Book Logging
Jun. 3rd, 2018 12:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckAllen, Sarah Addison. Garden Spells - Audiobook read by Susan Ericksen. This audiobook is peculiarly formatted. Not one track is longer than a minute, and some are less than twenty seconds. Seven CDs with ninety nine tracks each. Why? This also needs a warning on it for domestic violence because one of the main characters is escaping a long term abusive relationship. Most of the book is gentle and fairly happy, but the parts with domestic violence are disturbing (more emotionally explicit than physically detailed).
Baldwin, James. Jimmy’s Blues - Short book of poetry. These poems are pretty uncompromising on the subjects of racism and violence, and I’m sure that I missed things about the poems in that regard because I’m a white woman (in the same way I’m likely to miss things about any experience that’s outside of my particular context. I figure that the stretch is good for me).
Bridges, Elizabeth. Sonnets from Hafez & Other Verses - Project Gutenberg book of poetry. These are kind of bad, but the book is very short with a lot of empty space. 38 poems taking 100 pages when none of them are very long seems excessive. I didn’t count syllables or lines for all of these, but many of them were obviously not sonnets. One poem had a lot of odd accent marks-- one on the first e in ‘here,’ one on the a in ‘say,’ and several others that just looked weird. The author’s forward notes that these are not translations of Hafez but rather works inspired by Hafez.
Castle in the Stars: The Space Race of 1869 - This graphic novel ends with a cliffhanger. I hope that I still remember details when/if the next volume comes out. The main character's mother sets out on a scientific balloon trip at the beginning and doesn't come back. Her journal falls to earth later, and the protagonist and his father end up working on a follow-up to her work which is leading toward space. The book is very short and aimed middle grade-ish.
Clifton, Lucille. Next - Short book of poetry. Quite a few of these poems hurt. I’m not sure if I’m missing something in the ones that didn’t or if they weren’t meant to. Clifton’s words are very deliberate knives.
Conkling, Hilda. Poems by a Little Girl - This is a Project Gutenberg book and is exactly what it says on the tin. The poems are somewhat better than I’d expect for the author’s age but not all that much.
Evans, Mari. A Dark & Splendid Mass - Short book of poetry. The local library’s overall poetry holdings don’t skew toward works by black poets, but I’m finding that the shorter books of poetry in the collection do skew that way. Many of them are part of the ‘Black Studies’ collection which I assume has a separate budget that can’t be used to replace Leaves of Grass or the complete works of Yeats or Pound or Dickinson or any other author who can be found in most collections. It means that I’m finding works by poets I haven’t heard of before (partly because the breadth of my knowledge of the field is just barely measurable in centimeters and partly because my previous readings skewed to anthologies at least as old as I am). I’m still feeling, as I read these things, as if I’m in a foreign country and need to be respectful because I’m a guest. Which seems like a reasonable approach given how often poetry can be guttingly, emotionally naked. Many of the poems in this book refer to specific events and/or people I don’t recognize but probably should Google. I think that, sometimes at least, poetry is something very private being given to readers in the hope that those who understand won’t feel alone and that those who don’t understand will find a way closer.
Ibbotson, Eva. The Dragonfly Pool - Audiobook read by Patricia Conolly. Listening to this was kind of weird because the narrative really caught the POV of child characters in the months before war was declared in 1939. There’s a certain threshold quality to having the reader know what’s coming when the characters don’t, but that oncoming horror also casts a pall over the exciting/adventurous bits and the cosy bits because one knows that, no matter what the characters do, terrible things are coming. A major bit of the book involves some English children helping the crown prince of a Ruritanian kingdom escape the Nazis, and I just kept falling out of the narrative because I kept thinking of the realities not in the story and of the minor characters who were about to be devoured by history. I don’t know if, for someone younger than I am, this would be as much of a problem. My mother’s father was Army Air Corps, and my father’s father had just gotten through basic training (Army) when the war ended.
