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What'cha Reading?
- Thread starter Falselogic
- Start date
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- Tags
- prose and cons
I wrote about Navola, the new fantasy from Paolo Bacigalupi, for The Washington Post. It's one of the best fantasy novels I've read in ages, and I think the readers here who like Gene Wolfe or Jeff VanderMeer or George R.R. Martin or Robin Hobb would appreciate it.
When I finished reading it, I wanted nothing more than to run out and pick up the next volume. Of course, I read the book before publication of the first volume, so who knows when book two will appear. But I will be ready.
It still feels weird seeing my name in the Post, as I have been reading their book reviews for almost half my life. And I have something coming up in my hometown paper, The Boston Globe, later this month.
Other recent reads:
When I finished reading it, I wanted nothing more than to run out and pick up the next volume. Of course, I read the book before publication of the first volume, so who knows when book two will appear. But I will be ready.
It still feels weird seeing my name in the Post, as I have been reading their book reviews for almost half my life. And I have something coming up in my hometown paper, The Boston Globe, later this month.
Other recent reads:
- A Strange and Sublime Address by Amit Chaudhuri: Flitting, impressionistic, and beautiful portrayal of a boyhood in India. If you like the film Pather Panchali, you will like this. If you like plot or action, avoid.
- The Mystery Guest: A True Story by Grégoire Bouillier: It's very French and very minor. I can see why others find it laugh-out-loud funny, but this parody of self-absorption didn't win me over.
- Gone: The Last Days of The New Yorker by Renata Adler: Do not get on Renata Adler's bad side; she will destroy you. Of interest for people who already know who William Shawn and Robert Gottlieb were; lots of gossip and elegant score-settling among rich New York intellectuals.
- Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow: The weirdest book, almost more essay or summary than novel, to ever inspire a major motion picture and a Broadway musical. I loved it and started off on a Broadway kick. The film has a scene of Norman Mailer getting shot in the head, which presumably fulfills a long-held fantasy of half of mid-century literary New York.
- Europeana by Patrik Ourednik: One of those books that thinks it's bravely demolishing conventional wisdom while it is, in fact, only reiterating, in the most tediously ironic prose, only marginally less conventional wisdom. Plus it gets basic historical facts wrong.
- Maigrets Anger; Maigret Gets Angry; Maigret Goes to School; Maigret and Monsieur Charles; Maigret's Pickpocket by Georges Simenon: These books continue to be an addiction. I have more than forty to go, plus Simenon published literal hundreds of other books. I won't ever run out. Just don't ask me to summarize plots or distinguish between (say) Maigret's Anger and Maigret Gets Angry.
It's one of those books that is a hundred pages long and I cannot bear to read more than ten pages at a time, but I will finish the damn thing because like an idiot I bought this book with my own money.
On the other hand: New Kevin Barry out this week, and I will be reading that over the weekend. After hearing him read at an event on Monday, I understand why so many people swear by the audiobooks, which he narrates himself: Wonderful comic timing, beautiful Irish accent, real sense of enthusiasm for his own work.
Just want to say it's extremely cool that you're writing for major publications. Congrats!
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
This is so cool, congrats!
Yeah, gave up on this one. Had my book club meeting about it and am glad I read it so could join the discussion, but it just moves too slowly and I ultimately don't think the writing is good.
Thank you both! It feels really nice, as I've been reading both publications for years.
I think Veniss is one of his I never read, but I do like Borne a whole lot. Unfortunately I think it was the last of his books I particularly liked. Although the Strange Bird short story/novella in the Borne world was OK too.
I just read M.T. Anderson's first adult novel, Nicked. It's a fantastical queer medieval heist story, which I bet a lot of people here would dig. I wrote it up for The Boston Globe.
I also read Kevin Barry's The Heart in Winter, a Montana-set Irish Western both funny and fatalistic, with profane beauty and more humor than you might expect. Further reminder, as if any was needed, that Barry is essential.
Now reading Lives of the Saints by Nancy Lemann, a comic and so far plotless book of booze and dissipation in New Orleans. Funny, but not exactly propulsive.
Next up: Ann Schlee's Rhine Journey, about a woman's awakening in 1850s Germany. A reprint of a previously forgotten but apparently great Booker finalist. It sounds a little Sylvia Townsend Warnerish; I hope I'm right in my guess.
