Reading Wednesday, taking the later edition

[st_aurafina]

Holy balls, today was a scorcher. We've just had a thunderstorm and it's down to 33C, from 43C. Blah. On the other hand, we finally got our watering system hooked up to our rainwater tank, so we can give everything a guilt-free soaking. Well, not that we felt that guilty, since our region isn't on water restrictions, but still, it was expensive to water from the mains. And we have our first zucchini, which, in this heat, turned from a tiny todger to a monster practically overnight.


What have you just finished reading?

Inheritance, by Malinda Lo

The sequel to Adaptation - it was clever, and it wrapped up all the plot lines in ways that felt original and not too clever-clever. I love the way she writes contemporary teenagers, and the way she can pull off a plot where said teenagers are saving the world, and yet by the time all the threads are pulling together, it doesn't feel cheesy. Also, yay for canon queer characters.



I love her alien race, the Imrians - they're these hyper-evolved, gender-relaxed, polyamorous people who present themselves as Earth's kindly older siblings - you know the kind. And then, they get totally caught having meddled in human genetics millions of years ago, and they're just so embarrassed about it. And I loved that Amber, one of the love interests for the main POV character, might be alien, but she's still a teenager, damn it. Teenagers - a universal constant.





What are you currently reading?

A Fatal Thaw, by Diana Stabenow

This is the second Kate Shugak murder mystery - I love the setting (a National Park in Alaska) and I love the people (all sorts, all rugged as fuck) and I love Kate (never wants anyone to see how much she cares about stuff). I'm finding, as with the first book, I'm really not that into the actual murder. I just want to see Kate and her tough as balls friends hanging around and surviving stuff. But you have to read the murder to get the Kate, and so I am.
ETA: Just finished it; the murder got a lot more engrossing about halfway through.



Moon Over Soho, by Ben Aaronovitch

Definitely liking that there are consequences for the characters who were badly injured in the last book, and definitely liking Peter a lot better.



What do you think you'll read next?

After gritty Kate Shugak, I'm thinking I'll give India Black a try. Madam of Espionage Mysteries! It sounds fancy and fun.



Some links:

- This amazing fan art for Hannibal by gnatkip (Warning for animated gifs.) So creepy-beautiful!


- What if Hannibal told cheesy jokes instead of implying cannibalism?. (Also warning for animated gifs) Their faces! Their faces, expressing horror and hopelessness, as he delivers the punchline! Ow, my sides hurt.

- Operation War Diary is the new project at Zooniverse, the people who ran Snapshot Serengeti. They have scanned in unit war diaries from WWI, and need people to tag the scans for dates, location, people etc. It's like the ideal thing for me, since I have extensive training and experience in reading crappy handwriting.

- via vass, a read-along for Arrows of the Queen which I haven't read yet, but looks like fun. Dr Vanyel's Exploding Horse Syndrome!

- Monster of the Week has started Season Four of X-Files, yay! Bees and bee husbandry!

Comments

[crossedwires]

Oh, Kate. I love Kate Shugak, though I probably would not rec the series past book 8? It's always a little white gazey, but it gets A LOT worse for some reason (well, I think Stabenow wanted to write about other characters, but the Kate books sell better) past that point. But KATE. I love her so much. A while back there was talk of a tv show about her -- and I do give Stabenow credit for not selling the rights unless a Native actress was guaranteed -- but it doesn't seem to be happening. :/

[st_aurafina]

Thank you for posting about the books in the first place - that's where I heard about them. And yeah, I love Kate! I would love a series - I think it has lots of potential, and it's great that she's held out for the right cast. T

It's always a little white gazey,

Yeah, I'm seeing that already. There's a bit in this one where Kate is at her grandmother's (wow, how much do I love her grandmother!) potlatch, and the POV flips from her experience to the guy who is watching her, for no reason other than how ~graceful she is. And it's weird, because her POV was fantastic and inclusive and worked really well, where the guy's was hokey and a bit disturbing.

