running up that hill
Jan. 7th, 2021 01:01 pmWe're all dealing with lockdown/winter in our own way:
I dealt with it by writing 37k in under four weeks, and re-reading The Left Hand of Darkness for the one thousandth time. It's a good book to read at winter time - all the yearning and nearly freezing to death in the snow. I hadn't reread it in a couple years, but a year or so ago I went to The Second Shelf, which is a rare bookstore for books by women, and spent the most I've ever spent on a single book to buy a rare-ish (not very rare! I'm not rich. Just a little rare) copy of it, so I finally have a paper copy and I very carefully read my expensive copy and finished a couple days ago. I've also been listening to Meg Myers' cover of Running Up That Hill constantly.
Everyone who follows me on twitter knows I've basically only been talking about LHoD and the fic I've been writing for several days. The fic is done and getting read by other people to confirm it's not completely unhinged and will get posted soon! I'm currently experiencing a lot of existential dread about picking a title for it. It's post-canon Witcher 3 (game, not show) Geralt/Emhyr fic with ghost stories and a mystery and lots of talking about grief and past lives etc. I've really enjoyed writing it and hope people like it too!
Left Hand of Darkness is still amazing - it still pulls me in absolutely and completely. Leguin really could imagine such complete and alien worlds, and Genly is so lovely as a character. You feel so attached and connected to him, his loneliness, his struggle to understand Gethen, his stuggle to make himself understood. It's such a familiar feeling, but also so located in the alien world he's in. You feel so close and attached to him, especially as he's so vulnerable.
Also SO MUCH weird stuff happens in the book that everyone FORGETS ABOUT because of the space gender distraction. Eyeball licking!! Telepathy!! Incest! Mystical space religion! Literally actually seeing the future! Rereading it is always an exercise in "well I'd completely forgotten that happened".
The ice journey that is the last third or so of the book is so, I don't know, powerful and all-encompassing, and both practical and mystical all at once. All of the book is good but that's the really the killer part. Leguin goes for the jugular there. Obviously I've never lived somewhere that cold, but it made me miss home, the way the sky will be totally bright and blue, completely empty and cloudless, and the air viciously bitingly cold. It doesn't get properly cold here, or ever properly empty of people, and there is this part of me that misses it so desperately.
This time I was really struck by the back and forth between Estraven and Genly's POVs. The bit when Genly talks about trying not to cry and later Estraven notices how Genly always looks away when he cries, and it must be shameful in his culture. God, bullseye. Estraven is such a wonderful character, so understandable and yet with this complete backstory to their life, fully realised. They're so bitten by grief, so defined by being an exile, from their home, from their country, from their dead lover, and maybe that's why they're so read and willing to accept the Ekumen and other worlds. They've been an exile so much, what is it to be an alien as well?
I had kind of forgotten how incomprehensible the book is about women. There's a scene where Estraven asks Genly to describe women and Genly actually cannot come up with anything sensible. Urusla Leguin, 0 faith in men's ability to relate to women, even in her utopian space federation future. Obviously, thinking about how the thinking behind the book has changed over time is really interesting too. Comparing it to its "successors", like Ammonite by Nicola Griffith, or Ancillary Justice, which take really different approaches to science-fictional gender, and I like seeing fic take different approches too.
I've skimmed big chunks of the Left Hand of Darkness tag and enjoyed these:
( left hand of darkness recs )
This is an open call to please tell me your thoughts and opinions about Left Hand of Darkness (and any other related ~science fiction gender books!) because I could happily talk about it forever and I unfortunately live with two people absolutely fundamentally disinterested in science fiction, which is killing me.
I dealt with it by writing 37k in under four weeks, and re-reading The Left Hand of Darkness for the one thousandth time. It's a good book to read at winter time - all the yearning and nearly freezing to death in the snow. I hadn't reread it in a couple years, but a year or so ago I went to The Second Shelf, which is a rare bookstore for books by women, and spent the most I've ever spent on a single book to buy a rare-ish (not very rare! I'm not rich. Just a little rare) copy of it, so I finally have a paper copy and I very carefully read my expensive copy and finished a couple days ago. I've also been listening to Meg Myers' cover of Running Up That Hill constantly.
Everyone who follows me on twitter knows I've basically only been talking about LHoD and the fic I've been writing for several days. The fic is done and getting read by other people to confirm it's not completely unhinged and will get posted soon! I'm currently experiencing a lot of existential dread about picking a title for it. It's post-canon Witcher 3 (game, not show) Geralt/Emhyr fic with ghost stories and a mystery and lots of talking about grief and past lives etc. I've really enjoyed writing it and hope people like it too!
