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xcziel · 5 months

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tuesday new release for november 7:

i spent half the evening monitoring the line at the midnight release for iron flame AND trying to sneak in snippets of jungkook on jimmy fallon (lol) since i had my phone bc i was also taking photos for the party

sooooo yeah. but there's LOTS of stuff out today

iron flame, book 2 of the empyrean saga by rebecca yarros is out! as is the holiday edition of fourth wing (red! very pretty! also: sprayed edges!)

latest installment in christopher paolini's eragon series, murtagh, plus the large hardcover illustrated eragon to pair with it

my name is barbra, a brick of a memoir ($47 list!) by la streisand

remembrance a collection of the correspondence of ray bradbury

resurrection walk new mickey haller AND harry bosch law thriller from michael connelly

novel the future, by naomi alderman

new naturals by gabriel bump

so late in the day: stories of women and men by claire keegan

the olympian affair, a new cinder spires novel by jim butcher

"clive cussler" released the corsican shadow

ben mezrich - the bringing down the house poker story guy- release breaking twitter, possibly one of the most topically relevant books today

teddy and booker t. about roosevelt and washington "blazing a path for racial equality" from bestselling historian brian kilmeade

h.w. brands new book on the history of american politics founding partisans

love redesigned by lauren asher, first in new lakewood billionaires series

chestnut springs series book four reckless by elsie silver

katee roberts' first in a new series hunt on dark waters

in YA we have:

the second book in the lightspark series by alex aster, nightbane

sequel to the way i used to be by amber smith, the way i am now

powerless by lauren roberts

and a paperback teen romance from ali hazelwood, check mate

same as ever: a guide to what never changes from psychology of money author morgan housel

the fund, about ray dalio, bridgewater associates, and wall street shenanigans by rob copeland

class, a story of single motherhood and higher education, by stephanie land

lyrics by paul mccartney is out in paperback

world within a song from jeff tweedy

living the beatles legend: the untold story of mal evans, longtime beatles roadie and personal assistant, by kenneth womack

and new d&d heroes' feast: flavors of the multiverse cookbook

and finally: SYSTEM COLLAPSE is here!!!! the new murderbot story from martha wells!!!!

to paraphrase: un-follow me now, this is gonna be the only thing i talk about for the next week. ive been waiting forever it feels like. fuck.

(a tiny exaggeration bc i know i will also be obsessed with jk and standing next to you for the next little while but you get the idea)

#tuesday new releases #... and a lot more! because it's the season lol #gods i'm tired #many peopke picking up their yarros books were also grabbing the new releases we had set out for midnight #so that was nice #but the weirdest behavior tonight was just the seeming overwhelming impulse to stand in line #like people were lining up spontaneously - we said 'we'll call you when it's time to line up'#but people just started coagulating in clumps - even though we said those with reservations would get their books first #like we still had everybody through the line by half past so it's not like lining up late would have really cost time???#a co-worker was just like 'they really want to be told what to do' and like i'm happy the majority-female crowd #was polite and tidy but y'know have a little fun with it if you're gonna be up thst late #idk maybe they were just tired and sitting in line takes less mental effort

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erstwhilesparrow · 10 months

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sparrow's short story and poetry recs (incomplete)

@desultorydenouement requested some recommendations for [generally stuff i've read that inspires / influences my writing]. i don't know if these all fit that requirement exactly, but. i sure do think about these ones a lot. here you go, hope you enjoy!

poetry:

Per Fumum by Jamaal May - My father was an astronomer / for forty minutes in a row / the first time a bus took us so far / from streetlights he could point out constellations / that may or may not have been Draco, / Orion, Aquila, or Crux. Sometimes I still catch myself using the phrasing of "[someone] was [a role / profession] for [some number of units of time] in a row" in my own writing. I like... the idea of curiosity / wonder / experimentation as something that puts you in a tradition of all the scientists and thinkers that have come before you.

