the girly who shall end all girls

what are you currently consuming?
reading-wise, i'm on volume 5 of The Apothecary Diaries light novels. i'm so happy to be living in the timeline where we get translations; i remember watching Read or Die *sigh* 20 years ago and wishing for the books.

tv-wise, Game Changer is back and the most recent episode, Deja Vu, was a joy to watch, especially because we were figuring it out along with the contestants. it was partly designed by the guy who did Escape the Greenroom last season. Dropout might be my most loved subscription these days

and tonight we remembered that we never finished Spy x Family. so we're in the midst of the cruise arc and after a long stretch of episodes that lost our interest it's back to serving the premise i watch the show for (Mr & Mrs Smith/fake dating/found family + competence porn and cuteness)

ongoing, Delicious in Dungeon and The Bad Batch. (i kind of watch The Bad Batch from behind the sofa because i don't want deaths, i know they do deaths, and there are very few characters we've seen in this show that we know survive into the Rebellion era.)

what did you recently finish?
OMG The Apothecary Diaries (no links, so many spoilers), very excited they've been renewed for a second season. once i got over the way the characters turn into chibi caricatures when they have strong emotions, i fell in love with the mystery of the week and the ongoing court intrigue and it's often funny. (seriously the character design is so beautiful and then suddenly it's a parody of itself.) while entirely unlike Nirvana in Fire, it satisfies some of my desire for more things like Nirvana in Fire.

what will you consume next?
more Spy x Family.

C may be sick or may have eaten something that his system hates. so out of caution this has become a very quiet weekend.

in some ways i've been in a reading drought for almost two years. In others i am reading mass quantities. in the Before Times the stories i thrived on were rife with conflict and unpredictability - nothing better than an unreliable narrator and danger at every turn. between the pandemic and living through a thwarted coup attempt and a dead parent, none of what i would normally read was at all okay. with some experimentation i discovered that rereads were fine, comics were often fine, and new things could be historical or sfnal romance (happy ending guaranteed, nothing close to real life) and fanfiction, especially fluff and fix-it (everyone who deserves to be happy is happy, none of the good guys die). i can now almost trace the quality of my mood by what i most want to read. i've gotten up to reading the Witcher books (currently rereading short stories, and then on to the novels, which are new to me) but i keep dipping in and out of them.

anyway, i feel like i should rec my recent fanfic obsession.

The Desert Storm, an epic Star Wars fic where Obi-wan Kenobi (at about four years after order 66) is thrown back in time twenty-some years. it is both warmly familiar and unexpectedly new; i especially recommend it to fans of The Clone Wars but i think it would work if you've only seen the first six films. there is a lot of space here where Jedi culture and life at the Temple is explored, and everyone who needs it gets some goddamn therapy.

i started it on a whim, because it is a genre i dislike on principle: a character travels back in time on their own timeline and attempts to use their foreknowledge to create a better outcome. but fuck it, i enjoyed the hell out of this thing and the author is writing from an insane level of knowledge (pulling out characters who appeared in one three-issue arc of Dark Horse comics in the late 90s, squeezing out every bit of Force lore that was in Clone Wars and Rebels, all kinds of shit from video games. there was a lot i knew and a lot to look up on Wookieepedia). if you've ever been upset at the idea of Anakin's mom being left behind a slave, if you like all the background Jedi characters, if you dig Mandalorian culture, if you want lightsaber battles but also younglings eating cookies, if you ship Obi-wan/happiness but also kind of like to wallow in how broken this guy is... it's all there. and it's complete.* there's enough going on that i'm considering a reread sooner than later. it's damn good.

for a short read that is canon-compliant, i recommend The Fragility of Noble Flaws, written as a missing scene from the Rako Hardeen arc of The Clone Wars; Anakin goes in person to tell Satine that the death was faked.



*there's a sequel series in progress but it ends in a perfectly fine spot.

a lot of long-awaited library holds came through for me, some wonderful and one remarkably disappointing.

i've now read all of The Murderbot Diaries series to date and they are just as good as people say they are.* there's a nice drip of character growth and mysteries solved per novella. Murderbot the self-aware jailbroken SecUnit is a delightfully unreliable narrator, not about events but about their feelings and their friendships. i like the worldbuilding (so much capitalism, itty bitty drones, bingewatching, pretending to be human is so relatable) and especially the behind-the-scenes world of ubiquitous artificial intelligence.

i have also read The House in the Cerulean Sea; where a depressed social worker inspects an orphanage full of nice people. i know that it is supposed to be heartwarming and is beloved by many but it really didn't work for me. ( spoilers and not so mild complaining )

i think i forgot to mention that i bought every Restaurant to Another World light novel that is available in English to read while we were camping in August. they are just as delightful as the anime. the books include more recurring characters, more of the culture of the fantasy world, and more about the life of the chef.


*i deeply resent that the ebook novellas cost the same as a thousand-page paperback novel so i'll still be sticking with the eternal library hold wait for the next one.
**and therefore also Christianity is real and it's the End Times?

i read a historical romance novel that was set in Egypt today. i had a laugh when they mentioned Abydos*.





