Book Logging
Dec. 4th, 2017 08:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckCleopatra in Space 4: The Golden Lion - It’s a little frustrating that I can’t remember these characters from volume to volume. There are references in this one to things in previous volumes that left me a bit at sea because I just don’t remember what happened. I think this is not one for me to keep reading as it comes out, not with a year between volumes.
Faith 1: Hollywood and Vine - I kept stumbling over the name for the superpowered folks in this-- ‘psiots’ --which isn’t something that made reading easier. Two things I liked about this. First, the heroine is fat. Second, it’s not an origin story. She’s been a hero for a while. She was part of a team that split up. The hero vs villain plot didn’t catch me strongly, but those very seldom do. I’m just interested in the characters.
Kaur, Rupi. Milk and Honey - Poetry. Much of this is explicitly sexual. Some of this addresses rape and child sexual abuse. The poet doesn’t mince words or talk around things. I can’t judge whether those poems are more likely to be comforting or triggering because it really depends on the reader.
Mighty Jack and the Goblin King - There was a panel near the end of this that I kind of want as a poster on my wall. The kids are sitting on the porch and saying, “I guess things are back to normal,” and there are goblins and such on the roof, just watching them, not threatening or anything but so very obviously not over. This one picks up immediately after the end of the previous volume, and I remembered the plot and the characters pretty clearly. I think that there being only a handful of characters to track helped immensely.
Nameless City 2: The Stone Heart - I still liked this, but I wasn’t as happy with it as I was with the first volume. I feel that the villainous female character had no depth and was just there so that the male villain wasn’t quite as much to blame for what was going on. That is, she very clearly pulled his strings at several crucial points, but she wasn’t actually a person the way he was. This is definitely a things-get-darker book. I’m not sure how long the series is meant to be.
Paper Girls 3 - I think this volume hit my (admittedly low) limits for level of violence. I can only go so far on the strength of many female characters and time travel, even in combination. I suppose I’ll see which way I jump if the library gets the next volume whenever it comes out. Possibly at that point my curiosity about whether this is closed loop time travel or not will overcome my just not liking the characters that much and not wanting to deal with the violence.
Pashmina - I’d actually be interested in reading this as a text novel, if there were a version like that, as opposed to as a graphic novel because I wanted more interiority for the characters. This is the story of a teenager who is the daughter of a single mother who immigrated to the US while pregnant. There’s magic in it in the form of gods and visions. The general shape of the character’s journey was familiar, but the details weren’t because the mother came from India, and the daughter visits India during the book. I know much less about India than I probably should.
Spence, Annie. Dear Fahrenheit 451: Love and Heartbreak in the Stacks - This was an exercise in me laughing and wanting to share why and then realizing that neither Scott nor Cordelia had ever heard of, say, The Yellow Wallpaper and that, because of that, they wouldn’t understand. Jokes that require that sort of explanation generally aren’t funny by the punchline. My taste in books is not the same as Spence’s, but that didn’t matter most of the time.
Sunstone 1 - I’m trying to remember what I rated highly to get GoodReads to start recommending this one to me. I think it was Princess Princess Ever After which is aimed at a very different audience. I remember looking at the cover and the blurb and being kind of boggled that there was no filter to avoid that. Adults who like Princess Princess Ever After may well like Sunstone, too. That part’s reasonable. I’m just not convinced that I’d want to explain Sunstone as a thing to a five year old. Anyway-- Graphic novel porn with F/f BDSM where everybody’s happy. Either your thing or not but still, you know, not for five year olds. Ah, well.
The Wallflower 19-20 - Sunako might actually have ended up enjoying being married to the prince in v.20, but I kind of think that he wouldn’t have been so happy in the long run. Now I’m wondering if this is one of those series that has to stop rather than end. I’m still grinning as I read, though, so I guess either it hasn’t gotten old or I’m reading volumes at the right intervals so as not to overdose.
Wells, Martha. Stories of the Raksura, v.1: The Falling World + The Tale of Indigo and Cloud - It took me a couple of renewals to start reading this, but once I did, I sped through. I need to remind myself that there are books that are text only and aimed at adults that I will finish and enjoy. I just keep forgetting it.
Started but not finished:
Anya’s Ghost - This just wasn’t to my taste. It’s frustrating to want/need the slightly lower stress of stuff aimed at a younger audience when I also very, very easily get annoyed with the characters for acting like children and/or adolescents.
Christie, Agatha. Parker Pyne Investigates - I got through 1.5 stories and just couldn’t. I wanted to murder everyone. Smugness, racism, and people not questioning things that they really, really ought to.
Daniels, April. Dreadnought - I started this and kept looking at it on the shelf and not picking it up again because I didn’t want to see how terrible things were going to get between Dani and her parents. This is a superhero novel about a trans teen who gets the body she always wanted when a dying superhero gives her his powers. I got far enough in to know that the father is going to be terrible and that at least some other superheroes are not going to be supportive. I’m sure, given the age the book’s aimed at, that the main character will come through it all, but I can’t, so I’m returning it to the library. It will be exactly the right book for someone not-me.
