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I owe this Wednesday Reading Meme a debt of considerable weight!

Back in January of this year, I bought myself a Reading Journal ( Read more... )

So I have to thank this meme and the other people writing their weekly reading to share - it has kept me from disparaging myself and let me realize that I have indeed not been ideal, even when I was tired and a bit overwhelmed by life.

With no further ado and leaving the lily entirely ungilded!

What I've Read
A Taste of Gold and Iron by Alexandra Rowland - I had pre-ordered this book because I like everything this author writes, and I was not disappointed! Our main character is a prince with an anxiety disorder who has to figure out a plot against his sister's kingdom, while also proving to himself ( and his deliciously upright and decent bodyguard) that he's not actually a villain or a coward. It's very gay, it will make you feel things about the debasement of currency, there's a little bit of magic and there's a lot of focus on fealty as romance. I adored it. And the author wrote a (spoilers! full of spoilers!) coda on AO3 - what spring does with the cherry trees by Ariaste

The Idiot's Array by Ashcroft_Writes (160K) - Star Wars Clone Wars Era - Cad Bane/Obi-Wan Kenobi - After the Rako Hardeen arc, Cad Bane escapes prison and takes Obi-Wan with him in a bid to fight Dooku and prove to Obi-Wan (and perhaps himself) that he's not wrong when he sees the Jedi's dissatisfaction with his life. This has some exceptional poetry in it , and a card game as a recurring motif in their relationship, and fic is really interested in Cad Bane as a character with an interior life and morals that, while really not normal, are still viable. Also, good sex! I enjoyed the hell out of it. I'm going to read the sequel, Homeworld Elegy.

Like a Hinge, Like a Wing by Ultrageekatlarge -(56K) Batman, focused on Tim Drake - "The problem is that Tim’s spent the past month or so slowly getting murdered." This fic loves watching characters deal with trauma with compassion and realism, I'm here for it!

What I'm Reading

Battle of the Linguist Mages by Scotto Moore - Reading club book!
Untamed Vol 2

What I'll Read Next

Homeworld Elegy by Ashcroft_Writes
Two Old Women: An Alaska Legend of Betrayal, Courage, and Survival by Velma Wallis

I feel like I owe myself a more comprehensive write up about the Hugos, so I might do that once I get a breather on it. I liked most of what I read but my goals were lofty and I am reasonably pleased with what I did accomplish.

Current Music: Noah Kahah - Stick Season

What I’ve Read
Strange Adventures by Tom King – Hugo 2022 Nominated – Best Graphic Novel – Eh. This is good, but it’s incredibly Tom King-ish. By which I mean, an American gets involved in a war abroad, lies a lot, and the CIA could probably sue for co-author credit. King’s work is good, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not sure if the Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy angle is really working for me. It does finish out my Best Graphic Novel category, tho!

Tame a Wild Human by Kari Greg – I read this technically-a-book book on some curiousity – got it from the library, and at free, I think the price is fair. It’s unexamined werewolf porn – there’s better on AO3, but it’s not terrible, I just think that the happy ending is, uh, kind of soured by knowing that your “misunderstood” werewolf bf did literally order some torture and murder to occur in front of you? Which might work for some people, or even me, if the writing could pull it off, but uh, nope.

a simple thing by iridan – Star Wars & Mandalorian to season 2, not in continuity with Book of Boba Fett – This 650K work is technically lacking a chapter or two before it's complete, but I read it over the course of about 5 days, riveted. It’s a truly ambitious work that brings in a significant amount of Expanded Universe characters and backstory to flesh out a potential future for both Din Djarin and the Mandalorians as a culture in diaspora. Like. This is magnificent and I have enjoyed every word. I also really appreciated how the author was very careful about thinking thru what elements of fanon v canon v her own headcanon she wanted to include, and I think she did a really good job at that.

“Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather” by Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny Magazine, Mar/Apr 2021) Hugo Nominated for Best Short Story - deliciously creepy, makes interesting use of an online medium, definitely recommend reading on a computer rather than a phone. An interesting blend of modern tech as the medium to explore a theme that is probably more in the realm of fantasy, and I enjoyed how carefully the metanarrative built on itself, slowly, comment by comment, until the story's conclusions arrived in your brain as gently as a needle.

What I’m Reading
Never Say You Can’t Survive by Charlies Jane Anders – Hugo Nominated Best Related Work – How to get Through Hard Times by Making Up Stories – Just started, we’ll see!

