Livre d'Or

Recently read: The pomegranate gate by Ariel Kaplan. (c) 2023 Ariel Kaplan; pub Solaris 2023; ISBN 978-1-78618-824-3. Someone around DW recommended it and it really sounded like my sort of book, so I put it on my wishlist and it showed up as a late December present. It is gorgeously written and original, but ultimately quite depressing.

( detailed review, very generic spoilers )

Currently reading: Menewood by Nicola Griffith. Long-awaited sequel to Hild, which I absolutely adored. hatam_soferet lent it to me so I didn't have to wait for it to be officially released in the UK. So far I'm not loving it quite as much as the first volume, but equally I have devoured more than half the 700 page tome in about a day.

Up next: I got lots of books as Seder presents as usual. I think the one I'm most excited about is The last watchman of old Cairo by Michael David Lukas.

Recently read (Actually on holiday a couple of weeks ago, so not very recent, but I'm disorganized about updating.) Being seen by Elsa Sjunneson. (c)2021 Elsa Sjunneson; pub 2022 Simon Element; ISBN 978-1-9821-5240-6

Lots of people had really strongly recommended it so I put it on my wishlist and lovely cjwatson bought it for me. And I packed it for my travels the other week, and it's not exactly holiday reading because it's quite depressing, but it's also incredibly readable so I devoured it and then ran out of reading material. Oh well. On balance I'm glad I did make time for it.

( detailed review )

Currently reading The Archimedes Codex by Reviel Netz & William Noel. This was a loan from hatam_soferet, it's a non-fiction account of how a lost manuscript of Aristotle was recovered from a palimpsest. The writing is not the most amazing and sparkling ever, but the subject matter is really interesting and I'm getting on well with it.

I'm on a non-fiction kick, which is good because I really do need to start seriously tackling my pre-college reading list. So up next is probably something along the lines of The way into Jewish prayer by LA Hoffman.

I said I'd try to post more here, especially links and just general keeping in touch posts. I'm not very good at sticking to that sort of resolution, but anyway.

Right now I've had a potential Covid exposure, I'm testing negative so far but feeling pessimistic. It's my "fault" in that I took a trip and did some higher risk activities than I normally would, particularly eating indoors when it was around freezing outside and dark and foggy. The person I travelled with is unpleasantly ill, so I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. I still don't understand how anyone thinks living like this is preferable to the alternative of actually having public health measures.

Anyway, recently read (locally):

Elon and the virgin by siderea. It's a very cool mashup between Elon Musk snark and Mediaeval religious folklore as expressed through early music.

lannamichaels has no cultural context for a situation where dating gives you social cachet and benefits and has written some lovely meta about the fake dating trope.

rushthatspeaks is always brilliant, and has written on porn as a genre.

Also sorcyress and silveradept, among the most engaging and interesting writers in my circle, are doing some cool December Days series, on dice and adjectives respectively. Worth a look.

Currently reading: Theoretically Netwon's cannon by Greg Keyes, in reality I may DNF. It's a very cool alt-history setting where the world actually works according to Newton's esoteric theories about things like alchemy and magical sympathy, not just his mechanics. And the characters are fun, but the writing on a sentence-by-sentence level is a bit subpar and I find it difficult to get past that to enjoy what is an original and exciting story. Or possibly I'm just not in a reading place at the moment, that seems to happen more and more these days.

Recently read: The song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. (c) Madeline Miller 2011, pub Bloomsbury 2017, ISBN 978-1-4088-9138-4

cjwatson gave me this response to Greek literature as a slightly ironic Chanukah present. It's basically the Iliad from the POV of Patroclus, and I found it very readable, working both as a novel and a Tragedy.

( detailed review )

Currently reading Still dipping into The order of time by Carlo Rovelli. It's a book to savour with its mix of abstruse physics and very poetic language. But it's not grabbing me in the way a novel would.

Up next Probably Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao. But jack is in the middle of it at the moment, so I need to wait my turn.

Recently read: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. (c) Susanna Clarke 2020, Pub Bloomsbury 2020; ISBN 978-1-5266-2242-6

I bought this as a new hardback soon after it came out, because I'm exceptionally excited by a new Susanna Clarke and because lots of my friends were raving about it. I didn't settle down to read it for ages, but then I messed up a pandemic safety decision and ended up waiting alone in my partners' house for several hours. (Basically Judith was in a panto, I'd automatically assumed I wouldn't go because we haven't been doing indoor theatre at all, but forgot to factor in that if the whole family was going there was no point me staying away. Anyway, I missed the show, so I read a book while waiting for everybody to come home.)

Anyway, it's just as good a book as I hoped, really absorbing.

( detailed review )

Today I had my booster. I still think, even post-omicron, that focusing on boosters was the wrong policy; we should have started with first doses for children and the poorer parts of the world. But given that the mistakes have already been made and we have a highly transmissible, immune escape variant everywhere, I personally feel a lot safer now that I've had my mRNA booster. (I was AZ/AZ/Moderna.) In order to get it I needed ghoti_mhic_uait to give me a lift to a small town 15 miles away, because this million boosters a day programme is a bit of a mess. But when I turned up it was all very efficient, big spacious sports hall, loads of marshalls, straight through to a vaccination station and straight out again, bam.

I currently feel tired, nothing worse than that, and I'm not even convinced I feel more tired than I did yesterday. It's been a long, dark, lonely autumn, and that's as likely as the vaccine to be the culprit.