Left Hand of Darkness is still amazing - it still pulls me in absolutely and completely. Leguin really could imagine such complete and alien worlds, and Genly is so lovely as a character. You feel so attached and connected to him, his loneliness, his struggle to understand Gethen, his stuggle to make himself understood. It's such a familiar feeling, but also so located in the alien world he's in. You feel so close and attached to him, especially as he's so vulnerable.
Also SO MUCH weird stuff happens in the book that everyone FORGETS ABOUT because of the space gender distraction. Eyeball licking!! Telepathy!! Incest! Mystical space religion! Literally actually seeing the future! Rereading it is always an exercise in "well I'd completely forgotten that happened".
The ice journey that is the last third or so of the book is so, I don't know, powerful and all-encompassing, and both practical and mystical all at once. All of the book is good but that's the really the killer part. Leguin goes for the jugular there. Obviously I've never lived somewhere that cold, but it made me miss home, the way the sky will be totally bright and blue, completely empty and cloudless, and the air viciously bitingly cold. It doesn't get properly cold here, or ever properly empty of people, and there is this part of me that misses it so desperately.
This time I was really struck by the back and forth between Estraven and Genly's POVs. The bit when Genly talks about trying not to cry and later Estraven notices how Genly always looks away when he cries, and it must be shameful in his culture. God, bullseye. Estraven is such a wonderful character, so understandable and yet with this complete backstory to their life, fully realised. They're so bitten by grief, so defined by being an exile, from their home, from their country, from their dead lover, and maybe that's why they're so read and willing to accept the Ekumen and other worlds. They've been an exile so much, what is it to be an alien as well?
I had kind of forgotten how incomprehensible the book is about women. There's a scene where Estraven asks Genly to describe women and Genly actually cannot come up with anything sensible. Urusla Leguin, 0 faith in men's ability to relate to women, even in her utopian space federation future. Obviously, thinking about how the thinking behind the book has changed over time is really interesting too. Comparing it to its "successors", like Ammonite by Nicola Griffith, or Ancillary Justice, which take really different approaches to science-fictional gender, and I like seeing fic take different approches too.
I've skimmed big chunks of the Left Hand of Darkness tag and enjoyed these:
( left hand of darkness recs )
This is an open call to please tell me your thoughts and opinions about Left Hand of Darkness (and any other related ~science fiction gender books!) because I could happily talk about it forever and I unfortunately live with two people absolutely fundamentally disinterested in science fiction, which is killing me.
Wednesday - reading, other stuff
Aug. 7th, 2019 09:24 amCurrently Reading:
The Countess Conspiracy - Courtney Milan
Started this, realised I didn't love the ~~we are trapped in this secret~~ plot and put it down, now I'm back at it. Obviously it's good and I'm quite engaged, but for some reason the character melodramatics are a bit wearing. Both characters being like THE OTHER PERSON HATES ME COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY starts to strain my suspension of disbelief and also my nerves after a little while. Very much hoping they get over it soon. I like romance novels where they like each other! Basically it's pining but not very well done imo.
The Odyssey - Emily Wilson
Her editorial notes were great, and I think are a really good intro to thinking about the classical world. She also gives some really great insights into her translation thought process, which is cool. I'm only reading a couple pages of this every evening, because reading blank verse for hours is soul-destroying, but I'm enjoying it!
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell - Susanna Clarke
This is fun, but GOD why is it so goddamn long?? It does not need to be so long, and honestly would be a funner novel if it was about half the size. I am also reading one chapter a night (the chapters are short) because if I do any more I get bored. I do want to finish it though, because the magic is cool, and I like the world-building, and the regency novel style is fun, but god it's just depressing picking it up.
Currently Listening To:
the Badass Women playlist on spotify, which is guitar tracks with female voices. Some really great tunes on this.
Currently Watching
I caught up on Killing Eve on Tuesday, and am desperately waiting to watch the finale. I love it so much, the costuming, Villanelle playing characters, the cat and mouse game, Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer. There's some storylines I wish they'd wrap up, or like, make something happen, because a lot of the show is waiting for something to happen, and then it diverting course to keep you on your toes, which is obviously great but very FRUSTRATING. Anyway I want Villanelle and Eve to team up and solve crimes.
additionally, if one more man tells me I have to watch Fleabag I'll explode.
recent reading
May. 1st, 2019 08:11 pmI finished some books recently:
Tentacle by Rita Indiana
I liked this a lot, but it was fucking weird, and I wish it had been longer. It won a bunch of awards, and to me it felt like a mid-point between magical realism and science-fiction. Like some of the stuff in the book had science fiction explanations for why they were happening, and some of them had more straight up magical realism reasons. I liked it a lot, but I think it would be a lot better book if it was longer? Like, a lot of elements are unexplored, or very underexplored, and I think the book's trying to play that off as ~~literary, but at points it just came off as sloppy. One of the thing I really like is the way that characters merge, as magical realism reasons reveal that characters you thought were separate people are actually the same person - it's very mindfucky, and good. I think it might have lost a little in translation, so if I'm feeling brave (and really missing the DR) I might try and tackle it in Spanish. Would recommend if you like weird, gender-fucky, sci-fi!
