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Mar. 1st, 2023 11:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kitewithfishWhat I've Read
just me against the sky by magneticwave - https://archiveofourown.org/works/42315729 (48K) Bat-family alternate universe where Tim Drake is a girl and never became Robin but was a different and kind of badass. Girl!Tim/Girl!Jason, but mostly pre-relationship. This is charming and a tender and wonderful look at who Tim is and could have been, in a slightly diffrent world than the comics are showing us. (I think I came across it in the bookmarks of SPQR (https://archiveofourown.org/users/spqr) whose work in Mandalorian fandom is probably why I got into Star Wars prequel fanfic. ) "Just me against the sky" was a great fic to read, in part because it made me realize just how much of magneticwave's fic I have read in some many different fandoms. I went on a binge and re-read "staring down the barrel of the hot sun" and read "i want your warmth to stay beside me" for the first time and a few other shorter things - go, read their stuff, it's amazing.
The Good Lord Bird by James McBride (https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/83f3410a-8112-4958-93ff-6a7fbb184ff1) (Read by Michael Boatman, who deserves an Oscar) Read for Discord Book Club This book was totally outside my normal perview - a historical novel about John Brown's last few years of life, as told from a newly freed young mand who was mascarading as a girl for most of the novel. It's hilarious, it's painful, it's keenly attentive to the damage that suffering causes to the human soul under slavery, and it bounces between reverent and irreverent like a tennis ball in a dryer. Highly recommend. ( Somehow the book group discussion did not get into trans themes at all, but this book is from 2013 and the author is my mom's age so I don't think trans issues were at all on his mind. But it would make for a real discussion about gender as performance and how that works in the context of race for the space of the book.)
What I'm Reading
Phoenix Extravagant - by Yoon Ha Lee - (Read by Emily Woo Zeller) to the end of Chapter 11, for Xing Book Club - Man, this book is good. It's clearly cribbing off the Japanese invasion of Korea in a fantasy setting for languages and cultural notes, the main character is interesting. It's interested in the meaning and value of art to the culture that created it and what an invading culture values in those same works of art - the main character is an artist and they are dealing with the delicate balance of making a living under occupation while maintaining an identity as an artist and a person in their own culture. It doesn't cut quite as close to the soul as a A Memory Called Empire but that might be due to the fact that the narrator is a painter and I'm not. Lovely book, blitzed thru it as an audiook to the stopping point for the book club.
A Half Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys (Read by Kate Handford) - 37% read - also for Xing Book Club, but it's the next book out- A pastoral Earth that revolted and rebuilt to stave off climate apocalypse makes first contact with some aliens who have some fascinatingly different ideas about where sentient species should end up. Great themes! - people compare it to Le Guin and I see the commonalities but I'm going to see how it sticks the landing. The aliens see motherhood, specifically gestational motherhood, as a key sign of leadership ability, and so the main character's relationship with the aliens really has a lot of baby care woven in. Polyamory! Jews in the future! The alluring glitter of apocalyptic corporate culture in the far future. Espionage! Alternate forms of government!
Harrow the Ninth - 86% - Tamsyn Muir - When I get done with this book, I'm doing to have to do some screaming about it. What's notable about the reading experience is that so many people have told me that they read and enjoyed this series that there's a whole LIST of people I can go and scream at when something absurd happens. Is this the experience that people were having reading the Harry Potter books as they came out? Because I didn't, I was an awkward kid who read books to get away from people and not to connect with them, but man, I could see how the allure of this feeling would linger as a warm and fuzzy memory well past the point I finish this book. (Not to the point of remaining financially loyal to the author if she starts, ya know, targeting peopel for stocastic violence thru twitter, jesus fucking christ, some Harry Potter fans have some major fucking blinders on for their asshole) I accidentally created a bookclub around The Locked Tomb Series and its going well!
Men With Stakes - Julia Wright - still at 65% - need to finish the book for March 12th
A Very Good Book for the Great Queer Supernatural Re-Watch! Highly recommend for people who want to think about the show and the way it fit into concepts of masculinity as part of the landscape of tv. I wish the author would define her concept of "the gothic" somewhere in the book!
What I'll Read Next
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke - Xing Book Club
Audiobooks from Libby that I need to get to: Spare by Harry No Last Name, Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi, Re-reads planned via audiobook for A Taste of Gold and Iron and Mexican Gothic (I got some friends to read it and it's landed very well and I want to talk about it again!)
