#reading roundup | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

harriertail · 1 month

Text

start of year book thoughts

Revolutionary Road - the first half meanders a bit to build up to the ending which was... unexpected? I see why this is used in sixth form college english classes because it Says A Lot About SoSighEtTea but it did just feel like a bunch of chapters loosely linked together, April's sudden Part Three episode really came out of nowhere to me (maybe that's the point, but she had POV chapters and then just didnt at all really). Still I enjoyed it, loved the descriptions and writing style. I liked John.

Wise Blood - finally. Oh my god. Hazel Motes you are Insane. I didnt fully get what he was preaching ("i seek the truth and there is no truth?" There is no sin and no redemption? So hes a nihilist? Or smth?) I think he really is a religious man but can't cope in a world full of fake preachers and conmen and things, thus he does all That. fucking loved Enoch tho. What the fuck? The Sabbath stuff was.... questionable but also makes me think Haze probably has PTSD and no sense of who he is anymore and is trying to be someone else (someone mean and cruel) when hes really just an idiot. But where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it!

Djibouti - Leonard's dialogue is definitely modern, to the point, reads like someone is speaking. It's not my kind of reading tbh. I'm also sick of how every female protag i seem to read (by men) always has a mention of her body/how sexy/good looking she is randomly, when its not part of the plot, she can't just... be. DNF.

Go to the Widow-maker - gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous writing, what a beautiful tranquil sea, what beautiful wildlife, what a setting! Didn't care for the characters. A life goal of jacking off in a cave is nawt interesting. Oh everyone's cheating on each other? He's insecure about how he compares to other men? How novel. DNF.

Two Sherpas - maybe it was the translation but this was so... pretentious. It feels like he just wanted to write about Flavius and Marullus instead, and write about two sherpas, and combined them into one. I'm liking the characters and the use of "the old Sherpa" and "the young Sherpa" to differentiate them instead of names as it goes with the book, and ties them more to Flavius and Marullus- and some chapters (especially the historical stuff or the sherpas backgrounds) were incredible- but it felt disjointed. Each chapter was super short as well sometimes just a paragraph and it was very jumpy. I can tell what he was trying to do, but it just didn't work. We get it, the loud thundering of the wind over the side of Everest can hardly be considered silence. DNF

TBR; the spectre of alexander wolf, a special kind of providence, when we were two, the power and the glory

#not a brilliant start to the year but #we move and we continue #branching into modern lit is not.... going well #reading roundup

16 notes · View notes

digitalfossils · 4 months

Text

#80s #software #Reading Roundup

9 notes · View notes

ninsiana0 · 4 months

Text

Books 73-78 read in 2023.

The last reading roundup of the year.

LOST IN THE MOMENT AND FOUND by Seanan McGuire

MISLAID IN PARTS HALF-KNOWN by Seanan McGuire

The great 2023 Reread of the ENTIRE Wayward Children series was so much fun. I see so much of myself & my loves in these books, which is, I think, the entire point.

THE DEEP SKY by Yume Kitasei

A Very Queer, Who Done It, Locked Room, in Deep Space. Delightful.

WALK AMONG US, a Vampire: The Masquerade anthology

I loved one of the novellas. I liked one a lot. And I'm undecided about the third, as I keep thinking about it, but it makes me frustrated, and yet sometimes that's the point of art.

WHAT FEASTS AT NIGHT by T. Kingfisher

Nonbinary. Spooky. Trauma. I loved it. T. Kingfisher is my current Have a Great Time Reading author.

NIGHT SIDE OF THE RIVER by Jeanette Winterson

Technically I'm still reading this, but End of the Year, blah blah blah. It's been a while since I've read a Jeanette Winterson book, and I'm as in love with her writing as I was back in college. Spooky, literary stories for Yuletide.

#books read in 2023 #2023 reads #2023 reading goals #2023 reading challenge #book #books #book covers #book review #book recs #bookreccs #book recommendations #i read books #readmore #reading roundup

5 notes · View notes

alt-air · 1 month

Text

February 2024 Reading Roundup

Hello February. I am late with writing this because so many things have happened near the end of the month but now im here! And what a month it was everyone I started T, went to Puerto Rico, did some secret March activities that I will talk about next reading roundup. I also realized I am running out of time to try restaurants where I live so I have been spending like a madman so RIP to my bank account. This month I feel like has been an up and down for reading. I definitely slowed down a bit at the beginning of the month then panicked and realized I only have a couple weeks before Ramadan starts so I have to finish all my checked out books. I also realized I read too much fantasy so im gunna try to start diversifying my genres a bit but damn do i love my made up worlds. anyway best of luck to me i have like 3 days to finish 4 books.

