Bookgazing

Today I'm taking part in Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon (the last one with its current hosts, Andi and Heather).

I haven't taken part in Readathon in a few years, but, well, lock down has given me significantly more time, and a craving for a big, community-minded reading event so here I am today. Plus, I found myself really wanting to take part in Andi and Heather's last time hosting. They've kept such a fantastic legacy going for Dewey, co-ordinated what must be an epic project in terms of organisation 17 times, and expanded it into an event that now trends on Twitter. It's been really special to see all that happen even if I haven't taken part every time.

Let me kick off with the opening survey:

1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today? I'm in England where it's pleasantly sunny for April, so I'm hoping to get some of my reading done in the garden.

2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to? I haven't made a stack as I find as soon as I make one I suddenly want to read anything else. I'm starting by finishing off Heaven, My Home by Attica Locke.

3) Which snack are you most looking forward to?

Brownies (not home-made) and maybe biscuits (also not homemade) but I'm going to try to restrain myself because lock down.

4) Tell us a little something about yourself!

I'm a huge media geek and love reading, watching TV, theatre, films etc. My big book love is SFF, but I've just recently come back around to contemporary stories. Usually, I work as a bookseller at a major chain (don't worry, our shops are closed right now). I'm a co-editor over at Lady Business where I mostly write about short fiction at the moment.

5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to?

This year I'm going to open up my Twitter (which is normally a private account) so I can comment on posts over there. I'm probably not going to check in online from my laptop so much, but I might cheer quite a bit from my phone. I did however join the Goodreads group so I'll probably check that quite a bit.

Doing any kind of Nanowrimo deal with long-form writing is a laughable dream right now, but I am considering doing like a drabble or short-fic variation because the 'I would love to write fic again' vibe is hitting me hard. Please consider throwing prompts (words, phrases, tropes - anything really) at me that I could use on any fandom I fancy because I could really do with some kind of focus right now. Any help appreciated :D

So, it has been a loooong time since I did a books update but I finally have a free day during this set of holidays to talk about some of the books I've read.

( A whole load of books I liked and some 'it's complicated' moments )

That's what I've been reading - how about you?

See, the last post was not just a one off! Onwards into shitposting February! Here's a bit of what I've been up to media wise.

Reading

I'm currently reading a ton of 2018 SFF so I can nominate for the Hugo awards, and right now I'm paying particular attention to the YA category (the Lodestar Award). So, I finished The Belles by Dhionelle Clayton, which wasn't so much my cup of tea. I just have to remember that I'm not a huge fan of concept SFF. Also, this book really was weird about lesbian relationships as willowcabins mentioned. The most prominent lesbian character dies horribly, and Amber and Camelia should obviously have been together. I know they call each other Sisters but they're not, as far as I can see, actually blood related...

I also finished Dread Nation by Justina Ireland which was way more my thing; African American women trained to fight zombies in an America where slavery has been outlawed but similar systems are still kept in place. I'd just watched Lucy Worsley's new three part series America's Greatest Fibs so I had a reasonable handle on the American history that Ireland was working with, which added to the book's interest for me. I really recommend this one; Jane's voice is just the kind of practical snark I enjoy, and I loved seeing the enemies to friends story line between her and Kate develop. Sidenote - Kate, it transpires, is asexual, and Jane is bisexual.

Right now I'm close to the end of A Blade so Black by L. L. McKinley, which is an urban fantasy YA adventure set in a re-imagined Wonderland. I'm enjoying lots of things about it, but I also keep getting distracted. I can't decide if it's because the book is so full of action and my mind glosses over action scenes, or if it's because my brain is just running a little distracted at the moment. *shrugs* Anyway it's worth picking up, and I'll have more to say about it when I finish up.


Watching

I finally started watching Friends From College, which is about Ethan and Lisa; a couple moving back to New York to start a family, who spend perhaps too much time reconnecting with their college friend group. Keegan Michael-Kay plays Ethan, a literary writer reluctantly moving into the YA world in order to sell his next book. I love how fast his character goes from 'YA is trash, and I will game this genre to make money' to 'Oh yeah, Bella and Edward! YA is the most exciting thing in literature right now,' although I really wish the series had some more up to date YA references >.> Ethan is also in the middle of a 20 year long-distance affair with Sam, one of the couple's "close" married friends (played by Annie Parisee) and it is not going to end well because they are both disaster human beings. Cobie Smulders plays Ethan's wife, and is obvs brilliant, particularly in the episode Mission Impossible where she deals with taking on IVF with a partner who seems less than enthusiastic. I also love seeing grown up Fred Savage in this, especially as the actor playing his partner is Billy Eichner (who played Craig in Parks and Rec) and I like when TV shows collide. My fav episodes so far have been All-Nighter, Mission Impossible and Party Bus, and I can't wait for the emotional pay off at the end of the series when surely the affair will be revealed to all?!

This is the first comedy I've watched since I started Love, and it kind of reminded me why I found that show so dissatisfying. I just like jokes, OK? I need to stop forgetting that when I'm picking out comedies to watch.

