#Award-winning book

[jjspina]

Limerick - Jemsbooks - Lamby the Lonely Lamb!

[bapple117]

do you see my vision

[starry-bi-sky]

do yall ever think about bruce/batman!clone danny standing in front of his bathroom mirror after finding out he was a clone and silently tracing his face. The slope of his jaw and point of his chin. The high angle of his cheekbones and the shape of his eyes, the curve of his brow bones and the shape of his nose. The volume of his hair and the way it curls and gets fluffy when it gets too long.

His hair is black the same way a crow's wing is black. His dad's hair is black the same way a black bear's fur is black. His dad's eyes are blue like the ocean is blue. Danny's eyes are blue the same way a glacier is blue.

His dad has a square jaw and straight flat hair, and he tans and gets a face full of freckles when he's out in the sun for too long. Danny burns like a lobster and his face remains untouched. Danny has a sharp jaw and tall cheekbones, and Sam says when he's not smiling there's almost something regal about him. You would never call Jack Fenton "regal" when he's not smiling.

Sam says when he's not smiling he looks scary the same way a stone statue is. Jack Fenton when he's not smiling looks scary the same way that german shepherd staring at you across the street is.

Do you ever think he grew up wondering if he was adopted. Because of course, he has black hair and blue eyes like his dad. But having the same color doesn't make you someone's child.

Or, worse, things he's heard from the other kids and the other parents and even some of his teachers growing up; that he was the product of an affair. And that his dad was just too stupid to notice. And Danny would defend his parents until the day he died, because Jack Fenton wasn't an idiot and Maddie Fenton wasn't a cheater.

But doubt comes in with fickle tongue. his parents swear up and down that he is their child when he asks about either. That Danny just had his grandparents' features, but he was their son and they loved him.

But Danny doesn't look like either of his parents. His mom's eyes are blue like an aquamarine and Jazz's too. And they burn like lobsters in the sun too, but Jazz gets freckles on her face and so does Maddie. And as Danny grows up he doesn't bulk up or get stocky like his dad did, and when he hits puberty he doesn't shoot up like a tree like Jack Fenton did.

He stays small, and they say he's a late bloomer (and he is), or that he just has his mom's height. But he's fast and has good stamina, and some days it feels like he's built entirely different from his family. That the things they went through growing up just didn't apply to him. Jack and Maddie Fenton both had acne and breakouts when they hit puberty, and Jazz inherits it and he's seen the amount of skincare products she keeps on her side of the bathroom.

And then he hits puberty and breaks out maybe once or twice, but his skin stays clear for the most part and the problems and changes his dad went through just don't happen to him.

And the truth is worse than all of the lies.

How horrifying.

[simrn-off]

"I was aware that I had been looking for him on every street, in every crowd."

Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

[gunsatthaphan]

🥺.

[remnantglow]

losing my mind over this goodreads review of Mission Child by Maureen F. McHugh a little bit like did they read the book with their eyes closed 😭 yes wearing men's clothes for practical reasons does not make you queer. but i would argue that not only continuing to do so even after it is no longer necessary/needed, but also jumping at the chance to take HRT and alternating between (repeatedly and over the course of decades) stating you are both a man and a woman/that you are neither does, in fact, probably make you queer. what do i know though

[throneofsapphics]

I just thought y’all might appreciate my sisters texts after she finished Queen of Shadows

[essektheylyss]

I highly recommend local bookstores because nowhere else can you pick up a book that is no different from any other books around it, which include publications by such authors as Ursula fucking Le Guin, and discover only once you get home that it's printed in batches of 200 and doesn't even have an associated ISBN. This has happened to me multiple times, and it is the best. This is not ironic, it's the funniest experience and you really will only get this kind of appreciation and uplifting of local and small artists in indie bookstores.

And also those books will usually knock your fucking socks off.

[save-the-villainous-cat]

wow isn't it cool that All Quiet on the Western Front won some Academy Awards in 2023, the same year in which Germany started to ban pro-Palestine protests :) isn't that amazing how we have learnt absolutely nothing?

[picturebookshelf]

a collection of Pride-related picture books I read this June!

[jjspina]

Showcasing - Drystan the Dragon and Friends Series Book 4: Delfina Solves a Problem - a Children's Book!

[slaughter-books]

Day 12: JOMPBPC: Should Win An Award

[geryone]

It’s literary prize season & I don’t care but also I am secretly rooting for the books I’ve read to win

[crowns-of-violets-and-roses]

Translation State

Anne Leckie returns to the world of her Ancillary trilogy for a second independent novel in the setting. This one rotates between three protagonists. An heir to an old family shuffled off world on a diplomatic mission to find someone who meant missing three hundred years ago (explicitly a sinecure - there is no expectation she makes more than a token effort to find them). An adoptive child working an ordinary job who finds he may be the descendant of the disposed ruling dynasty to a deceased station. Lastly and most interestingly a young translator one of a species created to server as an intermediary between humans and the incomprehensibly alien

The beginning of the book is attention grabbing. Each of the protagonists are interesting in their own way. After that initial burst of promise it never felt like it reached it's potential.

Getting a perspective from a Translator was great. They were one of the most interesting parts of the Ancillary books but the best chapters about that were all early in the book and the facts that a point of view was a translator felt less and less relevant as the story continued despite it being crucial to the climax.

By the end of the book the diplomat Enae's perspective became increasingly superfluousness. The other two protagonists are deeply tied in to the climax and Enae is also there.

My biggest complaint about the POV's is that we didn't get to see Reet and Qven's viewpoint after they matched. It would have automatically made me like the book a lot more if we saw that and it was even half decently executed.

It's not a book with surprising twists. It telegraphs everything. The first idea you have about what will happen will nearly always be what actually happens. It does this all well in advance of events happening. You can see plot points long before they actually eventuate. I don't need shocking twists but events happening exactly how you would have expected a hundred pages ago gets tiresome.

There's references to the setting's history but they feel like isolated events with no real connection to each other rather than a detailed fleshed out history.

The depiction of polities and how those with influence in them act was simplistic. Leckie only seems to view them at a very high level and an individual level and is blind to anything in between. A lot of the political beliefs of background characters are more like caricatures rather than what someone would genuinely belief. In other cases the beliefs are plausible but the manner in which the characters frame them or justify themselves rings false.

The arcs of the main characters are didactic and the book is equally opinionated about events that are only focused on in passing. We can never just be shown or told about something; we must be told what to think of it. Leckie's views aren't objectionable but the messages imparted aren't complex or novel. It often seems as if Leckie simply doesn't trust the reader to draw their own conclusions rather than her having something she feels is important to say.

All this combines to make the world feel wooden and hollow. A mere facade constructed by Leckie to attempt to wow the reader rather than a fully realized world.

I am being somewhat harsh here. This isn't a bad book. It's certainly better than the average SF novel but I see Leckie in general and this book in particular in the context of award nominations and accolades and it doesn't meet that standard.

Simplistic is the word I keep coming back to for it. The world, the non-POV characters and the messages it intends to impart all lack any real complexity. It was a reasonably enjoyable read albeit frustrating at times but ultimately not anywhere near as good as the accolades suggested.

[sydcarmyfan]

Ayo Edebiri did the THING!

[funkytoes]

"is this movie featuring female empowerment roles ACTUALLY bad or are men just sexist" - me whenever a movie with unconventional and/or very powerful female leads gets super bad reviews from male movie critics and youtubers lol