What I've Read
I have given up on Midnight Sun! Because, good god. Why bother.

I also gave up on the audiobook of True Believer, the autobiography of Stan Lee. It's just organized with a very odd way of bouncing back and forth in time, and not particular compassion for the living people involved.

I have finished nothing else, somehow. I think I was on a visual media kick this week - I slipped back into the second season of the Punisher because someone was talking about it on Tumblr, I watched like 10 episodes of The Story of Yanxi Palace. I saw The Batman!


What I'm Reading

Still on The Galaxy and the Ground Within - it's getting to the good parts!
Edit from Thursday: Having just finished this book, I can speak with authority - the endings are the good parts. The epilogues for each other characters were each a full culmination of the experiences that they'd had while stuck on the little planet. They were excellently composed vignettes for each character, built entirely on the relationships and conversations they'd had with the other former strangers trapped with them. I am so glad I persevered to the end of this book!

Have not touched Four Profound Weaves because I want to read it for next week.

What I'll Read Next

Monsters in the Closet - next up in the Great Queer Supernatural Re-watch Reading Club.

How did I re-read the Thief series and forget about the final book in the series? Which I have never read before! I'm a fool. I have it got it from the library as an audiobook and I'm delighted to start it soon.

I'm going to read Being Seen, the Past is Red, Never Say You Can't Survive.

What I've Read

A Conspiracy of Kings - Megan Whalen Turner - The ending lands! It's just a dang good book!

Fireheart Tiger - Aliette de Bodard - Hugos Death Race 2022 (Best Novella Nominee)  - I have loved AdB since I read the Tea Master and the Detective in early pandemic, and I have a special place for her novellas. This is worth a read. We'll see if I want it for my Hugo card.


What I'm Reading

Thick as Thieves - Megan Whalen Turner - This is hilarious. Literally just wonderful writing. I am loving Kamet as the narrator.

Four Profound Weaves - RB Lemberg - I have read precisely to the point that the book club asked for and no farther. I am a virtuous and obedient book club member. But I really want to see how this goes. I love the viewpoints of both the main characters - elder trans people from different cultures, dealing with some really important personal metaphors. 

Melusine - Sarah Monette - The pacing on this is just slower than I usually like. Not bad! Just, not as tight as the Goblin Emperor. 

Across the Green Grass Fields - Seanan McGuire -  Hugos Death Race 2022  (Best Novella Nominee) - Started this morning, probably could finish tonight if I want to. Solid so far! I like the main character, and hope that her cowardice passes as she grows. 

What I'll Read Next

Um. Midnight Sun by Stephenie Meyers. I rewatched the first movie and it (mostly) was really fun and I liked it. I can see the problems that others have mentioned! I'm just choosing a different interpretation!

I was also inspired by a friend's Oscars Death Race this year to try a Hugo Death Race - aka, trying to read all the works nominated in their categories, before the awards are announced in September. I made a Google Doc and everything! 

So, on that list I will next read Becky Chambers the Galaxy and the Ground Within, and Alix Harrow A Spindle Splinters

Work in Progress
Sock Madness 16 has dropped round 2 - It's Plaid, It has Pockets -https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/plaid-pocket-socks One thing I love about Sock Madness is watching the sheer number of projects explode on a pattern! 790 people are working on these socks this week!

Here's mine: https://www.ravelry.com/projects/kitewithfish/plaid-pocket-socks#  I have gotten the right gauge with the swatch. I love the colors I picked.

What I've Read

After reading Martha Wells' All Systems Red, I went on a binge and listened to all the books in the Murderbot series.

Artificial Condition - this is where things get a bit heavy - Murderbot goes back to the location of the massacre that propelled it to learn to hack its governor module and finds a different history than it remembered. A wonderful and raw look at what freedom really looks like for MB.

Exit Strategy - Fresh from understanding its history better, Murderbot goes and meets up with the first people who were kind to it and figures out they actually need it. It's a great examination of what it's like to shape your recovery your own way.

Network Effect - The full length novel. This one feels like it really gets a chance to dig into Murderbot as a character with real relationships, decisions to make, and a future to think about. It's definitely full of action but also just some great content of people figuring out how to be a person.

