sophia_sol | Entries tagged with book theme: modern earth

A nonfiction book I listened to as an audiobook. I went into it with the understanding that it's a memoir about a security guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and on the perspective that spending SO many hours around the same pieces of art over years gave him. And it is that!

But it's also about more than that: what kinds of things led him to become a museum security guard, and about what the job of museum security job entails, and about people-watching and people-interacting. And, over all, about the huge impact of grief on a person's life. The author's brother died as a young adult, and it was in the aftermath of that loss that he decided he needed a job with less pressure than the kind of promising office job he'd had, one that would allow him time to process.

It's a beautiful book, thoughtful and meaningful and interesting. His reflections on art really are good! As is everything else! I loved it.

Edit: but also

pauraque has a really good point about the unexamined privilege in the pov the author is coming from in their review

I wasn't quite sure what to expect from this book, going into it. It's a nonfiction book about underworlds, but what did that mean, exactly? What approach was the author going to take?

It turned out that the approach was: Macfarlane, over a number of years, went and visited 10 different places where the human world intersects with the world beneath our feet, and used that to talk about the human relationships with those places, and why we use them and what for, and what the experience is like, and the history of them. Each chapter was on a different place, and was a deep dive into that place in particular, and then the cumulative effect of these different places was built up together to say something bigger.

It's a remarkably beautiful book, caring far more about the artistic qualities of the prose than most non-fiction books I read. It's so evocative and thoughtful at the same time! In each chapter he's so careful about building the narrative landscapes for each chapter, in the details he does or doesn't choose to include. I was surprised to discover in one late chapter that the author must be a birder, because he kept on referring to so many different kinds of birds he saw there, specifically by species name, but it had never come up before because birds weren't thematically relevant details in previous chapters!

The chapters include things like salt mining, cave art, tunnels beneath Paris, melt-holes in glaciers, and more. All of it was fascinating and thought-provoking and carefully researched, too.

My one and only point of disjoint in reading the book was in his chapter on nuclear containment, because in my opinion he seems too optimistic about the likelihood of containment methods working for the span of time they'll be needed. Like. Ten thousand years is an astoundingly long time! I have concerns!

But other than that, this is truly an excellent book, and I recommend it highly.

A non-fiction book about racism and particularly anti-Black racism in Canada, by activist writer Desmond Cole.

I am a Canadian myself, but honestly, so much of the anti-racism rhetoric I hear is still so thoroughly based in a US context, given the English speaking media environment and online world are so US-dominated in a lot of ways. So it was helpful to read a book that was clearly and specifically talking about the Canadian context, with discussion about the Canadian activism being done and the Canadian police force's use of violence with impunity and the like. Canada likes to think of ourselves as being better than the US, but that's an extremely low bar and lets Canada think there's no work that needs to be done here when there's SO much that needs addressing.

A good and worthwhile read.

First thing I've read for my Hugos homework! yes I feel like I'm behind already. I only have 2 months left!! Anyway this is the sort of book I wouldn't have chosen to read without external reason, and no it still isn't my thing but it's a really excellent version of that thing.

It's a modern YA urban fantasy written in first-person present-tense about a special girl with special secret magical powers experiencing a love triangle and trying to save the world. Which is great if that's your jam, we all have our well-used premises we like to read and this just doesn't happen to be mine! But it does some good stuff with it that makes me admire it at least, and definitely want to rec it to people for whom this type of book IS their jam.

I appreciate that it's drawing on Arthurian legend while also being anti-monarchy, for one thing. And has a black girl in the Arthur role!

Also it's about a girl having a complicated experience of her connection with her history and her family's traditions - there's both good and bad in such things, and the book is firmly on the side of having a choice about what to value in it.

I also appreciate that it's a book that understands that it's not actually GOOD to make teens be the only people who are able to access the secret special magic powers and in fact it's probably because there are adults who want to be able to manipulate them. Secret orders are a problem actually!

There's lots of good themes overall in fact.

