April Books and Other Sundries
Apr. 30th, 2014 05:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
netgirl_y2kSalvage - Alexandra Duncan
The King's Peace - Jo Walton
Salvage is a dystopian YA, sort of. It's about a girl who's grown up on a deep space colony ship which has developed this deeply patriarchal culture, all the men have multiple wives, and a lot of the young boys get left behind planetside; I couldn't help but think of them as the space mormons. And when the protagonist gets kicked out of the space mormons she's got to adjust to life on Earth, both the culture, which is totally different, and the gravity, which is so much higher than she grew up with, first on a giant inhabited island of garbage in the Pacific, and later in Mumbai.
It's good, not massively subtle, but then, since when has dystopian YA ever been subtle. And all the different settings were pretty fascinating.
The King's Peace is a hold over from March that I finished in April; it's an alternate telling of Arthurian legend told from the POV of one of the king's female knights. It took me a long time to get into in, the plot meandered a lot. But I did end up liking it, certainly enough to read the rest of the trilogy. I think part of the reason it took me so long to get into it was that it was Jo Walton's first novel, and it's always a little frustrating to read an early effort by an author whose later works you adore. It reminded me a lot of The Deed of Paksenarrion, so if you liked that one--
I'm still dipping in and out of The Doomsday Book as well as Life Mask by Emma Donoghue, which I'm really liking.
*
I read so little this month, which I refuse to feel bad about. Books being one of the delights of my life which I refuse to attach feelings of guilt to. I also like scotch and cake; hard not to feel at least a little guilty about scotch and cake.
On the other hand I have finished my Remix and Rarewomen fics early, which isn't at all like me, hurrah!
I also did the Merlin remix, which I must confess I signed up for with less than the optimum amount of enthusiasm (if I have to write Merlin/Arthur I can always write five hundred and one words and then orphan it, I thought). But I'm glad I did because I ended up being quite pleased with the fic I wrote, which I can't talk about yet, but what I can do is rec you the awesome remix of my fic:
The One Where a Bear and a Dragon (and Morgana) Save the Ending From Being Eaten By Canon (The Grimm and Bear It Remix)
Which takes a daft wee OT4 fic I wrote in S2 and turns it into everything I could want about Morgana and Aithusa and the possibility of a better destiny.
*
The other things is, I've said that I'd been referred to a counsellor type person for some cognitive behavioural therapy, didn't I? So I've been doing that for the last couple of months, and my last session was yesterday.
I am now officially totally sane and normal... Well, at least as normal as NHS Scotland is prepared to pay for me to be.
I do think it's helped, though I was sceptical at first. I don't exactly feel like a bird on the wing, no, but I'm also not as paralysed by anxiety and my various neuroses as I was a few months ago. The most surprising thing is that I'm drinking a lot less now, I guess I didn't realise how much I was using alcohol as a crutch until I didn't feel like I had to, you know?
The King's Peace - Jo Walton
Salvage is a dystopian YA, sort of. It's about a girl who's grown up on a deep space colony ship which has developed this deeply patriarchal culture, all the men have multiple wives, and a lot of the young boys get left behind planetside; I couldn't help but think of them as the space mormons. And when the protagonist gets kicked out of the space mormons she's got to adjust to life on Earth, both the culture, which is totally different, and the gravity, which is so much higher than she grew up with, first on a giant inhabited island of garbage in the Pacific, and later in Mumbai.
It's good, not massively subtle, but then, since when has dystopian YA ever been subtle. And all the different settings were pretty fascinating.
The King's Peace is a hold over from March that I finished in April; it's an alternate telling of Arthurian legend told from the POV of one of the king's female knights. It took me a long time to get into in, the plot meandered a lot. But I did end up liking it, certainly enough to read the rest of the trilogy. I think part of the reason it took me so long to get into it was that it was Jo Walton's first novel, and it's always a little frustrating to read an early effort by an author whose later works you adore. It reminded me a lot of The Deed of Paksenarrion, so if you liked that one--
I'm still dipping in and out of The Doomsday Book as well as Life Mask by Emma Donoghue, which I'm really liking.
*
I read so little this month, which I refuse to feel bad about. Books being one of the delights of my life which I refuse to attach feelings of guilt to. I also like scotch and cake; hard not to feel at least a little guilty about scotch and cake.
On the other hand I have finished my Remix and Rarewomen fics early, which isn't at all like me, hurrah!
I also did the Merlin remix, which I must confess I signed up for with less than the optimum amount of enthusiasm (if I have to write Merlin/Arthur I can always write five hundred and one words and then orphan it, I thought). But I'm glad I did because I ended up being quite pleased with the fic I wrote, which I can't talk about yet, but what I can do is rec you the awesome remix of my fic:
The One Where a Bear and a Dragon (and Morgana) Save the Ending From Being Eaten By Canon (The Grimm and Bear It Remix)
Which takes a daft wee OT4 fic I wrote in S2 and turns it into everything I could want about Morgana and Aithusa and the possibility of a better destiny.
*
The other things is, I've said that I'd been referred to a counsellor type person for some cognitive behavioural therapy, didn't I? So I've been doing that for the last couple of months, and my last session was yesterday.
I am now officially totally sane and normal... Well, at least as normal as NHS Scotland is prepared to pay for me to be.
I do think it's helped, though I was sceptical at first. I don't exactly feel like a bird on the wing, no, but I'm also not as paralysed by anxiety and my various neuroses as I was a few months ago. The most surprising thing is that I'm drinking a lot less now, I guess I didn't realise how much I was using alcohol as a crutch until I didn't feel like I had to, you know?
no subject
Date: 2014-05-02 03:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-03 05:03 pm (UTC)you are a better woman than me re: rarewomen. it's going to be a mad dash to the finish over here. i'm trying to finish grading all these papers so i can finish revising my story. blergh.
i'm glad the counseling worked! the fact you already see some legit results should make you feel good. and drinking is more fun when it comes from a place of celebration than from self-medication.
no subject
Date: 2014-05-06 07:38 pm (UTC)I totally agree with you on Anne's coming out story. That bit where Eliza is confronting Anne and kisses her to prove that Anne did nothing for her - aye, right! - I really thought I knew where the story was going, and I really loved that it didn't go that way; that Anne ended up with Mary, and that Eliza's sexuality was left more ambiguous.
I ended up really grateful that the rarewomen writing period is unusually long, because any shorter and I would have had to drop out. I was drawing a complete blank for, like, six weeks.