*and of course real Abydos is in the news right now for its brewery

the Fitbit thinks I'm asleep when I sit quietly and read.

i have struggled with reading since mid-march. basically i can't successfully read anything that has real conflict or consequences or dark themes unless i am rereading (with the exception of 'latest installment of long-running series') or it's fanfic.

when we went camping i decided to try a combo of fantasy romance novels and comics, and it worked pretty well. around labor day i started a massive massive jag of regular historical romance, thanks to a good recommendation from r/RomanceBooks.

conveniently the libraries have a lot of them.* it's nice to be back onto my normal pace of several books a week, but they're a bit of a smear in my memory - there's a white woman in a dress on the cover, one or both of them is some form of English nobility, they always seem to have sex standing up at least once**, and they get married and live happily ever after. also they all have a wad of promo material and an excerpt of the next/another book at the end so i always quit before the "end" and it never triggers the add to goodreads window on my kindle, so i don't. (my goodreads is basically a list of the ebooks that kindle asked me to rate, usually it's just missing paper books and comics, but between the end matter and some romances only coming from the library in epub none of these are getting documented.)

is this the new normal? not sure. i do know that not all regency/historical is working for me; i've ditched a book that was just plain boring (and full of awkward attempts at writing Scots) and one that started with a torture scene (?!?). they're definitely better written and less creepy than the harlequins of my youth, and so far i've managed to avoid ones with plots that could be resolved with a single honest conversation. i'm having fun and it's so nice to read.





*for max ebooks, i have two library cards and pool those with a friend in another county for a total of three cards. we don't comment on each other's book choices but i'm sure they're amused by now.

**the most improbable thing for me about this is the frequency and ease of face-to-face sex against the wall, i don't know if this is about romance novels being full of wish-fulfillment fantasy or just the limits of my experience. i am statistically tall and commensurately long-limbed and heavy; the wrestler who could easily lift and hold me up for long periods was also a head shorter than i am so it was still an awkward enterprise.

i got myself a copy of Les Misérables with a holiday gift card, it arrived today.

i've bounced off it a few times but i want to have read it. after wussing out on reading it en français (it's not the difficulty so much as the size of the project) i pursued the Christine Donougher translation. getting a specific translation of a public domain book is a pain in the ass. my libraries didn't seem to have it and amazon blends all the listings together in a frustrating way. i really would have preferred to have an ebook (it's over 1200 pages, which is hard on my hands) but i couldn't be confident that i would get the desired edition. i'm not even sure there is an ebook of this translation.

it looks pretty. i'm excited.

Recently Finished
Never Grow Up
Jackie Chan's episodic autobiography. most interesting revelation: he's functionally illiterate, more literate in English than Chinese but not by much. i feel like there's a lot to be read between the lines and it makes me very curious about what it's like to have lived through the power transition in Hong Kong. this book doesn't really tell that story and i'm sure that's not allowed. also, Chan is textbook ADD.

i enjoyed reading it much like i enjoyed reading Anthony Bourdain - what a charming and talented asshole, i appreciate his work and i'm glad i'll never have to deal with him in real life.

The Seventh Bride
this is a T. Kingfisher book from 47 North that i got for free, read in one or two sittings, and don't remember that clearly. but my impression was favorable? clever girl teams up with other women to beat the odds.

Make the Bread, Buy the Butter
got this from the library based on (IIRC) rachelmanija's review. i read it cover-to-cover like a book - the recipes are organized in a sort of narrative with a lot of context - and enjoyed it a great deal. it's currently full of post-it tabs and assuming the bookmarked recipes turn out for me i will probably buy it. really nifty reference for cost and effort comparison for making things from scratch. (she's wrong about homemade coffee liqueur; it's easy and relatively cheap. but otherwise for the things i've already made from scratch i agree with her.) her voice is charming and her chicken ownership story is so true to the experiences of my chicken-raising friends.

Dragon Sword and Wind Child (Tales of Magatama Book 1)
this was in translation and i feel like i would have appreciated it more if i had a stronger Japanese cultural grounding. as it was i kind of hated the heroine and found it emotionally distant and unsatisfying.

China Mountain Zhang
this is a classic literary fiction book about a loser gay dude finding himself with a B plot about a marriage of convenience that turns into something more. it is also set in a near future where China is the world superpower and the US is their client nation and a Mars colony and there's a lot of nifty computer technology and travel and architecture. i still don't know how i feel about it because i was reading it expecting there to be a big international/interplanetary story about a government conspiracy or a revolution and apparently i was interrogating the text from the wrong perspective. it's kind of screaming for a Blade Runner-style adaptation where a moody book with great worldbuilding gets a more accessible story bolted on.

That Ain't Witchcraft (InCryptid)
a sturdy episode in the InCryptid series where we deal with the concept of the Crossroads, and hopefully the last one that is without Aeslin mice (although they are honored well). it feels like a bit of a bridge, but a fun bridge.