And it seems promising about how it's going to handle the love triangle - a polyamorous answer does not seem out of the question, which is fun.

However it is the second book in a series and it ends on a cliffhanger so there's that.

I would call it a 4 or even 5 star book for people who enjoy the modern YA genre. I'm almost certainly going to rank it either first or second on my Hugo voting form in the YA category, because I do think it deserves recognition! But I'm tagging it 3 stars because that's the degree to which I personally enjoyed it.

An f/f romance novella featuring two young women who are both active in the online fandom for the same tv show, but with widely different interpretations and preferences in their fanfic.

And oh my god it's so funny while also being so charming and fun! The two main characters are so petty and yet so into each other. And I recognize both kinds of fan, though I'm not either of them, lol. A fun quick read.

A charming little non-fiction book about pigeons, written and illustrated by the person behind the fabulous Bird & Moon comics. The writing is a bit on the simplistic side, but that's understandable since it's written to a pretty broad audience, and the art is super charming, plus it definitely succeeded at making me want to pay more attention to pigeons! Unfortunately my city is actually remarkably low on pigeons to look at :( Genuinely cannot remember the last time I saw a pigeon from close enough to see any details on it.

It's a graphic novel memoir of growing up trans, and like, eh, it's perfectly fine, competently done, no complaints about it, but it just....idk, didn't have enough there to really engage me deeply? I guess it's more for an audience of either nervous baby trans people or of cis people Trying To Understand. Which is fine and good! But I'm not either of those things.

A romance novel parody of Harry Potter written in response to jkr’s transphobia. A good-hearted t4t story of trans joy that combines things making no sense with things that are actually wonderful and fascinating worldbuilding (of a world which is distinctly NOT the world of the original hp novels), with delightful fourth-wall-breaking aspects. There are a lot of typos, and the style is very consciously romance-novel-esque with lots of epithets and things, so it took me a bit to get into it, but once I was in I was honestly hooked.

Also the author, Chuck Tingle, is out here on the internet openly being his wonderfully autistic self without shame, and encouraging everyone to live a life that centres love and the knowledge of everyone's intrinsic worth, and I really admire that!

So thanks Chuck. LOVE IS REAL.

This is the first ever magical girl story that I've read, as far as I can remember! though of course I've heard a lot about the genre.

In this comic, Max is a trans teen boy who comes from a long tradition of magical girls on his mother's side of the family. His mom is delighted to see the powers of the goddess Aurora being awakened in the next generation; meanwhile Max is horrified by the frilly dress and the expectation of ladylike grace.

But he can't ignore his magical powers because there's a threat he has to face! With the power of friendship, and of learning to stand up for who he is, Max is able to become the MAGICAL BOY!

It's a charming and delightful story and I enjoyed all the characters. The art is great at communicating feeling and motion, and at keeping all the characters distinct, though sometimes the speech bubbles were arranged in ways where I found it difficult to navigate what order to read them.

It is unfortunately not a story that's complete in one volume, but I had fun reading it, and maybe at some point my library will get the next volume and I'll stumble across it, the way I did this one!

ughghghg this is...ok like. This is a romance novel that combines a) things I really like and think are well done, b) things that aren't really my thing but are common for romance novels so I can overlook them, c) things that are like, fine I guess, d) things that aren't handled super smoothly, and e) things that I hate SO SO MUCH.

As you might guess, this combination leaves me feeling a bit conflicted!

The novel is about a biracial woman named Gracie who happens to look a great deal like a famous Chinese actor (Fangli), who because of reasons needs someone to pretend to be her for a few months. Gracie then gets thrown into a world of what it's like to be rich and famous, and spending time with Fangli and her best friend Sam, and learning how to pretend to be someone else.

The premise of the book is pretty inherently silly, but that's fine, implausible set-ups are normal for romance novels and I can have fun with it. The voice is a breezy first-person-present-tense, which is probably my least favourite variety of narrative voice out of all the options, but that's becoming super common as well so here we are.