Favorites of the month: Tadek and the Princess, And Then He Sang A Lullaby

Standalones

Saint Juniper's Folly by Alex Crespo ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Hierarchy of the Unseen by B. Pigeon and Fell A. Marsh ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Membranes by Chi Ta-Wei ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Green Fuses Burning by Tiffany Morris ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Country Will Bring Us No Peace by Matthieu Simard ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Witch King by Martha Wells ⭐⭐⭐.5

Tadek and the Princess by Alexandra Rowland ⭐⭐⭐⭐.5

A Vision of Moonlight and Other Stories by Tamara Jeree ⭐⭐⭐⭐.5

And Then He Sang A Lullaby by Ani Kayode Somtochukwu ⭐⭐⭐⭐.5

Cinder the Fireplace Boy and Other Gayly Grimm Tales by Ana Mardoll ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Series

All the Hidden Paths by Foz Meadows ⭐⭐⭐⭐.5

Savage Bounty by Matt Wallace ⭐⭐⭐⭐.5

Savage Crowns by Matt Wallce ⭐⭐⭐⭐.5

Malice by Heather Walters ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Misrule by Heather Walters ⭐⭐⭐.5

Nonfiction

Freedom is a Constant Struggle by Angela Davis ⭐⭐⭐⭐

#ilyasreadsbooks #februaryreadingroundup #reading roundup

2 notes · View notes

gridbug · 5 months

Text

Ok so I'm still alive I'm just getting beaten over the head with a frying pan like a loony tunes character by school work and family commitments, I think I'm just going to do a short review of the books I managed to finish at the end of the year, maybe even early January, because I do have a lot I want to say for the reading roundup and it was a fun exercise, I just haven't gotten a chance to open the app and do whatever.

I have way too much to type on what's been going on with Israel/Palestine, it's something I like many people find an infuriating, heartbreaking subject, you've heard it from a million places and people, we need a ceasefire now.

In lieu of me just writing words about all the ways in which this is a completely avoidable tragedy, (I'm sorry for my one mutual that's in the one group chat where I've just been dropping term papers in there I am losing my mind) both for Israeli civilians taken hostage by Hamas, and for all of the Palestinian civilians being killed in an act of revenge by the Israeli state, I'm just going to link two reading lists from the excellent Boston Review (and then just read on for my thinly edited ramblings):

These essays cover so much ground, I don't agree with all of them of course, they're contradictory, but taken together they provide an excellent analysis and context that is a great alternative to both the mainstream "pro-Israel" consensus and the left's pro-palestinian response, which while undeniably often impressive and heroic, can too often slip into a sort of essentializing rhetoric that makes Israel this black hole of evil, and this rhetorical arms race between the pro-Israel* and pro-Palestine** sides does not lead to anything resembling genuine understanding.

What I think is missing from the left is a comparative lens through which to view this conflict. Violence against stateless peoples, in Sudan, Indonesia, the Congo, India, Syria, Turkey, anti-indigenous violence in South and Central America, American and Canadian violence against indigenous peoples demanding sovereignty over their lands with regard to oil pipelines and other forms of environmental destruction, Morocco's occupation of western Sahara: each of these have their own nuances and challenges but fit a larger pattern of (often) U.S. and first world backed violence against vulnerable ethnic groups. I really hope the current wellspring of interest in Israel/Palestine has a chance to grow into a richer critique of the rules-based international order from the left, to move beyond calling out hypocrisy and broken discourses and to actually dismantling existing regimes of violence and oppression and creating justice and peace for everyone on earth. This isn't a utopian dream, it's the only realistic answer I believe we have. It's the bare minimum of what we owe to eachother.

And I'm sorry as well this is an unreadable mess but I need to finish the paper I'm working on and this keeps poking me in the back of my head as a thing I want to write so I hope this will bring me some peace. I won't know until I press the post button.