I'm also SO CLOSE to the end of the new Les Miserables TV drama - just one ep moooooorrrre. Urgh, idk, there is nothing really wrong with this series. In fact, its expansion of Fantine's back story was much appreciated. Dominic West makes a perfectly good Jean Valjean, and the same goes for David Oyelowo's Javert. It's just this adaptation feels very by the numbers with little stylistic innovation. I guess the team thought just making it not a musical, and adding in some of stuff from the book that the musical skates over, would be enough, but it's kind of... flat?

The same can be said for the film adaptation of The Little Stranger which I watched last week. I always knew a film would struggle to translate the book's class politics, and deliberately obscured ideas about what caused the happenings at Hundreds, to the screen without picking a more definite line about what actually happened. And, yeah, everyone in the film is good, and the atmosphere is spot on, but a lot of the book's brilliance lies in unsettling the reader with uncertainty whereas the film spells out what's happened. Also, the film lets Dr Faraday off the hook somewhat, which I should really be in favour of as I felt Waters almost linked the emerging middle class with malicious destruction in the book, but in the end I wasn't so much a fan of the treatment he got in the film.

What media has anyone else been getting into?

For anyone who I haven't told yet I'm now a Waterstones bookseller and will be working for the company up until around January sales. After that it's all a bit uncertain, but for now there's an interesting job and money :D I've been at our store for just over a month now and it's very interesting so far.

I am still not really over that charity shoplifting incident. I want to be able to go 'Well if you have to steal from a charity shop then you must be desperate and I feel for you, but please never come back and steal from my shop'. However, the reality is that this time it was a group of organised guys who targeted a charity shop because we don't have the security measures that are in place (or at least look like they're in place) at major retail stores. And the guy I spotted leaving our shop with stolen goods was so brazen - he went against everything in the training manual about stealing; he wasn't extremely shifty or extremely in my space, but I now recognise that he was probably trying to distract me while his buddies had a look around. I'm pretty paranoid at the moment, and making huge use of the devices in place to keep a check on people in particular sections of the shop while compensating by being extra pleasant to customers. It brought me down though, because - as a lot of you have asked via e-mail - who steals from the charity? I mean I knew people did (there's a shop in the same town that had all its cash taken four times in one year) but it wasn't quite a reality until I saw this guy walk off with something.

Hey ho, what do we do when life tries to crush our optimism? I chose to go shopping for books because I still have money. I had a small book spree this week, picking up:

"Take Back the Skies" - Lucy Saxon (because sky ships and, I assume, sky pirates)
"The Last Wild" - Piers Torday (lovely cover that I have been eyeing for a while)
"Why We Took the Car" - Wolfgang Herrndorf (because sometimes you want a book that sounds like pure fun)
"Daughter of Smoke and Bone" - Laini Taylor (finally, finally caved)

And I made some library plans, because they have "Broken Monsters", "The Haunting of Hill House", "The Promise of Blood" and some Patricia Highsmith books in. The library is amazing. I'm having a great library book run at the moment - just finished The Complete Stories of Alice Walker, which was a fabulous collection, and I'm now half way through "The Flamethrowers" by Rachel Kushner, a book which I am sure to be evangelising about soon.

Read this month:

The Best of All Possible Worlds - Karen Lord
Spirit Gate - Kate Elliot
Under the Tripoli Sky - Kamal Ben Hameda
Lagoon - Nnedi Okorafor (Huge rec to all my Mieville loving friends - the writing is a different style, but this book has just as much weird and sea creatures)
Mr Fox - Helen Oyeyemi

Currently Reading: The Chaos - Nalo Hopkinson

Purchased:

Too many. Among them:

Lagoon - Nnedi Okorafor
The Chaos - Nalo Hopkinson
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves - Karen Joy Fowler
The Winner's Curse - Marie Rutko
Boy, Bird, Snow - Helen Oyeyemi
Gossip From the Forest - Sarah Maitland
Starbreak - Phoebe North
Valour's Choice - Tanya Huff
All the Bird's Singing - Evie Wyld
Assassin's Apprentice - Robin Hobb
Dirty Wings - Sarah McCarry

I should be writing big ol' reviews or something, but I wanted to say HI and I just saw this post on Tumblr about personal posts so here's a quick update.

Films

I re-watched "Catching Fire" for a podcast I'm doing with Renay and it was even better than I remembered. There are so many little moments that catch and hold. Can't wait for the final film now.

I went to see "X-Men Days of Future Past" this week and that story line is still as weird as anything :D It's one of my top three favourite stories from the X-Men cartoons, because I'm me and it's hard for me not to love something that just discards story continuity because time travel.

Still, I wasn't a huge fan of this film. I like the main cast from the first three films more than the cast from the films set in the past. So, a film which concentrates on young Charles and Magneto isn't going to be totally my flavour no matter how much Wolverine you shove in I'm afraid. And as always with this franchise the focus is on guys, although Jennifer Lawrence's Mystique was still much more prominent than I expected. Yay for Jennifer Lawrence trying to push her wonderful acting into this franchise. But, come on, we should absolutely have had more Blink.