Slow River by Nicola Griffith
Another sci-fi. I bought this from the queer bookstore in Glasgow, Category Is... Books (I actually got Tentacle there too, if you're ever in Glasgow you should check it out!) and really really loved it. It's a twisty, tense sci-fi novel about Lore, who is abandoned by her rich family and rescued by a criminal Spanner. The book is about the larger world, which in this future has been hopelessly polluted and the rich profit off cleaning the pollution, and also about the individual family drama of Lore, and her relationship with Spanner, and her efforts to find honest work. It's very very good. It has warnings for every kind of abuse, so ask for warnings and be careful if that's something you need to think about, but the book is honestly very very good, and kept me gripped right until the end.
The Penalty Box by Deirdre Martin
This was super weird. I bought it second-hand from The Ripped Bodice, because it was a hockey romance. The main character has recently returned to her home town to help look after her nephew, and she falls for Paul, a former NHLer who was forced to retire after head injury and has ALSO returned to the town to run the bar. It was weird in the sense that the book seemed to treat the characters very different from what I was expecting out of a romance novel??? Even the main character was never truly likeable, and at times there would be flashes of the characters being likable and then would do something really weird and unpleasant? but the characters were interesting and I kinda wish the author had written like a long "serious" novel about them?? I dunno. I can't in good faith reccomend it to anyone, because I don't think it was good, or even that enjoyable, but I did like reading it? It was weird.
Currently reading:
The Tarnished Lady, a romance novel I bought second-hand from the Ripped Bodice
The Muslims Are Coming! Islamophobia, Extremism and the Domestic War on Terror by Arun Kundnani
Other Stuff
how winning is done podfic by ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
growlery. I finished listening to this today and it's soooo good. growlery does a great job with TK & Patty's dynamic, and the humour in the text, and makes so many lines so so funny. big big rec!
LOVE + FEAR new album by Marina (previously Marina and the Diamonds). so so good!! I've been listening non-stop since it came out. Particularly favorite songs are To Be Human, Karma, Enjoy your Life.
feels like a long way down some very cute T rated boy kissing Miro/Roope of the Dallas Stars. Very cute! short and sweet.
I've been feeling a weird combination of great and terrible recently, swinging back and forth between them, because I'm lucky to have wonderful friends, and be in a fandom I enjoy, and have a wonderful boyfriend, and an amazing girlfriend and get to do lots of great things with them, but I also feel very dissatisfied and stressed at work, and am not sure how to get out of that rutt. But I think I'm rounding a corner with that, hopefully. So we'll see. Hope you're all good! <3
I've finished a bunch of books recently, and haven't posted about them, so I figured I'd do the book log for them all at once. Bit of a mixed bag of genres and types of books, but good experiences with all of them!
Jerusalem: The Biography by Simon Sebag Montefiore
I actually liked this a lot. It's me getting my backlog of nonfiction out of the way, and I enjoyed the read. I think it has a number of issues as a history book, but a lot of those come naturally from it being a popular history book and also trying to cover all of Jerusalem's history in one book. At points it's a bit hysterical/salacious, but I think that's it being a pop history book, not an academic text. And at times it moves a bit too fast, speeding through years, but also that's it trying to do a lot. Aside from that, it's super engagingly written and compelling, and Sebag Montefiore is very good at keeping a historical narrative thread while juggling multiple "characters". I enjoyed it! (One more non-fiction book off the list!
Band Sinister by KJ Charles
I had an 11hr flight last week, so I had saved both of the new KJ Charles books up to read on the plane. I put them on my ancient kindle, and basically did nothing else but read for the whole flight. I inhaled this! I liked Any Old Diamonds, but I loved Band Sinister. I loved Guy, who was such a dear, and I loved strong-willed Amanda (the proposal scene at the end! darling!!) and I loved the entire cast of characters. While I was in LA, I managed to go to The Ripped Bodice and they had a paperback copy of it, so I bought that as well, because I know I'm going to want to reread it again and again, and having a paper copy means I can lend it to people and everything. Seriously, this might be my new favorite KJ Charles, which is saying so much!
Any Old Diamonds by KJ Charles
I also inhaled this on my 11 hour flight, and loved it so much. I won't spoil the twist but I loved it, and I loved the callbacks to other books. Jerry and Alec are great and the sex was hot hot hot. Basically another KJ Charles classic.