Elliott, Kate. Court of Fives - Audiobook read by Georgia Dolenz. I listened to about half of the first CD and found myself really, really wanting to strangle all four of the girls. I understood their motivations and sympathized, but I thought they were really awful to spend time with. I think that part of my problem was that the POV character didn’t seem to respect her sisters’ desires.
Elseworlds: Batman - Why do I keep checking out superhero comics? Well, probably because the ideas intrigue me combined with them being free from the library. In this case, I wanted to know what the AUs were, but I didn’t actually want to read the stories. I just wanted the world building. That’s not actually something that will carry me through a book like this.
Larson, Erik. The Devil in the White City - Audiobook read by Scott Brick. I just got bored. I made it through the first CD out of twelve and realized that I had barely noted any of the details. I think it was all scene setting. The second CD registered more but still didn’t make me want to keep going. I didn’t finish that CD. Part of that is that I’m not actually very interested in true crime.
O’Rourke, Meghan. Sun in Days - I just couldn’t feel the flow of the words for these poems or quite parse the meaning. I got some things, but it was enough of a struggle that I didn’t enjoy it. Back to the library this goes.
Pierce, Tamora. Tortall: A Spy’s Guide - I think my main problem here was that I don’t remember a lot of details from the books. Also, there were some kind of indigestible lumps of information in a format that I just don’t parse well. It’s all written as homework assignments, spy reports, letters, etc. There’s a waitlist at the library, so I think I’m going to return it. I don’t think I’m likely to write any fic set in Tortall, so I don’t think I’ll try to buy a copy, but it would be useful for that.
Spill Zone - Too creepy for me. I’m a little curious about the backstory but not enough to stick around.
The Wisdom of Malcolm X - I’m not sure I should call this a book because it’s two CDs of excerpts from his speeches. I mainly wanted to sample and to hear his style of oratory, so I didn’t expect to listen to all of it. Some of what I listened to was sad-- things like talking about police violence and the biases in the criminal justice system and so on-- because of how little has changed. A bit of it, I disagreed with; Malcolm X expressed vehement opposition to interracial relationships in the speeches I listened to. There was also some anti-Semitism. I’m assuming that repeated assertion that white people all have blond hair and blue eyes was more of a rhetorical thing because I can’t actually believe that he never encountered a white person with brown eyes or hair. Malcolm X seems to me to have been as powerful a speaker as I had heard he was. I’m not surprised that he was assassinated because I can see many people-- almost all white-- feeling threatened by him. Black men are still dying for being ‘threatening’ in much less concrete ways.
Faith 1: Hollywood and Vine - I kept stumbling over the name for the superpowered folks in this-- ‘psiots’ --which isn’t something that made reading easier. Two things I liked about this. First, the heroine is fat. Second, it’s not an origin story. She’s been a hero for a while. She was part of a team that split up. The hero vs villain plot didn’t catch me strongly, but those very seldom do. I’m just interested in the characters.
Kaur, Rupi. Milk and Honey - Poetry. Much of this is explicitly sexual. Some of this addresses rape and child sexual abuse. The poet doesn’t mince words or talk around things. I can’t judge whether those poems are more likely to be comforting or triggering because it really depends on the reader.
Mighty Jack and the Goblin King - There was a panel near the end of this that I kind of want as a poster on my wall. The kids are sitting on the porch and saying, “I guess things are back to normal,” and there are goblins and such on the roof, just watching them, not threatening or anything but so very obviously not over. This one picks up immediately after the end of the previous volume, and I remembered the plot and the characters pretty clearly. I think that there being only a handful of characters to track helped immensely.
Nameless City 2: The Stone Heart - I still liked this, but I wasn’t as happy with it as I was with the first volume. I feel that the villainous female character had no depth and was just there so that the male villain wasn’t quite as much to blame for what was going on. That is, she very clearly pulled his strings at several crucial points, but she wasn’t actually a person the way he was. This is definitely a things-get-darker book. I’m not sure how long the series is meant to be.
Paper Girls 3 - I think this volume hit my (admittedly low) limits for level of violence. I can only go so far on the strength of many female characters and time travel, even in combination. I suppose I’ll see which way I jump if the library gets the next volume whenever it comes out. Possibly at that point my curiosity about whether this is closed loop time travel or not will overcome my just not liking the characters that much and not wanting to deal with the violence.
Pashmina - I’d actually be interested in reading this as a text novel, if there were a version like that, as opposed to as a graphic novel because I wanted more interiority for the characters. This is the story of a teenager who is the daughter of a single mother who immigrated to the US while pregnant. There’s magic in it in the form of gods and visions. The general shape of the character’s journey was familiar, but the details weren’t because the mother came from India, and the daughter visits India during the book. I know much less about India than I probably should.
