kitewithfish: (geralt witcher black eyes intense)
kitewithfish ([personal profile] kitewithfish) wrote2025-04-16 12:47 pm

Wednesday Reading Meme for April 16 2025

­What I’ve Read

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison – This is my fourth time thru this book, and different things stood out to me that the first time. A major turning point for Maia in the novel that I had really not remembered was him shifting from a mindset of, How can I please everyone who is making demands of me? to, Since it’s impossible to please everyone what do I think is the right thing to do?  And as a person who only recently discovered that disappointing people is not legally punishable, I felt that in my heart. This audiobook version was great - Kyle McCarley had a lot of character to each voice and it felt like it made sense for the choices he made.

I have also read a good deal of Star Wars fic by Blackkat that are all slightly too short to be counted as novels, but special attention to Cor Cordium - https://archiveofourown.org/works/52209091

What I’m Reading
His Majesty’s Dragon – Naomi Novik – I picked this up to keep my post-vacation chill mood intact, and then the library took it back. Treason! I will return to it, tho. Honestly, I feel like this one of those book series that I think I would give to any kid who lives near an ocean. 

Master and Commander – Patrick O’Brian – Since the library took Novik’s book back too early for me to finish, I figured I would go to the source material that inspired her, and start reading this! It’s about the sea and also about how being English is great because you get to fight people about stuff – wild nonsense. Jack Aubrey is a certified dummy and I think I love him – how can you not notice that the people around you are speaking Catalan and not Spanish, you hot mess of a captain.  I think audiobook is the right choice for this, as it allows the longer passages about how a sailing ship works can just glide past my ears. 

The Antarctica Conspiracy – Derin Edala made the least normal space ship in the world and the second half of the story is not any less wild. We started with a murder! 

Male Order – Unwrapping Masculinity -edited b y Rowena Chapman


What I’ll Read Next
The Memory Librarian - Janelle Monae - crossing book club 

HUGOS – This is my first year as a voting member, and I want to try and read everything (that is a single book- too many series and I will fall over). I know there is packet that goes out containing some of the books but I think it might arrive too late for me to get to all the books, so I have decided to start with what my local library can get me and work from there.




I found out about two different interesting nonfiction books recently that I want to read: 
Manhood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity by David D Gilmore which is from 1990 and came up in a recent "If Books Could Kill" podcast episode where the host got really interested in the description of how masculine social roles construct nurturing differently than for feminine roles. It sounded interesting! 

I also found a book from 1925,  The English Language in America by GP Krapp, which came up in a Tumblr post about the way 'eye dialect', aka, phonetically writing out nonstandard spellings to portray dialects in writing, is used to portray people speaking in dialect as ridiculous and stupid (which is a dick move). I started to skim this book after finding the wikipedia article on 'eye dialect' and I found it so interesting in just the portion of the discussion where he gets into New England town hall records as a primary source for linguists to understand how colonial America was using English. I want to read it some time in more detail, or at least skim the interesting points. I realize it is literally a century out of date but I'm not a scholar, I am doing this for fun! 
kitewithfish: (down the rabbit hole)
kitewithfish ([personal profile] kitewithfish) wrote2025-04-09 08:01 pm
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Wednesday Reading Meme for April 10 2025

What I've Read:

The Javelin Program Time to Orbit: Unknown #1 by Derin Edala This is the first half of a long web novel about an extremely fucked up space ship. Our protagonist starts out in the very media-est res, waking in the middle of a journey to be told, the ship is broken and you have to fix it! Things spiral. The characters have really interesting discussion of their decisions, and I'm looking forward to finishing the story in the next book.


Order 66: Star Wars: Republic Commando #4 by Karen Traviss
This is a fucking BUMMER of a book but it has to be - this series is about a set of clones in the Star Wars universe who are determined to escape the trap they've been born into. Traviss writes a good war story and this series has morally complex people doing good and bad things and feeling absolutely fine about it while they leave wreckage in their wake. Absolutely a must read series for anyone who is interested in the Mandalorian cultural canon - Traviss built most of of it from scratch.

What I'm Reading:

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison - 82% - Started Apr 4, 2025 This re-read is great, the voices are excellent


The Antarctica Conspiracy
Time to Orbit: Unknown #2 Derin Edala -10% - Started Apr 7, 2025 like I said, the second half of the larger story.


What I'll read next
Book club - Janelle Monet short stories but I cannot recall which yet.