Wednesday Sundays
Apr. 20th, 2025 10:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sorcyressFinished Reading Recently:
This entry is not counting children's books, since I talked about those separately.
It took me longer than expected to read Feet of Clay, by Terry Pratchett, but that happens sometimes, and it spanned the Brain Be Weird part of the month where I was badly crashed out. I quite liked it, obviously. Here's what I wrote on Weds when I finished it:
After, I dove into Richard Osman's We Solve Murders on a day in which I was going on slow meandery errands that involved lots of hanging out outside in the _almost_ bearable weather. Read from start to finish in about three and a half hours, nearly continuous, and you know? It was real nice to have a book that was both fluffy enough and captivating enough to do so. Osman writes incredibly human characters, with fairly clear good-vs-evil descriptors, and it's pretty fun to find out what they're up to.
On Thursday I read a couple of short works, the first of which was an 1884 Evangelical screed entitled There is no harm in dancing (a title, I want to be clear, that should be read extremely sarcastically). It's about thirty pages explaining how dancing is The Worst Sin That Ever Was and especially being simultaneously victim-blaming and slut-shaming about All Those Horrible Women That Do It And Corrupt Men, and then we get to the crown-jewel part, which says something like "most if not all of these sins can be found at every dance" and precedes to list about thirty sins, a great many of which I have never once seen because I am clearly not going to exciting enough dances. For instance, not once have I been on a dance floor that features "assassination", or "infanticide" although I have to admit, of late "sedition" has been appearing in most of my social experiences. Anyways, it turns out that if you're gonna hate-read something, choose something that's like a century and a half old, it's *way* funnier. And I wish I knew how to cross-stitch so I could make a proper art piece out of that last bit.
I followed it up with the Simple Sabotage Manual, which is neat because a lot of the specifics they offer are out of date, but the concepts feel real clear and lovely. I shouldn't say more about this one.
Thursday afternoon I stumbled into a copy of Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine, which I haven't read in ages, so I grabbed it. It's still a pretty fun book! It is more of a love story than I remember, I think I think of it as "Ella becoming a whole adult" but it really is "falling in love with Char" as the central premise. It's sweet though, it's a damn good romance, and I like all the worldbuilding quite a bit.
Currently Reading:
I have cracked spine on Wyrd Sisters (metaphorically, all my Pratchett is in e-form) but literally only read about three pages. So I'll get to that all in a rush soon.
I don't know if I have properly mentioned, in part because I really don't know how to mark it on my spreadsheet: I have gotten pretty entangled in The SCP Foundation of late, which is several million words of collaborative semi-horror. It just _keeps going_ is what I am finding. It's serving as a nice thing to read when I don't feel like playing video games.
Reading Next
SamSam has never heard of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, and I'm visiting them soon, so that's going to get read aloud I suspect, at least a few chapters worth.
I have the next Vorkosigan book, so I really ought to do that. Also I downloaded like...fifty? eighty! Eighty things from Project Gutenburg. This is how I got the short stuff I mentioned above, but there's Oz and the coloured faerie books, and the complete Poe, and Man of La Mancha, and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and all sorts of stuff.
And Dracula Daily starts in two weeks. Every year I've managed to get a little farther, but this'll be my third year trying it out. Let's see if I can finish the novel this time around!
~Sor
MOOP!
This entry is not counting children's books, since I talked about those separately.
It took me longer than expected to read Feet of Clay, by Terry Pratchett, but that happens sometimes, and it spanned the Brain Be Weird part of the month where I was badly crashed out. I quite liked it, obviously. Here's what I wrote on Weds when I finished it:
Okay yeah, Feet of Clay was *really* good. I like the gender part --"we've got extra pronouns here", _be still my heart_ and I really fucking like the golems. And I lovehate Vetrinari so very much, he is such a beautifully sympathetic antagonist. If Vimes ever figures out how much he's been played...actually, I think Vimes would sulk for a bit and then be okay with it.
And then there's Dorfl, and Oh Man. The part of mybrainheart that loves community and solidarity and the inherent worth of all and trying to make things better for everyone is Very Aware Of How Good This Feels.
I'm obviously going to keep reading, but one of the unexpected things I really like is that I've read three watch books now and each of them is a fully complete story. No cliffhangers! Like, there's obviously more things that _could_ happen, but they feel like opportunities, not like frustrations. It's an astonishing feature of writing, and something I hadn't realized I'd been missing by some of the other fantasy I've read. I love Seanan, for instance, but you read enough Toby books and you know there's unfinished story that hasn't been resolved and it'll nag at you. Which is fine! The story she is telling is a longer one that takes a lot of books to get through! But it's still refreshing to know that I could never read another Discworld book and still feel like I've reached a satisfying end.
After, I dove into Richard Osman's We Solve Murders on a day in which I was going on slow meandery errands that involved lots of hanging out outside in the _almost_ bearable weather. Read from start to finish in about three and a half hours, nearly continuous, and you know? It was real nice to have a book that was both fluffy enough and captivating enough to do so. Osman writes incredibly human characters, with fairly clear good-vs-evil descriptors, and it's pretty fun to find out what they're up to.
On Thursday I read a couple of short works, the first of which was an 1884 Evangelical screed entitled There is no harm in dancing (a title, I want to be clear, that should be read extremely sarcastically). It's about thirty pages explaining how dancing is The Worst Sin That Ever Was and especially being simultaneously victim-blaming and slut-shaming about All Those Horrible Women That Do It And Corrupt Men, and then we get to the crown-jewel part, which says something like "most if not all of these sins can be found at every dance" and precedes to list about thirty sins, a great many of which I have never once seen because I am clearly not going to exciting enough dances. For instance, not once have I been on a dance floor that features "assassination", or "infanticide" although I have to admit, of late "sedition" has been appearing in most of my social experiences. Anyways, it turns out that if you're gonna hate-read something, choose something that's like a century and a half old, it's *way* funnier. And I wish I knew how to cross-stitch so I could make a proper art piece out of that last bit.
I followed it up with the Simple Sabotage Manual, which is neat because a lot of the specifics they offer are out of date, but the concepts feel real clear and lovely. I shouldn't say more about this one.
Thursday afternoon I stumbled into a copy of Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine, which I haven't read in ages, so I grabbed it. It's still a pretty fun book! It is more of a love story than I remember, I think I think of it as "Ella becoming a whole adult" but it really is "falling in love with Char" as the central premise. It's sweet though, it's a damn good romance, and I like all the worldbuilding quite a bit.
Currently Reading:
I have cracked spine on Wyrd Sisters (metaphorically, all my Pratchett is in e-form) but literally only read about three pages. So I'll get to that all in a rush soon.
I don't know if I have properly mentioned, in part because I really don't know how to mark it on my spreadsheet: I have gotten pretty entangled in The SCP Foundation of late, which is several million words of collaborative semi-horror. It just _keeps going_ is what I am finding. It's serving as a nice thing to read when I don't feel like playing video games.
Reading Next
SamSam has never heard of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, and I'm visiting them soon, so that's going to get read aloud I suspect, at least a few chapters worth.
I have the next Vorkosigan book, so I really ought to do that. Also I downloaded like...fifty? eighty! Eighty things from Project Gutenburg. This is how I got the short stuff I mentioned above, but there's Oz and the coloured faerie books, and the complete Poe, and Man of La Mancha, and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and all sorts of stuff.
And Dracula Daily starts in two weeks. Every year I've managed to get a little farther, but this'll be my third year trying it out. Let's see if I can finish the novel this time around!
~Sor
MOOP!