[crossedwires]

I would like a TV series just to see if they could use the character and community, but with their own take on the story, which ideally would not be white gazey, with a different set of writers and a change of medium. I feel like the series unfortunately goes from that sort of ~well-meaning, but still icky~ type gaze to a sort of actively wrong, if not outright hostile, gaze; like, whoa, yes, here we see that Stabenow is THAT type of white liberal (who thinks racism would be solved if only black people were not so racist against whites, and let's pair up Kate with white dudes*). I haven't even read the latest 2 Kate books, because I am worried about the way the storytelling is trending, even though KATE. She is my favourite in many, many ways. I want her and Jessica Jones to have adventures together.

*One of the post-book 9 problems is that so much of the POV switches to Jim, who also sexually assaults Kate, but it's written as 'romantic'/not really rape because she wanted it even though she said no and if was really a threat, Kate would've fought back and so would have Mutt. SO MUCH NO. Like, it doesn't even fit either of their characterizations. IDEK. (Well, I guess I'm not completely shocked by it, given that Stabenow has expressed admiration for Diana Gabaldon's sex scenes, some of which go along these lines of 'forced seduction', which I hoped was an over and done with trope.)

[st_aurafina]

Stabenow has expressed admiration for Diana Gabaldon's sex scenes

I have the biggest D: face right now.

[killing_rose]

I've been reading Stabenow for the better part of forever (local author, local settings, despite The Park being fictional, characters and places that if you are local, you're like "Oh, you're supposed to be [x]!"), and there are several rather events in later books that are painful and not fun if you are one who doesn't do traumatic events well. (I am damned lucky I read most of the canon before I turned twenty, because if it'd been an after 20 books series, I would not have been able to finish it.)

Also, I find it hysterical/nostalgic to sit down with the whole series, start at the beginning (written/published when I was a tiny, tiny child) to the current books because all the changes, all the shifting places mentioned--that's exactly how my state's changed, from the bookstore on Northern Lights (no longer there--the other used bookstore in town moved in across the street) to what they ate up on the slope 20 years ago (crab and steak and other incredibly expensive meals).

[st_aurafina]

Well, I'm glad they hold up to an Alaskan, that's good to know!

[killing_rose]

...Jesus, I should not leave comments when stoned on latest try-and-break-the-migraine med.

What I meant to say is that if you are not a person who deals with specific types of trauma, I can throw you spoilers ahead of time for such.

(And if you want to donate money to a good cause--I think they've finally ironed out some of the issues that had me arguing with them in the fall--, she's trying to open a writer's retreat: http://storyknife.org/dana-stabenow/)

[vass]

OMG those Hannibal jokes. ♥ ♥ ♥

BTW, if you want terrible jokes to be 1000% funnier, read them in a language you know at the same level as a five-year-old native speaker. Suddenly they are as funny as they were when you were five. Works especially well for the ones with painful puns that you're just conversant enough to understand.

"Hallo, ich bin Umberto. Ich bin hier um ihre Tochter zu schlafen."
"Um WAS?"
"Um-berto!"

["Hello, I'm Umberto. I'm here to sleep with your daughter."
"To [Um] WHAT?"
"Um-berto!"]

[st_aurafina]

*gigglesnorts*

[cosmic_llin]

Aaah, Inheritance! I really enjoyed it. I want Malinda Lo to hurry up and write more stuff!

[st_aurafina]

Oh, yay, someone else has read it! It was so much fun - I really love where she took the story. I can't wait to see what she does next.

[monanotlisa]

Oh, good to know Malinda Lo's is keeping up the good work! I loved Ash; still have to get the sequel…ALSO SHE LIKED ONE OF MY TUMBLR COMMENTS, YES! <3

[st_aurafina]

I loved Ash, too, but it was definitely first-novel-ish, if you know what I mean? She's definitely getting better and better - Inheritance was great. Yay for many good books to come!

ALSO SHE LIKED ONE OF MY TUMBLR COMMENTS, YES! <3

OMG YOU'RE INTERNET-FAMOUS! *super impressed*