books books books
Mar. 26th, 2021 10:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hugseverycatNO, WHY?? I just wrote the longest entry but it only posted like 1 sentence! Everything I put behind the cut was just disappeared. Wow, posting on Dreamwidth really is like a time machine to the aughts!
Anyway, I attempted to write a bunch of thoughts about the books I am reading or have recently finished.
Winter’s Orbit
It was good. It was fine. I honestly don’t have a whole lot of thoughts about it right now. It was fun to read but it’s sort of vacated my mind afterwards. There’s one description though that I really enjoyed. It was when they were talking about how the remnants make you feel, and at one point they say it was like walking into a garden full of bees, and I remember that giving me such a... sensation in my body. I am one of those people who has trouble visualizing, so descriptions actually don’t usually do much for me, unless they have really interesting prose. So it’s honestly pretty rare that a description of anything in a book gives me any particular feeling at all. I wonder if this is what it’s like to be a person with a good imagination, where a book can reliably give you these sensations of being in another world. Must be nice!
Ninefox Gambit
Anyway for my next book, I really wanted something sci-fi and something substantial. I’ve been reading a lot of fantasy and a lot of really easy-to-digest quick stuff. This book has been on my radar for ages, obviously, because it was very popular and won awards and stuff, but for some reason I have this (possibly unfair) gut reaction to space opera. It’s why it took me so long to get into Ancillary Justice (and to a lesser extent, Murderbot, even though that’s not really space opera). I read the descriptions and thought “this is boring space wars nonsense” and I don’t like war stories in general and space war stories even less. Even though I have read lots of space opera that I like (and lots of war stories that I like, too). I’m also a huge raving sexist and generally avoid books by men. Sorry fellas. But on the other hand, I do also want to start reading more books by people who aren’t white.
So anyway I downloaded a sample, read the first two chapters and was like “Wow, I have no fucking clue what’s going on and there’s some really bizarre magic stuff going on despite this being sci-fi”. And for me, both of those things are big positives, so I bought it and now I’ve read like 4 chapters and still don’t know what’s happening. A+ so far.
It’s weird, but I have a similar feeling reading this book as I did when I read Harrow the Ninth. Which is a very different book, except inasmuch as it is sci-fi with space magic. But the specific way that it feels similar is hard to describe. In Harrow the Ninth, much of the action happens in spaceships and on planets that don’t feel very real. On purpose. Probably. I don’t know their geography, even less so than I normally would (see above about not visualizing and therefore not really being interested in description). The settings I’ve seen so far in Ninefox Gambit also feel very unreal to me. Not in a bad way. In a dreamlike way. I really can’t tell if this is just me being particularly disoriented due to worldbuilding and difficulty visualizing, or if this is intentional. But it’s interesting. I like it.
The Echo Wife
While I was typing this up, I looked at my Goodreads account and was reminded that I finished The Echo Wife only like a month ago! Have any of you read this book??? It was deeply unsettling! Please talk to me about this book.
Anyway, I attempted to write a bunch of thoughts about the books I am reading or have recently finished.
Winter’s Orbit
It was good. It was fine. I honestly don’t have a whole lot of thoughts about it right now. It was fun to read but it’s sort of vacated my mind afterwards. There’s one description though that I really enjoyed. It was when they were talking about how the remnants make you feel, and at one point they say it was like walking into a garden full of bees, and I remember that giving me such a... sensation in my body. I am one of those people who has trouble visualizing, so descriptions actually don’t usually do much for me, unless they have really interesting prose. So it’s honestly pretty rare that a description of anything in a book gives me any particular feeling at all. I wonder if this is what it’s like to be a person with a good imagination, where a book can reliably give you these sensations of being in another world. Must be nice!
Ninefox Gambit
Anyway for my next book, I really wanted something sci-fi and something substantial. I’ve been reading a lot of fantasy and a lot of really easy-to-digest quick stuff. This book has been on my radar for ages, obviously, because it was very popular and won awards and stuff, but for some reason I have this (possibly unfair) gut reaction to space opera. It’s why it took me so long to get into Ancillary Justice (and to a lesser extent, Murderbot, even though that’s not really space opera). I read the descriptions and thought “this is boring space wars nonsense” and I don’t like war stories in general and space war stories even less. Even though I have read lots of space opera that I like (and lots of war stories that I like, too). I’m also a huge raving sexist and generally avoid books by men. Sorry fellas. But on the other hand, I do also want to start reading more books by people who aren’t white.
So anyway I downloaded a sample, read the first two chapters and was like “Wow, I have no fucking clue what’s going on and there’s some really bizarre magic stuff going on despite this being sci-fi”. And for me, both of those things are big positives, so I bought it and now I’ve read like 4 chapters and still don’t know what’s happening. A+ so far.
It’s weird, but I have a similar feeling reading this book as I did when I read Harrow the Ninth. Which is a very different book, except inasmuch as it is sci-fi with space magic. But the specific way that it feels similar is hard to describe. In Harrow the Ninth, much of the action happens in spaceships and on planets that don’t feel very real. On purpose. Probably. I don’t know their geography, even less so than I normally would (see above about not visualizing and therefore not really being interested in description). The settings I’ve seen so far in Ninefox Gambit also feel very unreal to me. Not in a bad way. In a dreamlike way. I really can’t tell if this is just me being particularly disoriented due to worldbuilding and difficulty visualizing, or if this is intentional. But it’s interesting. I like it.
The Echo Wife
While I was typing this up, I looked at my Goodreads account and was reminded that I finished The Echo Wife only like a month ago! Have any of you read this book??? It was deeply unsettling! Please talk to me about this book.
