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

Reading Record 28

     Okay, so this morning I finished reading Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett.

    It's the last of the Discworld books in the volume I borrowed from my brother, so probably the last one I'll read for a while.  (Since, after all, I have an already overflowing to-read shelf as it is.)

    I don't really have a lot to say about the book, I guess?

    Not without trying to go into a deep-dive about gender issues that I'm 100% not prepared for and really would have needed to read the book with a much more careful eye if I wanted to do that.  Also probably I wouldn't be able to say anything anyone hadn't already said.  Probably.  I have zero idea what kind of discourse there is about this book.  I mean, it's from like the early 1990s, right?  So it's not old enough to be the subject of debate as anything historical, but it's too old to be of much modern debate?  Also, various societal changes hadn't happened yet, and...

    Eh.

    Like I said, not ready for a deep-dive anything.

    Besides, today is the day I start updating the AO3 text for the second of the Atalanta and Ariadne books, since I finally finished the rewrites yesterday.

    But first I need to pre-write next week's IWSG post so I don't end up hastily writing the post around bedtime like I did this month.  😰  (Ugh, I hate the Windows 11 emojis.  Why did they have to redraw them all to be ugly?)

Original Language:  English

Reading record 27!

 (Exclamation point because finally the decimal points are gone!)

So, this super-short, one-sitting-by-design book was Vivi and Grandpa's Memories for the Sky, a Final Fantasy IX picture book (released for the game's 25th anniversary last year), with story by Kazuhiko Aoki and art by Toshiyuki Itahana (both of whom worked on the original game).

Highly adorable, because Vivi.  😁  Not the deepest story, even as picture books go, but very sweet.

Possibly more of a .1 than a .2 in length, but...I gave it that numbering to get rid of the danged decimal points for good!  From now on, when I get a new work that doesn't feel like it should count as a full number, I'm just gonna put it on the to-read shelf until there are enough similarly short works to add up to one, and then I'll go through them all in a row and put them in a single post.  'Cause this was just plain getting stupid.  Also exceptionally frustrating.  I'm not keeping track of my reading to annoy myself with being pedantic about what counts as a book, I'm keeping track of it 'cause otherwise I'll forget what I read when!

Original language:  Japanese

Reading record 26.8

 Argh, I am so sick of those decimal places!  🤬

Uh.  Anyway.

Today's book was Theseus, Volume Three, by Jordan Holt.  A graphic novel I backed on Kickstarter.  Volume one was back in 2020, so it's been long enough since the previous volumes that I forgot many of the individual quirks of this telling of the Theseus myth.

Or rather I forgot the problematic one:  the author chose to include the "Medea subplot."

Which is a genuine part of some ancient tellings of the myth, but it sucks.  (The subplot, not this book.)  Basically, it makes Medea into Theseus' evil stepmother, and...yeah, actually, that's pretty much all that needs to be said.  Making Medea into a villain instead of a victim was emblematic of the misogyny and xenophobia that was so prevalent in ancient Greek society.

There's something extra demented about adding Medea to Theseus' tale in particular.  (Again, I am specifically here talking about whatever ancient Athenian chose to add her into the story.)  Because let's look at the facts:

1) Medea playing the evil stepmother comes hard on the heels of the conclusion of Theseus' brief affair with Ariadne, who he abandoned on Naxos at the orders of Dionysos.  (Surprisingly, the author of this modern book chose to leave that out, so Theseus actually ended up with Ariadne.)

2) Medea and Ariadne play the exact same role in their own stories:  they are both foreign princesses who betray their fathers in order to enable the Greek hero to achieve his goal successfully, rather than dying miserably as they would have done unaided.

3) Both Medea and Ariadne are thrown over by their dependent Greek beau as soon as they are no longer useful.  (Excuses were made in both cases, but they don't change the hard facts of the matter.  Especially since there are versions where Dionysos does not order Theseus to abandon Ariadne, and merely picks her up after Theseus has sailed off and left her.  (Those versions presumably came from somewhere other than Athens...))

4) Medea and Ariadne are actually first cousins!  Ariadne's mother, Pasiphae, is the sister of Aeetes, Medea's father.

