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carriagelamp · 22 days ago

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Read some delightfully impactful books this month, it was a very satisfying assortment of stories! My biggest recommendation is Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Books, I'm telling everyone I can to read that book. Funny, meaningful, and sort of lights a fire under your ass, makes you want to make the world better.

Doctor Who: Forever Autumn

My obligatory Halloween-y read. Like many Doctor Who books of this particular calibre it was a fine and entirely forgettable read. It was fun to have an autumn-themed setting and villain, and I always love when Martha’s around. They wind up needing to deal with “no no it’s not magic it’s definitely just science we don’t understand for sure for sure” and some pumpkin-headed terrors. It was a pleasant thing to have playing as an audiobook while driving to work amid autumn leaves.

A Lady for a Duke

This had so much potential but honestly failed to live up to it imo. This story is very deliberately tipping its hat to Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and the initial set up is really promising. Injured and presumed dead during the Battle of Waterloo, transwoman Viola Carroll seizes her chance to remake her life and live the way she wants. She becomes the lady's companion to her brother’s wife (the only two who know that she’s alive) and with their help begins figuring out how to fit into this new life. However when an old childhood friend, the Duke of Gracewood who had fought alongside her in Waterloo, seems to be in a bad state she finds herself being forcefully drawn out of her quiet, secluded life and put at risk of being recognized by someone who had known her before.

Excellent premise! The characters are fun, Viola is an enjoyable protagonist, Gracewood is a decent romantic lead, and Viola’s sister-in-law is easily my favourite character in the book, she’s a DELIGHT, especially when paired with her husband. The first half of the book is also pretty well done, with lots of mistaken identity and pining, very much in the spirit of Twelfth Night. Unfortunate the second half is where it loses all momentum. The dialogue becomes repetitive and the romance rather dull, the B-Plot is really the only thing dragging the plot along at that point. It also loses any real touch with historical attitudes towards queer issues — it was always a light touch, but it quickly becomes everyone repeating All The Right Things to each other ad nauseum, without any real exploration of queer identities in a Regency period. Which, to be fair, is probably what some people want, very low stakes and chill romance, but for me it took the wind out of the book’s sails, I would have loved more discussion. It would have made the sex more interesting at least.

That being said, if you want a soft, pleasant, historical trans romance, I would honestly give it a shot. If nothing else the first half is REALLY quite good, I couldn’t put it down, and the last half isn’t so bad that it damns the whole thing. It’s worth it if this is what you’re keen on.

Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books

Easily my favourite book from October, this book managed to hit on very topical subjects with both tact and humour. In a small town in Georgia, Lula Dean has spearheaded a book banning crusade, managing to get a number of “problematic” books removed from the library and has made a show of setting up a Little Free Library in her yard full of “appropriate” books instead. When Beverly Underwood visits her mother and hears about this she’s so exasperated with it all that she quickly hatches a plan. The night before she leaves for home, she takes the banned library books from where they’re being stored and swaps out their dust jackets with the ones in Lula Dean’s Little Free Library. The rest of the story is about various people in the town who borrow a book from Lula Dean’s library and how the book they got instead ends up impacting not just themselves but their town. The first story involves a penis cake. Can’t recommend it enough, starts out humour and quickly becomes something you want to rally around.

My Neighbour Totoro

This was an enjoyable read just because I like Totoro in general, but it was not the best novelization I’ve ever read. Honestly I think it mostly suffers from a less-than-ideal translation… the whole thing comes across as quite stilted and I have a feeling the language was prioritised over the flow and intention. It was fine, cosy to sit and read, gives a couple scenes that aren’t in the movie that were interesting, but overall it won’t deliver anything the movie doesn’t do better.

Ogres

Absolutely fascinating novella, and a very rare example of a story told absolutely perfectly in second-person. If you’re looking for something a bit different and thought-provoking, this was a good read.

Ogres rule this world. They’re bigger than you. Stronger than you. Have magics you could never comprehend. The natural order of the world is for humans to serve ogres. However you, as the son of the village headman, live an idyllic sort of life… until the ogre landlords come to call and everything begins to go wrong and you're facing realities and secrets you never could have imagined.

The One and Only Family

I read this one mostly because I wanted to finish off the series. The One and Only Ivan is a fantastic novel that is a fictionalised account of a real silverback gorilla that was poached and brought back to the United States to live in a small cage in a roadside mall. The first story is about him, his friends Bob and Ruby, and his life in captivity. The second and third book are about Bob the dog and Ruby the elephant respectively, and this last book focuses back on Ivan, his new life in a zoo, and his growing family. Honestly all the other books in this series were fine for kids, had some good ideas behind them, but were otherwise somewhat bland. I’m glad I finished the series but they don’t hold a candle to the first book.