However, I did love the bits of fan service that turned up. The ending was just the creators getting that everyone wants to see Jean again even if there's no real reason to bring her back. And I adore that this franchise is still on it with naked Wolverine. There were some uncomfortable dudebros in my screening during that scene which made me exceptionally happy - like OMG, this action film explicitly caters to the female gaze once. How squicky for you >.> And Fassbender was great as Magneto - I wish we could have a past and present film all about Magneto.

Today I'm off to see "Malificent" and I have big dreams and hopes for this film. Cross your fingers.

Books

"The Shadowed Sun" was fantastic. It's on my list to review.

I'm in the middle of "Sister's Red" for a project and I have a lot of feelings about it. I am mostly annoyed at the potential this story had and how it appears to be throwing that away.

I'm also re-reading "The City & The City". Crime + SFF = love.

And this is the weekend I'll be starting "Monsters of Men". It's finally happening!

TV

"Orphan Black" continues to be my main TV pre-occupation. I think it's the strongest program on TV at the moment, bar "Hannibal", despite a bit of a bumpy series two set up. Last week's episode with Helena appearing in the bloody wedding dress was just incredibly messed up and amazing. I'm also glad to see they appear to have figured out how to fit Rachel into the series because the first few episodes left her so marginal. And Art and Angie continue to be favs of mine so I hope there will be more of them.

I still await Paul's death eagerly.

I also saw the season finale of "The Mentalist" and I would really like it if this terrible series could be the last one we ever see. There was a lot I enjoyed about this series as a fan of the show's goofy side and the minor characters, but the concept for it was just terrible. And, while I believed Jane's emotion faces at other times in the series, the sequence on the plane felt so overdone I couldn't deal with it. By the way, did anyone think the idea of the plane scene was very tasteless considering recent history?

Is anyone watching "Happy Valley" the new crime show from the writer of "Scott & Bailey"? It started out shaky, but it's picked up and I love the family drama element.

Creative Stuff

So, I worked out which piece of fan-fic I want to do next and it is something almost no one I know will want - POI white guy shipping. The working title is "Five Ways to Communicate with Your Partner". We'll see how it goes.

I made a playlist for Wiscon 38's Vid Party called <http://wiscon-vidparty.dreamwidth.org/10922.html#cutid10">What Women Want: Agency, Control and Desire". I highly recommend all the vids I put on there - so many talented vidders. And you should go check out the other playlists too because they're great!

And I wrote a short review of a Hugo nominated short story over at LB. Hopefully short reviews of short fic will become a regular thing from me, in a series called "Short Business" (if you think too hard about names you never get anything done). I've already read another Hugo nominated short story and hope to review it soon.

Still got those top notch post titling skills ;P

I finished a book! Magic. I read "Grasshopper Jungle" by Andrew Smith. If you have teens who like books that talk about relationships and weird SFF creations without sparing the squishy, fluidy bits of the story then I recommend it. As Ana from The Booksmugglers said when I started reading it, warning for weirdness about ladies in places. There's also a lot of good stuff in there though.

I started "The Shadowed Sun" which is the second book in N.K. Jemisin's duology. It's great but I have to concentrate on the world building quite a lot so it's not an ideal bus book and as a consequence my reading progresses slowly. Reading it reminded me how much I liked the story and characters in "The Killing Moon" even though I thought it had quite a bit of awkward explaining shoved in places (which makes so much more sense now that I know this was written before her trilogy). I'm kind of holding my breath until the end of this book because Jemisin does kill central characters and I'm worried about a couple of my favs.

I bought a shit ton of books. Like, possibly too many all at once considering how little I've managed to read so far this year.

I wrote and posted a piece of fan-fic for a challenge and then wrote about how this wasn't as terrible an experience as I expected it to be.

I went to see the Vikings exhibition at the British Museum and it was amazing, but really busy. If you're thinking of seeing it I advise going when you think the whole place will be quieter because the larger sections of the exhibit (the boat) are doable with people around but the first part clog up super quickly due to the way the timed entry system is set up.

I also went to The London Aquarium, which was kind of disappointing. Pretty sure my city's aquarium is better... I expected it to be more like the Monaco museum and aquarium I suppose, but it was more windy and small inside apart from the shark and ray tanks - more like the kind of aquarium you get tacked on to a zoo. I did learn lots of interesting things about sharks though.

I saw "Pompeii". Hahahaha. It actually was a pretty good B-movie until the last half an hour where it got dull-stupid instead of hilarious-stupid and killed my favourite character. I also watched "The Love Punch" which was exactly what I wanted from this film (this cast all talking to each other - I am easily pleased), except it could have done with more jokes. "Locke" predictably came out for a week here and then disappeared so I'll have to catch it on DVD.

I watched "Orphan Black" and I'm so happy it's back.