Entries tagged with bujold

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Wednesday Reading Meme for Sept 4 2024

I have read 69 books for this year – nice.

What I’ve Read:

A Civil Campaign – Lois McMaster Bujold - audiobook narrator Grover Gardner (who did an absolutely fantastic job!) This books is a comedy of manners and politics on Barrayar that is totally comprehensible if you pick it up solo, and also benefits tremendously from having read the whole Vorkosigan series. Miles Vorkosigan is trying to woo a brilliant, beautiful, honorable woman he met in a previous book, and he’s an absolute idiot about it until he comes fucks up big and has to come clean. It contains an amazing Dinner Party From Hell scene that ends in the worst proposal possible, and also a political intrigue where a public proposal deflates a REALLY stupid political argument made by a self important bigot. Ekaterin is a wonderful character to visit with, and Bujold easily makes her the equal of her series protagonist, Miles, by not attempting to make her blind to his faults, but vividly aware of them.

This book is one of Those Books for me – they show up early in your life, make an impression, and then never really leave you. In those wild pre-internet days, this was the first book I read by Bujold because a relative had it, and I did not appreciate it properly because I was a callow child (not even a callow youth). So reading this book is always an exercise in re-reading it and recalling who I was at the time. It definitely influenced my ideas on romance (largely for the good) and had a real inoculating effect against the fatphobia of the era I grew up in. (It’s remarked that more than one male character appreciates a “woman who can survive a minor famine” and describes women as being gorgeously plump.)

What I’m Reading

Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky – 55% or so – I started reading this on Monday and it’s really fun. The spiders have spaceships now and they are doing diplomacy with the octopuses, who also have spaceships. Tchaikovsky set up a universe where Earth was doing some terraforming in the last book and then Bad Disruptive Things Happened so that, like the Vorkosigan Saga, different cultures had a chance to develop in isolation and acquire a unique flavor to their planets. I’m really enjoying all the thought going into the translation difficulties among enemies and allies in this book. Tchaikovsky, being a bug guy, really put effort into making his alien cultures alien, even tho most of them are in fact derived from earth creatures so far -but a spider or an octopus is REALLY alien to a human, and the care and interest he has in them shows a great deal. I did not think I would at some point think, Man, I miss how normal and comprehensible spider minds were. :D

Back Burner
Ash: A Secret History –
Paladin’s Grace
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
The Two Towers
The Count of Monte Cristo
The Lottery and Other Stories
The Power Broken – Audiobook #2
Mo Dao Zu Shi vol 5
It Came from the Closet

What I’ll Read Next
Murderbot #5 -Network Event – Xing Book Club
She Who Became the Sun – Xing book club -reread so that I can read the sequel

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Reading Meme for Feb 1 2023

What I've Read

Gideon the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir - Oh, man, the last third of this book is just payoff after payoff - stuff that I was certain was going to be left to be resolved in the next book was just laid out in front of your eyes and it worked so damned well. This was my second attempt to read this book - the first time, just after it came out, I made charts and tried to keep track of all the characters and figure out the mystery of the whole thing, well, I had some trouble. The second time around had a much better result when I just let the whole thing wash over me. I really enjoyed this book and I'm starting on the next one immediately.

Penric's Fox - Lois McMaster Bujold - I am still really enjoying this series, which are short mysteries set in the Chalion universe with a metaphysical 'odd couple'- a young human man with no background in magic is host of a centuries-old demon who has the memories and personalities of nine previous women hosts as part of her constituent parts. They fight crime! It's also got touches of the kind of settled affection that I tend to associate with long-married couples who still adore each other. Penric gets roped into solving murders that are short and clear, with a cast of interesting recurring characters and a boss who is a badass woman in her 70s. The mysteries are a bit straightforward but explore some of the interesting edge cases of how magic in their world works. Fun palette cleansing reads. (I which Bujold had a little more eye for queer relationships in her books but what she does provide is emotionally solid, so, meh.)

I'm Not As Think As You Drunk I Am - Mardiaz173 - https://archiveofourown.org/works/33021898 - Clark Kent/ Bruce Wayne - DC comics universe - This was just a nice short little fic where Superman wants desperately to date Batman, but Bruce Wayne keeps showing Clark a side of himself that few people get to see. Which will our hero choose? (I read this on the recommendation of the podcast Clio/Mireille for their Sept 2022 episode on Superman/Batman Identity Porn fic.) It is a fun fic and a charming podcast.

