The reading meme

[auroracloud]

Here's a quick Reading Wednesday-No-Thursday-Actually post, because I should be doing useful things and I don't want to! (Perhaps I need to make more tea first. More tea is often the answer.)

What I've Read Recently

The last book I finished was A Conspiracy of Truths by Alexandra Rowland, which I enjoyed a lot. Deliciously rich and detailed worldbuilding (though I'm a bit iffy about so many names directly from our world's languages appearing in a complete fantasy world), lots of things about storytelling and narrators and the power of stories for the good and the bad, everyone is super queer. I really look forward to getting my hands on the second book, especially as that'll feature my favourite character as the narrator.

What I'm Reading Now

A lot of things! I'm rereading The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet for the Xth (maybe 4th?) time because why not, and that books keeps making me very happy and comforted. Otherwise, all my library holds insisted on coming at the same time, so I'm a bit swamped, but I've finally started Gideon the Ninth so that I have time to read it before I have to take it back to the library. I'm not far into it enough to say what I think of it yet. It seems entertaining but maybe has more reanimated corpses than I strictly like? I really want to get back to Empress of Forever which I enjoy a lot but which I requires more of my brain than the others do, which is why it's been slow. I've recently been reading some Finnish poetry to enjoy things in my own language as well.

What I'm going to read next

Well, the library books with a definite due date to them include The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon, Realm of Ash by Tasha Suri, and Middlegame by Seanan McGuire. I'm not convinced I can read all of them in the time I've got left, but I can't decide which one to take back to the library without reading, because I super much want to read all of them. Wish me luck, or something. Anyway, once that situation is done, we'll see, but I might want to tackle some of my own books for a change, and I have a bunch of stuff I want to reread, like the Imperial Radch books and In the Vanishers' Palace. Oh, and there are lots of history books I want to get down to. I've realized I've spent too much time in the 19th century Europe and would really like to read more about other historical periods.

So, trying to keep up with new, recently published stuff is turning out difficult for me. Maybe I should go back to being late for each and every book and fandom? That's usually more my style. Then again, I've discovered some fabulous books by keeping up with the current releases, so ah, it's hard to know what to do.

Okay, I'm going to stop procrastinating for real now.

Comments

[st_aurafina]

Imperial Radch!! I'm just here to cheer for them, they're excellent books. (Especially in audiobook form!)

Maybe I should go back to being late for each and every book and fandom?
I mean, that's pretty standard for me? But yeah, sometimes it's nice to be up to date.

[auroracloud]

The Radch books are soooo good! I need to check out the audiobooks some time, everyone who's listened to them keeps going on about how excellently fabulous the narration is.

Yeah, being late for everything is pretty standard for me as well. It's just that I've recently had some experiences of finding something years after everyone else and wishing I had tried it sooner - such as the aforementioned Imperial Radch books. (Though to be fair, I'd tried them once earlier, but then my brain was so overworked that I couldn't get past the first 50 or so pages where you don't really understand what's going on and have to slowly parse things together.) Plus, I've got fond of voting in the Hugos - just doing my part in keeping the awards queer and diverse, you know. It's hard to nominate if I haven't read anything recent, and it also makes it very stressful to vote if I haven't read any of the nominated stuff. Hopefully having tried to follow some new releases this year means that if I vote in next year's Hugos (I probably will, though I haven't got the membership yet) I'll know a fair amount of the nominees already. Well, I'll just have to dial it down, I guess - read some new things but not make a crazy load of library holds at once!

[hebethen]

I mean, for what it's worth, you can still discover fabulous books by reading stuff a couple of years after it's published! There are so manie booke.

Expectation spoiler regarding whether there's more, less, or roughly the same amount of reanimated corpsery throughout the rest of the book, if it's important to you (ROT13'd): Gur pbecfrl arpebznagrel bayl vapernfrf va dhnagvgl naq tencuvparff.

[auroracloud]

you can still discover fabulous books by reading stuff a couple of years after it's published! There are so manie booke.

Yes, there are! That is my standard model for discovering fabulous books - this whole trying to keep up thing is very new to me, mostly inspired by trying to vote in the Hugos and by getting tons of reading recommendations in WorldCons, and by discovering some fabulous books years late and wishing I'd read them earlier. I suppose I just have to learn a balance that works for me - some new books but not so that it becomes stressful to keep up with my library loans.

But then again, even those who seem to keep up with all the new releases aren't really doing that, there's an impossible amount of books being released, so they're probably just keeping up with what's popular or hyped in their circles, or pings some particular keywords for them.

Thanks for the info - and for the record, I don't mind that type of information - in fact I often seek out some such things in advance because I have a bunch of issues that flare up with certain types of content. Though some other readers might mind, so just to be safe, my response similarly scrambled: V fhccbfr vg zvtug or n ovg zhpu sbe zr. Bs pbhefr, V qba'g xabj jung V rkcrpgrq sebz n obbx gung unf fxhyyf ba gur pbire naq vf gntyvarq nf "yrfovna arpebznapref va fcnpr". Jryy, fbzrgvzrf vg'f uneq gb xabj vs fbzrguvat vf gbb zhpu sbe lbh hayrff lbh gel vg.

[thisbluespirit]

It seems entertaining but maybe has more reanimated corpses than I strictly like?

How many reanimated corpses are the right number?



;-p

[auroracloud]

That's hard to quantify, but based on my reactions I would prefer reanimated corpses to be sparsely used to particularly great effect, perhaps at a maximum of 1-3 per book.

Then again, I'm not sure what I expected from a book that has skulls on the cover and is generally taglined as "lesbian necromancers in space". What can I say, it's easy to catch my attention with the words "lesbian" and "space"?

[thisbluespirit]

lol, there was a word in between those two words there? :-D

Sparsely sounds reasonable to me anyway.

[auroracloud]

Turns out there is, and it's significant when it comes to predicting the number of reanimated corpses per book! Who knew.

(I don't have appropriate icons for this topic, so unsettled Tegan is always a good option.)