sophia_sol | Entries tagged with rating: *****

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.

Disclaimer: this book is written by a friend so I am biased going in. But on the other hand this book is amazing and I'm not biased at all in saying that!! (I am, for better or for worse, the kind of person who Will always have honest critiques available to offer on request.)

Lady Eve's Last Con is set in space in the far future. Our viewpoint character, Ruthi, is a con artist infiltrating high society in order to get revenge for the way her sister was treated by one of these rich dudes. Too bad the older sister of the dude she's conning is so compelling!

(the back cover of the book says Sol is Esteban's YOUNGER sister but the cover copy writer is wrong. She's older. and she very much has older sibling vibes, and that's important.)

Anyway I adore both Ruthi and Sol, and their relationship with each other, and their relationship with their respective younger siblings. And also the worldbuilding, of the specific satellite where the action is taking place, and the broader universe it's situated in!

The connection between Ruthi and Sol is so palpable, and you really believe in why they would be interested in each other, despite everything else going on between them. And each of them stand out so well as Very Specific People with their own foibles and drives and values and interests. And the secondary characters are great too - really their own people as well.

And there' some delightful stuff about the bias of pov, even though the book is all through Ruthi's pov. Through much of the book you see Esteban very much through Ruthi's eyes and she doesn't like him at all -- but you hear a bit nearer the end about what Ruthi's sister saw in him, and he's the same guy but with a different lens of interpretation put on things and you can see why someone would love him!

And the way Ruthi imagines herself versus the way her sister sees her omg! SIBLINGS.

There's great class-related content, and great jewish-identity content, and great lesbian con-artist content, and great space content.

and the way it's written is just so funny and delightful and heart-felt and well-phrased, and and and.

I wish I'd written this review more promptly after finishing the book because I feel like I did have other elements I would have enjoyed talking about more fully! but I did not, so this is the review I have for you. I loved it wholeheartedly! Highly recommended.

I started my reread of Heaven Official's Blessing in September and have been working my way steadily through it ever since. This time I posted my as-it-happened thoughts to mastodon as I went, because there's just SO much book in this book that there's no way I'd remember everything by the end! So now I'm copying all those thoughts over to here for posterity. Warning, this is like 22,000 words of thoughts. But this book is so GOOD it's worth every one of those words and so many more besides! I could talk about this book forever it feels like.

Anyway. On with the liveblog! (originally posted to: https://federatedfandom.net/@soph_sol/tagged/tgcfthoughts)

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THE END.

Damn, another real banger from Aster Glenn Gray! She's just so good at historically-grounded character-rich retellings of stories from the folk tradition.

The Sleeping Soldier is an m/m Sleeping Beauty retelling. Russell, a Union soldier from the US civil war, falls asleep for a hundred years and wakes up in the 1960's to a different world. Caleb is a college student who meets the newly-woken Russell and takes it upon himself to be Russell's guide to the world he's ended up in.

I love how real the social mores of both the 1860's and the 1960's are in the narrative of this novel - both are clearly realized, and different from each other and from today. What does same-sex friendship look like? what does dating look like? what does it mean to have sex with someone else, what does it mean to have sex with a friend, what does it mean to be gay?

In sum - what are the expected patterns of the shapes of different kinds of relationships, and how do these assumptions work when you're from two different cultures separated by the gulf of a hundred years?

And god, the way it kept coming up over and over all the different ways in which it was no longer acceptable for men to express affection and closeness to one another, physical or emotional, platonic or otherwise! PAINFUL, and so true, and something that hasn't actually changed from the 1960's to today. The days of romantic friendship are gone.

Russell gives it his all to throw himself into finding ways to be happy and comfortable and to fit in in this new life of his, and Caleb is so, so earnest and caring and brave and scared. It's scary to be gay in the 1960's! It can literally mean your death!

I really appreciated that although the main focus was on the Russell/Caleb relationship, and the various other communities and relationships they're a part of and which are meaningful to them as well, we also got to see a bit about romantic friendship between girls in the past as well, via Caleb's historical research project. And I loved how much he loved the girls in the letters he was studying!

