What Have I Been Reading?
Nov. 8th, 2018 07:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroDungeon Born (The Divine Dungeon Book 1) by Dakota Krout - The author has clearly played a lot of crpgs, likely roguelikes, and came up with a drawn-out and extremely specific system of levels and terminology of how dungeons grow and how human adventurers “level up”. Then he put them all into a book with a vague narrative and a bunch of characters we don’t really care about. This is more like the stories that go in the beginning of many rpg handbooks to try to make the exposition seem more exciting than it is like a novel. (I had figured someone named “Dakota” was female, got very confused about exactly how “male” the author’s voice read to me, and then finally read his website and learn he was a dude.) I read this entire book because it vaguely entertained me to read his complicated worldbuilding canon, but I’d never claim it was actually good, and I’m not planning to pay any money for the sequels.
The Upward Spiral: Using Neuroscience to Reverse the Course of Depression, One Small Change at a Time by Alex Korb - It’s very much the usual advice (exercise, get regular sleep, fake it ‘til you make it, be social, use CBT / BAT / mindfulness) but dressed up with details on which parts of your brain are activating and which hormones are involved. I appreciated his emphasis that even if you can’t do everything, doing something, anything is often enough to get you moving in the right direction. This jives well with my experience that as long as I can get something done, the dopamine hit from that is often enough to get me into the larger swing of productivity.
Indexing: Reflections by Seanan McGuire - Picking up where the first book left off, and continuing the terrifying lives of government agents that prevent the eldritch horrors that are fairy tales from subsuming our reality. This picks up most of the dangling threads from the first book and actually bounces away from Henry’s viewpoint a few times, though it doesn’t answer a bunch of the greater mythological questions (and honestly plays a little fast-and-loose with the hints it does give). I thought it was fun, though the serial nature of the chapters (which I discovered was, indeed, because it was originally published as a serial) gets annoying at times and I suspect that, even in a third volume, a reveal of the actual overarching nature of this universe wouldn’t be forthcoming. Heck, I just want to know what Sloan’s actual deal is!
The Ethical Slut (3rd Ed.) by Janet W. Hardy and Dossie Easton - The definitive guide to polyamory in many forms. (Which is certainly further than I’m interested in going, but I approve of most things that emphasize that your partner doesn’t have to be everything in your life. Your partner shouldn’t be the only person you do things with, your only source of support, or the only person you love. I’m cool with monogamy, but I don’t think nonmonogamy such a leap in terms of things that can still be helpful and healthy.) It covers everything from contemplating jealousy to navigating group sex, though the psychological material was a bit more pertinent to me. I had a moment when I read the bit about how relationship rules of “don’t do this or that” are often poorly defined and generally come down to “Don’t have too much fun.” There seem to be a lot of non-romantic situations where I follow rules like that “just to be safe,” because someone might be upset / disappointed / judgey / whatever if I actually do what I want to do—like, y’know, wear my geeky pin jacket where my coworkers might see me. But really, the takeaway here is that love isn’t a zero-sum game, and someone else’s happiness doesn’t have to mean a loss for you.
Drawn to Sex: The Basics by Erica Moen and Matthew Nolan - An extremely frank and graphic (though cartoony) guide to sexual practices, safe sex, consent, etc. by the creator of the webcomic “Oh Joy Sex Toy.” I figure when ARR is around 10 I’ll just leave it in a noteworthy place on a shelf and let him find it.
The Story Behind: The Extraordinary History Behind Ordinary Objects by Emily Prokop - A series of blog-post-length histories of everyday objects. (Based on, you guessed it, a podcast.) I’m not quite sure why she felt the need to end each chapter with a tl;dr version, but the two-minute chapters make excellent phone-reading. It’s nothing amazing, but some fun trivia bits.
Tainted Moonlight by Erin Kelly - I met the author at Uticon and she had a decent pitch for a modern-day dark fantasy werewolf romance (with no sparkly vampires!), but unfortunately, I don’t think her writing really holds up. Jethrien warned me that it wasn’t very good (it was a book that was near her so of course she read it), and I gave it four chapters but it wasn’t working for me. Ah, well; picking up random things at cons sometimes goes that way.
The Upward Spiral: Using Neuroscience to Reverse the Course of Depression, One Small Change at a Time by Alex Korb - It’s very much the usual advice (exercise, get regular sleep, fake it ‘til you make it, be social, use CBT / BAT / mindfulness) but dressed up with details on which parts of your brain are activating and which hormones are involved. I appreciated his emphasis that even if you can’t do everything, doing something, anything is often enough to get you moving in the right direction. This jives well with my experience that as long as I can get something done, the dopamine hit from that is often enough to get me into the larger swing of productivity.
Indexing: Reflections by Seanan McGuire - Picking up where the first book left off, and continuing the terrifying lives of government agents that prevent the eldritch horrors that are fairy tales from subsuming our reality. This picks up most of the dangling threads from the first book and actually bounces away from Henry’s viewpoint a few times, though it doesn’t answer a bunch of the greater mythological questions (and honestly plays a little fast-and-loose with the hints it does give). I thought it was fun, though the serial nature of the chapters (which I discovered was, indeed, because it was originally published as a serial) gets annoying at times and I suspect that, even in a third volume, a reveal of the actual overarching nature of this universe wouldn’t be forthcoming. Heck, I just want to know what Sloan’s actual deal is!
The Ethical Slut (3rd Ed.) by Janet W. Hardy and Dossie Easton - The definitive guide to polyamory in many forms. (Which is certainly further than I’m interested in going, but I approve of most things that emphasize that your partner doesn’t have to be everything in your life. Your partner shouldn’t be the only person you do things with, your only source of support, or the only person you love. I’m cool with monogamy, but I don’t think nonmonogamy such a leap in terms of things that can still be helpful and healthy.) It covers everything from contemplating jealousy to navigating group sex, though the psychological material was a bit more pertinent to me. I had a moment when I read the bit about how relationship rules of “don’t do this or that” are often poorly defined and generally come down to “Don’t have too much fun.” There seem to be a lot of non-romantic situations where I follow rules like that “just to be safe,” because someone might be upset / disappointed / judgey / whatever if I actually do what I want to do—like, y’know, wear my geeky pin jacket where my coworkers might see me. But really, the takeaway here is that love isn’t a zero-sum game, and someone else’s happiness doesn’t have to mean a loss for you.
Drawn to Sex: The Basics by Erica Moen and Matthew Nolan - An extremely frank and graphic (though cartoony) guide to sexual practices, safe sex, consent, etc. by the creator of the webcomic “Oh Joy Sex Toy.” I figure when ARR is around 10 I’ll just leave it in a noteworthy place on a shelf and let him find it.
The Story Behind: The Extraordinary History Behind Ordinary Objects by Emily Prokop - A series of blog-post-length histories of everyday objects. (Based on, you guessed it, a podcast.) I’m not quite sure why she felt the need to end each chapter with a tl;dr version, but the two-minute chapters make excellent phone-reading. It’s nothing amazing, but some fun trivia bits.
Tainted Moonlight by Erin Kelly - I met the author at Uticon and she had a decent pitch for a modern-day dark fantasy werewolf romance (with no sparkly vampires!), but unfortunately, I don’t think her writing really holds up. Jethrien warned me that it wasn’t very good (it was a book that was near her so of course she read it), and I gave it four chapters but it wasn’t working for me. Ah, well; picking up random things at cons sometimes goes that way.