The Law of Ueki 13-16 - I’d have gotten these four volumes from the library sooner if I’d realized that the series was complete in sixteen volumes. I had assumed it was going to go on and on forever and hadn’t thought to check. These volumes keep the underlying silliness and the violence. Ueki, himself, is a familiar anime/manga type-- the slacker/goofball who ends up working to become powerful out of dedication to his friends. He’s likeable enough. I’ve forgotten a lot of details from the first twelve volumes because it’s been years since I read them. I’m not sure that it matters, though, because the tropes are so very familiar.
Levine, Gail Carson. Forgive Me, I Meant to Do It - Short, illustrated book of poetry. All of these are modeled after William Carlos Williams’s “This Is Just to Say.” Some of them made me laugh. The poems need the illustrations, though, because each poem is sparsely worded, so I would not recommend the poems on their own.
M.F.K. - Every time I looked at the title of the graphic novel, I thought, “Oh, marry, fuck, kill.” Then I’d try to figure out if that was right. As far as I can tell, from reading the book, that doesn’t apply. I’m not actually sure what it stands for within the story. This is either post-apocalyptic SF or fantasy with the distinction not actually mattering for the story; I’m mainly curious about the world building because the details imply a bigger and consistent world. The plot is fairly simple: two guys find an injured girl during a sandstorm and take her home so that she can recover. She does, and things happen. This is really very obviously the beginning of a much longer story. The ending isn’t a cliffhanger, though, so if I don’t see more, I won’t feel quite as cheated as I might. There is an animal death early in the book. The girl uses a hearing aid and really can’t hear much without it.
Myers, Walter Dean. Here in Harlem - Short book of poetry. The author says, in the forward, that he was inspired by The Spoon River Anthology, and I can certainly see that here. The poems are mostly monologues (I recall at least one dialogue) by specific individuals. The titles are names, ages, and occupations, and each one has a different voice. This isn’t an imitation of The Spoon River Anthology; the milieu and characters are quite different. It’s just the same sort of thing.
Nelson, Marilyn. how i discovered poetry - Short book of semi-autobiographical poetry. The poems, according to the afterword, span a decade of the author’s childhood, ages 4 to 14, during the 1950s. Her father was one of the first black officers in the Air Force so the constant transfers are part of that as is the racism they encounter. The author states that she prefers to think of the girl at the center of poems (they’re in first person) as not quite herself and that each poem centers on a gap in that girl’s understanding of the world around her. I think this one would be a good book for a history class to look at as a supplemental text.
Sarton, May. Coming Into Eighty - Short book of poetry. I found some of these kind of trite, but the author has a clear understanding of the frustrations of a body that doesn’t work quite right and limitations that can impose. Her limitations are due to being eighty, but I think that her experiences will be familiar to people with variable disabilities. I found one poem I really liked a lot only to discover, when I got to the end, that it was a translation of someone else’s work.
Shaw, George Bernard. The Doctor’s Dilemma - Audio only performance of Shaw’s play. I had enough trouble following who was who in this that I think I may not bother with the rest of the set I got from the library. I grasped the list of characters and personalities reasonably well; I just couldn’t generally remember which traits and names went with which voice. Part of that was them sounding mostly the same to me.
Shetterly, Margot Lee. Hidden Figures - Audiobook read by Robin Miles. Cordelia thought that the bits of this that she heard while I was listening were boring. I disagreed. I think that what she was reacting to was that the reading sounds sort of flat and detached. I think that the delivery is suited to the material because it’s very definitely a delivery that underlines the text being non-fiction. Shetterly does a very good job of tracking two different historical things, both over decades, and show how they each affected the other. The race/segregation/civil rights thread is as definite as the US aerospace development thread. Shetterly never loses either and is very clear about how they interact. Shetterly also tracks how sexism impacted the women she was talking about.
Street Angel: Super Hero for a Day - I think I only finished this comic/graphic novel because it was extremely short. It’s not my sort of thing, generally speaking, and either I was lacking a vast amount of context (probable) or the characters were all cardboard and just unpleasant enough for me to not want to spend time with them.
