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landofnowhere(A lot to catch up on, so these will be short takes.)
Princess Napraxine, Ouida.lunabee34's readalong has finished volume 2 of this 3-volume novel, in which we had various drama including a marriage and a death. Not sure how this book is going to wrap up in the last volume!
Thomas Nast: the Father of Modern Political Cartoons, Fiona Deans Halloran. Thomas Nast's career really peaked when he took down Boss Tweed. Afterwards, although he was a household name, it was all downhill: making a good income but poor financial choices, trying to assert journalistic independence from his publisher's political views, ultimately trying to shart his own paper which failed, trying to get a cushy diplomatic job and ending up dying of yellow fever in Ecuador. So yeah, the second half of this book gave a useful look at late 19th century US politics, but also anticlimactic.
We Regret To Inform You, Ariel Kaplan. I needed a YA book to cheer myself up, and this one worked! Overachiever Mischa is rejected from all the colleges she applied to, even the safety school. This leads to the soul-searching you'd expect from a YA novel, but also to her falling in with a group of girl hackers, who suspect that someone must have sabotaged Mischa's application materials, leading to fun hijinks as they investigate.
Just Happy to Be Here, Naomi Kanakia. Also set in the DC area and about a scholarship student at a private school who befriends a group of girls, but very different. Tara is a trans girl who has just transferred to an all-girls high school from its sibling all-boys school. The book doesn't flinch away from depicting transphobia, both internal and external, but the arc is generally positive, and it was fun to see Tara finally make a group of friends. It felt like a very well-rounded book: though we get the protagonist's point of view, the other characters, both teens and adults, felt fully realized and I could imagine how things looked different from their perspectives.
The Way of Kings, Brandon Sanderson. Book 5, concluding the first half of The Stormlight Archive, is coming out in December, and so I thought I'd reread this series of fantasy bricks to remind myself of what has happened up to this point. I'm reminded why this isn't the favorite of my books in the series -- it is setting stuff up for later in the series, but very slowly, and I'm not super-fond of any of the POV characters.
Princess Napraxine, Ouida.
lunabee34's readalong has finished volume 2 of this 3-volume novel, in which we had various drama including a marriage and a death. Not sure how this book is going to wrap up in the last volume!Thomas Nast: the Father of Modern Political Cartoons, Fiona Deans Halloran. Thomas Nast's career really peaked when he took down Boss Tweed. Afterwards, although he was a household name, it was all downhill: making a good income but poor financial choices, trying to assert journalistic independence from his publisher's political views, ultimately trying to shart his own paper which failed, trying to get a cushy diplomatic job and ending up dying of yellow fever in Ecuador. So yeah, the second half of this book gave a useful look at late 19th century US politics, but also anticlimactic.
We Regret To Inform You, Ariel Kaplan. I needed a YA book to cheer myself up, and this one worked! Overachiever Mischa is rejected from all the colleges she applied to, even the safety school. This leads to the soul-searching you'd expect from a YA novel, but also to her falling in with a group of girl hackers, who suspect that someone must have sabotaged Mischa's application materials, leading to fun hijinks as they investigate.
Just Happy to Be Here, Naomi Kanakia. Also set in the DC area and about a scholarship student at a private school who befriends a group of girls, but very different. Tara is a trans girl who has just transferred to an all-girls high school from its sibling all-boys school. The book doesn't flinch away from depicting transphobia, both internal and external, but the arc is generally positive, and it was fun to see Tara finally make a group of friends. It felt like a very well-rounded book: though we get the protagonist's point of view, the other characters, both teens and adults, felt fully realized and I could imagine how things looked different from their perspectives.
The Way of Kings, Brandon Sanderson. Book 5, concluding the first half of The Stormlight Archive, is coming out in December, and so I thought I'd reread this series of fantasy bricks to remind myself of what has happened up to this point. I'm reminded why this isn't the favorite of my books in the series -- it is setting stuff up for later in the series, but very slowly, and I'm not super-fond of any of the POV characters.
Just Happy to Be Here
Date: 24 Oct 2024 11:03 (UTC)Re: Just Happy to Be Here
Date: 24 Oct 2024 11:46 (UTC)Re: Just Happy to Be Here
Date: 24 Oct 2024 11:48 (UTC)