Companion to Wolves - Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette. This came from a desire to read older works by Katherine Addision aka Sarah Monette. I really liked this, but I'm a bit cautious about Elizabeth Bear's reputation, so I'm probably not going to go digging into the rest of the series. If you're wondering where all the psychic wolves content in fandom came from, this is it.


It Takes Two to Tumble- Cat Sebastien - Charming! I have written about it before. Nails the ending pretty well.

What I'm Reading

In the heady days of not having a sock project, I started... too many books.

Queen of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner - This is an audiobook re-read and I'm really enjoying it. I figured I would lean into the urge to mainline a series I love already and I'm listening to all the books. I debated starting with The Thief, but I had re-read it in the last year so, I'm just going to live with it.

Over All the Earth by Alexandra Rowland - A novella set in the world of the Chants (traveling storytellers) with a new main character.

Melusine by Sarah Monette - Dark histories and stuff! I am liking the main character but I will probably hold it for later.

Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham - After watching the recent del Toro movie and finding it fascinating, I decided to watch the 1947 movie of the same name (a bit more sanitized by the Hollywood system), I decided that I wanted to read the book! Came in from the library today.

What I'll Read

Probably more of the Attolia series. The Cruel Prince is waiting, as well! I started the audiobook of King's Dragon by Kate Elliot, the first in a series I started in maaaaybe 1999 and never finished.

Work in Progress
-Well, I ran out of time to finish my qualifier for Sock Madness so I ended up only doing 1.75 socks, but that is enough to confirm a spot as a Cheerleader - I'll still get the patterns but won't get any prizes for completing socks in the assigned time, so it's a much more relaxed vibe.

Link to Ravelry Project Page - Engelkristall Socks -https://www.ravelry.com/projects/kitewithfish/engelkristall

Reading Wednesday Meme


What I've Read

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin, Narrator Jeff Woodman - I can see why this book was so impressive and important to me when I read it at age 11 or so, and it holds up pretty well. But the world is full of adaptations of And Then There Were None that are far more bloody and I think there will always be a space in the world for a mystery that is not, really, about the darkness in the human soul.

Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells, Narrator Kevin R. Free - An excellent novella to revisit in audiobook form. The mystery was still pretty well put together and I enjoyed being able to spot the signs that something was amiss along with Murderbot. The only flaw with this book in audio form was that, sometimes, I had difficulty telling when Murderbot was thinking versus when they were speaking - rather key for a character who is very internal and uncomfortable with displaying emotion. I am waiting for the other audiobooks from the library but they are very long waits indeed. I liked this re-read so much that I went back to the start of Wells's Raksura series to read that - by the way, there should be more fic based in those books, they cry out for fannish engagement. 

Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao - This book made me understand how people love anime and manga about fighting giant monsters with giant robot battle suits.  Fast paced and compelling, I was supposed to read to chapter 22 and stop for my book club, but I didn't look up from the book until I checked in and realized I'd hit chapter 28 already. Soooo, I kept going and read it in a day. An excellent piece with a main character who is blisteringly, righteously furious, and willing to burn the world down to right the wrongs being done. It's a rage born out of compassion, and adaptable to new information, but not without mistakes or the capacity for tenderness. I feel like if I knew more about Chinese history I would get more out of it, but I am using it as a stepping off point and you certainly can enjoy it without that background.

Raised By Wolves by astolat - Game of Thrones, Robb Stark/Jaime Lannister - Lately, Astolat has been doing a lot of Ruined Knight Jaime Lannister Meets A Lord Worth Fighting For and I am HERE FOR IT. This fic contains a really excellent observation that I feel like George RR Martin himself might have missed - that the presence of a person called the Kingslayer, who loves Cersei more than anything, is one of the only things from keeping Robert Baratheon from being far more physically violent to his wife. 

