Media diet, Jul-Aug
Sep. 1st, 2021 22:02![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
superborbAs I was on vacation for like a month (post... still forthcoming), my media consumption dropped way off. Still, got to read a bunch of stuff on planes.
This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone: Two enemy agents travel through time + universes altering events to favor the future in which their side wins, begin to exchange letters, and fall in love. I'd have loved it if it were half as long, but it felt, well, approximately twice as long as it needed to be. Fluffy language, and I thought it rather neatly tied together the foreshadowing at the end.
A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine: An independent space station living at the edge of an expansionist empire receives a demand to send a new ambassador. Mahit is, like the previous ambassador, a huge fan of the empire's culture, but is without some critical tools an ambassador from her station would normally rely on, namely a functional copy of the previous ambassador's memories and consciousness to guide her. I really loved that the historical referent was something more obscure and you could really tell that Martine knows that history inside and out. As a result, it felt like a unique and rich exploration of colonialism and politics. I do think it tried to guide me on what to think a little too much-- sometimes the narrow and twisty plot was a little too narrow. Still, I found this book to be really meaty and well worth sinking your teeth into.
Desdemona and the Deep by C.S.E. Cooney: The wealthy daughter of a mining family has finally found the line where she will have to take a stand, when her father forces an exchange of a tithe of men in exchange for oil. This reads extremely YA to me, in a negative way. The plot was rather straightforward and the problems always immediately solved. There /are/ really interesting and imaginative details in the worldbuilding though! Just not very satisfying and felt rushed.
Beowulf: A New Translation by Maria Dahvana Headley: I thought this was very interesting, the way it skipped between the hypermodern and the alliterative / playing with the original poetic form. Definitely easier to read than the translation I read in high school English class haha.
Also I've been reading They All Say I've Met a Ghost for reading club and watching Couple of Mirrors (livetweeting under #coupleofborbs here), but I'll probably do full reviews for those when I finish. Ooh, I should also compile the more interesting poems from the Shijing / 19 Old Poems for poetry club! We're onto Mulan now, doing some short one offs for now. Over on![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
dankodes if you want to check it out!
This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone: Two enemy agents travel through time + universes altering events to favor the future in which their side wins, begin to exchange letters, and fall in love. I'd have loved it if it were half as long, but it felt, well, approximately twice as long as it needed to be. Fluffy language, and I thought it rather neatly tied together the foreshadowing at the end.
A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine: An independent space station living at the edge of an expansionist empire receives a demand to send a new ambassador. Mahit is, like the previous ambassador, a huge fan of the empire's culture, but is without some critical tools an ambassador from her station would normally rely on, namely a functional copy of the previous ambassador's memories and consciousness to guide her. I really loved that the historical referent was something more obscure and you could really tell that Martine knows that history inside and out. As a result, it felt like a unique and rich exploration of colonialism and politics. I do think it tried to guide me on what to think a little too much-- sometimes the narrow and twisty plot was a little too narrow. Still, I found this book to be really meaty and well worth sinking your teeth into.
Desdemona and the Deep by C.S.E. Cooney: The wealthy daughter of a mining family has finally found the line where she will have to take a stand, when her father forces an exchange of a tithe of men in exchange for oil. This reads extremely YA to me, in a negative way. The plot was rather straightforward and the problems always immediately solved. There /are/ really interesting and imaginative details in the worldbuilding though! Just not very satisfying and felt rushed.
Beowulf: A New Translation by Maria Dahvana Headley: I thought this was very interesting, the way it skipped between the hypermodern and the alliterative / playing with the original poetic form. Definitely easier to read than the translation I read in high school English class haha.
Also I've been reading They All Say I've Met a Ghost for reading club and watching Couple of Mirrors (livetweeting under #coupleofborbs here), but I'll probably do full reviews for those when I finish. Ooh, I should also compile the more interesting poems from the Shijing / 19 Old Poems for poetry club! We're onto Mulan now, doing some short one offs for now. Over on
dankodes if you want to check it out!
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Date: 2021-09-02 22:21 (UTC)Oh, I can see how that would definitely bring A Memory Called Empire right to the top! I don't think I really identified with Mahit very much; the novel felt much more like an exploration of feelings about colonialism that I was only intellectually appreciating instead of viscerally. Still, I enjoyed it a lot!
HAHA Browulf is excellent! It was a really fast read, since it's quite short.