(no subject)

[skygiants]

Forgot to do my books read in 2021 post! Bit of a shorter list than usual, and, as usual, I do hope to catch up on a lot of the booklogs I've not done, but no guarantees; the further back something is on the list, the less likely I'll get to it. So if you've got questions about anything I didn't write up (or further questions about anything I did, for that matter) just let me know!



Books read, 2021

1. New Times, New Hell, 林知落
2. Axiom's End, Lindsay Ellis
3. Moby-Dick, Herman Melville
4. The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry, C.M. Waggoner
5. Trouble the Saints, Alaya Dawn Johnson
6. The Fortune Hunters, Joan Aiken
7. When the Tiger Came Down from the Mountain, Nghi Vo
8. For the Love of April French, Penny Aimes
9. Winter's Orbit, Everina Maxwell
10. Ring Shout, P. Djèlí Clark
11. Paladin's Strength, T. Kingfisher
12. The Valley and the Flood, Rebecca Mahoney
13. Female General, Eldest Princess, Please Don't Laugh
14. A Tip for the Hangman, Allison Epstein
15. The Deep, Rivers Solomon, Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, Jonathan Snipes
16. To The Hilt, Dick Francis
17. Waiting for the Flood, Alexis Hall
18. Electric Shock, Luna Harlow
19. Eminent Victorians, Lytton Strachey
20. And All The Stars, Andrea K. Host*
21. The Last True Poets of the Sea, Julia Drake
22. Smallbone Deceased, Michael Gilbert
23. King Hereafter, Dorothy Dunnett*
24. Star Wars: Medstar I: Battle Surgeons, Michael Reaves and Steve Perry
25. Tale of Time City, Diana Wynne Jones*
26. Dark Lord of Derkholm, Diana Wynne Jones*
27. Year of the Griffin, Diana Wynne Jones*
28. A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Emma Southon
29. Song of Spiderman: The Inside Story of the Most Controversial Musical in Broadway History, Glen Berger*
30. The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution, Christopher Hill
31. A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martine*
32. Black Water Sister, Zen Cho
33. A Desolation Called Peace, Arkady Martine
34. Fugitive Telemetry, Martha Wells
35. PUBG Online Romance of the Century, 酱子贝
36. Elatsoe, Darcie Little Badger
37. The Firelings, Carol Kendall*
38. The Chosen and the Beautiful, Nghi Vo
39. K., Mary Roberts Rinehart
40. Straight, Dick Francis
41. Realm of Ash, Tasha Suri
42. Sensational: The Hidden History of America's 'Girl Stunt Reporters', Kim Todd
43. Iris and the Tiger, Leanne Hall
44. The Magicians of the Golden Dawn: A Documentary History of a Magical Order, 1887-1923, Ellic Howe
45. The Sugared Game, K.J. Charles
46. Subtle Blood, K.J. Charles
47. Longshot, Dick Francis
48. The Galaxy, and the Ground Within, Becky Chambers
49. The Jasmine Throne, Tasha Suri
50. The Shivering Sands, Victoria Holt
51. The Man in the Brown Suit, Agatha Christie
52. To Love and Be Wise, Josephine Tey
53. Paschal Beverly Randolph: A Nineteenth-Century Black American Spiritualist, Rosicrucian, and Sex Magician, John Patrick Deveney
54. A Master of Djinn, P. Djèlí Clark
55. Star Wars: Medstar II: Jedi Healer, Michael Reaves and Steve Perry
56. The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable, Amitav Ghosh
57. Victories Greater Than Death, Charlie Jane Anders
58. The Hands of the Emperor, Victoria Goddard
59. The Larks Still Bravely Singing, Aster Glenn Gray
60. The Thursday Murder Club, Richard Osman
61. Seducing the Sorcerer, Lee Welch
62. Iron Widow, Xiran Jay Zhao
63. Northshore, Sheri S. Tepper
64. The Flatshare, Beth O'Leary
65. Southshore, Sheri S. Tepper
66. In the Garden of Iden, Kage Baker*
67. A Marvellous Light, Freya Marske
68. The Yellow Kids: Foreign Correspondents in the Heyday of Yellow Journalism, Joyce Milton
69. Peach Blossom Paradise, Ge Fei
70. Fly By Night, Frances Hardinge*
71. Basin and Range, John McPhee
72. Under Fortune Stars, Ren Hutchings
73. The City Beautiful, Aden Polydoros
74. The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York, Deborah Blum
75. Cat and Mouse, Christianna Brand
76. Where the Wild Ladies Are, Aoko Matsuda
77. Faking It, Jennifer Crusie*
78. Sword in the Stars, Amy Rose Capetta and Cori McCarthy
79. Devil Venerable Also Wants To Know, Cyan Wings
80. Sky Coyote, Kage Baker*
81. The Talisman Ring, Georgette Heyer*