The Tea Dragon Society - This is a darling graphic novel by Katie O’Neill, the same creator who made Princess Princess Ever After (which I recommend highly). This seems to be a world with many different species of intelligent beings with intermarriage and same sex relationships not remarkable. It all centers on caring for small, domesticated dragons which grow tea from their bodies. I’d call this more slice of life than anything else. I wanted it to be longer because I liked the characters and wanted to enjoy spending time with them.
Thomas, Sherry. A Study in Scarlet Women - Audiobook read by Kate Reading. Victorian era mystery with a female Holmes. There's a lot of focus on the limitations that women face in the era. The first half of the book is almost all about getting the main character into position to invent an invalid brother so that she can work as a consulting detective without having potential clients balk at the idea of working with a woman. The mystery is mostly in the second half. The mystery needs warnings for child sexual abuse.
Turf Wars 1 - Legend of Korra graphic novel. This picks up right after the end of the series with Korra and Asami in the spirit world. There’s a mix of them telling people about their relationship and dealing with different reactions and them dealing with refugees needing help and land developers wanting to exploit the spirit world and a gang war. This reads more like it’s starting a long series than like it’s starting something that will be resolved in three issues. The previous AtLA comics have been in sets of three, so I had been assuming these would be, too. Of course, at this point, I’m pretty sure that the writers know that they’ll get more than one set of three, and that changes things.
Wells, Martha. Artificial Condition - I enjoyed this novella. I'm not sure that I liked it quite as much as I liked the first book in the series. I still enjoyed it a lot and look forward to the next book eagerly. I think that part of the difference for me is that the protagonist isn't as certain of who they are at this point and only makes small steps in that direction here. That aspect doesn't quite connect to the more actiony bits of the story. Those felt like they were just coincidentally happening at the same time.
Yang, J.Y. The Black Tides of Heaven - I got this and the companion book out of the library at the same time but read this first because it couldn’t be renewed while the other one could. I found the world building interesting and complex but didn’t find the story/character arc fully satisfying. I was never completely sure why anybody did anything and felt as if I was being told how they related to each other without any of the work or underpinnings being shown.
Started but not finished:
Craig, Darrell Max. Mugai Ryu: The Classical Art of Drawing the Sword - Somehow, I’d gotten the impression that this was a book of translated essays. Looking at the library record, I can sort of see how I might have gotten there, but I can also see that it doesn’t say that’s what it is. Most of the book is illustrated, step by step, instructions for sword drills. There’s a bit of history at the beginning, but it’s very clearly not based on scholarly research. There were several things in that section that had me going, “I’d like a book on that, please,” but sadly, such books aren’t available to me via the library. The sword drills might be useful if I end up writing Rurouni Kenshin fic that involves fights, but the sword work in that series is rather more magic than reality with a lot of made up attacks and defenses. I doubt any book could give me enough to make that sort of thing up properly. Detailed handwavium of any species requires some knowledge of the more mundane side the topic.
Creeley, Robert. Echoes - Short book of poetry. Trying to read these gave me a headache. The print was tiny, and there often wasn’t any punctuation beyond apostrophes. My being sick might have been part of the problem, but it’s hard to tell at this point. I’m not sure why the print was so small; most of the poems weren’t long enough to take even half a page.
The Dam Keeper - I gave up on this because the art was giving me eye strain. All of the borders are so soft that I felt like I needed glasses in order to see things clearly, but the book was at what I expect is the intended viewing distance, and the images weren’t particularly small or detailed. I was intrigued by the setting/story, but I just couldn’t get my eyes to cooperate.
Dodge, Mary Mapes. Rhymes and Jingles - Project Gutenberg book of poetry. These poems are aimed at children and aren’t, IMO, all that great. I think they’re more toward nursery rhymes and nonsense songs (which fits the title), but reading them doesn’t give me the same level of earworms that most collections of well known nursery rhymes do. It took me a little bit to realize that some of the non-sequitur bits were because I’d downloaded the version without illustrations. That version has short text descriptions of the illustrations, but they’re not set off from the poems in any way and generally look like a very weird first or last line. Some of the poems are in baby-talk. Some are saccharine. I read 300 pages and then gave up near the end with 70-80 pages to go.
