plinythemammaler

Hugo homework continues. I'm posting about it real time on the sync read post, but also posting here as I finish things I consider stand-alone books (novellas and longer) and complete categories:

8. Amal El-Mohtar, The River Has Roots – I wasn’t sure what to expect from this one, and I’m still not entirely sure what I think. There is some lovely prose, some of which I found self-indulgent, and some of which I found overly poetic – not in a purple prose way, but in a way where I thought it would’ve genuinely worked better for me in a poem than a novella – but some of it was just good, too, and I think the prose was a positive for me on the whole. The grammar puns – or, not puns, but whatever you’d call it when it’s played straight – grammar word games, I guess? – were mostly a miss for me, though. Like, they’re clever, but they punctured my suspension of disbelief rather than enhancing my reading experience, and felt kind of superfluous and, IDK, smug?

I like the bones of the story, though. ( Spoilers )

Of the two sibling-centric, dealing with the fey novellas that are on the ballot this year, I definitely prefer The Summer War – it’s more relevant to my interests and also has more going on – The River Has Roots is a short novella (which I did not realize, because the ebook in the voter packet is padded out with an excerpt and long acknowledgements – and some lovely woodcut-type art, which I did enjoy – and the story itself (including the illustrations) is only 90 of the 130 pages), but it feels slight even for its real length – a fair bit of it is songs and repetition. But I reasonably enjoyed this one, too, even though I did have to force myself not to skim some of the more self-indulgently descriptive sections.

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OK, so, I’m going to take the fact that I’ve read 4 different novellas since starting the T.Kingfisher one as a sign that I should maybe try reading other things in other categories rather than trying to force myself through that one. And I thought the easiest way to… well, ease myself into full-length novels would be to start with the C.B.Lee Lodestar nominee.

9. C.B.Lee, Coffeeshop in an Alternate Universe – Hm. My experience of this book was a fairly monotonic downward trend over its 450 pages (too many pages! It did not need so many pages), which is pretty disappointing but not entirely surprising. My history with C.B.Lee is that I read Not Your Sidekick and found it really cute, despite not finding it any sort of great literature, so those were the expectations I went into this book with, and I was on board with it when it was doing cute teenage hangouts (both romantic and platonic) and everyday family/community stuff – it’s still a bit twee and very Tumblr-earnest, but it is talking about things it knows about, and so it’s charming even when it is, you know, very average modern YA. But then it attempts to have a grand plot, which left me increasingly bored throughout the middle section, and then I got to the last quarter or so and found myself actively annoyed, because now the book was trying to be about world-shaping events and Big Themes and clever plans, and it’s just… not good at conveying any of those things, sorry XD ( More, with spoilers )

Anyway, overall, this started out cute but ended being quite disappointing. I’m not mad I read it, but I think I would be mad if it wins the Hugo… Ah well.

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Taskmaster s21e08 – this series is going so fast! ( Spoilers )

This week’s podcast guest was Jason Mantzoukas, whom I think I enjoy less as the podcast guest than a lot of people, but who was nevertheless a breath of fresh air after John Kearns. He shared that ( spoilers! )

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Taskmaster Oz s5e04 -- don't have much to say about Anisa's dress this time around, but I do love her glittery lipstick which looks like the ruby slippers. ( Spoilers )

Hugo homework continues. I'm posting about it real time on the sync read post, but also posting here as I finish things I consider stand-alone books (novellas and longer) and complete categories:

6. Annalee Newitz, Automatic Noodle – Hm. I don’t think I’ve read anything by Annalee Newitz prior to this, but I've read them and other people talking about their books, which set my expectations pretty low. And then cyanmnemosyne finished this novella and described it as, “If I had been asked to blurb it, my blurb would be ‘Great for fans of the Monk and Robot books’” – and since I HATED the first Monk and Robot book – well, OK, I strongly disliked the book itself and HATED that it won the Hugo – that further lowered my expectations.

But actually I thoroughly enjoyed the first half of the book, where it’s all getting to know our plucky band of misfit robots, making noodles (I do want some noodles now), and traipsing around future!San Francisco, and getting to hear what NorCal is like post ?the war of secession?. So, I was pleasantly surprised for the first part of my reading journey. But then I got to the parts where there are supposed to be, like, emotional arcs? and maybe themes more serious than “yum, noodles!”, and from here the book worked considerably less well for me. ( More, with spoilers )

7. Naomi Novik, The Summer War – this isn’t new ground for Novik, but she’s doing a thing she does well, and that I enjoy her doing, so, like, no complaints from me. This hasn’t got, for me, the iddy appeal of Uprooted’s central relationship, or the poignancy of Miryem the well-realized Jewish protagonist of Spinning Silver, but I do really enjoy Novik’s fairytales as a baseline, and her fey, with their alien morality that makes them at once laughable and compelling, which is a neat trick. And Novik also just writes prose in a way I really enjoy, which is on display here, and which was a big part of how much I liked this novella. ( Spoilers from here )

Short stories: ( Tia Tashiro, Isabel J. Kim, Thomas Ha, J.R.Dawson, Samantha Mills, Effie Sieberg )

Short stories (6/6): Missing Helen > Wire Mother > In My Country > 10 Visions > Laser Eyes > No Award > Revise You


Novelettes:

( Never Eaten Vegetables, H.H.Pak )
( The Millay Illusion, Sarah Pinsker )
( When He Calls Your Name, Cat Valente )
( Rapport, Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy, Martha Wells )
( The Girl That My Mother Is Leaving Me For, Cameron Reed )
( Kaiju Agonistes, Scott Lynch )

Novelettes: (6/6) Never Eaten Vegetables >> The Girl That My Mother Is Leaving Me For > When He Calls Your Name / Kaiju / Millay Illusion (I keep fiddling with the order... I think the Valente one has more of a point, under the thicket of words, though admittedly I found 'Kaiju' more fun and 'Illusion' less of a slog > the ART one (I liked the additional ART canon, I love ART, but in no way is that worth a Hugo).

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Taskmaster also continues:

Taskmaster s21e07 – Amy looks really cute in her patterned dress and her boots and with her hair like that! ( Spoilers from here )

John Kearns was the Taskmaster Podcast guest and, wow, I really do find him unlistenable. I multi-tasked through most of the episode, because otherwise I would’ve turned it off, and I did want to hear Ed’s thoughts on the episode, which I don’t think I got any of, just pause-ridden unrelated rambling from Kearns, and fell asleep during the last bit, which I’m not going to attempt to repeat. Ah well.


Taskmaster Australia s5e03 – I keep looking forward to Anisa’s outfits and she keeps not disappointing! ( Spoilers )