It was set in Canada, in Toronto, which is hypothetically a plus for me – I enjoy when I get to read a book that is actually set in the country I live in. But it felt in this book like Toronto was just a series of famous set-pieces, rather than being a real city, so that was a disappointment.

I liked the way the book handled Gracie's complexities of emotions over her relationship with her mother and the way it's affected her, and I appreciated the way Gracie and Fangli became friends so easily, and the stuff about Gracie's biracial identity seemed well-handled too. Also the mental health content. And overall I just liked all of the major characters, which takes me a great deal of a way into enjoying a book! Though the romance itself (between Gracie and Sam) was just like. Fine.

But the book spent a great deal of time putting me in positions of feeling like I had to cringe on behalf of the characters, which is NOT my jam, and then near the end, it went all in on a trope that I haaaaate whenever I come across it, which is ( cut for spoilers )

I don't know. It's good representation to exist in the genre, it's a quick and easy read, I can absolutely see it appealing to lots of people, but ultimately it did not live up to what I personally want out of a romance novel. (or a novel, period.) Ah well.

A graphic novel telling a story in a series of character vignettes about the points of tension and points of connection in a small Mennonite community in southern Manitoba.

It's....hmm. It does a great job of giving an accurate and nuanced portrayal of the current state of the Mennonite community and the conversations of the current time in Canada (including: relationships with indigenous people and the history of residential schools; queer people's degree of welcome in churches; relationships with war and the military; dynamics between modern megachurches and more traditional churches; voluntourism; and more). I 100% believed in the realness of every single character in this book. And it left me unsettled at the end, but in a good way? idk the whole thing is somehow both melancholy and hopeful.

I do wish though that the book was saying something more though than just holding up a mirror to go "this is who we are." I mean there's value in that! But it wasn't quite enough for me. But maybe that's just, like, where we're at with fiction that actually explores Mennonite identity: there's so little Mennonite fiction out there that we can't get beyond just going for representation through depiction.

I also struggled in places to follow the story — although the art is great, it is not quite distinctive enough in how it depicts all the many different characters, and I had a huge amount of trouble following who was who as they interwove throughout each other's stories. And checking the character cheat sheet at the front didn't always help as much as I wanted it to.

I did love that the book is clearly by someone who at the very least knows birders, and might be a bird enjoyer himself. (but it doesn't go overboard on the bird content, just makes choices of what birds to include that aren't birds the average non-birder would have thought much about!)

Overall.... I'm glad I read it. I'm curious how it would read to someone who isn't intimately familiar with the things it's depicting, though!

It occurs to me, a couple days after I finished reading Sam Starbuck's fourth romance novel, that even though I read these novels on AO3, they should still count as books I read! He's publishing them all and everything!

So I have retroactively added three books to my count for last year (Fete for a King, Infinite Jes, and The Lady and the Tiger) and now I guess I'm writing a review for all four at once.

I've been following Starbuck's fanfic for years, under the name

copperbadge, but last year he started on an original series of linked romance novels set in a tiny fictional European country, along the traditional Ruritanian lines, and I was like, sure, why not. The books feature plenty of queer characters (and only one of the four is about an m/f couple), a country where kingship is an elected position, and lots of feel-good content. Also two of the four have neurodivergent protagonists.

Of the four books, I liked Fete for a King (about a young king and a loud American chef) and The Twelve Points of Caleb Canto (about two Eurovision contestants) the best; the two middle ones (king emeritus and podcaster; two nobles doing politics) didn't land as well for me for a variety of reasons.

Overall the writing style in this series trends strongly in the direction of quippy dialogue for everyone, resulting in me feeling that there's very little sense of there being individual voices for the various characters. I also find constant quips to get kind of exhausting to read after a while, personally.

I also don't love that the focus is on a royal family. Yes, this is not a hereditary monarchy, and yes, the family is very open and welcoming to providing support to whoever appears in their ambit, but....idk. I think this may be one of those things where shining a light on the fact that the book knows hereditary country-leadership is bad means that I'm just more primed to notice ways in which the solution to the problem is imperfect.

