Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

Books read in the last couple of months:

Sofia Samatar, The Winged Histories:. This is odd and somewhat disjointed, set in the same secondary world as A Stranger in Olondria (which I read ages ago and remember very little about). The threads all come together at the end. I’d been displeased earlier because I thought we’d lost both the first narrative voice, which I liked, and the continuity of the narrator's story. The book does get back to her story, or at least her sister and cousin’s stories.

James Thurber, The Thirteen Clocks: read aloud, because Adrian had never read it. Still delightful, a fairy tale set in a world where people have at least heard of fairy tales.

Lorraine Baston, Rules: A Short History of What We Live By. Baston talks about rules as measuring devices, as sets of instructions, and as models, and various shifts in meaning over time. She talks about thick and thin rules, thick rules being ones with (more) examples and details, and which anticipate more exceptions. A about the change in how people learn/are taught all sorts of things, including math. I enjoyed this, and if that description sounds interesting you probably will too.

Edward Eager, The Time Garden: Children's magical adventures while spending the summer with a relative because their parents are in London, working on the premiere of a play. Another read-aloud, this one was new to me, and fun.

Helen Scales, What the Wild Sea Can Be: The state, as of 2023, and possible futures of the ocean and ocean life in the Anthropocene, according to an oceanographer. I asked the library for this because I liked the author's book about mollusks.

I read fewer books than I'd expected to while I was in London. Recently finished:

The Grimoire Grammar School Parent-Teacher Association, by Caitlin Rozakis, is a fantasy novel about a magical school, from the viewpoint of a student's parent.

The Eights, by Joanna Miller, is about four women students who enroll at Oxford University the year the university starts offering degrees to female students. It's set in 1920-21, with flashbacks to earlier in the four women's lives. (The "eights" in the title means the residents of corridor 8.)

Between Silk and Cyanide: A Code-maker's War, by Leo Marks, describes working at one of the British government agencies that sent coded messages to underground agents in occupied Europe during the second world war. The author's job included deciphering messages that were mangled either in transit, or by the agent who encoded them, and coming up with new and hopefully better codes.

Evvie Blake Starts Over, by Linda Holmes, is about a woman who was in the process of leaving her husband when he died in a car accident, and her recovery from both the bad marriage and from all the people who expect her to be grieving him. A romance, more or less.

I enjoyed all of these, and don't remember who recommended any most of them to me (adrian_turtle just reminded me that she recommended The Grimoire Grammar School PTA). There's a range of moods here, less because of planning than because of what came up on my library hold lists.

None of these books are useful for my Boston Public Library summer reading bingo cards: I'd already filled the squares for "book with a name in the title" and "published in 2025." I have a book with a green cover on my desk, and got email while I was in London telling me that it had been automatically renewed for another three weeks.

Last week:

*Cattitude read Blue Moose, by Daniel Pinkwater, aloud to us, because it's one of his favorites and Adrian had never read it. I've reread the book several times, and was happy to hear it out loud.

*I read Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil, by Oliver Darkshire. Decidedly weird, funny fantasy. A lot of the humor is in the footnotes, which seem to be at least a quarter of the text. Also, the title does in fact describe the book. Isabella lives in a poor, out-of-the-way village, whose wizard keeps the local goblin market in check, until one day he doesn't. The goblins sell one thing, unnaturally tempting and dangerous fruit.

*Did not finish: Girls Against God, by Jenny Hval. I don't remember where I saw this recommended, and just couldn't get into it.

Currently reading:

*Installment Immortality, by Seanan McGuire, the latest book in her InCryptid series. I started it late last night, and only read a few pages before turning the light out.

*Twelve Trees, by Daniel Lewis, nonfiction about trees and climate change. I picked this up at the libraru, as a "book with a green caover" for the summer reading challenge.

I am still partway through Darnton's The Revolutionary Temper, about Paris in the half century before the French Revolution. I do want to go back to it, but I needed to sync my kindle to put other books on it before going to Montreal.

Books finished last month:

Penric and the Bandit, by Lois McMaster Bujold: the latest Penric and Desdemona story, which I liked. The bandit is the main viewpoint character, and this book doesn't (imho) depend as much on familiarity with the series as some of the previous stories do.

Perfect Accord, by Celia Lake: another of her fantasy historical romances set in Albion. The non-romance part of the plot involves an illegal conspiracy, and it's not entirely clear who they're conspiring against, and some of the conspirators don't seem to know either. The heroine of this one and her gay male best friend agreed, at 13, to get married if they reach the age when their families are pressuring them to marry, and neither of them has found someone they prefer.

