February Reading
Mar. 2nd, 2023 09:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sultrybutdamagedLast fall I set a goal of reading more. I used to be a big reader. Especially during the break I took from fandom, reading was my main hobby. But I fell off a few years ago (other than fanfic) and I’ve been wanting to get back to it. Partially because I miss it and partially because even when I wasn’t reading, I was still amassing a ridiculous TBR and I need to get through some of it before I drown in books.
In February I finished 8 books, which seems to be about my average. March may be a little higher since I’m doing a themed readathon. This is what I read:
Dark Moon by Meredith Ann Pierce - This is the second in a series that started with Birth of the Firebringer. It’s fantasy and I think classified as YA. It feels more like the YA fantasy I remember from being a kid, by which I mean it’s like someone took a kid’s book and wrote it for an older audience rather than taking an adult book and writing it for a younger one. If that makes sense. Anyway, it has a mythological feel to it I really like. The main characters are all animals (unicorns mostly) and there’s a lot about culture clashes and how history can be warped to tell the story a society wants to believe about itself.
Orlando by Virginia Woolf - This is for a classics challenge I’m doing, 12 classics in 12 months. I hadn’t read Woolf in years and this scratched the English major part of my brain that’s been asleep for a while. It’s about a person who is born as a man in 16th century England and then lives into the 20th century, along the way becoming a writer and a woman (that part goes completely unexplained but not unaddressed.) It has interesting things to say about gender and a lot to say about writing, both as a vocation and as a career. It was inspired by Vita Sackville-West, who was Woolf’s lover and a writer herself. Knowing this made the book extremely funny because if Orlando is meant to be VSW, it’s an affectionate but definitely not completely positive portrayal. I’m reading a novel by VSW next month to compare. (And by then I will hopefully have stopped referring to her in my head as Vita Sackville-Baggins.)
and Falling, Fly and In Dreams Begin by Skylar White - This is an erotic fantasy duology collectively called The Harrowing. The books have different characters and plots but are connected through the lore of the world. One is about a fallen angel/vampire who gets involved with a neuroscientist who doesn’t believe in the supernatural and wants to cure her with drugs and the other is about a woman who dreams her way into the life of WB Yeats and his muse, Maud Gonne. (This one is great if you went through an Irish history hyperfixation like I did, because the fantasy elements mean Yeats and Gonne’s weird relationship makes more sense than it did in reality.) They’re interesting books; I liked them even though there’s a lot in them I wouldn’t usually enjoy. They are the type of fantasy where things happen more because they fit the themes of the book than because they, strictly speaking, make sense, and the kind of romances where you aren’t ever sure what the couple see in each other and sexual passion is the most transcendent possible human experience, which ace me has issues with. But they have a fascinating world, a lot of brain-tingling ideas and themes sitting side by side with the romance and magic, and really, really beautiful writing. I wish there were more books in this series.
Signal to Noise by Silvia Moreno-Garcia - This is a stand-alone modern fantasy set in Mexico. The plot reminded me of The Craft, but this isn’t a horror story. It has neat magic, but at the same time, the fantasy elements are almost incidental to the story, which is really more about the relationships between the characters and about the idea of returning home. There are two timelines: one in the 1980s, where three teenagers figure out how to use magic and things go wrong, and one in 2009 where the main character, Meche, returns to Mexico City to bury her father and meets up with the friends she hasn’t talked to in twenty years. The best thing about this book is how strongly it resists the urge to glamorize or soften its characters. The teenage characters in the 1980s storyline are real kids: awkward, emotional, prone to questionable decision making. And Meche, the main character, is abrasive and intense and bad at personal relationships at any age. You root for her because you’re in her head but you’re also kind of amazed that everyone else isn’t writing her off. This is another one where I really liked the writing style.
Glamour in Glass and Without a Summer by Mary Robinette Kowal - These are the second and third in the Glamourist Histories series, which are Regency books with light magical elements. I was on the fence about continuing this series after the first one (it made me question whether I even like Regencies) but these are quick reads so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try more. (I hate leaving a series unfinished unless I hated it and this one I was just lukewarm on.) I’m glad I did because the second book was an improvement and the third one I really liked. These are solid alternate histories; they weave the story around the real historical events of the period very well. The magic is fun. And while I didn’t like the main characters to begin with, they’ve grown on me. I appreciate that the series focuses on one couple rather than doing the typical romance series thing of introducing a new pair for each book because you get to see their relationship over time and their character growth within that context.
Queens of Geek by Jen Wilde - This was a book club pick for a group I joined that’s doing a monthly read of books with autistic protagonists either written by autistic writers or that have good reviews from within the community. It was a reread for me and it was light and fun. It’s about a group of friends at a fandom convention and it captured that feeling very well, even though it seriously glosses over how much time these characters should have spent just walking from place to place or standing in lines. The rep (not only autistic but also mental health rep, racial diversity and queer rep) was very prominent in a way that still felt natural, not like an Issues Book.
I also started Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng, but I didn’t get very far so that one will be finished this month. And I caught up on the Vox Machina origins comic series (I’ve been reading them as they get released collected.)