The books are very readable, good-hearted, fun, and happy-ending-guaranteed. But I'm not sure I'm going to keep reading them.

An odd sort of fantasy novel where it's like....mostly about the experience of community theatre, and interpersonal relationships, and learning to understand yourself better, but the theatre's director happens to be a faery. I like this approach! But the book as a whole was, idk, I more or less enjoyed the reading of it but I also found it fairly frustrating.

First of all, a large cast of eccentric characters isn't really my thing; I had trouble keeping track of them all and who they were and what their relationships were with each other, and most of them were fairly one-note characters. (some of those one notes were fun! but put together it was a lot.)

Second....the romance. ( cut for spoilers )

Sigh.

The book was promising! I really wanted to like it! But the more it became about the romance and about how tragic and wonderful Rowan was, the more I squirmed and skimmed ahead. In the end I would have preferred this book to not be fantasy at all, I think. Cut Rowan and faeries entirely, narratively reprioritise how important it is that Maggie is finally able to develop close supportive friendships instead, and I'd be here for this! But that would be an different book.

I seem to be going on a bit of a nonfiction spree this month for some reason. I think I've read as much nonfiction this month as all last year!

This one is about how fascism works, surprise surprise! It's a clear, cogent, thoughtful read, and full of helpful examples drawn from history and from various countries' fascist trends in the current political climate. It's very readable and very distressing.

The author is Jewish and clearly feels strongly about the topic, and for good reason; and that passion, backed up by a strong commitment to evidence-based arguments, makes it a powerful read.

(Note that this book quotes hate speech from fascists, including slurs and various dehumanizing and violent language, so be warned to expect that.)

The book is written as a call to action, to be able to recognize and resist fascism when you see it. It was published in 2018 and continues to be unpleasantly timely.

I just reread Piranesi, and you know how when a book is so close to perfect and yet falls short in a few specific ways, it can feel more disappointing than a book that didn't get so close? Yeah, that.

There's so much about this book that's truly glorious, that I absolutely adore. Things that it's doing that are really special and unusual and incredible. But. For a book published in 2020 to unquestioningly reproduce a) the evil gay trope and b) the heroic police officer trope, with no indication there was ANY thought put into complicating either those ideas.....it's disappointing. Look, I'd absolutely be okay keeping Arne-Sayles gay; it's relevant to him as a representative of outsider thinking, especially during the era he was academically active. But there needs to be other non-evil, non-predatory queer characters as well to balance him out! In fact, let's just make 16 a non-cop lesbian, and maybe make Matthew Rose Sorensen gay as well, and the book would be fixed.

It's especially disappointing from an author like Clarke, who in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell created a book where the persistent theme throughout is that people with social and political power abuse it, and that the outsiders and people from oppressed people groups are worth listening to. But of course, as was pointed out to me, just because people are interested in those themes doesn't mean they're capable of recognizing all of who has power and who's oppressed.

On my first read of Piranesi I was so transported by the good things the book is doing that I didn't think much about these issues except to note that they were present. But now on reread, they sting a little more. SIGH. I want this book to be perfect, dangit!!!!

EDIT: can't believe I forgot to mention: Piranesi must have had a background as a birder! he confidently identifies herring gulls instead of being like "um, they're seagulls of some kind"

The third book in the Locked Tomb ~~trilogy~~ quartet! I had to reread the first two books because like, this series may be great but it is also MEGA confusing and I already struggle enough with remembering what happened in previous books when the new book in a series comes out! This time I went into Gideon the Ninth armed with an illustrated guide to all the cavaliers and necromancers, which house each belongs to, and what various names/titles they all go by. This helped ENORMOUSLY in being able to follow the dang thing, and I had a much better experience than my first go. And then, having been able to follow the first book made following Harrow the Ninth much easier too! I knew who Ianthe was, for example, and could understand her character better, and was capable of having opinions about her!

