Return to regular blogging needed. The last week or two have been something of a disturbance in normal operating patterns, to the extent that anything is normal these days anyway.
It is Too Warm but at least the cold robot still works.
What are you reading now?
Freedom & Necessity, by Steven Brust & Emma Bull. Sixth or so reread. I read/reread (first reread in twenty years) Wrede & Stevermer's Sorcery & Cecilia before/during Fourth Street because Marissa Lingen was hosting a conversation with them about it, and I both enjoyed it a decent bit and kept thinking "I really wish I were reading F&N."
So. F&N is an epistolary novel that began life as a Letter Game, with four protagonists/writers instead of the usual two, and an exceedingly twisty plot centred around occultists and Communists in 1849 England. It contains fantastical elements, all of which are witnessed by skeptics. (I have a recollection that it's connected to Brust's Agyar, I think Jack Agyar is at school with James Cobham, but I'm not certain of that.) I continue to enjoy the process of reading it, and as always I'm not sure who I'd recommend it to. It's wordy, and I'm not certain what the wordiness is in service of, other than "being a kind of fun that I enjoy."
Also slowly working my way through Jessica Fern's Polysecure, finally (got about halfway a couple years ago). So far it's a fine introduction to both attachment theory and consensual nonmonogamy. Looking forward to how she ties those together.
What did you just finish reading?
A couple of weeks ago I needed something utterly unchallenging to read at midnight in a strange airport where I couldn't sleep. I'd just picked up an ebook bundle of All The Valdemar, so I started in on Mercedes Lackey's first three Valdemar books: Arrows of the Queen, Arrow's Flight, Arrow's Fall.
These are deeply wish-fulfilment-y fantasy novels, in which a teenage girl is carried off by a magical horse to Paladin School because she's Special, and becomes Way Too Empathic and finds True Love. Points for an almost complete lack of slut-shaming, and for gay characters and even a touch of polyamory; minus points for unpleasant and unexpected gender-essentialism ("Men!") and for the first half of the third book, which is one long exercise in People Refusing To Speak To Each Other So There Can Be Conflict. But: I read them (and the Last Herald-Mage trilogy) to death during junior high and early high school, and I have no particular regrets about that, or about revisiting them now. Not something I'll be doing often, though.
What do you think you'll read next?
The plan had been to read Martha Wells's Witch King before I got sidetracked by F&N, so, probably that? Possibly a comic series (The Unwritten) by Mike Carey so I can decide if it's for the go-away stack, though.
It is Too Warm but at least the cold robot still works.
What are you reading now?
Freedom & Necessity, by Steven Brust & Emma Bull. Sixth or so reread. I read/reread (first reread in twenty years) Wrede & Stevermer's Sorcery & Cecilia before/during Fourth Street because Marissa Lingen was hosting a conversation with them about it, and I both enjoyed it a decent bit and kept thinking "I really wish I were reading F&N."
So. F&N is an epistolary novel that began life as a Letter Game, with four protagonists/writers instead of the usual two, and an exceedingly twisty plot centred around occultists and Communists in 1849 England. It contains fantastical elements, all of which are witnessed by skeptics. (I have a recollection that it's connected to Brust's Agyar, I think Jack Agyar is at school with James Cobham, but I'm not certain of that.) I continue to enjoy the process of reading it, and as always I'm not sure who I'd recommend it to. It's wordy, and I'm not certain what the wordiness is in service of, other than "being a kind of fun that I enjoy."
Also slowly working my way through Jessica Fern's Polysecure, finally (got about halfway a couple years ago). So far it's a fine introduction to both attachment theory and consensual nonmonogamy. Looking forward to how she ties those together.
What did you just finish reading?
A couple of weeks ago I needed something utterly unchallenging to read at midnight in a strange airport where I couldn't sleep. I'd just picked up an ebook bundle of All The Valdemar, so I started in on Mercedes Lackey's first three Valdemar books: Arrows of the Queen, Arrow's Flight, Arrow's Fall.
These are deeply wish-fulfilment-y fantasy novels, in which a teenage girl is carried off by a magical horse to Paladin School because she's Special, and becomes Way Too Empathic and finds True Love. Points for an almost complete lack of slut-shaming, and for gay characters and even a touch of polyamory; minus points for unpleasant and unexpected gender-essentialism ("Men!") and for the first half of the third book, which is one long exercise in People Refusing To Speak To Each Other So There Can Be Conflict. But: I read them (and the Last Herald-Mage trilogy) to death during junior high and early high school, and I have no particular regrets about that, or about revisiting them now. Not something I'll be doing often, though.
What do you think you'll read next?
The plan had been to read Martha Wells's Witch King before I got sidetracked by F&N, so, probably that? Possibly a comic series (The Unwritten) by Mike Carey so I can decide if it's for the go-away stack, though.