*ideally we wouldn't even use this term, Israel will not survive as even a nominally democratic, Jewish state under the current government's policy, this is as much a self-destructive war as it is a destructive and almost certainly genocidal one, and anyone that cares about there being safety or political freedom for Israelis should recognize this is an unwinnable war that will doom Israel. The level of repression that the Israeli Jewish left is currently facing is simply unprecedented. Even if you see a post online from anyone who is Jewish or Israeli, and you think they have the wrong post or are saying something bad, just don't argue with them. They are experiencing something traumatic and painful, and it would be an act of epistemic injustice to both deny the pain they are in and demand they perform the correct political script for you. Just donate to UNRWA or PCRF and continue on your day, go to a March or write to your congressperson or phone bank, read a book about the conflict from that reading list you saved and haven't looked at since, do literally anything else rather than get into arguments with strangers, you have no idea how they are grieving and processing this. I keep finding myself with this compulsion to read the threads from people on Shitter responding in extremely callous ways to people, to what end, why? You're never going to convince them of anything especially not online. Now if it's a Christian zionist who's just on twitter/wherever celebrating the upcoming apocalypse let them have it, they can fuck right off.

**Just because this is driving me up a wall: there's nothing liberatory about Hamas, it has run Gaza as an East Germany-style police state since it squeaked its way into power, anyone on the left should be able to see that our solidarity with the people of Gaza should be with the brave members of civil society groups that have and do resist both Hamas and the coercive Israeli and Egyptian violence of the blockade. I also have no sympathy for the people policing the language or rhetoric of Palestinian activists, who have so often and so beautifully made the case for peace even in the face of unthinkable cruelty. Anyone hectoring a Palestinian person for not condemning Hamas enough after half of their family is killed by an Israeli airstrike, or who don't know if their loved ones are alive or dead right now, anyone who is grieving, can jump into the sun and stay there until all of their organs boil away.

#reading roundup

3 notes · View notes

bermudianabroad · 4 months

Text

2023 Reading Roundup

Everything what I read in 2023

I read a whole bunch.

Heartily Recommend Visceral Bleh Reread *Audiobook*

Fiction

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens (where is the fucking humidity in your swamp, Delia??)

Days Without End by Sebastian Barry

Lot by Bryan Washington

Mr. Loverman by Bernadine Evaristo

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J Maas

Trust by Hernan Diaz

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway

The Unquiet Dead by Ausma Zehanat Khan

It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover

By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantell (but everyone is called Thomas)

Verity by Colleen Hoover (awful but wacky and hilariously awful)

Katalin Street by Magda Szabo

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell

Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng

Animorphs #24 The Suspicion by KA Applegate (a trip)

Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli

The Island of Forgetting by Jasmine Sealy

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

The Trio by Johanna Hedman

At the Bottom of the River by Jamaica Kincaid

The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera

Libertie by Kaitlyn Greenidge

Silence by Shusaku Endo

When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill

Babel by RF Kuang (was so disappointed by this one)

The Bass Rock by Evie Wyld

Island by Siri Ranva Hjelm Jacobsen

The Gold-Rimmed Spectacles by Giorgio Bassani

Must I Go by Yiyun Li

The 1,000 Year Old Boy by Ross Welford

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker Chan

Ariadne by Jennifer Saint

The Singer’s Gun by Emily St. John Mandel

Memphis by Tara M Stringfellow

The Whirlpool by Jane Urquhart

Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert

A Country of Eternal Light by Paul Dalgarno

Yellowface by RF Kuang

The Country of Others by Leïla Slimani

The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing

American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld

All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville-West

The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng

Game Misconduct by Ari Baran

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

Uprooted by Naomi Novik (sorry Naomi :/ )

The Foot of the Cherry Tree by Ali Parker

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

Matrix by Lauren Groff

The Twilight World by Werner Herzog

Wild by Kristen Hannah

*The Fraud by Zadie Smith*

The Mountains Sing by Nguyen Phan Que Mai

The Wind Knows My Name by Isabel Allende

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

This Other Eden by Paul Harding

The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham (weirdly, one of the best depictions of a marriage I’ve read)

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

Against the Loveless World by Susan Abdulhawa

North Woods by Daniel Mason

Shadows on the Rock by Willa Cather

The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht

Animorphs: The Hork-Bajir Chronicles by KA Applegate

Roman Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri

Animorphs #13 The Change by KA Applegate

Animorphs #14 The Unknown by KA Applegate

Animorphs #20 The Discovery by KA Applegate (snuck in two more under the wire… #20 is when shit REALLY kicks off. From there it gets darker and darker).

