What I'm Reading Wednesday
Oct. 2nd, 2013 12:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Rejoice! For whatever reason, my brain has decided to be nice and allow me to read books again without the annoying stumbling over a sentence five times thing until I just give up. This is very exciting, because I haven't been able to read read for oh, three years.
Yes.
I am mostly diving into "teen" fantasy, because that is my pleasure reading and when you've been deprived of reading for quite awhile it's important to nourish that core of you.
What I read recently
I read the entire Frontier Magic series by Patricia C. Wrede (even though I'd already read the first two, I wanted to reread them to refamiliarize myself with the characters before finishing it). Overall, I liked it, though not as much as some of her other works. I do disagree with some of how she created the frontier (i.e. leaving out Native Americans entirely), but as my partner pointed out...the Lewis and Clark expedition minus Sacagawea didn't make it back, did they? And she did a lot of reshuffling of history, and the premise of the book wouldn't have worked if there were people there. Which. Is problematic too. I did really like what she did with trauma especially in the first book, and with meditation techniques, and with women's rights and also the Underground Railroad. So. The ending was also highly satisfying.
Have also been rereading some Pratchett, notably the Tiffany Aching books, which I've already read. Tried to reread the Chronicles of the Necromancer, which is a series I love at least the beginning of, but the book is too damn heavy.
What I'm reading now
Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore, which is the third in her Graceling Realm series. I am enjoying it, though not as much as Graceling but more than Fire. It reminds me a lot of what I've read about say, the effects of opening the Stazi archive to the public, versus not doing so with other secret police files in certain other former Soviet Bloc countries. In other words, how does a country deal with a history of atrocities when the main perpetrator is gone, but others must have been complicit or at least accomplices for the power system to work? How far does "following orders" go as an excuse (in the book, there's magic involved, but still)? How does a country heal from violence? And this is how you tell that I'm a history major as well as a reader of fantasy novels...
What I'm going to read soon
Moar Pratchett! I picked up Dodger, which somehow I haven't read yet (probably as it's not Discworld, or maybe it's just never at the library, so I caved and bought a copy for the Pratchett shelf). Also his new book Raising Steam is coming out in March, but that's a long way off. I might make my way through some of the Discworld books I haven't read in awhile, or maybe I'll try something new...
Yes.
I am mostly diving into "teen" fantasy, because that is my pleasure reading and when you've been deprived of reading for quite awhile it's important to nourish that core of you.
What I read recently
I read the entire Frontier Magic series by Patricia C. Wrede (even though I'd already read the first two, I wanted to reread them to refamiliarize myself with the characters before finishing it). Overall, I liked it, though not as much as some of her other works. I do disagree with some of how she created the frontier (i.e. leaving out Native Americans entirely), but as my partner pointed out...the Lewis and Clark expedition minus Sacagawea didn't make it back, did they? And she did a lot of reshuffling of history, and the premise of the book wouldn't have worked if there were people there. Which. Is problematic too. I did really like what she did with trauma especially in the first book, and with meditation techniques, and with women's rights and also the Underground Railroad. So. The ending was also highly satisfying.
Have also been rereading some Pratchett, notably the Tiffany Aching books, which I've already read. Tried to reread the Chronicles of the Necromancer, which is a series I love at least the beginning of, but the book is too damn heavy.
What I'm reading now
Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore, which is the third in her Graceling Realm series. I am enjoying it, though not as much as Graceling but more than Fire. It reminds me a lot of what I've read about say, the effects of opening the Stazi archive to the public, versus not doing so with other secret police files in certain other former Soviet Bloc countries. In other words, how does a country deal with a history of atrocities when the main perpetrator is gone, but others must have been complicit or at least accomplices for the power system to work? How far does "following orders" go as an excuse (in the book, there's magic involved, but still)? How does a country heal from violence? And this is how you tell that I'm a history major as well as a reader of fantasy novels...
What I'm going to read soon
Moar Pratchett! I picked up Dodger, which somehow I haven't read yet (probably as it's not Discworld, or maybe it's just never at the library, so I caved and bought a copy for the Pratchett shelf). Also his new book Raising Steam is coming out in March, but that's a long way off. I might make my way through some of the Discworld books I haven't read in awhile, or maybe I'll try something new...
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Date: 2013-10-03 02:21 am (UTC)