What I'm Reading

In Other Lands by Sarah Reese Brenan, Narrator Matthew Lloyd Davies - This is a GREAT audiobook version from the library. I can completely hear Elliot's voice, which is key - he's a character that hinges on being compelling and obnoxious in equal measure. (Do I love obnoxious smart people with a crippling sense of self doubt? Yes. Do I look too hard at why? No. Let me clutch John Adams and Eugenides from the Thief and Elliot Schaeffer to my chest and not think about it.)

I'm still technically holding the audiobook for One Last Stop, but I am realizing that audiobooks are hard for me to take in new stories - when my attention wanders on a book I know, I can just glide with it. Not so in audiobooks. So, I am stalled and perhaps will read the physical book if I am not knitting compulsively in the next few days. 

What I'll Read Next

Five Times Frederick Wentworth Had the Breath Knocked Out of Him On the Ice (and one time he let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding) by AMarguerite  - I have been SAVING  this. 

I have a bunch of audiobooks out of the library, so I suspect one of those are going to come up - Robin Hobb's Assassin's Apprentice, Myke Cole The Armored Saint, Neil Gaiman's Good Omens for a re-read , and Kate Elliott's King's Dragon (Crown of Stars series) - also probably some Holly Black books.

It's late and it has been a long day, so I'm going to make this quick!

I've Read:

Paladin's Grace by T Kingfisher - it's great! Go read it!

I'm Reading:

Peter Darling - Austin Chant - Loving this!
The City We Became - NK Jemisin - Also great!
TV Horror

What I'll Read Next:
Bequeathed from Pale Estates by Author376, I think.
Re-Read the Westing Game
Inheritance Games?

1. What's your favorite candle scent?

Beeswax - I actually do not like the smell of scented candles much!

2. Do you have an artistic or crafty hobby? What is it?

I knit, I used to crochet, I have done a lot of bookbinding and paper crafts in the past.


3. What's one weird way you save money on food?

Mostly by reducing food waste. I make large batches of food when it's on sale, and then freeze a third of it for later. When I finish with the main batch, I'm usually tired of it, so freezing some means I have a few spare meals in the freezer all the time and I don't have to worry about cooking things when I'm tired.

4. Do you collect anything weird or unusual?

I hoard stationery but that isn't that weird. I've got a few more fountain pens than the average person.

5. Do you fear the deep ocean, or does its unknown depths excite you?

I fear the deep like humans before fire feared the dark of night. The depths are not empty, do not go knocking.


Source: https://thefridayfive.dreamwidth.org

What I've Read
The Missing Page by Cat Sebastian - Second in the Page & Sommers series, This is the a little more of a cozy country house mystery, with some deeply tender scenes where two men who are not used to having any kind of permanent affection negotiate how to manage building a life together. And there's a mystery! Solving the disappearance of a young woman some 20 years back, as the final request from a wealthy uncle in his will. It's excellent - highly recommend this but only after reading the first one. The mystery plot will carry you thru without reading the first book, but the interpersonal development of the romantic leads is truly lovely and I think that the first book will give you some joy. Also, there are LOTS of queer people in this book, and characters thinking about how there is always someone queer, in every time and every place - you just have to find them. It's a soft and gentle book, for all that it deals with a central crime. 

Some by Virtue Fall by Alexandra Rowland - THIS is a swashbuckling fast paced book. It's like Alexandre Dumas, with lesbians and theatre instead of noblemen with honor. There's subterfuge! Spies! Trickery! A duel! Honestly, I would watch this movie. The general set up is, in a city not unlike our Shakespeare's but much gayer, theatrical troupes have outlawed men on stage because the different troupes kept fighting each other in the streets. So, of course, the women in the troupes have banded together to prove that they are even worse. I really really loved the main character, who has a giant heart, loves the theatre, and a deeply stupid inability to tell when a pretty girl is jerking her around. 

What I'm Reading
Paladin's Grace by T. Kingfisher - A romance novel? A mystery? A fantasy? It's great - there's a big dumb loyal careful thoughtful kind dude who makes socks and very occasionally goes into berserker rages now that his god is dead. He meets a tiny perfumer who thwarts an assassination attempt. They fight crime! And maybe fuck! 
Sabriel - Garth Nix - Read by Tim Curry - Such a good performance from Curry, it's a treat. 
Meng Yao v The Board of the Homeowner's Association by Ariaste -"Two gremlins, their husbands, and the horrible HOA board. As long as nobody gets arrested for arson or murder, we're gonna call it a win." - This is a deeply charming series, I have no idea how true to the actual source material it is. I love a man who will hack the Amazon device of someone who annoys him so that he can get her kicked off the HOA board so that his beloved husband can grow tomato plants in the backyard. 


