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#a spindle splintered

lakecountylibrary · 11 months

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It's my favorite time of year! Time to make my annual blog post about the best queer books I read in the last 12 months!

I've been doing this since 2017 so here, go back and see some trends: 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022

Now, you may look at the covers of this year's batch and think... Four out of five of those are... kind of intense looking. Are you okay. And the answer is no, but are any of us? These books will help! Probably!

The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson (lesbian, gay, bisexual, poly characters)

Ok so this book comes with like. All of the trigger warnings. Government sanctioned homophobia, racism, eugenics, graphic depictions of violence... read this one when you're feeling strong. It's a fantasy novel about characters who fight against those things in a world colonized by a profit-driven (and often, too familiar) empire. Brilliantly written, but steel your heart.

Twelve Percent Dread by @emilyscartoons (nonbinary characters)

Let's lighten up a bit, shall we? This one's a graphic novel that, as promised on the back cover, is fast paced and action-packed. Follow the adventures of Katie and Nas as they navigate jobs, adulthood, and the whims of one eccentric tech CEO who's going to change the world, one way or another.

The World We Make by @nkjemisin (ace, gay, lesbian, trans characters)

This one's a sequel, so sorry (not sorry) you're going to have to read The City We Became first. You'll love it, and you'll love this sequel. It's about New York manifested in human avatars, and it's about home and the power of being where you belong. The characters deal with some very real, familiar problems - and then they STOMP ON THEM WITH AWESOME GIANT CITY POWERS. Very satisfying read, highly recommend.

Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (wlw characters & general gender shenanigans)

This one's the third in the series, also not sorry about this one, start with Gideon the Ninth. It's sci fi! It's necromancy! God is there and he's depressed. It's really hard to describe.

A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow (bisexual, lesbian characters)

A novella for when you are short on time or attention span and want a Sleeping Beauty remix told by an author who knows her folklore. Definitely have the second novella in the series, A Mirror Mended, on hand for when you finish - you'll want more.

See more of Robin's recs

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desdasiwrites · 8 months

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"I'm at least three-fourths straight, but her lashes are very long, and very golden, and I'm not made of stone."

– Alix E. Harrow, A Spindle Splintered

#book quote of the day #alix e. harrow #a spindle splintered #fantasy #fairy tale retelling #zinnia gray #novella #lgbtqia+ literature #sleeping beauty #sapphic #book quotes #book recommendations

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literary-illuminati · 2 years

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Books I Read In July

31. India In The Persianate Age by Richard M. Eaton

So this has been on my list for, like, 2 years(?),since I asked for recs on Indian history after finishing After Tamerlane and someone mentioned it. Having finished it - good recommendation! Shockingly readable, and if absolutely nothing else has given me a basic understanding of the broad strokes of medieval Indian history. (Now just to read up on the Congo basin and points south, and South-East Asia, and I’ll have something like an extraordinarily cursory understanding of the political history of the entire world).

But no it really was interesting. Beaton’s central thesis - that it’s more useful to think of medieval India as a period of conflict and syncretization between Persianiate and Sanskrit cultural spheres, not a period of holy war and strict us-them divides - seems a bit overstated, but it’s definitely worth taking seriously (and certainly a useful corrective to the political narratives that have dominated since). The Mughal’s in particular seemed to have been a really syncretic empire, legitimized by islamic clergy but with Rajputs and other hindu aristocrats playing keys roles in just about all realms of the state, and the symbolism and rhetoric of the state definitely seemed to be pretty thoroughly syncretized by the eighteenth century.

Also, like, to the extent there even is a popular memory of the Mughals in the west, it’s definitely of the ‘ancient, decadent empire’ sort, so useful to remember that they’re almost quintessentially early modern.

It’s mostly an aside in the book, but one thing that really did strike me (largely because it agreed with what I remember of Darwin’s take in After Tamerlane) is that the colonization of India was in large part only possible because India was so much like Europe - The collapse of the Mughals sort of rhymes with general anarchy of the Early Modern in terms of giving opportunities for state formation, and more specifically there had been something like an Indian Military Revolution leaving large populations of trained professional mercenaries very skilled at their craft and without much loyalty beyond their next paychecks, and (probably more importantly, especially in Bengal) fairly sophisticated credit markets that could be tapped to provide capital for military adventures. If the Brits hadn’t been able to tap into both the military and credit markets and exploit them to the hilt, there’s simply no way they would have been able to exploit the opportunities they did and dominate the subcontinent.

Which definitely does lead one to wonder how much of a delay you’d need to allow proper Indian fiscal-military states to consolidate on their own and resist complete European domination/jump into the empire-building game themselves, and what that would have looked like. From my (again, very vague) understanding of it, the Sikh Empire and Sultanate of Mysore managed to get pretty close to fighting the Brits on even ground even historically.

