Reading Update

There's certainly a benefit to being a member of library systems in different countries. That is, while some e-books have a long waitlist in the library system of where I live, they're abundant in the catalog of where I'm from :D

The Unwomanly Face Of War by Svetlana Alexievich

A collection of so many first-accounts of WW2 from Soviet women, many of whom fought in it or were otherwise involved with the army, with Alexievich's musings interspersed. It's a gripping and unrelenting work, both in the women's words themselves and how Alexievich arranges them, pauses in between to note the women's reactions as they tell their stories, to note what they're most hesitant to talk about and how the story shifts with who is present. I know almost nothing about this front of WW2, but as the author herself says, the facts of battles won and territories lost are not her concern here.

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Sula by Toni Morrison

It was nice to finish a book in four days, after how long my previous two reads were stretched out. Sula the character was the right kind of unsettling, IMO.

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

There are two ways this book was described to me. One was "Low horny, high lore, and ~loyalty~". This is an accurate description. The other was that it was a sci-fi exploration of colonialism, and honestly that made me head into it feeling very ambivalent, given how little I cared for Imperial Radch trilogy's exploration of the same and the similar-sounding praise for that. I was very wrong. This book's handling of it was awfully compelling to me. It's summed up best by the book's own dedication: to anyone who has ever fallen in love with a culture that was devouring their own.

That aptly describes Mahit, who thus makes an excellent protagonist as the Lsel ambassador to the Texicalaani Empire. She loves the Texicalaani canon even as she tries to ensure her home isn't the next place annexed by their expanding Empire. The wrestling with those not-quite competing desires and the awareness that she'll always be other is the emotional throughline of the book, as busy as she is with thrilling political intrigue, given the death of her predecessor.

(No one described this book to me by saying that Three Seagrass has the same energy as Peridot, so I'm just going to put that out there.)

Everything else I want to say is spoilery, so before the cut - this is probably my favorite of the novels I've read so far this year. Also, I desperately want fanart.

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