… I’m back on my Dune grind. Non-fiction wise I’m working on If We Burn by Vincent Bevins, which has been great so far. I also recently read this great article by Kate Wagner of McMansion Hell fame, I know very little about F1 so it was cool to get a fellow outsider’s view of the insider’s world.
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I’m working my way through Unmasking Autism by Devon Price. It’s a great read if you’re on the spectrum or know anyone that is.
As the title suggests it’s about advocating for yourself, embracing Autism and trying to lead a life that works well for your brain rather than censoring or reining yourself in. ‘Masking’ can take a lot of mental effort and energy even if it’s only happening subconsciously.
The author also emphasizes how much of Autism research is focused on wealthy white men and their sons. White women are socialized differently in ways that often lead people to not read them as Autistic, and Black people in general are much less likely to be read as Autistic because of medical industry racism.
I’ve felt pretty confident that I’m on the spectrum for a while, and the book has given me some nice strategies for trying to be myself more.
It’s been pretty easy for me to read as the author is very queer and brings up a lot of people as examples that feel “real” to me. Folks with Autism at the same time as other disabilities, people of color, poor people. I definitely recommend the book!
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I’m just about finished with Moss Roberts’s unabridged translation of Three Kingdoms, though I haven’t had a chance to read the past couple days. Once I’m done with that I’ve got a couple overdue library books to tackle, probably starting with The General in His Labyrinth by Gabriel García Márquez.
I’m always looking for goodreads friends, so feel free to add me there!
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I burned through jade city last year but the ending was so stressful that I haven’t gone on to jade war - hopefully gonna book club it to get through.
I also have the latest Red Rising book lined up, but that will also be a stressful read lmao.
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Ah, I enjoyed reading that! (The Roberts translation of Ro3K) Good memories 
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I FINALLY started Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao and I am frothing for it (positive). As an ancient Chinese history/classics, wuxia series, and scifi enjoyer it is flat-out buttonmashing me into oblivion. There are references I’m getting that I didn’t even realize could be references to even get (every time they mention “two hundred and twenty-one years ago” I bark like a dog). The themes are what I think the internet wanted a certain summer blockbuster to be, but actually taken unapologetically to 11.
Still maybe 1/3 away from the end but I have to wait until a “safe” time to pick it up again 
(once I open a book, it eats me, so I can’t read if there is anything I need to do other than eat and drink that day because I Will Not stop reading—including while making food etc—until I literally can’t keep my eyes open anymore)
I think I know where it’s kind of going (signposts are good storytelling actually) but I’m sure they will still be able to surprise me in the execution. It’s due back at the library on I think Friday and I’m out of renewals on it so I’m going to have to find time to finish it somewhere!
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I only read two books last year (I used to be such a big reader and just don’t have the concentration for it anymore through the brain fog).
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin is a book about identity, disability, game development and design, what connects us to the people we love, and the lies we tell ourselves. It follows a half Jewish half Korean man with a bad foot after a car accident he was in as a child, and a friend he met while in the hospital back then who’s sister had some chronic condition being treated at the hospital regularly. It spans over a decade of their lives and the relationship they have with each other, romantic in tone but never actually together. I loved it so much, like it covered so many things that I can relate to and the ending chapters were written in a different style that really deeply touched me. Fantastic book.
The other one I read was The Magnolia Palace by Fiona Davis. It was a perfectly decent read, but nothing all that special in my opinion. I kept expecting it to become like Last Night in Soho but it did not go that route despite following two different women in the same location at different points in time with similar but slightly different careers much like that movie does.
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I listen to a lot of audiobooks while working since my job has like 4-5 hours a day of basically uninterrupted freeway driving, so I get through a lot of stuff. Recently I’ve been tearing through the newer Discworld audiobooks, and re-listening to the Murderbot series.
Physically, Ive been going through the Earthsea books alongside the shelved by genre podcast, and slowly working through Leslie Feinberg’s Drag King Dreams (this is a very slow process: I tend to read a chapter, put it down and just think about it for weeks, then wait awhile before picking it back up again)
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I just finished (on Monday), a novella called What Moves the Dead. Any of you that follow me on cohost probably know i had Some Thoughts. Just started Jade City and i’m loving it. Too tired to read the last two days, so I haven’t gotten far, but like I said, really enjoying it already.