Star Wars Republic Commando: Hard Contact by Karen Traviss – Traviss laid the groundwork for a lot of Mandalorian cultural elements, including language, so I’m going to read this as backstory for Mandalorian fic. It’s compelling and I’m appreciating the fact that someone noticed that the Republic grew a slave army to fight their wars, and that’s BAD. Pages, they are turning. I'm not sure whether or not I would find this all so compelling if I didn't have the Star Wars gremlins living rent free in my skull, but they have indeed taken up residence there, so this is pretty great for me.

What I’ll Read Next
Unconquerable Sun by Kate Elliott – Book Group
Short stories and novelettes - Hugo Nominated

What I've Read
Master of Djinn by Djeli Clark (Hugo Nominee - Best Novel) - This is a novel that is potentially a great novella or a great first book in a trilogy and doesn't quite land on either. I loved the detective plot, and when it was wrapped up, I felt like the book lost some drive. I would happily read all the short stories in this universe that the author mentions in passing, but I also really would like it if, say, they were not mentioned so much in this book. All in all, this is very good book - characters, plot, and world are all very solid and interesting, but I think it needed another editorial pass - there were a lot of places where the writing itself felt repetitious or information was given awkwardly. I think I might have enjoyed it more if I had read it *quickly* as opposed to stretching it out over a month for book club. I'll try and re-read it sometime later to see.

This closes out my Hugos Best Novel Nominee category for 2022! My hopes are for She Who Became the Sun to win, as it has the most "punch you in the face" ending, or Light from Uncommon Stars, which I think did fascinating things with genre expectations and made me starvingly hungry for donuts.

Monsters in the Closet - Harry Benshoff - At long last, I have finished reading this book and I think it did a few things really well. The trends in film and the summation of history for each chapter were incredibly helpful - I recommend this book as a queer historical text as well as a book for monster movie aficionados. However, I think towards the end, Benshoff stays in the real of gay and lesbian cinema, while I am trying to get more into queer theory, and those are not quite the same thing. Very solid, highly recommend.

What I'm Reading
I have been reading a lot of Star Wars fic, with a focus on Mandalorians, clone troopers, and the odd pockets of calm that exist outside the plots of the films. A lot of it is shorter and goofier fic, so I'm not going to log it for novel-reading reasons.

I will however, recommend particular authors - SPQR and Blackkat are both writing excellent fic in this space and I have enjoyed a huge amount of it.

a simple thing by iridan - Star Wars: the Mandalorian (not in continuity with Book of Boba Fett) Author Summary - Boba Fett likes to be in control. Din Djarin feels more out of control with every passing day. Giving control over to Boba would make both of them happy. Din just doesn't understand why that has to be so complicated.
I am maybe ten chapters in, it's got 50 planned chapters and 46 up to this moment. It's 670,000 words now and I am in love.

Minor gripe - I encountered the Star Wars Expanded Universe in the form of books about Luke Skywalker's academy on Yavin 4, where he trained his niblings as well as Jedi students from all around the galaxy. I'm not calling it Legends now. I get that there's a Disnified continuity that is in canon with the films, but I don't care - I grew up with comic books having multiple canons that got revamped every five years. I can handle keeping two things in my head at the same time - but I will not call it Legends.

What I'll Read Next
Strange Adventures -Tom King (Hugo Best Graphic Novel nominee)
Never Say You Can't Survive - Charlie Jane Anders (Hugo - Best related work)
Unconquerable Sun - Kate Elliott (book Club)
Republic Commando - Karen Traviss (Star Wars Mandalorian stuff)

What I've Read

His Secret Illuminations and His Sacred Incantations - I have finished a two-book series by Scarlett Gale (aka, ScarlettStorm on AO3) and I was delighted by it - warm and sweet and very horny, with a surprisingly significant subplot on overcoming religious indoctrination and liberating others as you go. Totally not interested in world building, the plot started when Scarlett's friend was lamenting the lack of romance novels where the sheltered young man gets swept off his feet by a magnificent warrior woman. Warm and tender femdom! Lucian is raised in an abbey where he has learned illumination, healing magic, and to fear his abbot as much as he loves his god. What happens when he sent out into the world for the first time with a devastatingly gorgeous She-Wolf to hunt down stolen manuscripts? I paid actually money for these and I am happy I did!

What I'm Reading
Lore Olympus, Vol 1 (Hugo Nominee for Best Graphic Novel) - Rachel Smythe - a beautiful webcomic turned into a collected graphic novel, nominally about the Greek pantheon with a focus on a budding romance between Persephone and Hades.

