Reading Update

[js_thrill]

Since my last update, I’ve read 14 books:

April:

1. The Fortunate Fall (Cameron Reed)
2. The Black Fantastic: 20 Afrocuturist Stories (André M. Carrington)
3. Dune (Frank Herbert) (re-read)
4. What we are seeking (Cameron Reed)
5. Vita Nostra (Marina and Serhiy Dyachenko)
6. On the Calculation of Volume: Book 1 (Solvej Balle)
7. Spread Me (Sarah Gailey)

May:

1. New Voices in Chinese Science Fiction (Clarke, Jia, Wang, Eds.)
2. Inspection (Josh Malerman)
3. The Steerswoman (Rosemary Kirstein) (re-read)
4. The Outskirter’s Secret (Rosemary Kirstein) (re-read)
5. Yesteryear (Caro Claire Burke)
6. The Lost Steersman (Rosemary Kirstein) (re-read)
7. Dungeon Crawler Carl (Matt Dinniman)

I am currently reading and will likely finish in May:

1. Sleeping Giants (Sylvain Neuvel)
2. The Language of Power (Rosemary Kirstein) (re-read)

I am also currently reading Les Miserables but that I won’t finish before June starts.

Of the books I read in April and May, the ones that stick with me most are The Fortunate Fall, Vita Nostra, and the Steerswoman series.  The Fortunate Fall was really good, really engrossing, and often times zigged when I expected it to zag. I’ll be thinking about that one for a long time.  Vita Nostra was really playing to my interests in philosophy of language and metaphysics. The book is dark and difficult going at times, but there is a lot of depth to it that felt worth bearing with the bleakness. The Steerswoman series is amazing; they are among my favorite books ever. Friendship, inquiry, community, personhood: all of these investigated with such care and detail (if you haven’t read them, don’t google; you want to avoid spoilers: just try them out)!

I’m reading Les Miserables on my XTEink x4, which is a minimalist tiny e-reader. It doesn’t have a light so I don’t use it as much at night, which is part of why that’s been slow going. 

I am about a third of the way through Sleeping Giants and it has a lot to recommend it so far, though I’m not entirely sure why the author decided on the epistolary/documentary structure (it’s not getting in the way of anything I just don’t know what it’s adding).

The one I had the most negative reaction to was Spread Me; it was doing some sort of horny body horror, which I won’t categorically say is not ever for me, but I guess I will say that it’s probably a genre that’s more miss than hit for me.

Inspection and Yesteryear get the Robert Charles Wilson award for underutilizing a good premise. Inspection (by the author of Bird Box) was…fine? But I don’t think it had enough of an idea of what it was trying to say. Yesteryear had a clear vision for what it wanted to say, but I think the premise had so much more it could have been used for. 

I also DNF’d a few books:

• Klara and the Sun (Kazuo Ishiguro): just too slow for me
• The Cartographers (Peng Shepherd): felt like it was working too hard to keep the reader (and protagonist) in the dark about what was going on
• Earth Abides (George Stewart): started off good but took forever for anything to happen, and I lost interest before anything did
• The Color Masters (Aimee Bender): I loved The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake so wanted to try more of her writing. This short story collection makes me think Lemon Cake is an outlier and most of her writing is not going to be for me.

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Comments

[stdesjardins]

Is this your first time through Les Misérables or a reread? While I reject the premise of the question "What's the greatest novel of all time?", Les Misérables is my go-to answer. I am fond of the debate between the bishop and the atheist: I find the bishop's arguments to be wrong, but respectful and cogent.

[js_thrill]

First time. I am about 70 pages in and still continuously hearing about how great this bishop is