Media Round Up:Before and After I was Ill
Jul. 16th, 2023 01:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
forestofgloryHaven't done one of these in a while! For a bit there I had so much brain fog that I couldn't really read, but luckily I seem to have recovered!
Here's three things I read before I got covid. (I write things up as finished them and then post these round ups when I have enough to talk about)
Queer Transfigurations: Boys Love Media in Asia ed James Welker—This is an edited volume so each chapter covers a different topic and is written by different people. Most of these were very interesting! There was stuff about lots of different communities. I did wish most of the chapters were longer though, a lot of them only scratched the surface. But I learned a lot!
Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong by Louisa Lim—For urban planning book club. I finally got the book club to read something about the sinosphere, and it wasn’t really a good fit for the topic. (It turns out it's really hard to find affordable books about sinoshere cities in English, which is a frustrating gap) Indelible City is a combination of memoir and history and the two parts didn't always mesh well. In the beginning especially things were not very linear and I found that hard to follow. But once the book got to where the author's experience was part of the history she was telling, the whole thing worked much better. Her accounts of the recent protests were very moving.
A Half Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys—I have had this book on my radar for a long time, but I've been scared to start it because it sounded really good, and I didn't want to be disappointed. But I finally read it and I was not disappointed! It's a near future story about a mom and first contact. The society the main character is from is pretty aspirational. They are mending the world and making collective decisions.
Having complained in the past about how often SF shows humanity leaving the Earth behind I really appreciated how this was the opposite of that, where the main character wants to stay even though the aliens want humanity to leave. But I think it could have done more with human nature relationships. At one point someone says something like "we want humans to become part of the ecosystem" and I wanted to tell them "we already are!" So I enjoyed the stewardship ethos but I wanted a deeper exploration of these issues. I also would have loved to see more about indigenous knowledge and land management traditions.
I loved the detailed descriptions of food here and also really appreciate that the viewpoint character is interested in where the food comes from and thinks about trade networks and such. It's such a fun worldbuilding detail, because we learn about what the society values and about their material culture.
I also loved the main character's family! It was good to see her having adventures with her kids but I also loved her wife and co-parents, and her relationship with them.
And here are some things that I'v been reading (and watching) now that I feel better:
The Long Ballad (长歌行) episodes 1-16—I keep forgetting to mention what I'm watching with my group watch in these posts, but we finished Love Between Fairy and Devil a while back and are now watching the long ballad! I'm really enjoying it! It reminds me very much of things that I read as a young person. I've compared bits of it to both Tamora Pierce and Bujold. So it feels very idy to me! It's got a naive but fierce young woman who is cross dressing and having adventures, and has a love interest who sometimes reminds me of Aral Vorkosigan.
The King’s Road: Diplomacy and the Remaking of the Silk Road by Xin Wen—I loved this book so much! It's a fine grained historical analysis of the lives of diplomatic travers on the silk road c 850 to 1000 CE centering on Dunhuang. It's got lots of details about what they ate and how they traveled as well as the broader implications of the network of diplomatic travel. I like that the book decenters imperial China. Tang-to-Song China is one of about a dozen states introduced at the start of the book. I also just love these kinds of details about daily life!
Can't Spell Treason Without Tea by Rebecca Thorne—I picked up the sequel to this (not realizing it wasn't a stand alone) while I was at WisCon. It was on the Cozy SFF display shelf! The book is about Reyna, a place guard who quits her toxic job to run off with her girlfriend Kianthe. The two of them open a book store that sells tea. (I don't really understand why opening a small business is a cozy fantasy for some people. Sounds stressful to me!)
This was a fun, cute read. The worldbuilding is not very deep, which annoyed me sometimes (parchment is not paper!) But mostly I enjoyed spending time with these characters and their community.
Here's three things I read before I got covid. (I write things up as finished them and then post these round ups when I have enough to talk about)
Queer Transfigurations: Boys Love Media in Asia ed James Welker—This is an edited volume so each chapter covers a different topic and is written by different people. Most of these were very interesting! There was stuff about lots of different communities. I did wish most of the chapters were longer though, a lot of them only scratched the surface. But I learned a lot!
Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong by Louisa Lim—For urban planning book club. I finally got the book club to read something about the sinosphere, and it wasn’t really a good fit for the topic. (It turns out it's really hard to find affordable books about sinoshere cities in English, which is a frustrating gap) Indelible City is a combination of memoir and history and the two parts didn't always mesh well. In the beginning especially things were not very linear and I found that hard to follow. But once the book got to where the author's experience was part of the history she was telling, the whole thing worked much better. Her accounts of the recent protests were very moving.
A Half Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys—I have had this book on my radar for a long time, but I've been scared to start it because it sounded really good, and I didn't want to be disappointed. But I finally read it and I was not disappointed! It's a near future story about a mom and first contact. The society the main character is from is pretty aspirational. They are mending the world and making collective decisions.
Having complained in the past about how often SF shows humanity leaving the Earth behind I really appreciated how this was the opposite of that, where the main character wants to stay even though the aliens want humanity to leave. But I think it could have done more with human nature relationships. At one point someone says something like "we want humans to become part of the ecosystem" and I wanted to tell them "we already are!" So I enjoyed the stewardship ethos but I wanted a deeper exploration of these issues. I also would have loved to see more about indigenous knowledge and land management traditions.
I loved the detailed descriptions of food here and also really appreciate that the viewpoint character is interested in where the food comes from and thinks about trade networks and such. It's such a fun worldbuilding detail, because we learn about what the society values and about their material culture.
I also loved the main character's family! It was good to see her having adventures with her kids but I also loved her wife and co-parents, and her relationship with them.
And here are some things that I'v been reading (and watching) now that I feel better:
The Long Ballad (长歌行) episodes 1-16—I keep forgetting to mention what I'm watching with my group watch in these posts, but we finished Love Between Fairy and Devil a while back and are now watching the long ballad! I'm really enjoying it! It reminds me very much of things that I read as a young person. I've compared bits of it to both Tamora Pierce and Bujold. So it feels very idy to me! It's got a naive but fierce young woman who is cross dressing and having adventures, and has a love interest who sometimes reminds me of Aral Vorkosigan.
The King’s Road: Diplomacy and the Remaking of the Silk Road by Xin Wen—I loved this book so much! It's a fine grained historical analysis of the lives of diplomatic travers on the silk road c 850 to 1000 CE centering on Dunhuang. It's got lots of details about what they ate and how they traveled as well as the broader implications of the network of diplomatic travel. I like that the book decenters imperial China. Tang-to-Song China is one of about a dozen states introduced at the start of the book. I also just love these kinds of details about daily life!
Can't Spell Treason Without Tea by Rebecca Thorne—I picked up the sequel to this (not realizing it wasn't a stand alone) while I was at WisCon. It was on the Cozy SFF display shelf! The book is about Reyna, a place guard who quits her toxic job to run off with her girlfriend Kianthe. The two of them open a book store that sells tea. (I don't really understand why opening a small business is a cozy fantasy for some people. Sounds stressful to me!)
This was a fun, cute read. The worldbuilding is not very deep, which annoyed me sometimes (parchment is not paper!) But mostly I enjoyed spending time with these characters and their community.
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Date: 2023-07-17 01:54 pm (UTC)