Poetry

Black Cat Bone by John Burnside

Women of the Harlen Renaissance (Anthology) by Various

The Analog Sea Review no. 4 by Various

The World’s Wife by Carol Ann Duffy

Non-Fiction

Besieged: Life Under Fire on a Sarajevo Street by Barbara Demick

Atlas of Abandoned Places by Oliver Smith

Novelist as a Vocation by Haruki Murakami

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe

Wanderers: A History of Women Walking by Kerri Andrews

City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in Eighteenth Century London by Vic Gatrell

The Lazarus Heist: From Hollywood to High Finance by Geoff White (fully available as a podcast)

The Entangling Net: Alaska’s Commercial Fishing Women Tell Their Stories by Leslie Leyland Fields (very niche but fascinating. Transcribed interviews)

Free: Coming of Age at the End of History by Lea Ypi

Hijab Butch Blues: A Memoir by Lamya H.

Freedom by Margaret Atwood (just excerpts from novels repackaged)

*Born a Crime by Trevor Noah* (Noah’s narration is superb)

The Slavic Myths by Noah Charney and Svetlana Slapšak (was expecting stories, but it was mostly academic essays)

Manga, Comics, Graphic Novels

Safe Area Goražde by Joe Sacco

The Way of the House-Husband, vol. 1 by Kousuke Oono

SAGA vol. 1-6 by Fiona Staples and Brian K Vaughan

Top of the Top:

Born a Crime was probably my favourite non ficition, and most of that probably is due to Trevor Noah's narration skills. It was very entertaining and heartfelt.

Less uplifting but just as gripping in a different way was Empire of Pain. Excellent book that went deep into the why and what and hows of Purdue Pharma. Anger inducing.

Lazarus Heist is great and available as a podcast. The book is more or less the podcast word for word.

Fictionwise: I read Trust at the start of the year and it was a bit soon to declare as favourite of the year, but it's stil made the final cut. Just very imaginative and intriguing. Just my kind of MetaFiction. Clever without being cleverclever.

Demon Copperhead I read right off the back of Empire of Pain so maybe that coloured my experience. I've not read any Dickens so loads of references no doubt flew past me, but the language was acrobatic and zingy. I loved it.

Wrapped up the year on a high with North Woods. That was so unexpected and entertaining. Again with the playful language, memorable characters and a unique approach to tying all the various stories together. One that sticks in the mind and makes the writer in me wonder how I can replicate his style (with my own personal twist of course.)

#a whole bunch of books #reading roundup #Still one day to go but i don't think i'm going to finish anything else #year in books #2023 in books

6 notes · View notes

meta-squash · 1 year

Text

Squash’s Book Roundup of 2022

This year I read 68 books. My original goal was to match what I read in 2019, which was 60, but I surpassed it with quite a bit of time to spare.

Books Read In 2022:

-The Man Who Would Be King and other stories by Rudyard Kipling -Futz by Rochelle Owens -The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht -Funeral Rites by Jean Genet -The Grip of It by Jac Jemc -Jules et Jim by Henri-Pierre Roche -Hashish, Wine, Opium by Charles Baudelaire and Theophile Gautier -The Blacks: a clown show by Jean Genet -One, No One, One Hundred Thousand by Luigi Pirandello -Cain’s Book by Alexander Trocchi -The Man with the Golden Arm by Nelson Algren -Three-Line Novels (Illustrated) by Felix Feneon, Illustrated by Joanna Neborsky -Black Box Thrillers: Four Novels (They Shoot Horses Don’t They, Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, No Pockets in a Shroud, I Should Have Stayed Home) by Horace McCoy -The Dictionary of Accepted Ideas by Gustave Flaubert -The Chairs by Eugene Ionesco -Illusions by Richard Bach -Mole People by Jennifer Toth -The Rainbow Stories by William T Vollmann -Tell Me Everything by Erika Krouse -Equus by Peter Shaffer (reread) -Ghosty Men by Franz Lidz -A Happy Death by Albert Camus -Six Miles to Roadside Business by Michael Doane -Envy by Yury Olesha -The Day of the Locust by Nathaniel West -Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche -The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code by Margalit Fox -The Cat Inside by William S Burroughs -Under The Volcano by Malcolm Lowry -Camino Real by Tennessee Williams (reread) -The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg -The Quick & The Dead by Joy Williams -Comemadre by Roque Larraquy -The Zoo Story by Edward Albee -The Bridge by Hart Crane -A Likely Lad by Peter Doherty -The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit by Michael Finkel -The Law In Shambles by Thomas Geoghegan -The Anti-Christ by Friedrich Nietzche -The Maids and Deathwatch by Jean Genet -Intimate Journals by Charles Baudelaire -The Screens by Jean Genet -Inferno by Dante Alighieri (reread) -The Quarry by Friedrich Durrenmatt -A Season In Hell by Arthur Rimbaud (reread) -Destruction Was My Beatrice: Dada and the Unmaking of the Twentieth Century by Jed Rasula -Pere Ubu by Alfred Jarry -Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath by Anne Stevenson -Loot by Joe Orton -Julia And The Bazooka and other stories by Anna Kavan -The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda by Ishmael Reed -If You Were There: Missing People and the Marks They Leave Behind by Francisco Garcia -Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters -Indelicacy by Amina Cain -Withdrawn Traces by Sara Hawys Roberts (an unfortunate but necessary reread) -Sarah by JT LeRoy (reread) -How Lucky by Will Leitch -Gyo by Junji Ito (reread) -Joe Gould’s Teeth by Jill Lepore -Saint Glinglin by Raymond Queneau -Bakkai by Anne Carson -Reflections in a Golden Eye by Carson McCullers -McGlue by Ottessa Moshfegh -Moby Dick by Herman Melville -The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector -In the Forests of the Night by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes (reread from childhood) -Chicago: City on the Make by Nelson Algren -The Medium is the Massage by Malcolm McLuhan

