Reading Meme for March 13 2024
Mar. 13th, 2024 03:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kitewithfishWhat I’ve Read:
The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation – Vol 4 (Mo Dao Zu Shi) In case anyone was tracking, this took me about a month to read and the main romantic couple have finally fucked! It was a disaster! These idiots have one book left to get their shit together
What Feasts at Night (Sworn Soldier #2) - T. Kingfisher – This is a sequel to What Moves the Dead, which I think is a bit better by virtue having a more interesting blend of science fiction set in a historical period. However, if you want to learn more about our main character, Alex Eastern, and kan fictional country, it’s a solid horror story with characters I want to hold up to the sun like stained glass.
We Were Liars – E. Lockhart – Good lord, I pulled this book out of the TBR cart knowing I’d had it a while and the receipt stuck in its pages was from the Year of Our Lord Josh the Carpenter 2015. SO. I read it in basically two days, and it’s really quite good - the writing is poetic and I'm slightly reminded of One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies (2004), a novel in verse by Sonya Sones. Character voices are solid and feel distinct, there's a weight and momentum behind the actions our main character takes, and it's all so very human. Our heroine is a sick 18 year old girl who is trying to figure out what happened during her family’s annual vacation when she was 16. It’s Gothic! It’s New England! It’s fucked up! Including houses full of secrets, a family who has something to hide, and a heroine going somewhere unfamiliar to unearth what she should, by rights, already know.
The cover flap instructs me to lie about the ending if you ask, and I actually think that’s worth the effort.
What I’m Reading:
Witchmark – CL Polk – Fun with Necromancy Book club – I am re-reading this and now that I know CL Polk used to write as CeeAintHereForThat, I am certain I see the signs of SPN fanfic
Abandoned - A Court of Mist and Fury – Audiobook read by Jennifer Ikeda – book 2 of ACOTAR series – 60% This book has lost all charm. I didn’t think a heist narrative could be boring, but I am just TIRED of how uninterested Maas seems to be in making the writing engaging or fun or surprising. It’s all just STATEMENTS. I have bailed bc I was doing the audiobook and the library summoned it back. I do not anticipate picking it back up again. Why are the booktok girlies so into this? I like romance novels but this doesn’t even have the charm of being self indulgent.
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York– Robert Caro – about 23% - Soooon
The 99% Invisible podcast has special episodes on the chapters along this schedule, which I am trying to keep up with:
Reading schedule under the cut
Episode 3 — March 15 — Chapters 11 through 15 – done!
Episode 4 — April 19 — Chapters 16 through 20
Episode 5 — May 17 — Chapters 21 through 24
Episode 6 — June 21 — Chapters 25 through 26
Episode 7 — July 19 — Chapters 27 through 32
Episode 8 — August 16 — Chapters 33 through 34
Episode 9 — September 20 — Chapters 35 through 38
Episode 10 — October 18 — Chapters 39 through 41
Episode 11 — November 15 — Chapters 42 through 46
Episode 12 — December 20 — Chapters 47 through 50
Fellowship of the Ring – JRR Tolkien – 17%
What I’ll Read Next:
Silver Nitrate
Gunslingers Paean #3
Murderbot #3
The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation – Vol 4 (Mo Dao Zu Shi) In case anyone was tracking, this took me about a month to read and the main romantic couple have finally fucked! It was a disaster! These idiots have one book left to get their shit together
What Feasts at Night (Sworn Soldier #2) - T. Kingfisher – This is a sequel to What Moves the Dead, which I think is a bit better by virtue having a more interesting blend of science fiction set in a historical period. However, if you want to learn more about our main character, Alex Eastern, and kan fictional country, it’s a solid horror story with characters I want to hold up to the sun like stained glass.
We Were Liars – E. Lockhart – Good lord, I pulled this book out of the TBR cart knowing I’d had it a while and the receipt stuck in its pages was from the Year of Our Lord Josh the Carpenter 2015. SO. I read it in basically two days, and it’s really quite good - the writing is poetic and I'm slightly reminded of One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies (2004), a novel in verse by Sonya Sones. Character voices are solid and feel distinct, there's a weight and momentum behind the actions our main character takes, and it's all so very human. Our heroine is a sick 18 year old girl who is trying to figure out what happened during her family’s annual vacation when she was 16. It’s Gothic! It’s New England! It’s fucked up! Including houses full of secrets, a family who has something to hide, and a heroine going somewhere unfamiliar to unearth what she should, by rights, already know.
The cover flap instructs me to lie about the ending if you ask, and I actually think that’s worth the effort.
What I’m Reading:
Witchmark – CL Polk – Fun with Necromancy Book club – I am re-reading this and now that I know CL Polk used to write as CeeAintHereForThat, I am certain I see the signs of SPN fanfic
Abandoned - A Court of Mist and Fury – Audiobook read by Jennifer Ikeda – book 2 of ACOTAR series – 60% This book has lost all charm. I didn’t think a heist narrative could be boring, but I am just TIRED of how uninterested Maas seems to be in making the writing engaging or fun or surprising. It’s all just STATEMENTS. I have bailed bc I was doing the audiobook and the library summoned it back. I do not anticipate picking it back up again. Why are the booktok girlies so into this? I like romance novels but this doesn’t even have the charm of being self indulgent.
