#goblin emperor would be on here but i read it in 2024

[meadowlarkx]

saw a tag meme for posting your favorite 9 books read in 2023 and couldn't resist doing it. no pressure tagging @tuulikki @themelodyofsilence @swanmaids @searchingforserendipity25 @jouissants @aquaregiaarts @imakemywings @polutrope and anyone else who thinks it's a fun way to reflect on the year!

[blysse-and-blunder]

in lieu of lawn care

10:30pm, sunday, may 26, 2024

cut the grass today, and then went and spent two hours lolling around outside, sitting on a blanket that even now smells perfectly of summer

reading just finished kj charles' the henchmen of zenda (thank you @yogurtforever for mentioning it to me! please overlook the fact that i'm about to go off) and i have to say, surprisingly, this was a rare kj charles miss, for me! i still finished it, i still think i'm glad i read it, but from an author who i've adored all of her other work, it's odd to realize i didn't have as much fun here as i would have liked. two reasons for this, possibly, one that i think it was an early work for her [edit: nope came out in 2018] and two that i actually had read the source material of which this is an au, and i found it continually grating that this book's whole tone and style is set up to be cynical about the original prisoner of zenda novel. if you want the critique to really, actually matter, don't change so much! don't make your case by actually rewriting the entire personalities of the king and player-king, who in this turn into strawmen because they've literally been restructured to prove monarchy is awful. the other option, b), would be to step further away from the source material, in which case you need to stop quoting the original book and integrating so much of the original language. bah. this leaves us open for one of my most irritating little meaningless quibbles, which is that a character gets very self-righteous about what the original novel's narrator meant by using the term 'well-bred', to the point that i think ends up actually being ahistorical and weakening the overall critique we're trying to produce here.

charles is also trying to introduce more time and personality for the female characters (moderate success) and insert some revolutionary, 'hey wait a minute the best answer here is not a continuation of the monarchical system where everyone sucks' sentiment (middling to poor success). i just...found i really hated the idea that every character was Worse, Actually than in the original novel, although in fairness it is believable that the pov character here would think that, i guess. you chose a narrator who's going to take a cynical view of everything, and are trying to show how he allows himself to trust and/or like certain very few people, and it didn't make for a great reading experience.

the same, however, can't be said for the other two books here, although arguably they are also dealing with a narrator who is a) damaged and grieving b) gay. katherine addison's the goblin emperor was a christmas/birthday gift for me in...2022 and was such a gem, a gift in multiple senses, and this spring i have finally indulged in the two companion (?) novels, which i read voraciously on Eclipse Day and the weeks following, and then have turned around and listened to in audiobook almost immediately. the world of amalo is no less full of horror, death and injustice and corrupt or infuriating structures of power are a big part of the inciting action, but the time we spend seeing the people who are kind makes these so much more. pleasurable to read. plus the details of the city, the public transit, the tea houses, the opera, the belle epoque prague vibes. there's comparatively more death, more 'true crime' style mystery solving, more small vignettes of crime (reminding me that she does like writing cases like this, and making her her sherlock holmes au angel of the crows, pictured in ilcb 05/12/24 but not discussed, fit into place in a new way), but the lack of cynicism matters.

listening a lot of podcasts lately. had reason to try and sum up my podcast habit recently, and realized that i am really almost constantly listening to one, of some variety. i go through different moods and will switch between shows to find the right vibe rather than try to finish one all the way through. that being said, the list i tell people when asked 'oh what do you listen to?' is, like, 99% invisible (genuinely really enjoying the robert caro the power broker read-along, despite not reading the book-- it's fascinating) and articles of interest and ologies, whereas this week i think it was primarily no such thing as a fish, followed by normal gossip, followed by i hate it but i love it followed by some npr and crooked media pods (god help me, i do still check in on their election takes and will probably continue to do so out of morbid curiosity). the maxfun shows i listen to? are like family to me, and may be just as overlooked-- but you can bet that's where i'm turning first when stuck on a long subway ride.

