What Have I Been Reading? (2020 batch #1)
Jan. 19th, 2020 09:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroRosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire - A hardboiled detective story set in a very complicated world of fae politics intersecting with mortal concerns. McGuire clearly knew from the start this would be a series, given there are several major mysteries that are established and then left open for future stories. Which occasionally weakens the mystery setup in this book, because you don’t know which threads will actually connect into the resolution here and which are just red herrings—and there are a lot of red herrings. This edges into torture-porn, given the number of near-death injuries Toby suffers; I’d hope that in later books she spends slightly less time either bleeding out in agony or in recovery from it. I do, at least, appreciate that Toby is an adult of middle-age equivalent; she makes some stupid decisions but at least they aren’t teenager stupid.
How To by Randall Munroe - This is a delight. Chapter 5 is a cheat (most of the answers come from Col. Chris Hadfield and are a more realistic brilliant-goofy), and a few of the other chapters wander rather far from their “official” topic, but pretty much all of them are entertaining in a “what monstrosity of an idea can we justify the physics for?” sort of way. Totally recommended.
150 Things Every Man Should Know by Gareth May - Gender essentialism aside, this is a pretty decent guide to adulthood, because his “things a man a should know” include both things like how to throw darts and order a pint, and also how to do laundry and clean a bathroom. Note that he’s British, so some things don’t translate perfectly to American men; and also that these are 2-3 page capsule guides intended to get you through the task with minimal embarrassment, not enough to make you any sort of expert. (The “film buff” bit was that sort of miss; either learn to make light conversation about films or learn to redirect conversations; trying to sound like an expert with a few bullet points will only embarrass you.) That, and he front-loaded his best material; a bunch of the later chapters felt either throw-together or downright sexist. (Despite the title, this is probably not a good gift for the transman in your life; the chapter on crossdressing is cringey.)
Middlegame by Seanan McGuire - If I didn’t already know McGuire was into Mage: The Ascension (from her tie-in Mage fiction), this would cinch it for me: An alchemist uses a bestselling series of children’s fantasy novels to rewrite consensus reality, and we get to see the perspective of separated twins in their process of awakening. It’s very well done. It could have maybe been a little tighter (there are several emotional beats that get repeated a few too many times), but I suspect that’s a side-effect of McGuire being an inhuman writing machine, similar to Peter David re-using puns. When you’re somehow able to put out multiple novels and comic series in a single year, these things happen. I’m curious, if this ever got a sequel/side-story, to hear about the other alchemists who tried the “write fiction into reality” trick—Baum’s attempt plays into this story, but I’d be very interested in hearing how C.S. Lewis and H.P. Lovecraft’s attempts to revise reality clashed.
How To by Randall Munroe - This is a delight. Chapter 5 is a cheat (most of the answers come from Col. Chris Hadfield and are a more realistic brilliant-goofy), and a few of the other chapters wander rather far from their “official” topic, but pretty much all of them are entertaining in a “what monstrosity of an idea can we justify the physics for?” sort of way. Totally recommended.
150 Things Every Man Should Know by Gareth May - Gender essentialism aside, this is a pretty decent guide to adulthood, because his “things a man a should know” include both things like how to throw darts and order a pint, and also how to do laundry and clean a bathroom. Note that he’s British, so some things don’t translate perfectly to American men; and also that these are 2-3 page capsule guides intended to get you through the task with minimal embarrassment, not enough to make you any sort of expert. (The “film buff” bit was that sort of miss; either learn to make light conversation about films or learn to redirect conversations; trying to sound like an expert with a few bullet points will only embarrass you.) That, and he front-loaded his best material; a bunch of the later chapters felt either throw-together or downright sexist. (Despite the title, this is probably not a good gift for the transman in your life; the chapter on crossdressing is cringey.)
Middlegame by Seanan McGuire - If I didn’t already know McGuire was into Mage: The Ascension (from her tie-in Mage fiction), this would cinch it for me: An alchemist uses a bestselling series of children’s fantasy novels to rewrite consensus reality, and we get to see the perspective of separated twins in their process of awakening. It’s very well done. It could have maybe been a little tighter (there are several emotional beats that get repeated a few too many times), but I suspect that’s a side-effect of McGuire being an inhuman writing machine, similar to Peter David re-using puns. When you’re somehow able to put out multiple novels and comic series in a single year, these things happen. I’m curious, if this ever got a sequel/side-story, to hear about the other alchemists who tried the “write fiction into reality” trick—Baum’s attempt plays into this story, but I’d be very interested in hearing how C.S. Lewis and H.P. Lovecraft’s attempts to revise reality clashed.
