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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. Read more... )

Dreams of Gods and Monsters - Laini Taylor. Read more... )

Night of Cake & Puppets - Laini Taylor. Read more... )

Cupcakes, Trinkets, & Other Deadly Magic - Meghan Ciana Doidge. Read more... )

Trinkets, Treasures, & Other Bloody Magic - Meghan Ciana Doidge. Read more... )

The Terracotta Bride - Zen Cho. Read more... )

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. Read more... )
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Fangirl - Rainbow Rowell. Read more... )

Valmiki's Daughter - Shani Mootoo. Read more... )

Ich Bin Dann Mal Vegan: Glücklich und fit und nebenbei die Welt retten - Bettina Hennig. Read more... )

Interim Errantry - Diane Duane. Read more... )

Court of Fives - Kate Elliott. Read more... )

How to Save a Life - Sara Zarr. Read more... )

Nearly Gone - Elle Cosimano. Read more... )

Nacht der Hexen - Kelley Armstrong. Read more... )

Daughter of Smoke & Bone - Laini Taylor. Read more... )

Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead - Brené Brown. Read more... )

Die Schachnovelle- Stefan Zweig. Read more... )
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Deadlocked - Charlaine Harris. I still appreciate Sookie Stackhouse's pragmatic nature, & that Harris keeps class issues in the foreground; I still cringe whenever Harris writes about POCs. & despite that, I still manage to read around enough to enjoy this series. This one was pretty creepy -- writing this up a couple months later, I can't actually remember that much about it, but I enjoyed being back in Sookie's world.

Dead Ever After - Charlaine Harris. I made it to the last Sookie book! (Though I think I missed one along the way?) The issue of whoever (of her various & numerous supernatural suitors) Sookie was going to end up w/ (because you know she would end up w/someone) was resolved hugely satisfactorily to me.

Chime - Franny Billingsley. Briony is growing up in the rural Swampsea w/a secret: she's a witch & she's used her powers to harm her sister & stepmother. Devastating in its depiction of a young woman who thinks that she's inherently bad, she's just fucked up & harmful to those around her.

The Summer I Turned Pretty - Jenny Han. There were moments I liked in this book about how Belly (a childhood nickname for Isabel) spends the summer in a beach house with her mom & brother, her mom's best friend, and the latter's two sons. Least interesting to me were Belly's changing relationships with the two boys that she's spent every summer with for years; a pity, as that took up a lot of the book.
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I'm going to try to be more careful to mark spoilers, just a heads-up (I mostly just think of this as a place where I mark down things I've read, not as something someone else might read, eep!).

Boring Girls - Sara Taylor. There's a lot I didn't like about this YA novel, & the writing is really bad, & yet I can't stop thinking about it: what experiences & cultures the author drew from, why I wanted so badly there to be a different ending for these girls, why it must've been so cathartic to write as a revenge fantasy (& why I wanted it to be more than that). It's about two teenage girls who start a metal band, & the misogyny in the music scene (I suspect Taylor, aka Chibi of the Birthday Massacre, writes from her own experiences as a woman in music), & it's... mild spoilers )

Kitty Saves the World - Carrie Vaughn. The last Kitty book! While I was really bummed that the series was ending, I think this was a good place for it. The oh-shit-o-meter was cranked to 11, &... yeah. Not perfect (nothing is perfect!), but gave me a lot of what I wanted!

Cold Steel - Kate Elliott. This took me longer to get into than I was expecting, given that there are feisty girl cousins who are best friends having adventures & things. It's because the obvious love interest is so v. v. obnoxious at first, & he's meant to be, but I was kept waiting too long for the part where things become more complicated & you might not actually need to hate him. Anyway, I appreciate alternate histories that highlight the accomplishments of people of color!

Sorcerer to the Crown - Zen Cho. First in a trilogy about England's first black Sorcerer Royal & the extremely magically talented biracial Indian woman he meets that proceeds to wreak havoc (in his life, & in general) in all kinds of fun ways. This is really wonderful -- seriously, everything good you've read about this book is true. Not only is it utterly delightful & frothy & lovely, it also says v. pointed things about race & colonialism & gender (& from the POV of people negatively affected), which shouldn't feel as refreshing & rare as it did.

