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kitewithfish: circulate that flask (john constantine needs a drink)
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.


kitewithfish: You are the warm rock that my happy lizard self lies upon. (lizardhappy;somethingpositive;)
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/) 

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