Reading Wrap-Up | November 22, 2020

Once again, I totally skipped over one of the books I meant to talk about in this wrap-up. Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley will be in the next batch!

THINGS MENTIONED

The Citadel of Weeping Pearls by Aliette de Bodard

Defender by C.J. Cherryh

Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger

Hacking Darwin by Jamie Metzl

Imago by Octavia Butler

Lithium-6 by Risto Isomaki (translated by Owen F. Witesman)

Masquerade in Lodi by Lois McMaster Bujold

Ophiuchus, Vol. 1 by Alexis Leriger de la Plante & Natasha Tara Petrovic

Permafrost by Alistair Reynolds

Untouchable by Talia Hibbert

The XY (Who Runs the World?) by Virginia Bergin

ME ELSEWHERE:

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

[fcoportela]

Greetings from Brazil. Thank you for the tips!

[FinalBlowJoe]

I have only read The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard so far which I really liked and plan to get to a lot more by her next year. Imago I still, maybe, plan to read at some point. The issues I had with both book one and two make the third less appealing but I would still like to get it finished despite this; it may just take longer. I've been looking forward to listening you speak about Masquerade In Lodi the instant I knew it was being released. I loved it just the same as every other although, for reasons I'm not really sure of, I wouldn't think of it as my favourite or one of the best of the series; if there can be of course. The way you pronounced Lodi sounds much more correct than my attempt which was more 'Low De'.

Hearing you start speaking about The XY by saying 'I have nothing good to say about this' made me really laugh. Your expression whilst saying it spoke volumes.

[SuSi-zqhw]

I liked reading Permafrost very much. The concept surprised me. It shows a very interesting way of time traveling I never seen anywhere before. I loved the conversations between Tatiana and Valentina.

[Kim_Traveling_in_Books]

I read Masquerade in Lodi last week, and thoroughly enjoyed it. It was interesting to see Pen after Martensbridge and before he went to Cedonia. Also, demonic chickens... And really, who would know if a cat was possessed?

[leticiatoraci]

I want to read the Foreigner series eventually. A question, with which book would be best to start reading Butler? I would rather read her more towards science fiction stories.

[ptlehmann]

I enjoyed Masquerade in Lodi but, as I read it, I came to realize that it was really about the saint, not Penric and Desdemona. I found myself reminded of one of Auden's epigrams at the end: "Talent calls for display, some public space to perform in; Virtue hills itself, even from virtuous men."

[ThatsSoPoe]

I think I need to pick up The Citadel of Weeping Pearls! It sounds really good. And yay that you're going to do a standalone review for Elatsoe!!! I can't wait to see it. Also, my condolences for you in reading that XY book. It sounds like such an unpleasant experience! If I ever run across an X book that sounds good, I'll send the rec your way so that hopefully some year you'll have a good book for that letter!

[TheBookishMom]

I really want to pick up Elatsoe, I have heard so many amazing things about it.

[Conumbra]

Man, The XY winning the award feels like a huge head-tilter.

Especially when you look at what it was up against! Seriously, the Honor List for that year included Yang's first two Tensorate novellas, An Unkindness of Ghosts, Dreadnought, Carmen Maria Machado's landmark short story collection, and The Devourers, any one of which would have been at least a decent pick for the award.

I can only think that the reason this won was the judges' votes were otherwise so split between all the other serious contenders that this managed to pull ahead by sheer luck. Otherwise I'm stumped

[lucillerenard]

I was so happy to get a new Penric and Desdemona novella, but I've been buying the bind ups and the fact that it's out of chronological order makes me my order-loving heart scared for the future third one!

[leticiatoraci]

I often leave X out in my A to Z challenges. Once I read a comic called X'ed which was a sci-fi thriller comic, but it goes only until issue 4 so there is no ending to the story. *shrugs*

[books_and_ki]

Elatsoe sounds good and I'm looking forward to your review!

[jimnyenhuis]

I’ve only ever wished that an Alastair Reynolds book was shorter, so I might check this one out :)

[LaurensNerdyFunStuff]

Ooo, I didn't know that Elatsoe had ace rep! That makes it shoot way up on my list of books I really want to get my hands on. I am also asexual, but I've found hardly any books with ace rep that aren't heavy on the romance (haven't really been able to enjoy much romance so far so I'm kind of avoiding it ha...). To be fair I'm honestly terrible at digging around for new books to read, so maybe I just need to dig a little more.
Also I just realized that I'm also going to have to do a really long wrap-up oof. Guess I better film that soon before it gets even more unwieldy lol.