Johnson, Alissa. A Gift for Guile - I ended up reading the middle and end of this but not the beginning. I’m not actually sure why. I liked the romantic pairing well enough as characters but am less sure of them as a pairing. They could probably make things work, but the misunderstandings they had all hinted at an underlying lack of trust in themselves that would undermine things pretty regularly. I was more interested in the family backstory parts of the plot than in the bits that were more action/fighting bad guys. My ability to read romances fluctuates. I find that I keep wanting to rewrite the stories to fit the ways that I think people actually work. I’m aware that my ideas in that direction don’t fit the genre very well, so I’m not sure where to take that.
Northrop, Michael. Tombquest 2: Amulet Keepers - I expected this to be kind of terrible, and it was. I still read about 30 pages. I have no idea why I put this on my list of books to get from the library, but I’m trying to read the short ones now. This is a game tie-in, a fantasy using Egyptian mythology and horror movie tropes and aimed at 10 year olds.
Schumer, Amy. Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo - Audiobook read by author. I only got about fifteen minutes in. At that point, I realized that I hadn’t found any of it either interesting or funny and gave up.
Shattered Warrior - Graphic novel by Sharon Shinn and Molly Knox Ostertag. I’m not sure why I bounced off of this, but I somehow wasn’t up to reading it. I think that what I can handle with visuals-- as opposed to text only-- is different. And April/early May has been so awful.
Wilcox, Ella Wheeler. Poems of ??? - Ditched this one fast and neglected to write down the full title. Project Gutenberg has several of her collections of poetry, and they are… not good. Given that I tried this the same evening that I read Hilda Conkling’s collection, the bar was low.
Baldwin, James. Jimmy’s Blues - Short book of poetry. These poems are pretty uncompromising on the subjects of racism and violence, and I’m sure that I missed things about the poems in that regard because I’m a white woman (in the same way I’m likely to miss things about any experience that’s outside of my particular context. I figure that the stretch is good for me).
Bridges, Elizabeth. Sonnets from Hafez & Other Verses - Project Gutenberg book of poetry. These are kind of bad, but the book is very short with a lot of empty space. 38 poems taking 100 pages when none of them are very long seems excessive. I didn’t count syllables or lines for all of these, but many of them were obviously not sonnets. One poem had a lot of odd accent marks-- one on the first e in ‘here,’ one on the a in ‘say,’ and several others that just looked weird. The author’s forward notes that these are not translations of Hafez but rather works inspired by Hafez.
Castle in the Stars: The Space Race of 1869 - This graphic novel ends with a cliffhanger. I hope that I still remember details when/if the next volume comes out. The main character's mother sets out on a scientific balloon trip at the beginning and doesn't come back. Her journal falls to earth later, and the protagonist and his father end up working on a follow-up to her work which is leading toward space. The book is very short and aimed middle grade-ish.
Clifton, Lucille. Next - Short book of poetry. Quite a few of these poems hurt. I’m not sure if I’m missing something in the ones that didn’t or if they weren’t meant to. Clifton’s words are very deliberate knives.
Conkling, Hilda. Poems by a Little Girl - This is a Project Gutenberg book and is exactly what it says on the tin. The poems are somewhat better than I’d expect for the author’s age but not all that much.
Evans, Mari. A Dark & Splendid Mass - Short book of poetry. The local library’s overall poetry holdings don’t skew toward works by black poets, but I’m finding that the shorter books of poetry in the collection do skew that way. Many of them are part of the ‘Black Studies’ collection which I assume has a separate budget that can’t be used to replace Leaves of Grass or the complete works of Yeats or Pound or Dickinson or any other author who can be found in most collections. It means that I’m finding works by poets I haven’t heard of before (partly because the breadth of my knowledge of the field is just barely measurable in centimeters and partly because my previous readings skewed to anthologies at least as old as I am). I’m still feeling, as I read these things, as if I’m in a foreign country and need to be respectful because I’m a guest. Which seems like a reasonable approach given how often poetry can be guttingly, emotionally naked. Many of the poems in this book refer to specific events and/or people I don’t recognize but probably should Google. I think that, sometimes at least, poetry is something very private being given to readers in the hope that those who understand won’t feel alone and that those who don’t understand will find a way closer.