House of Shattered Wings - Aliette de Bodard. Post-apocalyptic Paris, dangerous magic, fallen angels. I think I liked the idea of this book more than the book itself -- there were good bits, but somehow it didn't click w/me like I wanted it to (& I think the author deserved a better editor). I did really appreciate that the book also dealt w/colonialism though!!

Soloplay - Miranda Baker. Utter smutty fluff about a shy woman who ends up becoming a playtester for a sex toy company. Needs the usual sort of deliberate disregard for tired gender roles, etc. (though it's... not as bad as it could be, I guess?), & mild spoilers, but it's not like you read this for the plot exactly! ) If you can put these things aside (& it's a fairly big if), this is kind of hilariously amazing.
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Cold Magic- Kate Elliott. Read more... )

Harry Potter et le Coupe de Feu - J. K. Rowling. Read more... )

Cold Fire - Kate Elliott. Read more... )

We Should All Be Feminists - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Read more... )

East Main Street: Asian American Popular Culture - Edited by Shilpa Davé, LeiLani Nishime, and Tasha G. Oren. Read more... )
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Paranormal Bromance - Carrie Vaughn. Read more... )

Spirits Abroad - Zen Cho. Read more... )

Succubus Shadows - Richelle Mead. Read more... )

Discord's Apple - Carrie Vaughn. Read more... )
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Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Finding Peace in a Frantic World - Mark Williams and Danny Penman. Read more... )

Fluency Made Achievable and The Vocab Cookbook - Kerstin Hammes. Read more... )

New Moon, Sadar's Keep, and Beldan's Fire - Midori Snyder. Read more... )

Harry Potter et le Prisonnier d'Azkaban - J. K. Rowling. Read more... )

Eyes Wide Open: How to Make Smart Decisions in a Confusing World - Noreena Hertz. Read more... )
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Eurostars and Eurocities: Free Movement and Mobility in an Integrating Europe - Adrian Favell. Read more... )

Forty Days of Yoga: Breaking Down the Barriers to a Home Yoga Practice - Kara-Leah Grant Read more... )

Harry Potter et la Chambre des Secrets - J. K. Rowling. Read more... )
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The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun - Gretchen Rubin. Read more... )

Harry Potter à l'école des sorciers - J. K. Rowling. Read more... )

A History of Franco-German Relations in Europe: From "Hereditary Enemies" to Partners - Edited by Carine Germond and Henning Türk. Read more... )
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Well! It's been a long time. I've got a real backlog of books to put down here (almost a year, in fact) -- so I'm going to try to do these in dribs & drabs, & my thoughts may be even briefer than usual.

To start:

Drowned Ammet - Diana Wynne Jones. Read more... )

The Crown of Dalemark - Diana Wynne Jones. Read more... )

A Song for Arbonne - Guy Gavriel Kay. Read more... )

Fluent in 3 Months: Tips and Techniques to Help You Learn Any Language - Benny Lewis. Read more... )

Eat That Frog! - Brian Tracy. Read more... )
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The Happiness Trap: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living - Russ Harris. Read more... )

A Tale for the Time Being - Ruth Ozeki. Read more... )

Among Others - Jo Walton. Read more... )

Keeping up with the Germans: A History of Anglo-German Encounters - Philip Oltermann. Read more... )

Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch. Read more... )

A Stranger in Olondria - Sofia Samatar. Read more... )

Understanding the European Union: A Concise Introduction - John McCormick. Read more... )

Cart and Cwidder - Diana Wynne Jones. Read more... )

o hai

Dec. 30th, 2013 07:11 pm
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I've actually continued to read books since this summer! I just have been massively failing to post about them. Here is the first bit of the backlog.

The Summer Prince - Alaya Dawn Johnson. Read more... )

Kitty's Greatest Hits - Carrie Vaughn. Read more... )

Heart of Iron - Ekaterina Sedia. Read more... )

Fortress Europe: Dispatches from a Gated Continent - Matthew Carr. Read more... )

The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance - Edited by Tricia Telep. Read more... )
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I'm reading! Things that are new to me! Long may this last but it probably won't.

Permeable Borders - Nina Kiriki Hoffman. Read more... )

Undone - Rachel Caine. Read more... )

Unknown - Rachel Caine. Read more... )
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... I always start these entries meekly. Gosh, it's been a long time since I updated, ugh.