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York– Robert Caro – about 23% - Soooon
The 99% Invisible podcast has special episodes on the chapters along this schedule, which I am trying to keep up with:
Reading schedule under the cut
Episode 3 — March 15 — Chapters 11 through 15 – done!
Episode 4 — April 19 — Chapters 16 through 20
Episode 5 — May 17 — Chapters 21 through 24
Episode 6 — June 21 — Chapters 25 through 26
Episode 7 — July 19 — Chapters 27 through 32
Episode 8 — August 16 — Chapters 33 through 34
Episode 9 — September 20 — Chapters 35 through 38
Episode 10 — October 18 — Chapters 39 through 41
Episode 11 — November 15 — Chapters 42 through 46
Episode 12 — December 20 — Chapters 47 through 50
Fellowship of the Ring – JRR Tolkien – 17%
What I’ll Read Next:
Silver Nitrate
Gunslingers Paean #3
Murderbot #3
no subject
Date: 2024-03-14 02:06 pm (UTC)I’ve been vaguely avoiding this one because it kind of blew up on TikTok and you couldn’t pay me to read most of the TikTok books (even the ones my company publishes, which I am paid to read and yet *haven’t* read). But your review actually makes me want to read it! I haven’t read a lot of gothic stuff but what I have read has been very good (I loved Plain Bad Heroines and Mexican Gothic) so I might actually out this on my list now. If you have any other gothic recommendations I’m all ears
no subject
Date: 2024-03-15 02:28 pm (UTC)I recently did read a few BookTok books just to get an informed opinion. I am now informed and I have an opinion and it's that some of them are bad books because they are sincere but unskilled efforts by authors aiming beyond their abilities to tell stories I find rather dull, and some are cynical cashgrabs to mimic the sincere efforts. (ACOTAR being the first, Fourth Wing being the latter.) I think that BookTok has some good niches for recommendation, but I think that I'm going to avoid anything that is written since TikTok blew up.
E Lockhart's writing is good, tends to be a bit lyrical and full of imagery, and feels very in character - she tends to write rather close to the character's POV, even if she's not always in first person - I find it engaging. I think *Liars* got popular on BookTok because, in addition to having rather beautiful prose, it does have a first person POV for a young woman with a secret and an interesting mystery plot with some good twists - I think it does haves something enjoyable to offer the kind of people would read *Fourth Wing* and burn thru it without noticing how bad the writing it so that they could absorb the story.
I will also say that E Lockhart has written several works that are catnip to me because they deal with old money institutions around New England (in a fictionalized version), and I have to live with those things, so I like having fiction reflect how irksome they are. If you want to sample some of her work without the BookTok aura, I really enjoyed The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks (which has a similar main character with a bit more agency and much less deadly stakes) and the Ruby Oliver quartet: The Boyfriend List, The Boy Book, The Treasure Map of Boys, and Real Live Boyfriends. (which are written diary style by a character in high school who has to go to therapy) But again, it's been a decade since I read these, and my memories may be off.
Of things I have read recently in the Gothic Vibe: Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle is more horror but has solid roots in a Gothic tradition - our heroine must uncover the secrets of the gay conversion therapy camp in her home down while she tries to remember the horrible thing that was done to her; What Moves the Dead by T Kingfisher is a story in the continuation of the House of Usher, with some twists. Piranesi is a gentle kind of Gothic - the secret monster has swallowed the main character whole and he has not desire to escape, but the decision is being mad for him. The Locked Tomb Trilogy of four books was tonally complicated to call Gothic but deals with a lot of the themes - the voice is deeply off from the spooky vibes of deliberately Gothic books, but the actual plot and world are very very Gothic.
And if you're interested in a bit of nonfiction, The Gothic: Very Short Introductions by Nick Groom was something I read last year and really enjoyed how it followed the thread of why Gothic went from meaning German tribes in the Classical era to a type of fiction.
Lol, this got long - I was thinking over your comment for a couple of busy days and now you've got the end result!
no subject
Date: 2024-03-16 02:28 pm (UTC)i did read Camp Damascus and enjoyed it! i wouldn't have thought to classify it as gothic, but then my knowledge of the genre is spotty at best, so yes taking that nonfic rec too. i have a copy of Piranesi that i got around the time it came out, just haven't got around to reading it yet, and i have the first three of the Locked Tomb books in paperback (i haven't read them yet and at this point it feels like i might as well wait until the 4th one is out in paperback as well before i do).
i've been following dr Sam Hirst on twitter for years (https://twitter.com/RomGothSam), this is where I've picked up what little I know about the genre.
no subject
Date: 2024-03-15 03:49 am (UTC)Witchmark was written by a former SPN fic writer? I have to say I missed that when I went through it haha. Maybe I will have to re-read.
no subject
Date: 2024-03-15 02:45 pm (UTC)They recently published a book Even Though I Knew The End, that started life as a Destiel fic. It's now genderswapped and has lesbians and some delightful Noir vibes.