Long time no reading Wednesday
Apr. 29th, 2015 09:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dhampyresaOkay, before I dive right into "dhampyresa goes tl;dr about books", I have a question to ask. I've been thinking that I'm never going to get around to writing the remaining posts from the December talking meme (everything except the first five) if I don't impose some kind of external structure on it/myself. These posts are likely to be 1k+ words, because I have thoughts and feelings and talk a lot. My question is:
If I were to write a weekly meta(-ish) kind of post, which day would you rather I do it on?
By the by, if anyone has anything else they want me to talk about, feel free to ask!
Okay, onto "dhampyresa talks too much about books".
What did you finish reading
Several things, actually! Probably not as much as I could have given that it's been a month since I did one of these, but more than I expected, given that life interferred.
Le Visage de l'Ombre, by Erik L'Homme: I finished this book right after posting the previous reading meme, so it's been a while I forgot most of what I had to say.
I am now 100% convinced that these books would have worked a lot better as one book with a slightly older target audience.
My memories of the books as far as actual events went was accurate, but I wish I hadn't re-read this trilogy. I remember this trilogy being one the books that really made an impression on me as a child (I wanted to be Ambre when I grew up) and it is filled of tropes I still love, but alas the execution is not as good as I remember it being.
Reading bingo-wise, I'm counting this as "book with antonyms in the title" (random card), given that shadows don't typically have faces.
Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett: THIS BOOK. THIS FUCKING BOOK. I should not have read this book so close on the heels of Pratchett's death, because I was a crying mess at several points. This is the book where "GNU" and "Alive in the overhead" come from, you see and I 'd forgotten that. I cried so much, but it was also very cathartic. I pulled a lot of quotes from this book and as soon as I can actually access them, I will post them. (Pratchett has such an amazing way with words and is such a keen observer of human nature. Never before have I read a book that got engineers the way this one does.)
This is the book I used to get my dad into Discworld. It felt fitting to read it.
Reading bingo: "book your parent loves" (random card).
Gustav Adolf Mossa: L'oeuvre symboliste: 1903-1918 (exposition catalogue for a 1992 exposition at the Pavillon des Arts): YES YOU READ THAT RIGHT I FINISHED THIS That was a such a relief This book is essentially 'Inception into the brain of a mysogynist', but don't take my word for it. The book has an afterword in English and I typed up the relevant quote
It's a shame, actually, because I kind of like the art style, at times. I do think I learned a handful of things about mixing mediums when doing art, so reading the book wasn't a total loss.
Here are a handful of pictures I did like, in the best quality I could find on the internet.
Yes, those are dead people. This is very far from the only time Mossa explicitly links female sexuality to dead people.
Reading bingo: "book you once started but did not finish" (hard mode of "book on farthest shelf/oldest ebook") (random card).
Ekhö Monde Miroir, 3: Hollywood Boulevard, by Arleston (scénario) and Alessandro Barbucci (art): This is a French comic book that opens with the line "Marc Antoine est mort" which I felt was A Sign (Roman! Spotted in the wild!). I've been reading Ekhö when it shows up at the library and I think this is my favourite so far. I enjoyed the plot, the art was still good, the worldbuilding took a bit of a backseat but I didn't mind. There's less female fanservice and more male fanservice, which made it more balanced than the previous two books. It even deals with the consent issues inherent to having two people have sex when one of them is possessing someone else's body . It doesn't deal with it much, but it does deal with it some. (Fourmille calls it 'rape', to which Yuri implies he was also raped, which is somewhat coeherent with Norma-possessing-Fourmille forcing herself on him that we saw earlier, an dthen the issues never shows up again, so IDK? It is supposed to be a light-hearted kind of book, but I was surprised that it dealt with it at all.) All the jokes about 1950s/60s Hollywood are also pretty funny. I think my favourite was the journalist asking King Kong, "Mr Kong, wasn't playing naked embarassing?"
Reading bingo: "book where main male and female don't fall in love" (serious card).
