Reading Update
May. 9th, 2021 11:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jaggedwolfAnother rapid-fire round, splitting the cuts to two broad categories.
Books I generally liked (Sugarbread, The Lady's Guide To Celestial Mechanics, The Scout Mindset)
Sugarbread by Balli Kaur Jaswal
A YA novel following Pin, a Sikh primary-school kid in Singapore discovering the truth of her mother's past and why everyone keeps saying she shouldn't be like her. Ultimately a heartening story, as angry as it made me at times. Pin's kiddish empiricism and her father's understated sweetness sufficiently balanced out the very painful history between her mother and grandmother. Couldn't tell if the initial expository bits of How Things Work In Singapore were objectively unnecessary or if my perspective is shaded by my own knowledge.
The Lady's Guide To Celestial Mechanics by Olivia Waite
A historical f/f romance between an astronomer and the widowed countess sponsoring her work. Had a little of that classic forced romantic conflict at the end, but by that point I was so fond of both Lucy and Catherine that I could excuse them it, especially with the nature of Catherine's marriage. I was also charmed by what the romantic efforts are here. Writing an astronomy translation that's accessible to the other because she was denied learning such things. Making a scarf with an accurate rendition of the stars. And of course, that very last proposition that seals the deal: starting a peer-reviewed science journal together.
The Scout Mindset by Julia Galef
Non-fiction book arguing that what it terms scout mindset is more useful than what it terms soldier mindset in a variety of situations - where the scout is concerned about seeing situations accurately while the soldier is concerned about their side or argument "winning". Enjoyable read, took a bunch of notes. I particularly appreciated the arguments that seeing the truth is uh, actually good for you, despite what people say about the benefits of self-deception, especially when many more people have more choices than used to be the case.
Seeing how the accuracy of my confidence levels differed across categories of the calibration quiz was fun too. E.g I did slightly better on history questions than I estimated I would but way worse on animal questions than I estimated I would and it's intriguing to consider what causes those differences, though it's a small sample size.
Books I was meh on (Memorial, Middlegame)
I liked the prose well enough (the descriptions of food made me very hungry) and Mitsuko, but the two guy's PoVs sounded too similar and I don't care for the kind of open ending this book has.
Middlegame by Seanan McGuire
On one hand, the set-up that this is merely one iteration of a loop that's happened many times before should be entirely within my wheelhouse, I read too many Peggy Sue HP fics back in the day for that not to be the case. On the other hand, Roger and Dodger are clueless about their enemies' existence for far too much of the book, let alone their enemies' goals, and so the plot feels too vague for too long.
Possibly a me-specific tick: I really could not take it seriously when anyone used the phrase "quantum entanglement" or when Leigh argues that Roger and Dodger shouldn't interact because of...Galileo's planetary charts?? The book's take on alchemy hits my science uncanny valley. On that note, the way Dodger's math geniusness was written just didn't work, I dunno if it's how she talked/thought about it or something else.
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Date: 2021-06-10 10:16 am (UTC)Oh Seanan McGuire. Her books just never work for me, no matter what they're about.
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Date: 2021-06-15 02:15 pm (UTC)This was the first McGuire book I've read, but yeah, didn't feel much urge to read more by her.