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...and 54 books read in the last 5.5 months but as-yet-unreviewed since I last posted a What Am I Reading Wednesday.
LET'S DO THIS.
Finished in April
Queer City — Peter Ackroyd
Queer London is 300-odd pages of conjecture and cherry picked facts. There's a serious book to be written about the history of queer people in London from the pre-Roman period to the present, but this volume isn't it.
Finished in July
Moira's Pen — Megan Whalen Turner
I held off reading this one for so long because once I did the series really would be Done. I enjoyed revisiting the short stories I'd previously read in the company of others I hadn't, and the framing device of Moira's introductions to each works well (although half the time I forgot it was Moira speaking and not Turner). "Eddis Goes Camping" was my favorite story, "The End of Eddis" made me sad, and I am not sure how I feel about Costis having children.
Lore Olympus vol. 1 — Rachel Smythe
Lore Olympus has some of the best opening chapters of any graphic novel series. As a kid cutting my teeth on Bernard Evslin's versions of the Greek myths, I empathized with Hades as the black sheep of the family who got short shrift when divine domains were being parceled out, and Smythe's take on the character is very much in keeping with my early inclinations.
Keeper of Enchanted Rooms — Charlie Holmberg
As usual, Holmberg's worldbuilding is top notch: this novel features multiple schools of magic and an arcane society charged with overseeing sentient houses. The Rhode Island setting was also fun. Alas, the romance started strong but stumbled over the genre standards Easily Avoidable Misunderstanding(TM) and But There's No Way I Could Just Talk To Her/Him.(TM) Still, I enjoyed the read, and my brain is low-level toying with an Enchanted Rooms/Bone Key crossover.
Finished in August
Lore Olympus vol. 2 — Rachel Smythe
I feel so bad for Minthe in this collection. She's in multiple dysfunctional-to-toxic relationships that don't serve her, but can't see her way out.
Lore Olympus vol. 3 — Rachel Smythe
Even as a kid I was very much an Artemis versus Apollo kind of person, so Smythe's take on the latter character sits very well with me. I also really enjoy the looks we get at Hera, Eros, and Psyche as well.
The Laws of Brainjo — Josh Turnkett
This self-published book about how to learn a non-Classical musical instrument well as an adult doesn't offer any groundbreaking advice—listen a ton, practice, slowly, and focus on the parts you aren't doing well; learn to read music but don't rely on it, don't be afraid of mistakes but be sure to correct them—but I very much enjoyed the read.
Cattle Lords & Clansmen — Nerys Patterson
Perhaps the best book I read this year. You wouldn't necessarily think that a scholastic examination of how climate and terrain shaped family structure and inheritance law in pre-modern Ireland would be fascinating, but it absolutely is.
The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill — Rowenna Miller
At its outset, this novel reminded me of nothing so much as Robin McKinley: warm, slow-paced, and squarely focused on domestic concerns over the Grand Doings of government or nobility. The novel never loses that vibe, but like the best of McKinley the story gradually expands to encompass so much more, including hard choices with real stakes, and some of the best descriptions of fairy I've read.
Dark Earth — Rebecca Stott
Set in post-Roman eastern England, Dark Earth is the story of two orphaned sisters trying to survive in a world where plague and famine threaten, Saxon warlords compete for dominance, Christian missionaries are starting to stamp out the old religion, and an unusual physical or mental trait was enough to get someone branded as a witch and blamed for a community's misfortune. I'm not going to say anything more specific because I don't want to spoil the plot; suffice it to say this is a refreshingly original and well-written bit of historical fiction, and I'll happily read anything else Stott publishes.
絶愛ー1989ー 2 — 尾崎 南 ( Zetsuai—1989 vol. 1 — Ozaki Minami )
Nothing is iddy and trashy quite like vintage mid- to late-90s manga, and Zetsuai helped pave the way. This is exactly the empty calorie reading I needed this past summer.
絶愛ー1989ー 2 — 尾崎 南 (Zetsuai—1989 vol. 2 — Ozaki Minami)
More of the above, with all the usual tropes: the snarly uke, the too-cool-for-school seme being slowly undone by his hopeless infatuation with the former, the bubbly bimbo younger sister, gender misidentification, cheesy J-rock, high school sports montages. This volume has it all.