I also read Kevin Barry's The Heart in Winter, a Montana-set Irish Western both funny and fatalistic, with profane beauty and more humor than you might expect. Further reminder, as if any was needed, that Barry is essential.
Now reading Lives of the Saints by Nancy Lemann, a comic and so far plotless book of booze and dissipation in New Orleans. Funny, but not exactly propulsive.
Next up: Ann Schlee's Rhine Journey, about a woman's awakening in 1850s Germany. A reprint of a previously forgotten but apparently great Booker finalist. It sounds a little Sylvia Townsend Warnerish; I hope I'm right in my guess.
I finished the August Book Club book in advance, and it was actually pretty good. But that's for later explanation, here's 2 other books I've read, one graphic novel and one comic.
One thing I've noticed is how much they use art as a selling point. That alone has quite some pros and cons.
First up is The Infinity Particle, by Wendy Xu and published by Harpercollins. The art is very good, using only a specific range of colors. The setting is neat, but the romance feels dull and uninspired when it focuses on the human character. Being a human-robot romance, there's naturally a lot of questions about consciousness, feeling, and creation, so that kept me quite hook. Overall, a 6/10.
Bocchi the Rock... a comic I did not particularly like. I read Volume 1, but it was an unfortunate way to start the story. The art is bizarre; I heavily dislike how these highschoolers, working and being independent, are somehow looking like toddlers. Bocchi is an extremely average protagonist, and the side characters felt a bit flat. The pacing is also wild, it's sometimes too slow, but then it jumps and rushes some parts. The oddest thing is that it's characterized as shonen, aka for boys; but how?? It has an all-girl cast with no male romance. It's a 3/10, perhaps the anime is better.
One thing I've noticed is how much they use art as a selling point. That alone has quite some pros and cons.
First up is The Infinity Particle, by Wendy Xu and published by Harpercollins. The art is very good, using only a specific range of colors. The setting is neat, but the romance feels dull and uninspired when it focuses on the human character. Being a human-robot romance, there's naturally a lot of questions about consciousness, feeling, and creation, so that kept me quite hook. Overall, a 6/10.
Bocchi the Rock... a comic I did not particularly like. I read Volume 1, but it was an unfortunate way to start the story. The art is bizarre; I heavily dislike how these highschoolers, working and being independent, are somehow looking like toddlers. Bocchi is an extremely average protagonist, and the side characters felt a bit flat. The pacing is also wild, it's sometimes too slow, but then it jumps and rushes some parts. The oddest thing is that it's characterized as shonen, aka for boys; but how?? It has an all-girl cast with no male romance. It's a 3/10, perhaps the anime is better.
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
Ugh I really hate seeing books still categorized like this. This is an outdated argument about "what boys should do" that was never great in the first place and now falls under toxic masculinity. Boys can read about girls. Having a girl protagonist shouldn't make someone feel they can't enjoy it just because they aren't a girl either, whether it's books, movies or games. I hope this (and boy/girl toy aisles) will go away in my lifetime but probably not.
Anyway, I just finished How to Age Disgracefully by Clare Pooley and it was just plain fun. Elderly heist novel I guess? A quick and really enjoyable read.
I suppose I should give Bocchi more credit then, I’m sorry. It makes sense that an all-girls cast can be read by boys. Though I’m still wondering about the “shonen/shojo” categories, I feel like those separate gender categories are just a marketing tactic to increase demand.
Johnny Unusual
(He/Him)
I mean, if anything it's more about demographic and the magazines they are published in, which are generally categorized by demographic (note that kodomomuke, "kids books" aged at 3-10 is the one ungendered category).
Yeah, it's a bit bygone but realistically, a lot of "boys" books have a lot of female readers (I also feel like this is a known considering how a lot of shonen characters get a bishonen look) and a lot of "girls" books have male readership.
Interestingly, I will say that I feel like shojo is less varied now, with more focus on romance but there used to be more shojo fantasy/horror/sports series. Of course, I can't always tell which was sold to which magazine.
