Reading Record 35

 So, last night I finished rereading volume two of The Apothecary Diaries light novels by Natsu Hyuuga.

Funny thing happened the day before that:  I was reading it at the dentist's office, and I had just gotten to one of the (many) scenes where Jinshi is being jealous (in this case because Maomao dared to speak to a man who wasn't him) while the music in the office was playing the song "Every Breath You Take."  It was hard to keep from laughing aloud. How had I never noticed before that that song could practically be Jinshi's theme song?  (And that being the case, is it any wonder that I don't want to read the novels past where I stopped?  I don't want to see Maomao actually forced to let him act on his obsessive, possessive and frankly childish feelings for her.)

Anyway, I will be taking a few days off before I start rereading book three.  That's the one with the "moon fairy" sequence, and I had a figure of Maomao in that costume in my Pile of Loot at Big Bad Toy Store, so as soon as I thought of that, I had them ship my stuff, and I want to wait a bit so it will be here by the time I get to that sequence.  😅

So I'll keep plugging away at reading through that CRPG ebook for a while.

Original language:  Japanese

Reading Record 34

 Welp.

It's been a thing.

After the last three books being pretty serious, I wanted something lighter.

Nothing much on my to-read shelf fit the bill.  The closest I could come was one of those books that seem to have been published with the intention of putting them in the "cheap clearance" section of large bookstores.  😅  But that ended up being a DNS.  (A "Did Not Start," in other words.  I sat down to read it, thinking it was art history only to find it was a particularly dry and bland regular history...so I ended up just leafing through to look at the pictures then putting it away.  I've recently read a far more complete history of that culture, one that was much less dry and absolutely more readable.  No reason to force myself to read something inferior as well.)

So I turned to an ebook about CRPGs--Computer Role-Playing Games, that is--which is fascinating, but also almost 700 pages and very, um, stultifying in large chunks.  It's just not the sort of thing that's meant to be the only book you're reading, ya know?  I'm gonna keep picking at it on and off until I finish it, but 200 pages at a time was just the limit of what I could take.

Therefore, I decided to turn to something that wasn't on my to-read shelf.

I decided to reread something.  In part to refresh my memory before the next season of the adaptation starts, and in part because I wanted to revisit a few sections because I might want to write a wee bit of fan-fiction...

Thus, on Friday night I started rereading volume one of The Apothecary Diaries light novels by Natsu Hyuuga.

And having just finished the volume...yup, I can't help it.  Maomao is an icon.  She is a fantastic blend, and absolutely the aromantic poster child.

As always, I'm sort of torn on the whole "Jinshi" issue.  He's an entertaining, likable character, and it's funny just how pathetic he gets in his endless pursuit of Maomao, but no matter how pathetic or charming he is, that can't justify how he continues to romantically pursue her when she so blatantly is not interested.

And, frustratingly, I feel like we, the audience, are somehow supposed to be on his side in this.  Even though he is objectively acting incorrectly.  (Sure, he looks great in comparison to his grandfather, but...that's not enough to excuse his behavior.)

Original language:  Japanese

Reading Record 33

 So, last night I finished reading A Radical Act of Free Magic by H. G. Parry, the second (and final) book in the series started by A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians.

As you would expect, this one moved on from the French Revolution to the Napoleonic Wars.  (Well, the first of them.) And, as you also might expect, it was still excellent.

In the afterward, the author said she had spent the last seven years working on the duology, and I can easily believe it!  The way she wove her story of magic and...something I shouldn't mention because spoilers...into the actual historical events was amazing in its seamlessness.  There were even actual quotes from the real people involved.  (Napoleon's line about "forty centuries look down on you" in reference to the pyramids is quite famous, but there were also several speeches in the first book (both in Parliament and by Robespierre) that I was pretty sure were the real speeches (with some modifications in some cases to add in mentions of magic), and so on.)  And although I'm still pretty sure Fina was entirely fictional, the words she used to start her life story were, I suspect, either quoted or adapted from those of a real person who had suffered the same fate (minus the magical/alchemical aspects) she had in childhood.

Even after giving myself overnight to think about it, I'm still not sure what to say, because it was just that good, you know?

Then again, if I'm mostly keeping this record for myself, I guess I don't need to say anything.

So I guess I won't.  😅

Original language:  English

(Also, what the heck do I read next?  It's gonna be a jarring shift no matter what it is.  But maybe something lighter, since this got pretty heavy at times?)

Reading Record 32

     So, this morning I finished reading The Wings Upon Her Back by Samantha Mills, the next book for book club.

    I kind of have no words, really.  This is very much not the kind of thing I normally read, and I don't even know what I think.

    Also, I sprained my wrist the day before yesterday, and it turns out to be really, really hard to type wearing this immobilizing brace that I need to keep from making it worse before it can heal.  (I'm on the internet computer today because I thought I had the new version of book two of the Atalanta and Ariadne books ready to go up, only to realize that nope I had missed something!  So now I have to go back and fix it again and it is driving me nuts and also this brace is a wee bit painful...😭)

    Anyway, yeah.  Typing hard.  Stopping.

Original language:  English

Reading Record 31

 I chose this book off my shelf next--wait, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Just finished reading A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians by H. G. Parry.  And, um, wow.

Okay, so now, back where I started:  I picked this particular book to read next for two reasons.  First, it was long, so I thought it would get me all the way to Saturday, when I planned to start reading the next book club book, since the meeting is the following Saturday.  (It's, what, Wednesday?  😅)  And the second reason is that it, too, is a work of historical fiction...although as the title makes clear, it's a (slightly) different time period, and it's also a work of fantasy.