I also appreciated that it came up more than once what a stark difference there was in songbird populations between 1865 and 1965, because yeah, the enormous decline would be noticeable.

Anyway the book was amazing and I nearly cried at the end and I definitely stayed up way too late last night reading it but regret nothing.

This is the first time in my life that I have gotten to hold in my hands a real actual published book written by a friend of mine, and let me tell you, it is a GREAT experience and also this book lived up to absolutely everything I hoped for from it. Five stars, would collapse into a puddle of emotions again. And I say this without bias! I would have loved this book even if I didn't know Becca!

So The Iron Children is a scifi novella about cyborgs warriors and a robot nun and one squishy human traversing a treacherous landscape together in the midst of war, and also is about questions of identity and religious ethics and duty and kindness and freedom. I loved EVERYTHING about this, I adored all the characters, I loved the worldbuilding, I loved its careful pacing and the way it built on its ideas, I loved that it managed to pack so much into such a short book without ever feeling like it was overcrowded.

The book is told through three different POVs: the squishy human, Asher, who's a young nun-in-training getting thrown in over her head; Barghest, the leader of the cyborg warriors, whose dedication to duty is above and beyond the call of duty; and a character whose identity is a mystery until partway into the book but is definitely one of the other cyborg warriors. The first two characters get their POV sections in third person, but the mystery character's sections are in first person.

I have gone on record in the past as stating that I find it irritating when there's multiple povs and some of them are, for no reason, in a different person than the others.

BUT the key here is that there IS a reason in The Iron Children, and when there's a reason it works! It's got a destabilizing effect, to have one of the three in a different person than the other two; it shows that character as other, as separate. It works thematically! (Okay and incidentally it lets the name be hidden to allow a reveal later on as to which character this one is, which is convenient!)

And now let me go into the realm of spoilers because I have to to talk about everything else I love.

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ANYWAY read this book!!!

I first heard of this book via a rec from

sineala, and I'm so glad, because ahhh I loved this book so much! It just really hit the spot perfectly, of feeling like a classic secondary-world fantasy of my childhood while also being well written and interesting and queer. So much of the sff I read these days is either historical fantasy or futuristic sci-fi, and though both are delicious, I'd forgotten how good it can be to sink your teeth into a nice well-built secondary world fantasy and immerse yourself in that created world.

And it's a book published in the 90's that's textually queer! This aspect isn't forefronted, but it's subtly-yet-clearly woven into the worldbuilding throughout the whole book, in a way that's probably possible for an oblivious het to not even notice, but is blatant to anyone else.

The worldbuilding in general though is all really good. It's doing things that are interesting and specific and well integrated, and clear about what it's doing without ever feeling infodumpy. And I love how the city where most of the story takes place feels lived in and full of real people living their various intersecting lives, and with enough references to other cultures (and the tensions of living in a multicultural city with Histories between the various cultures) that the city feels like part of a larger world too. And there are enough references to things that have changed or happened in the past, including the recent past, that it doesn't feel stagnant; it's a living city, a living world.

Anyway the actual plot/characters. Rathe is a pointsman (....sort of a policeman, but with enough specificity about their place in the culture that it doesn't feel to me at least like it carries with it all the burden of associations a modern reader brings to police) and Eslingen is a mercenary soldier temporarily between jobs; together, they fight crime! That is, the city has recently had a more than usual rash of children disappearing, ones who seem very unlikely to have simply run away from home, and no bodies have been found, so what could have happened to them?

The mystery doesn't have Shocking! Twists! but unfolds well and interestingly, and

spoilers

I was pleased that in the end all of the children were recovered safely.

Anyway it looks like there are 4 more books in the series, and I want to read all of them! Though my library only has 1 other, so we'll see how far I get.

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 got this book from

skygiants' review, and like, reading through this book I could ABSOLUTELY see how it is obviously the poison for Becca, Becca's poison, but also: I read the first two pages and was immediately confident I would like this book too. And I was right!