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Just finished Iron Widow since it’s due back at the library tomorrow.
SO. FUCKING. GOOD.
I didn’t realize before reading it that the sequel finally comes out this year, I’m excited!
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It’s probably going to get delayed again unfortunately but here’s hoping
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Mint is right. This book has been delayed a bunch. I’m hoping it comes out this year but the delays aren’t encouraging
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I’ve picked up a copy of Otherside Picnic’s omnibus volume 1 and 2! Time to see if this book is in fact how I imagined it
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I’m currently taking a class on Readers Advisory, so that’s been the bulk of my reading lately. The aim is to read a wider variety of things and to be able to identify things that would appeal to people, even if you might not like it yourself (which I’ve found helpful in applying beyond books!). I read a good variety of things but my weak areas have stayed pretty consistent. Romance and westerns have never been my genres.
I’m currently reading Casey McQuiston’s One Last Stop, which is a queer romance with a time loop hook. I’ve just started it but that hook itself was enough to get me to check it out.
I’ve also been slowly picking away at Delicious in Dungeon, which I’d been meaning to read for years.
Not sure if you’ve watched the anime, but I felt it was a huge tonal departure from the light novels. I felt it angled it too much as a comedy for my liking. I haven’t read the manga so not sure what if anything they changed there. I’m a fan of urban legend/internet lore stuff and the light novels go deep into that, distorting the characters’ reality in ways that would be hard to capture in more illustrative ways.
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this is awesome and exactly the kind of glass i guess would exist for a librarian in training.
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It’s been a lot of fun. Just learning to think more about what I’m engaging with beyond “I like this” or “I don’t like this” and having the language for it has been very beneficial. I doubt I’ll ever use it professionally but I’ve already found it helpful beyond that.
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I haven’t – my usual position since becoming a fairly avid reader of manga is that the anime adaptations are less good than the original source material, simply because they’re not up against the constraints of labor and deadlines that anime is. Which is to not to say that it’s inherently bad but it’s never going to be my starting point for any given series.
The manga adaptation definitely didn’t seem to be too focused on comedy, and definitely has its freakout moments – honestly the tone of it was sort of uncanny as I immediately started reading it after a long essay about getting increasingly disillusioned with academia that was nearly tonally identical to it, which is why I want to see how the actual book compares, even if it means I’ve found myself in a position where most of the visual details have already been made concrete for me. If you haven’t tried it, it might be worth a look. Aside from the more concrete visuals, I think the biggest difference might pacing just due to the lack of narration – but I say that after having shotgunned all the scanned manga chapters and only looked over a few bits of the book itself. I’m reserving more time tonight to read through it more seriously
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Currently im reading Empires of Eve Vol. II and , F*****s by Larry Kramer. Im also trying cram in a book on Japanese grammar.
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i’ve been saying it everywhere but good lord, Jade City is good. actually cutting video games and whatnot short tonight cause i just wanna read it more.
I’m reading Dragon Ball for the first time. I actually started on it last fall, the anime never aired over here and while the manga was translated, those early volumes really are like pulling teeth and I never got far into them when I was young. I was making real slow agonizing progress through them only reading a chapter here or there for months, but I got a little more motivated after the recent sad news, and once I finally got through that first arc and reached the first tenkaichi budokai… Oh boy, Dragon Ball baby!!! The action is so good, the drawings are so dynamic, Goku is such a funny guy whose passion for fighting is infectuous. The kid Goku part of the manga continued to occasionally dip back into being gross about women, but never as agonizingly as the first couple volumes, and going into adult Goku it’s significantly smoothed out. The racism has been rough but besides Popo being a lost cause I’m hoping there’ll be less of that introduced as the story continues to go into space guys territory. It’s such a smooth read now, I’m blasting through sometimes two Viz-volumes a day, I’m early in the Namek saga and can’t get enough of the punch guys.
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