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highlyeccentricCurrently Reading:
Fiction: Nothing active. Redwall, on a backburner, and A Hand of Knaves, at a rate of about one story per week.
Non-fiction: The Ethical Slut, third edition which is... not as comforting, or as exciting, as it was when I first read it. I am particularly o_0 at the advice to 'let go of what feels like yours and trust that it will be replaced by a generous world'. AHAHA LOL. Have you /seen/ the world lately, Mses Easton and Hardie? Like. I get that it is necessary to cling less hard to things and people, but... the answer cannot be that the world is generous. The world is generous to fewer and fewer people these days, and it's honestly never been that munificent.
Technically I am still wading through Meanjin Winter 2018
Academic: None
Recently Finished:
The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo by Zen Cho
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This was adorable. I enjoyed the pragmatic-yet-whimsical voice of the narrator, which felt like... what you'd get if Anne of Green Gables was Chinese-Malaysian and frank about sex. A great combo. I enjoyed her pragmatic approach to sex, and indeed to love. The Bloomsbury-group-eseque free loving couple were, I thought, sympathetically portrayed, even though Jade did not wish to join them. I guess I was slightly disappointed that she wasn't even a *little* attracted to their lifestyle, but if what you're going for is a conventional ending, at least she knew from the outset that's what she wanted.
Online Fiction: Nothing. I tried the serialised lesbian fiction 'Lakeside' that The Queerness is running and bounced off in the first paragraph for frankly *terrible* prose style.
Up Next: Two more Murderbots.
Mid-year progress report:
How many books read: 44. So I'm slightly behind on my goodreads goal, but I usually am right up until December / until I go home and binge-read my Dad's Prachetts for a while.
Favourite book so far: ... possibly Call Me By Your Name. But The Well of Loneliness is in higher contention to be one of those Epoch Books for me (up there with Portrait of a Lady).
Biggest waste of time: Definitely 'Flight to Coorah Creek'. Which I expected, because I bought it about two years ago based on Kobo recommendations, and literally EVERYTHING I bought based on Kobo's recommendation engine at the time was terrible.
Reading goals: I'm behind on my 100 book goal, but not concerned about that.
I am *ahead* on the intention to read 20 (or 1/5+ of my reading total, whichever is higher) books by POC/ethnic minority/non-white authors. This might have something to do with the slowing down of my reading pace: I started the year read, well, Literachur, and memoir, and the like. Much fewer romance novels (I just don't enjoy most het romance, and most POC romance writers are writing het). The Binti novellas, and a couple of other shorter works recently, have picked up the pace a bit, both for this category of reading and overall.
I wanted to keep an intentional eye on how many trans/genderqueer authors I read, and the answer so far is a disappointing 'two, and then only if you include Radclyffe Hall'. Although I guess it actually goes up to three since I'm re-reading The Ethical Slut, and Janet Easton describes herself as 'gender-bent ... sometimes male and sometimes female'.
Academic reading has been in a slough. I read through a backlog of journals before I left the UK, but not much else since. The second half of 2019 *needs* to involve a lot more academic reading. I also haven't read a single medieval primary source, other than checking miscellaneous details during editing or re-writing something, for... uh... the first time since at least 2005. That also has to change in the next half of the year.
What about you folks? What's your favourite read so far this year? Any goals for the next six months?
Fiction: Nothing active. Redwall, on a backburner, and A Hand of Knaves, at a rate of about one story per week.
Non-fiction: The Ethical Slut, third edition which is... not as comforting, or as exciting, as it was when I first read it. I am particularly o_0 at the advice to 'let go of what feels like yours and trust that it will be replaced by a generous world'. AHAHA LOL. Have you /seen/ the world lately, Mses Easton and Hardie? Like. I get that it is necessary to cling less hard to things and people, but... the answer cannot be that the world is generous. The world is generous to fewer and fewer people these days, and it's honestly never been that munificent.
Technically I am still wading through Meanjin Winter 2018
Academic: None
Recently Finished:
The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo by Zen ChoMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
This was adorable. I enjoyed the pragmatic-yet-whimsical voice of the narrator, which felt like... what you'd get if Anne of Green Gables was Chinese-Malaysian and frank about sex. A great combo. I enjoyed her pragmatic approach to sex, and indeed to love. The Bloomsbury-group-eseque free loving couple were, I thought, sympathetically portrayed, even though Jade did not wish to join them. I guess I was slightly disappointed that she wasn't even a *little* attracted to their lifestyle, but if what you're going for is a conventional ending, at least she knew from the outset that's what she wanted.
Online Fiction: Nothing. I tried the serialised lesbian fiction 'Lakeside' that The Queerness is running and bounced off in the first paragraph for frankly *terrible* prose style.
Up Next: Two more Murderbots.
Mid-year progress report:
How many books read: 44. So I'm slightly behind on my goodreads goal, but I usually am right up until December / until I go home and binge-read my Dad's Prachetts for a while.
Favourite book so far: ... possibly Call Me By Your Name. But The Well of Loneliness is in higher contention to be one of those Epoch Books for me (up there with Portrait of a Lady).
Biggest waste of time: Definitely 'Flight to Coorah Creek'. Which I expected, because I bought it about two years ago based on Kobo recommendations, and literally EVERYTHING I bought based on Kobo's recommendation engine at the time was terrible.
Reading goals: I'm behind on my 100 book goal, but not concerned about that.
I am *ahead* on the intention to read 20 (or 1/5+ of my reading total, whichever is higher) books by POC/ethnic minority/non-white authors. This might have something to do with the slowing down of my reading pace: I started the year read, well, Literachur, and memoir, and the like. Much fewer romance novels (I just don't enjoy most het romance, and most POC romance writers are writing het). The Binti novellas, and a couple of other shorter works recently, have picked up the pace a bit, both for this category of reading and overall.
I wanted to keep an intentional eye on how many trans/genderqueer authors I read, and the answer so far is a disappointing 'two, and then only if you include Radclyffe Hall'. Although I guess it actually goes up to three since I'm re-reading The Ethical Slut, and Janet Easton describes herself as 'gender-bent ... sometimes male and sometimes female'.
Academic reading has been in a slough. I read through a backlog of journals before I left the UK, but not much else since. The second half of 2019 *needs* to involve a lot more academic reading. I also haven't read a single medieval primary source, other than checking miscellaneous details during editing or re-writing something, for... uh... the first time since at least 2005. That also has to change in the next half of the year.
What about you folks? What's your favourite read so far this year? Any goals for the next six months?
no subject
Date: 2019-06-26 05:17 am (UTC)Oh, I liked this so much.
I would love to see it as a TV miniseries starring Constance Wu.
no subject
Date: 2019-06-27 10:51 pm (UTC)