By no means comprehensive, but a start at catching up, perhaps.
Semi-Recently Finished
The March North by Graydon Saunders (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
graydon) was fascinating all the way through; it reminded me of Glen Cook's The Black Company except a much more functional and pleasant world in which people actually have some concern for the lives of others. There is a lot of very dense worldbuilding happening, so I read it slowly and was glad to have the time to piece things together. It will definitely be worth rereading to see the characters through the larger view of understanding their world better.
What Matters in Jane Austen by John Mullan was enjoyable to the end; I had many new thoughts about Austen's novels and ended up with a few related books I am now reading.
Lisa & Co. by Jilly Cooper ended up really pleasing me in spite of itself; the stories are all from the 60s and 70s and very early 80s, and Cooper's point of view on people and class and romance and such is mostly not anything like mine, but she surprised me by taking her one story with a queer character equally seriously to the rest (even though it had many problems, but the actual humanity of the queer character was not in doubt which frankly surprised me from the period), and there is just something satisfying in her various female characters dumping men who want them to be domestic goddesses in exchange for men who appreciate their brains and ambitions and so forth. Definitely not solid reading matter, but it was an enjoyable digression and did some good and no harm.
The Penguin Pool Murder by Stuart Palmer, which I read due tosovay's
excellent review of the 1932 movie based on the book. As a book it was all right, but the author seemed to take the female lead seriously when she was explaining about how she was "only a woman" and thus couldn't understand what the detective was thinking or planning. The movie sounds much better in that regard, so I may look for it online, although I am not very good at sustained visual media.
On the Go
I am mere pages from the ending of Love in a Different Key by Marjorie Franco, which is an early 80s YA-ish novel about a girl who plays piano and first romance. I think it is meant to be a serious coming-of-age tale but I found its handling of mental illness problematic, although it may well have been good for the time.
I am reading two Joan Aiken books for children at once -- one is More Than You Bargained For, a 1957 collection of short stories, some of which I have read elsewhere, and the other is The Kingdom and the Cave which is thus far written from the POV of a palace cat who is just now, some chapters in, admitting it might be good to have a human to help with unravelling the local mysteries. They are both enjoyable and I am considering trying my daughter on them, although they might be too slow-paced for her tastes.
In adult fiction I am about halfway through The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan, which is a multivoiced novel about rural Ireland after the collapse of the Celtic Tiger, focusing in and around a murder and the assumed murderer. It is very, very good, and unless it somehow falls apart in the second half it is goiing to be one of the best things I have read thus far in the year.
Finally, I am readinggraydon's second novel (A Succession of Bad Days) just like I read the first -- a few pages each night before I sleep -- but with perhaps triple the enjoyment, as people learning how to do sorcery is one of my best beloved things to read about when it is done anything like well, and this does it extremely well indeed.
I am not even trying to list my upcoming, it is too hard to pick and choose, they will just appear as they do, like mushrooms.
Semi-Recently Finished
The March North by Graydon Saunders (
graydon) was fascinating all the way through; it reminded me of Glen Cook's The Black Company except a much more functional and pleasant world in which people actually have some concern for the lives of others. There is a lot of very dense worldbuilding happening, so I read it slowly and was glad to have the time to piece things together. It will definitely be worth rereading to see the characters through the larger view of understanding their world better.What Matters in Jane Austen by John Mullan was enjoyable to the end; I had many new thoughts about Austen's novels and ended up with a few related books I am now reading.
Lisa & Co. by Jilly Cooper ended up really pleasing me in spite of itself; the stories are all from the 60s and 70s and very early 80s, and Cooper's point of view on people and class and romance and such is mostly not anything like mine, but she surprised me by taking her one story with a queer character equally seriously to the rest (even though it had many problems, but the actual humanity of the queer character was not in doubt which frankly surprised me from the period), and there is just something satisfying in her various female characters dumping men who want them to be domestic goddesses in exchange for men who appreciate their brains and ambitions and so forth. Definitely not solid reading matter, but it was an enjoyable digression and did some good and no harm.
