Last Reading Wednesday (now Thursday) of 2014

I'm posting this now, because I want to do some of the various year-in-books memes I've seen floating around and it's quite hard to do that if my last Reading Wednesday post was in mid-November. I think that's all the books I've read since then, but I might be wrong and have missed one. In case, heh, it couldn't have been that good, could it?

With cuts! Because I remember how to do those and this entry is hella fucking long. Like 3k+. Because I TL;DR like it's my job when it comes to books.


What did you finish reading? (aka what did you finish before Dec 31 2014?)

Crimson Angel, by Barbara Hambly: So I still haven't figured out what The Right Answer TM to the ethical dilemna posed in the book is (because there kind of isn't one) and it is still fucking with my head, because I apparently have massive issues re: ethics in medicine. That aside, it was a really good book and y'all should read it. It really stuck with me.

The Demigod Files , by Rick Riordan:( I liked it )

Storykiller, by Kelly Thompson:( It was okay )

(*I will apparently never get over the fact that in the English version of the Arthurian myth, Morgane is the bad guy. What the hell are y'all smoking?)


Les Ogres-Dieux: Petit, by Hubert and Gatignol: French comic that I greatly enjoyed. It's billed as Les Ogres-Dieux, T01: Petit in a lot of online places, but as far as I know there's no plan for a sequel. (Would be hard to do, given the ending.) The best way to describe it is "Gothic". Not in the Japanese fashion sense, or the architectural sense (although, by moments...), but in the literary sense. I was greatly reminded, while I was reading it, of "Fall of the House of Usher". The art is all in shades of greay, but mostly in stark black and white and the various sizes of different things and people are very well transcribed; it's full of tiny details and some of the panelling is breathtaking. I also really like the chapter separation which are plain text and explain what's up with the family of the Ogres: why they're so much smaller now than they used to be (inbreeding, because gothic, remember?), how they came to be the way they are (they eat people! Gothic!) and mostly how they're one completely fucked up breeding ground for neuroses, delusions of grandeur and madness (GOTHIC!). It's also a reflection on human nature and nurture vs nature and all that good stuff. It's not for the faint of heart, though, because it is gothic and contains a vast array of disturbing things: cannibalism, sexual assault, normalised incest, graphic violence, institutionalised breeding of humans as cattle, graphic murder, etc. It's very in line with a lot of the horror commonly found in gothic literature, is what I mean.

Basically: it's very gothic, but it's damn good gothic. It's delightfully creepy and baroque; I would heartily reccomend it to anyone for who the words "gothic graphic novel" sound right up their alley, because it's gonna be. (Also, gothic no longer looks like a word.)


City of Stairs, by Robert Jackson Bennett:( I loved it )

Stranger, by Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith:( I wanted to like more than I did )

What are you reading now? (aka what have you read since Jan 01 2015?)

I'll talk about all of these next week, for ease of tallying and I am making the arbitrary decision of counting all of House of Mystery (2008) as having been read in 2015, because if it wasn't, then certainly most of it was.

Finished: Stained Glass Monsters, House of Mystery (2008)

Still reading: Les Fleurs du Mal, Murder Most Witchy, The Art of War, Darshan, The Kick-Ass Writer, La véritable histoire de Carthage et de Hannibal, Gustav Adolf Mossa: L'oeuvre symboliste: 1903-1918


What are you reading next? (aka the to-read list)

A to-read list that is properly formatted, so I don't forget about books I wanted to read! Now updated with books I should have put on it a long time ago AND with recent recs I got.

Books that I have already: Prisoner (Echo's Wolf, Book 1) (Werewolf Marines 2) by Lia Silver, Darkness Over Cannae by Jenny Dolfen, Taking Stock by Scott Bartlett (yuleswap book 1), February by Lisa Moore (yuleswap book 2), The Demigod Diaries by Rick Riordan, The Daylight War by Peter V. Brett

Books that are out and that I haven't got: Clariel: The Lost Abhorsen, by Garth Nix, Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie, Melting Stones and Battle Magic by Tamora Pierce, The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay, The Beginning Place by Ursula Le Guin (both recs by egelantier), Seraphina by Rachel Hartman, The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex, The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison (all three recs by scintilla10 in my fandom stocking), Hostage by Sherwood Smith and Rachel Manija Brown, the last two books of Kate Eliott's Spiritwalker trilogy and whatever's out of the Craft Sequence series.

Books that aren't out yet (and when they're out): The Sword of Summer by Rick Riordan (Autumn 2015), Benjamin January #14 by Barbara Hambly (no idea), Empire Ascendant by Kameron Hurley (Summer 2015? Still unsure if I'm even going to be reading this one), the Tris book by Tamora Pierce (2015), whatever Jenny Dolfen's next project is (THAT ART!) and probably Robert Jackson Bennett's next book.

I've also been thinking about doing a reread of Les mondes d'Ewilan (and assorted series) and/or (re)read the Tara Duncan series.

HI MY NAME IS DHAMPYRESA AND I LIKE TO TALK ABOUT BOOKS.

Fandom snowflake Day 8

Day 8

In your own space, create a love meme for yourself. Let people tell you how amazing and awesome and loveable you really are. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so. Surf the comments and find people to give love to.

An offer + Fandom Snowflake 9

Okay, so I'll be going to the Louvre on Sunday to see the exhibit on Medieval Morocco and then hit up the permanent collection. I've several things I want to see, but that won't take me all day, so I'm offering to, while I'm out there, check out anything y'all might want me to check out. I can't guarantee anything, but I will at least try to take pictures of relevant things, so if you want me to take some pictures of, idk, musical instruments of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom, I can do that.

Speaking of the Louvre, I've now acquired both seasons of HBO's Rome, so I'll be watching that in future. (The link, if you're wondering, is that I was at a conference at the Louvre last July that the conference-er recced Rome to the whole room, so yeah.)






Day 9
In your own space, talk about what surprises you about fandom. It could be a pairing or fandom you never thought you'd like. A fanwork type you never knew existed. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

So! Fandom!

Fandom is the reason I have Opinions on how to translate Old English's "Hwæt!" (it's "So!", unless you're doing a Surfer's translation of Beowulf, in which case it's "Dude!").

More seriously, the thing that amazes me about fandom even after all this time (about 10 years, now, even with most of them as a lurker, that's a long time) is that fandom thinks that I'm okay, that I'm not strange or weird or at least no more than anyone else and that I might have something worthwhile to contribute. In fandom I can be me, without fear of shame or ridicule. (Oh yeah, I had a happy childhood.)

I'll stop here (because nobody wants to read about how fandom saved my life), but I want all of you to know that you're some the kindest, bravest, smartest, most amazing and creative people I know. Y'all are just so so wonderful and I feel so honoured to know you. Thank you.

Okay! On a slightly less dramatic note, something that surprises me about fandom is that there is no end to what can be a fandom, from books to movies to comics to TV shows to songs to ads to paintings to games to poems to History to anything, anything at all, really.  And tat anything can be a fanwork, too: I've read fic and seen vids and listened to filk and read fancomics and swooned at fanart and did some RP and seen fanpoems and seen coplay and listened to audiofic and and and!

Fandom is amazing and honestly, it'd be easier to answer what doesn't surprise me about fandom.

Don't get me wrong, I know fandom has some bad spots (I was in Hetalia fandom, how could I not), but so far for me the good has, overall, vastly outweighted the bad and that's a surprise in itself.