What I'll Read Next 
City We Became - NK Jemisin - Book Club!
Iron Widow - Xiran Jay Zhao - Book Club!

Knitting 
My Patch Socks (because Damensocken mit Frontpatch is too much to type) are at the point where I must commit to turning the heels and going on. It's reminding me how little I enjoy stockinette stitch - perling is irksome. But I hope I will reach a point where I have socks Iike, that I can wear, that are also beautiful and strange and cause all around to tremble in awe.

Work in Progress

My current sock project, Scylla in Malabrigo Candome, nears completion - I have picked a fancy slipped stitch form of ribbing to complement the slipped stitch pattern. I'm ignoring the charted instructions with some glee to add extra yarn overs in the rows before the slipped stitches so that the fabric doesn't tug itself out of alignment. While I love the yarn, it's knitting up quite dark and it's a challenge to get the level of contrast I want on the slipped stitches, but I'm very pleased with how soft it is and how well it's knitting up. 

Reading Meme!

What I've Read

I've finished House of Leaves! (Mark Danielewski) This book was a TOME, but a fascinating read. I think it has some fame for being just a very weird book, which it is, and I felt like the ending was more of a fizzle than a bang, but that might be because I read a lot of the Appendices and the Whalestoe Letters as they became relevant to the book, rather than at the end. I really enjoyed it as a deeply impressive act of typesetting - which sounds like faint praise but it's really not. This book weaves the physical reality of the book into the narrative, in some straightforward ways and in some deeply strange ones. It's definitely horror - it left me with a somewhat abiding sense of unease and distrust towards reality around me - and it's a book that cries out for annotation. I really enjoyed watching the book talk to itself and then commenting on that in the extremely large margins. 

I suppose I have a bit of personal myth built around this book.  I have an emailed library notice from 2009 that confirms I ordered it from a public library for pick-up, which means I specifically requested it. I think that I found it first in my college library, but I just can't be sure - the only edition that I have ever seen was published in 2000, and I definitely did not encounter it before high school.   I have tried to pick it up and read it so many times that I eventually bought the book because I knew I would never get thru it in the timeframe of a library check-out. But it's still been ten years and I have a vivid and enduring memory of getting to a very early part of the novel, where the main characters measure a home's interior wall over and over with greater tools and increasing precision, only to confirm again and again that they are encountering an impossible thing - the interior wall is larger than the exterior wall, the house is not interested in the limits of physical space, and they are encountering something that is uninterested in conforming to human perception. And every time! I would get to that part and bail! It was too much!

I suspect that the last calendar year's focus on horror films has really helped me get into the headspace where I could pick this book up and actually finish it. 

I have also finished the much briefer but extremely creepy   Through the Woods by Emily Carroll, a graphic novel that showed up at my house without me ordering it! I have no idea where this came from, though I recognize some of the comics, especially "His Face All Red" from its rounds on Tumblr. The book is excellent and deeply weird. I highly recommend it, but maybe not late at night. 

What I'm Reading

I started and then put down Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames. The premise is quite charming - aging rockers in a fantasy world where a 'band' is not a group of musicians but a team of fighters, and the main character, Clay, is legitimately charming. But I keep bouncing off the random casually misogynists asides. They are not bad as, say, Jim Butcher and his weird fetish for sexy teens, but just... it's very clear that this is a man with no interest in women as characters trying to write his female side characters in a not sexist way, and landing flat. And he's included a fair number of women side characters! He definitely thinks that having his main characters robbed by a team of unsexy women is a plus! 

I'm still delighted by the tone and the concept - it's got an 'inspired by Terry Pratchett' vibe in terms of really exploring the edges of what it means to do "battle of the bands but they have swords" reality, so I'm going to go back to it! But, oof, those little grace notes about ugly prostitutes or pretty women being sell outs are just... not my vibe, my dude. 