The Broken Forest, by Megan Derr: I thought this was brilliant and would gladly read a lot more about these characters and/or in this universe! The way the various fairytales were mixed and changed and integrated into the plot was brilliant and I really enjoyed the thrill I got when I figured out who the Queens or Adamina's parents were. And the Huntress were totally founded by Red Riding hood, nothing can convince me otherwise.
The romance between Adamina and Grete was just lovely and I loved that even though Adamine thinks Grete is amazing and wants to sleep with her, she has her priorities in the right order ("Children were being murdered; her libido was going to have to behave itself.").
I also enjoyed the fact that even though all the fairytales involved are of European origin (as far as I know), not all the characters were white. Adamina is dark-skinned, for example, and iirc, Grete sounded kind of South-East Asian, maybe.
Would definitely reccomend this book to anyone who wants to read about lesbians investigating murders in a setting that does clever things with fairytales.
Reading bingo: "book with trans* main character" (serious card). Adamina is MtF.
Taijiku, by Elizabeth Andre: I enjoyed this, but it felt more like a prologue to a greater story than a story in itself. Don't get me wrong, it is a complete story, but there was so much foreshadowing of Angela defeating the titular Taijiku that it felt odd that she didn't at the end. It made common sense, but not narrative sense, if you will. That said, I did enjoy it and would gladly read the story it seems to be a prologue to.
Reading bingo: "book with queer main character" (serious card). Angela has a girlfriend.
This makes 0/25 on the Mix'n'Match Card (unchanged from last time), 19/25 on the Random Card (+3 from last time AND A BINGO) and 5/25 on the Serious Card (+3 from last time) forhamsterwoman's reading bingo.
Currently reading
Still stalled on The Art of War, The Kick-Ass Writer, La véritable histoire de Carthage et de Hannibal, Les Fleurs du Mal and Métronome.
Rome's Revolution: Death of the Republic and Birth of the Empire, by Richard Alston: I am reading this because I have been having Feelings About Romans lately (you're very surprised, I know) and someone recently framed Octavian's ascension to Princeps as him being ROME'S VERY OWN YA PROTAGONIST to me and that is so perfect I am immensely saddened said YA novel does not exist. Instead I'm reading an Oxford University book on the subject.
It's very good so far! I like author's style and that he doesn't buy into the pro-Empire proganda that can be rife when looking at books dealing with the Roman Empire (my thoughts on the Roman Empire are the same as my thoughts on any empires: IMPERIALISM IS BAD OKAY DON'T DO IT KIDS).
So far the author has mostly been catching the reader up on the political situation in Rome before Caesar shows up. He goes back to the Gracchi and points to their assassination as the moment when the Empire became inevitable. (Sidenote: I am still a major fan of the Gracchi and I am forever crying because of what happened to them. NICE JOB RUINING IT FOR THE REST OF US ROMAN MOB(S).) I agree with this and think the political context is very well explained. If anything, I might have gone back earlier; the more I think about it, the more I can trace the beginning of the thought patterns that eventually lead to the Empire to the Second Punic War and Scipio Africanus (even though it breaks my heart to think of Scipio bringing down the Republic, no matter how indirectly, because HE WOULD NEVER and in fact he didn't, but yeah, it's all there. But nobody wants to hear my thoughts on this. >:[).
The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal and the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic, by Robert L. O'Connell: I am also enjoying this! But I am only on page, like, 17 or so. So far most of my notes consist of "FFS HISTORY GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER WHERE THE HELL ARE ALL THE PRIMARY SOURCES" and laughing because of this one dude being both named "Manlius" and described as a "hardcore Roman" and looking wonderingly at "Hannibal, the proverbial trickster", because that's a very... interesting way of looking at things.
And then there's this quote (emphasis mine):
That floored me, ngl.
L'aigle et le safran, by Sen: (You can buy it online or read it online. I'm reading the paper version, so I don't know if the online text is the same, but at a glance it looks like it is.)
It's been so long since I read anything this beautiful in French.
Look at this! "Cette grâce irréaliste d'un moment parfait", that's gorgeous.