ハーレムビートは夜明けまで 2 — 高嶋 上総 (Harlem Beat ha Yoake Made vol. 2 — Takashima Kazusa)
Being the second volume in a series about a Lord of Hell whose devoted servant/bodyguard sneaks him into the human world disguised as a high school boy to prevent his arranged marriage, and the various other denizens of hell (a vampire, a werewolf, a zombie) who follow in his wake to try to find and/or protect him. It's spastic and over-the-top, but Takashima's art is as beautiful as ever.
禁句 — 氷栗優 (Kinku — Higuri You)
This short doujinshi contains some Tethyus and Zardi backstory that Higuri wasn't able to publish in Seimaden proper, and as such is very much RTMI.
ハーレムビートは夜明けまで 3 — 高嶋 上総 (Harlem Beat ha Yoake Made vol. 3 — Takashima Kazusa)
The art is beautiful, the situations humorous, but in trying to fanservice multiple categories of readers—shojo, shonen, and BL—it goes somewhat wide of the mark for all of them.
Thraxas — Martin Scott
Scott's debut novel introduces the titular character—a down-on-his-luck former mercenary turned private eye in a Discworld-esque fantasy setting. It's not original, but it is quite well done and it's fun to see Scott at the early stages of his craft. I enjoyed the romp and plan to continue with the series.
Finished in September
The Penelopiad — Margaret Atwood
The Penelopiad isn't bad, but I expected a bit more from Atwood's retelling of the Odyssey from Penelope's perspective. For one, her Helen is the same superficial, vain harlot from so many other (re)tellings; I was surprised and disappointed Atwood (of all authors) didn't imbue her with more depth. Atwood does some interesting stuff with Penelope's relationship to her mother-in-law and the twelve maidens, and I wish she'd expanded on those elements in a novel-length treatment.
Grief is a Journey — Kenneth Doka
My therapist recommend I read this one. It was fine. Doka takes care to write inclusively in that the examples aren't solely focused on straight, white people grieving the loss of close family, but acknowledges the breadth of losses that cause people to mourn (e.g., friends, illicit sexual partners, celebrities, objects). That said the book does predominantly focus on "traditional" losses: parents, children, romantic partners, with the other categories getting much less attention. Where the book does shine is in laying out the various ways grief can manifest, and not categorizing any of those manifestations as better, worse, or more or less valid than the others.
The Lazarus Heist — Geoff White
Based on the eponymous podcast (which I have not listened to), The Lazarus Heist lays out how North Korean hackers accomplished several major cyber crimes, including stealing billions of dollars from a Bangladeshi bank, and a retaliatory hack-and-leak targeting Sony Pictures for parodying the Dear Leader in a then-unreleased film. It's well-written and reads like an action thriller; what struck me most was how much the culprits depended on dozens of human helpers (oblivious or not) undertaking real world actions to carry out their digital crimes.
We Don't Know Ourselves — Fintan O'Toole
This book is tied with Cattle Lords & Clansmen and Vagina Obscura for the best thing I read this year. It is a history of Ireland from the year of O'Toole's birth to the year of its publication, framed through the autobiographical lens of O'Toole and his family's experiences. My favorite sections of the book were the earlier chapters, where those two elements are much more closely intertwined; O'Toole's personal experiences recede to the background in the later chapters, but the book doesn't suffer for it per se, it's just a change in focus. This may all sound a bit dull, but it reads like a page-turner and I devoured it in under two days. I will definitely reread this one again.
Last Night's Fun — Ciaran Carson
Last Night's Fun was my introduction to Carson and the one I've returned to the most. It's a collection of essays—eached titled for a traditional tune—about various aspects of playing Irish traditional music. What struck me most on this readthrough was how many of the elements: names, craftsmen, musicians, I recognize now but did not the first several times I read the book.
Red Memory — Tania Branigan
Branigan's book deals with individual's experiences of the Cultural Revolution, and how individuals, Chinese society, and China's government acknowledge, interpret, ignore, or recast those events. It is good, if obviously heavy, reading.