Living With a Tiger by x_los - https://archiveofourown.org/works/33488392 - 人渣反派自救系统 - 墨香铜臭 | The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù - Original Luò Bīnghé/Shěn Yuán, post Post-Bingge vs. Bingmei Extra - I am delving at last into the fic for the Scum Villain fandom, and I love the set-up on this. X_los wrote an AU that really delves into a grey version of the characters from the canon, and I really enjoyed it. (If you don't care to read the canon, this is still mostly intelligible on its own.) The tags are accurate.

What I'm Reading

Harrow the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir has got her hooks in my soul. Like with Gideon the Ninth, I was spoiled by tumblr osmosis for some elements of this book, but I honestly don't think it matters! Starts basically directly after Gideon the Ninth and I am glad I followed my friend's recommendation to start this book immediately upon finishing Gideon, as my poor memory would not have helped with understanding this book. I find these books do very little explicit handholding of like, "Character realized that this new development related back to This Setup from Chapter 2" and yet Muir does indeed set up enough reminders to guide you back to the points you need to recall for the payoff to be satisfying.

What I'll Read Next
Phoenix Extravagant - Yun Ha Lee - Book Club
The Uncle's Story - Witi Ihimaera - The library wants this back and I don't want to give it back! I might end up having to buy more of the Ihimaera books I want to read - local libraries are NOT great about having these around, and I am slow.
The Good Lord Bird

Library books
Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi
A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys
Unnamed Midwife (whole series)

Owned and need to read: Frey Marske's A Restless Truth, and Susanna 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

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Reading Meme for Jan 4 2023

What I've Read

The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System ( Ren Zha Fanpai Zijiu Xitong) Vol. 3 by Mò Xiāng Tóng Xiù with Faelicy (Translator) - This seems to have been the end of the real arc of the story, and it landed in a good and very tropey place.

if you were a mythical thing by Kangofu_CB - MCU and Marvel Comics (Hawkeye, mostly) - 74K - https://archiveofourown.org/works/42952029 - Bucky/Clint - This is pretty cute and fluffy. Werewolf au without omegaverse elements. Clint Barton, not a superhero, gets in trouble with the Ukrainian mob and flees to a small town where everyone is really, really nice and people keep sniffing him? The werewolf element is cute - I vaguely wanted a little more angst because I love angst related to keeping secrets and this fic was just like, Nah, that's not what we're here for.

Penric's Demon by Lois McMaster Bujold - I am legitimately annoyed by how long this took me to read! I bought this book two years ago and just looked at in my stack and didn't read it! But someone on DW read it recently, mentioned that the dynamic between Penric and the demon that inadvertently comes to share his body is really similar to Eddie Brock and the Venom symbiote, and welp, here I am, I love this and I bought the next four novellas because my library system doesn't have them all as ebooks. (It was a gift card to Barnes and Noble and I want Lois to have some walkin' around money.)

A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers - Also a book that I had been sitting on. The first book with these characters, A Psalm for the Wild-Build, came at a deeply needful time and was a great read for the book club. I have a vivid memory from the summer of 2021 of sitting on the back porch in the sun and feeling like the world wasn't doomed. I will love Becky Chambers forever for that book, and this one is a worthy successor. It's calm and introspective and gentle with the foibles of sentient minds.

What I'm Reading

let the river run by Astolat - A Robb/Jaime/Brienne fic about finding a man worth fighting for. This is literally just pure fealty fic.

The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System (Ren Zha Fanpai Zijiu Xitong) Vol. 4 by Mò Xiāng Tóng Xiù with Faelicy (Translator) - I think this is a collection of short stories with main and side characters from the main series of this. It's goofy and fun.

The World We Make by NK Jemisin (Great Cities 2) - I love this unabashedly so far.

Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction and Film by Lee Clark Mitchell - slightly on hold
2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson - Slowly

What I'll Read Next
Gideon the Ninth

Library books in the house:
Tiger's Daughter - K Arsenault Rivera - Will abandon, library called it back
The Book of the Unnamed Midwife - Meg Elison
The Uncle's Story - Witi Ihimaera - information I gathered from elsewhere suggests this is even gayer than I thought

Owned and need to read: Frey Marske's A Restless Truth, and Susanna 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.

