Finished reading Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett. This was a charming story about two academics — the titular Wilde, junior and diligent and quite possibly neurodivergent, and a tenured professor, lazy and charming and (Wilde suspects) prone to falsifying his research. Seasoned with little bits of horror, but still quite fun and cozy.
Finished reading The Language of Power by Rosemary Kirstein. This is clearly not the end of the series, though it ends on an adequately-satisfying note, but it’s the most-recently published. (Kirstein is apparently continuing to write.) Less Le Guin–esque than the others, but still reminiscent. I’ve enjoyed all these books.
Finished reading The Lost Steersman by Rosemary Kirstein. This was a little more harrowing than the previous two, but (or thus?) a little more compelling.
These books are self-published, and could have used another pass from a copyeditor, but nothing that ruins the read.
Finished reading The Outskirter’s Secret by Rosemary Kirstein. Confirms the Le Guin vibes I got from the first book: ecology and sociology are core to the story.
Finished reading The Steerswoman by Rosemary Kirstein. A kind of a fantasy novel about a group of (mostly) women who gather and share knowledge, and a group of (mostly) men who hoard it, this feels like the kind of story that a younger Ursula K. Le Guin might have written.
Finished reading The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey. I read it compulsively, but it was really hard, about sexism and abuse and surviving them. It didn’t help that the protagonist — or at least the narrator, maybe she’s not the protagonist — is not especially likeable. I’m glad I read this, but I can’t easily recommend it.
Finished reading Saving Time by Jenny Odell. I read it slowly and sporadically, as I do with a lot of nonfiction, and I’m not sure what to make of it. There seem to be some deep insights about how we perceive time and how parts of it are a social construction, along with digressions about labor and inequity that Odell manages to pull back to the main topic, along with bits that feel a little too woo-woo for me.
Finished reading Dead Country by Max Gladstone, book seven or one in a series, depending how you count. (It’s seven, I think.) Anyway, interestingly, this book sort of rhymed with Gladstone’s previous, Last Exit, sharing some motifs, but I think this was the better book: tighter and with less clumsy preaching.
Finished reading The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz. I almost put this one down unfinished: The setting and story are incredibly inventive, and the characters’ portrayal and motivations very one-dimensional and clumsy. I actually found myself skimming parts, which I almost never do with fiction.
Finished reading Babel by R.F. Kuang, about the translators’ college at Oxford in the 1830s that worked magic based on the tension between imperfectly-translated terms, and thus fueled the British Empire. About empire of course, and appropriation and systemic racism and such. I enjoyed this.
Finished reading Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel, about plague, time travel, and the simulation hypothesis. Includes some more-mature forms of her standard tropes, plus links to other parts of the St. John Mandel Literary Universe. Quite good.
Finished reading Joan by Katherine J. Chen, historical fiction about Joan of Arc. Chen, properly, wrote her own interpretation of Joan, one who’s less a holy maid with visions and more “the Thomas Edison of handing a dude his ass” (note: not a quote from the book). The final part of the book was difficult to read — it’s a tragedy after all — but at least we don’t get to her being (spoiler for approx. six-century-old history) burnt at the stake.
Side note / content warning / complaint: In the book, Joan’s sister is raped (offscreen, and handled delicately, but). I hope someday we can find a better plot point to motivate the main character.
Set aside After the Ice: A Global Human History, 20,000–5000 BC by Steven Mithen. I’m enjoying it, but it’s a big chonk of a book, and I have other library books due back soon. I’ll return to this while I’m between other books.
The book referenced several books and authors also referenced in The Old Ways, not entirely surprisingly.
Finished reading Imaginary Peaks by Katie Ives. The core of the book is a mountain climbing hoax, but it extends outwards to cartography and its difficulties, hoaxes more generally, and colonialism, among other things.