I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons, by Peter Beagle: novella about a dragon-hunter/exterminator, who would like to be almost anything else; a princess whose parents are hoping she will like one of the many princes who keep turning up; and the first prince she does like, who was wandering around as part of avoiding his parents plans for him. Good.

Lady Eve's Last Con, by Rebecca Fraimow, a queer Jewish sf romance, set on a satellite of Pluto, with some references to Brooklyn. I think Ruthanna recommended this one.

I read both of those while visiting rysmiel, and didn't make any notes,

Since the middle of December:

Bookshops and Bonedust, by Travis Baldree: This is a prequel, I guess, to Legends and Lattes. I liked it, and there was something pleasantly recursive about getting caught up in a book that is significantly about other people being caught up in books (people who think of reading as something that other people do). (If you didn't like the first book, you probably won't like this one either.)

Paladin's Faith, by T. Kingfisher. This is billed as "book four of the saint of steel," with an interesting plot about industrial espionage/sabotage along with the demon-hunting and (how) will these two characters wind up together. I liked it, and think it's at least as good as the previous volumes in the series. There's room for three more books, at one per paladin. I'd like a story that's more about the Temple of the White Rat, Zale and Bishop Beartongue, and/or the gnoles, but I'm not sure a romance structure would work for those.

Liberty's Daughter, by Naomi Kritzer: Beck is a teenager living with her father on a seastead, i.e., a group of offshore platforms and converted ships that has somehow managed not to be part of any country. The story starts with some odd discoveries Beck makes while finding random-seeming things someone wants enough to pay or trade for, like size nine black sandals, and the stakes get higher as the story goes on. The people who run the seastead call themselves libertarians, but Beck's father gives arbitrary-seeming orders and expects her to obey, and these are the sort of libertarians who are happy to have most of the scutwork done by indentured servants. [I think this is a fix-up of a series of stories that were originally published separately.]

Mostly just another list, with some notes copied from my "booklog" file.

Lake, Celia, Winter's Charms. Three winter-themed novellas connected to some of her novels. I particularly liked the one about how Seth, Dilly, and Golshan became a triad (after Seth and Dilly were married, and also after Golshan was seriously wounded in the War).

Rather, Lina, Sisters of the Vast Black. Weird sf, with living spaceships, some of them convents, one of which is named Our Lady of Infinite Constellations, and vaguely hand-waved FTL. This is set a few decades after a very destructive war that left behind extremely nasty plagues. I enjoyed the story, but it is vastly implausible, and not just because it involves faster-than-light travel. This is the first in a loose series, but I didn't like it enough to look for the next one.

Christie, Agatha, After the Funeral and One, Two, Buckle My Shoe. Murder mysteries about Hercule Poirot, well constructed but ( spoiler )

Moniquill Blackgoose, To Shape A Dragon's Breath. A very good fantasy novel set in a somewhat alternate-history 19th century New England, with dragons. The viewpoint character is a member of the Wampanoag tribe, as is the author, and a significant part of the plot is driven by settler prejudices against the Indigenous inhabitants of the area. First in a trilogy, and I definitely want to read the next book.

Hogan, Linda, The Radiant Lives of Animals. A mix of poetry and natural history, hard to describe but I liked it. I think someone recommended this to me, but I don't remember who.

Mandel, Emily St. John. Sea of Tranquility. An oddly constructed novel about time travel and pandemics.

Dimaline, Cherie, Venco. This is a fantasy novel about a poor Metis woman from Toronto who finds a spoon, which connects her to women who are working against a deadline to assemhle a coven, and about her relationship with her grandmother. I liked this, and not just because it takes it takes older women seriously.

Books I've finished in the last several weeks:

You're My Kind, by Claire Lydon is a lesbian romance that I may have gotten as a freebie via the BookBub email list. At the beginning of the story, the protagonist still misses the ex who walked out on her without a word several years ago, and also has trouble trusting anyone because if Justine could do that, so could anyone. The tone is sweet, but it felt like a little too many of the necessary conversations were not just offstage, but of the form "Maddie, Justine did X" and "Justine, Maddie says Y." Yes, the genre promises the reader a happy ending, but the author is expected to supply it, and this has a bit of the tone of "meanwhile, back at the ranch..."

