagnosis by Lisa Santers. Interesting, but I can't even sum it up because it rambled so badly. I guess I'm not surprised that the art of physical examination is becoming less well-trained, but I was hoping for more interesting medical stories and strange methods of diagnosis. (Actually I was hoping for something about smell in diagnosis, because I read that some very experienced people can smell some diseases, and it made me want to know more about how sick bodies generate a different smell. I tend to look out for stuff about the sense of smell precisely because it's so overlooked. But that was probably too much to ask for! Alas.)
Rosemary and Rue and A Local Habitation by Seanan McGuire, San Francisco changeling PI knight solves mysteries for her fairy ruler. Really fun, actually! It's well-written and does some creative things with modernizing fairy. And the second book actually struck me as slightly better than the first, which always gives me hope for the future of a series. ...You can tell I read this a while ago now and don't really remember it now all that well, can't you?
...And I know I'm missing books, but I'm not sure which and I'm too lazy to figure out what. OH WELL.
This entry was originally posted at opusculus @ DW. There are currently
comments over there. Feel free to talk over there.