So then I felt as prepared as I could be to go into Nona the Ninth.

And it was GREAT. Was it also confusing? Yes, absolutely. Being confused is the Normal State Of Being when interacting with these books, in my humble opinion. But I understood enough! And oh gosh there are many amazing things about it!

Except that the first thing I did upon finishing reading it was go to my rss reader and read through all the tumblr posts, so now I kind of feel like all the important things have already been said by other people, which makes it much harder to write a review. Oops.

But I cared so much about so many characters, and I have so much admiration for Tamsyn Muir's writing (she uses words so deliciously, and also is great at creating imagery!), and I cannot WAIT to find out what happens in Alecto the Ninth!

Oof. The kind of book where you finish and have to just kind of sit in a daze for a while as you let it settle.

This is a graphic memoir by Kate Beaton of Hark! A Vagrant fame, about her two years working in the oil sands of Alberta when she was a fresh university graduate - a very young woman working in an isolated environment that was mostly men separated from their communities. It's a wonderful, nuanced look at a complicated and difficult place, and Kate's writing and art and impeccable sense of pacing do an amazing job of carrying you with her into the emotions of the moment, in everything she depicts.

Not sure what else to say about it, really. Book good. Very recommend. Content notes for sexual harassment and sexual assault.

I've been having a grand time reading this book a few pages a day for months, and I finally reached the end! It calls itself an "advanced" birding book, which at first intimidated me because I thought it meant I had to be advanced to understand what it was saying, but no, it's a book that is designed to take any birder and teach them the skills needed to become more advanced.

I loved the underlying mindset of the book, that the best way to be a birder is to bird in the way that makes you happy, and a good birder is a birder who finds joy in the experience, however they approach it. And this book is merely meant to be a resource for the kind of birder who's into getting really careful and detailed about bird ID, but that doesn't mean it's the only way to bird, and this approach isn't for everyone.

But this approach IS for MEEEEE.

The book starts with an extensive section teaching you things that are relevant to ID for any type of bird: about the structure of feathers in wing, tail, and body; about molting and other changes to feather appearance over time; about behaviour; about songs and calls; and so forth. Then it goes on to illustrate its principles by discussing specific groups of birds for whom ID can be challenging, and what you can do to help you better understand what you're seeing in these contexts.

The example birds are all North American, so it's a book that may be best for a North American birder, but the first section is relevant for birders no matter where they live and what birds they're looking at.

I found it very engagingly written, not dry at all, and I have learned SO much from it. I have started looking at birds in a whole new way since getting into this book, and it's added so much to my birding experience!

I also appreciate that it's very practical, discussing what you're likely to experience in real world contexts, and what to do about it. So for example in the chapter on seabirds, it's like, you're almost certainly going to only ever see these birds in the context of a chartered birding experience on a boat, with an expert on board to point things out, so here's some good ways to help you to make the most of that context.

I will admit I did a bit of skimming in the chapter on Empidonax flycatchers. The author makes it clear in a number of places throughout the book that sometimes the correct ID answer to a bird you see is "there isn't enough information available to me to make a certain ID" and that is particularly emphasised in the Empids. For a number of Empids you can only really be certain about your ID if you hear the voice, because they look so similar and the amount of visible variation within a species can overlap so much with the variation between species. So reading through careful descriptions of what kinds of barely noticeable field marks MIGHT be a mildly useful sign in pointing towards one Empid over another just....didn't feel worthwhile to me personally to spend that many pages on, at least at this stage of my birding skills. It's possible I'll feel differently once I have a lot more experience in looking at birds and recognizing extremely subtle variation, and then I can come back to Empids and feel like it's an exciting challenge instead of a "wow no thank you."

But other than the Empids I read through every page with fascination, even for birds that live in parts of North America that are nowhere near me, because it was still teaching me more about how to look at birds, even if that particular bird isn't relevant to me.

And I will definitely be regularly referring to this book in the future for help with some of these difficult-to-ID groups!

