Skip to main content

What I read: January 2018



“A Conjuring of Light” by V.E.Schwab. Book 3, I read book 2 in maybe... November? Of course I had to make the boy buy me this for Christmas, considering how book 2 ended. I spent a lot of this book hoping that Kell would hook up with Holland or maybe just die. Anything would be better than being stuck with Lila. Then of course I felt guilty, because do I hate her because she’s female? Would I tolerate her better if she was a man? Um… maybe. I didn’t totally hate her by the end, but it seemed like she was the meanest taker and suffered the least consequences, so. I mean, I feel like the author tried to give her some consequences, but there was no way to make Lila really care about them. Though days later I was still bereft at having finished the story. I will miss them all so much.

Though I’ve just noticed that she’s doing a sequel trilogy and I’m not sure how I feel about that…

Library Hold Challenge!
I put a lot of books on inactive library hold so I don’t forget about them. The list is currently up around 55 books, and that’s getting unmanageable. Last year I managed to read everything that had been there since 2016, and I don’t know if I can do the 2017 ones but I will try. There’s one I might just purchase, but I should read it anyway. Or set myself up for 2019 “Books I bought and never read challenge” which wouldn’t go so well I suspect because I bought at least a few of those books because they were too fat to read in 3 weeks. Or “Books I brought home from my mother’s house Challenge” which wouldn’t go so well because a lot of them are “serious literature” and I can only take so much “serious”.

So, LHC #1: “Everfair” by Nisi Shawl. Not really sure what I expected here, but I was quite looking forward to this book. It’s 380 pages (roughly) and has a ton of characters, who I had a hard time connecting to, I think because the story takes place over like 40 years. To tell the story she was telling, I suppose it had to have that scope, but maybe it should have been longer? I don’t know… I didn’t realize until about 100 pages from the end that I was missing the point. This story wasn’t so much about the characters, the characters were in service of the place. And in the case of this story that’s not a bad thing.

“Fortunately the Milk” by Neil Gaiman. I gave this to Ed for Christmas even though it’s meant for I guess 8-year-olds. Ed didn’t care and read it anyway and then forced it on me. It was cute, but not important I think.

“Persepolis” by Marjane Satrapi. I’ve got this short story I work on sometimes, and it needed some background about Iran. I’d known about Persepolis for a long time, but it wasn’t really on my radar to read. I’m so glad I did. The voice was marvelous.

Not really reading, but where else do you put it? I listened to the entirety of Blueprint for Armageddon by Dan Carlin, a podcast about WWI. Six episodes, all over 3 hours. It’s like reading a whole book.

Popular posts from this blog

Moraine

So a couple of days I thought I was done with this short story, and I wrote the last line of the story. I even dated it (that's how I can tell it's over). It was a little long, at 6600 words (I was aiming for 5000). But then I was walking to work, and I thought, "My, that was a lame ending. My endings are all crap." So yesterday morning, I scribbled out the date and wrote a bit more. And this morning I wrote a bit more again, and I dated it and called it done. And still, that ending seemed lame. So a few minutes later, in the last paragraph, I scratched out "the Oak Ridges Moraine" and wrote in "that stupid moraine". Much better. Now I can move on. But in the meantime, I was doing a little research about the Moraine, and I discovered that EGTourGuide lives on it. Only by one or two hundred feet, but I thought it was funny. Good for you, EGTourGuide, with all those excellent plants growing on that substandard soil, where in the olden days (you kno...

In progress: August 2024

Wind/Water/Salt  Chapters 39-51:   Still n eed to take up comments and revise.  Persephone  (probably not its real name): Continued to think thoughts.  Short Stories:   After posting that short story from last month onto the workshop, I picked one of those short stories I'd started and forced a plot onto it.  Critted  5  Got back  4 Submissions  0  Out there   0   Rejects   0 Knitting Cathar  (self). Started month with two inches done above the armholes. Listening to audiobooks, I finished the fair isle portion, cut the steeks, and set up and knit the neckline. Just the endless finishing now.   Blushing Cloud  (Knitty S/S24). Started the month with (still) three inches of back done. Socks take priority.  Elbrus socks (Knitty first fall 2024). Finished.  Elbrus socks II . Started the first.  Pole shorts  (Joan McGowan-Michael). I knitted these several years ago, but the...

Word of the day: Wendigo

I first encountered this word a few weeks ago on Leah Bobet's blog , but I skipped over and paid it no nevermind. Anyway, it caught my eye again today when I was reading a short story . So I googled it. In November, I did like an hour of research of first-nations (specifically ojicree ) mythology when I was writing the zombie karate novel. How did I not find this? How did I not learn about wendigos (wendigoes?) when I was learning mythology in high school English? And manitous? One of my friends goes to Camp Manitou every summer. How did I not know? Was I asleep? Is this proof of my ADD which no one else agrees I have? What? I'm not needing to culturally appropriate or anything, but it would have been cool to know. Also, this is awesome: http://groups.google.ca/group/alt.fan.heinlein/msg/0920b2f01ac0a248?hl=en . Not sure I ever finished a Heinlein novel. I know I didn't finish "The number of the beast" on account of I found it totally sexist. When I was 15.