hit counter

Tag: Mishell Baker

Posted on

Three more books

Reading a lot these days…

  • Borderline by Mishell Baker: this was a re-read (it’s on the Sirens Reading Challenge). I liked it the first time; I enjoyed it this time around too. There are now two more books in this series. I read Phantom Pains (the second in the series) a while back, but Borderline is still my favorite.
  • Damsel by Elana K. Arnold: I found this book super-original and I admired it…and at the same time it wasn’t really my kind of thing. But my feeling about it isn’t dissimilar from previous books that, upon re-reading, HAVE become my sort of thing. I’ll have to wait and see with this one.
  • Wake of Vultures by Lila Bowen: this was a Sirens Reading Challenge book. This one was *really* not my kind of thing, even while I admire what the author managed to do (vampire/other creature-infested Wild West with a heroine of color). Some of my issues are straightforward – vampires and Westerns both are hard sells for me, as are books with a world with a mashup of magical creatures (sirens and chupacabras, among others, also make an appearance in this one). Some are not so easy for me to pinpoint – while I can say that the native representation in the book seemed more related to tropes in Westerns than to any real understanding, that’s just my initial reaction and I can’t pull out exactly what bugged me. It just made me uncomfortable. I did look for a review of this book on Debbie Reese’s blog, but she apparently hasn’t received a copy.

Posted on

Slow reading

I am a fast reader. When I’m on a reading binge it is not uncommon for me to go through two books (of a reasonable length, say 400 pages each or so) a day, even while doing other regular-life things.

But the past two weeks have been different. I’ve been reading a lot, but not maniacally. Instead I’ve been reading slowly, taking my time, making a conscious effort not to rush. Reading is a new experience when I do it this way, more of a meditation than entertainment. Right now, I need the slowness.

Here’s what I’ve been reading:

  • The Bear and the Nightingale – I really enjoyed this Russian-style fairy tale. Reading it while the local temperatures soared past 100 F was a special treat.
  • Phantom Pains – this is the sequel to Borderline, which I read as part of the 2017 Sirens Reading Challenge. I found it pretty darn entertaining, though for me it suffered a bit from being a sequel (i.e., I liked the first one enough that the second will inevitably be a letdown).
  • Kingfisher – this fantasy was a little high for me but I liked it nonetheless; the worldbuilding in particular I found fantastic.
  • Molly on the Range – light and fun, by the author of the blog My Name is Yeh (a new find for me).
  • The Baking Bible – this was the only one of the books I read over these past weeks that I really didn’t jive with. Beranbaum’s cookbooks have a lot of fans, but somehow they don’t work for me…I keep trying them, but the recipes, for whatever reason, don’t really inspire me. To each his own I guess.

Next up: The Glass Sentence as well as more stories in The Unreal and the Real. I also picked up a collection of LeGuin’s novellas, The Found and the Lost, and am really looking forward to them.

How is your summer reading going?

Posted on

2017 Sirens Reading Challenge complete!

As of today: I have completed the 2017 Sirens Reading Challenge!

As part of this challenge, I’ve read many books I would not have read otherwise. I loved some of them (N.K. Jesimin’s The Fifth Season, for example). I flat-out hated others (I alluded to one such here). Most were somewhere in between.

The experience of reading so many new-to-me authors and books was definitely positive. I do have some more specific thoughts about my experience of the challenge overall, but I’m letting them coalesce for the time being. Once I can write about them with some coherence I’ll post more. In the meantime, here’s what I read (books I especially liked marked in bold).

Guests of Honor: Required
Required Theme
Additional Theme Books
Middle Grade/Young Adult: Select Five
Adult