Current Location: the halls of memory

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Reflections on 2018 - Statistics!

I suppose this a little obligatory, but overall, a worthwhile task.

Fannish!
Fanworks Created: 0. As usual, I lurk much more than I write.

Comments Left: Who knows! But I have at least 80 replies in my AO3 inbox from the last year, and those are uniformly replies to comments I have left on other people'e work, so at least 80 and probably a good bit more than that. (Does anyone know of a way I can see comments I left to other people in one location on AO3? That would be very useful.)

Fanfic Read: Approximately 1,340 works, based on my AO3 history page. (The math: 20 entries per page in my History tab on AO3, had to go back to page 67 to hit Jan 2018) That's assuming I didn't read anything that was hosted outside AO3, that none of those are re-reads (oho, a mistake that would be!) and that I actually read everything I clicked on. I have a number of open tabs that would put the lie to that last assertion, so let's just say it all comes out in the wash.

Bookmarks Created: 200-ish, again based on that entries-per-page-AO3 math. Which is a pretty good ratio of good fic! One thing I like about reading on AO3, the fact that my History saves things I have looked at frees me up to use my Bookmarks to save the things I really want to rec or read again - I don't bookmark things that I just felt okay about. By far the largest fandom of growth was Venom - that tag went from being a desert to a gooey alien oasis.

Non-Fannish!

Knitting: According to my Ravelry, I have completed at least 11 Knitted Objects in 2018! My most common project were socks - at least four pairs that I have documented, and I am skeptical if I didn't do more this year. But it's hard to remember when I started things and when I finished them. The second most common project, and by far the largest, were two shawls, both in a pattern called Rosetta Tharpe, which I liked so much when I made one for a friend, I had to make one for myself! I also made my first sweater, so for good or for ill, I appear to have crossed the line into being a real knitter.

(This review has made me realize that my Ravelry projects history has some fairly major gaps in it - there was a large project from 2017, a piecework blanket, that took months but never actually got onto my Ravelry page at all.)

What I Have Been Reading:
Pro-Fic : CryoBurn by Lois McMaster Bujold - a wonderful book in the post-Memory half of the Vorkosigan Saga. An excellent example of "point Miles at something and watch what happens." While the Vorkosigan Saga's books are each episodic with character development that links the books thematically and make them wonderful, I think that this book should be read only after you've read Shards of Honor, Barrayar, (maybe also The Vor Game), and then Memory, if not also Komarr and a Civil Campaign. It's not necessary to understand the main plot at all, and you can absolutely read this book in any order you like, but there are some elements of character dynamics that mean so much more now that I have the full context for them, that I really suggest just letting this series run your life for a little bit.

Fanfic
Classic: Early Returns by rageprufrock - Inception - Reporter AU - Author Summary: Thinking that a reporter genuinely likes you is pretty much on par with feeling like you really are special to that stripper.
Why I love it: This features honestly one of the most deeply humiliating scenes that I have ever even imagined in a fic - having a one-night-stand who shows up at your job the next day as the new hire, and he does not recognize you or notice that you're the person he slept with the night before. For MONTHS. aaaaaaaaaaarg it's good writing.

New: Xenoethnography by Therrae (Dasha_mte) - Transformers - Outsider POV - Author Summary: It also didn’t help that the average glyph message was only three characters long, used no articles or prepositions, and usually had no verbs. What was the proper response to:: Curiosity; Sensation of great speed? Was it a question? A comparison? Why, after a brief visit by National Security Director Mearing, did four different ‘Bots send:: Emphasis; overlapping? Why was a particularly bad joke by Bulkhead derided as ::Undercharged when there were actual glyphs for Not funny and Humor fail? How did any of that work?
Why I love it: OPTIMUS PRIME HIRES AN ANTHROPOLOGIST TO HELP THE AUTOBOTS DO CULTURAL EXCHANGE WITH THE HUMANS. The aliens are alien! The humans are well intentioned and aware of their own biases and still are influenced by them. Incomplete series, but it's 150K so far, so you're good for a while.