RIP (Read In Progress) Wednesday

[silversea]

Last Wednesday of August, what are everyone reading? Any nice summer-y books? 👀

Comments

[rocky41_7]

I finally got ahold of "This is How You Lose the Time War" from my library, so that's what I'm working on now! What about you?

[skye_writer]

Rereading an old favorite—Beauty, by Robin McKinley. It’s been nice to revisit something so familiar. I’m honestly tempted to reread all the McKinley books I own.

[silversea]

I'm reading A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers, which is kind of summer-ish? with all the camping, but it's far too cozy for my liking. Despite trying and hoping to like cozy SFF, they unfortunately aren't really my thing. I need some kind of stakes to get invested in, and many just don't have any stakes/excessively dull stakes. I'm still early in though, so we'll see if the book surprises me or not.

[spiralsheep]

82. The Passengers on the Hankyu Line, by Hiro Arikawa (translated by Allison Markin Powell), 3.5/5.
A Japanese, slice of life, composite novel or short story cycle that does exactly what it says in the title by introducing us to various railway passengers and their interactions. Mostly a gentle and positive read, with multiple happy endings, although I didn't think the last two wrap-up stories in the suite were as good as the cycle they were concluding.

83. Accidental Darlings, by Crystal Jeans, 4.5/5.
Lgb(t) historical-ish novel set in the interwar period, with a coming of age theme in a broadly found-family framework, and a style I can only describe as gothy Dickensian modernism in a surprisingly smooth medley without choppy changes of tone or key. The author is also particularly a Bronte fan. This novel was a serendipitous choice from the library because if I'd had an accurate description then I wouldn't've picked it: orphan, scary aunt, large dilapidated house, vicious servant, local bigots, ageing bright young things. I found it a compelling read with enjoyable moments and a well-earned fabulous ending, a smidgin of hope in a glassful of resilience. The in-jokes in the epilogue chapter boosted it overall from a 4 to a 4.5/5 because lmao (literally!).
Warnings: the dogs die (two are murdered, but it's fair to add that humans also die through illness and accident), and emetophobes should avoid this (within the first 100 pages there's a child, a haemophobe twice, and a dog, and it doesn't stop there).

[valoise]

I've been reading a bunch of short fiction in various sff magazines, but I also read:
A Daily Exercise for Ladies, a cookbook from 1617 by John Murrell it was focused almost entirely on candies, biscuits, preserving fruit, and fancy sugar work. Although I don't plan on trying any of his recipes it was an entertaining read.

There was a Humble Bundle deal on crochet and knitting books. A nice haul of books. I started with Cozy Crochet by Melissa Leapman. Fairly basic introductory book but I'll hang onto it. There are a few sweater and hat patterns I'd like to do.

[olivermoss]

I read the first four books, all that's out so far, of the Memento Mori series by C S Poe. It takes place during a summer heat wave in New York, so I guess that's summery?

[sonotadream]

Started The Mortal Word, #5 in The Invisible Library series. They're fun books - this one seems to be a murder mystery- about spy librarians traveling around the multiverse.

[cactus_rs]

Loved this one so much!!!

[cactus_rs]

A book club opted for Brave New World so I just started that today. Not sure how I haven't read it before.

I'm also working on a short story collection called The Encyclopedia of the Dead. I picked it up in Zagreb when I was looking for an English translation of a Croatian author I could take home with me.

[pauraque]

I'm most of the way through The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi. I think I like it, though it depends on where the plot ends up.

[pauraque]

I liked Brave New World when I read it for school, though I haven't read it since. I wonder what I would think of it now.

[dark_phoenix54]

Just yesterday I started "The Last Great Dream: How Bohemians Became HIppies and Created the Sixties" by Dennis McNally. The title kind of says it all; the author starts with artists, writers, and musicians who were working in the last forties and through the sixties, and how their work and lives interconnected and what their art did to change life. Very well researched (my gawd, the index, bibliography, notes, and cast of characters take up 95 pages!) and very dense with facts- I suspect I'll need to take breaks from it at times, just to relax my brain. But this is a subject that fascinates me, so I am eager to read it!

[mxroboto]

Oh you're in for a treat!

[mxroboto]

For me, the saving grace of that book was its length. I struggle with that kind of cozy story too

[mxroboto]

Whoa that sounds super interesting, I'm gonna add it to my library list!