Finished in October
Lore Olympus vol. 4 — Rachel Smythe
Now we're really getting some juicy plot and character development. Hera is kinda my all-star here, and I love the green and gold color scheme to boot.
Ivory Vikings — Nancy Marie Brown
Ivory Vikings uses debate over the origins of the Lewis chess pieces as a framing device for an exploration of Icelandic, Scandinavian, and Scottish history, culture, and sagas. Readers looking for a book (to say nothing of an answer) narrowly focused on that framing device will be disappointed, but for those willing to go along on the journey, it's an enjoyable ride indeed.
Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts — Edna Barth
This was perhaps my favorite childhood book on Halloween. Returning to it as an adult, I can spot several howlers (Samhain is not "the Celtic lord of the dead", for instance, and Barth is entirely too willing to treat testimony from 17th and 18th century witch trials as documenting actual historical practices) but set those aside and it's still a great introduction to the origins of a bunch of seasonal practices, from Jack O'Lanterns, to trick-or-treating, to the Day of the Dead.
Folk Music and Dances of Ireland — Breandan Breatnach
As short and not comprehensive as this volume is, it's still a good introduction to its subject.
The Fall of Numenor — J.R.R. Tolkien
*sigh* By now I should know better than to read anything by Tolkien that isn't The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings, which I first encountered when I was young enough, and unread enough, to not notice their faults. It's telling that my favorite sections of this book dealt with Numenor's topology and environment; once the narrative moved on to the island's human inhabitants, it lost me. For all his powers of imagination, Tolkien never managed to mature beyond the developmental stage of a nine-year-old child for whom women exist to provide an endless supply of emotional support on demand and something pretty to look at. (And if you aren't able to imagine your way past that, how imaginative are you, in the end?) And boy howdy, if "incestuous" and "pedophilic" aren't the words that come to mind in Tolkien's description of how Elendil thinks about his son in The Numenorean Chapters from "The Lost Road", I don't know what words will.
Reviews of November and December's reading to follow.
これで以上です。
LET'S DO THIS.
Finished in April
Queer City — Peter Ackroyd
Queer London is 300-odd pages of conjecture and cherry picked facts. There's a serious book to be written about the history of queer people in London from the pre-Roman period to the present, but this volume isn't it.
Finished in July
Moira's Pen — Megan Whalen Turner
I held off reading this one for so long because once I did the series really would be Done. I enjoyed revisiting the short stories I'd previously read in the company of others I hadn't, and the framing device of Moira's introductions to each works well (although half the time I forgot it was Moira speaking and not Turner). "Eddis Goes Camping" was my favorite story, "The End of Eddis" made me sad, and I am not sure how I feel about Costis having children.
Lore Olympus vol. 1 — Rachel Smythe
Lore Olympus has some of the best opening chapters of any graphic novel series. As a kid cutting my teeth on Bernard Evslin's versions of the Greek myths, I empathized with Hades as the black sheep of the family who got short shrift when divine domains were being parceled out, and Smythe's take on the character is very much in keeping with my early inclinations.
Keeper of Enchanted Rooms — Charlie Holmberg
As usual, Holmberg's worldbuilding is top notch: this novel features multiple schools of magic and an arcane society charged with overseeing sentient houses. The Rhode Island setting was also fun. Alas, the romance started strong but stumbled over the genre standards Easily Avoidable Misunderstanding(TM) and But There's No Way I Could Just Talk To Her/Him.(TM) Still, I enjoyed the read, and my brain is low-level toying with an Enchanted Rooms/Bone Key crossover.
Finished in August
Lore Olympus vol. 2 — Rachel Smythe
I feel so bad for Minthe in this collection. She's in multiple dysfunctional-to-toxic relationships that don't serve her, but can't see her way out.
Lore Olympus vol. 3 — Rachel Smythe
Even as a kid I was very much an Artemis versus Apollo kind of person, so Smythe's take on the latter character sits very well with me. I also really enjoy the looks we get at Hera, Eros, and Psyche as well.