Spence, Annie. Dear Fahrenheit 451: Love and Heartbreak in the Stacks - This was an exercise in me laughing and wanting to share why and then realizing that neither Scott nor Cordelia had ever heard of, say, The Yellow Wallpaper and that, because of that, they wouldn’t understand. Jokes that require that sort of explanation generally aren’t funny by the punchline. My taste in books is not the same as Spence’s, but that didn’t matter most of the time.
Sunstone 1 - I’m trying to remember what I rated highly to get GoodReads to start recommending this one to me. I think it was Princess Princess Ever After which is aimed at a very different audience. I remember looking at the cover and the blurb and being kind of boggled that there was no filter to avoid that. Adults who like Princess Princess Ever After may well like Sunstone, too. That part’s reasonable. I’m just not convinced that I’d want to explain Sunstone as a thing to a five year old. Anyway-- Graphic novel porn with F/f BDSM where everybody’s happy. Either your thing or not but still, you know, not for five year olds. Ah, well.
The Wallflower 19-20 - Sunako might actually have ended up enjoying being married to the prince in v.20, but I kind of think that he wouldn’t have been so happy in the long run. Now I’m wondering if this is one of those series that has to stop rather than end. I’m still grinning as I read, though, so I guess either it hasn’t gotten old or I’m reading volumes at the right intervals so as not to overdose.
Wells, Martha. Stories of the Raksura, v.1: The Falling World + The Tale of Indigo and Cloud - It took me a couple of renewals to start reading this, but once I did, I sped through. I need to remind myself that there are books that are text only and aimed at adults that I will finish and enjoy. I just keep forgetting it.
Started but not finished:
Anya’s Ghost - This just wasn’t to my taste. It’s frustrating to want/need the slightly lower stress of stuff aimed at a younger audience when I also very, very easily get annoyed with the characters for acting like children and/or adolescents.
Christie, Agatha. Parker Pyne Investigates - I got through 1.5 stories and just couldn’t. I wanted to murder everyone. Smugness, racism, and people not questioning things that they really, really ought to.
Daniels, April. Dreadnought - I started this and kept looking at it on the shelf and not picking it up again because I didn’t want to see how terrible things were going to get between Dani and her parents. This is a superhero novel about a trans teen who gets the body she always wanted when a dying superhero gives her his powers. I got far enough in to know that the father is going to be terrible and that at least some other superheroes are not going to be supportive. I’m sure, given the age the book’s aimed at, that the main character will come through it all, but I can’t, so I’m returning it to the library. It will be exactly the right book for someone not-me.
Elliott, Kate. Court of Fives - Audiobook read by Georgia Dolenz. I listened to about half of the first CD and found myself really, really wanting to strangle all four of the girls. I understood their motivations and sympathized, but I thought they were really awful to spend time with. I think that part of my problem was that the POV character didn’t seem to respect her sisters’ desires.
Elseworlds: Batman - Why do I keep checking out superhero comics? Well, probably because the ideas intrigue me combined with them being free from the library. In this case, I wanted to know what the AUs were, but I didn’t actually want to read the stories. I just wanted the world building. That’s not actually something that will carry me through a book like this.
Larson, Erik. The Devil in the White City - Audiobook read by Scott Brick. I just got bored. I made it through the first CD out of twelve and realized that I had barely noted any of the details. I think it was all scene setting. The second CD registered more but still didn’t make me want to keep going. I didn’t finish that CD. Part of that is that I’m not actually very interested in true crime.
O’Rourke, Meghan. Sun in Days - I just couldn’t feel the flow of the words for these poems or quite parse the meaning. I got some things, but it was enough of a struggle that I didn’t enjoy it. Back to the library this goes.
Pierce, Tamora. Tortall: A Spy’s Guide - I think my main problem here was that I don’t remember a lot of details from the books. Also, there were some kind of indigestible lumps of information in a format that I just don’t parse well. It’s all written as homework assignments, spy reports, letters, etc. There’s a waitlist at the library, so I think I’m going to return it. I don’t think I’m likely to write any fic set in Tortall, so I don’t think I’ll try to buy a copy, but it would be useful for that.
Spill Zone - Too creepy for me. I’m a little curious about the backstory but not enough to stick around.
The Wisdom of Malcolm X - I’m not sure I should call this a book because it’s two CDs of excerpts from his speeches. I mainly wanted to sample and to hear his style of oratory, so I didn’t expect to listen to all of it. Some of what I listened to was sad-- things like talking about police violence and the biases in the criminal justice system and so on-- because of how little has changed. A bit of it, I disagreed with; Malcolm X expressed vehement opposition to interracial relationships in the speeches I listened to. There was also some anti-Semitism. I’m assuming that repeated assertion that white people all have blond hair and blue eyes was more of a rhetorical thing because I can’t actually believe that he never encountered a white person with brown eyes or hair. Malcolm X seems to me to have been as powerful a speaker as I had heard he was. I’m not surprised that he was assassinated because I can see many people-- almost all white-- feeling threatened by him. Black men are still dying for being ‘threatening’ in much less concrete ways.
