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landofnowhereSkipped last week as I had COVID, which presented itself as a bad cold, but I'm doing much better now and have a bunch to catch up on.
Labyrinth's Heart, M. A. Carrick. Final book in the Rook and Rose trilogy, generally a reasonably satisfying conclusion, as a member of Team Tanaquis I have Thoughts (though also feel that if I were really Team Tanaquis I would have picked up more clues about what is happening). Also wow Ren is wearing a lot of hats at the end of this, but this is not really a book of "Ren figures out she can't be everything to everyone", I mean that is kind of a thing but she is still really being a lot of things to a lot of people.
Six Characters in Search of an Author, Luigi Pirandello. Play readaloud. I was one of the people who suggested it, not knowing anything about it except that it's a Classic, on the grounds that it's public domain and metatheatre is always fun. Which it is, but I'm not sure about all the other things this play is doing. This play didn't quite hit for me but at least it did not overstay its welcome.
Simon Sort of Says, Erin Bow. Enjoyable -- a good middle-grade novel about kids and friendships to read while I had COVID. My inner 12-year-old who loved *Contact* got a kick out of the plot -- I could probably nitpick the science but that's not the point. (One thing that I will not nitpick is that it seems like the kids think that 1 is prime -- this is understandable, they are middle school kids, it is a prime by the definition they give, they do not care about number theory, they are not thinking hard about what the right definition of a prime number should be, and they don't have easy internet access. If a writer is using primes to demonstrate how mathy an adult character is, and they include 1 as a prime, I will totally nitpick that, but this is not that situation.)
The Roaring Girl, or Moll Cutpurse, by Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker. Play read-aloud. I ran across this a couple weeks ago when looking for public domain plays, and knew we had to do this. This is a 1610 play with a swashbuckling female/genderqueer protagonist based on a real person. And Moll is indeed a very delightful female protagonist, absolutely the best part of the show, doing whatever she wants without regard to gender roles and calling men out on their bad behavior! There is *so much gender* in this play, and though various characters are scandalized by Moll at points in the plot, the play is 100% behind Moll being herself and living her best life. This is also absolutely the bawdiest play we have done, full of sex jokes, often not very subtle. There are a couple subplots about the love lives of tradeswomen that got tedious, but the whole thing was fun and is still making me smile.
The Shadow Rising, Robert Jordan. Interesting reading this at the same time as watching Wheel of Time Season 2, because I get to see the same characters but at different places in the plot (not to mention the plot divergences between book and TV series, which mean these aren't quite the "same" characters).
Too Like the Lightning/Trop Semblable à l'éclair, Ada Palmer (tr. Michelle Charrier). I'm a good ways into this book now! Rereading in two languages in parallel (each week I read 3-4 chapters in English, then the same 3-4 in French translation) has been interesting -- recently I've gotten to the bit that really reads different after Perhaps The Stars. Enjoyed learning the French word "vaticination", which is particularly apt for describing Mycroft's ramblings.
Labyrinth's Heart, M. A. Carrick. Final book in the Rook and Rose trilogy, generally a reasonably satisfying conclusion, as a member of Team Tanaquis I have Thoughts (though also feel that if I were really Team Tanaquis I would have picked up more clues about what is happening). Also wow Ren is wearing a lot of hats at the end of this, but this is not really a book of "Ren figures out she can't be everything to everyone", I mean that is kind of a thing but she is still really being a lot of things to a lot of people.
Six Characters in Search of an Author, Luigi Pirandello. Play readaloud. I was one of the people who suggested it, not knowing anything about it except that it's a Classic, on the grounds that it's public domain and metatheatre is always fun. Which it is, but I'm not sure about all the other things this play is doing. This play didn't quite hit for me but at least it did not overstay its welcome.
Simon Sort of Says, Erin Bow. Enjoyable -- a good middle-grade novel about kids and friendships to read while I had COVID. My inner 12-year-old who loved *Contact* got a kick out of the plot -- I could probably nitpick the science but that's not the point. (One thing that I will not nitpick is that it seems like the kids think that 1 is prime -- this is understandable, they are middle school kids, it is a prime by the definition they give, they do not care about number theory, they are not thinking hard about what the right definition of a prime number should be, and they don't have easy internet access. If a writer is using primes to demonstrate how mathy an adult character is, and they include 1 as a prime, I will totally nitpick that, but this is not that situation.)
The Roaring Girl, or Moll Cutpurse, by Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker. Play read-aloud. I ran across this a couple weeks ago when looking for public domain plays, and knew we had to do this. This is a 1610 play with a swashbuckling female/genderqueer protagonist based on a real person. And Moll is indeed a very delightful female protagonist, absolutely the best part of the show, doing whatever she wants without regard to gender roles and calling men out on their bad behavior! There is *so much gender* in this play, and though various characters are scandalized by Moll at points in the plot, the play is 100% behind Moll being herself and living her best life. This is also absolutely the bawdiest play we have done, full of sex jokes, often not very subtle. There are a couple subplots about the love lives of tradeswomen that got tedious, but the whole thing was fun and is still making me smile.
The Shadow Rising, Robert Jordan. Interesting reading this at the same time as watching Wheel of Time Season 2, because I get to see the same characters but at different places in the plot (not to mention the plot divergences between book and TV series, which mean these aren't quite the "same" characters).
Too Like the Lightning/Trop Semblable à l'éclair, Ada Palmer (tr. Michelle Charrier). I'm a good ways into this book now! Rereading in two languages in parallel (each week I read 3-4 chapters in English, then the same 3-4 in French translation) has been interesting -- recently I've gotten to the bit that really reads different after Perhaps The Stars. Enjoyed learning the French word "vaticination", which is particularly apt for describing Mycroft's ramblings.
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