32. The Galaxy and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers

Hugo novel nominee 6 out of 6! We did it! Confetti and sparklers!

Okay it’s not really hate-reading but I’ve literally read all but one thing Chambers has ever published at this point, I think. Please don’t let the sequel to Hymn to the Wild Build get nominated for a Hugo next year.

But no honestly I didn’t even hate this one. Extremely readable - would have been great for a train ride or day stuck in an airport - and it even has a bit of interpersonal conflict! Little, little bit, argument lasts for three pages before they agree to disagree, and I get the feeling I’m supposed to find one side much more obviously correct than I do, but still!

I’ve said it before, but I really do want to like the Wayfarers universe. And, well, in large part that assuredly just because I can’t think of any other proper space opera settings that have even slightly taken off that are newer than Mass Effect, and also it’s the blessedly rare setting where the entire universe isn’t warped around the sheer magnetic Specialness of humanity, but still, it’s a fun, well-thought out setting! Would love to read a story with a plot set in it some day!

Though the whole Aeluon demographics thing is still bothering me - a population can’t recover from a bottleneck when the average number of kids per potential mother is less than two! Especially when they’ve got the whole galactic military superpower thing going on. They should still be slowly limping to extinction! (and really, if you actually want to dig into the drama of a huge cultural expectation to have kids, that seems like a way richer vein to tap anyway.)

33. Six-Gun Snow White Catherynne Valente

So on account of really loving The Past Is Red, and still having lines from The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland stuck in my head on occasion, and having gone feral over L’Esprit de L’Escalier when it came out last year, I just kind of decided to put holds on every Valente book my library had (there were a lot). Of the three I’ve read so far, this was easily the weakest

I mean the conceit is good - I still adore retelling fairytales and classics in new settings (fuck you I will defend 10 Things I Hate About You and She’s The Man to my dying breath), I love mixing up any post-medieval time period with mythic/fantasy elements, and the prose and imagery is still mostly very good.

But after the first act the whole thing just felt very confused and meandering and not sure what to do with itself, honestly. And maybe I’m just not cultured enough to get it, but the ending really fell a bit flat imo.

34. Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed The World by Adam Tooze

Since he’s the public intellectual of the moment, and also because my god I knew less about the history of the Great Finacial Crisis than I thought I did.

So beyond an understanding of just how long the crsis lasted and how comparatively hypercompetent the Chinese government was compared to anyone else, I have mostly been left with an incredible disdain for the European elite in general and Germany’s political class in particular. Just, totally fucked everything up and made everything worse for everyone, for almost no reason whatsoever. France comes out smelling of roses and seeming well-governed, by comparison. France!

Beyond that, it really just was a decade where the West’s most salient political divide was between well-heeled technocrats trying to keep global capitalism running relatively smoothly and the inarticulate nationalist screaming, huh? Truly depressing era for the left. (tbf so are most of them).

Relatedly but wow has spending the last section on Ukraine made this book age amazingly. More topical now than four years ago, somehow.

35. Comfort Me With Apples by Catherynne Valente

So this one I liked a fair bit better than Snow White, though honestly it really could have been a short story instead of a novella. The bits of the HOA agreement for the magical-realist-suburb the story takes place in before each chapter were clever and nicely dystopian/faerie-ish.

The whole conceit of the Garden of Eden as this stifling hyper-manicured stepford wives gated community was generally really well done, but as previously mentioned I’m an extremely easy sell for that sortof thing. It really did take me altogether too long to realize that all the other people had animal names, so it seemed clever to me when that was pointed out anyway.

Beyond that it was all a bit confused, really. Blasphemous in a 1990s feminist fantasy sort of way? Adam is also Bluebeard, a giant and a brute who murders his wives when they realize what he is after finding the mementos he keeps, or otherwise displease him and then demanding his Father make him a new one, Eve eventually convincing him to eat the Apple is something like an analogy to poisoning an abusive husband. That sort of thing.

36. Deathless by Catherynne Valente

Now this one, this one was good, IMO. But then like I said, I’m an easy sell for twentieth century fairy tales, and even moreso Soviet ones. And Valente really leaned into the fairy tale-ness with this one, all the rich description and obscure metaphors and triptychs upon trptychs upon triptychs. Also the little domestic/family spirits who’d gotten cooped together in communal housing like everyone else and formed a housing committee to start making the place bigger on the inside (and realized that they can cause far more trouble for people by being informants than just spoiling milk) and the kazakh dragon whose horde is oil and wheat were both great.

The plot was, honestly, still rather meandering. But hey, when it’s a novel length fairy tale that kind of comes with the territory. And being in Marya’s head was always enjoyable.

…really don’t have too much to say about this one except that it was good, honestly.

37. A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow

And Hugo Novella Nominee number five!

So I absolutely adored Ten Thousand Doors of January, which was also the only thing by Harrow I’d previously read. So it’s possible I went in with overinflated expectations. But still, this was honestly a pretty big dissapointment.

