Wow, it's been almost exactly a year...

[furyofvissarion]

Starting the slow process of catching up by listing things off, no matter how briefly I end up logging them:

Days of Blood and Starlight - Laini Taylor. Second book in this YA trilogy about, well, angels & monsters & their long bloody hatred of each other. I continue to be much more interested in just about anything in this series apart from the Romeo & Juliet romance that I think is its main selling point, alas. I'd much rather keep delving into the questions of how you tease apart a generations-long cycle of violence & genocide, whether people really can change that deeply, & how. It's been (ahem) months (maybe even a year?) between me reading this book & writing about it here, but I remember this second book had a lot more gut-wrenching stuff about the moral questions, & the cruelty of war, & how people keep (or don't) their humanity in the middle of it.

Dreams of Gods and Monsters - Laini Taylor. Still so uninterested in the main romance, apart from how it, like the other relationships in the book, deals w/the struggle to unlearn patterns of abuse & violence & vengeance. Still, a decent end to the series -- this trilogy drew me in way more than I expected; it's the kind of brain candy that has heart-clutching tropey goodness that I know I'll reread for comfort later on.

Night of Cake & Puppets - Laini Taylor. This novella was so adorable, & featured the secondary romance that I found much more endearing & interesting than the main pairing in Taylor's Daughter of Smoke & Bone trilogy. Sadly, like the trilogy, & like most fantasy by dominant-culture authors, the good stuff comes along with occasional racial/cultural microaggressions.

Cupcakes, Trinkets, & Other Deadly Magic - Meghan Ciana Doidge. Jade, a not very powerful witch, owns a cupcake bakery in Vancouver & gets mixed up in supernatural hijinks. Kind of charming at the start, but nothing particularly memorable. Fun & lighthearted enough, though not anything sticking in my brain.

Trinkets, Treasures, & Other Bloody Magic - Meghan Ciana Doidge. Book 2 of the Dowser series. Convinced me I probably didn't want to read the rest. Just the right (or wrong, really) combination of slightly dubious sociocultural moments, characters I discovered I didn't care about much after all, & a not hugely engaging plot.

The Terracotta Bride - Zen Cho. So good it kept me riveted while getting my thigh tattooed!! This novelette takes place in the tenth court of Hell & is just a beautiful, thoughtful & also funny story about queer ladies. Really a delight.

How to Write About Music: Excerpts from the 33 1/3 series, magazines, books and blogs with advice from industry-leading writers - edited by Marc Woodworth and Ally-Jane Grossan. This was so interesting! Though it was dude-heavy and also some of the writing reminded me of the casual sexism in rock music & rock music journalism & how gross it is. But I really liked seeing people enthuse about music & reading about how they could choose to enthuse and through what lenses.

Comments

[bibliofile]

re: writing about music -- I haven't been able to get into the 33 1/3 series, but that collection of excerpts sounds pretty interesting. It's unexpectedly hard to write about sounds using just words on paper; it's like the two senses don't intersect at all.

[furyofvissarion]

I think most (all?) of the excerpts were from existing 33 1/3 books, so you might not like them -- or it might be that they excised enough other stuff to make the excerpts interesting! & yes, it's that whole 'dancing about architecture' thing, quite challenging to put thoughts about music to words, I think!!