Wednesday Reading Meme
Feb. 11th, 2015 08:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I Just Finished Reading
Alexis Hall's There Will Be Phlogistan, an MMF romance with a completely unbeatable title. Doesn't that just make you want to drop everything and read it? Partly because it gives the wildly misleading impression that the world-building will be more than perfunctory, but hey, I still have to tip my hat to that title.
But the book itself feels somewhat unfinished, because it ends right after the threesome gets together and completely leaves out the fun part. How will these three people learn to accommodate each other and live together? They can't just have sex all the time, can they?
The characters are nonetheless charming. I liked the heroine, in particular, because she's so very much afraid of her own powerlessness that, in defense, she's become spiky and unkind and unlikeable - and knows she is unlikeable - and doesn't particularly angst about it. She knows she's not a good person, but she still believes she's worthwhile, which is so refreshing.
Especially given that one of the heroes spends most of the book wallowing in his angst about whether he is worth anything at all, which is pleasant enough in its own way, but if they were all doing it I probably would have wanted to throttle them.
What I'm Reading Now
George MacDonald's At the Back of the North Wind, which is... weird. So far a little boy has met the personification of the North Wind, and they are having philosophical discussions and also flying around some? I'm getting the same feeling I got from The Princess and Curdie, that MacDonald is really far more interested in his philosophy than his story, which is frustrating.
What I Plan to Read Next
Still waiting for the Newbery winners to come in at the library. In the meantime, perhaps something on my Kindle? I've been meaning to read H. Beam Piper's Little Fuzzy or Rosemary Kirstein's The Steerswoman for a while.
Alexis Hall's There Will Be Phlogistan, an MMF romance with a completely unbeatable title. Doesn't that just make you want to drop everything and read it? Partly because it gives the wildly misleading impression that the world-building will be more than perfunctory, but hey, I still have to tip my hat to that title.
But the book itself feels somewhat unfinished, because it ends right after the threesome gets together and completely leaves out the fun part. How will these three people learn to accommodate each other and live together? They can't just have sex all the time, can they?
The characters are nonetheless charming. I liked the heroine, in particular, because she's so very much afraid of her own powerlessness that, in defense, she's become spiky and unkind and unlikeable - and knows she is unlikeable - and doesn't particularly angst about it. She knows she's not a good person, but she still believes she's worthwhile, which is so refreshing.
Especially given that one of the heroes spends most of the book wallowing in his angst about whether he is worth anything at all, which is pleasant enough in its own way, but if they were all doing it I probably would have wanted to throttle them.
What I'm Reading Now
George MacDonald's At the Back of the North Wind, which is... weird. So far a little boy has met the personification of the North Wind, and they are having philosophical discussions and also flying around some? I'm getting the same feeling I got from The Princess and Curdie, that MacDonald is really far more interested in his philosophy than his story, which is frustrating.
What I Plan to Read Next
Still waiting for the Newbery winners to come in at the library. In the meantime, perhaps something on my Kindle? I've been meaning to read H. Beam Piper's Little Fuzzy or Rosemary Kirstein's The Steerswoman for a while.
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Date: 2015-02-12 01:46 am (UTC)I think I have the Phlogiston book on my device but haven't read it.
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Date: 2015-02-12 03:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-02-12 02:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-02-12 03:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-02-12 05:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-02-12 03:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-02-13 07:49 pm (UTC)(The Princess and Curdie is the second book in that series, right? I liked the first one better than the second when I was a kid. My favorite thing of MacDonald's was the Light Princess story.)
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Date: 2015-02-13 09:06 pm (UTC)And yes, The Princess and Curdie is the second book. It has a lot of philosophizing and also a bizarrely downer ending. I much preferred The Princess and the Goblins.
I've heard The Light Princess is the best, though, so probably I should look into that.