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June is very long in Arizona.
What I've recently finished since my last post:
The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison aka![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
truepenny, who played this one very well indeed. It's been a while since I've been taken up this seamlessly into a high fantasy, and am delighted to have a hero who is not just temperamentally unsuited to an action plot but by social role simply cannot work but through personal interaction and conversation. I am especially chuffed by not just the handling of the elves' social code-switching, but how Addison carefully and understatedly teaches the reader the codes and how to understand the significance of a switch. The premise of "a relegated youngest son of an emperor being suddenly thrust into an office he is woefully unprepared for by the assassination of his father and older brothers" woefully understates the depth of imagination here. Strongly recommended.
The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery, which as I suspected instantly became a comfort reread.
Poems of Places volume VI, covering the alphabetic first 40% of Scotland. In case you can't tell by my having read 3/4 of it, I'm rather pleased with this anthology -- it's massive, in a very Victorian (and Victorian American) way, and Longfellow has stylistic blind spots that you can drive several Gilded-Age trains through (exactly one Whitman, hello?), but within his idea of what poetry is, he had a very good ear. There is a lot of Really Good Stuff in here, much of it pleasant surprises, and even with the large mass of undistinguished nineteenth century poetry, most of it is readable.
Log Horizon volume 5, which I didn't like as much as the first couple volumes: romantic angst is starting to overshadow the other character relationships and larger-scale plotting -- and, let's be honest here, part of the appeal of this over Sword Art Online is less angst/more adventure. (BTW, in case you're wondering, yes the original title is in English.)
What I'm reading now:
Log Horizon volumes 6, which is slower going still -- still more (and more generic) angst.
The Selected Poems of Po Chü-i trans. David Hinton. I am not a fan of Hinton's style, which formally nods to the couplets of the Chinese original but syntactically ignores them, running-on his lines all over the place. Possibly worse, though, is his comment in the introduction about how Po's initial popularity was from poems that did not have "lasting value" but rather his "poems of sentiment ... [like] 'The Song of Unending Sorrow' and 'The Song of the P'i-P'a,' which hold relatively little interest to us at a distance." WELL THEY INTEREST ME THANK YOU VERY MUCH. It doesn't help that the back cover claims this is the first edition of Po Chü-i's poems to appear in the West -- ah, Waley, you have been forgotten so quickly. I haven't given up on this yet, though, so maybe I'll finish.
Poems of Scotland volume VII, continuing Scotland, and another adoption parenting book, the title of which escapes me at the moment.
What I officially Did Not Finish:
Mondaiji-tachi ga Isekai kara Kuru sô Desu yo volume 2 - still stupid fun adventure, but no longer enough fun to overcome the stupid.
What I might read next:
It's Complicated by danah boyd.
---L.
What I've recently finished since my last post:
The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison aka
truepenny, who played this one very well indeed. It's been a while since I've been taken up this seamlessly into a high fantasy, and am delighted to have a hero who is not just temperamentally unsuited to an action plot but by social role simply cannot work but through personal interaction and conversation. I am especially chuffed by not just the handling of the elves' social code-switching, but how Addison carefully and understatedly teaches the reader the codes and how to understand the significance of a switch. The premise of "a relegated youngest son of an emperor being suddenly thrust into an office he is woefully unprepared for by the assassination of his father and older brothers" woefully understates the depth of imagination here. Strongly recommended. The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery, which as I suspected instantly became a comfort reread.
"Doss dear," said Cousin Georgiana mournfully, "some day you will discover that blood is thicker than water."
"Of course it is. But who wants water to be thick?" parried Valancy. "We want water to be thin -- sparkling -- crystal clear."
Poems of Places volume VI, covering the alphabetic first 40% of Scotland. In case you can't tell by my having read 3/4 of it, I'm rather pleased with this anthology -- it's massive, in a very Victorian (and Victorian American) way, and Longfellow has stylistic blind spots that you can drive several Gilded-Age trains through (exactly one Whitman, hello?), but within his idea of what poetry is, he had a very good ear. There is a lot of Really Good Stuff in here, much of it pleasant surprises, and even with the large mass of undistinguished nineteenth century poetry, most of it is readable.
Log Horizon volume 5, which I didn't like as much as the first couple volumes: romantic angst is starting to overshadow the other character relationships and larger-scale plotting -- and, let's be honest here, part of the appeal of this over Sword Art Online is less angst/more adventure. (BTW, in case you're wondering, yes the original title is in English.)
What I'm reading now:
Log Horizon volumes 6, which is slower going still -- still more (and more generic) angst.
The Selected Poems of Po Chü-i trans. David Hinton. I am not a fan of Hinton's style, which formally nods to the couplets of the Chinese original but syntactically ignores them, running-on his lines all over the place. Possibly worse, though, is his comment in the introduction about how Po's initial popularity was from poems that did not have "lasting value" but rather his "poems of sentiment ... [like] 'The Song of Unending Sorrow' and 'The Song of the P'i-P'a,' which hold relatively little interest to us at a distance." WELL THEY INTEREST ME THANK YOU VERY MUCH. It doesn't help that the back cover claims this is the first edition of Po Chü-i's poems to appear in the West -- ah, Waley, you have been forgotten so quickly. I haven't given up on this yet, though, so maybe I'll finish.
Poems of Scotland volume VII, continuing Scotland, and another adoption parenting book, the title of which escapes me at the moment.
What I officially Did Not Finish:
Mondaiji-tachi ga Isekai kara Kuru sô Desu yo volume 2 - still stupid fun adventure, but no longer enough fun to overcome the stupid.
What I might read next:
It's Complicated by danah boyd.
---L.