Valor's Choice by Tanya Huff
I picked this up at a charity shop for 50p. It's in an omnibus with the second novel in the series, but I flipped through that and probably will not read it, since it only includes the main character and none of the other characters, and whole different setting. Not super into that. It's a classic military-setting scifi, and the main character is an NCO sent on a diplomatic mission that turns out to include a lot of fighting, while she tries to make sure her new senior officer doesn't get them all killed. I actually enjoyed it a lot - the main character is compelling, the writer writes military banter very very well, and all the characters in the platoon are fun. It has some great worldbuilding about the confederation of alien races, and how there's only three that join the army - humans, Krai (who eat ANYTHING), and di'Taykan (the Super Sexually Active species with purple hair). I liked the worldbuilding a lot, it's just a good solid military scifi novel. I skimmed the tvtropes page on the series and probably won't look up the other books, but I liked this a lot.
Book Log: Signal and Noise
Jan. 28th, 2019 05:05 pmI finally finished Nate Silver's The Signal and the Noise, aporximately 20 million years since it was in fashion. It was one of my new year's resolutions to read some of the unread non-fiction books I keep around the house, so at least one of them is done!
I tend to donate or pass on books I've finished that I don't think I'll read again, and I doubt that about this one, so if you'd like it and we have some liklihood of meeting in person/you live in the UK, let me know and I'll set it aside for you.
( on the book itself )
My next book is record of a spaceborn few, which I'm a little bit in. It started super sad so I had to nope out, but I'm making another run at it. Is it all like the start, i.e. basically just ficlets? I liked Becky Chambers other stuff, so I'm sure I'll enjoy it. After that, I have to pick another non-fiction book!
I tend to donate or pass on books I've finished that I don't think I'll read again, and I doubt that about this one, so if you'd like it and we have some liklihood of meeting in person/you live in the UK, let me know and I'll set it aside for you.
( on the book itself )
My next book is record of a spaceborn few, which I'm a little bit in. It started super sad so I had to nope out, but I'm making another run at it. Is it all like the start, i.e. basically just ficlets? I liked Becky Chambers other stuff, so I'm sure I'll enjoy it. After that, I have to pick another non-fiction book!
current reading list
Jan. 4th, 2019 12:39 pm One of my new year's resolutions was to work through all the books I've bought but not read (this is not a moratorium on buying books, I will definitely do that. Just a determination to read the ones I have!). This is especially true of the non-fiction books I keep buying and then not reading because I keep buying non-fiction I don't like/enjoy that much.
The list is
fiction
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norell - Susanna Clarke
Court of Broken Knives - Anna Smith Spark
A Confederation of Valor - Tanya Huff
Record of a Space Born Few - Becky Chambers
The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
The Odyssey - Emily Wilson
Non-fiction
The list is
fiction
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norell - Susanna Clarke
The Odyssey - Emily Wilson
Non-fiction
The Origins of Political Order - Francis Fukuyama (this was a gift and I don't actually like political science books, so we'll see how far I get with this)
Bury Me At Wounded Knee - Dee Brown (non-fiction I actually like, i.e. history, but will probably be insanely depressing)The Muslims Are Coming - Arun Kundnami (I actually got about half way through this and then got distracted, it's very good. Take down of the surveillance state in Western Europe combined with the continued bad Islamic theology of Westerners)
Crusaders Kingdom - Joshua Prawer (one of the seminal books on the medieval crusader states. I read part of this for uni, want to finish it)
Turkey Unveiled - Nicole Pope (Dad keeps harassing me to read this)
Living by Numbers - Steven Connor (book about Math)
Hard Choices - Hillary Clinton (this was a gift, I am trying to actually read it cause I think they'll be some interesting stuff.)
Talking With Female Serial Killers (I bought this because I wanted a book that would satisfy the "binge reading wikipedia articles about female serial killers" I do sometimes, but I tried it and I think I like the wikipedia articles more. Will try again)
A People's History of London (actually excited to read this)The Signal & The Noise - Nate Silver (reading this right now. Nate Silver shouldn't be allowed to talk about history but aside from that he's a very clear writer)Jerusalem The Biography - Simon Sebag Montefiore (I'm like three quarters of the way through this on my kindle. I like it a lot! A bit overblown at times maybe, but engaging)
So, I don't post enough and I don't feel active enough/like I'm writing enough in any form. Also, I never had the time/mental energy to read a lot of books during the school year (or, I do read a lot of books but they're things for my courses, not things I read out of pleasure or interest), so I usually read a lot during the holidays. I keep track of the books I read personally, but I wanna start writing about them here.