~Superlatives And Thoughts~

Fiction books read: 48 Non-fiction books read: 20

Favorite book: This is so hard! I almost want to three-way tie it between Under The Volcano, The Quick & The Dead, and The Man With The Golden Arm, but I’m not going to. I think my favorite is Under The Volcano by Malcolm Lowry. It’s an absolutely beautiful book with such intense descriptions. The way that it illustrates the vastly different emotional and mental states of its three main characters reminded me of another favorite, Sometimes A Great Notion by Ken Kesey. Lowry is amazing at leaving narrative breadcrumbs, letting the reader find their way through the emotional tangle he’s recording. The way he writes the erratic, confused, crumbling inner monologue of the main character as he grows more and more ill was my favorite part.

Least favorite book: I’d say Withdrawn Traces, but it’s a reread, so I think I’ll have to go with Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters. I dedicated a whole long post to it already, so I’ll just say that the concept of the book is great. I loved the whole idea of it. But the execution was awful. It’s like the exact opposite of Under The Volcano. The characters didn’t feel like real people, which would have been fine if the book was one written in that kind of surreal or artistic style where characters aren’t expected to speak like everyday people. But the narrative style as well as much of the dialogue was attempting realism, so the lack of realistic humanity of the characters was a big problem. The book didn’t ever give the reader the benefit of the doubt regarding their ability to infer or empathize or figure things out for themselves. Every character’s emotion and reaction was fully explained as it happened, rather than leaving the reader some breathing space to watch characters act or talk and slowly understand what’s going on between them. Points for unique idea and queer literature about actual adults, but massive deduction for the poor execution.

Unexpected/surprising book: The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code by Margalit Fox. This is the first book about archaeology I’ve ever read. I picked it up as I was shelving at work, read the inner flap to make sure it was going to the right spot, and then ended up reading the whole thing. It was a fascinating look at the decades-long attempt to crack the ancient Linear B script, the challenges faced by people who tried and the various theories about its origin and what kind of a language/script it was. The book was really engaging, the author was clearly very passionate and emotional about her subjects and it made the whole thing both fascinating and fun to read. And I learned a bunch of new things about history and linguistics and archaeology!

Most fun book: How Lucky by Will Leitch. It was literally just a Fun Book. The main character is a quadriplegic man who witnesses what he thinks is a kidnapping. Because he a wheelchair user and also can’t talk except through typing with one hand, his attempts to figure out and relay to police what he’s seen are hindered, even with the help of his aid and his best friend. But he’s determined to find out what happened and save the victim of the kidnapping. It’s just a fun book, an adventure, the narrative voice is energetic and good-natured and it doesn’t go deeply into symbolism or philosophy or anything.

Book that taught me the most: Destruction Was My Beatrice by Jed Rasula. This book probably isn’t for everyone, but I love Dadaism, so this book was absolutely for me. I had a basic knowledge of the Dadaist art movement before, but I learned so much, and gained a few new favorite artists as well as a lot of general knowledge about the Dada movement and its offshoots and members and context and all sorts of cool stuff.