The Pushcart War

Now this was a fun children’s novel, recommended to me by my New York girlfriend who says it’s a staple in New York classrooms — and I can see why, it’s an incredibly fun read. A prime example of a well-done under-dog story, very satisfying! The book is a “historical account” of the “New York City Pushcart War”, in which the city streets are hopelessly congested and everyone is suffering. The worst offenders are the big trucks which just seem to get bigger and bigger, and pushier and pushier. The trucking companies hatch a plan on how to gradually push out all other competition: they’ll start with the little, old-fashion pushcarts, try to villainize them until they’re entirely removed from New York City... and if no one speaks up for them, then how hard will it be to push out the taxis next? Or the automobiles? However, the scrappy little push-cart owners fight back. It’s very much written to be an allegory for actual wars, played on a smaller scale which some delightful wit and an interesting narrative voice.

Series of Unfortunate Events 4-10

I continue to read A Series of Unfortunate Events. As a child I had only ever read up to The Carnivorous Carnival so it’s exciting to strike into new territory with The Slippery Slope. I really enjoy the slippery slope you see the Baudelaires beginning to get caught in as the series progresses, how they have to start making concessions and doing things they wouldn't have considered doing at the beginning, and how their views of the world is beginning to evolve. Austere Academy, Ersatz Elevator, and The Vile Village are my favourite of this set.

The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System v3

I finished the main series of The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System and I’m not ready for it to be over ;^; I’m in the process of reading the last book of bonus stories and trying to savour it. I was hugely judgemental about this series and was tempted to skip it entirely, but I’m so glad I actually sat down to read it. Out of all of MXTX’s series, this one has, in my opinion, the least palatable main relationship and I say that with deep and profound affection. It's passionate and complicated and slightly horrifying but I don't think you could write it any other way. Every single thing about this story is messy and I think that really works in its favour.

Shen Qingqiu is an incredibly biased narrator, and it’s really interesting to read a story in which the main character tends to think of those around him more as characters in a book than as genuine people. You get to see how him viewing himself as a passive observer instead of an actual person with agency who can have an impact on others continuously trips him up, and how his actions have far reaching consequences that he fails to recognize. It makes this entire series a very meta exploration of storytelling and the impact people's personal narratives have on themselves and others. It really consistently shows how cruelty begets cruelty... but also how the choice to step away from easy resentment can break endless cycles. That's a common theme across her works, but the way its handled in this book particularly struck me.

Over all, it’s a fun, silly story with way more heart than I anticipated -- this last book really made me cry! I was so unprepared for the series to be over that I had to stare at the ceiling for a while to try to digest it all. If you were feeling debating whether or not to try this series, I’d honestly give it a shot because it brings way more to the table than the surface level plot would suggest.

This Census-Taker

Fucking weird novella. I grabbed this from the library because I quite enjoyed Railsea so I thought I’d try something else by this author. And I really liked it! But also what the fuck. Still don’t know if I absorbed everything that I was meant to absorb, but it’s obviously a book with a lot to say and did it through the most deranged and intriguing world building. China Miéville is great at creating unique worlds that feel alive and vibrant — this is the sort of world real people could live in, no matter how strange.

Goodread’s summary because gun to my head I’m not sure I’d be able to come up with a more functional explanation: “After witnessing a profoundly traumatic event, a boy is left alone in a remote house on a hilltop with his increasingly deranged parent. When a stranger knocks on his door, the boy senses that his days of isolation are over—but by what authority does this man keep the meticulous records he carries? Is he the boy’s friend? His enemy? Or something altogether other?” This doesn’t even scratch the surface but it does give a functional idea of the surface level plot. If you want something to sink your teeth in to and flex your analytical muscles, this one will do it for you.

The War That Saved My Life // The War I Finally Won

Absolutely stunning YA novel series, can’t recommend it enough. This series is centred on Ada, a girl born in the East End of London to an abusive mother who scorns her for her club foot. Ada is forced to stay in the apartment, is severely neglected and mistreated, and does her best to take care of her younger brother during all this. When news of WWII arrives though and people begin sending their children away from London to live in the country, Ada is determined to run away with her brother and get them both onto one of those trains, to find a better life far from the threatened bombs and their mother. The story followers Ada and Jamie finding a new home and contending with the trauma they’ve lived through during the throes of World War 2.

(* in regards to the queer content of this book: it is entirely subtext however it is such obvious subtext that I feel fine labelling it as queer, it's beautifully done -- very much a "haunting the narrative" sort of plotline)

The Warden

A “cosy fantasy” novel that was a fairly decent attempt at the genre. I find some cosy fantasies fail (for me at least) just because… nothing happens. This novel sort of straddles the line between cosy fantasy and standard fantasy in a way that I found quite satisfying and kept things from getting boring.

Aelis de Lenti is a newly graduated necromancer from the Lyceum who has accepted the position of Warden in the remote village of Lone Pines. Admittedly she had been hoping for a posting in an actual city with actual modern amenities but here she is. Surrounded by sheep shit and villagers who don’t trust her, in a crumbling wizard’s tower. Great. The story is about her gradually finding her space in this community, learning how to handle her position, and generally getting to kick ass and take names. It was a fun read.

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