The Penguin Pool Murder by Stuart Palmer, which I read due to
sovay's excellent review of the 1932 movie based on the book. As a book it was all right, but the author seemed to take the female lead seriously when she was explaining about how she was "only a woman" and thus couldn't understand what the detective was thinking or planning. The movie sounds much better in that regard, so I may look for it online, although I am not very good at sustained visual media.
On the Go
I am mere pages from the ending of Love in a Different Key by Marjorie Franco, which is an early 80s YA-ish novel about a girl who plays piano and first romance. I think it is meant to be a serious coming-of-age tale but I found its handling of mental illness problematic, although it may well have been good for the time.
I am reading two Joan Aiken books for children at once -- one is More Than You Bargained For, a 1957 collection of short stories, some of which I have read elsewhere, and the other is The Kingdom and the Cave which is thus far written from the POV of a palace cat who is just now, some chapters in, admitting it might be good to have a human to help with unravelling the local mysteries. They are both enjoyable and I am considering trying my daughter on them, although they might be too slow-paced for her tastes.
In adult fiction I am about halfway through The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan, which is a multivoiced novel about rural Ireland after the collapse of the Celtic Tiger, focusing in and around a murder and the assumed murderer. It is very, very good, and unless it somehow falls apart in the second half it is goiing to be one of the best things I have read thus far in the year.
Finally, I am reading
graydon's second novel (A Succession of Bad Days) just like I read the first -- a few pages each night before I sleep -- but with perhaps triple the enjoyment, as people learning how to do sorcery is one of my best beloved things to read about when it is done anything like well, and this does it extremely well indeed.I am not even trying to list my upcoming, it is too hard to pick and choose, they will just appear as they do, like mushrooms.
no subject
Date: 2019-04-29 09:50 pm (UTC)From:(I had just read through all of Glen Cook's books in my possession. This was hubris, because Cook is far more skilled as a prose stylist than I am, but more interesting hubris than I was afraid it would be.)
Somewhere out there someone's review of A Succession of Bad Days says "more like a Wizard Homeschool Cooperative for Adult Learners", which amused me greatly.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-02 07:21 pm (UTC)From:You make it clear in the second how very high the stakes are in the learning and how fraught the experience is, but the people are so enjoyable that I nonetheless find myself daydreaming about joining a Wizard Homeschool Cooperative for Adult Learners (oh felicitious phrase!).
no subject
Date: 2019-05-02 08:59 pm (UTC)From:(that is a very nice Goodreads icon you use.)
There is a lot of Cook, and it might not be the thing for continuous or concentrated doses, but the sheer technical ability intimidates. (Or at least it intimidates me!)
This particular homeschool co-operative is unusually fraught. (Though of course the main reasons it is fraught apply to independents generally.)
I'm glad it seems a sufficiently interesting place to be.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-03 04:55 am (UTC)From:I have just gotten to where Dove wishes very much to shake Chloris and I appreciate that while I, too, wish to shake Chloris, I also understand very well why it is she is spinning and not yet able to find anywhere to land.
(Although with 2/3 of the book still to go, perhaps 'the bit where Dove wishes to shake Chloris' is not going to be a sufficiently unique identifier...)
no subject
Date: 2019-05-03 05:14 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2019-05-03 03:12 pm (UTC)From:(I went by recentry and writing style, rather than username. So the remark about the icon does apply. :)
I am pretty sure you're referring to the conversation prior to the trip up to the Shape of Peace, and there Chloris is having difficulties of imagination. Their upbringing did not prepare them for any of the possibilities before them, and it did instill a certain concern for social error.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-09 07:43 pm (UTC)From:Yes, that is the conversation I was referring to -- I am farther on now, after the hugging on the windowseat, and no longer want to shake anyone; you do excellently at showing pieces over time and at angles such that I eventually build an understanding I can look around at.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-09 11:42 pm (UTC)From:(and thank you. That sense of comprehension has proved highly variable across readers and it's good to know when it works.)