Most interesting/thought provoking book: Moby Dick by Herman Melville. I annotated my copy like crazy. I never had to read it in school, but I had a blast finally reading it now. There’s just so much going on in it, symbolically and narratively. I think I almost consider it the first Modernist novel, because it felt more Modernist than Romantic to me. I had to do so much googling while reading it because there are so many obscure biblical references that are clear symbolism, and my bible knowledge is severely lacking. This book gave me a lot of thoughts about narrative and the construction of the story, the mechanic of a narrator that’s not supposed to be omniscient but still kind of is, and so many other things. I really love Moby Dick, and I kind of already want to reread it.

Other thoughts/Books I want to mention but don’t have superlatives for: Funeral Rites was the best book by Jean Genet, which I was not expecting compared to how much I loved his other works. It would be hard for me to describe exactly why I liked this one so much to people who don’t know his style and his weird literary tics, because it really is a compounding of all those weird passions and ideals and personal symbols he had, but I really loved it. Reading The Grip Of It by Jac Jemc taught me that House Of Leaves has ruined me for any other horror novel that is specifically environmental. It wasn’t a bad book, just nothing can surpass House Of Leaves for horror novels about buildings. The Man With The Golden Arm by Nelson Algren was absolutely beautiful. I went in expecting a Maltese Falcon-type noir and instead I got a novel that was basically poetry about characters who were flawed and fucked up and sad but totally lovable. Plus it takes place only a few blocks from my workplace! The Rainbow Stories by William T Vollmann was amazing and I totally love his style. I think out of all the stories in that book my favorite was probably The Blue Yonder, the piece about the murderer with a sort of split personality. Scintillant Orange with all its biblical references and weird modernization of bible stories was a blast too. The Quick & The Dead by Joy Williams was amazing and one of my favorites this year. It’s sort of surreal, a deliberately weird novel about three weird girls without mothers. I loved the way Williams plays with her characters like a cat with a mouse, introducing them just to mess with them and then tossing them away -- but always with some sort of odd symbolic intent. All the adult characters talk and act more like teens and all the teenage characters talk and act like adults. It’s a really interesting exploration of the ways to process grief and change and growing up, all with the weirdest characters. Joe Gould’s Teeth was an amazing book, totally fascinating. One of our regulars at work suggested it to me, and he was totally right in saying it was a really cool book. It’s a biography of Joe Gould, a New York author who was acquaintances with EE Cummings and Ezra Pound, among others, who said he was writing an “oral history of our time.” Lepore investigates his life, the (non)existence of said oral history, and Gould’s obsession with a Harlem artist that affected his views of race, culture, and what he said he wanted to write. McGlue by Ottessa Moshfegh was so good, although I only read it because 3 out of my other 5 coworkers had read it and they convinced me to. I had read a bunch of negative reviews of Moshfegh’s other book, so I went in a bit skeptical, but I ended up really enjoying McGlue. The whole time I read it, it did feel a bit like I was reading Les Miserables fanfiction, partly from the literary style and partly just from the traits of the main character. But I did really enjoy it, and the ending was really lovely. In terms of literature that’s extremely unique in style, The Hour Of The Star by Clarice Lispector is probably top of the list this year. Her writing is amazing and so bizarre. It’s almost childlike but also so observant and philosophical, and the intellectual and metaphorical leaps she makes are so fascinating. I read her short piece The Egg And The Chicken a few months ago at the urging of my coworker, and thought it was so cool, and this little novel continues in that same vein of bizarre, charming, half-philosophical and half-mundane (but also totally not mundane at all) musings.

I'm still in the middle of reading The Commitments by Roddy Doyle (my lunch break book) and The Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell, but I'm not going to finish either by the end of the year, so I'm leaving them off the official list.

#squash rambles #reading year in review #book list year in review #book list #reading list #book roundup #reading roundup

7 notes · View notes

morebedsidebooks · 2 years

Text

2021-2022 Women in Translation Roundup Part 3: Travelling the (Queer) World

Continuing my goal of reading more writers from across the globe from more languages, in the last year I had the bonus of reviewing several books with LGBTQIA+ themes and/or characters including a few by queer writers. (Also see my Part 1 round-up this year for a few other such books from French.)