And okay, part of it is, just like songs about how sexy being a musician is or dense essays about how criticism and Studying Theory are moral imperatives, stories about how ~important~ stories are have to be really good to not leave me rolling my eyes. And that goes double and triple for stuff that just leans into many worlds theory to justify itself about why there are all these convenient parallel worlds where fairy tales are real exactly as you imagine them, and triple for stuff that tries to get all cute and meta about all the cliches but then still expect you to take it seriously.

So I mean, even going in, this probably wasn’t the book for me. But still, it was just so…impressed with itself? Or no, that’s unfair, more that the reviews and marketing copy on the book jacket were impressed with it. And I just..didn’t see it? If it wasn’t gay the entire plot seems like it could have been a made-for-tv movie I watched as a kid. Certainly not exactly ‘subversive’ or ‘groundbreaking’ or whatever.

Also I was kind of surprised how how fucked up the original Sleeping Beauty story was (Princeess didn’t wake up with true love’s kiss, she woke up when the prince rapes her while she sleeps, she gets pregnant, and her newborn baby suckles the splinter out of her finger) was treated as this, like, shocking revelation. I mean I was absolutely a miserable child who sought these things out but still, pretty sure I’d heard that by the time I was 14. Like Cinderella’s stepsisters slicing chunks of their feet off to fit in the slipper, y’know?

#monthly tally #analysis/review #a spindle splintered #alix e. harrow #deathless #Six Gun Snow White #comfort me with apples #Catherynne Valente #crashed #Adam Tooze #the galaxy and the ground within #becky chambers #India in the Persianate Age #Richard M. Eaton

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nevinslibrary · 2 months

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Weird & Wonderful Wednesday

Ah, more fractured fairytales, and the start of Harrow’s series that’s called Fractured Fairytales. In this case it’s about Zinnia Gray. She’s about to turn 21, which is as old as she’s going to get since because of an illness she got. No one else with that illness has lived past 21.

Of course, that would be a boring book (and sorta short). Zinnia’s best friend Charm wants to make Zinnia’s last birthday an awesome one, with a Sleeping Beauty theme. Except, when Zinnia actually pricks her finger, well, suddenly she’s adventuring through the multiverse, alongside another ‘Sleeping Beauty’ named Primrose.

Like a proper fractured fairytale, this takes these fairytales and tilts them on their head, or their side, or sorta upside down and inside out. The characters were really fun, and unique, and it was a fast read too. And, it is the first book too, with the second out as well.

You may like this book If you Liked: The Charmed Wife by Olga Grushin, Malice by Heather Walter, or Lava Red Feather Blue by Molly Ringle

A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow

#weirdandwonderfulwednesday #nmlRA #nevins memorial library #a spindle splintered #alix e harrow #fractured fairytales #sleeping beauty

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myhikari21things · 4 months

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Read of A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow (2021) (119pgs)

#a spindle splintered #alix e. harrow #fiction #hardcover #2020s #reread

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daphneblakess · 2 years

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books i read in 2022: a spindle splintered by alix e. harrow

Even among other nerds who majored in folklore, Sleeping Beauty is nobody’s favorite. Romantic girls like Beauty and the Beast, vanilla girls like Cinderella, goth girls like Snow White. Only dying girls like Sleeping Beauty.

#a spindle splintered #alix e. harrow #sleeping beauty #storyseekers #booksociety #my edits #2022books

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nerdishfeels · 1 year

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Best Reads of 2022! 📚

Hey guys! These are the best books I read this year. I have to say, having looked at my old posts, it was really nice to see that I read a lot more and met my reading goal of 20 books! A lot went on this year but I’m proud that I was still able to do what I love.

I read some wonderful books from new authors (like Olivia Atwater) as well as favourite authors such as Alix E. Harrow. I also read some lovely manga too and discovered Spy X Family (which is so wholesome and I need more!).

I’m glad that I read a lot of great Asian fiction too. I think it’s become a favourite genre of mine, reading different stories inspired by Asia history or fairytales.

I can’t wait to see what my reading looks like in 2023!

#best reads #best reads of 2022 #2022 wrap up #half a soul #spy x family #the silence of bones #the once and future witches #almond #a spindle splintered #ten thousand stitches #the bone spindle #shaman king #fairy tail #the way of the house husband #six crimson cranes #booklr #books #bookworm

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bookishnewt · 1 year

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I think this prince was named Harold for the sole purpose of the meme.

(Text Excerpt from A Spindle Splintered: “Well, Harold,” I say gently. “They’re lesbians.” The Prince stares back at me with the dull, suspicious squint of a man who has been mocked on previous occasions by words he doesn’t know.)

#a spindle splintered #this book was much smaller than I expected #like a fairytale so it’s rather fitting #memes #they’re lesbians harold

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godzilla-reads · 2 years

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