No Love for the Wicked, by Jessica Cage, is a fantasy set mostly in a world where most people have magic. People are divided into Lights and Darks, which is somehow innate but also everyone is told which they are in high school. There's a romance plot, between two people who meet as adults, mixed in with the assignment to do a series of arbitrary-seeming things to save the world. The plot is driven partly by the protagonist/narrator's mother having carefully not told her the Very Important Prophecy about her. On the other hand, ( spoiler ) This was via a StoryBundle of fantasy books by BIPOC authors, and was clearly spell-checked rather than proofread, based on homonyms and missing words.

The White Mosque: a Memoir, by Sofia Samatar. Someone recmmended it, and I liked her novel A Stranger in Olondria, so I got this from the library.

The White Mosque is a linked collection of many short pieces about Samatar's family; Mennonite history; and her own life, built around a visit/pilgrimage to Uzbekistan in search of German Mennonite history. The "white mosque" of the title is a Mennonite church in Uzbekistan, built in the late 19th century. Samatar talks about having a Somali father and a white American mother, and looking for a place in a religion that still thinks of itself as ethnically (north) German, although most Mennonites today are people of color who live in Africa, Asia, or Latin America.

Samatar thinks and writes about memory, and about what missionary work does for, and to, the people doing it and those they're trying to convert. And numerous other topics, including the Aral Sea, a failed end-of-the-world prophecy that led some of those Mennonites to what is now Uzbekistan, and the history of photography and movie-making in Central Asia.

The book feels a bit like long strings of beads, making something but not a straightforward narrative. This shouldn't have surprised me; A Stranger in Olondria wasn't a linear narrative either. The acknowledgements describe the book as "creative nonfiction," saying some living people's names have been changed but the stories are as true as she can make them and the places are real.

I'm Glad My Mom Died, by Jennette McCurdy, is good but not pleasant reading. It's a memoir by a former child actor. There's a lot about her being a parentified child, including that she was expected to make her mother happy by, among other things, never having a different preference than her mother about anything, even favorite colors.

Current reading: The Thursday Murder Club, by Richard Osman, which feels relatively light so far. And I'm still (slowly) rereading Always Coming Home.

Several weeks' reading:

( cut for length )

brief and likely incomplete, because the computer I usually track this on is still in a box:

New (to me): Samuel Delany, Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand; Katherine Addison, The Witness for the Dead

reread: Pat Wrede, Calling on Dragons; Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men and A Hat Full of Sky;

currently rereading: Eleanor Arnason, _A Woman of the Iron People_; Pratchett, _Interesting Times_.

This is based heavily on what I had handy on the kindle, either owned or current from the library. (The Delany is from a three-novel ebook, and I started it while sitting in the ER having my heart monitored recently); adrian_turtle had a paperback of Interesting Times in reach last night while I was in her room staying away from the A/C installer.

I haven't been reading much that feels like it belongs here (examples of things that don't: news articles, email). So, for the last couple of months, a list with some comments:

Goblin Fruit, by Celia Lake: a sequel, sort of, to Outcrossing: magic/alt history romance in 1920s England, with a detective story. One of the main characters in Outcrossing appears in the background of this. (I got the first one free; this was $2.95 on Amazon, which is reasonable, but I may wait before getting any more, because I have a lot else available compared to how much I'm reading.

How Much for Just the Planet? by John M. Ford. This was a reread of an odd, farcical Star Trek novel. It was light and pleasant, but I remember it being funnier the last time I read it.

The Angel of the Crows, by Katherine Addison: a fun, somewhat weird spin-off of the Sherlock Holmes universe, with angels and steampunk-ish automata; the role of Sherlock Holmes in these adventures is played by a literal angel, and his Watson is Dr. Doyle, who came home from Afghanistan with a partly-metaphysical wound. I don't remember the original Doyle stories well enough to know how close she stays to those, for the episodes that clearly started there, like the one about the Hound of the Baskervilles. (The afterword says the book started as wingfic of the Sherlock TV series.)

A Memory Called Empire, by Arkady Martine, has dense worldbuilding, and an engaging narrator/protagonist, and is as good as everyone has been telling me.

Silver in the Wood, by Emily Tesh: fantasy, with a background including a seriously bad love relationship, about a man who is more than 400 uears old and guardian of a woodland, and what happens when a new landowner shows up, with questions. This is good, and I'm not sure how to describe it, but it seems worth noting that one of the important characters is a middle-aged woman, treated sympathetically. (This is fantasy in a fairy-tale sense, rather than high fantasy or a "secondary world" like Elizabeth Lynn's Arun or Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint.