Books and That, #4 (December 2022)

Things I've Read Recently

Books - any format

My target this month has been to finish off books I've had on the go and to get my Currently Reading list down to a "normal" number! On 30th November it was standing at 23 titles on the go, and I almost completely failed to clear ANY of them!...

• Recipes from My Russian Grandmother's Kitchen
  
• I re-read this on getting down to my parents in prep for my annual Christmas baking binge.
• One / Zero / Kathleen Ann Goonan
• This was a really cool scenario and build up, which lost out for me by stopping just that bit too soon! I wasn't ready to let the story go when it ended, so I'm hoping that this is set in a wider world that the author has written about.
• A Natural History of Dragons (Lady Trent #1) / Marie Brennan
• Bookgroup book. Another re-read for me, so decided to listen to this one on audio while travelling, failed, and ended up re-reading it with the audio on 2x speed the day of the meeting. Still a good book!
• The Jester / Michael J. Sullivan
• I needed one more book to make my goal for 2022, so I grabbed this one off my to read list as a quick win. It was short but complete scenario from the author's wider Riyria series. I wasn't feeling to brilliant on NYE, so this was perfect to make me a) less down by un-failing to meet my target for books read, and b) a nice dip into a known world with a simple mostly-happy ending. 
• While not things that I record here, I've also read a number of shorts and prompted works this month, mostly via Facebook community posts.

Term 2 for Russian starts in a couple of weeks, so I ought to be making the most of the freedom-to-read time! Oops

If I have time, I hope to complete a list of my planned books to read in 2023, just for the interest in seeing how many of them I read, and how many of what I read isn't even on my radar right now! I know that up to 12 books won't be on there regardless because book-group choices, but the rest should be, right?! ;)

Books and that #3 (November 2022)

Things I've Read Recently

• Uncanny Magazine, 49 - not completely finished, so will be reading the remaining stories this month.
• BBC History Magazine, October 2022 - some articles only

Books - any format

• North and South / Elizabeth Gaskell (Clare Wille, narrator)
• Still ongoing listening while crafting. Next big crafting binge is scheduled for Saturday, so hoping to get this mostly (if not completely) finished by the end of the week. Unfortunately that also means that it will count under December not November.
• Prudence and the Dragon / Zen Cho
• Nice short, losely related to the Sorcerer to the King series but in a modern London.
• The House of Aunts / Zen Cho
• Hauntingly interesting. Longer than a short, so took me two sittings due to time constraints this month.
• Unterminator / Zen Cho
• Sometimes flash fiction can be great, like a snack when you have the munchies. This was was more like only having a biscuit but when you start reading you realise you actually want dinner. Unsatisfying. The premise was good, but the whole just didn't do it for me.
• The Guest / Zen Cho
• This was a lovely short, with intriguing characters. I would like to meet them all again, if possible, so hoping the author writes a novel in this world.
• Дом с мезонином / Чехов
• Just read as part of my Russian course.

Term has started for my Russian classes (C1 now), so I'm also reading various Russian language texts, but I'm not counting those here for leisure reading.

I'm now working on what books I can reasonably expect to finish over Christmas, and then splitting my plans for 2023 into Short and Long lists. I need to remember to leave space for any books I'm given for Christmas as they will become priority reads.

My shortlist is things I can reasonably expect to read within 2023, and the longlist is for items that I'm either less likely to read (e.g. access reasons), or are "would like to read soon" vs "really want to read now" - the latter going onto my shortlist. Books which I need to reserve and collect from the library, as well as books which aren't in the library and I'd need to buy, go into the Longlist, but would get moved to the shortlist if I get them. 

Books and That, #2 (October 2022)

 Things I've Read Recently

• Uncanny Magazine, 48
• BBC History Magazine, September 2022 - some articles only

Books - any format

• The Grief of Stones / Katherine Addison
• The sequel to The Witness for the Dead, focussing again on Thara Celehar. This was as awesome as I had hoped, and has left me feeling very sad that The Tomb of Dragons isn't even published yet!
• Min Zemerin's Plan / Katherine Addison
• Having realised that The Tomb of Dragons is at least a year away from me, I was rather pleased to see that there was a short story in the series that I could read right now. This is short, but has everything I love about the world in it. I hope that the characters in this show up at least tangentially in the novel(s), as I'd love to see how they get on in future.
• Mr Godey's Ladies / Robert Kunciov
• I spotted this on eBay for a couple of quid and thought "Why Not?". It's a small book, but covers the span of the 19th Century US ladies' fashion magazine Godey's Ladies Book. The plates from the originals of this serial are very popular for costume research, and the book reprints a number of these in colour, though not at full size as the book itself is only the size of a standard paperback (although printed in a hardcover format). It also has line drawings from the magazines printed throughout, and alongside the descriptions printed at the time. Kunciov doesn't seem to have written anything else on the subject that I can find, but in this book he manages to provide commentary on the magazines, fashions, and their historical context without distracting from the original texts.
• North and South / Elizabeth Gaskell (Clare Wille, narrator)
• I haven't finished this yet - I'm currently 3 hours in.
• The President's Brain is Missing / John Scalzi
  
• I randomly picked this to read before bed the other night. It's fun, it's a bit silly, and it was just right for a before-sleep read! 

Term has started for my Russian classes (C1 now), so I'm also reading various Russian language texts, but I'm not counting those here for leisure reading.

Books and That, #1 (September 2022)

Things I've Read Recently

I have three magazines currently on subscription, plus a load of back issues from all three PLUS Mermaids Monthly, which ran for a year in 2020/21. Uncanny Magazine and Apex Magazine I back each year through Kickstarter at the subscription level, and my Dad bought me a sub for BBC History about 15 years ago for Christmas and never seems to have cancelled it, to my joy. Uncanny and Apex are both SF & Fantasy short story journals, and BBC History is a non-fiction semi-academic serial - the articles are usually written by academics, but with a popular history focus and style.

• Uncanny Magazine, 48
• Apex Magazine, 133
  
• BBC History Magazine, September 2022

Books - any format

• Spin / Robert Charles Wilson
• September bookgroup book.
  Interesting, and enjoyable. I liked the characters and enjoyed the story, I'm just not sure that I am desperate to read the remaining books in the series. This one ended on a perfectly satisfactory note, and I'm content waving characters off into their Brave New Future without having to see it...
• The Starless Sea / Erin Morgenstern
• This has the same feel as her earlier book, The Night Circus. For me, both of these were books that kept me intrigued and therefore kept me reading. Because her books are very twisty, I find that I can't just leave them because there is no way for me to figure out exactly where she is going with all her characters. She is a master of feeding you just enough information to keep the story interesting and moving, without signposting where she's going all the time. 
• The Witness for the Dead / Katherine Addison
• I adored the Goblin Emperor, and I've realised that I love books about new worlds and with heavy world creation in them. The story in The Goblin Emperor was cleanly finished, so I was worried about how this was going to be a series without screwing around with characters. This works, however, because she's moving different characters to the forefront of the story, ones who were important and about whom we felt had More To Know. One of The Goblin Emperor's strengths was the way in which characters were introduced, and that it was clear that they had their own story, but that the author didn't distract us from the actual story by running off after them.
  This, to me, is a great way of dealing with that - each important but non-action central character gains their own book later. It reminds me of the way in which academic research could send you off down fascinating rabbit holes. They wouldn't fit properly into your thesis, but by turning them into articles or conference papers allowed you to follow your thread to it's natural stopping point without damaging the storyline of your thesis work.
  Like The Goblin Emperor, this is a gentle book, even when there are scenes of action, fear and/or danger, I always felt a certain sense of confort while reading them. I'm looking forward to picking up the next book from the Library in October - it's waiting for me now!
• A Master of Djinn / P. Djèlí Clark
• I was initially both pleased and disappointed to see the synopsis of this novel. I'd loved all the short stories the author had already written in this world, but I had a preference for the protagonist of The Haunting of Tram Car 015. However Fatma, the protagonist of the novel and others of the prequel shorts, won me over fairly quickly and I enjoyed her leading role. Other characters we met previously also make cameo (or more meaty) roles, which was pleasant. I love this semi-steampunk alternate historical Cairo setting, especially as I was getting exceedingly bored of yet another novel set in the US.
• Who Fears Death / Nnedi Okorafor
• This is again a welcome change of setting for me. It was a hard book, but one I enjoyed. I feel that having aphantasia made it less traumatic to read for me than for many others, so I would counsel anyone with a history of SA to be at least aware of the themes before reading. Did I like the end? No, but also yes. This book took me a long time to read, but unintentionally. I had just started reading it as my commuting book when lockdown happened, and I lost my "enforced reading time", which I'm only just starting to reclaim. Every time I managed to sit down with it, I was disappointed to stop, but then it would be months before I got another chunk of it done. So, on holiday this year I chose one day to just read so I could sit down to finish it all at once. It was worth the effort.

I currently have about 8 books on the go, plus another dozen out from the library (either print, ebook, or audio), so for the rest of this year my plan is to try to whittle those down as much as possible. 

One thing I've given myself, is 15-45 minutes every night to read something - chapter of a book, a short story, an article, doesn't matter. I started when I came back from a conference in Wales earlier this month, and it was lovely. By setting myself small targets, I think I can cheese my brain out of "but I never have the time"... 

Things Suggested to Me

Things I haven't read as of yet, but intend to track down.

1. The Neurodivergent Friendly Workbook of DBT Skills (Amazon link)