[mxroboto]

Finished both Richard Siken's Crush and a local history book about my city during WWI (kinda shocking how we're doing so many similar things now, it's like laying a transparency down and changing some words). Now onto Samantha Sotto Yambao's Water Moon. It's all right so far. Chapter breaks are a little mystifying but I think it'll make a nice little snack. :D

[pedanther]

Still working my way through Ghost Empire.

On the fiction side, I just finished reading a small press anthology. The printer hadn't trimmed the page block cleanly, so I kept having to pause to slice two pages apart. I suspect this is the thing that I will remember about the book long after I've forgotten all the stories (to be frank, I've forgotten most of the stories already).

[silversea]

I just finished it and.... Yeah. That's the only saving grace for me too. It kind of picked up when Mosscap finally showed up (the pacing was atrocious), but its presence wasn't enough to salvage the story.

[drawnecromancy]

Whoops, I completely forgot to comment yesterday despite being online :D
I finally bit the bullet and decided not to finish the Chronicles of the Bitch Queen trilogy because, well. I was hating it. I was hating every second of it.

So instead I picked up a book I'd gotten in one of the free book boxes around town, a french translation of It had to be a duke (french title : La fausse fiancée which is a much worse title imo, where's the FUN ? although it was enough to get me interested i'll give it that), which is a romance book by Vivienne Lorret. Absolutely not the genre I read the most, but it's so enjoyable and funny. I don't regret my decision to drop the prior books because this is just a lot more awesome !

[drawnecromancy]

Accidental Darlings sounds really interesting by your summary of it, I think I'm going to add it to the list of books I should get my hands on eventually !

[drawnecromancy]

Oh I read Brave New World ages ago. I don't remember much of it, maybe it's due for a reread...

[valoise]

Sounds intriguing, love a history grounded in good research

[spiralsheep]

I keep trying to describe it to people and I'm now at: imagine if a Dickensian orphan hero (but a girl) got dropped into a melange of the gothier Bronte novels but with lgb(t) characters and set in the 1920-30s, and the result is like a grimmer more realistic version of Cold Comfort Farm (minus Gibbons' antisemitism) but in a modernist setting and with occasional post-modern inserts towards the end. Which sounds ridiculous and off-putting but was actually a good read. 4.5/5
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I don't think I'll read any of Crystal Jeans' previous novels but I will be looking out for her next.

[drawnecromancy]

I mean, if anything, it's a detailed description LOL
And fair! I hope you enjoy whatever she puts out next!

[meteordust]

That's one of my favourites too! I think I love all the parts about the family settling in to their everyday lives even more than the fairytale parts.

[isis]

I enjoyed this series but I think there are several books I didn't get to at the end - I should track them down!

[isis]

Same.

[isis]

Pretty much literally! I'm about 3/4 through Summer in Orcus by T. Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon).

[rekishi]

Completely unrelated to your books, but Zhaan! In your icon! Hi!

[mxroboto]

!!!! HIII omg I love your bewildered Crichton icon ahhhh

[angelcage]

Murakami's Norwegian Wood just came in from the library for me, but I haven't gotten around to reading it. I've not really jived with the last few things I've read so it's been demotivating as far as starting something new. Hopefully this one works out better for me!

[angelcage]

I read that in sixth grade, one of the first dystopian novels I had ever read right after Fahrenheit 451. It's really interesting how early that one was written— we hadn't even figured out DNA yet.

[angelcage]

That one's a ton of fun, the wild prose that verges on poetry really makes the setting feel kind of inhumanly futuristic which feels like just the right tone for what it's going for! I hope you enjoy it.

[angelcage]

Crush! At some point I've got to get that one out from the library. I've read a bunch of poems from it since they were massively popular for a while, but still not all collated in the form they were meant to be read. Still, I loved them a lot.

[mxroboto]

Oh man, they're gonna hit a lot harder as one cohesive work, I'm excited for you to experience them!!

[mxroboto]

I hope so too!! I hate when you have several misses in a row. :/

[angelcage]

Yeah! This was an excellent reminder to finally go do that.

[angelcage]

I've been suffering. They weren't even all in the same genre too so it's not like it's a specific thing I can take a break from— I just have to try different stuff until something works out again. But Jeanne Thornton's A/S/L didn't work for me, nor Coco Mellow's Cleopatra and Frankenstein, not Cory Doctorow's Radicalized, T. Kingfisher's A House with Good Bones... just a lot of misses.