Recently read: I wanted to share two profiles of people I admire:

Rabbi Arthur Waskow, profiled by Ben Harris in the Jewish Telegraphic agency. CN: police violence.

Zeynep Tüfekçi, profiled by Antonio Garcia-Martinez. CN: pandemic.

( informing myself about the pandemic )

Currently reading: Emma by Jane Austen, mainly because it's Judith's set book and I'm interested in what she's learning. It's perhaps not as consistently hilarious as some of Austen's stuff, and sometimes verges on the cringey, but it's good to reread.

Up next: There's a sequel to The Goblin Emperor! I'm very very excited to read The witness for the dead by Katherine Addison, but I'm not sure when it's actually going to be available for me to rush to the internet and buy. so maybe I should pick something else first.

Recently read A memory called empire by Arkady Martine. (c) AnnaLinden Weller 2019; pub 2020 Tor; ISBN 978-1-5290-0160-0.

Basically everybody who even slightly shares tastes with me has been recommending me this. The rec that tipped me over the edge into actually getting hold of it was a comment by cjwatson that made me think, ah, it's a diaspora book. And then I was grumpy because several of my partners own it in annoying Amazon ebook format that can't easily be lent, and I didn't really want to re-buy it, or faff about breaking DRM and format shifting, but in the end I decided to stop being grumpy and just go out and rebuy it in non-Amazon format.

Anyway, I'm glad I did because A memory called empire is basically pure Liv-bait, and also very good.

Murderbot: Artificial condition by Martha Wells. (c) Martha Wells 2018; Pub 2018 Tor; ISBN 978-1-250-18693-5.

I enjoyed All systems red and I was excited to read the sequel, especially now there's a full-length novel out. This one I read by physically borrowing jack's Kindle, which works well for reading while I do my exercise.

Artificial condition is fun and short, a bit middle-of-trilogy-ish but generally worth reading.

( A memory called empire )

( Artificial Condition )

Currently reading The cooking gene by Michael W Twitty. This is non-fiction by an African-American man (who is also gay and Jewish) tracing his personal roots while investigating the various historical and culinary influences on contemporary African-American soul food. It's really well written and readable, and obviously the subject matter is quite depressing, but I'm finding it pitched in a way that I can learn from.

My only minor complaint is that it's written for an American audience and sometimes he's contradicting a commonly held simplification of history without explaining what it is I'm assumed to believe by default. This is especially an issue with the food history sections, because he'll say, everybody knows [dish I've never heard of].

Up next: My sister sent us a book she thought we'd like, Sea of Rust by C Robert Cargill. It's apparently about post-apocalyptic conflict between robots...

Having missed at least a dozen Wednesdays, let's see if I can catch up with some brief reviews.

Not-so-recently read: ( The boy on the bridge by MR Carey; CN zombies, ableism )

( Normal People by Sally Rooney; passing mention of domestic violence )

( Demonology and the Tri-Phasic Model of Trauma: An Integrative Approach, by Nnm )

Currently reading: King of morning Queen of day by Ian McDonald. This is an early McDonald about fairies in Ireland around the time of the revolution. McDonald is very good at weaving the supernatural into real world history, and countering soppy American takes on Irish mythology.

I'm a bit tempted to DNF the book, though; I've put it down for several weeks and I'm disinclined to restart it. Partly because it is actually three books about three generations of half-fae women, and I didn't quite have the energy to start again with the second protag just when I'd got interested in the first.

And mainly because it is rather too rapey for my tastes. I mean, bad things happen to male characters but they are things like being fooled by scams and losing their wealth and professional reputation. Girls and women get raped by fairies, and it veers a bit too close to the classic horror trope of being punished for being curious about sex, plus the descriptions are unnecessarily detailed.

Up next: Don't know, I'm rather bogged down in KoMQoD so I haven't thought much about the next thing.

Recently read: siderea made a post covering a topic I've been trying to articulate for a while, science fanboys who get all militant in the public sphere about the superior scientific virtue of modern, allopathic medicine over its supposed enemies of woo and superstition.

The focus of the post isn't quite where I would have put it. I don't think the main problem is putting medicine on a pedestal, exactly. And the connected post about pedestalization of teachers and school-based, institutional education I don't agree with nearly so much. But I do very heartily agree that there's a massive problem with rhetoric around science-based medicine. (We usually say "evidence-based medicine" this side of the pond.) Yes, actual medicine which has been rigorously proved to be effective is a thoroughly good idea, and yes, people selling woo and claiming that it's "alternative" medicine do a lot of harm. But there are also real problems in medicine and medical research, some due to error and some due to bias and abuse of power, and both of those classes of problems can be both systematic and individual.

(I would also add that it does a disservice to science to equate "scientific" with, always right and never to be questioned by non-experts. Because that's the opposite of science, that's dogma. The whole point of science is that you change your models in the light of new evidence, and empirical reality, not people who wield authority, is the arbiter of truth.)

Currently reading: Declare by Tim Powers. I'm about 2/3 of the way through, and it's suddenly switched viewpoint from a made-up protagonist to, er, Kim Philby who was an actual historical person. It's also gradually committed to unambiguously being set in a world where the supernatural is real and important in international affairs. I really like the portrayal of djinns, and the setting of a meta Great Game between humanity and the spirit world intertwined with the Cold War between different factions of humans. But it's a bit weird to have a real person as a viewpoint character in this AU. (I didn't mind when Philby was a minor character alongside TE Lawrence and Harold Macmillan.)

Up next: Not sure in terms of fiction, but definitely lots of course-related texts.