Media Round Up: Books, Books, Books!
Nov. 22nd, 2022 10:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
forestofgloryMy novel reading brain has been visiting more often which is nice. I've been feeding it by trying to always have multiple library books around. Yes, sometimes I have to return library books unread, but its actually not a problem. I can check them out again if I want.
Here are some thoughts on the things I've been reading in the last month or so:
Husband Material by Alexis Hall— This the a sequel to Boyfriend Material which was a fake dating romance. Romance novels don’t often get direct sequels like this, focusing on the same couple, but I enjoyed spending more time with Luc and Oliver! The whole book was a lot of fun!
The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo— I loved this! I was hesitant to read this at first because it's a Great Gatsby retelling and I had read The Great Gatsby once in high school and didn’t remember much about it. However I loved everything else I’ve read by Vo so I decided to try it, and I’m very glad that I. This book is very atmospheric with an engaging first person narrator. I appreciated how the most important relationship in the book is fraught friendship between the narrator (Jordan Baker, who in this version is queer woman of color) and Daisy.
Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree— So I didn’t finish this but I want to talk about why. A book about an orc who retires from adventuring and sets up a coffee shop sounds fun. I generally like cozy stuff like that. However If I'm going to invest my time in a novel full of lovingly described material culture, I don't want it just to be stuff that the author finds charming. I want the world building to make sense. The worldbuilding in this book is extremely slapdash! The economics make no sense, and also the author doesn’t seem to know the difference between parchment and paper.
A Perfect Vacuum by Stanisław Lem— Another book that I didn’t finish but still have things to say about it. A friend recommended this collection of reviews of non-existent books when I mentioned I was thinking about reviewing fake books. The concept is very cool, but there’s two problems. One I don’t particularly like is this “objective’ style of reviews. It’s very dry. And two fake book reviews are in some way commentary on real books, and I don’t have the context to understand what Lem is saying here.
Temple Alley Summer by Sachiko Kashiwaba (柏葉幸子), ill Miho Satake, trans Avery Fischer Udagawa —I picked this up in the library middle grade section while I was helping the kid pick books. She wasn’t interested but I was curious so I got it for myself. This book is a very non-scary ghost story featuring friendships, a story within a story and family history, I really liked the main story which was very sweet but didn’t especially like the story within the story. (CW child enslavement)
Someone in Time: Tales of Time-Crossed Romance ed Jonathan Strahan— like many anthologies this contained some stories I liked and some I didn’t. The word romance is in the subtitle these stories are not genre romance for the most part, and many don’t have happy endings to the love stories. But I found many of them charming and I enjoyed the timey whimey-ness of it all.
Forgotten Disease: Illnesses Transformed in Chinese Medicine by Hilary A. Smith— I loved this! This book is about how concepts of disease have changed over time using foot qi as case study. It’s one of my favorite genres of history: how people in the past understood the world. Not only was the history of foot qi fascinating but this book made me think a lot about how
Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall by Alexandra Lange— for urban planning book club. This was fun but a bit disorganized. I felt that there were a lot of topics that she touched on that deserved more attention. I did appreciate how the author had read, and was engaging with academic history about this topic. A lot of books for a non specialized audience don’t do that.
Here are some thoughts on the things I've been reading in the last month or so:
Husband Material by Alexis Hall— This the a sequel to Boyfriend Material which was a fake dating romance. Romance novels don’t often get direct sequels like this, focusing on the same couple, but I enjoyed spending more time with Luc and Oliver! The whole book was a lot of fun!
The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo— I loved this! I was hesitant to read this at first because it's a Great Gatsby retelling and I had read The Great Gatsby once in high school and didn’t remember much about it. However I loved everything else I’ve read by Vo so I decided to try it, and I’m very glad that I. This book is very atmospheric with an engaging first person narrator. I appreciated how the most important relationship in the book is fraught friendship between the narrator (Jordan Baker, who in this version is queer woman of color) and Daisy.
Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree— So I didn’t finish this but I want to talk about why. A book about an orc who retires from adventuring and sets up a coffee shop sounds fun. I generally like cozy stuff like that. However If I'm going to invest my time in a novel full of lovingly described material culture, I don't want it just to be stuff that the author finds charming. I want the world building to make sense. The worldbuilding in this book is extremely slapdash! The economics make no sense, and also the author doesn’t seem to know the difference between parchment and paper.
A Perfect Vacuum by Stanisław Lem— Another book that I didn’t finish but still have things to say about it. A friend recommended this collection of reviews of non-existent books when I mentioned I was thinking about reviewing fake books. The concept is very cool, but there’s two problems. One I don’t particularly like is this “objective’ style of reviews. It’s very dry. And two fake book reviews are in some way commentary on real books, and I don’t have the context to understand what Lem is saying here.
Temple Alley Summer by Sachiko Kashiwaba (柏葉幸子), ill Miho Satake, trans Avery Fischer Udagawa —I picked this up in the library middle grade section while I was helping the kid pick books. She wasn’t interested but I was curious so I got it for myself. This book is a very non-scary ghost story featuring friendships, a story within a story and family history, I really liked the main story which was very sweet but didn’t especially like the story within the story. (CW child enslavement)
Someone in Time: Tales of Time-Crossed Romance ed Jonathan Strahan— like many anthologies this contained some stories I liked and some I didn’t. The word romance is in the subtitle these stories are not genre romance for the most part, and many don’t have happy endings to the love stories. But I found many of them charming and I enjoyed the timey whimey-ness of it all.
Forgotten Disease: Illnesses Transformed in Chinese Medicine by Hilary A. Smith— I loved this! This book is about how concepts of disease have changed over time using foot qi as case study. It’s one of my favorite genres of history: how people in the past understood the world. Not only was the history of foot qi fascinating but this book made me think a lot about how
Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall by Alexandra Lange— for urban planning book club. This was fun but a bit disorganized. I felt that there were a lot of topics that she touched on that deserved more attention. I did appreciate how the author had read, and was engaging with academic history about this topic. A lot of books for a non specialized audience don’t do that.
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