Ibbotson, Eva. The Dragonfly Pool - Audiobook read by Patricia Conolly. Listening to this was kind of weird because the narrative really caught the POV of child characters in the months before war was declared in 1939. There’s a certain threshold quality to having the reader know what’s coming when the characters don’t, but that oncoming horror also casts a pall over the exciting/adventurous bits and the cosy bits because one knows that, no matter what the characters do, terrible things are coming. A major bit of the book involves some English children helping the crown prince of a Ruritanian kingdom escape the Nazis, and I just kept falling out of the narrative because I kept thinking of the realities not in the story and of the minor characters who were about to be devoured by history. I don’t know if, for someone younger than I am, this would be as much of a problem. My mother’s father was Army Air Corps, and my father’s father had just gotten through basic training (Army) when the war ended.
The Law of Ueki 13-16 - I’d have gotten these four volumes from the library sooner if I’d realized that the series was complete in sixteen volumes. I had assumed it was going to go on and on forever and hadn’t thought to check. These volumes keep the underlying silliness and the violence. Ueki, himself, is a familiar anime/manga type-- the slacker/goofball who ends up working to become powerful out of dedication to his friends. He’s likeable enough. I’ve forgotten a lot of details from the first twelve volumes because it’s been years since I read them. I’m not sure that it matters, though, because the tropes are so very familiar.
Levine, Gail Carson. Forgive Me, I Meant to Do It - Short, illustrated book of poetry. All of these are modeled after William Carlos Williams’s “This Is Just to Say.” Some of them made me laugh. The poems need the illustrations, though, because each poem is sparsely worded, so I would not recommend the poems on their own.
M.F.K. - Every time I looked at the title of the graphic novel, I thought, “Oh, marry, fuck, kill.” Then I’d try to figure out if that was right. As far as I can tell, from reading the book, that doesn’t apply. I’m not actually sure what it stands for within the story. This is either post-apocalyptic SF or fantasy with the distinction not actually mattering for the story; I’m mainly curious about the world building because the details imply a bigger and consistent world. The plot is fairly simple: two guys find an injured girl during a sandstorm and take her home so that she can recover. She does, and things happen. This is really very obviously the beginning of a much longer story. The ending isn’t a cliffhanger, though, so if I don’t see more, I won’t feel quite as cheated as I might. There is an animal death early in the book. The girl uses a hearing aid and really can’t hear much without it.
Myers, Walter Dean. Here in Harlem - Short book of poetry. The author says, in the forward, that he was inspired by The Spoon River Anthology, and I can certainly see that here. The poems are mostly monologues (I recall at least one dialogue) by specific individuals. The titles are names, ages, and occupations, and each one has a different voice. This isn’t an imitation of The Spoon River Anthology; the milieu and characters are quite different. It’s just the same sort of thing.
Nelson, Marilyn. how i discovered poetry - Short book of semi-autobiographical poetry. The poems, according to the afterword, span a decade of the author’s childhood, ages 4 to 14, during the 1950s. Her father was one of the first black officers in the Air Force so the constant transfers are part of that as is the racism they encounter. The author states that she prefers to think of the girl at the center of poems (they’re in first person) as not quite herself and that each poem centers on a gap in that girl’s understanding of the world around her. I think this one would be a good book for a history class to look at as a supplemental text.
Sarton, May. Coming Into Eighty - Short book of poetry. I found some of these kind of trite, but the author has a clear understanding of the frustrations of a body that doesn’t work quite right and limitations that can impose. Her limitations are due to being eighty, but I think that her experiences will be familiar to people with variable disabilities. I found one poem I really liked a lot only to discover, when I got to the end, that it was a translation of someone else’s work.