All the Roads are Open by Annemarie Schwarzenbach

The travelogue essay/memoir of a road trip to Afghanistan in 1939 by a Swiss heiress who has become a European cult figure.

All This I Will Give to You by Dolores Redondo

From a popular Spanish writer this is another long chilling thriller, with a successful novelist trying to sort through his grief, anger, and questions after the sudden death of his husband when nearly everyone he meets in picturesque Galicia is hiding or lying about something.

La Bastarda by Trifonia Melibea Obono

Bisexual feminist Trifonia Melibea Obono’s short YA novel is the first to appear in English translation by a woman from Equatoria Guinea.

Girls Lost by Jessica Schiefauer

A dark YA fairytale like book in a magical realism vein utilizing gender transformation whose original Swedish title translates to ‘The Boys’.

Last Words from Montmartre by Qiu Miaojin

A fiction book made up of a series of letters that can be read in any order by famous Taiwanese lesbian writer Qiu Miaojin and published posthumously after her own suicide.

The last year has been particularly notable for Chinese danmei novels (m/m romantic or sexual fiction) appearing officially in English.

A huge global juggernaut spanning mediums the Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation by MXTX is a supernatural fantasy series also in the xianxia (immortal heroes) genre.

Little Mushroom by Shisi is a dark dystopian sci-fi series following one xenogenic little mushroom who becomes a doppelganger of a human on a quest while humanity precariously hangs in the balance.

Paradise Rot by Jenny Hval

A bizarre and sensual eco-gothic debut novel where a biology student from Norway with an interest in mycology pursuing her education aboard encounters an unusual roommate.

The Quilt and other stories by Ismat Chughtai

A story collection named from the (in)famous piece of the Indian Urdu novelist writing where she was faced with defending herself and her writing against obscenity charges.

The Wandering by Intan Paramaditha

An adult fiction choose-your-own-adventure type of book drawing on the Indonesian author’s ‘A Red Shoe Odyssey’ visual project. I ended up taking a sapphic route.

We Wrote in Symbols: Love and Lust by Arab Women Writers

Across millennia, lands, and language (writing from Arabic, English and French) the sensuous anthology displays the long history, depth, and varied expression of the erotic in writing by women (also one non-binary writer) of Arab heritage.

#Women in translation #wit month #world literature #reading roundup

3 notes · View notes

floatsonabigballoon28 · 2 years

Text

June Reading Roundup

1) Temporary Fix by Dbeaux

2) Hate to Smoke (Without You) by louhazpride

3) I Still Crave It by germericangirl

4) Flash Back to Me by akatomlinson

5) Flash Back to The Beginning by akatomlinson

6) The Cat that Got the Cream by onlylearsfool

7) Babydoll blues by devilinmybrain

8) Last to Know by reader_chic_2

9) Without the Bitter, the Sweet Isn't As Sweet by isthislove

10) Let Go by Grand Buzz

11) Horizontal like a quarter to three by orphan_account

12) Watching You Watch Him (Friend to the Undertow) by myownspark

13) Only Thing That Can Quench My Thirst

By eyesofshinigami

14) Bartender, 100% Not Gay, Voiceover and finally the whole Best of Collection by purpleeyestelllies

15) Glimpse of the silhouettes by orphan_account

16) You were a beam of light, lit up my broken sky by larrydoinglaundry

17) burn to ash by bethaboo

18) Blinded by the Colors by FallingLikeThis

19) And then a bit by infinitelymint

20) We can take the long way home by eleadore

21) Drifting, Weightless by dinosaursmate

22) Matilda by Roald Dahl

23) To the Ends of the Earth by stylinsoncity

#June #reading roundup #reading #Roundup

3 notes · View notes

forever-rogue · 1 year

Text

Reading Roundup!

here’s your weekly dose of all my clownery summed up in one post 🥰

soft - joel miller x fem!reader

together again - joel miller x fem!reader

at first sight - joel miller x fem!reader

sick (but still stubborn) - eddie munson x fem!reader

new friends - din djarin x fem!reader

#reading roundup #weekly reading #we're gonna ignore the fact that i missed a week lol #joel miller x reader #eddie munson x reader #din djarin x reader

94 notes · View notes

the-hype-dragon · 18 days

Text

Books I Read in March

(I am a horrifically slow reader, always have been, so the fact that I read multiple books this month was a surprise to me)

Books I finished reading:

Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones - 4/5

If you've heard of it most likely it's because of the movie. The book and the movie are similar for the first ~50% and then diverge wildly. I much prefer the book. Diana Wynne Jones was hilarious. I was pleasantly surprised at the subversion of various fairy tale tropes. Also: the copy I read had an interview with DWJ at the end, and the first question was asking her her thoughts about "everyone wanting to marry Howl." And I was like, "wow, I guess I'm not the only one." There are two types of fictional men I actually like and Howl falls into one of those types. Besides him the other characters were all very fun to read about too, I especially like how diverse the range of female characters are for a relatively short children's book. DWJ was a legend.

