(not) Wednesday reading meme
Jan. 29th, 2015 06:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbardI should just start calling this the Thursday reading meme, honestly, since this is the third Thursday running.
What I've just finished reading
A reasonable batch of books! I finished The Mirror Empire by Kameron Hurley, which is...odd. It's almost indescribable as a novel; it's set in a fantasy universe with some crazy wild world-building, and it has parallel universes, which is normally a thing I would be pretty into. I just...don't know how I feel about it. I can tell you that Hurley cannot build tension for anything -- over the long term, sort of, but not in the short term. Her prose is...I don't know. I don't know how to describe it. It's not bad, but there's something about her word choice and sentence structure that doesn't build and sustain tension and I can't figure out why, and during scenes that should have been on the edge of my seat oh my god what's going to happen I was just sitting her going, "Meh." And being weirdly fascinated by her inability to do that.
I also finished reading Martha Wells' The Gate of Gods, which was a reread, and then Michael Stackpole's Star Wars: X-Wing: Rogue Squadron, which was pretty good military sci-fi. Also, Rosemary Kirstein's The Outskirter's Secret, which I read all in one go and which I also have mixed feelings about. (This is pretty much how I felt about The Steerswoman, too; it took me a good six months at least to read The Outskirter's Secret after I finished the first book.)
What I'm currently reading
Purse reading is Stackpole's Star Wars: X-Wing: Wedge's Gamble, the second X-Wing book, which so far is holding up to book one's standards, and computer/ebook reading is Martha Wells' Stargate Atlantis: Entanglement, which is a reread. I've got Wells' Star Wars: Empire and Rebellion: Razor's Edge on my phone (also a reread), so we're pretty deeply into tie-in territory right now, heh. And I'm still listening to Wells' The Element of Fire in audiobook. (I love Martha Wells, and her prose style is close enough to mine that it doesn't mess up mine when writing, which is actually a concern with some writers. I had to blow through the last of the Hurley really fast because losing the ability to construct tension would have been a nightmare and I could feel my brain moving to form sentences the same way she does.)
What I'm reading next
Please gods, one of the ten billion books I have out from the library and seem to be hoarding like the end of the world is coming and those books are all I'm gonna have left in the universe.
What I've just finished reading
A reasonable batch of books! I finished The Mirror Empire by Kameron Hurley, which is...odd. It's almost indescribable as a novel; it's set in a fantasy universe with some crazy wild world-building, and it has parallel universes, which is normally a thing I would be pretty into. I just...don't know how I feel about it. I can tell you that Hurley cannot build tension for anything -- over the long term, sort of, but not in the short term. Her prose is...I don't know. I don't know how to describe it. It's not bad, but there's something about her word choice and sentence structure that doesn't build and sustain tension and I can't figure out why, and during scenes that should have been on the edge of my seat oh my god what's going to happen I was just sitting her going, "Meh." And being weirdly fascinated by her inability to do that.
I also finished reading Martha Wells' The Gate of Gods, which was a reread, and then Michael Stackpole's Star Wars: X-Wing: Rogue Squadron, which was pretty good military sci-fi. Also, Rosemary Kirstein's The Outskirter's Secret, which I read all in one go and which I also have mixed feelings about. (This is pretty much how I felt about The Steerswoman, too; it took me a good six months at least to read The Outskirter's Secret after I finished the first book.)
What I'm currently reading
Purse reading is Stackpole's Star Wars: X-Wing: Wedge's Gamble, the second X-Wing book, which so far is holding up to book one's standards, and computer/ebook reading is Martha Wells' Stargate Atlantis: Entanglement, which is a reread. I've got Wells' Star Wars: Empire and Rebellion: Razor's Edge on my phone (also a reread), so we're pretty deeply into tie-in territory right now, heh. And I'm still listening to Wells' The Element of Fire in audiobook. (I love Martha Wells, and her prose style is close enough to mine that it doesn't mess up mine when writing, which is actually a concern with some writers. I had to blow through the last of the Hurley really fast because losing the ability to construct tension would have been a nightmare and I could feel my brain moving to form sentences the same way she does.)
What I'm reading next
Please gods, one of the ten billion books I have out from the library and seem to be hoarding like the end of the world is coming and those books are all I'm gonna have left in the universe.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-02-01 06:40 am (UTC)Re: the ten billion books from the library - Sympathies! My current aim is to read through all the books I've actually bought, which are sitting on bookshelves and beside my bed and on the floor. One nearly down, and about a dozen to go.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-02-01 08:37 pm (UTC)