RIP (Read In Progress) Wednesday

[silversea]

Happy June!

What are you reading?

Comments

[spiralsheep]

Still reading one chapter a week of Aurora Australis.
https://spiralsheep.dreamwidth.org/669833.html

Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries, by Heather Fawcett, 2023, fantasy romance (het), 4/5.
I liked the readable prose, presented mostly as diary entries, and especially the protagonist, but all the she-forgot-herself and voila she's a queen now with a wannabe prince charming waiting to rescue her from her unwanted king was tedious to me. However the author does emphasise, as do traditional folk and fairy tales, that aristocracy is arbitrary, capricious, and cruel, which took the edge off my discontent, lol.

Never Anyone but You, by Rupert Thomson, 2018, historical novel (lgbt+), 4/5.
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.

Bad Influence, by C.J. Wray, 2025, technically a crime novel, 3.5/5.
If this was What Three Words it'd be heartwarming.popular.tropes. Warning for spoilery but exceedingly obvious trope wrt elderly protagonists.

Priest Turned Therapist Treats Fear of God, by Tony Hoagland, 2019, poetry, 3.5/5.
Specifically post-2016 dissatisfactions from Hoagland, to add to his usual satirical tendencies.

God on the Rocks, by Jane Gardam, 1978, literary slice-of-life novel, 4.5/5.
0.5 of a point too Booker Prizey for me.

Oliver VII, by Antal Szerb (translation from Hungarian by Len Rix), 1942, ruritanian farce, 3/5
I blame James Davis Nicoll. :-)

[silversea]

I finished The Incandescent by Emily Tesh, which was enjoyable enough, but probably wouldn't reread. The story being told by a teacher is a nice change in the ever so popular magical school trope, but I wish we got slightly more teaching. I do appreciate the boring reality of all the paperwork and dealing with parents and board, you really can tell that Tesh was a teacher, but let's make this more fantasy haha. I saw all the twists coming early in the story, but it was still fun seeing them unfold.

I'm slowly going through Exhalation by Ted Chiang, reading one or two short stories each day. He's a decent writer, but I think I had my expectations set too high after hearing all the praise.

[haunted_cherries]

I'm still in the middle of reading Several People are Typing!! I love non-traditional ways of telling stories, and this book has honestly been a hilarious ride so far xD

[matsushima]

This looks so cool! Thank you for sharing!

[zenigotchas]

Making more progress on Spawn (#37? I believe?) and I'm hoping this issue's villain becomes a reccuring one because while I like the protagonists, this series is in dire need of a bigger, more diverse and vibrant rogues gallery. Also Greg Capullo's art is just gorgeous, I love watching his renditions of each character design slowly but surely evolve. It's just so.... Disgusting, dark, cynical and cheesey, cartoony, and goofy all at the same time.

I reread a bunch of old creepypastas and have been listening to some new ones. I also have been trying some Pseudopod for my fix of original, short horror stories. Mixed bag. Most just don't scare me that much, though I like their meats and such. The one that stands out the most to me would be Meat but that one needs a tw for SA, violence and general sexuality, it was pretty dark for sure.

[althea_valara]

I'm listening to the audiobook of All Systems Red: The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, narrated by Kevin R. Free, and I'm really enjoying it. I've previously read the ebook, and had wanted to reread it but couldn't afford buying the series at this time (because if I am going to buy it, I'll get ALL the ebooks) so I'm borrowing it from my library. All the physical/ebooks were checked out, but they did have the first audiobook! So I'm listening to it as I crochet, and I'm glad I decided to give it a try.

Also, on the advice of a friend, I am reading Barbara Sher's Refuse to Choose: Use All of Your Interests, Passions and Hobbies to Create the Life and Career of Your Dreams. I'm a big fan of her books, but had somehow never heard of this one, so when it was recommended to me, I immediately bought the ebook. I'm hoping it will help me figure out my future job path.

(I spent much time on Barbara's old forums, proofread a chapter of Wishcraft when she was first digitizing it, and talked with her on the phone once. She was such an inspirational lady, and is missed. RIP Barbara.)

[peaceful_sands]

I absolutely love Kevin R. Free's reading of the Murderbot Diaries - he's got a wonderful way of narrating this particularly series! I'm reading the books for the first time as they've not been available to me until quite recently and my 'mental voice' while reading is definitely influenced by his narration (much more so than the TV version of the first series that I've just started watching)

[rabbit_stew]

The Murderbot Diaries are so good on audiobook. I loved the narration!

[petrea_mitchell]

I started on Cunning Folk: Life in the Era of Practical Magic, but I'm finding it hard to stick with.

[volkameria]

I was reading All Rhodes Lead Here but DNF'd at 20%. Contemporary romance seems to really not be my thing.
I'm now reading Wartime Entertainment: How Britain Kept Smiling Through the Second World War, which is a lightning fast survey of the development of the BBC as a news and entertainment service during WW2. The first nonfiction book where I feel they could have provided more detail, honestly, but it's still a good read.

[matsushima]

Rediscovered: A Compassionate and Courageous Guide For Late Discovered Autistic Women (and Their Allies) finally came in on hold and I was excited to read it but I think I've kind of hit my limit on the "late diagnosed autism memoir/self-help" genre - not that there's anything wrong with the genre in general or this book in particular, just that I've gotten what I need from it and it's time for me to find my next thing.