It is a historical fantasy novel with three main characters. The first two are an angel and a demon who live together in a Jewish shtetl in Poland as chevrusas, or study partners in their study of the Talmud, but who for a variety of reasons end up immigrating to the US. The third, Rose, is an extremely lesbian Jewish teen girl who immigrates to the US as well, for opportunities and for adventure and for getting away from her best friend Dinah who had the temerity to marry a man. Then they all get involved with labour activism! And also dealing with ghosts and dybbuks and gentile demons and oppressive immigration policies and more.

The three main characters are all so different from each other and I adore all three of them so so so much! Never ever a moment of disappointment on switching viewpoints, just excitement to spend time with that character again. Also: the narrative itself is a character with an "I" which I love too. Actually I would have loved if this was an even more prominent feature too! Love me a book where the narrative isn't trying to disappear into the background but has its own opinions separate from that of the characters it's writing about.

Plus the book as a whole is suffused both with very Jewish and very queer vibes and I love this about it. I am not Jewish myself so cannot speak in detail to that aspect of it, though I always love to read books that go all in on depicting very specific experiences like this! And the queerness....ohhhh it was beautiful. This book not just a book with queer characters; the whole narrative is queer in its soul, and I love that for it. And for me, reading it!!! It's just like, this is a book that understands me.

( minor spoilers I think )

At any rate, thank you Becca for the rec because this was a GREAT read.

I've seen this recommended many times, and this is the year! I was expecting A Room of One's Own to be a straightforward book-length essay arguing about the ways a culture of misogyny has gotten in the way of women's writing and the things women need to be successful writers, but it's got a much more interesting structure and approach than that. Woolf uses the conceit of telling the story of a particular (fictional) day in the life of a woman and the things she experienced and thought about over the course of that day, in order to both straightforwardly argue points like I expected but also to just, like, put forward the realities of women's experiences for the reader to ponder upon and draw their own conclusions.

It's fascinating, it's compellingly written, it's extremely more-ish. It's full of both things where I'm like "YEAH YOU'RE SO RIGHT, BRING IT" and things where I desperately want to argue with Woolf, but like, argue (affectionate). And I'm pretty confident that's what she was going for, tbh!! An invigorating read, and now I want to read more things by Woolf.

I've been on and off for years about whether to read this book, because I've heard that it's really amazing but also that it's a hell of a read, emotionally speaking. But recently I was encouraged to read it, so I gave it a try, and both things are indeed true about it, and in my opinion it is worth it! You know how it is, I sobbed wholeheartedly for the last 50 pages of the book because I cared SO MUCH and it got me SO BAD.

Code Name Verity is a work of historical fiction set in WWII featuring two young women who are best friends, working on the side of the Allies, one as a pilot and the other as a spy. I loved Maddie and Julie SO MUCH, and they love each other so much too, and war really really sucks!!

I absolutely did look up spoilers before going in, so that I could brace myself for what would be coming, and I'm glad I did. I think it would be an even harder read without that knowledge!

Anyway it's a brilliant book and I highly recommend it, as long as you are ready to be punched in the gut by feelings!

Okay so this is a stand-alone book that is set in the same universe as Everina Maxwell's first novel, Winter's Orbit. It is also about two guys falling in love IN SPACE and it is so much fun!

Somewhere I saw one of those graphs with one axis being Cause Problems - Solve Problems, and the other being On Purpose - By Mistake, and with the main characters of this book placed firmly in the "cause problems on purpose" quadrant and YES and it is SO GOOD. And the best part is that they are extremely different flavours of this, but they work so well together. One of the leads is approximately as chaotic as a person can get, and clearly thrives off of it, he loves the feeling of being like, well what would happen if I did THIS completely bonkers thing on impulse and see where it goes. The other lead is the kind of person who memorizes regulations and can recite them at will, and has a very firm set of principles and morals, and is perfectly comfortable causing problems for other people via unorthodox applications of rules in order to effect what he thinks is right. TOGETHER THEY WILL - well, you'll find out.