-Good so far: the art is very striking - simple and gorgeously colorful with a real warmth and personality to it. I keep hitting panels that I would happily turn into a framed piece on my wall, and Smythe is deft in her communication of character and movement. I find most of the characters goofy caricatures loosely inspired by the Greek myths in a modern setting and that's fun.
-Bad (for me): I have some reservations about stories that re-work the Hades and Persephone myth into a romance against an overbearing Demeter - it feels like It's Been Done a Lot recently, particularly in stuff for a younger audience. I'm finding myself longing for stories that allow people to have fucked up marriages without being bad people, or allow Demeter to be in the right, or.... something other than very sweet romance. Gods are not meant to be inspirational in Greek myth.
-Solution: This is a personal hang-up, not something the work itself is responsible for. I'm mentally trying the trick I do when """New England""" appears in TV shows, and reminding myself that this is actually Vancouver playing Mount Olympus. It's not fair to judge a book for being a different story than you want - you have to judge it on the book it's trying to be.

Strange Love by Ann Aguirre - This is some fun and self indulgent porn. The writing is forgivable. The main couple are charming and awkward and once I got past the absurd conceit to the part where they get to know each other, I'm having a good time.

A Master of Djinn - (Hugo Nominee - Best Novel) P Djeli Clark - Still reading, still good, due for book club next Wednesday. Still a solid genre fantasy detective story.

Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film - Harry M. Benshoff -I have been reading this with a friend chapter by chapter and I should finish this weekend in time for our discussion. Finally hit the chapters that Benshoff remembers firsthand (rather than pre-dating him) and I think there's still some really good stuff here! Let me know if you'd like me to write in more detail about this - I think it's doing a wonderful job of placing horror films in their cultural context around queer life in the US.

I finally hit my first hard Nope on the Hugos reading list - DIE (vol. 4) by Kieron Gillen is both too far along in the series to make any sense without first reading the other volumes, and just unpleasant enough that I am calling it quits. So I will concede that I must have a gap in my Best Graphic Novel category.

What I'll Read Next

(This section got a bit hefty, huh.)

Hugos Death Race Items - I have nearly all the short fiction to read - Best Novelette and Best Short Story, as well as the Related Works Category (aka, the nonfiction section) - so I'll work on Never Say You Can't Survive by Charlie Jane Anders, and finish up the Graphic Novel category with Strange Adventures by Tom King. I have read his prior work on Batman, so I think he's a reasonably skilled writer whose take on Bane was deeply boring. We'll see what this turns up.

I have purchased but not read the second volume of Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi by Mò Xiāng Tóng Xiù, so I hope I can get into that without having to go re-read the whole first novel over. I have returned to my watching of the TV adaptation, The Untamed on Netflix, so I am at least going to have a sense of the plot. But the novel is really required to understand the show - they took out all the actually explicit mentions of queerness so some things simply don't make sense.

I have California Bones by Greg Van Eekhout from the library, on the recommendation of Sholio, who seemed delighted by it and has some fun things to say about the series. (I haven't read beyond the first enthusiastic rec post, so I remain only lightly spoiled.)

I recently purchased Manhunt, after watching a long video essay on transmisogyny and how the book uses horror in some interesting ways - and then I found out that Nicole Cliffe is dating the author? Good for her.

Book club is probably going to look at A Prayer for Crown-Shy and/or Record of a Spaceborn Few for the next book so I went ahead and bought those because I love Becky Chambers

And just because I have been really enjoying the Hugos Death Race project, I have decided to make up a spreadsheet to track the single-work nominees for the 2022 World Fantasy Awards- which gives me a slightly different list of books to read! (List is here- https://www.tor.com/2022/07/20/announcing-the-2022-world-fantasy-award-finalists-2/)

What I've Read
The Dragon's Bride by Katee Robert - It's delightful smut about a heroine fucking a humanoid dragon and finding true love. It's cute and fun and moderately smutty.

I want to sing the praises of Catherynne Valente again - after reading The Past is Red (and conning my book club into reading it even tho we are normally strictly novel-based), I was really impressed with her ability to make a sentence feel like a poem, meaning stuffed into each word in a compact sting. I read her short story, "The Sin of America" last week and holy fuck, this is an excellent piece to render the creeping self indulgent malaise on my country's soul palpable. Highly recommend.

What I'm Reading
I enjoyed Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry so much that I'm actually semi reading Unnatural Magic by CM Waggoner due to enjoying her other book. However, I fell asleep listening to the audiobook sometime last week and I have not kept track of the characters or plot and I'm honestly considering starting over. Not a resounding recommendation for my skills as a reader!

Monsters in the Closet remains a great book for anyone who likes to do a little learning about history while also reading about subversively queer monster movies. I'm on chapter three, about the repressions of the 50's, and the details about HUAC's impact on queer people working in government were upsettingly timely. It's great stuff and I need to watch Ghost Ship before the end of the week for my little discussion group.

