Reading roundup

Nov 02, 2011 21:24

53. The Way of the Wizard, edited by John Joseph Adams -- pretty good collection. One of the things I was impressed by is the mix of famous and new-to-me names, the number of female authors in the anthology (just a little less than half), and the number of non-Caucasian names (still a distinct minority, but more than one normally sees). ( Individual stories with spoilers )

a: simon r. green, weetzie bat, kushiel, a: susanna clarke, a: marion zimmer bradley, a: libba bray, a: charlaine harris, leguin, a: orson scott card, a: lev grossman, a: cinda williams chima, a: ursula leguin, a: t.a.pratt, a: peter s. beagle, short stories, a: george r.r. martin, a: delia sherman, a: jacqueline carey, reading, a: francesca lia block, marla mason

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Comments 28

jesatria November 3 2011, 04:39:07 UTC
Phedre totally was the one to make up the name in order to tweak Barquiel's nose, Y/N?

Ha ha ha I like this idea. Also, related macros:


... )

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hamsterwoman November 3 2011, 04:46:42 UTC
LOL at hipster!Barquel! (Who looks really good in those glasses! XD)

Anyway I'm just about to post Chap 1 of the Phedre as Barquiel's protege AU

Ooh!

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jesatria November 3 2011, 05:15:19 UTC
He does. He really does! Hipster!Barquiel is endlessly amusing to me because it's so true! I can just see him going around in his Akkadian clothes & when someone asks him about them he's like "They're from Khebbel-im-Akkad. You've probably never heard of them."

Fic is here!

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hamsterwoman November 3 2011, 05:42:56 UTC
"They're from Khebbel-im-Akkad. You've probably never heard of them."

Ahaha, totally! XD

Yay, fic! :D

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_grayswandir_ November 3 2011, 04:47:52 UTC
Also, "seraphim" used as the singular will never stop bugging me.

In spite of your comments, this story continued to sound vaguely interesting to me until you mentioned this. I mean, what even... Is this, like, a thing? Do people use "seraphim" as singular in fiction now? I've never seen it myself, but it sounds appallingly ignorant to me. I don't mind if people want to use "seraphs" instead of "seraphim" for the plural -- you want to make the word English, fine, it's less elegant but it's what we do. But I can't figure why anybody would want to make the plural into an English singular, unless they just genuinely have no damn idea what they're doing. :/

/overreaction to grammatical issues...

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hamsterwoman November 3 2011, 05:17:26 UTC
Heh, I admire your righteous grammatical wrath!

I don't know if it's a frequent thing, but I know I've encountered it and similar before. Might've been "Nephilim", which, to be fair, I'm not sure *has* a singular in English. "A sepraphim" nets almost 60k hits on Google, although some of it is being used grammatically correctly to modify something, like "A seraphim Christmas". At least 1.5k of those hits seemed to belong to talking about this canon (which has a bunch of books in it in addition to the short story I read). At least one of them is somebody saying, "Sniegoski appears sadly unaware that Seraphim is plural and its singular is Seraph"I realize I have only minimal high ground because the Russian word for cherub is "heruvim", clearly taken from the Hebrew plural. (I just had to call B and ask him what the singular was because I couldn't figure it out. Apparently it's "kruv". Which also means "cauliflower". O.o) And, unlike all the other times in Hebrew when words sound identical to me but are actually spelled iwth a bunch of ( ... )

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angerfish November 3 2011, 05:04:44 UTC
Aaaand I deleted my comment (to change "crown" to "crowd") and apparently failed to copy it. Grrrr.

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hamsterwoman November 3 2011, 05:09:02 UTC
I hate when that happens! And it still does, even though I've tried to train myself to copy stuff...

Here is your comment (yay for emailed comments!), which I shall respond to anon :)

I'm very adamantly NOT in the "wahhhhhh the books should stay in Terre D'Ange forever because IT R THE BESTEST" crown. And yet... I actually found the dramaaaaz in TdA compelling and I kind of groaned when Moirin had to leave again. idk, like... helping care for an emotionally neglected kid, getting used to being married, getting integrated back into a society that's foreign to her, and dealing with the inevitable changes that would occur due to trade with Terra Nova... that seemed like enough of a plot to me. Carey could have even contrived a reason for her to travel around Terre D'Ange if she wanted to keep up the traveling ( ... )

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angerfish November 3 2011, 05:21:09 UTC
Yay! XD

Apparently the last thing I successfully copied was me blathering about the bloop over on tumblr. Which, while interesting, is not related to Kushiel's Whatever.

