30 days of babble, dec 22 - books! (reading, not writing or binding)
happy birthday mistyzeo! knitter and sherlock fangirl. :D *throws glitter* *suggests cake*
dancing boys: *booty shake*
i was kind of busy-ish at work today, altho it wasn't as bad as i was expecting (i think there are a bunch of reports that have to go out by dec 31, and at some point they'll all go through me), and never overwhelming. and i had time to meet gnomi for lunch. (it always takes us an hour and a half.) there was almost no one in the office, tho. it was a little disconcerting. and i'm off tomorrow, so i can collect my camera and maybe write something of a ficcy nature. woot.
yesterday's monthly babble topic was from akintay who wanted me to talk about books - what i look for, what catches my interest, what are the things i absolutely don't like. basically, i look for stories that sound interesting. :D vaguely speculative-fic-y, i guess - not straight fantasy or scifi or the werewolves-vampires-and-fairies kind of urban fantasy but, like, the rivers of london books or jonathan strange and mr norrell, where the weird and magic and not-quite-human is less obviously fantastical and feels a little older and a little stranger than the "normal" world. i like my urbanish fantasy with a sense of humor, and i like the casually weird and surreal. i hate books that take themselves too seriously. i'm not interested in shapeshifters and i haven't been interested in vampires in a long time, and my reaction to love triangles is mostly "why the love triangle? why never the threesome?" (which is not to say that i've read a lot of books with threesomes, because i haven't. if you want to recommend some, feel free. :D ) i don't want straight up romance, and i hate the "two people despise each other on contact and that's how you can tell they're wildly attracted to each other and will fall in love/bed with no warning" trope, but i'm not averse to romance in general. i like happy endings. ambiguous endings are ok, if frustrating. (the many deaths of the firefly brothers, which i otherwise enjoyed, had an annoyingly - altho appropriately - ambiguous ending.) i want to read more slightly fantastical books based on non-western-european mythologies and folklore. one of the things i really liked about alif the unseen was the fact that i was unfamiliar with the setting and mythological underpinnings. i like a good post-apocalypse, altho i haven't read any recently. i'm not interested in what i think of as "message fic", in which the author has a very clear social justice type agenda, and the entire story and all the characters are merely vehicles to get the message across. i want to read a good story, not someone's essay on their idea of a perfect society. (think ayn rand, but not as, er, randian. but that kind of philosophical discourse sometimes very badly disguised as a novel.) (altho i did like we the living and the fountainhead.) i want my female characters to have agency and their own internal lives and backstories, and not exist as just adjuncts to the male characters' stories. but i'm not super interested in the typical "strong female character" whose defining characteristic is how tough she is and how hard she can hit you in the face. i don't like artificially-created tension and drama (say, two characters have no reason to keep things from each other but do it anyway because the author doesn't know how else to create conflict) and i'm not a huge fan of constant angst. see: books that take themselves too seriously. i want to read about main characters i can like as people! who aren't overwhelmingly selfish or self-absorbed or self-pitying or patronizing or cold or mind-bogglingly stupid. people who can learn when they screw up.
oh, and i like historicals. historicals are good. :D any time period i know nothing about. (which is most of them.)
dancing boys: *booty shake*
i was kind of busy-ish at work today, altho it wasn't as bad as i was expecting (i think there are a bunch of reports that have to go out by dec 31, and at some point they'll all go through me), and never overwhelming. and i had time to meet gnomi for lunch. (it always takes us an hour and a half.) there was almost no one in the office, tho. it was a little disconcerting. and i'm off tomorrow, so i can collect my camera and maybe write something of a ficcy nature. woot.
yesterday's monthly babble topic was from akintay who wanted me to talk about books - what i look for, what catches my interest, what are the things i absolutely don't like. basically, i look for stories that sound interesting. :D vaguely speculative-fic-y, i guess - not straight fantasy or scifi or the werewolves-vampires-and-fairies kind of urban fantasy but, like, the rivers of london books or jonathan strange and mr norrell, where the weird and magic and not-quite-human is less obviously fantastical and feels a little older and a little stranger than the "normal" world. i like my urbanish fantasy with a sense of humor, and i like the casually weird and surreal. i hate books that take themselves too seriously. i'm not interested in shapeshifters and i haven't been interested in vampires in a long time, and my reaction to love triangles is mostly "why the love triangle? why never the threesome?" (which is not to say that i've read a lot of books with threesomes, because i haven't. if you want to recommend some, feel free. :D ) i don't want straight up romance, and i hate the "two people despise each other on contact and that's how you can tell they're wildly attracted to each other and will fall in love/bed with no warning" trope, but i'm not averse to romance in general. i like happy endings. ambiguous endings are ok, if frustrating. (the many deaths of the firefly brothers, which i otherwise enjoyed, had an annoyingly - altho appropriately - ambiguous ending.) i want to read more slightly fantastical books based on non-western-european mythologies and folklore. one of the things i really liked about alif the unseen was the fact that i was unfamiliar with the setting and mythological underpinnings. i like a good post-apocalypse, altho i haven't read any recently. i'm not interested in what i think of as "message fic", in which the author has a very clear social justice type agenda, and the entire story and all the characters are merely vehicles to get the message across. i want to read a good story, not someone's essay on their idea of a perfect society. (think ayn rand, but not as, er, randian. but that kind of philosophical discourse sometimes very badly disguised as a novel.) (altho i did like we the living and the fountainhead.) i want my female characters to have agency and their own internal lives and backstories, and not exist as just adjuncts to the male characters' stories. but i'm not super interested in the typical "strong female character" whose defining characteristic is how tough she is and how hard she can hit you in the face. i don't like artificially-created tension and drama (say, two characters have no reason to keep things from each other but do it anyway because the author doesn't know how else to create conflict) and i'm not a huge fan of constant angst. see: books that take themselves too seriously. i want to read about main characters i can like as people! who aren't overwhelmingly selfish or self-absorbed or self-pitying or patronizing or cold or mind-bogglingly stupid. people who can learn when they screw up.
oh, and i like historicals. historicals are good. :D any time period i know nothing about. (which is most of them.)