And I love how the combination of these two characters making Choices means that the book kept on going in directions I was totally not able to anticipate. I recognized tropes, and then the narrative just zoomed RIGHT on by the expected arc of those tropes to do some other weirder thing!

It's got an excellent balance of relationship building and plot building, too. The author talks in the end-note about how it'll read for people coming it either from the romance genre or the scifi genre, and as someone who loves both, I think its way of integrating the two was perfect.

I also loved how many wonderful secondary characters the book contains, both sympathetic and less so! The sister, the aunt, the dead gen-parent, the previous governor, the governor general, the two rankers....all of them were amazing. (yes I am bad at names, how did you guess.)

And! It is about TELEPATHIC BONDING (and about pretending to be telepathically bonded!). Hot damn.

The funny thing was, as much as the book kept on doing its own thing, I was also unavoidably reminded of two other narratives I've previously read. The alien remnants stuff put me in mind of Tanya Huff's Confederation series, in terms of interacting with mysterious, powerful, and incomprehensible alien objects that can do unexpected things. And the brain powers and forced military mind-bonding to subjugate the powers of a particular type of person thing reminded me very strongly of astolat's Person of Interest fanfic Dangerous If Unbound!

Ocean's Echo is doing rather different things with both of these elements than either Huff or astolat, but it's fun that it still manages to be in conversation with other things I've read.

I thoroughly loved reading the whole thing, and kept on having to pause to like, scream silently inside my head about various aspects. Good times!!!

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!

When I read A Memory Called Empire I absolutely adored it and was blown away by it, and so when this sequel came out I a) bought it immediately, and then b) failed to read it for a year and a half because I was afraid it wouldn't live up to the first one.

And.....hm. A Desolation Called Peace is an excellent book, a five star book, doing many interesting things. The kind of book I want to pick into pieces because it has so many pieces TO pick; it's doing lots of things, and it's interesting and compelling and I care very much about all the characters and what's happening. But I don't love it to the degree I loved A Memory Called Empire.

I think I'm more confused about the ultimate themes that underlie everything this one is doing, is part of the problem. The first book was, among other things, about what it means to always be an outsider for whom belonging and fitting in isn't possible; about degrees of assimilation and whether they're inevitable or not, desirable or not. The sequel both continues some of that AND seems to be trying to say that there are always connections and similarities between people, no matter how different they seem, and that sometimes assimilation is the way forward. And the way they're implemented in this book makes it feel to me like those two themes were working against each other, instead of building together.

I love the thing where everything a book is doing all works together so perfectly that it creates something that's greater than the sum of its parts, and I feel like the first book did that beautifully, and this one not so much, as great as all its parts are. And it's disappointing! I think if I didn't have the first book to compare it to I would be writing a much more gushing review of this book.

I did really love many things! The complexity of the relationship between Mahit and Three Seagrass, everything about Eight Antidote and how he relates to the people around him and to the kind of world he is ensconced in, TWENTY CICADA omg he's so interesting I want to know everything about him, the subversive comic Mahit picks up in Lsel Station (I want to know more about the political teen artist stationers!), and so much more! And Martine is also just really good at writing prose that makes you want to keep reading.

I don't know. Talk to me about this book! If you've read it, what do you think? Did the management of the themes work better for you than it did for me? Am I missing something or misunderstanding something? It's possible that I just haven't cogitated over this one enough, but the hugo voting deadline is end of day TOMORROW so I wanted to get my thoughts up asap!

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!!

A short story collection by my favourite writer of short stories! This is a recently re-released and expanded collection; the original was published by a smaller press back in 2014, which I loved, but now it exists with Extra Stories so obviously I had to buy this version too.

Most of the stories in this collection are old familiar friends to me, but there were a few stories I've never read, and they were also excellent. Cho really excels at writing about the intersection between the supernatural and the mundane, and at writing about people who have all the quirks and foibles and irritating habits of real people but are still people you like and care about. This peaks in her skill at writing ghost grandmas/ghost aunties but really everything she writes is great -- every single story in this collection is worth reading, which I find is a rarity in short story collections!