Comics and manga read, 2021
1-3. Delicious in Dungeon, Volumes 6-8
4-11. Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku, Volumes 1-8
12-13. Mob Psycho, Volumes 2-3
14-26. Basara, Volumes 1-13*

Comments

[rachelmanija]

I'd like to know about Sky Coyote!

[skygiants]

I wrote it up! I regret to say I still care about it very much.

[sovay]

So if you've got questions about anything I didn't write up (or further questions about anything I did, for that matter) just let me know!

Please write about A Tale of Time City!

53. Paschal Beverly Randolph: A Nineteenth-Century Black American Spiritualist, Rosicrucian, and Sex Magician

P.S. Also this dude!

[osprey_archer]

Seconding Paschal Beverly Randolph! PLEASE tell us what is up with Paschal Beverly Randolph.

[chestnut_pod]

Ooh, definitely thirding!

[skygiants]

I am definitely going to do a post on Paschal Beverly Randolph all his own, he truly deserves it!

A Tale of Time City is so fun to read and has so many set pieces that are just blazoned into my brain -- the translation bit! butter-pies! Elio chasing the Sempitern round his palace! -- but also it always surprises me how much the various characters are clear echoes of characters in other books: Elio and Yam, obviously, but Mordion and the Silver (?) Watcher are described with almost exactly the same physical turns of phrase, as are Dr. Wilander and Christopher's tutor in Lives of Christopher Chant, and I'd very much like to know how much of that echoing is deliberate given the themes of the book.

Also I had forgotten that Leonardo da Vinci is there as a 24th century homme fatale in a tiny miniskirt. A delightful surprise every time.

[sovay]

but also it always surprises me how much the various characters are clear echoes of characters in other books: Elio and Yam, obviously, but Mordion and the Silver (?) Watcher are described with almost exactly the same physical turns of phrase, as are Dr. Wilander and Christopher's tutor in Lives of Christopher Chant

Unless she wrote them in a different order from publication, A Tale of Time City (1987) predates both The Lives of Christopher Chant (1988) and Hexwood (1993), so the echoes go the other way. I think it may just be that she has, like most writers, her own pack of archetypes, or was working at the same ideas from different angles.

(I understand the skull-faced thing, but I always more associated Mordion and Sempitern Walker, with their faces that change entirely around their surprisingly charming smiles. She must have known someone with a smile like that.)

[raven]

Smallbone Deceased? I love Gilbert’s wonderful nutty whodunits.

[skygiants]

I kept meaning to write that one up! I might still compile it in when I get around to reading another Gilbert -- whimsyful mentioned one that's set during theatricals in a WWII POW camp which I really feel like I've got to read. Anyway I loved how much Gilbert was using the frame of the murder to make affectionate jokes about a workplace he clearly knew very well and I also really enjoy that the protagonist's dark secret was 'never sleeps, it's a medical condition, don't worry about it.'

[sovay]

one that's set during theatricals in a WWII POW camp which I really feel like I've got to read.

I may have to read that!

[raven]

It's great! It's absurd and funny in the same way as Smallbone, which initially I didn't like? At least I was a bit "..." at the idea of a murder in a fascist-run prisoner of war camp being played for comedy and then more so at the, uh, escape from the Nazis. But then I learned that this actually happened to Gilbert - he was a POW in Mussolini's Italy after 1940 and nearly starved to death crossing enemy lines, which naturally changed my reading of the book quite a bit! Anyway it really is v good and I keep meaning to write to the publishers to find out if they're going to re-release any more.

