kitewithfish

What I’ve Read:

Romancing Mister Bridgerton- Julia Quinn – A fine romance novel! It hit the Regency tone well, the characters are engaging, and it definitely does something quite different than the season of Bridgerton The Show that is based on it. As I mentioned last week, I mostly read this in order to have an Informed Opinion about the changes made to Penelope’s character in the show, and I think I now do: Book Pen is a kind person and entertaining writer who has pride in her work and no malice in her. Show Pen is a haphandedly created villainess who merges a snide voiceover performance by Julies Andrews with an actual character who is interestingly self-interested and more than a little callous. SO, I like Show Pen better while acknowledging she’s a much worse person. I overall think the book was fine – Romance novels have a certain level of wish fulfillment around the human need to actually say words out loud to express feelings, and well, that wasn’t a thing people needed to do in this book! Everyone is somehow mindreaders, it’s amazing. But, overall, I think this was engaging and well written and anyone who likes the genre of historical romance would enjoy it.

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky – Xing Book Club – This is going to be fun to discuss. This is a book in which two sides of a conflict, human beings trying to survive a species-ending event and a population of uplifted spiders with on a planet terraformed and then abandoned, are portrayed with insight and compassion. The whole book is leading up to the inevitable conflict of these two groups and by the end, I was deeply invested in both groups and hoping desperately that somehow they’d manage to avoid genociding each other. And, SPOILERS in Rot13: Gurl npghnyyl znantr vg! Gurl trg n unccl raqvat! Gurl tb gb gur fgnef gbtrgure! V’z nznmrq naq eryvrirq naq wblshy ng gur raqvat bs guvf obbx. Vg’f terng jbex. It’s great writing for plot and clear communication, and I’m glad I read this book. Might read the next book – Children of Ruin sounds fascinating. Tchaikovsky keep surprising me but I had only read shorter things by him in the past for the Hugos Deathrace, and now this is proof that he can keep that tension up over the length of a book.

The Long Hangover by CoffioCake - https://archiveofourown.org/works/5912137 (Archive Locked) – This was a fun Batman/Superman story with a TON of Secret Identity porn – these idiots are in love, dammit, and somehow the two of them are actually four idiots in love. I’d recommend it! It’s from 2016 just before Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice so it manages to be entirely devoid of the flaws of the Snyder Superman and Batman nonsense.

What I’m Reading:

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York– Robert Caro – 31% - static, but I have followed the podcast ahead of the book.

Saint of Bright Doors – Hugo – Audiobook and paperbook – this feels so fresh and interesting and also a little bit like it’s about a version of peter pan but really, really not.

The Spear Cuts Through Water – hugos and xing book club - breaking at "day three"

Dune Messiah – this reads like a snide remark.

Battle Ground, Jim Butcher – abandoned since the audiobook went back to the library

What I’ll Read Next

Desperate Glory
Hugo Nominees:
Bea Wolf Saga, Vol. 11 Translation State Starter Villain The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi “Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition” “Ivy, Angelica, Bay” “On the Fox Roads” “One Man’s Treasure” “The Year Without Sunshine” I AM AI Rose/House “Life Does Not Allow Us to Meet” The Mimicking of Known Successes Mammoths at the Gates “Seeds of Mercury” The Culture: The Drawings A City on Mars A Traveller in Time: The Critical Practice of Maureen Kincaid Speller, All These Worlds: Reviews & Essays “Better Living Through Algorithms” by Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld May 2023) “Answerless Journey” / 没有答案的航程, 韩松, “The Sound of Children Screaming” “How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub” “The Mausoleum’s Children”