Shaw, George Bernard. The Doctor’s Dilemma - Audio only performance of Shaw’s play. I had enough trouble following who was who in this that I think I may not bother with the rest of the set I got from the library. I grasped the list of characters and personalities reasonably well; I just couldn’t generally remember which traits and names went with which voice. Part of that was them sounding mostly the same to me.
Shetterly, Margot Lee. Hidden Figures - Audiobook read by Robin Miles. Cordelia thought that the bits of this that she heard while I was listening were boring. I disagreed. I think that what she was reacting to was that the reading sounds sort of flat and detached. I think that the delivery is suited to the material because it’s very definitely a delivery that underlines the text being non-fiction. Shetterly does a very good job of tracking two different historical things, both over decades, and show how they each affected the other. The race/segregation/civil rights thread is as definite as the US aerospace development thread. Shetterly never loses either and is very clear about how they interact. Shetterly also tracks how sexism impacted the women she was talking about.
Street Angel: Super Hero for a Day - I think I only finished this comic/graphic novel because it was extremely short. It’s not my sort of thing, generally speaking, and either I was lacking a vast amount of context (probable) or the characters were all cardboard and just unpleasant enough for me to not want to spend time with them.
The Tea Dragon Society - This is a darling graphic novel by Katie O’Neill, the same creator who made Princess Princess Ever After (which I recommend highly). This seems to be a world with many different species of intelligent beings with intermarriage and same sex relationships not remarkable. It all centers on caring for small, domesticated dragons which grow tea from their bodies. I’d call this more slice of life than anything else. I wanted it to be longer because I liked the characters and wanted to enjoy spending time with them.
Thomas, Sherry. A Study in Scarlet Women - Audiobook read by Kate Reading. Victorian era mystery with a female Holmes. There's a lot of focus on the limitations that women face in the era. The first half of the book is almost all about getting the main character into position to invent an invalid brother so that she can work as a consulting detective without having potential clients balk at the idea of working with a woman. The mystery is mostly in the second half. The mystery needs warnings for child sexual abuse.
Turf Wars 1 - Legend of Korra graphic novel. This picks up right after the end of the series with Korra and Asami in the spirit world. There’s a mix of them telling people about their relationship and dealing with different reactions and them dealing with refugees needing help and land developers wanting to exploit the spirit world and a gang war. This reads more like it’s starting a long series than like it’s starting something that will be resolved in three issues. The previous AtLA comics have been in sets of three, so I had been assuming these would be, too. Of course, at this point, I’m pretty sure that the writers know that they’ll get more than one set of three, and that changes things.
Wells, Martha. Artificial Condition - I enjoyed this novella. I'm not sure that I liked it quite as much as I liked the first book in the series. I still enjoyed it a lot and look forward to the next book eagerly. I think that part of the difference for me is that the protagonist isn't as certain of who they are at this point and only makes small steps in that direction here. That aspect doesn't quite connect to the more actiony bits of the story. Those felt like they were just coincidentally happening at the same time.
Yang, J.Y. The Black Tides of Heaven - I got this and the companion book out of the library at the same time but read this first because it couldn’t be renewed while the other one could. I found the world building interesting and complex but didn’t find the story/character arc fully satisfying. I was never completely sure why anybody did anything and felt as if I was being told how they related to each other without any of the work or underpinnings being shown.
Started but not finished:
Craig, Darrell Max. Mugai Ryu: The Classical Art of Drawing the Sword - Somehow, I’d gotten the impression that this was a book of translated essays. Looking at the library record, I can sort of see how I might have gotten there, but I can also see that it doesn’t say that’s what it is. Most of the book is illustrated, step by step, instructions for sword drills. There’s a bit of history at the beginning, but it’s very clearly not based on scholarly research. There were several things in that section that had me going, “I’d like a book on that, please,” but sadly, such books aren’t available to me via the library. The sword drills might be useful if I end up writing Rurouni Kenshin fic that involves fights, but the sword work in that series is rather more magic than reality with a lot of made up attacks and defenses. I doubt any book could give me enough to make that sort of thing up properly. Detailed handwavium of any species requires some knowledge of the more mundane side the topic.