[imbir]

Psst, you're missing a link for 79, you reviewed it a couple of entries back.

Speak to me of girl stunt reporters, if you please. Also, PUBG Online Romance of the Century. I'm familiar with the game and I'm having trouble with all the other words in that title.

[skygiants]

Ah, thank you! I've gone in and added it now.

I am hoping to fully write up girl stunt reporters in the next week and will add a link back here if I do; if not I will return!

PUBG Online Romance of the Century is a danmei by the same author as Guide to How to Fail at Online Dating, which I really liked, so I decided to give it a try despite the fact that it's about a livestreamer who specializes in PUBG and the billionaire boss of the company who employs him, who is bad at PUBG and makes a secret online persona in order to learn how to play better. As it turns out, it wasn't even the billionaire boss thing that bothered me but the 'people fall in love over livestream where everyone else in the chat actively and vocally ships them,' a very popular cnovel trope that unfortunately makes me want to go hide under a bed.

[merit]

The Poisoner's Handbook /sounds/ fascinating. I hope it was!

A Marvellous Light was already pretty high up on my reading list but reading your review made it even higher!

[skygiants]

It was! I definitely plan to write this one up, I had a great time with it.

[quodthey]

What did you think of A Master of Djinn? I've enjoyed his shorter fiction, have been thinking about picking this one up!

[pedanther]

Seconding.

[skygiants]

I enjoyed it fine, but in my heart I keep wanting each new Clark book to be The Haunting of Tram Car 015, which is to me a perfect book, and none of them that have come out since have quite overridden that wish in my heart. I'm going to keep reading them though and someday I do believe I will hit one that I like enough on its own merits to not wish it was Tram Car 105 again!

[quodthey]

Hah, Tram Car 015 is also my favourite of that series so far, so I understand this feeling very well.

[hermionesviolin]

Do the asterisks next to some of the books mean anything?

[pedanther]

It looks to me like they indicate books that were re-reads.

[skygiants]

You are correct!

[skygiants]

whoops, should have provided a key! yes, * means a reread book.

[cinaed]

Someone else who's read The Poisoner's Handbook! I loved that book, honestly one of my top ten nonfiction books of all time.

The one she wrote more recently about the creation of the FDA, The Poison Squad, was also pretty interesting! Fair warning, it was published in 2018 so there's a lot of "And these protections are what Trump is dismantling" stuff going on.

[skygiants]

Oh, fascinating, thank you for the rec! I'm definitely interested in Poisoner's Handbook: The Sequel.

[obopolsk]

I recently read A Marvellous Light, inspired by your post, and loved it, so thank you for the rec!

[skygiants]

Ahhh, I'm so glad you liked it! Freya is just a master of the craft, I'm so glad her stuff is finally out in bookstores. :D

[sophia_sol]

I'd love to hear what you thought of A Desolation Called Peace! I still haven't got round to it myself but that doesn't matter I'm still curious :P

oh also the Tasha Suri books!

[skygiants]

I enjoyed Desolation Called Peace a lot, and I still love Mahit and Three Seagrass as well as several of the new characters, but I did kind of regret the shift from single-POV to multi-POV -- the first book did such a good job of selling the vast cultural divide between Mahit and the world she was moving through, and the difference in the voices/thought patterns as written in the second book when we started seeing through the eyes of Three Seagrass and other Teixcalaanli characters didn't quite maintain that mystique, for me.

Of all the Tasha Suri books I've read so far, Empire of Sand is still the one that's stuck with me the most -- I feel like I'm going to need to reread Jasmine Throne before I read the second book in the series, because I did like it a lot but I also read it at a time when I was finding it hard to focus and I think it'll make more of an impact the second time around.

[sophia_sol]

Ohhhh yeah I really did like how the first one was all outsider-pov on the Teixcalaanli empire, that shift does seem like it would lose something even if the book is otherwise very good!

Empire of Sand is the only Suri I've read yet but I keep intending to read more because I loved it so much! maybe I'll wait to read Jasmine Throne until its sequel is out though

[pseudo_tsuga]

I'm mostly commenting to show off my Basara icon. I love your tweet threads about the amazing, ridiculous series.