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hamsterwoman November 3 2011, 05:34:56 UTC
When I first read about the bloop, it totally freaked me out. Mysterious blooping noise! Like nothing made by man or produced by beast! O.o ( ... )

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limbomonkey November 3 2011, 11:57:14 UTC
Sidonie and Imriel cared enough about Delaunay to sort of name their kid after him. But I think the term "Montrevan oath" is pretty dumb.

We had an ants nest in our house a few weeks ago. It made me think of this book and pissed me off even more since I don't like the Moirin trilogy (though this was the best of them).

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hamsterwoman November 3 2011, 23:16:59 UTC
Sidonie and Imriel cared enough about Delaunay to sort of name their kid after him.

Oh, right, that's true! (Though I still think it was mostly like naming your kid after a grandfather you never knew because he was important to your mom.)

It made me think of this book and pissed me off even more since I don't like the Moirin trilogyLOL, this gives me a mental image that totally cracks me up XD ( ... )

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ambyr November 3 2011, 12:07:19 UTC
Hah, everyone enjoys books more than me. I am a curmudgeon. At book club, the second question is always, "Did you like the book?" at which point there is generally a pregnant pause as everyone turns to look at me to see what my outburst of complaints will be this time around.

My Naamah's Blessing thoughts are on Goodreads, I think. I liked Temilotzin a lot and was sad he didn't get more of a role. Taking this in combination with my thoughts on the previous book, I'm. . .kind of shipping Temilotzin/Erdene. And by "kind of shipping" I mean, "dreamed up a whole elaborate AU so it will make sense." Oh poor, neglected favorite characters. You need someone who will appreciate you!

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hamsterwoman November 3 2011, 23:33:03 UTC
Haha, OK, I feel better then. (I do know that I tend to be relatively easy to please. I tend to quibble about stuff in series that I'm lukewarm on -- like the Chronicles of Elantra stuff -- and have my weird pet peeves, like English puns that are purported to work in languages other than English and books that mishandle Russian or Jewish characters (I did a lot of side-eyeing of Carey's Yeshuites, *sigh*), but mostly I'm happy just to be entertained and really easy when it comes to books in my favorite series.

I liked Temilotzin, too, even though there wasn't very much of him in the action (though more than I had anticipated, really). I tend to like competent warriors, and he had a sense of humour, too.

I'm. . .kind of shipping Temilotzin/Erdene. And by "kind of shipping" I mean, "dreamed up a whole elaborate AU so it will make sense."

Ooh! That could be rather cute, in a fierce way. And now I'm curious about your AU! Does he keep traveling East until he encounters the Tatars? Or does she venture into Terre D'Ange?

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ambyr November 4 2011, 00:23:37 UTC
Oh, I have those quibbles, too! I just finished reading an otherwise perfectly serviceable WWII historical fiction book in which one of the characters happened to be Jewish, and at one point was excited because she found someone from whom she could . . . "borrow a copy of the Torah" for a ceremony. I think I spent a good five minutes blinking over that.

It's the AU in which she leaves the Tartars with Moirin, because damn it she is married to Bao and since he's never formally divorced her or died or anything her position at home is quite awkward, and they sort of try poly but frankly it goes rather terribly, and Temilotzin is the first person she's met since leaving pseudo-Asia who actually understands some of what she's going through, because his culture has plural marriage, and. To write it I would feel like I actually needed to know something about Mesoamerican and Mongolian cultures, though, which I don't.

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hamsterwoman November 4 2011, 05:50:57 UTC
"borrow a copy of the Torah" for a ceremony

XD I get a great visual of this, someone walking around with the scrolls secreted under a voluminous trenchcoat...

I don't think I've run into anything quite so blink-worthy (well, mostly I read genre, and mostly Jews don't even show up), but even stuff that's not outright wrong. Like, reading Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionavar Tapestry, I spent entirely too much time trying to figure out how Kevin Laine's name went with him calling his father "abba". Well, that was probably a special case and I normally wouldn't have bothered if I hadn't found GGK's fantasy Jews to be so well done in Lions of Al-Rassan.

and Temilotzin is the first person she's met since leaving pseudo-Asia who actually understands some of what she's going through, because his culture has plural marriage

Oh, neat! I can definitely see that being a point of connection/sympathy between the two of them and an interesting dynamic!

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