Creeley, Robert. Echoes - Short book of poetry. Trying to read these gave me a headache. The print was tiny, and there often wasn’t any punctuation beyond apostrophes. My being sick might have been part of the problem, but it’s hard to tell at this point. I’m not sure why the print was so small; most of the poems weren’t long enough to take even half a page.
The Dam Keeper - I gave up on this because the art was giving me eye strain. All of the borders are so soft that I felt like I needed glasses in order to see things clearly, but the book was at what I expect is the intended viewing distance, and the images weren’t particularly small or detailed. I was intrigued by the setting/story, but I just couldn’t get my eyes to cooperate.
Dodge, Mary Mapes. Rhymes and Jingles - Project Gutenberg book of poetry. These poems are aimed at children and aren’t, IMO, all that great. I think they’re more toward nursery rhymes and nonsense songs (which fits the title), but reading them doesn’t give me the same level of earworms that most collections of well known nursery rhymes do. It took me a little bit to realize that some of the non-sequitur bits were because I’d downloaded the version without illustrations. That version has short text descriptions of the illustrations, but they’re not set off from the poems in any way and generally look like a very weird first or last line. Some of the poems are in baby-talk. Some are saccharine. I read 300 pages and then gave up near the end with 70-80 pages to go.
Johnson, Alissa. A Gift for Guile - I ended up reading the middle and end of this but not the beginning. I’m not actually sure why. I liked the romantic pairing well enough as characters but am less sure of them as a pairing. They could probably make things work, but the misunderstandings they had all hinted at an underlying lack of trust in themselves that would undermine things pretty regularly. I was more interested in the family backstory parts of the plot than in the bits that were more action/fighting bad guys. My ability to read romances fluctuates. I find that I keep wanting to rewrite the stories to fit the ways that I think people actually work. I’m aware that my ideas in that direction don’t fit the genre very well, so I’m not sure where to take that.
Northrop, Michael. Tombquest 2: Amulet Keepers - I expected this to be kind of terrible, and it was. I still read about 30 pages. I have no idea why I put this on my list of books to get from the library, but I’m trying to read the short ones now. This is a game tie-in, a fantasy using Egyptian mythology and horror movie tropes and aimed at 10 year olds.
Schumer, Amy. Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo - Audiobook read by author. I only got about fifteen minutes in. At that point, I realized that I hadn’t found any of it either interesting or funny and gave up.
Shattered Warrior - Graphic novel by Sharon Shinn and Molly Knox Ostertag. I’m not sure why I bounced off of this, but I somehow wasn’t up to reading it. I think that what I can handle with visuals-- as opposed to text only-- is different. And April/early May has been so awful.
Wilcox, Ella Wheeler. Poems of ??? - Ditched this one fast and neglected to write down the full title. Project Gutenberg has several of her collections of poetry, and they are… not good. Given that I tried this the same evening that I read Hilda Conkling’s collection, the bar was low.
no subject
Date: 2018-06-03 11:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-06-04 08:35 pm (UTC)I thought I had said, but I must have gotten distracted in the middle of writing about it and then come back and seen that I'd written whole sentences (just not what they were) already.
What is the sequel called? Our library doesn't track series information accurately in the catalogue, so I don't want to rely on finding it that way.
no subject
Date: 2018-06-05 12:24 am (UTC)I know the author has a lot of other books in the same genre, but I haven't had a chance to read any of them. (someday!)
no subject
Date: 2018-06-05 12:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-06-04 03:34 pm (UTC)That's definitely how I read it, looking at your post just now XP
I agree with you about Black Tides of Heaven -- I really enjoyed the interesting worldbuilding, which is why I want to read the sequel, but didn't feel pulled in by characters or plot. I've heard the second novella is better in that regard, but haven't read it myself yet.
no subject
Date: 2018-06-04 08:33 pm (UTC)I have the other book from the library. I just haven't started reading it yet.