What I'll Read Next
Many Hugo Nominees are in my reading future! I have bamboozled my book club into reading A Master of Djinn for our next month's book so I'm putting that on my back burner. We've got a novella, Sisters of the Vast Black, to read between then and now, tho I might give that a skip because I don't get to join the conversation for that week (time zones). I have one more novel to read for the Hugos, She Who Became the Sun, which I hope to get into over the vacation. I just got Never Say You Can't Survive by Charlie Jane Anders from the library so I might make that my starting foray into the Best Related Work category

What I've Read
The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry by C.M. Waggoner (Book Club ) This is a solidly plotted story in a well-built world. I felt like there was a potential for either a little more in the third act for the criminal plot, but one of the things I appreciated about this book was that the protagonist react to horrible violence with actual trauma - so I'm not sad it ended when it did. A book that is very interested in class and in violence done by economics, and also how necromancy can be used to make drugs. Trans character! Cultural normative queer relationships!

Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Hugos 2022 Nominee for Best Novella) - I really like the concept of this book! One character thinks their setting is a high fantasy and they are seeking help from a wizard. One character thinks he's an anthropologist abandoned on a distant human colony world that fell back into feudalism. Delightfully, neither is completely right in their interpretations of the world that they are seeing! Very much a book that could be put into conversation with The Thing (1982) in terms of questions about how to face a future where your death is assured. Not bleak, tho.

What I'm Reading
Monstress, Vol. 6: The Vow by Marjorie M. Liu with Sana Takeda (Illustrator) (Hugos 2022 Nominee for Best Graphic Story or Comic) - I am so lost in the book. I almost cut out this category because so many of these are collections from an ongoing story, and I definitely feel like I walked halfway into Dracula and needed to ask who Van Helsing is. I'm going to dig into a wiki and see if I can figure this out any better. But I kind of think that the main character might have started a war.

Monsters in the Closet by Harry Benshoff - An ongoing and excellent nonfiction entry into the Great Queer Supernatural Rewatch Project. I'm on Chapter 2 this week, "Shock Treatment: Curing the monster queer during World War II" and it's making me think I need to watch Dracula's Daughter.

What I'll Read Next
A Master of Djinn, Far Sector, Something in the Blood, Once and Future: Parliament of Magpies, Die: Bleed, Bedlam Stacks, Space Opera, For the Wolf, Golden Age .... look, I just got a lot of books out from the library.
Books I Bought
- Seeing Like an Activist, How to Survive A Plague, Make Sew and Mend

I confess I am slightly discouraged - I have not made a lot of progress on my reading in the last few weeks (life got busy). But we prevail! We overcome!

What I've Read
I finished the Galaxy and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers - which I kind of noted in my last post. But still.

The Four Profound Weaves by RB Lemberg - lovely and refreshing, but it kind of felt like a short story that went on too long, or a novel that needed more space. I loved it, and it landed in a wonderfully unsettling place for me. Highly recommend.

What I'm Reading

Long term reads - Dracula Daily - it's stupidly fun to get a little email update on Jonathan Harker's journal!

And, also Monsters in the Closet by Harry Benshoff - this book is proving surprisingly timely, particularly as an example of the ways heteronormative society, in particular the Hays Code era of Hollywood, enacts violence on kind of sex or sexuality that they deemed "perverse" - which included monsters that played hard on themes of race, queerness, nonprocreative sex, sexual violence, and other "perversions." By virtue of not fitting a very narrow white supremacist patriarchal model of "normal," benign difference among people was lumped in with actual crimes and all painted with the same condemnation. It's a good thing to keep in mind as the discussion of why people who want to fight the upcoming overturning of Roe v. Wade have to actually wrap their minds around the communities impacted by ableism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, anti-fat bias, and Christian supremacy when they advocate for abortion access - these things all play into each other.

The Past is Red by Catherynne M. Valente - A Hugo Best Novella Nominee that somehow feels like its Les Miserables. So much HAPPENS, and I have been stymied in reading it because I get into one chapter and have to rearrange everything I knew from the last chapters. Time jumps! Social upheaval! Outcasts and outsiders! The Great Pacific Garbage Patch! It's all a lot.

What I'll Read Next
Truly no clue. None at all. Hugo Nominees! Elder Race , the Bedlam Stacks, For the Wolf, Nightmare Alley, a book of short stories by Naomi Novik/Astolat - it's all on my desk. Not to mention the other things I have out from the library as books. We'll see how I go.

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