Evolution by Linda Bierds - You know that feeling when it occurs to you for maybe the first time ever that hey, you're an adult now and you can decide what to do about your [fashion / food / leisure time] and you pick something you like that you wouldn't have tried to pick before and now that thing is special to you specifically? This poem is that, for poetry, for me. Alan Turing, and life, and all the dark mares on their dark shadows.

A Toast To The Alchemists by Laura Gilpin - Look, I like when people do poetry about science, and I love love love talking / thinking about the history of science, I don't know what to tell you. Last stanza makes me vaguely achy.

The Fish by Marianne Moore - If I had to pick a favourite poem ever, it'd be this one. First learned about it How to Read Poetry Like a Professor by Thomas Foster and it fills me with delight. I like how it looks on the page, I like its rhyme scheme, I like its language and imagery, I like the whole act of digging around in it. Did one of my favourite high school presentations on this poem.

NUMBERS by Mary Cornish - A joy to read out loud. I said this to a friend of mine and she immediately called me and demanded I read it to her and it was delightful! Highly recommended experience. It's... fun! Playful. Appreciative of something I think we are not appreciative of enough.

Rick Deckard Comes Home by Kanami Ayau - Even if this poem was just the phrase 'syncopated two-step dog-tag paramour' I would still love it. Have you ever heard anything condensed so perfectly well? Can you hear the drumbeat of it? I will never stop thinking about this.

Second Street Drifting by Austin Walker - You may have noticed this link takes you to a wiki page. I'm cheating with this one because the poem is from a podcast (Friends at the Table) and the podcast, really, is the thing that's a huge inspiration / influence for me, but this poem on its own, too: perfect. It is delicious to read out loud and delicious to hear read out loud -- Austin savours every syllable in his reading, and it is completely justified.

Catastrophe is Next to Godliness by Franny Choi - Lord, I confess I want the clarity of catastrophe but not the catastrophe. Just. Yeah. Big fan of Franny Choi in full generality. More of their work here!

Beautiful Short Loser by Ocean Vuong - Joy? Gender? Brilliance and confidence and that one interview he gave where he was like, and this is paraphrasing badly, "I insist on being a man and on using he/him specifically to complicate what those things can / should mean" ?

The Melancholy of Mechagirl by Catherynne M. Valente - Part of a collection of poems and short stories by the same name. I love this poem; it is fun and bright and touches things I care about (mechs, bodies, sci-fi concerned with the individual and the personal). The short stories I don't tend to feel as strongly about but some of them are stick-in-your-brain-for-days-after great. Recommend taking a look at the whole book!

I can't pick a Mary Oliver one. I simply cannot do it. But read her poems. They're excellent.

short stories:

The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges - I love weird architecture. I love buildings and structures that make no fucking sense. I love infinity. I love finding horror or wonder or despair or meaning in those things. This story is about more than that, but mostly it's about an infinite library that our narrator moves through and describes to us. Don't ask me why it's on genius dot com of all places.

I Am In Eskew Episode 1: Correspondence - This is cheating because it's a podcast transcript. It's not cheating because this first episode is entirely stand-alone, really excellent, and caters to (almost) all of the interests I like to talk about on Tumblr: architectural horror, unusual intimacies, meat, locations that are alive and have a lot of feelings about you. A man named David, a relatively recent arrival in the city of Eskew, chases down the source(s) of a series of bizarre exchanges in the correspondences section of the local paper.

The Narrative Implications of Your Untimely Death by Isabel J. Kim - Judging by where I remember seeing your username around, you will also care about this. Get fucked up about characters that know they are characters with me. Get fucked up about people who are constantly putting on a performance, forever aware of where the audience is and what they might inflict on you, intentionally or not. (Second person POV story about someone signing on to a reality TV show and trying to play the part just the right way to get to leave.)

Exhalation by Ted Chiang - A thoughtful, melancholy, wonderful exploration of a different world, where people explode into showers of gold when they die, and the narrator learns about and comes to terms with how utterly temporary and completely doomed their people are. Makes me sad, but in a slow and gentle way, you know?