Owned and need to read: Frey Marske's A Restless Truth, andSusanna Clarke's Pirenesi California Bones, Raven Song by IA Ashcroft, Kraken's Sacrifice by Katee Robert, Even Though I Know the End by CL Polk, True Colors by Karen Traviss, At The Feet of the Sun by Victoria Goddard, Tamryn Eradani's Enchanting Encounters Books 2 and 3, Like Real People Do by EL Massey, Tom Stoppard, invention of love. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty, "You Just Need to Lose Weight" and Other Myths about Fatness by Aubrey Gordon, Alisha Rai Partners in Crime, the Right Swipe, Aphorisms of Kerishdar
Work in Progress Wednesday (The Return)
Sock Madness was once again too much for me- I got one sock done and sent it in to be a cheerleader rather than on a team. I found this technique (intarsia in the round) a good stretch of skills but no way I was getting that done in time for the second sock. That said, I have started the second sock and I'm knitting it flat, against the rules of the competition socks, and it's sooooo much easier. Intarsia in the round, kids, not even once.
just me against the sky by magneticwave - https://archiveofourown.org/works/42315729 (48K) Bat-family alternate universe where Tim Drake is a girl and never became Robin but was a different and kind of badass. Girl!Tim/Girl!Jason, but mostly pre-relationship. This is charming and a tender and wonderful look at who Tim is and could have been, in a slightly diffrent world than the comics are showing us. (I think I came across it in the bookmarks of SPQR (https://archiveofourown.org/users/spqr) whose work in Mandalorian fandom is probably why I got into Star Wars prequel fanfic. ) "Just me against the sky" was a great fic to read, in part because it made me realize just how much of magneticwave's fic I have read in some many different fandoms. I went on a binge and re-read "staring down the barrel of the hot sun" and read "i want your warmth to stay beside me" for the first time and a few other shorter things - go, read their stuff, it's amazing.
The Good Lord Bird by James McBride (https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/83f3410a-8112-4958-93ff-6a7fbb184ff1) (Read by Michael Boatman, who deserves an Oscar) Read for Discord Book Club This book was totally outside my normal perview - a historical novel about John Brown's last few years of life, as told from a newly freed young mand who was mascarading as a girl for most of the novel. It's hilarious, it's painful, it's keenly attentive to the damage that suffering causes to the human soul under slavery, and it bounces between reverent and irreverent like a tennis ball in a dryer. Highly recommend. ( Somehow the book group discussion did not get into trans themes at all, but this book is from 2013 and the author is my mom's age so I don't think trans issues were at all on his mind. But it would make for a real discussion about gender as performance and how that works in the context of race for the space of the book.)
What I'm Reading
Phoenix Extravagant - by Yoon Ha Lee - (Read by Emily Woo Zeller) to the end of Chapter 11, for Xing Book Club - Man, this book is good. It's clearly cribbing off the Japanese invasion of Korea in a fantasy setting for languages and cultural notes, the main character is interesting. It's interested in the meaning and value of art to the culture that created it and what an invading culture values in those same works of art - the main character is an artist and they are dealing with the delicate balance of making a living under occupation while maintaining an identity as an artist and a person in their own culture. It doesn't cut quite as close to the soul as a A Memory Called Empire but that might be due to the fact that the narrator is a painter and I'm not. Lovely book, blitzed thru it as an audiook to the stopping point for the book club.
A Half Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys (Read by Kate Handford) - 37% read - also for Xing Book Club, but it's the next book out- A pastoral Earth that revolted and rebuilt to stave off climate apocalypse makes first contact with some aliens who have some fascinatingly different ideas about where sentient species should end up. Great themes! - people compare it to Le Guin and I see the commonalities but I'm going to see how it sticks the landing. The aliens see motherhood, specifically gestational motherhood, as a key sign of leadership ability, and so the main character's relationship with the aliens really has a lot of baby care woven in. Polyamory! Jews in the future! The alluring glitter of apocalyptic corporate culture in the far future. Espionage! Alternate forms of government!
Harrow the Ninth - 86% - Tamsyn Muir - When I get done with this book, I'm doing to have to do some screaming about it. What's notable about the reading experience is that so many people have told me that they read and enjoyed this series that there's a whole LIST of people I can go and scream at when something absurd happens. Is this the experience that people were having reading the Harry Potter books as they came out? Because I didn't, I was an awkward kid who read books to get away from people and not to connect with them, but man, I could see how the allure of this feeling would linger as a warm and fuzzy memory well past the point I finish this book. (Not to the point of remaining financially loyal to the author if she starts, ya know, targeting peopel for stocastic violence thru twitter, jesus fucking christ, some Harry Potter fans have some major fucking blinders on for their asshole) I accidentally created a bookclub around The Locked Tomb Series and its going well!
Men With Stakes - Julia Wright - still at 65% - need to finish the book for March 12th
A Very Good Book for the Great Queer Supernatural Re-Watch! Highly recommend for people who want to think about the show and the way it fit into concepts of masculinity as part of the landscape of tv. I wish the author would define her concept of "the gothic" somewhere in the book!
What I'll Read Next
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke - Xing Book Club
Audiobooks from Libby that I need to get to: Spare by Harry No Last Name, Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi, Re-reads planned via audiobook for A Taste of Gold and Iron and Mexican Gothic (I got some friends to read it and it's landed very well and I want to talk about it again!)
Owned and need to read: Frey Marske's A Restless Truth, and
Work in Progress Wednesday (The Return)
Sock Madness was once again too much for me- I got one sock done and sent it in to be a cheerleader rather than on a team. I found this technique (intarsia in the round) a good stretch of skills but no way I was getting that done in time for the second sock. That said, I have started the second sock and I'm knitting it flat, against the rules of the competition socks, and it's sooooo much easier. Intarsia in the round, kids, not even once.