The Laws of Brainjo — Josh Turnkett
This self-published book about how to learn a non-Classical musical instrument well as an adult doesn't offer any groundbreaking advice—listen a ton, practice, slowly, and focus on the parts you aren't doing well; learn to read music but don't rely on it, don't be afraid of mistakes but be sure to correct them—but I very much enjoyed the read.
Cattle Lords & Clansmen — Nerys Patterson
Perhaps the best book I read this year. You wouldn't necessarily think that a scholastic examination of how climate and terrain shaped family structure and inheritance law in pre-modern Ireland would be fascinating, but it absolutely is.
The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill — Rowenna Miller
At its outset, this novel reminded me of nothing so much as Robin McKinley: warm, slow-paced, and squarely focused on domestic concerns over the Grand Doings of government or nobility. The novel never loses that vibe, but like the best of McKinley the story gradually expands to encompass so much more, including hard choices with real stakes, and some of the best descriptions of fairy I've read.
Dark Earth — Rebecca Stott
Set in post-Roman eastern England, Dark Earth is the story of two orphaned sisters trying to survive in a world where plague and famine threaten, Saxon warlords compete for dominance, Christian missionaries are starting to stamp out the old religion, and an unusual physical or mental trait was enough to get someone branded as a witch and blamed for a community's misfortune. I'm not going to say anything more specific because I don't want to spoil the plot; suffice it to say this is a refreshingly original and well-written bit of historical fiction, and I'll happily read anything else Stott publishes.
絶愛ー1989ー 2 — 尾崎 南 ( Zetsuai—1989 vol. 1 — Ozaki Minami )
Nothing is iddy and trashy quite like vintage mid- to late-90s manga, and Zetsuai helped pave the way. This is exactly the empty calorie reading I needed this past summer.
絶愛ー1989ー 2 — 尾崎 南 (Zetsuai—1989 vol. 2 — Ozaki Minami)
More of the above, with all the usual tropes: the snarly uke, the too-cool-for-school seme being slowly undone by his hopeless infatuation with the former, the bubbly bimbo younger sister, gender misidentification, cheesy J-rock, high school sports montages. This volume has it all.
ハーレムビートは夜明けまで 2 — 高嶋 上総 (Harlem Beat ha Yoake Made vol. 2 — Takashima Kazusa)
Being the second volume in a series about a Lord of Hell whose devoted servant/bodyguard sneaks him into the human world disguised as a high school boy to prevent his arranged marriage, and the various other denizens of hell (a vampire, a werewolf, a zombie) who follow in his wake to try to find and/or protect him. It's spastic and over-the-top, but Takashima's art is as beautiful as ever.
禁句 — 氷栗優 (Kinku — Higuri You)
This short doujinshi contains some Tethyus and Zardi backstory that Higuri wasn't able to publish in Seimaden proper, and as such is very much RTMI.
ハーレムビートは夜明けまで 3 — 高嶋 上総 (Harlem Beat ha Yoake Made vol. 3 — Takashima Kazusa)
The art is beautiful, the situations humorous, but in trying to fanservice multiple categories of readers—shojo, shonen, and BL—it goes somewhat wide of the mark for all of them.
Thraxas — Martin Scott
Scott's debut novel introduces the titular character—a down-on-his-luck former mercenary turned private eye in a Discworld-esque fantasy setting. It's not original, but it is quite well done and it's fun to see Scott at the early stages of his craft. I enjoyed the romp and plan to continue with the series.
Finished in September
The Penelopiad — Margaret Atwood
The Penelopiad isn't bad, but I expected a bit more from Atwood's retelling of the Odyssey from Penelope's perspective. For one, her Helen is the same superficial, vain harlot from so many other (re)tellings; I was surprised and disappointed Atwood (of all authors) didn't imbue her with more depth. Atwood does some interesting stuff with Penelope's relationship to her mother-in-law and the twelve maidens, and I wish she'd expanded on those elements in a novel-length treatment.
