I didn’t read a whole lot this month, I mean, six isn’t bad, but I did
Nanowrimo this month, and most of my focus was placed there. So I couldn’t make
myself focus on reading. I won nanowrimo by the way, if anyone cares. 89,000
words, bitch. I don’t know why I added the bitch there. I can’t pull that off.
Anyways, this is what I read in November
I read Poison Fruit, the third and final book in the Agent of Hel
trilogy. So in this book Daisy is faced with another demon spawn who is
basically buying up the city for an unknown client. Basically his client wants
to take over the underworld of Hel. Daisy and the eldricht community in
Pemkowet have to fight back, because if this client comes in and takes over they
won’t really be able to live there anymore, because of, reasons. I liked it.
It’s fun, it’s snarky, and cool. And there’s a love triangle of sorts. Daisy
has a crush on a werewolf, he likes her, they can’t be together because they
can’t make werewolf babies. So to compensate for this the werewolf becomes all
snarky, bitchy and passive-aggressive about the man Daisy chooses instead. I
really like Daisy. She’s cool, she will take no shit, so when Cody gets all
shitty she calls him out on it and stops it. It was fun, and it was a good
conclusion I thought. I enjoyed an urban fantasy series where the main
character was something other than a vampire or werewolf. It was fun.
This was really weird. It’s an older science fiction satire, I guess.
It’s about a constructor (basically an inventor) named Trurl, and his colleague
Klapaucius, who go on adventures and invent stuff for the rulers of distant
planets. It’s divided into different short stories. Usually Trurl and
Klapaucius have travelled somewhere and meet a king or something like that and
are asked to do something for the king and get shoved into some weird
adventures. The inventions are completely crazy and unreasonable, and weird. It
was fun, and it was really funny, Stanislaw Lem was really funny. There’s some
great satire, and it was just a lot of fun. I feel like I got a bit sick of it
in the end. It got a bit same-y. And I just wanted it to end, but it was fun.
I read books six and seven in the HP series. I call it HP now,
apparently. It’s the two last books, and I have obviously read them a bagillion
times before, but I listened to them on audiobook again, and it had been a
while. I love Harry Potter guys. I love it, I get annoyed with it, I want to
punch Harry. This is clearly a person who has grown up with Harry Potter. I
wrote, reviews would be generous, I wrote ramble-y posts about both books. I’ve
done this for all the books, except book one, so I might try to write a post
about how much I love Harry Potter to make up for my ranting. But I love these
two, Half-blood prince for Slughorn, and because we get to learn about
Voldemort, and because there’s some fun teenage angst. I love Deathly Hallows
because it’s such a loss of innocence, Harry has to deal with the fact that his
hero didn’t tell him everything, and he has to grow up, and cope with the fact
that Dumbledore wasn’t perfect. And I hate the epilogue. I’m sorry, it’s
stupid.
This is Gloria Steinem’s latest memoir. It’s about her life on the road,
logically. She grew up in her dad’s car, basically. He would sell antiques on
the road and brought his family with him. When Steinem graduated college,
instead of settling down in a rebellion against her father she kept doing the
same thing. So this is about her life travelling across America, and the world.
How she and Florynce Kennedy went and held like lectures in colleges in the US.
And it’s about Women’s Circles they hosted. Women come together and talk about
being women basically. It’s also about how she founded Ms Magazine, and how
that magazine was a huge deal for her and she wanted it to be this force for
good in feminism and journalism. I really loved it. Her writing is so
beautiful, and it made me want to travel. And it made me cry, because I’m a
softy. I listened to it on audiobook, which I bought at audible, and it was
great. The narrated was lovely. And I love audible. It’s great. I’m not being
sponsored, I’m just very excited.
I heard of this through the magic of Book-tube. It’s been making the
rounds, and I got very intrigued. Why? Because I love tidying and organizing.
Because I’m a nerd. It was so great. I loved it. I’m gushing. Anyway. It’s
basically about tidying. Marie Kondo has developed this way of tidying that is
apparently fool-proof. It is a bit odd, because Kondo is a Shinto-buddhist, so she
has some thoughts on the spirits of things, or the anthropomorphic qualities of
things, which I as a very down-to-earth atheist find a bit weird. Like it just
sounds too different to me, but I do see her point, which is to go through all
your things and ask yourself if they give you joy, and if you answer no then
you get rid of it. Now that nanowrimo is over I can tidy. And I’m so excited. I’m
a fun person. There’s a woman at work who has also read it and we can geek out
over it together. We’re fun people.
So that’s what I read in November. Now that I’m not writing non-stop I
can read more, and I am excited about that. I am excited. I’ve said excited too
much. Also, it’s December, it’s the Christmas month. I love Christmas.
Poison fruit by Jacqueline Carey
Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling, read by Jim Dale
I read books six and seven in the HP series. I call it HP now,
apparently. It’s the two last books, and I have obviously read them a bagillion
times before, but I listened to them on audiobook again, and it had been a
while. I love Harry Potter guys. I love it, I get annoyed with it, I want to
punch Harry. This is clearly a person who has grown up with Harry Potter. I
wrote, reviews would be generous, I wrote ramble-y posts about both books. I’ve
done this for all the books, except book one, so I might try to write a post
about how much I love Harry Potter to make up for my ranting. But I love these
two, Half-blood prince for Slughorn, and because we get to learn about
Voldemort, and because there’s some fun teenage angst. I love Deathly Hallows
because it’s such a loss of innocence, Harry has to deal with the fact that his
hero didn’t tell him everything, and he has to grow up, and cope with the fact
that Dumbledore wasn’t perfect. And I hate the epilogue. I’m sorry, it’s
stupid.
My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem, read by Debra Winger
I heard of this through the magic of Book-tube. It’s been making the
rounds, and I got very intrigued. Why? Because I love tidying and organizing.
Because I’m a nerd. It was so great. I loved it. I’m gushing. Anyway. It’s
basically about tidying. Marie Kondo has developed this way of tidying that is
apparently fool-proof. It is a bit odd, because Kondo is a Shinto-buddhist, so she
has some thoughts on the spirits of things, or the anthropomorphic qualities of
things, which I as a very down-to-earth atheist find a bit weird. Like it just
sounds too different to me, but I do see her point, which is to go through all
your things and ask yourself if they give you joy, and if you answer no then
you get rid of it. Now that nanowrimo is over I can tidy. And I’m so excited. I’m
a fun person. There’s a woman at work who has also read it and we can geek out
over it together. We’re fun people. 