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juushikaTitle: A Midsummer Night's Dream
Author: William Shakespeare
Published: 1600
Rating: 5 of 5
Page Count: 100
Total Page Count: 253,775
Text Number: 819
Read Because: co-read with my mother
Review: This has long been one of my favorite plays, and it holds up entirely. It's profoundly evocative and aesthetic even as a script, with a dreamlike atmosphere of slipping time and drugged revelry: transporting, seductive, flirting with danger. (Compare to Love's Labour's Lost, where the dreamlike pacing and repetition is smothering, instead.) I love how the trio of plotlines intersect while remaining distinct, and the ways they explore themes of identity and attraction (and attraction's interactions with, and refusal of, convention), but loosely, playfully. The language is more assured and the humor less forced than in earlier comedies; the blatant "ass" puns and fairy commentary on mortal failings (even as they engage their own squabbles) possess a tolerant self-mockery which suits both the themes and my personal taste. Each time I read (or see) this play, I become lost in it; it glitters, it sparkles; it's otherworldly and playful and just the right sort of ruthless; it's a complete experience, and I'm never disappointed.
Title: An Unkindness of Ghosts
Author: Rivers Solomon
Narrator: Cherise Boothe
Published: Blackstone Audio, 2017
Rating: 5 of 5
Page Count: 350
Total Page Count: 254,125
Text Number: 820
Read Because: multiple recommendations, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A young doctor on a generation ship begins to solve the mysteries around her mother's death. There's some narrative jumps—flashbacks, headhopping—that I don't enjoy as a technique; and that's effectively my only complaint. This is an ambitious book, especially for a debut, but it's a successful one. The forgotten history of generation ships is one of my favorite speculative premises, and this one is intriguing and contributes a mystery plot with significant momentum. The themes meanwhile are brutal, discomforting, and profoundly intersectional: the lives of gender-divergent, neuro-divergent trauma survivors in a racist society. These elements build on each other—the use of language as an exploration of race/class and of worldbuilding is especially good—but also balance each other: upticks in plot keep the themes from growing too grim or preachy. It's a delicate balance, and through it Solomon creates a world which is vibrant and engaging, painful and complicated. This left me in awe. It's one of my favorite books of the year, and Solomon is an author to watch out for.
Title: Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day
Author: Seanan McGuire
Narrator: Emily Bauer
Published: Tor, 2017
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 180
Total Page Count: 254,305
Text Number: 821
Read Because: multiple recommendations, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A ghost who's trying to ethically earn her passing on discovers that other ghosts are disappearing. This has engaging concepts on paper—a ghost working a suicide hotline! ghosts and corn witches making lives for themselves in New York!—but as a narrative is fairly slight: short, no significant subplots, a character arc familiar to McGuire's work and a pragmatic voice enlivened by the occasional, but outlying, poetic turn of phrase (like the title). It lost me at the magic system, wherein time as a currency bartered and stolen between ghosts, witches, and mortals; it's a concept which has no particular resonance with ghost superstition and which is delivered in heavy-handed exposition. This fell flat for me, but harmlessly so, it's still a quick read; fans of urban fantasy may like it more than I.
(I've been reading a lot of McGuire just to learn that only some tidbits from the Wayward Children concept really work for me; everything else has just been shrug emoji. She seems like such a decent person, and I appreciate her social media presence; this isn't the first time that I've thrown myself against an author for wanting to like them, with no success. Usually it's for urban fantasy/post-apocalyptic/"fun" writing, and each time I wish I could ... have different standards, be more open to "fun"—and every time that makes me feel like a snob. Reminder to self that my own "fun" just means something different, that there are no obligations in media consumption, and to. just stop.)
Author: William Shakespeare
Published: 1600
Rating: 5 of 5
Page Count: 100
Total Page Count: 253,775
Text Number: 819
Read Because: co-read with my mother
Review: This has long been one of my favorite plays, and it holds up entirely. It's profoundly evocative and aesthetic even as a script, with a dreamlike atmosphere of slipping time and drugged revelry: transporting, seductive, flirting with danger. (Compare to Love's Labour's Lost, where the dreamlike pacing and repetition is smothering, instead.) I love how the trio of plotlines intersect while remaining distinct, and the ways they explore themes of identity and attraction (and attraction's interactions with, and refusal of, convention), but loosely, playfully. The language is more assured and the humor less forced than in earlier comedies; the blatant "ass" puns and fairy commentary on mortal failings (even as they engage their own squabbles) possess a tolerant self-mockery which suits both the themes and my personal taste. Each time I read (or see) this play, I become lost in it; it glitters, it sparkles; it's otherworldly and playful and just the right sort of ruthless; it's a complete experience, and I'm never disappointed.
Title: An Unkindness of Ghosts
Author: Rivers Solomon
Narrator: Cherise Boothe
Published: Blackstone Audio, 2017
Rating: 5 of 5
Page Count: 350
Total Page Count: 254,125
Text Number: 820
Read Because: multiple recommendations, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A young doctor on a generation ship begins to solve the mysteries around her mother's death. There's some narrative jumps—flashbacks, headhopping—that I don't enjoy as a technique; and that's effectively my only complaint. This is an ambitious book, especially for a debut, but it's a successful one. The forgotten history of generation ships is one of my favorite speculative premises, and this one is intriguing and contributes a mystery plot with significant momentum. The themes meanwhile are brutal, discomforting, and profoundly intersectional: the lives of gender-divergent, neuro-divergent trauma survivors in a racist society. These elements build on each other—the use of language as an exploration of race/class and of worldbuilding is especially good—but also balance each other: upticks in plot keep the themes from growing too grim or preachy. It's a delicate balance, and through it Solomon creates a world which is vibrant and engaging, painful and complicated. This left me in awe. It's one of my favorite books of the year, and Solomon is an author to watch out for.
Title: Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day
Author: Seanan McGuire
Narrator: Emily Bauer
Published: Tor, 2017
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 180
Total Page Count: 254,305
Text Number: 821
Read Because: multiple recommendations, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A ghost who's trying to ethically earn her passing on discovers that other ghosts are disappearing. This has engaging concepts on paper—a ghost working a suicide hotline! ghosts and corn witches making lives for themselves in New York!—but as a narrative is fairly slight: short, no significant subplots, a character arc familiar to McGuire's work and a pragmatic voice enlivened by the occasional, but outlying, poetic turn of phrase (like the title). It lost me at the magic system, wherein time as a currency bartered and stolen between ghosts, witches, and mortals; it's a concept which has no particular resonance with ghost superstition and which is delivered in heavy-handed exposition. This fell flat for me, but harmlessly so, it's still a quick read; fans of urban fantasy may like it more than I.
(I've been reading a lot of McGuire just to learn that only some tidbits from the Wayward Children concept really work for me; everything else has just been shrug emoji. She seems like such a decent person, and I appreciate her social media presence; this isn't the first time that I've thrown myself against an author for wanting to like them, with no success. Usually it's for urban fantasy/post-apocalyptic/"fun" writing, and each time I wish I could ... have different standards, be more open to "fun"—and every time that makes me feel like a snob. Reminder to self that my own "fun" just means something different, that there are no obligations in media consumption, and to. just stop.)