watching had reason, last week, to sit down and watch the entire new season of gamechanger start to finish. y'all heard about this shit? gamechanger? anyone? yes? i bought dropout for myself and a few friends last year, and it has been the best possible investment. i love feeling the, like, increase in energy and stakes and creative chaotic potential in each new episode, each new show that gets added to the roster, but i love gamechanger til death do us part. hard to pick a favorite bit for cast psychic damage and resulting peak performances (second place?? bingo?? the timeloop??? sam says????) so let me here give a shout-out to the lesser memed episodes this season, the drawfee collab and the newlyweb game (scream) and beat the buzzer, all of which were so fun while featuring people i knew less or not at all. the little sam reich matryoshkas absolutely killed me. can we hear it for the motherfucking ART DEPARTMENT.

playing having beaten one of the colosseum of fools tournaments in hollow knight, i've gone back for round two and am now emotionally trapped until i can win this second one. since i need the pale ore from it in order to upgrade and do anything more challenging. so it goes. this has also meant that i turned back to other games, after not wanting to continue to die so very much. chants of sennaar was there waiting for me so politely, and i got through the third language and felt pretty accomplished after puzzling slash brute-forcing it i had to do to make things work. was not expecting the uh. the jumpscare, as it were, at the end of the bards' level. but look how gorgeous.

making made a pretty passable banana bread today. the ratio of banana to other ingredients was a little off, so it's largely just 'bread' and isn't too sweet, but it's more than edible.

working on ignoring my email inbox, ignoring my article revisions, ignoring my chapter edits--forgot to send out the email with discussion questions for our panel discussion which we meant to send out this friday, fuck! trying to make progress on paid tasks and stay on top of those hours before i leave, trying to also organize my trip which has meant, like it or not, getting back to some of those emails. also i found an article in welsh which i had been unaware of which will be Extremely Good to have read, even if it doesn't tell me anything too new, just so that i can prove i did. my footnotes always feel so anemic. hopefully this helps, and hopefully i speed up--currently reading about two pages an hour if i'm lucky.

[starsandsteelandbrokenglass]

May 2024 Reading Wrap Up

This is coming in late because I've been traveling! And am still doing so, which means I expect June reading stats to be very low. But I'm having a great time doing other things, some of which might eventually be posted. I left right at the beginning of June, so my May reading was still pretty solid--15 books and a little over 5,000 pages. Here they are:

Leisure Reading:

Empire of Sand (The Books of Ambha #1) by Tasha Suri- 3.5/5 stars; didn't like it quite as much as the Jasmine Throne trilogy, but still a solid fantasy read

Realm of Ash (The Books of Ambha #2) by Tasha Suri- 3.5/5 stars; again, interesting world and I think I liked the characters of this one slightly more than the first

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison- 4.75/5; this was delightful, somehow managing to be both slice of life and high court drama and both low and high stakes all at once

Starcrossed (Starcrossed #1) by Josephine Angelini- 3.5/5 stars; not as good as I remembered from high school, but still passable

Dreamless (Starcrossed #2) by Josephine Angelini- 3.5/5 stars; again, not phenomenal, but I have read worse takes on the Trojan War

Goddess (Starcrossed #3) by josephine Angelini- 3.5/5 stars; a true 2010s YA novel that wrapped everything up neatly

All the Hidden Paths (The Tithenai Chronicles #2) by Foz Meadows- 4.5/5 stars; I like this world and these characters a lot, and seeing them grow is really rewarding, especially within a well-constructed plot

In My Dreams I Hold a Knife by Ashley Winstead- 3.5/5 stars; didn't super connect with any of these characters, but it was a compelling mystery/thriller

Lost in the Moment and Found (Wayward Children #8) by Seanan McGuire- 3.75/5 stars; another great addition to this series, and an interesting new piece of worldbuilding

Aces Wild by Amanda DeWitt- 3.25/5 stars; great premise and love an asexual found family but honestly not as much heisting as I wanted

Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher- 3.75/5 stars; not my favorite Kingfisher I've read, but a well-done reversal of a familiar fairytale

Metamorphoses: A Play by Mary Zimmerman- I would looooove to see this done onstage, especially with the pool elements

Academic Readings:

Affective Intensities and Evolving Horror Forms: From Found Footage to Virtual Reality by Adam Daniel

Post-Horror: Art, Genre and Cultural Elevation by David Church

Characterisation in Apuleius' Metamorphoses: Nine Studies by Stephen Harrison

Favorite read in May was The Goblin Emperor--I definitely want to read more Katherine Addison now!

Currently Reading: The Night Villa by Carol Goodman and The Palgrave Handbook to Horror Literature