TWIR: Okay, more than a week.

It’s been a while! I have read quite a few books recently. For example, my first Charlie Parker* mystery, but not my last. Also a book by a blogger I have long read. And I read Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill, just before going to see him talk to Lauren Beukes about her new book, Broken Monsters, which I have not read and am looking forward to.

Plus: A YA fantasy book for book club, which I did not love as much as the rest of my book club, and a YA fantasy book not for book club, which I did love. (Unspoken did not hit enough of my Beloved Tropes to overcome the pacing issues, and I am less won over than others by the Everyone Is Clever And Funny Here sort of world-building. The Diviners, on the other hand, did hit some Beloved Tropes so I was blind to many of its faults.)

There are always things that, when present in a work, will make me forgive a certain number of other things. Is a movie really, incredibly pretty? Then who cares about that “plot” thing? Is the book set in 1920s New York with speakeasies and hints of the labor movement and class unease? Well, I guess I can ignore the overuse of slang. It would be an unending project to try to list out all of my tropes, and it wouldn’t even be accurate because ever trope would probably have a caveat. But The Diviners had tropes for me, and Unspoken didn’t.

Currently: Re-reading We Have Always Lived In The Castle by Shirley Jackson as my bedtime reading (it’s soothing to me). Plus a handful of other things, as always.

*Not the KC jazz great, though I’d read the heck out of that mystery series.

TWIR: Genre-bending, fantasy, and capitalism at the movies

I love #fridayreads and want more excuses to talk about reading (even though it’s Saturday), so I’m going to attempt to do that regularly with This Week In Reading.

Last weekend I went to Readercon, as mentioned, and picked up a bunch of books, but have barely touched them because I was already in the middle of several things. I have limits, you know. I can’t read ten books at once.

Five? Sure.

The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes

I sped through The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes before Readercon. It worked as a book to clear out my head after weeks traipsing through the autobiography of a labor activist (Elizabeth Gurley Flynn — the bio was great! But heavy, with a million little stories of wins and losses for the movement.) The Shining Girls was one of those cases of a book straddling the border between litfic and genre. Beukes made a valiant effort to write something that embraced litfic + time travel + mystery/thriller, but because she was balancing so many things, they all came off a little less rich than they could have been if focused on one. That may sound like a criticism of the book, but it’s not meant to be. I like the effort, and what combining genres did for the story. No aspect of it collapsed when poked, which is a huge accomplishment.

Ombria in Shadow by Patricia A. McKillip

I also started Ombria in Shadow by Patricia McKillip. I wouldn’t normally pick up something that has a cover like this, with the flowing locks of hair and the pensive look and the Renaissance-y stylings. This is not to say that I automatically dislike this sort of thing. It’s that I am not actively drawn to it, but the author was specifically recommended to me. So far it has magic, and ancient ageless evil, a girl made of wax, and a shadow underworld, so… I’m on board.

Short things I’ve read recently:

Smash the Engine at Jacobin Magazine:

“As it is, Snowpiercer is an enjoyable spectacle whether you care about its political message or not. But this is also a story with genuinely subversive and radical themes….It’s about the limitations of a revolution which merely takes over the existing social machinery rather than attempting to transcend it.”

That was a good movie, everyone.

Playing Nice with God’s Bowling Ball by N.K. Jemison:

“Then, apparently oblivious to Grace’s stare, the boy burst into tears. ‘I told him to be careful.'”

Please go read this story like I did: knowing nothing about it.