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thanateI didn't read in February, as I started off spending very little time sitting down, followed by a lot of time staring at my newborn. Then there were some non-fiction things I didn't get all the way through (for various reasons, although I got interesting things out of all of them) and lately there's been a lot of reading things interspersed pieces, as I've got things stashed next to most of the places I sit to nurse, and so it takes a bit longer to finish any one of them. But whatever...
February:
Huntress- Malinda Lo. Same world as Ash, but centuries earlier, and you get to see the beginnings of some of the important cultural elements from the later-time book. Good YA adventure, some romantic angst but not from the normal directions, various fairly traditional fairytale themes done pretty well. Magic, fairies, changelings, lesbians, several shades of death, and quests to save the world... if that appeals it's probably worth a look. :)
Commander Toad & the Planet of the Grapes- Jane Yolen. Hee. This came out of one of the boxes of my brother's picture books, though it's more early reader age-target. If you're not familiar with the Commander Toad series, they're amphibian Star Trek/early SF spin offs with ridiculous puns the like. Ten-fifteen minutes of entertainment apiece, recommended for those with smallish children or who don't mind reading like them. (start wherever)
Wormwood Forest: a Natural History of Chernobyl- Mary Mycio. Nonfiction that understands the use of the past tense (which I've been having trouble finding recently, though that may be semi-coincidental.) It's more or less what it purports to be, addressed in a research memoir sort of format-- a great collection of bits surrounding the Chernobyl event and exclusion zone from just before the melt-down to not quite a decade ago (when the book was written.) Lots about the plants and animals and various effects upon them, a bunch of social and societal stuff including the people who still or again live in the exclusion zone, and the occasional foray into the technicalities of radiation. She doesn't ever fully address the double-standard between radiation zone as wildlife preserve and the purported danger to humans, though there's enough there to contemplate one's own conclusions, and it's pretty clear most of the people the author has talked to have drawn their own conclusions as well.
March:
City of Fire- Laurence Yep. My library fails to have further Dragon of the Lost Sea books, so I requested the city trilogy instead. The dragon & boy dynamic is actually quite similar between the two, though here there are a bunch of other major characters to confuse things, and I love the world, which is nominally 1940s but full of Asian empires and the casual inclusion of all sorts of mythic species. Also a very cool rendition of Pele. A little slow to get rolling, but a good adventure with a team of children and mythic creatures. Fun & recommended to anyone old enough to handle some supporting-character death.
The Hallowed Hunt- Lois McMaster Bujold. Reread, as![[twitter.com profile]](https://p2.dreamwidth.org/e0caa790ec10/-/twitter.com/favicon.ico)
Rural_Fantasy reminded me that Learned Hallana is pregnant in it; I had forgotten her character entirely. Interestingly, I read that bit just as I was gearing up to active labor, and so ended up following the character's pregnancy & delivery timing-wise. I've heard a lot of people say they don't think this one holds up against the Chalion books. Paladin of Souls looks to be the latest book I reread about yearly until I can't anymore because I know it too well, but I don't find Ingrey much slighter than Cazaril.
A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady Trent- Marie Brennan. This is entirely the book I was hoping it would be, and thus after I accidentally devoured the first five chapters the moment it came into the house, it went into the hospital go-bag on the theory that I might have a while where I wanted something easy to concentrate on. (um, not so much, as it turned out...) Anyway, this is the pseudo-Victorian tale of a young woman who would rather study dragons than go to balls, as recounted by her much older self. In my head it's shelved with Pat Wrede's 13th child series, which I love for similar reasons. Something about not-quite-the-same-old alternate history and young women pushing the bounds of what they can grow up to be in historically accurate ways.
Melusine- Sarah Monette. Turns out what I needed to know to get into this was that Felix self-destructing only lasts about six or eight scenes; Felix mad I didn't have so much trouble with. And Mildmay was awesome. Anyway, intrigue with various problematic magic-users, ghosts and madness, and a cat-burgler with his own set of problems. Quite dark but not without promise of possible redemption somewhere.
Electric Light- Seamus Heaney. Someone online quoted a section out of Heaney's "The Lightnings" which I loved, and subsequently checked out a bunch of his stuff from the library in search of the rest of the poem. I haven't found it yet; this collection turned out to be divided in two parts loosely themed Birth and Death (though not labeled as such) so I opened it up and found myself suddenly reading several different things about a baby girl about to be born, or just so. Decent poems overall, but most of these didn't grab me too hard; I couldn't begin to say whether that's the fault of the poems or of my present mental space, though.
...and books not finished:
The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han- Mark Edward Lewis. I was all excited about this book, and I think two things went wrong. Partly, I was not concentrating so well as I might have liked, and being distracted by things like wondering how I was supposed to pronounce ancient Chinese names I've seen transliterated several ways (and in fact if, given that they're from a pictographic language with multiple extremely divergent dialects, anyone now knows how they were pronounced at the time.) That was a me problem, and going back later might help it. The other thing was that the book is structured in five sections each dealing with a different cultural aspect and it didn't start with enough of an overview of the history of the period for me to feel like I had anything to tie the bits into. This may also be mostly me, but I felt like a page or three of boring linear history overview would have helped.
Mapping Doggerland: The Mesolithic Landscapes of the Southern North Sea... This is a report on an academic study, and while a bunch of it is interesting, much more of it is about methodology than about findings, and thus I skimmed a bunch of it. If you have a fair tolerance for research papers and are interested in the details of who presently has collected undersea data between the British isles and the rest of Europe and what happens to core samples in long-term storage (they mold!) then have fun; otherwise I'd probably give it a miss.