In an Absent Dream (Wayward Children, #4)
this tells Lundy's backstory. better than Beneath the Sugar Sky! not quite as good as Down Among the Sticks and Bones. this one i think suffered from the short length and would have blossomed with another dozen pages.

Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach
loved the worldbuilding and having an elderly genetically engineered heroine with practical tentacles, but it ended abruptly and awkwardly in a way that felt like it was an excerpt from a novel rather than a complete story. hmm. noting that this might be a bigger Tor.com problem.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Wayfarers, #1)
cozy SF story about life on board a ship where stuff is also happening in the galaxy sometimes. if you dig the crew interaction stuff from Firefly or The Orville, then this will be a pleasure. i had to try twice to get into it, but once i did it was like a warm bath.

The Kingdom of Copper (The Daevabad Trilogy, #2)
i waited a long time to get this from the library, and it read slowly because a) it was due to timing and shared elements jumbled with Rebel of the Sands in my brain and b) it was the middlest middle book that ever middled. in the first book our heroine is a grifter discovering her heritage and there's this big political and religious thing happening and the end is a dramatic downer but you are primed to know how she's going to climb out of this hole. in the second book she's in the hole as is everyone else and while there's some excitement at the end it is, again, a dramatic downer.

The Kiss Quotient (The Kiss Quotient, #1)
this is a romance novel about an autistic woman who hires an escort to help her learn about sex and romance. it's got some internalized ableism and some ick around her early sexual experiences, but it was otherwise a joy to read from an allistic perspective and a fun twist on Pretty Woman. the author is on the spectrum and i appreciated her descriptions of texture and scent in general and especially in the sex scenes. (there are many sex scenes.)

An Argumentation of Historians (The Chronicles of St. Mary's #9)
i thought this series was over? but it's not? they are still hunting that one bad guy.

Children of Blood and Bone (Legacy of Orïsha, #1)
Magic in Africa with colonialism and colorism and genocide. it's got a revolution and a quest with a ticking time clock and women finding their power. good times, looking forward to the next one.

Currently Reading
The Way of Kings: this has been sitting on my Kindle for years. i got it free at some point and had been warned that it was slow and i kept setting it aside. but i've also been told getting through this one is worth it to read the next ones. well, it's really slow.
right now i want to count all the times we've been shown that the one dude sucks the magic light out of the stones they use for money and then heals BUT NO ONE PUTS THIS TOGETHER INCLUDING HIM.

What's Next
library ebooks.

Recently Finished
The Riddle-Master. yeah, those books were not for me. at least i correctly guessed why our hero had his superpowers? has someone written fanfic in this universe? i feel like someone else doing something interesting in that world might be good. (just now i realized that it may have been an influence on Birthright. i should check, often the designers will credit their inspirations in the book somewhere.)

DNF: Woman on the Edge of Time. it started with violence against women of color and a forced abortion and i noped the fuck out of there. i know there's supposed to be some good spec fic beyond that point but no, not right now.

Clockwork Boys: D&D meets Suicide Squad featuring a forger, an assassin, a disgraced paladin, a cleric, and some scary stuff going on in the world. unfortunately it's really just half a book, so don't get it without its sequel. (i have that one out from the library but am still racing to finish expired books on the kindle.) i adored it.

Plain Kate: an orphan girl strikes a bad bargain with a witch and has to dig herself out (and save a bunch of lives in the process). it has nifty worldbuilding and a very special cat, kind of classic YA hero's journey stuff. trigger warning for violence against animals.

Cart and Cwidder: more classic YA, a growing into power story featuring magic music and the best horse. i enjoyed this but while the sibling dynamic was great the kids' relationship with their parents was profoundly odd and hard for me to believe; it's book one of a series but while i liked it okay it wasn't enough to seek out the rest. also has violence against animals.

Currently Reading
Jade City - duelling crime families in a Vietnamesque country where jade provides people (who are genetically able) with superpowers. think Mistborn (but with an element that doesn't get consumed) meets The Godfather.

What's Next
kindle library backlog! i'm getting more and more caught up.

i read Snowspelled yesterday (it's a novella). it has fun worldbuilding (fake regency england with elves, trolls, men doing magic and women doing government) with a smart and cranky heroine. it was light and charming and i enjoyed it.

but i couldn't love it.

i was sure the plot was going to resolve in a certain way, and i was there for the ride to said resolution. i was right about the mystery aspect, but not about the destiny of our heroine. the choice she made at the end felt out of character to me (even though on reflection i could see how it was supposed to have been set up in earlier scenes).

what happened?

i thought that i was reading a fantasy with romance elements, but actually i was reading a romance in a fantasy setting.* i expected the story to be about fulfilling the heroine's thirst for knowledge and adventure, but actually it was about fulfilling her need for belonging.

i've been trying to allow myself to read more romances; i like longing and love (and sex) in stories. but oh, the tropes and the formulas still aren't for me.




*when a book that's mentioned somewhere online piques my interest, i put it on hold at the library. due to my local libraries being well-loved, enough time has passed when i get the book that i often have no idea where the recommendation came from or why i thought it was something i should read.