Grief is a Journey — Kenneth Doka
My therapist recommend I read this one. It was fine. Doka takes care to write inclusively in that the examples aren't solely focused on straight, white people grieving the loss of close family, but acknowledges the breadth of losses that cause people to mourn (e.g., friends, illicit sexual partners, celebrities, objects). That said the book does predominantly focus on "traditional" losses: parents, children, romantic partners, with the other categories getting much less attention. Where the book does shine is in laying out the various ways grief can manifest, and not categorizing any of those manifestations as better, worse, or more or less valid than the others.
The Lazarus Heist — Geoff White
Based on the eponymous podcast (which I have not listened to), The Lazarus Heist lays out how North Korean hackers accomplished several major cyber crimes, including stealing billions of dollars from a Bangladeshi bank, and a retaliatory hack-and-leak targeting Sony Pictures for parodying the Dear Leader in a then-unreleased film. It's well-written and reads like an action thriller; what struck me most was how much the culprits depended on dozens of human helpers (oblivious or not) undertaking real world actions to carry out their digital crimes.
We Don't Know Ourselves — Fintan O'Toole
This book is tied with Cattle Lords & Clansmen and Vagina Obscura for the best thing I read this year. It is a history of Ireland from the year of O'Toole's birth to the year of its publication, framed through the autobiographical lens of O'Toole and his family's experiences. My favorite sections of the book were the earlier chapters, where those two elements are much more closely intertwined; O'Toole's personal experiences recede to the background in the later chapters, but the book doesn't suffer for it per se, it's just a change in focus. This may all sound a bit dull, but it reads like a page-turner and I devoured it in under two days. I will definitely reread this one again.
Last Night's Fun — Ciaran Carson
Last Night's Fun was my introduction to Carson and the one I've returned to the most. It's a collection of essays—eached titled for a traditional tune—about various aspects of playing Irish traditional music. What struck me most on this readthrough was how many of the elements: names, craftsmen, musicians, I recognize now but did not the first several times I read the book.
Red Memory — Tania Branigan
Branigan's book deals with individual's experiences of the Cultural Revolution, and how individuals, Chinese society, and China's government acknowledge, interpret, ignore, or recast those events. It is good, if obviously heavy, reading.
Finished in October
Lore Olympus vol. 4 — Rachel Smythe
Now we're really getting some juicy plot and character development. Hera is kinda my all-star here, and I love the green and gold color scheme to boot.
Ivory Vikings — Nancy Marie Brown
Ivory Vikings uses debate over the origins of the Lewis chess pieces as a framing device for an exploration of Icelandic, Scandinavian, and Scottish history, culture, and sagas. Readers looking for a book (to say nothing of an answer) narrowly focused on that framing device will be disappointed, but for those willing to go along on the journey, it's an enjoyable ride indeed.
Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts — Edna Barth
This was perhaps my favorite childhood book on Halloween. Returning to it as an adult, I can spot several howlers (Samhain is not "the Celtic lord of the dead", for instance, and Barth is entirely too willing to treat testimony from 17th and 18th century witch trials as documenting actual historical practices) but set those aside and it's still a great introduction to the origins of a bunch of seasonal practices, from Jack O'Lanterns, to trick-or-treating, to the Day of the Dead.
Folk Music and Dances of Ireland — Breandan Breatnach
As short and not comprehensive as this volume is, it's still a good introduction to its subject.
The Fall of Numenor — J.R.R. Tolkien
*sigh* By now I should know better than to read anything by Tolkien that isn't The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings, which I first encountered when I was young enough, and unread enough, to not notice their faults. It's telling that my favorite sections of this book dealt with Numenor's topology and environment; once the narrative moved on to the island's human inhabitants, it lost me. For all his powers of imagination, Tolkien never managed to mature beyond the developmental stage of a nine-year-old child for whom women exist to provide an endless supply of emotional support on demand and something pretty to look at. (And if you aren't able to imagine your way past that, how imaginative are you, in the end?) And boy howdy, if "incestuous" and "pedophilic" aren't the words that come to mind in Tolkien's description of how Elendil thinks about his son in The Numenorean Chapters from "The Lost Road", I don't know what words will.
Reviews of November and December's reading to follow.
これで以上です。
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Ahh, Zetsuai- now there's a blast from the past. That and CLAMP are essence of 90s Tokyo for me.
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It sounds like you have had some good and interesting reads this year!
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