A middle grade book about a mixed race girl whose family moves back in with her Korean grandma whose health isn't doing well. I really loved it, and definitely cried at the end.

I don't love everything about it though. It's the kind of fantasy novel where it's never quite clear whether the magical elements are real, or if they're just a metaphor for the struggles the characters are experiencing. Look, the magic can be real AND an important thematic parallel, and that's what I want! Let the magic be magic! And it's so close to that, but not quite there. It frustrates me! I don't quite know how to articulate the reasons why I dislike this approach so much but it feels wrong to me.

But regardless of how real the magic is or isn't, this book is doing great things about complicated family dynamics, the ways in which it can be hard to talk to the people who you love, the ways in which untold family secrets can weigh a family down, and also about friendship and belonging and being othered for your race and for your weirdness, and what it's like to accept that you can change and still be yourself and that's ok. It's got a lot going on but it all ties together really well and I loved it. Though I also found it hard to read because it was STRESSFUL. I'm too much of a weenie for middle grade books sometimes!!

The third volume! It is here! And my main reaction is: aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!! I actually had to take a break partway through reading because it was so much and I needed to calm down. But now I am finished and I am a mass of emotions.

Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe spend this whole volume trying genuinely to reach out to each other, to understand each other, and doing a lot of failing but eventually they get there and I AM OVERCOME. God. I can't believe that the first time I read svsss (in the online fan translation) I genuinely believed that there was no evidence that sqq was genuinely happy with how things ended up between him and lbh and that he was basically just like "this might as well happen." Sure he's not very outwardly expressive but it is So Obvious how much sqq loves lbh and ahhhhhh. And lbh! Trying so so so hard to be a good boy for his shizun!! Until xin mo warps his obsession and trauma and leads him to follow his worst impulses, and it's SO UPSETTING but sqq is THERE for him no matter what, now that he finally understands what's driving lbh!

Anyway, this volume also contained a whole bunch of absolutely wild plot stuff that I had 100% forgotten had happened from last time I read it and it was a time and a half to re-experience it. Also I now understand Tianlang-Jun and Zhuzhi-Lang far better too. (and airplane's explanation for why he cut tlj is SO FUNNY. Tlj is like binghe but MORE SO and the readers wouldn't stand for someone stealing lbh's spotlight!!)

I also love this bit about sj!sqq:

"When written within the bounds of the original genre, this kind of character was extremely difficult to handle. You could say he was scum, but he was also pitiful. But if you tried to acknowledge his pathos, his ruthlessness was real too. Characters that were both scummy and tragic always drew aggro, and they were a hotbed for wank, leading comment sections to devolve into massive flame wars."

Hot damn. This is so accurate, to how parts of fandom treat characters who are both scummy and tragic at the same time; it seems like many people struggle to acknowledge that both aspects exist simultaneously, or are only interested in exploring one side. And there are characters like this in so many fandoms! I mean, I spent my youth in the depths of HGSS fandom, and like. Severus Snape. Oh boy.

And the statement at the end that the way svsss goes is what airplane's original outline had INTENDED for pidw, like, ALL of it?? Including the lbh/sqq ship?!?? INCREDIBLE. Real curious how that would have gone with sj!sqq instead of sy!sqq! How would a happy ending have still been reached? AIRPLANE TELL ME MORE about the lost non-harem version of pidw!!!!

Also every single illustration in this volume is an artistic masterpiece, I don't even know which one is my favourite because there are SO MANY perfect illustrations of important scenes.

This volume takes us to the end of the main story of svsss, which means that volume 4 will be entirely the extras, and I am PUMPED. I don't think I successfully managed to find translations of all the extras when I read svsss the first time, given how I've definitely heard references to things that happen that I haven't read, so I cannot wait for NEW BINGQIU CONTENT for me, and also to get to wallow in the airplane extras some more because MOSHANG.

As far as I've seen the publishing date for volume 4 hasn't been announced yet, and I want them to take the time they need to finish making it, and also I am on tenterhooks for more. I am made of nothing but svsss feels!!