Welcome to my first monthly round up. I am planning on publishing them on the last Sunday of the month. They are mostly for me to look back on at the end of the year but you’re welcome to come along for the ride.
The New Year always starts with the best of intentions, at least for me, but planning and doing are two entirely separate things.
Playing Catch-Up
I have set this year’s plan as ‘playing catch-up’ and that’s still my intention though as you’ll see the struggle is real.
Currently Reading: The Fifth Season & Far From the Light of Heaven
I said in my opening blog post for the year that I wanted have another go at reading N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy and after a few false starts I think finally I’m invested.
The Fifth Season is told from the point of view (pov) of three main characters. Each gets their own chapter and Jemisin is swapping between them regularly. Every chapter swap between the characters but there is no order to it .
Having multiple povs is standard but my brain doesn’t really enjoy the swapping and changing. I like consistency and so this tends to subtly kick me out of the story.
In The Fifth Season one point of view is narrated using ‘you’.
You are she. She is you. You are Essun. Remember? The woman whose son is dead
The opening line to Chapter 1
I really don’t think it helped me to settle into the book as I usually bounce straight off second person narratives. And then I say bounce, they make me incredibly frustrated.
I wasn’t really feeling it on the second attempt either but I asked Mastodon for their views and I got two really helpful comments:
And then there was this.
So I am now listening to a mix of the audiobook and reading the text. Listening to The Fifth Season got me into the ‘you’ voice and combined with Robin Miles’s narration gave the voice of the story, which I’ve very grateful for.
And I’ve settled in to each pov and the ‘you’ doesn’t seem jarring now I’ve got used to it. I am very curious what the payoff is going to be.
I was listening to Runemarks when I tried the audiobook for The Fifth Season so I am balancing both books.
I’m now at page 200 and I don’t think there is further DNF potential. So thank you Cina and Louise for the feedback to get me going again.
I’m about 80 pages into Far From the Light of Heaven by Tade Thompson. I wasn’t sure what to read as my next ebook but someone mentioned that Far From the Light of Heaven by Tade Thompson. is a space horror book. And as it’s a book I already have, I have it a go.
I also found out that it’s also a detective story. I love this combination.
Tade has a storytelling style that had be invested from page 1. I am now on page 80 and I am curious to see where this is going as there is a lot of pages to go.
Back to Runemarks, I’m about 2 hours (or 66 pages in) and as it’s a relisten I can take me time and enjoy it. And I am. It’s a fun take on Norse myth.
For my own notes these books were published in 2007, 2015 and 2021.
Reducing the overflowing physical and digital TBR piles
I failed. I’ve failed so hard. It’s gone up. It’s gone up by quite a margin. I am keeping a spreadsheet of what I’ve bought but also how much I’ve spent. I’ve bought more books than I’ve set as my reading goal for the year. I need an intervention. Or better budgeting skills.
Below are some of the highlights. And can you blame me? Look at them, they all come highly recommend.
I dipped my two into these fancy book you can get with sprayed edges from Illumicrate last year getting the full package of book plus extras (Babel and The Book Eaters). I could see me accumulating lots of lovely items that stay in the box quite rapidly so I cancelled my subscription.
I did continue to have FOMO so I’ve got a book-only subscription to both Illumicrate and FairlyLoot.
My rationale is that I’ll pick up nice editions of new books. And this will scratch some sort of new book-itch… it’s not a very strong reason I grant you. But the two February books are high on my radar list. And the January Illumicrate (if I understood the teaser correctly) is a stand-alone I’m itching to read as well.
Bonus Challenge of Reading More Shorter Fiction
If you check out my Read in 2023 page, you’ll see I’ve logged 1 short story. It was a short story that got me thinking but I need to get more shorter fiction under my belt in February, I think I’ve been distracted by acquiring new books…
Plans for February…
Finish the books listed above, get some shorter fiction read, and maybe start The Stand.
I have just finished The Burning God by R.F. Kuang. It’s the last book in The Poppy War trilogy. And I have thoughts.
Currently, my thoughts centre around grimdark not being a genre I enjoy. I didn’t know that’s what The Poppy War was going to be when I went in. I just knew that a lot people on BookTok love it. And I was curious enough to pick up the series*.
Don’t get me wrong the trilogy is outstanding, challenging, thought provoking, and emotive but it lives up to the definitions of Grimdark presented on Wikipedia
Liz Bourke considered grimdark’s defining characteristic to be grimdark’s defining characteristic to be “a retreat into the valorisation of darkness for darkness’s sake, into a kind of nihilism that portrays right action … as either impossible or futile”
And there is a quote from page 42 of Adam Roberts’s Get Started in: Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy:
“where nobody is honourable and Might is Right” and as “the standard way of referring to fantasies that turn their backs on the more uplifting, Pre-Raphaelite visions of idealized medievaliana, and instead stress how nasty, brutish, short and, er, dark life back then ‘really’ was”
I didn’t know that A Land Fit for Heroes was considered grimdark…at least when I read (OK…listened to the audiobook) it didn’t strike me as darkness for darkness sake.
The Burning God by R. F . Kuang
But The Poppy War is a brutal story. And I think it falls with the definition provided by Adam Roberts.
It’s relentless. The main character’s arc is extreme. She does terrible things and has terrible things done to her. And Kuang is great because when you reach the point that you can’t take any more, she shifts gears and the story moves along.
But I don’t think it’s a style of story I’d want to pick up regularly. I read to escape the darkness and find hope.
That’s not the point or aim of grimdark as I understand it. And The Poppy War is an exemplary example of the genre.
I don’t plan on going back to grimdark consciously, at least not for a while, unless I read a series that is grimdark but I don’t realise it is.
I’m though going to read Babel as I’m curious what Kuang will bring to dark academia… Maybe I’m a fool as I have a feeling it’ll be a dark tale…
*I read the first two books back in April and May of 2022 before picking up The Burning God in December.
A courier is late for a handover, and then their night gets worse. Interesting set-up but the payoff lacked sense. It fell apart when revealed. Had some nice SF elements.
I also gave it a star review of 2/5. I am sort of uncomfortable with my score and I’d like to explore the score and the story in a bit more detail.
If you plan on reading this story in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Nov/Dec 2022 issue please read the it first and then come back.
The theme of 2023 is Playing Catch-up. I have this looming feeling of unfinished business where my reading is concerned as it feels like I’ve failed to keep promises to myself. And this weblog is part of my rebuilding trust with myself (deep or what).
In this post I’m trying to get an overview of my reading intention for 2023.
