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Apparently I haven't done a reading post in a couple of months. So, briefly:
Relatively recent reading:
Ursula Le Guin: The Last Interviews: This isn't quite what it says on the tin: one of these goes back to when she was working on Always Coming Home, though the last one in the collection appeared after her death. It's somewhat repetitive, more in the introductory matter that was published with each interview than in the interviews themselves, in part because Le Guin made it clear that she didn't want to answer the same questions over and over. I'm fairly sure the collection also included some things I hadn't known. I can't really recommend the collection as a whole, though people who are interested in Le Guin's life and work might want to read just the actual last interview here.
The Halcyon Fairy Book, by Ursula Vernon. In the first half of this, Ursula Vernon reads and comments entertainingly on some odd fairy tales, pointing out the funny, absurd, or just plain incomprehensible bits as well as comparing versions of things. [These started on Twitter, I think.] The second half is a reprint of her short collection Toad Words, which I had already read.
Arsenic in the Azaleas, by Dale Meyer. This is a cozy mystery, of the "woman relocating to a small town after divorce or other life disruption" subgenre. I got it as a free ebook (via BookBub), and enjoyed it enough to finish it, though a copy editor might have helped tidy some inconsistencies about what the viewpoint character knows/has experience with in terms of gardening. (I also worry about the family who brought her up to be incompetent with anything to do with cooking.) First in a series of several about the amateur detective in question.
Catfishing on Catnet, by Naomi Kritzer. This is a very good near-future YA novel about a teenager and her online friends, including the AI that runs her online home. The narration switches viewpoint, mostly Steph (human) and the AI (who uses the handle CheshireCat on Catnet). Steph has never lived in the same place for long, because her mother is terrified of Steph's father finding them; the story starts as they move to yet another obscure town. A very good sequel to "Cat Pictures, Please"--the AI narrator of that story has set up the social network where payment is in cat pictures instead of money.
Wilding: Returning Nature to our Farm, by Isabella Tree. About twenty years ago, Tree and her husband gave up on conventional farming, because they were going broke. Instead, they let the hedgerows and weeds grow as they would, and slowly introduced ponies, pigs, and other livestock that seemed appropriate to the landscape. They tracked the appearance/return of locally rare, or sometimes UK-rare, animal species. Tree compares the common idea of a closed-canopy forest as the natural and/or inevitable climax ecosystem to a medieval (or earlier) mixed woodland with brambles and hedgerows, which lets new oaks establish themselves in the woods. Tree argues that ecological succession is an oversimplification if not myth.
This is definitely a case of "believe the bird, not the bird book," as various birds and insects that were considered to only live/breed in woodlands turned up in their meadows and hedgerows. Stepping back from turtle doves and individual oak trees, Tree talks about how de-canalizing the bit of river on their land reduced flooding downstream. Someone recommended this book to me, and they were right.
Relatively recent reading:
Ursula Le Guin: The Last Interviews: This isn't quite what it says on the tin: one of these goes back to when she was working on Always Coming Home, though the last one in the collection appeared after her death. It's somewhat repetitive, more in the introductory matter that was published with each interview than in the interviews themselves, in part because Le Guin made it clear that she didn't want to answer the same questions over and over. I'm fairly sure the collection also included some things I hadn't known. I can't really recommend the collection as a whole, though people who are interested in Le Guin's life and work might want to read just the actual last interview here.
The Halcyon Fairy Book, by Ursula Vernon. In the first half of this, Ursula Vernon reads and comments entertainingly on some odd fairy tales, pointing out the funny, absurd, or just plain incomprehensible bits as well as comparing versions of things. [These started on Twitter, I think.] The second half is a reprint of her short collection Toad Words, which I had already read.
Arsenic in the Azaleas, by Dale Meyer. This is a cozy mystery, of the "woman relocating to a small town after divorce or other life disruption" subgenre. I got it as a free ebook (via BookBub), and enjoyed it enough to finish it, though a copy editor might have helped tidy some inconsistencies about what the viewpoint character knows/has experience with in terms of gardening. (I also worry about the family who brought her up to be incompetent with anything to do with cooking.) First in a series of several about the amateur detective in question.
Catfishing on Catnet, by Naomi Kritzer. This is a very good near-future YA novel about a teenager and her online friends, including the AI that runs her online home. The narration switches viewpoint, mostly Steph (human) and the AI (who uses the handle CheshireCat on Catnet). Steph has never lived in the same place for long, because her mother is terrified of Steph's father finding them; the story starts as they move to yet another obscure town. A very good sequel to "Cat Pictures, Please"--the AI narrator of that story has set up the social network where payment is in cat pictures instead of money.
Wilding: Returning Nature to our Farm, by Isabella Tree. About twenty years ago, Tree and her husband gave up on conventional farming, because they were going broke. Instead, they let the hedgerows and weeds grow as they would, and slowly introduced ponies, pigs, and other livestock that seemed appropriate to the landscape. They tracked the appearance/return of locally rare, or sometimes UK-rare, animal species. Tree compares the common idea of a closed-canopy forest as the natural and/or inevitable climax ecosystem to a medieval (or earlier) mixed woodland with brambles and hedgerows, which lets new oaks establish themselves in the woods. Tree argues that ecological succession is an oversimplification if not myth.
This is definitely a case of "believe the bird, not the bird book," as various birds and insects that were considered to only live/breed in woodlands turned up in their meadows and hedgerows. Stepping back from turtle doves and individual oak trees, Tree talks about how de-canalizing the bit of river on their land reduced flooding downstream. Someone recommended this book to me, and they were right.