A Guide for Working Breeds by Vina Jie-Min Prasad - Two robots become friends by bonding over the following: dogs, killing, and the horrors of capitalism. Very sweet, very [sunshine x storm cloud] pair of characters. I feel fondly about it and managed to make me very sad by shuffling some numbers around in a list of unread notifications. (Also, I've found Tor.com has a lot of cool SFF stuff in general?)

A Very Special Pigeon by Cao Wenxuan, translated by Helen Wang - Pigeons. Friendship. Something complicated and difficult to describe but nevertheless recognizably sad. Reading this definitely Did Something to my writing style, but it's hard to tell what. Two boys somewhere in China are joined by the fact of pigeons, and the racing thereof.

Alien Hand Syndrome (Nth Street) by Molly Ofgeography - Utterly charming. When I say I want to write characters that are strange and specific and charming and alive, I mean like this. Cavendish Grotto (what a name, right!!) does not control his left hand; it does what it will. Cavendish Grotto lives his life.

[“Power absorption?” you ask him over your pasta, which you are currently absorbing powerfully.] by inkskinned - Written for a prompt, about how someone with a fairly mediocre superpower gets to be considered one of the top ten most powerful superheros. There's plenty of stuff on Tumblr that's in this wheelhouse or adjacent to it that I also really enjoy, but this is one of the first I read and it still sticks in my brain.

The Magician's Apprentice by Tasmyn Muir - Power and hunger and eating people. Welcome to All Of My Interests. A magician teaches his apprentice the utterly laborious art of performing magic. It's horrifying, it's glorious.

The Hydraulic Emperor by Arkady Martine - That vaguely sick feeling of trying to tally up some numbers and realizing, as you redo the calculations with increasing desperation, that it doesn't add up, that you're going to fall short? You can assume I'm being metaphorical or literal, but this story is like that. It's gorgeous, it's terrific, it's about how much you are willing to give up and for what. (It's about a collector on the hunt for a film that is effectively lost media. To win access to a print of it, they go to an auction where people are made to sacrifice irreplaceable parts of themselves or of history.)

Sestu Hunts the Last Deer in Heaven by M. H. Cheung - This one just feels good to read? Wild and lovely. It doesn't feel like it tries very hard or wants very much to explain itself, just drags you into its world and makes you keep up. I think the title gives you enough of a premise. I couldn't offer anything better, sorry.

A Farce to Suit the New Girl by Rebecca Fraimow - A new girl joins a Yiddish theatre troupe travelling through Russia right after the Tsar has been killed. (I don't know / recall which Tsar.) Everyone's trying to get through in one piece and help each other out, and everyone is so insistently themselves in a way I wish I could do more.

Texts from the Ghost War by Alex Yuschik - There's a war, because there are ghosts. People fight them in mechs. One of those mech pilots accidentally strikes up a friendship with a prince. This story is the development of that relationship, as told through texts. Describing it as sweet feels insufficient, though it is that. I like when things are true in SFF worlds without trying to explain themselves, I think.

L'Esprit de L'Escalier by Catherynne M. Valente - I did just say I am not particularly taken by some of her short stories. HOWEVER. THIS ONE IS VERY GOOD. Orpheus succeeds in getting Eurydice back. This is what happens after, and it sucks massively for everyone involved. Graphic depictions of decomposing bodies, which is both content warning, and reason I am so admiring of it.

[A scorpion, not knowing how to swim, asked a frog to carry it across the river.] by sadoeuphemist - I think about this one frequently. The scorpion and the frog, across many iterations.

#sparrowsong #fic recs tag #<- yes i know these aren't fics i just want to have these saved somewhere findable #i'm calling this incomplete because i'm sure i'm gonna go to bed tonight and #stare at the ceiling for several hours going 'aw wait fuck i forgot my favourite one aw fuck oh no'#i feel like this way this post is written is itself telling about my writing-related interests.#went back to count how many stories that was and yelled 'FIFTEEN??' out loud #anyway. hope this is both readable and useful!#if some of these annotations are nonsense i am so so sleepy you have to forgive me #i definitely was planning on doing something else this evening.#but i've lost all trains of though to this. oh well!

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