In February I finished 8 books, which seems to be about my average. March may be a little higher since I’m doing a themed readathon. This is what I read:
Dark Moon by Meredith Ann Pierce - This is the second in a series that started with Birth of the Firebringer. It’s fantasy and I think classified as YA. It feels more like the YA fantasy I remember from being a kid, by which I mean it’s like someone took a kid’s book and wrote it for an older audience rather than taking an adult book and writing it for a younger one. If that makes sense. Anyway, it has a mythological feel to it I really like. The main characters are all animals (unicorns mostly) and there’s a lot about culture clashes and how history can be warped to tell the story a society wants to believe about itself.
Orlando by Virginia Woolf - This is for a classics challenge I’m doing, 12 classics in 12 months. I hadn’t read Woolf in years and this scratched the English major part of my brain that’s been asleep for a while. It’s about a person who is born as a man in 16th century England and then lives into the 20th century, along the way becoming a writer and a woman (that part goes completely unexplained but not unaddressed.) It has interesting things to say about gender and a lot to say about writing, both as a vocation and as a career. It was inspired by Vita Sackville-West, who was Woolf’s lover and a writer herself. Knowing this made the book extremely funny because if Orlando is meant to be VSW, it’s an affectionate but definitely not completely positive portrayal. I’m reading a novel by VSW next month to compare. (And by then I will hopefully have stopped referring to her in my head as Vita Sackville-Baggins.)
and Falling, Fly and In Dreams Begin by Skylar White - This is an erotic fantasy duology collectively called The Harrowing. The books have different characters and plots but are connected through the lore of the world. One is about a fallen angel/vampire who gets involved with a neuroscientist who doesn’t believe in the supernatural and wants to cure her with drugs and the other is about a woman who dreams her way into the life of WB Yeats and his muse, Maud Gonne. (This one is great if you went through an Irish history hyperfixation like I did, because the fantasy elements mean Yeats and Gonne’s weird relationship makes more sense than it did in reality.) They’re interesting books; I liked them even though there’s a lot in them I wouldn’t usually enjoy. They are the type of fantasy where things happen more because they fit the themes of the book than because they, strictly speaking, make sense, and the kind of romances where you aren’t ever sure what the couple see in each other and sexual passion is the most transcendent possible human experience, which ace me has issues with. But they have a fascinating world, a lot of brain-tingling ideas and themes sitting side by side with the romance and magic, and really, really beautiful writing. I wish there were more books in this series.
Signal to Noise by Silvia Moreno-Garcia - This is a stand-alone modern fantasy set in Mexico. The plot reminded me of The Craft, but this isn’t a horror story. It has neat magic, but at the same time, the fantasy elements are almost incidental to the story, which is really more about the relationships between the characters and about the idea of returning home. There are two timelines: one in the 1980s, where three teenagers figure out how to use magic and things go wrong, and one in 2009 where the main character, Meche, returns to Mexico City to bury her father and meets up with the friends she hasn’t talked to in twenty years. The best thing about this book is how strongly it resists the urge to glamorize or soften its characters. The teenage characters in the 1980s storyline are real kids: awkward, emotional, prone to questionable decision making. And Meche, the main character, is abrasive and intense and bad at personal relationships at any age. You root for her because you’re in her head but you’re also kind of amazed that everyone else isn’t writing her off. This is another one where I really liked the writing style.
Glamour in Glass and Without a Summer by Mary Robinette Kowal - These are the second and third in the Glamourist Histories series, which are Regency books with light magical elements. I was on the fence about continuing this series after the first one (it made me question whether I even like Regencies) but these are quick reads so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try more. (I hate leaving a series unfinished unless I hated it and this one I was just lukewarm on.) I’m glad I did because the second book was an improvement and the third one I really liked. These are solid alternate histories; they weave the story around the real historical events of the period very well. The magic is fun. And while I didn’t like the main characters to begin with, they’ve grown on me. I appreciate that the series focuses on one couple rather than doing the typical romance series thing of introducing a new pair for each book because you get to see their relationship over time and their character growth within that context.
Queens of Geek by Jen Wilde - This was a book club pick for a group I joined that’s doing a monthly read of books with autistic protagonists either written by autistic writers or that have good reviews from within the community. It was a reread for me and it was light and fun. It’s about a group of friends at a fandom convention and it captured that feeling very well, even though it seriously glosses over how much time these characters should have spent just walking from place to place or standing in lines. The rep (not only autistic but also mental health rep, racial diversity and queer rep) was very prominent in a way that still felt natural, not like an Issues Book.
I also started Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng, but I didn’t get very far so that one will be finished this month. And I caught up on the Vox Machina origins comic series (I’ve been reading them as they get released collected.)
no subject
Date: 2023-03-04 09:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-04 07:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-04 03:47 pm (UTC)ASDFHGFDJKGJKL, the second I read her name this is exactly what I thought! xD xD
"It’s about a group of friends at a fandom convention and it captured that feeling very well, even though it seriously glosses over how much time these characters should have spent just walking from place to place or standing in lines."
I wish there was a book JUST about standing in lines. xD I think it's my favorite part of the con experience, I met some super fun people this way. :D
I'm bookmarking Signal to Noise, it sounds up my alley!
no subject
Date: 2023-03-04 07:35 pm (UTC)I hope you like Signal to Noise.