I've mostly been reading academic articles, ostensibly for grad school assignments but mostly because I'm interested; I started at a suggestion to look up "a/r/tography" and most recently requested "Storytelling the Multiple Self: Posthuman Autoethnography as Critical Praxis" from the university library.

[peaceful_sands]

At the weekend, I finished 'The Golden Enclaves' by Naomi Novik - overall I didn't like this series all that much - I much preferred 'Uprooted' and even the 'Her Majesty's Dragon' series to this set. I just couldn't find myself liking the main characters enough.

On a better note, on Tuesday I finished 'Stars Above' by Marissa Meyer - a collection of short stories from the Lunar Chronicle series - this was a much better read - mostly prequels to the main arc with each story focusing on a different character/characters. They aren't all perfect, but overall a pleasant read.

I've just finished the third Murderbot story 'Rogue Protocol' and have move straight onto the fourth 'Exit Strategy' as I'm reading 'Volume 2' which is an omnibus edition of the two novellas. Enjoying this as although I've listened to them before, this is my first time reading in physical form.

My last two audiobooks have been DNFs so I'm taking a few days break and listening to music instead in the hope of breaking the DNF cycle.

I've also been doing some reading of a training course I'm doing and the associated articles - this is an ongoing thing where I do an hour or two a week.

[cornerofmadness]

The witchs orchard, an arc of a PI mystery in appalachia which so far is very good

West by god a h orror also set in appalachia

[pedanther]

Attempted John Brown: Queen Victoria's Highland Servant by Raymond Lamont-Brown, but gave up after a few chapters. I realise that you can't tell the story of John Brown without also covering the relevant bits of the story of Queen Victoria's relationship with Scotland, but it felt like the author really wanted to talk about Victoria - in great detail - and occasionally remembered that John Brown was also there. Maybe the balance is redressed in the later chapters, but I ran out of patience to stick around and find out.

So I've put aside the "Book beginning with J" reading challenge for now, and I'm reading Solzhenitsyn's The First Circle for a different challenge. It's set in Stalinist Russia, and is about the inmates of a special prison where all the scientists and technicians have been sent and set to work on phone scramblers and things.

I recently got to a bit describing how the current big project is in trouble because the Minister (who doesn't understand the technical challenges) made wildly unrealistic promises to Stalin about when it would be ready, and all the middle managers were either equally ignorant or too afraid to contradict him, so now the technicians are stuck trying to do a job in a month that would take years to do properly, even if they had up-to-date and well-maintained equipment which of course they don't. Apart from the bit where they'll all be shot if the client isn't satisfied, it reminds me of several tech projects I've worked on.

[soricel]

About halfway through Vincent Bevins' If We Burn. It's a history of the huge protest movements that popped up all over the place in the 2010s, and why most of them "failed" in one way or another. It's a sad and frustrating book, and I think it does a good job of clear-eyedly acknowledging how huge and transformative and empowering these movements felt for the people involved in them while also acknowledging the contradictions and weaknesses within them. So far I've found the chapters about Brazil most engaging, because Bevins was there at the time. I really appreciate how international the scope of the book is, but at some points it feels a little disjointed and unwieldy. Maybe that's just me though.

Also listening to the audio book of The Dream Thieves, the second book in Maggie Stiefvater's Raven Cycle series. This book feels very summery to me, and I'm into it so far--actually enjoying it quite a bit more than the first one, I think. Also loving the narrator of the audiobook.

[valoise]

I was in the mood for some vintage science fiction so I started browsing through Hoopla. I have loved several books by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky so I chose one I hadn't heard of The Way to Amalthea or it was called in this translation Destination: Amaltheia. A hard sf story about a supply ship on it's way to a station on a moon of Jupiter, it was one of the worst translations I've come across. Very clunky, felt like the translator was using high school language skills and a Russian-English dictionary. If I come across a more recent translation of this I might give it another try because the Strugatskys have written some really great stuff.

I'd read some J. G. Ballard in a History of Science Fiction class in college so I thought I'd look for something else by him. I was surprised there was nothing by him at my library so I looked in Hoopla and found Concrete Island. What a disappointment. While driving home from work the tire on the main character's car blows out and he crashes off the freeway into an abandoned area under an overpass. There are only two other characters and all three of them are a combination of incompetent, unsympathetic, and cruel.

[brightly_lit]

I loved the movie of Empire of the Sun so much that I looked into all of J. G. Ballard's books then, and ... yeah. The description of all his books, and characters, sounded so grim and unpleasant that I decided to just leave it at having seen the movie.

[valoise]

I had read The Drowned World which was a kind of climate fiction, flooded London, which I remember as well written. And the movie adaptation of High Rise was also grim but a well made movie. So I originally I was looking for an eBook of High Rise when I stumbled across Concrete Island.

[rabbit_stew]

I'm currently reading Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford. The author is an anthropologist rather than a Western or Middle Eastern historian, and he writes the book more from the Mongolian POV. It's refreshing. I'm looking for a book like this about Attila the Hun next.

The other book I'm reading is Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito. It's an odd bit of a horror book, but perfect for falling asleep.

[brightly_lit]

My friend's book Sacrosanct (by Nixie Lotus). For an erotica book, it's wonderfully written and full of passion for music and fashion and a cool scene. It's about a bunch of people associated with a goth club and their various liaisons with each other. I don't generally read erotica, but I do love gothy stuff, and I wanted to write a review for her, as she that for me. It's a fun, light-hearted read, in any case.