Skip and Loafer has a strong look that reminds me of shojo and doesn't fall into a lot of traps (namely male gaze) that a lot of male romances do but I think its actually a seinen series (seinen being for the 18-or-over crowd, which can vary wildly in tone).
Alternately, because the male lead in Ore Monogatari!! is a big, beefy, goofy, weird-lookin' dude who is also the point-of-view character, while the female romantic lead is scene somewhat from the outside, I assumed that this was a shonen but in fact it came out in a shojo magazine.
(BTW, both series are great)
It feels like the actual categorization is a little less meaningful but the magazines these series originate in have a long history with those titles (and a lot of them are branded with particular tones, to an extent, with a popular outlier every-so-often). But generally I think the readership for both demographically categorized series is often much richer in spectrum, especially the big popular series like One Piece (I remember telling a teen girl I was teaching that Usopp was my favourite crewmember and she looked at me shocked and said "BUT HE'S A LIAR!").
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
Oh I guess I should be clear I'm not mad at you, I'm mad at sexism and probably capitalism too.
I hadn't heard of this and looks like my library has the first one, put a hold on it. Thanks!
Sadly they do not have this, oh well.
Johnny Unusual
(He/Him)
In what sense? Do you mean demographic designation? Or audience overlap?
I'm not super familiar with anime programming blocks,. I know the more violent or sexy the show is, the more likely it's going to air later in the evening, even if the target audience for the manga itself is teens (for example Chainsaw Man, which is quite violent with characters having sex is a late night show). I feel like there are probably Seinen series that air earlier because even though the target audience is older, the content is less intense. But even then, MANY of the popular anime you see or hear about air after midnight. The big ones like One Piece air in prime time but even a lot of romance series with not a lot of objectable stuff, like the teen romance Your Lie in April, was late night viewing. So all this probably has an effect on the audience (as does the rise of the streaming era with these shows, I imagine).
Anyway, I don't know if the programming blocks (the grouping of shows within period, sort of like Fox's Animation Domination) often hew to a specifically-labeled gender demographic but I know some stick to a certain tone noitaminA is a block that originally was created to be an alternative to shonen-type series and even started with adaptations of shojo and josei series. Eventually it would change and include some shonen series but even then some of them had in some way atypical tones (which is not to say it didn't have trashy series on there, too).
Johnny Unusual
(He/Him)
The English title is the much more generic My Love Story!! in case they are using that.
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
They did not and I searched by author too but thank you! I'll keep an eye out for it.
Anyway, I just finished up the 4th book/novella in the Singing Hills cycle, Mammoths at the Gates. A bit of a departure from previous ones but I liked it very much, added a new dimension to the world.
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
Started What Fresh Hell Is This? about perimenopause and menopause which people have been telling me to read for years. I am very into the rage.
It's also the horrifying reminder of how ridiculous treatments for women's health were for too damn long:
It's also the horrifying reminder of how ridiculous treatments for women's health were for too damn long:
So my wife and I decided a bit ago to start doing a little ritual of reading to each other out of a novel just a few pages at a time before bed, and started with Perdido Street Station. We're like seven chapters in now and I have no idea when of if a plot will actually go somewhere but I'm already super intrigued by the world of Bas-Lag and could just stick around for all this world-building for quite a while.
I want to get a birthday present for my cousin's son, who is 12 and loves reading. He's recently gone through His Dark Materials and, I have to assume, stuff like Harry Potter. Anyone have good recommendations for a kid that age?
Try Spy School stuff? My 11 year old loves it.
My 11 year old is addicted to the Warrior Cats series.
I loved Redwall at that age.
One book I kinda wish I'd read when I was younger was Un Lun Dun by China Mieville (it's a YA book, unlike his typical output).
Umm... Percy Jackson?
Oh I could put out a recommendation for Cinda Williams Chima and her books. Maybe those are more teen-level, I don't know, I haven't read many. But she's one of my oldest friend's mom, so I should mention her.
One book I kinda wish I'd read when I was younger was Un Lun Dun by China Mieville (it's a YA book, unlike his typical output).
Umm... Percy Jackson?
Oh I could put out a recommendation for Cinda Williams Chima and her books. Maybe those are more teen-level, I don't know, I haven't read many. But she's one of my oldest friend's mom, so I should mention her.