Bernadette Banner is someone who I've been following on youtube for uhhh years at this point I think, because I just find her pleasant to watch and listen to, but I have never found her on-video instructions to be entirely clear to follow, so this book about how to sew is a wonderful addition to the Bernadette Banner oeuvre and I'm definitely glad I bought it. It has good clear photos and explanations showing you exactly what to do for everything it's teaching!

I've been sewing since I was a child, taught the basics on how to use a sewing machine and follow a commercial pattern by my mother, and then have picked up various useful sewing skills piecemeal on my own as an adult. This way of learning to sew leaves you with gaps in your knowledge, and so although in a lot of ways Banner's book is far more introductory than I need, in other ways it taught me EXACTLY the simple obvious little things that I really ought to have already known.

Like for example you're supposed to sharpen your tailor's chalk! that makes so much sense! how did I never think of that myself??

Also I have now learned how to properly anchor your thread when beginning to hand-sew, instead of always using a knot like I previously did. And the knot would never hold through the weave, so I'd double my thread and knot it together at the end so I could come through the loop to fully anchor my thread, which means that I've always had to sew with doubled thread. Maybe now I can Not do that!

I have also always done french seams the hard way, sewing the actual garment seam first and then caaaaaarefully folding in the seam allowance inside and awkwardly pinning it so I can sew the two sides of the seam allowance together with the raw edges enclosed, and the Actual way you're supposed to do it makes so much more sense, lol. Though also I am over french seaming, and turning and felling is the way to go imo - or just whip stitching the seam allowance together if it doesn't need the full security of turning and felling or french seaming.

And I love how Banner demonstrates how to put a really tidy looking patch onto a hole in a garment! It looks so good and so sturdy as well when done that way! And her tips on how to add a gusset to fix the armscye of a purchased shirt where lifting your arm lifts the whole shirt is a GREAT way to improve the fit of mass-market clothes and I think I'm highly likely to do this in the future.

I also enjoyed the little one-page essays by guest contributors she included throughout, from people of various backgrounds and identities and experiences, to make it clear to the reader that sewing or mending your own clothes can be for ANYONE, not just white cis conventionally-attractive not-visibly-disabled women like Banner herself. Banner always makes an effort to be thoughtfully inclusive and I love that about her.

An excellent choice for my first purchase of a how-to-sew manual as someone who already sews.

HECK YEAH!!! Nghi Vo's novella duology was everything I could have ever wanted they were so perfect, and then her more recent retelling of The Great Gatsby I just felt disappointed by. But Siren Queen has Vo back on her A game!

This book is set in pre-code hollywood, following a young queer Chinese-American woman who falls in love with the movies and will do anything to be a successful actor -- except play the stereotypical Asian roles. The world is full of dangerous magic, on top of the more mundane dangers of being a vulnerable outsider under the control of the power-hungry men who run the studios, but she's determined to find her way.

I love the role of magic in this story, that it feels real and threatening and ever present but also always slippery and a little out of reach of understanding. The reader never really grasps all the rules of magic in this world, but not in the irritating way where it just feels like the author is being sloppy, but instead in a way where it feels numinous and believable, always just around the corner.

I also love the various intertwining lives of the other women in the novel, because of course our protagonist is not the only one around. They each have their own ways of making a way to live in the world, and sometimes those ways are in conflict with our protagonist's, but none of them are necessarily wrong for it. They each just have different priorities. But the protagonist loves women so much, and the book loves women so much, and there are so many great characters! (there are also some great male characters too, for the record; I love the part of the storyline involving Harry particularly!)

The protagonist's relationship with her sister, her sexual and romantic partners, her roommate, the older woman who helps her get access to a studio head for her chance as an actor, on and on. They're all great. But of the women in the protagonist's life, I particularly love Greta; she fascinates me, and I love the strength of the bond between Greta and the protagonist, even though Greta is straight. I love when books depict those kinds of complicated relationships that are beyond the bounds of what's normally considered friendship, but also doesn't follow the expected patterns of a partner-level relationship.

