rereading The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens, A Radical Act of Free Magic by H.G. Parry and The History of the Ancient World by Susan Wise Bauer
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What'cha Reading?
- Thread starter Falselogic
- Start date
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
Lighter reading recently as most of my free time was spent playing P3 Reload.
Read the DnDoggos book (unique story that's not on the website) and really liked it. Definitely aimed toward younger readers and people who don't know D&D as well but well-done. I also like that there are good party interactions where the DM explains things politely when the players aren't sure what they should be doing and there's a cute scene where all the snacks interrupt play. I got it from the library but will be getting a copy, I think it's something I'll want to lend to friends who want to get their kids into D&D.
Also finished From a Certain Point of View: Return of the Jedi, the third in the collections of short stories. Like the first two, it's just fun, some stories are good and some aren't. This collection did feel much more spread out than the first (which focused too much on the cantina) and the second (which spent too much time on Hoth) and I think there's more variety in the style of stories although it's been quite a while since I read the first two. A great thing to keep by my bedside then read a story or two before bed.
Read the DnDoggos book (unique story that's not on the website) and really liked it. Definitely aimed toward younger readers and people who don't know D&D as well but well-done. I also like that there are good party interactions where the DM explains things politely when the players aren't sure what they should be doing and there's a cute scene where all the snacks interrupt play. I got it from the library but will be getting a copy, I think it's something I'll want to lend to friends who want to get their kids into D&D.
Also finished From a Certain Point of View: Return of the Jedi, the third in the collections of short stories. Like the first two, it's just fun, some stories are good and some aren't. This collection did feel much more spread out than the first (which focused too much on the cantina) and the second (which spent too much time on Hoth) and I think there's more variety in the style of stories although it's been quite a while since I read the first two. A great thing to keep by my bedside then read a story or two before bed.
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
Picked up Bohemians, Bootleggers, Flappers, and Swells, a collection of early Vanity Fair essays from the 1910s-1930s. It came up when I talked about reading A Moveable Feast last year that I'm not as obsessed with the jazz age as many others are, but I do love magazine-style writing a lot for some reason. The very first essay in the collection is PG Wodehouse essay satirizing people who exercise every morning:
This is fun. I suppose if you have a subscription you could read through the articles without getting the collection but I don't and it's fun to have them curated like this. Glad my library had this!
This is fun. I suppose if you have a subscription you could read through the articles without getting the collection but I don't and it's fun to have them curated like this. Glad my library had this!
My library doesn't have Kelly Link's new novel in yet, so I read her previous book of short stories White Cat, Black Dog in the meantime. I absolutely loved this book and wished it was twice as long. Apparently the stories are all based on Brothers Grimm-type fairy tales, but I didn't know most of them and it didn't make me enjoy the book any less. The dreamlike atmosphere and crisp writing were their own rewards for me. I just went and put holds on a bunch of her other books too, can't wait to dig into them.
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
Just started Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata for my classics book club. It's supposed to have absolutely stunning writing so I'm excited.
But I'm annoyed that I read the Introduction and without any sort of warning the introduction just started analyzing the events of the final scene of the book in detail. I don't care much about spoilers so I'm fine, but that was quite a surprise and I know a lot of people who would be pretty annoyed!
But I'm annoyed that I read the Introduction and without any sort of warning the introduction just started analyzing the events of the final scene of the book in detail. I don't care much about spoilers so I'm fine, but that was quite a surprise and I know a lot of people who would be pretty annoyed!
Damn, this took me nearly three months. It was labyrinthine and surreal, and pretty hard to follow. It leaves almost everything quite open-ended, and I had trouble keeping a lot of the minor characters straight. But it was beautifully written, especially for a translation, and I get the distinct feeling that there's nothing quite like it out there. I'll be spending some time reading interviews, analyses, and wiki diving about it, for sure. I'd recommend for fans of magical realism or with an interest in depictions of handicaps and the people who have them.
Next, I think I need something a bit lighter and quicker, and I'm not sure if this qualifies but I think I'll try A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet.
I think that will be exactly what you’re looking for—I found it light, quick, and lovely.
I should really grab the second book in the Wayfarers series, I did enjoy ALWtaSAP quite a lot.
RIght now, though, I'm reading Hyperion for the first time ever. I went into this book with basically no expectations of any kind, and so far it's been pleasantly surprising! As is tradition for science fiction novels, it starts out with around 10 pages of indecipherable proper noun soup, but then it quickly becomes something pretty different. I'm getting both classic mystery AND anthology sci-fi vibes from what I've read so far, although I'm only a little ways in and I still haven't finished the first of the main characters' back stories. I get the feeling this is going to be a really long book (reading on a Kindle can often disguise that fact in a way physical books cannot), but I think I'm going to enjoy it.
One thing I am not entirely enjoying is the language used to describe some of the groups of people that the POV characters run into. Now this is a science fiction book from the 80s, so I can't say I'm completely surprised, but there's definitely a bluntness and some very poor word choices when one of the characters runs into a group of people with very limited expressivity and unusual customs. I grew up in the 80s, so I know that people were way less sensitive about this stuff in general back then, but it can be a little rough stumbling across this stuff in a book you are otherwise enjoying. I also think that science fiction as a genre is more prone to these kind of blunders because of the big swings people take when devising settings and races whole cloth. A lot of sci-fi reads as someone thinking "wouldn't it be crazy if everyone acted in this strange way" and then trying to flesh that out for 400 pages. And sometimes it works! But historical revisionism can really take the shine off some of those attempts as time goes by.
Anyway, good book so far, just have to keep in mind that it was written 35 years ago and try not to judge it too harshly on certain aspects.
RIght now, though, I'm reading Hyperion for the first time ever. I went into this book with basically no expectations of any kind, and so far it's been pleasantly surprising! As is tradition for science fiction novels, it starts out with around 10 pages of indecipherable proper noun soup, but then it quickly becomes something pretty different. I'm getting both classic mystery AND anthology sci-fi vibes from what I've read so far, although I'm only a little ways in and I still haven't finished the first of the main characters' back stories. I get the feeling this is going to be a really long book (reading on a Kindle can often disguise that fact in a way physical books cannot), but I think I'm going to enjoy it.
One thing I am not entirely enjoying is the language used to describe some of the groups of people that the POV characters run into. Now this is a science fiction book from the 80s, so I can't say I'm completely surprised, but there's definitely a bluntness and some very poor word choices when one of the characters runs into a group of people with very limited expressivity and unusual customs. I grew up in the 80s, so I know that people were way less sensitive about this stuff in general back then, but it can be a little rough stumbling across this stuff in a book you are otherwise enjoying. I also think that science fiction as a genre is more prone to these kind of blunders because of the big swings people take when devising settings and races whole cloth. A lot of sci-fi reads as someone thinking "wouldn't it be crazy if everyone acted in this strange way" and then trying to flesh that out for 400 pages. And sometimes it works! But historical revisionism can really take the shine off some of those attempts as time goes by.
Anyway, good book so far, just have to keep in mind that it was written 35 years ago and try not to judge it too harshly on certain aspects.