Europe's Lost World: The Rediscovery of Doggerland (CBA Research Report) This one has the "research report" bit in the title, but is actually written up chronologically following the knowledge reclaimed over the last century. Very readable, interesting, and I would have finished but it needed to go back to the library. Will buy when I find a copy that's not ridiculously expensive.
February:
Huntress- Malinda Lo. Same world as Ash, but centuries earlier, and you get to see the beginnings of some of the important cultural elements from the later-time book. Good YA adventure, some romantic angst but not from the normal directions, various fairly traditional fairytale themes done pretty well. Magic, fairies, changelings, lesbians, several shades of death, and quests to save the world... if that appeals it's probably worth a look. :)
Commander Toad & the Planet of the Grapes- Jane Yolen. Hee. This came out of one of the boxes of my brother's picture books, though it's more early reader age-target. If you're not familiar with the Commander Toad series, they're amphibian Star Trek/early SF spin offs with ridiculous puns the like. Ten-fifteen minutes of entertainment apiece, recommended for those with smallish children or who don't mind reading like them. (start wherever)
Wormwood Forest: a Natural History of Chernobyl- Mary Mycio. Nonfiction that understands the use of the past tense (which I've been having trouble finding recently, though that may be semi-coincidental.) It's more or less what it purports to be, addressed in a research memoir sort of format-- a great collection of bits surrounding the Chernobyl event and exclusion zone from just before the melt-down to not quite a decade ago (when the book was written.) Lots about the plants and animals and various effects upon them, a bunch of social and societal stuff including the people who still or again live in the exclusion zone, and the occasional foray into the technicalities of radiation. She doesn't ever fully address the double-standard between radiation zone as wildlife preserve and the purported danger to humans, though there's enough there to contemplate one's own conclusions, and it's pretty clear most of the people the author has talked to have drawn their own conclusions as well.
March:
City of Fire- Laurence Yep. My library fails to have further Dragon of the Lost Sea books, so I requested the city trilogy instead. The dragon & boy dynamic is actually quite similar between the two, though here there are a bunch of other major characters to confuse things, and I love the world, which is nominally 1940s but full of Asian empires and the casual inclusion of all sorts of mythic species. Also a very cool rendition of Pele. A little slow to get rolling, but a good adventure with a team of children and mythic creatures. Fun & recommended to anyone old enough to handle some supporting-character death.
The Hallowed Hunt- Lois McMaster Bujold. Reread, as
A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady Trent- Marie Brennan. This is entirely the book I was hoping it would be, and thus after I accidentally devoured the first five chapters the moment it came into the house, it went into the hospital go-bag on the theory that I might have a while where I wanted something easy to concentrate on. (um, not so much, as it turned out...) Anyway, this is the pseudo-Victorian tale of a young woman who would rather study dragons than go to balls, as recounted by her much older self. In my head it's shelved with Pat Wrede's 13th child series, which I love for similar reasons. Something about not-quite-the-same-old alternate history and young women pushing the bounds of what they can grow up to be in historically accurate ways.
Melusine- Sarah Monette. Turns out what I needed to know to get into this was that Felix self-destructing only lasts about six or eight scenes; Felix mad I didn't have so much trouble with. And Mildmay was awesome. Anyway, intrigue with various problematic magic-users, ghosts and madness, and a cat-burgler with his own set of problems. Quite dark but not without promise of possible redemption somewhere.
Electric Light- Seamus Heaney. Someone online quoted a section out of Heaney's "The Lightnings" which I loved, and subsequently checked out a bunch of his stuff from the library in search of the rest of the poem. I haven't found it yet; this collection turned out to be divided in two parts loosely themed Birth and Death (though not labeled as such) so I opened it up and found myself suddenly reading several different things about a baby girl about to be born, or just so. Decent poems overall, but most of these didn't grab me too hard; I couldn't begin to say whether that's the fault of the poems or of my present mental space, though.
...and books not finished:
The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han- Mark Edward Lewis. I was all excited about this book, and I think two things went wrong. Partly, I was not concentrating so well as I might have liked, and being distracted by things like wondering how I was supposed to pronounce ancient Chinese names I've seen transliterated several ways (and in fact if, given that they're from a pictographic language with multiple extremely divergent dialects, anyone now knows how they were pronounced at the time.) That was a me problem, and going back later might help it. The other thing was that the book is structured in five sections each dealing with a different cultural aspect and it didn't start with enough of an overview of the history of the period for me to feel like I had anything to tie the bits into. This may also be mostly me, but I felt like a page or three of boring linear history overview would have helped.
Mapping Doggerland: The Mesolithic Landscapes of the Southern North Sea... This is a report on an academic study, and while a bunch of it is interesting, much more of it is about methodology than about findings, and thus I skimmed a bunch of it. If you have a fair tolerance for research papers and are interested in the details of who presently has collected undersea data between the British isles and the rest of Europe and what happens to core samples in long-term storage (they mold!) then have fun; otherwise I'd probably give it a miss.
Europe's Lost World: The Rediscovery of Doggerland (CBA Research Report) This one has the "research report" bit in the title, but is actually written up chronologically following the knowledge reclaimed over the last century. Very readable, interesting, and I would have finished but it needed to go back to the library. Will buy when I find a copy that's not ridiculously expensive.