I've spent a lot of the last few months rereading Carrie Vaughn's Kitty Norville books, serious comfort reads for me; you can check the tag for my previous thoughts, as I don't have the spoons to write up reread thoughts right now (& thinking I should is part of why I haven't updated in ages). Someday I will write a big post about why I love these books so much, & what Kitty says to me about power & activism & choices & family, but... this is not that day.

Kitty Rocks the House - Carrie Vaughn. This one is new since I last updated! Read more... )

Shaping Europe: France, Germany, and Embedded Bilateralism from the Elysée Treaty to Twenty-First Century Politics - Ulrich Krotz & Joachim Schild. Read more... )

Half World - Hiromi Goto. Another comfort re-read. This book says so many things that I need to hear over & over.

Darkest Light - Hiromi Goto. This is the sequel to Half World. I had to special-order this from Canada, but it was so worth it. Read more... )

& one more

Mar. 29th, 2013 01:17 pm
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I didn't want this to get lost in the Diane Duane post nor in the next post I ought to make sometime (rereading the Kitty Norville books ♥).

A Stir of Bones - Nina Kiriki Hoffman. Read more... )
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I did a reread recently of the first 7 of Diane Duane's Young Wizards books (I've previously posted brief reactions on my last reread). The series follows Long Island kids Nita & Kit as they discover they're wizards & run around drawn into adventures in the battle between good & evil. Wow, that's a dismissive summary, but I actually love these books (ask me about my Diane Duane tattoo, if you don't already know! I have plans for a second, even... ).

Anyway, general notes on the series: Read more... )

Brief commentary on individual books:

So You Want to be a Wizard - Read more... )

Deep Wizardry - Read more... )

High Wizardry - Read more... )

A Wizard Abroad - Read more... )

The Wizard's Dilemma - Read more... )

A Wizard Alone - Read more... )

Wizard's Holiday - Read more... )
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Most of these have been written up for ages; I just never got around to posting. & yes, these are the only books I've managed to read since August.

Broken Kingdoms - N. K. Jemisin. Read more... )

Small Change: About the Art of Practice and the Limits of Planning in Cities - Nabeel Hamdi. Read more... )

The Wiscon Chronicles Volume 6: Futures of Feminism and Fandom - Edited by Alexis Lothian. Read more... )

Post-Suburban Europe: Planning and Politics at the Margins of Europe's Capital Cities - Nicholas A. Phelps, Nick Parsons, Dimitris Ballas & Andrew Dowling. Read more... )
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Daughter of the Blood, Heir to the Shadows, Queen of the Darkness - Anne Bishop. Yeah, the magical cock ring books. Read more... )

Kitty's Big Trouble - Carrie Vaughn. Read more... )

Half World - Hiromi Goto. Read more... )
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Kitty's House of Horrors - Carrie Vaughn. My second reread of the 7th book in the Kitty Norville series; still as much delicious delicious brain candy as the first time I read it. Still in awe of how Vaughn pulls no punches w/the body count here. Still love how Kitty finds herself kind of a reluctant leader, even though she'd never really seen herself that way, because the world is fucking w/the people she loves & well, that can't stand. (& yeah, still OMG want werewolf poly OT3ness in canon pls? Someone has to have written some fic about this; I don't want to write it, I only want to read it!)

Kitty & the Midnight Hour - Carrie Vaughn. Maybe I'll reread all of these out of order? Thought after reading my favorite one, I would reread the first one. &... a huge huge part of the series is how Kitty learns to interrogate what is presented to her as the natural order of things when one is a werewolf: certain domineering behavior from males in the pack, etc. What I love is that Vaughn does make Kitty skeptical, eventually, about these things, & that Vaughn doesn't do the easy thing of making it all normal because OMG our werewolf natures~~~ or whatever. But wow, on a reread I feel like it wasn't all that clear in the beginning that Vaughn was actually going to do that! I am glad whatever made me stick around the first time pulled me through. Also OMG Cormac surly werewolf bounty hunter of love! (... though yeah, still want OT3 fic, I would settle for lots of Kitty/Cormac smut as a poor second!)
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Fanning the Flames: Fans & Consumer Culture in Contemporary Japan - Edited by William W. Kelly. Read more... )

Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti - Genevieve Valentine. Read more... )

Zen to Done: The Ultimate Simple Productivity System - Leo Babauta. Read more... )

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