RIP (Read In Progress) Wednesday

[spiralsheep]

What are you reading?

Weds is the time, is the place, is the motion,
Weds is the day we are reading....

Comments

Aurora Australis readalong 6 / 10, An Interview with an Emperor

[spiralsheep]

Aurora Australis readalong 6 / 10, An Interview with an Emperor, by Alastair Mackay, post for comment, reaction, discussion, fanworks, links, and whatever obliquely related matters your heart desires. You can join the readalong at any time or skip sections or go back to earlier posts. It's all good. :-)

Reaction post 6 / 10:
https://spiralsheep.dreamwidth.org/668973.html

Text of An Interview with an Emperor, by Alastair Mackay:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Aurora_Australis/An_Interview_with_an_Emperor

Readalong intro and links to discussion posts 1-5:
https://spiralsheep.dreamwidth.org/662515.html

Reminder for next week, the poem Erebus by Nemo (Ernest Shackleton):
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Aurora_Australis/Erubus

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Endless Night by Agatha Christie. I suppose it's a re-read but I've forgotten the plot and none of the characters are likable. Some Cadfael (12 century monk) mysteries. I put down my Inspector Rebus. I don't know when I'll pick it up again. I have the 600-page The Seamstress to read, too. TBR pile is growing brick by brick.

[spiralsheep]

I found The Seamstress very readable and enjoyable.

I've just read some early Muriel Spark short stories and there's not a likably character is the whole collection. Why? /rhetorical

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Oh, good. I have only read the first few pages but it is one of my friend's favorite books and I have a 'recommended' square on my bingo. I had to order it through the state library system because we didn't have it locally so I should get on it because it'll have to go back sometime and, you know, 600 pages.

Ah, interesting. Ha, ha, that disappointing. Yeah, why would you make nobody likable? Not one? And we haven't got to the murder yet so that's disappointing. I have my thoughts about what the 'twist' will be but I really don't care. They can all hang as far as I'm concerned.

[peaceful_sands]

Finally I have finished 'Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds' box set (1000+ pages in a dual hardback set) - I didn't love this although I know it has a real following in some parts - I actually found it quite relentlessly depressing although this may be my frame of mind at the moment.

I also finished listening to 'The Mistake' by Wendy James yesterday and 'Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear' by Seanan McGuire today as it's only short. Next up is 'The Golden Enclaves' by Naomi Novik - I'm not loving this series like I did with Uprooted but I'll stick with it to the end of this volume. In physical format, I'm almost at the end of 'Earthsea - the first four books' by Ursula le Guin (still - hopefully it'll be finished before the end of the month) and 'The Murderbot Diaries Vol 2' by Martha Wells. I think I need to look through my TBR pile for a few things that I'm excited to read when I've got through these (although the Murderbot ones are good - I loved the audio versions but this is my first opportunity to have the in print versions).

[spiralsheep]

Wow, 1000+ pages of depressing reading is a lot. I hope your next read is more encouraging. :-)

[spiralsheep]

Recently finished reading Cwen, by Alice Albinnia, which is trans-inclusive, anti-racist (anti-misogynoir), women-centred, feminist speculative utopian fiction set on an archipelago of small islands where 50% of local power has recently been legislated to women. Written in a very readable style, combining serious critique with the mischievousness of the best feminist fiction. I LOVED THIS. Can't believe nobody ever recced this to me! 5/5

And Don't Kiss Me, the Art of Claude Cahun & Marcel Moore, which is a collection of essays about the lives and art of CC & MM, plus a generously illustrated catalogue of the Jersey Heritage Trust's collection of Cahun & Moore's art, letters, and other archived documents such as news clippings. 4/5

And Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries, by Heather Fawcett, a fantasy romance novel. 4/5

And Never Anyone but You, by Rupert Thomson, a historical novel about Lucie Schwob (Claude Cahun) and Suzanne Malherbe (Marcel Moore) which managed to combine the historical and the novel aspects very well. Warning for the Second World War, plus suicides, and anorexia. 4/5

[petrea_mitchell]

Just finished reading Valentine Pontifex. Great book, but like with Lord Valentine's Castle, I am startled to see how much this work which is just remembered as a cool planetary romance is about the relationship between the planet's many colonial species and its original inhabitants, in a way very similar to the politics around the United States and Native Americans. I am especially surprised that it's never come up in any discussion I've seen about sf and its relation to and interrogation of colonialist attitudes.

[silversea]

I finished reading They Bloom at Night by Trang Thanh Tran and it was okay. Read The Floating World by Axie Oh afterwards. I think I've just really outgrown YA literature at this point, everything have been "just fine but would not continue/reread."

I started The Anti-Ableist Manifesto by Tiffany Yu last night for a change. This appears to be very surface-level so far, which reminds me that I should probably pick up some more indepth books on disability in the future.

[lycomingst]

Just started, A Difficult Woman by Alice Kessler-Harris. A bio of Lillian Hellman.

[pedanther]

If you'd asked yesterday, I would have said Jirel of Joiry, a collection of sword & sorcery stories that were originally published in Weird Tales in the 1930s alongside Conan the Barbarian - the point of interest being that these are written by a female author and the tough warrior protagonist is also female. I gave up on it yesterday after reading the first three stories and deciding I wasn't getting anything out of them: the protagonist has some imaginatively weird adventures but we barely get to know anything about her as a person so I never felt like there were meaningful stakes.

I'm still working through A Choice of Catastrophes. I've been increasingly encountering reminders that the book is fifty years old: the section on asteroid impacts doesn't say a word about the dinosaur-killer asteroid, for instance, because that wasn't in the conversation yet in 1979. I've just started the section on ice ages, and it'll be interesting to see if 1979 Asimov has anything to say about anthropogenic climate change.

[drawnecromancy]

It's a shame Jirel of Joiry didn't end up being that interesting ! At least I hope A Choice of Catastrophes is more enjoyable to you, personally I do enjoy realizing how differently people thought about things in decades past :)

[inchoatewords]

I just finished The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass; it took me ten days to get through. It is a bit long but also it was a little difficult and to be honest, I'm not sure I fully understood it! I know it's allegorical about WWII, but there were still parts that were confusing.

[drawnecromancy]

I'm reading "Mrs Victoria buys a brothel", and so far it's lovely, delightful, and really funny ! I'm not usually one for Far West stuff or romance books, but the pitch from the author sounded like pure fun, so I wanted to try. And I'm having a great time :)

[zenigotchas]

Spawn and a new gaming creepypasta I've never heard of before (Training.bsp). Aaah I have too many books I wanna read >_

[cornerofmadness]

The Smoke in his Voice - an indie book in desperate need of editing (great title and cover though)

[hafnia]

I'm about halfway through The River Has Roots and will finish it as soon as I have time to read again. I'm enjoying it! :)

[elizalavelle]

I'm really excited to read this one, it sounded fantastic!

[silversea]

That was a great book, I really enjoyed the fairy tale vibes!

[soricel]

About halfway through Ghosts by Dolly Alderton. Breezy, quippy, normie, tender. Lots about dating and the shittiness of millennial men, but also (I think) lots about trying to create/maintain a sense of stability to one's memories and identity, which is maybe one of the things people use long-term monogamous relationships for. The narrative voice gets in my head and makes me want to try making clever observations about people.

[elizalavelle]

I'm reading The Appeal by Janice Hallett. It's an interesting way of presenting a mystery in that we're essentially reading case files of correspondence and the occasional legal note. I have 100 pages to go and have a guess at the whodunit but it's really a guess at this point. It's been a fun read so far.