What Am I Reading Wednesday - August 14

All The Birds in the Sky – Charlie Jane Anders
This one did very little for me. The concept—young misfit girl with magical abilities forced into a social alliance of convenience with young misfit boy with next-gen technological aptitude—is excellent, but the execution is lacking. Anders veers from Roald Dahl-esque exaggeration to soap opera melodrama to Christopher Moore-style snarkiness, sometimes within a single paragraph, and seldom fluidly. Her emotionally flat characters are buffeted from event to event without ever really reflecting on or growing from their experiences. It’s an odd novel where the protagonists are the characters with the least narrative agency. There’s definite potential here: Anders’ depictions of the birds were magical in every sense of the word, and the novel’s conclusion would have made a fine short story, but that potential ultimately wasn’t realized in the novel’s current form.

Libby on Wednesday – Zylpha Keatley Snyder
This is an all-around excellent book. Snyder expertly walks the fine line of writing about heavy issues in a manner not only accessible to young readers, but as if she were of that target age group herself. Moreover, this novel is both a love song to writing and how-to manual on how to do it, and I really couldn’t ask for a better combination of things in 280-odd pages.


What I Am Currently Reading

...I didn’t read any novels aside from those I finished this week, which I think is the first time this has ever happened since I started posting these things.


What I'm Reading Next
Another month, another Tor freebie. Other than that, I’ve been very good about not acquiring anything new.

これで以上です。