I have picked up The Missing Page by Cat Sebastien, I am about 20 pages in and it's already delightful and making me want to read the previous novel again for the sheer joy of being in an excellently written mystery. Also, I love the fact that we immediately get to revisit the Cottage Lesbians from the previous book - it's a soft and gentle comfort to think that in every era of history, we have always found each other. 

I'm also reading a Temeraire novel-length fanfic "Terror in War, Ornament in Peace" by WerewolvesAreReal, in which William Laurence makes some different decisions after the end of the canonical events of Empire of Ivory by Naomi Novik, and we see a lot more of Napoleon Bonaparte. 



What I'll Read Next
I'm going to finish Light from Uncommon Stars after this book club meeting (I hate to read ahead)
Finishing The Missing Page
Some By Virtue Fall will be out next week!
Need to do more SPN Queer Rewatch Reading - TV Horror chapters 3-4
I bought Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's Between Men because I adored reading Epistemology of the Closet 
I'm vaguely interested to see what Mark Danielewski has done since House of Leaves - there are some interesting ebooks of his floating around.
Might hunt down more of Emily Carroll's digital works because her wikipedia pages suggests that some of them are interactive in a way that can't be booked.  

What I've Read

Neon Yang's The Descent of Monsters (Tensorate #3) & The Ascent to Godhood (Tensorate #4)
These quite short novellas are both the most experimental entries in the Tensorate series.  Monsters is a great epistolary detective story with a new character who is outside the central band of rebels established in the previous two novels. Chuwan is an investigator for the Protectorate who's been assigned to discover when went wrong at a site for secret experimental magic, and gradual discovers that she's being asked to hide something. It's just as fucked up as the rest of these books would suggest. Bonus Rider!

Godhood takes off from the end of Monsters, and it looks forwards and backwards at the same time. The scheme that Chuwan uncovered in the last novella has come to fruition but it's in the background of this book - it focuses instead of the rise of the Protector Sanao Hekate and her vicious reform of the crumbling empire she inherited, as viewed by the servant she molded to her service. It's got excellent vibes about mourning someone who betrayed you.

Mo Xiang Tong Xiu's Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi, Vol.1
Ok, this is just a fun book, with goofy characters and a brisk plot and lot and lots of tropey fun. I definitely enjoyed this more than The Untamed on the level of handling the flashbacks. The Untamed seems to have run all the flashbacks together into a 30+ episode story inside their main present-day plot, but that just felt absurdly ponderous to me. This books drops the flashbacks into the present plot in much more engaging small chunks.

The Untamed also suffered for cutting out the overt gayness of the characters in Grandmaster - there are times when characters act and react in ways that only make sense if they are open about the fact that at least one character is overtly gay - leaving that information out makes some interactions incomprehensible. There's a gay hole (heh) in the center of the Untamed, and this book filled it (hehehe!). I really wish I had been able to snag a copy of the unofficial translation before it was taken down. 


What I'm Reading
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
I've picked this book up again - I'm feeling the academic tone of the text, and this is one book that just BEGS you to write in the margins as you read it. Narrative layers on top of layers that just make the whole thing fascinating and interwoven and direly creepy. I am definitely jumping around in the text to read the stuff in the Appendices as they become relevant. 

Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki
For book club - I have just barely started this but people were very enthused with this choice so I'm going to hope for the best.

TV Horror: Investigating the Dark Side of the Small Screen by Stacey Abbott, Lorna Jowett
For the Great Queer Supernatural Rewatch project - this is more an overview text on how horror TV has evolved over time. Not super engaging, but important background!


What I'll Read Next
Through the Woods by Emily Carroll - I received this book from Amazon without a note -  I didn't order it! And it just arrived one day! Graphic novel. 
Sweet Disorder by Rose Lerner (recommended via tiktok's Fat Girls in Fiction reading club) 
The Missing Page by Cat Sebastian (comes out 1/18/2022)
Some by Virtue Fall by Alexandra Rowland (comes out 1/25/2022)