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Wednesday Reading Meme for August 9 2023
Aug. 9th, 2023 03:07 pmWhat I’ve Read:
Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher – Oh, I loved this. I do love T. Kingfisher in general, and this has a great set up: One of three princesses has figured out that something terrible is happening to her sister, and decides to do something about it. Kingfisher’s author’s note says that this book arose out of a single line that stuck in her head “You came to me in your cloak of nettles with the dog made of bone at your side” and that became first the short story Godmother (https://storyspeaker.wordpress.com/2015/01/25/godmother-by-t-kingfisher/) and then later this novel. It’s compelling and sets a march of a determined main character who has a deadline to save her sister by doing several impossible tasks – the first of which is to build a dog out of bones. The cast of characters feel deeply real, even as they are magical, and each sounds like a distinct person. I love this. I love T. Kingfisher. I love it so much I cannot do more than hug the book to my chest and coo at it.
The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi - Hugo 2023 Nominee for Best Novella – Somehow, in a book where each character sounds exactly the same, there is more dialog than actual plot, and all of it (all of it, how can it be all of it) is info dumping. It’s utterly derivative of Pacific Rim and Jurassic Park, and makes a joke of how unoriginal it is by having every character reference this at least once. I wish he would stop hanging lampshades on the tropes and just let them happen! Stop patting yourself on the back for telling your audience where your toolkit came from! Godzilla had something to say with its Kaiju, so did Pacific Rim - you've absorbed the form of the story but not the meaning behind it! It’s competent? It’s definitely a whole book? The reading is technically going quickly in terms of page count, but I am truly honestly not enjoying any of it. It’s like an action movie script - all potentially interesting visuals that some kind effects team will fill in later. Note: I just finished it and while I definitely felt like this book was a chore to read, I respect it as a pandemic project that needed to be fun and joyful bc nothing else in life was good or easy at that time. But I don’t think I’m going to read more of Scalzi - too much of this book was just description of things that are happening.
What I’m Reading:
Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes – Rob Wilkins – 31% - Hugos 2023 Best Related Work Nominee (Delightful!)
Kristeva Powers of Horror – 51%
Dracula – Keeping up with Dracula Daily
The Count of Monte Cristo – 46% - Static
The King in Yellow 25% -static
What I’ll Read Next:
Fun home : a family tragicomic
Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow
The Spare Man
Still Just a Geek: An Annotated Memoir
Owned and need to read: California Bones, Raven Song by IA Ashcroft, Kraken's Sacrifice by Katee Robert, At The Feet of the Sun by Victoria Goddard, Tamryn Eradani's Enchanting Encounters Books 2 and 3, 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, Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle
Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher – Oh, I loved this. I do love T. Kingfisher in general, and this has a great set up: One of three princesses has figured out that something terrible is happening to her sister, and decides to do something about it. Kingfisher’s author’s note says that this book arose out of a single line that stuck in her head “You came to me in your cloak of nettles with the dog made of bone at your side” and that became first the short story Godmother (https://storyspeaker.wordpress.com/2015/01/25/godmother-by-t-kingfisher/) and then later this novel. It’s compelling and sets a march of a determined main character who has a deadline to save her sister by doing several impossible tasks – the first of which is to build a dog out of bones. The cast of characters feel deeply real, even as they are magical, and each sounds like a distinct person. I love this. I love T. Kingfisher. I love it so much I cannot do more than hug the book to my chest and coo at it.
The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi - Hugo 2023 Nominee for Best Novella – Somehow, in a book where each character sounds exactly the same, there is more dialog than actual plot, and all of it (all of it, how can it be all of it) is info dumping. It’s utterly derivative of Pacific Rim and Jurassic Park, and makes a joke of how unoriginal it is by having every character reference this at least once. I wish he would stop hanging lampshades on the tropes and just let them happen! Stop patting yourself on the back for telling your audience where your toolkit came from! Godzilla had something to say with its Kaiju, so did Pacific Rim - you've absorbed the form of the story but not the meaning behind it! It’s competent? It’s definitely a whole book? The reading is technically going quickly in terms of page count, but I am truly honestly not enjoying any of it. It’s like an action movie script - all potentially interesting visuals that some kind effects team will fill in later. Note: I just finished it and while I definitely felt like this book was a chore to read, I respect it as a pandemic project that needed to be fun and joyful bc nothing else in life was good or easy at that time. But I don’t think I’m going to read more of Scalzi - too much of this book was just description of things that are happening.
What I’m Reading:
Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes – Rob Wilkins – 31% - Hugos 2023 Best Related Work Nominee (Delightful!)
Kristeva Powers of Horror – 51%
Dracula – Keeping up with Dracula Daily
The Count of Monte Cristo – 46% - Static
The King in Yellow 25% -static
What I’ll Read Next:
Fun home : a family tragicomic
Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow
The Spare Man
Still Just a Geek: An Annotated Memoir
Owned and need to read: California Bones, Raven Song by IA Ashcroft, Kraken's Sacrifice by Katee Robert, At The Feet of the Sun by Victoria Goddard, Tamryn Eradani's Enchanting Encounters Books 2 and 3, 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, Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle
