osprey_archer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer) wrote2022-09-14 07:10 am
osprey_archer) wrote2022-09-14 07:10 am
Wednesday Reading Meme
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
Dorothy Gilman’s Mrs. Pollifax, Innocent Tourist. In my review of the previous Mrs. Pollifax book I commented wistfully that the series seemed to be going downhill, but this book provides a rebound! It helps that Mrs. Pollifax once again partners with John Sebastian Farrell, who worked with her on her first CIA mission lo these many books ago and remains my favorite of the many friends she has gathered along the way. They go to Jordan! They visit Petra! Farrell gets whipped again! A good time is had by all. (Well, by all the readers. Maybe not Farrell while he is getting whipped.)
Also Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea. Impressed by the sheer range of islands that Le Guin invented for Earthsea! Also chuffed because partway through I pegged Ged’s “I summoned a nameless shadow and now it is chasing me around Earthsea hoping to possess me” problem as a Dark Link situation, so called after the battle in Ocarina of Time where Link has to fight his shadow self. And indeed, Ged defeats the shadow by calling it by its true name, which is Ged!
I missed Tenar though.
I also read Emi Yagi’s Diary of a Void (translated by David Boyd and Lucy North). On a whim, a woman falsely informs her coworkers that she’s pregnant: the smell of coffee activates my morning sickness, so someone else will have to clean up the coffee cups from now on! And then she just rolls with the deception: cooks herself luxurious meals suitable for a mother-to-be, downloads a pregnancy app, joins a maternity aerobics class. She rolls with it so hard that she actually starts to experience psychosomatic pregnancy symptoms. In fact, it starts to seem like maybe she’s pretended to be pregnant so hard that she’s manifested a virgin conception (so that’s why she keeps having little chats with the Virgin Mary!), but I think this is not the case… although it’s hard to explain the ultrasound scenes, because the doctor definitely seems to be seeing something in there.
I found this book surprisingly stressful, because I kept waiting for the deception to be exposed, but it’s also a fascinating glimpse into, hmmm. The pregnancy experience? Pregnancy culture, if you can call it that?
Human experience is so fractal. There are so many different facets to it and each facet is so infinitely complicated.
What I’m Reading Now
littlerhymes sent me Cherith Baldry’s Exiled from Camelot, a professionally published whump-heavy hurt/comfort fic about Kay, the woobiest woobie in Camelot, and I am having a WONDERFUL time. Is it of high literary quality? Ehhhh. Does it feature Kay being kidnapped! tortured! and then returning to Arthur’s side only to SWOON at Arthur’s FEET when Arthur, enraged that Kay lost Arthur’s beloved (but secretly evil) illegitimate son Loholt, banishes Kay from his sight? It absolutely does! I have simple needs and sometimes that is all I want from a book.
In Dracula, Lucy is on her third blood transfusion this week, because people keep failing to take Van Helsing’s counter-vampire measures seriously. Now I realize that convincing a bunch of Englishmen all hyped up on their own rationality that the girl is being attacked by a mythical creature might be difficult, but Van Helsing’s current method of telling them NOTHING is clearly not working so perhaps he should try another tack.
What I Plan to Read Next
“I’m going to focus on the books on my TBR shelf,” I said. “No more new books till I finish the ones I have already accrued,” I said. Well, then I bought Pat Barker’s Regeneration and now, of course, I have to read the rest of the trilogy.
Dorothy Gilman’s Mrs. Pollifax, Innocent Tourist. In my review of the previous Mrs. Pollifax book I commented wistfully that the series seemed to be going downhill, but this book provides a rebound! It helps that Mrs. Pollifax once again partners with John Sebastian Farrell, who worked with her on her first CIA mission lo these many books ago and remains my favorite of the many friends she has gathered along the way. They go to Jordan! They visit Petra! Farrell gets whipped again! A good time is had by all. (Well, by all the readers. Maybe not Farrell while he is getting whipped.)
Also Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea. Impressed by the sheer range of islands that Le Guin invented for Earthsea! Also chuffed because partway through I pegged Ged’s “I summoned a nameless shadow and now it is chasing me around Earthsea hoping to possess me” problem as a Dark Link situation, so called after the battle in Ocarina of Time where Link has to fight his shadow self. And indeed, Ged defeats the shadow by calling it by its true name, which is Ged!
I missed Tenar though.
I also read Emi Yagi’s Diary of a Void (translated by David Boyd and Lucy North). On a whim, a woman falsely informs her coworkers that she’s pregnant: the smell of coffee activates my morning sickness, so someone else will have to clean up the coffee cups from now on! And then she just rolls with the deception: cooks herself luxurious meals suitable for a mother-to-be, downloads a pregnancy app, joins a maternity aerobics class. She rolls with it so hard that she actually starts to experience psychosomatic pregnancy symptoms. In fact, it starts to seem like maybe she’s pretended to be pregnant so hard that she’s manifested a virgin conception (so that’s why she keeps having little chats with the Virgin Mary!), but I think this is not the case… although it’s hard to explain the ultrasound scenes, because the doctor definitely seems to be seeing something in there.
I found this book surprisingly stressful, because I kept waiting for the deception to be exposed, but it’s also a fascinating glimpse into, hmmm. The pregnancy experience? Pregnancy culture, if you can call it that?
Human experience is so fractal. There are so many different facets to it and each facet is so infinitely complicated.
What I’m Reading Now
littlerhymes sent me Cherith Baldry’s Exiled from Camelot, a professionally published whump-heavy hurt/comfort fic about Kay, the woobiest woobie in Camelot, and I am having a WONDERFUL time. Is it of high literary quality? Ehhhh. Does it feature Kay being kidnapped! tortured! and then returning to Arthur’s side only to SWOON at Arthur’s FEET when Arthur, enraged that Kay lost Arthur’s beloved (but secretly evil) illegitimate son Loholt, banishes Kay from his sight? It absolutely does! I have simple needs and sometimes that is all I want from a book. In Dracula, Lucy is on her third blood transfusion this week, because people keep failing to take Van Helsing’s counter-vampire measures seriously. Now I realize that convincing a bunch of Englishmen all hyped up on their own rationality that the girl is being attacked by a mythical creature might be difficult, but Van Helsing’s current method of telling them NOTHING is clearly not working so perhaps he should try another tack.
What I Plan to Read Next
“I’m going to focus on the books on my TBR shelf,” I said. “No more new books till I finish the ones I have already accrued,” I said. Well, then I bought Pat Barker’s Regeneration and now, of course, I have to read the rest of the trilogy.
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Van Helsing's motives and actions are incomprehensible to everyone in the universe, basically. He can't even send a telegram home to have things sent for him if he can't stop to explain the supernatural to all these English people! No! He goes back to Amsterdam!
“I’m going to focus on the books on my TBR shelf,” I said. “No more new books till I finish the ones I have already accrued,” I said.
lol. Why are the new books always shinier???
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New books ARE always shinier. I have instituted a system where I can only buy a book if I intend to read it right away, which at least keeps MORE new books from accruing, but also means the old books simply wait and wait and wait...
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Honestly, I think he just wants to get to some proper staking action later.
And tbf, especially when it comes to chance second-hand findings and things, some have to be picked up, but they also may need to wait for their time. For the rest, well... lol. Yes. :-)
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I WISH I KNEW. Also, library books with a deadline supplant paper books that I own but haven't read, but have meant to read forever, but haven't read. I should make up book deadlines for my TBR stack of owned paper books, that would get it done. In theory. In my head right now, anyway.
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I have set myself a deadline for my TBR (the beginning of November, when I go on a trip to Massachusetts that may involve copious used bookstore visits), but it hasn't been as effective as I had hoped it might be. Still, it's early days...
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I am enjoying your Kay notes SO much.
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The knowledge that Cherith Baldry is one of the progenitors of the Warrior Cats books blew my tiny MIND. Thank you for letting me know!
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