Winter Rose by Patricia McKillip - 5/5

Patricia McKillip is one of those authors I knew about but never got around to reading her books. I am obsessed with the tale of Tam Lin and that was what led me to buying Winter Rose, and honestly? Probably one of the best purchases I've ever made. McKillip transformed the tale of Tam Lin into a tale of cycles: of seasons, revenge, abuse, and mistakes. I have heard other books described as "lyrical" but Winter Rose is the first where I actually agreed with the assessment. McKillip had a deft hand with language and her prose is evocative without feeling superfluous; I've complained on this blog about authors using "too many" words to say "very little" and McKillip was the exact opposite of this. She was able to convey a lot without saying very much at all; and so this 260 page book still manages to feel very complete. Definitely a huge recommend.

Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones - 4/5

Another Tam Lin retelling, mixed with the ballad of Thomas the Rhymer. DWJ turns Tam Lin into a coming-of-age story where a girl realizes that women can be heroes, too, inspired by her own childhood and the frustrations of heroic tales apparently only ever being about men. The only problem I had with this book was the age gap romance. Tom Lynn is a grown man when Polly meets him at the ripe old age of ten. Granted nothing explicitly romantic ever really happens between them in-story, and Polly's relationships and crushes tend to be pretty age-appropriate otherwise and Tom doesn't seem to think of Polly "that way" until she's about nineteen. Idk. The 80s were a different time, etc. etc. still pretty sus but not as bad as some other age gap romances I've read and am aware of.

Books I did not finish reading:

Uprooted by Naomi Novik - tentative 1/5

Sometimes you just don't get along with a book and Uprooted and I will never see eye-to-eye. There were just too many things about this book that I didn't really enjoy, mostly the juvenile plot elements being juxtaposed with real-world hardships like poverty and infant mortality, or the way Agnieszka was thirsting after the man she thought was going to r*pe her. My biggest mistake was reading this directly after Winter Rose and simultaneously with Fire and Hemlock. Ironically the actually-YA Fire and Hemlock was a much more mature story than adult-oriented Uprooted. Uprooted's characters felt like cardboard cutouts and the entire thing was paced like a Saturday morning cartoon. Big F from me, do not recommend, etc. I was expecting more because Novik's Temerarie series is pretty well-regarded and everyone seemed to like this book. I probably will not pick this back up except to skim it.

Malafrena by Ursula K. Le Guin - tentative 4/5

I started reading this on the 26th of March and made it about halfway by the 31st and ultimately decided that I have to put it down for a while. Malafrena is a book about idealists written in the most frank, cynical way possible and examines the notion of "freedom" through a philosophical lens. I fucking love it but it is a difficult read. It's about a fictional European country during the very real era of government reform of the 19th century. I appreciate that Le Guin addresses the fact that freedom in this era did not apply to women, and that Luisa Paludeskar spends most of her page time browbeating her freedom-fanboi love interest about this. Le Guin was another one of those writers who was able to convey very complex ideas without saying very much at all; I did not have to put this book down because what she was saying was going over my head. Everything was very clear, very cut-and-dry. However I have two main reasons for currently setting it aside. First: the characters are all incredibly well-written but they are also incredibly frustrating and unlikable people. I love it when an author is able to make me really care about flawed, miserable characters, but it is kind of difficult to read when ALL of them are like that. Second: there is a suicide that takes place about halfway through the book. You only get to read the aftermath, written about quite frankly, but it was so disturbing and tragic that I just couldn't go on reading at that point. I plan to pick this back up later this year but honestly just had to put it down, it was too much. Otherwise I really like it.

---

And that's that on that. Going into April about halfway through Alice Hoffman's Turtle Moon, which I started the evening of March 30th and which I'm enjoying so far. I have a bunch of books I want to read and reread this year and I might just be able to get through most of them... we'll see!

#reading roundup #readin

1 note · View note