(In case you're wondering why I'm writing around the protagonist's name: yes, names are complicated in this book. Love that for a narrative, hate that for me trying to write a review :P)

But overall what I love most about the book is the Vibes. Idk sometimes authors are just good at creating a Vibe with their words and Vo does this!

In conclusion I loved every minute of reading this book and I can't wait for whatever Vo puts out next. (which appears to be another Singing Hills novella due out later this year and I CANNOT WAIT)

Yes, it was time for yet another reread of The Blue Castle! I can never stay away for too long. This time I actually listened to a fan-made audiobook of it! It was delightful to experience it that way for a change, and the reader had a lovely rural ontario accent that's perfect for the book too. Though the files are unedited -- I think I need to take a pass through it all in audacity to even out some of the understandable stumbles in her reading, for when I inevitably listen to it again.

Each time I read The Blue Castle there's something new to pay attention to. Some of the things I thought about this time:

- Barney's friendship with Abel! It seems they have quite a habit of spending down-time together. What did Abel do with himself in the years before Barney came into town, or after Barney married Valancy and spent all his time with her instead? Abel must be real lonely, after Cissy dies and Barney disappears into wedded bliss.

( this one point is mild spoilers )

- Listening to the book instead of reading it meant I had more patience for the nature-descriptions part of the narrative, which was nice to discover, since there's rather a lot of that!

- And the last thing is.....back in January I went into a deep dive on investigating birth control availability in 1920's ontario because of this book. I read an entire master's thesis on the topic, as you do! Because I feel relatively confident that Barney and Valancy engaged in sexual activity, given the mentions of kisses and caresses and enjoying being held by your husband. But Valancy can't risk a pregnancy, given her health. So what did they do to prevent pregnancy?

Contraceptives were only legalized in Canada in 1969, which is kind of alarmingly recent, though the illegality allowed space for "when the public good required" which gave some doctors some leeway in providing contraception (and gave some doctors leeway into engaging in eugenics with their patients......).

Given what we see of Valancy and doctors, I feel confident Valancy would not have gone to a doctor to be fitted for a pessary, which was the main form of doctor-provided birth control available at the time. And although there's a chance Barney knows about condoms and knows where to find them, I also think it would be pretty unlikely they'd be able to get their hands on any in the rural Muskokas where they live during this year. Vaginal douching with lysol was a popular method of birth control in the 1920's-30's, but it was a) ineffective and b) dangerous, which is an unfortunate combination! Thankfully I don't think Valancy would have been susceptible to the kinds of advertising that lysol engaged in.

So my conclusion is that Valancy and Barney would be most likely to use natural birth control methods like pulling out, the rhythm method, or non-penetrative sex.

Now you know!!

My aunt J is a person who cycles through a lot of different hobbies (relatable), and one of her recent ones has been translation. This book is a collection of folktales which she translated into English from German - some of them are originally German tales, and some of them are stories from other sources for which she found German translations and then she translated the German into English. I can't speak to the quality of the translation, especially for the stories that went through multiple levels of translation, but Aunt J's writing style is clear and a pleasure to read.

It's a lovely collection of stories; Aunt J has good taste, or perhaps I should say similar taste to me :P She focused largely on stories that feature women and girls who play an active role in the story, which is a subset that often has not gotten a lot of attention from the (mostly snooty academic male) folklorists of the past.

The collection includes many stories I already knew, but also some stories that weren't familiar to me, which is truly impressive! Though often there were still elements that were familiar even in those stories, because there are often thematic patterns you'll find in traditional stories.

It's a self-published book that was self-edited, so there are a couple small proofreading errors, but honestly it's doing great by the standards of self-publishing, and even by the standards of some professionally published books, lol. As I would expect from Aunt J and her perfectionist tendencies! (you should see the CORNERS and the PERFECTLY DYED COLOURS on the art quilts she made in a previous hobby!)

This book has been my bedtime reading for the last few weeks and it was a lovely read. So glad Aunt J gave me a copy of this collection at Christmas, and that I finally got round to reading it.