Mostly I'm basking in how very very lovely the language is, but I am also enjoying everything else, from the characters to the plot to the worldbuilding to the understated romance to the illustrations (they are so beuatiful, omg). I am so so so glad I bought this book. It's beautiful.
What are you reading next? (aka the to-read list)
Old list:
Books that I have already: Pyramids of London, by Andrea K Höst, 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 Skull Throne, by Peter V. Brett, Hostage by Sherwood Smith and Rachel Manija Brown.
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, Seraphina by Rachel Hartman, The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex, The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison, the last two books of Kate Eliott's Spiritwalker trilogy, The Missing Queen by Samhita Arni, Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed 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), The Sleeping Life (Eferum, #2) by Andrea K. Höst (2015), Benjamin January #14 by Barbara Hambly (no idea), the Tris book by Tamora Pierce (2015), , The House of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard, Dogs of Peace by Ada Palmer and whatever Jenny Dolfen's next project is (THAT ART!).
Books what I'm not sure if I want to read them: City of Blades, by Robert Jackson Bennett: Still IDK.
Changes to the list:
If I were to write a weekly meta(-ish) kind of post, which day would you rather I do it on?
- Monday
- Tuesday
- Thursday
- Saturday
- Sunday
By the by, if anyone has anything else they want me to talk about, feel free to ask!
Okay, onto "dhampyresa talks too much about books".
What did you finish reading
Several things, actually! Probably not as much as I could have given that it's been a month since I did one of these, but more than I expected, given that life interferred.
Le Visage de l'Ombre, by Erik L'Homme: I finished this book right after posting the previous reading meme, so it's been a while I forgot most of what I had to say.
I am now 100% convinced that these books would have worked a lot better as one book with a slightly older target audience.
My memories of the books as far as actual events went was accurate, but I wish I hadn't re-read this trilogy. I remember this trilogy being one the books that really made an impression on me as a child (I wanted to be Ambre when I grew up) and it is filled of tropes I still love, but alas the execution is not as good as I remember it being.
Reading bingo-wise, I'm counting this as "book with antonyms in the title" (random card), given that shadows don't typically have faces.
Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett: THIS BOOK. THIS FUCKING BOOK. I should not have read this book so close on the heels of Pratchett's death, because I was a crying mess at several points. This is the book where "GNU" and "Alive in the overhead" come from, you see and I 'd forgotten that. I cried so much, but it was also very cathartic. I pulled a lot of quotes from this book and as soon as I can actually access them, I will post them. (Pratchett has such an amazing way with words and is such a keen observer of human nature. Never before have I read a book that got engineers the way this one does.)
This is the book I used to get my dad into Discworld. It felt fitting to read it.
Reading bingo: "book your parent loves" (random card).
Gustav Adolf Mossa: L'oeuvre symboliste: 1903-1918 (exposition catalogue for a 1992 exposition at the Pavillon des Arts): YES YOU READ THAT RIGHT I FINISHED THIS That was a such a relief This book is essentially 'Inception into the brain of a mysogynist', but don't take my word for it. The book has an afterword in English and I typed up the relevant quote
the basic existential themes are omnipresent: life, love, sex, death, with the baffling questioning of Woman -- eternally haunting, devouring, castrating Woman. We must stress the theme of Woman at once redeeming and depraved, angel and devil, life and death.Yeeeeeah. That kind of tells you everything you need to know, doesn't it?
It's a shame, actually, because I kind of like the art style, at times. I do think I learned a handful of things about mixing mediums when doing art, so reading the book wasn't a total loss.
Here are a handful of pictures I did like, in the best quality I could find on the internet.
Yes, those are dead people. This is very far from the only time Mossa explicitly links female sexuality to dead people.
Reading bingo: "book you once started but did not finish" (hard mode of "book on farthest shelf/oldest ebook") (random card).