As the title makes obvious (if you've studied your history), it takes place during the French Revolution.  Or rather, in-and-before said revolution.  What's sort of surprising to me is that rather than the approach many authors would take--inventing purely fictional characters who witness or take part in the historic events--the characters are almost all historical people.  Like, the characters we follow the most are William Pitt the Younger (Prime Minister of Britain for most of the book) and Robespierre!  There is one major POV character, Fina, who I think is probably fictional...but the other major characters she interacts with after she reaches Saint-Domingue are decidedly historical people.  I'm not going to research whether or not Fina is based on a real person until I've read the next book in the series (which has been on my to-read shelf longer than this one, since I didn't notice the "Book Two" bit on the cover until I was sitting down to start reading it 😅) or possibly more books if there are more than two in the series.

Anyway, the particularly remarkable thing to me is how closely it follows the history of what really happened, while simultaneously weaving in a new (or maybe "an additional" would be a better way to put it) about the oppressions that common-born mages suffered from throughout Europe, the threats of magic in warfare, and the even worse crimes magic let plantation owners commit.  Thankfully, the book does not go heavily into describing the bloody deaths and the battles; they're certainly present (particularly the former), but not in gruesome detail...just in horrifying "this really happened" levels of detail.  (Uh, aside from the dark magic parts, anyway.)

Honestly, I'm super-bummed that I can't just dive right on into book two, but I worry that if I do I won't be able to finish the book club book on time.  😭

Original language:  English

Reading Record 30

 (Ugh.  Typing on my phone is a nightmare due to my big fat fingers:  first attempt at that post title said "Reafong Tecord 40".  😭)  Not sure if 30 seems like a big number or a really small one in this context...

Anyway, the book I just finished was A Nobleman's Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel by KJ Charles.  And like the previous of her books I read, the title itself, while a good title, doesn't entirely seem to fit the book.  Which is sorta...I dunno, as someone who can't title her works 9 times out of 10, I suppose I have no right to comment on the titles of others.  (Though at least a lot of what I write are fanfics, and can thus be titled with song lyrics if I want.)

As to the book itself, turned out it was a sequel of sorts to a book I haven't read, but a "thirteen years later and centering on a different couple, one of whom was a minor (in both senses of the word, lol) character in the first book" kind of way, so...🤷🏻‍♀️  I should probably order the first book online sometime (since I cannot figure where, in store, these books would be located, as they weren't in regular fiction, and I even held my breath and checked the romance section, but they weren't there, either) but who knows if I actually will.

Like the last one I read by this author, it did feel a bit like a "guilty pleasure" kind of read, but I'm not sure why that is.  I mean, yes, a gay romance by a(n apparently straight) female author is a bit sketchy, but I don't have that same feeling when I read danmei, much of which is also written by women (though at least one of the danmei authors I read is male, and several have gender-neutral pronouns in the "about the author" blurbs from the publisher, so I have no idea about them) so it's something of a curious feeling.  I don't recall feeling that way about the Magpie series, so maybe it's the lack of a fantastic over-narrative that's got me uncomfortable?  Like, these two have been much more focused on the romance than most of the danmei novels, so...?  I don't know. It's an odd reaction on my part, ultimately.

But getting back to the book itself!  It seemed very well-researched on both the location (Romney Marsh in Kent) and the era (1823), even down to various regional and period terms, without being bogged down by an excess of them.  And it was a delight to read, like all the author's other books I've read.  Which is, ultimately, the most important part, right?

Original language:  English

Reading Record 29

     So, I have to start this post with a statement of the most extreme stupidity.  I finished reading this book about midday on Tuesday, but my brain immediately said "ah, rats, I'll have to wait and post tomorrow morning, because otherwise it'll muddle up the IWSG post."  Because for some reason I thought it was Wednesday.  And then the next morning, as I was getting up, I thought about the post I had put off and realized "oh no, today is Wednesday!"  Meaning that I could have posted straight away, and because I had waited I had to wait another full day.

    Because I am a total freaking moron, apparently.  :<

    Anyway.

    What is not stupid is the book I finished reading on Tuesday.  The book in question is The Once and Future Sex:  Going Medieval on Women's Roles in Society by Eleanor Janega.  It caught my eye when I was passing by the History section in the bookstore, and I picked it up especially because I'm thinking of writing a game for the Queer Medieval Jam on itch.io that runs from September 1st to December 1st.  (Assuming I can ever finish my current project of getting the revamped text of The Golden God of Aiolia released.  Which is constantly becoming a longer and longer process because every time I look at the text I find more problems I missed the previous times...)

    Uh.  But setting my own stuff aside and getting back to the book I read.

    This book is an intensive study into the actual facts of how women lived in the Middle Ages, setting aside the myths that have been repeated so often in virtually everything.

    Probably the part that comes across most strongly is the fact that women have always worked.  Not just domestically (a particularly hard work that cannot be denied in pretty much any era), but also out of the house.  It's just that people of the Middle Ages didn't talk much about women working.  Partially because they didn't entirely think of women as being people, and partially because they didn't think anything of it, because things had always been that way.

    Anyway.  Incredible book (although some of it was naturally infuriating, because Medieval 'philosophy' was horrifically misogynistic), one which everyone should read.

    Original language:  English