Reading Roundup and December meme, day 27: Volha

[hamsterwoman]

For the December ramble meme, Day 27, egelantier asked me to ramble about Volha, but I first needed to get my book thoughts down in more usual manner, and as I try to go in chronological order with the books, I should also post my last Reading Roundup of the year. I made it to 50, just barely... but hey, for a while it looked like even that might not happen

Comments

[manue7a]

I really enjoyed Haddon's book.
And I need to get on with my on ramble-meme. In fact I should get back to posting at all. :D

[hamsterwoman]

It's not the sort of thing I normally read, but I really enjoyed it!

It's been rather hard to keep up with the posting-every-day thing under the ramble meme, so it's kind of devolved into posting-in-about-the-right order-somewhere-in-the-vicinity-of-the-date for me, but it's still a great meme -- I've enjoyed both writing my own rambles (and caught some insights in the process that probably wouldn't have come about otherwise) and learned a lot from everybody else's rambles. So, looking forward to yours!

[_profiterole_]

I've read the Princess Series by Jim C. Hines. The princesses were badasses and there was canon f/f. I enjoyed the books, without being super enthusiastic about them, but I have long noticed that I am rarely super enthusiastic about books written by men compared to books written by women. Which doesn't mean that I have stopped reading books written by men, but I usually stick to one-shots and short series.

[hamsterwoman]

I've heard good things about the Princess Series, but kept coming across books from the middle that didn't seem like good starting point, and the premise didn't seem enough like my sort of thing to track them down intentionally.

I have long noticed that I am rarely super enthusiastic about books written by men compared to books written by women

Interesting... I think I'm about even in this regard. Lately I've been reading a lot more books by women, it seems like, but the odds of something sparking into full-on obsession seem to be about the same regardless of author's gender. (Like, this year, there were two new-to-me series I started that I would say I was obsessed with, and one had a male author and the other a female one.)

[_profiterole_]

The things written by men I obsess with are movies and TV shows, but genre movies are not written by women (or at least nothing comes to mind) and genre TV shows are only occasionally written by women. It makes me wonder how many more SFF movies and TV shows I would be obsessed with if women had a bigger place in the industry.

[hamsterwoman]

It makes me wonder how many more SFF movies and TV shows I would be obsessed with if women had a bigger place in the industry.

Yeah, it really does beg that question... :(

[ladymercury_10]

I've been hearing some interesting things about The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, but vampires aren't really my thing either, so I dunno if I'll check it out or not.

[hamsterwoman]

I forget, have you read other things by Holly Black? My personal bias towards urban-fantasy-with-fairies aside (or even not), I think her best so far are the Curseworker books (magical mafia in a modern world with a vaguely Prohibition era feel!). But Coldtown was quite good, and I was able to enjoy it even though it didn't change my mind on vampire books in general.

[ladymercury_10]

I have not read any Holly Black. Thanks for the suggestions!

[hamsterwoman]

She is really good, IMO -- I highly recommend her stuff!

In addition to the Curseworkers (trilogy that starts with White Cat), I also really like her Modern Faerie Tale books (loose trilogy starting with Tithe, although Valiant (the middle book) can be read as a standalone, too). And I think she writes really good short stories, which you can find collected in The Poison-Eaters.

I hope you enjoy if you do give her books a shot!

[ikel89]

I've read and liked Mark Haddon's book - I even have in paper, which means I wanted D to read it too, but I don't remember if he ever did?XD And Holly Black's on my to-read list, so I'm skipping it for now

[hamsterwoman]

I could see D enjoying Curious Incident (I thought B might be interested, too, but have given up on trying to get him to read fiction. He still has Jingo and Ponedelnik-in-English in queue from a couple of years ago :P)

The Holly Black was good! Not as good as Curseworkers, I think, but well worth a read. (There is *tiny spoiler* a little bit of flashback-Russia in there, btw, but nothing there to interfere with my enjoyment.)

Volha really seemed likable for her devotion to her professionalism

That is my favorite thing about Volha-the-character (assigning her wry narrative voice to Volha-the-narrator as distinct from Volha-the-character, if that distinction makes any sense; I mean, there are people I really like as narrators whom I like a lot less as characters -- Harry Dresden, for instance, or even Corwin).

Ksandr and Len's past (throw a couple more characters to the mix:) are a thing I really wanted to hear more about at the time, as well.

We don't get much more in the next two books either, then?

single-handedly

[ikel89]

Yo! I'm back for the Coldtown, mostly

[hamsterwoman]

I was a bit disappointed not to see you comment about Gavriel's Russian background here, ngl:>

I'm curious about YOUR thoughts on this, but did not have very many of my own. Like, it did not impress me with surprising astuteness / aptness the way a character in RoL #4 did, and it didn't enrage me the way Blood of Tyrants did, and it didn't baffle me like Russia in Kushiel's Legacy did. I feel like maybe she did a decent amount of research to avoid anything glaring, and then didn't go so deep as to show any problems with subtler stuff? Which is already way better than most Western authors writing Russian characters...

I admired her pragmatism, perseverance, quite rational approach to most things, and general kindness to people that wasn't of goodie-two-shoes variety

Agreed on all of this -- she felt complex and likeable without at all being generic or too perfect.

Yes, they are represented, and no, it didn't feel to me like SRB's agenda at allI saw Alenka's post on that as I petyred through, and your comments, I think -- does it

[meathiel]

The Haddon book is the only one listed that I already read. I remember I liked it ... it's been ages, though!

[hamsterwoman]

I've meant to read it for ages but never had the impetus to actually track it down -- but then just stumbled by it at a garage sale and knew it was time. Excellent use of $1, I have to say :)