Ekhö Monde Miroir, 3: Hollywood Boulevard, by Arleston (scénario) and Alessandro Barbucci (art): This is a French comic book that opens with the line "Marc Antoine est mort" which I felt was A Sign (Roman! Spotted in the wild!). I've been reading Ekhö when it shows up at the library and I think this is my favourite so far. I enjoyed the plot, the art was still good, the worldbuilding took a bit of a backseat but I didn't mind. There's less female fanservice and more male fanservice, which made it more balanced than the previous two books. It even deals with the consent issues inherent to having two people have sex when one of them is possessing someone else's body . It doesn't deal with it much, but it does deal with it some. (Fourmille calls it 'rape', to which Yuri implies he was also raped, which is somewhat coeherent with Norma-possessing-Fourmille forcing herself on him that we saw earlier, an dthen the issues never shows up again, so IDK? It is supposed to be a light-hearted kind of book, but I was surprised that it dealt with it at all.) All the jokes about 1950s/60s Hollywood are also pretty funny. I think my favourite was the journalist asking King Kong, "Mr Kong, wasn't playing naked embarassing?"
Reading bingo: "book where main male and female don't fall in love" (serious card).
The Broken Forest, by Megan Derr: I thought this was brilliant and would gladly read a lot more about these characters and/or in this universe! The way the various fairytales were mixed and changed and integrated into the plot was brilliant and I really enjoyed the thrill I got when I figured out who the Queens or Adamina's parents were. And the Huntress were totally founded by Red Riding hood, nothing can convince me otherwise.
The romance between Adamina and Grete was just lovely and I loved that even though Adamine thinks Grete is amazing and wants to sleep with her, she has her priorities in the right order ("Children were being murdered; her libido was going to have to behave itself.").
I also enjoyed the fact that even though all the fairytales involved are of European origin (as far as I know), not all the characters were white. Adamina is dark-skinned, for example, and iirc, Grete sounded kind of South-East Asian, maybe.
Would definitely reccomend this book to anyone who wants to read about lesbians investigating murders in a setting that does clever things with fairytales.
Reading bingo: "book with trans* main character" (serious card). Adamina is MtF.
Taijiku, by Elizabeth Andre: I enjoyed this, but it felt more like a prologue to a greater story than a story in itself. Don't get me wrong, it is a complete story, but there was so much foreshadowing of Angela defeating the titular Taijiku that it felt odd that she didn't at the end. It made common sense, but not narrative sense, if you will. That said, I did enjoy it and would gladly read the story it seems to be a prologue to.
Reading bingo: "book with queer main character" (serious card). Angela has a girlfriend.
This makes 0/25 on the Mix'n'Match Card (unchanged from last time), 19/25 on the Random Card (+3 from last time AND A BINGO) and 5/25 on the Serious Card (+3 from last time) for
hamsterwoman's reading bingo.Currently reading
Still stalled on The Art of War, The Kick-Ass Writer, La véritable histoire de Carthage et de Hannibal, Les Fleurs du Mal and Métronome.
Rome's Revolution: Death of the Republic and Birth of the Empire, by Richard Alston: I am reading this because I have been having Feelings About Romans lately (you're very surprised, I know) and someone recently framed Octavian's ascension to Princeps as him being ROME'S VERY OWN YA PROTAGONIST to me and that is so perfect I am immensely saddened said YA novel does not exist. Instead I'm reading an Oxford University book on the subject.
It's very good so far! I like author's style and that he doesn't buy into the pro-Empire proganda that can be rife when looking at books dealing with the Roman Empire (my thoughts on the Roman Empire are the same as my thoughts on any empires: IMPERIALISM IS BAD OKAY DON'T DO IT KIDS).
So far the author has mostly been catching the reader up on the political situation in Rome before Caesar shows up. He goes back to the Gracchi and points to their assassination as the moment when the Empire became inevitable. (Sidenote: I am still a major fan of the Gracchi and I am forever crying because of what happened to them. NICE JOB RUINING IT FOR THE REST OF US ROMAN MOB(S).) I agree with this and think the political context is very well explained. If anything, I might have gone back earlier; the more I think about it, the more I can trace the beginning of the thought patterns that eventually lead to the Empire to the Second Punic War and Scipio Africanus (even though it breaks my heart to think of Scipio bringing down the Republic, no matter how indirectly, because HE WOULD NEVER and in fact he didn't, but yeah, it's all there. But nobody wants to hear my thoughts on this. >:[).
