In March I read 7 books. I feel
like I did pretty well, sort of. I had a sort of slump-y phase in the middle of
the month. I got a bit grouchy and didn’t like anything, and didn’t want to read anything. Then I sort of got
back in the groove, which was sort of helped by Amy Poehler. Not her
personally, that’d be weird, if Amy Poehler called someone she didn’t know. But
I listened to her audiobook and I loved it and it made me excited to read.
Which sounds weird, but hey, whatever works. So this is a look at what I read
this month.
Carey wrote one of my favourite high fantasy series, Kushiel’s Legacy,
which is awesome. This is an urban fantasy series, so it’s very different from
Kushiel’s legacy. It’s about a young lady named Daisy Johanssen, who is the
daughter of a human and an incubus, the human liaison between the Norse God
Hel, and the Pemkowet Police force. Pemkowet is this small Midwestern town full
of supernatural things, and Daisy has to make sure their relationship with the
people in town and the tourists who come to town, is good and that people
aren’t hurt. Then a kid is found in the river, drowned, and is clearly killed
by a supernatural thing. It’s very cool, the writing is very fitting and very
different from Kushiel’s Legacy. Daisy is a badass, and she’s complex, and
flawed, and I loved her. Hel is cool, and creepy, and I love Norse mythology,
so I liked that Hel got to be the queen of this little place, because she’s
awesome. So yeah. I liked it, I’m excited about reading the two other books in
the trilogy.
This was a reread for me, I read this when I was like 16, and I didn’t
like it. I did like it this time, I thought it was… interesting. It’s not fun,
or nice. It’s dark and cold and just awful, every character is an awful human
being, and I didn’t like any of them, which obviously makes it hard to relate
to anyone, but it was beautiful in many ways, the descriptions are beautiful,
the writing is beautiful. It’s about a tragic love story that pretty much
destroys their families and the coming generations. It’s supposed to be a love
story, but my love stories don’t include people digging up their dead lovers
and trying to bar their love’s husband from being buried next to them, so…
Anyway. I liked it, in a way. I wrote a review, here.
This is a book about a travelling carnival/freak show. Al and Lilith
Binewski decide they need a freak show so they make design babies by having
Lilith ingest drugs and poisons while she’s pregnant, and they get their little
freaks and their show flourishes. It’s a horror story about how their carnival
rises and falls and how religion can completely fuck you over. And how love and
good intentions can sort of destroy you, and I really liked it, even though it
made me feel a bit disgusted and gross and I cringed and it was just awful, but
I loved it for some reason.
This is a Norwegian book, and the second in a trilogy. It’s about a
young woman named Hirka, who lives in Ymslanda, which is this parallel universe
based in Norse Mythology. She is different from the other people in her world.
She’s not from Ymslanda, she’s a human, or child of Odin, so in the first book
she goes to the human world, our world, to save Ymslanda from the Blind, who
they assume have come because of her. In this book she’s trying to adjust to
this world. Ymslanda is set in a sort of medieval world and she comes to York
in the 2010s sometime, so she has a language barrier and the world is full of
things like technology and social services that she just doesn’t get. And also
it seems like Ymslanda has followed her to York in the worst possible way. It’s
about a young woman getting to know herself and her heritage, and it’s very
interesting to see her react to the world she has come to, and to see how
confusing she finds this world. It’s also set halfway in Ymslanda with Hirka’s
friend Rime, who wants to get her back when he realizes her leaving makes no
difference to the Blind. It’s a little hard to explain. I really liked it. I
thought it was cool, and I like Hirka. Rime is a jealous, self-righteous ass at
times, but I like him too. He is very… Harry Potter in the Order of the
Phoenix. He’s smart and clever, so he has this slightly inflated sense of self.
He also feels a little sorry for himself for being pushed into this world of
politics and intrigue that he has to be in, and he gets too angry too quickly,
but I think it comes from a place of love, so I just… He just annoys me.
I really loved this. It was so sweet and fun. Junior is a great
narrator. It’s clearly aimed at someone younger than me, but it was okay.
Junior is very honest and direct, and I thought that was sweet. It’s told in a
very non-verbose way. It’s told a lot like a diary basically. It’s about this
Native American kid, or Indian, who lives on a reservation with his family. He
goes to the reservation school, and he realizes how bad it is when he is given
the same math book as his mother had when she was in high school 20-30 years
earlier and he is suspended for throwing his book at his teacher. The teacher
tells him to get out, to go to the white high school, and to not get stuck.
Junior’s parents are kind and accepting and want the best for him, so they
agree and they take him to the white school and let him go there. He has to
deal with being an Indian in a white school and to deal with being seen as a
sort of traitor on the reservation, so he ends up in this middle place that
immigrants often get where they’re not enough and too much of both cultures. He
also has to deal with family tragedies and just the awfulness of being an
Indian in America. The rez is full of families plagued by poverty, alcoholism
and abuse and people who just got stuck and never got out, and it feels sort of
tragic, but also hopeful, because Junior has hope and because he’s an awesome
dude. I loved it.
This is the second volume in the Locke and Key graphic novel series. It
deals with the second key, which you can use to unlock your head, which isn’t
creepy at all. I really like the creepiness, I love the story, and the art is
just incredible. Gabriel Rodriguez is amazing. I did a sort of round-up of the
graphic novels I’ve read so far here, if you want more in-depth commentary, but
I’m not good at this right now apparently. It started a lot of interesting plot
lines that I’m excited about seeing the continuation of. I like Kinsey and
Tyler’s relationship, they’re very close and kind to each other, which I like.
It seems like they’re not like this because of the horrible thing that
happened, but have always been this way, which I like. I really liked sibling
stories, I don’t know why.
I had a credit on audible, for one book, and I needed an audiobook for
my Read Harder challenge. And the one I started with did not work well for me
as an audiobook so I tried a different one. I loved this. I don’t watch Parks
and Rec, or didn’t, it’s over, I’ve seen one season, and I like it, so I think
I’ll see the rest, but I like Amy Poehler anyway, so yeah. This was sort of an
interesting take on an audiobook, she has invited other people to read with
her, like her parents, and Seth Myers who she did Weekend update with on SNL.
So they read a chapter, or do commentary, and it’s very cool. Her writing is
also really good. She’s very honest, which is good, it’s a memoir. But she
doesn’t really shy away from things, which is nice, I like her. It was funny,
and sad, and weird, and cool. I really loved it.
Still didn’t finish Americanah, and had a temper tantrum when it came to
Metro 2033, so I’m thinking I’ll finish Americanah in April, I’m not going to
freak out about it. And Metro 2033 I’ll just try later when I’m in a less
tantrum-y mood. That’s a really great and grown-up sentence. Anyways. That’s March, onto April.
Dark Currents by Jacqueline Carey
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
Yes please! By Amy Poehler