The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal and the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic, by Robert L. O'Connell: I am also enjoying this! But I am only on page, like, 17 or so. So far most of my notes consist of "FFS HISTORY GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER WHERE THE HELL ARE ALL THE PRIMARY SOURCES" and laughing because of this one dude being both named "Manlius" and described as a "hardcore Roman" and looking wonderingly at "Hannibal, the proverbial trickster", because that's a very... interesting way of looking at things.
And then there's this quote (emphasis mine):
Rome, on the other hand lost [at Cannae] -- suffering in one day more battle deaths than the United States during the entire course of the war in Vietnam, suffering more dead soldiers than any army on any single day of combat in the entire course of Western military history.
That floored me, ngl.
L'aigle et le safran, by Sen: (You can buy it online or read it online. I'm reading the paper version, so I don't know if the online text is the same, but at a glance it looks like it is.)
It's been so long since I read anything this beautiful in French.
La vision était très belle contre le blanc du sol, nimbée de cette grâce irréaliste d'un moment parfait – le sang, la neige, et l'élégance lente de la silhouette qui se redressait auprès du cadavre, et Fairn en savoura l'essence éphémère avant de se forcer, à regret, à s'avancer et à élever la parole.
Look at this! "Cette grâce irréaliste d'un moment parfait", that's gorgeous.
Mostly I'm basking in how very very lovely the language is, but I am also enjoying everything else, from the characters to the plot to the worldbuilding to the understated romance to the illustrations (they are so beuatiful, omg). I am so so so glad I bought this book. It's beautiful.
What are you reading next? (aka the to-read list)
Old list:
Books that I have already: Pyramids of London, by Andrea K Höst, 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 Skull Throne, by Peter V. Brett, Hostage by Sherwood Smith and Rachel Manija Brown.
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, Seraphina by Rachel Hartman, The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex, The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison, the last two books of Kate Eliott's Spiritwalker trilogy, The Missing Queen by Samhita Arni, Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed 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), The Sleeping Life (Eferum, #2) by Andrea K. Höst (2015), Benjamin January #14 by Barbara Hambly (no idea), the Tris book by Tamora Pierce (2015), , The House of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard, Dogs of Peace by Ada Palmer and whatever Jenny Dolfen's next project is (THAT ART!).
Books what I'm not sure if I want to read them: City of Blades, by Robert Jackson Bennett: Still IDK.
Changes to the list:
- I will not be reading The Grass-King's Concubine by Kari Sperring, because one of the main characters shares a first name with someone I'm very close to and it just feels really weird and I can't do it and gdit I was so looking forward to reading this book >:(
- moved The Skull Throne, by Peter V. Brett to "Books that I have already", because I am apparently weak and hate myself.
- I will no longer be reading Empire Ascendant or any other book by Kameron Hurley. Hurley made a post about Internet culture and ~bravery~ and invoked her one grandmother who'd grown up in Nazi-occupied France and you know what? All four of my grandparents grew up in Nazi-occupied France and FUCK THAT POST AND THE HORSE IT RODE IN ON. I'd been suspecting for a while that Hurley was more interested in her Tough Feminist persona than in either actual feminism or good writing and that sealed it. You don't get to use an experience that haunted/still haunts my grandparents and looms over my family history to score cheap points in an internet debate. (I could turn this into a "my grandmother was more impacted by the war than yours was" competition, but I will not, because that's not the point and the fact that that post did so was utterly, utterly crass and disgusting.) Ms Hurley, you've lost a reader in me. I'd say sorry, but I'm not. I'm not even sorry that I'm not sorry. I am done, I am so done, with people from the US using WW2 for cheap debating points.
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Date: 2015-05-01 12:47 am (UTC)It is amazing! And I think you'll love it. You can buy it here.
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Date: 2015-05-01 12:49 am (UTC)