5) (And this is the big one!) It's actually chronologically impossible for Medea to have been courting/marrying Aegeus during Theseus' youth.  This is why:  in his old age, the twice-widowed Theseus abducted an underage Helen of Sparta, planning to make her wife #3.  Her twin brothers, Castor and Polydeuces, rescued her while Theseus was held prisoner in the House of Hades for trying to help his bestie kidnap Persephone in an attempt to marry her.  Castor and Polydeuces went along on the voyage of the Argo to steal the Golden Fleece from Colchis.  (This event basically had to be after the abduction of Helen, since Castor and Polydeuces are the same age as Helen, and surely would have been viewed as too young to Argonauts before that time!)  Therefore, Theseus is already old and twice widowed by the time Medea leaves Colchis!

This is, of course, the big trouble in trying to work with Greek myths, because you have centuries of ancient texts (even setting aside Roman versions...which very few people do, as pretty much anyone you ask is likely to know Ovid's version of Medusa's 'origin story,' despite that his version is literally not attested anywhere prior to his Metamorphoses, strongly suggesting that he just effin' made it up), which were written drawing on different traditions from different regions, and which represent the different opinions and agendas of different authors, etc.  There is no hint of consistency even in the actual Greek versions, and as soon as you start looking at modern versions as well (to say nothing of Medieval and Renaissance versions!) it becomes even more wildly muddled.

Uh...

Yeah, I have completely lost track of anything else I may have wanted to say.

So.

Erm.

Well.

Guess that's the post, then.

Original language:  English

Reading Record 26.5(ish)

 Today I finished reading Legend of Exorcism, volume 6, by Fei Tian Ye Xiang.  (Volume 5 was the first book for this reading record back in May.  That's how long they're making us wait in between volumes of this novel that has been finished for years!  😭😭😭  I don't want to have to wait that long for the remaining two parts!! 😭😭😭😭)

Um.

Anyway.

This time, the character guide at the end did start out by saying that some of the side characters are historical, but it only gave the Emperor, his consort and her cousin the chancellor as examples.  Not anyone else, not even the rebel general who's leading a massive army against the empire.  And it still hasn't mentioned that Di Renjie was real, either, though maybe they figure he's so famous that they don't have to?  (Or maybe they think no one cares...?  I have no clue what they're thinking.  How could I?)  It makes me long for the greater effort they put into the supplementary materials on their earlier releases, particularly the character guide for Thousand Autumns, which listed (historical) or (fictional) after every name.  I don't know if it was some kind of administrative decision or if whoever was writing the character guide for Thousand Autumns was just feeling more invested than whoever has handled subsequent character guides, but either way, it boils down to being frustrating.

In any case...it's volume 6 out of 8, so how much even can I day about it?

Well, except that I fear all too many of the extreme horrors of war being depicted in the novel are historically accurate.  (You know, outside the ones involving yaoguai and demons.  Those particular horrors I think one can feel safely assured are fictional.)

...

Hmm.

I should probably say more, but I don't know what.

Oh well.

Original language:  Chinese

Reading record 25.5(ish)

 So, last night I finished Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett, the second of the City Watch sub-series of Discworld novels.

And I don't really have much to say?  Because, like, it's Discworld.  There's no need to say much more than that.  Solid works of fantasy-comedy, the whole series.  (Well, okay, I've heard there are a few outliers that aren't as good, but this isn't one of them.)

There was a bit at the end that I loved which (despite being at the end) I can share (possibly in paraphrase, because the book is in the other room so I can't check if the phrasing in my mind is the correct phrasing) because it's not actually connected to the plot.  After seeing something Carrot has written, Vimes reflects on some of the quirks of his writing style, namely his inability to put "i" before "e" and his "cruelty to the common comma" by putting commas in weird places where they absolutely don't belong.  I would call Carrot's abuse of commas "unique" (and it was probably intended to be unique) only if Carrot was truly the only one who ever used a comma that way, then much of the Internet is apparently Carrot.  😅

Anyway, rather than going straight on to book three, I'll be waiting until I can hit a bookstore today to pick up the new volume of Legend of Exorcism, because tomorrow I have a doctor's appointment, and a nice paperback is much easier to read in a waiting room than a massive, three novel hardback.  (Also, I like the idea of being the middle-aged woman proudly reading danmei in a public place.)  Plus the larger print is easier to read in the less ideal conditions of the waiting room environment.

Original language:  English

Reading record 24.5(ish)?

 Okay, so this one didn't quite feel like it had enough meat on its bones to deserve a full number, which means who knows when/how I'll get back up to whole numbers again.  😅

Uh.  Anyway.  The book I just finished was Barbie:  The World Tour by Margot Robbie and Andrew Mukamal.  Which was much less an artbook about the movie Barbie than it was a photo journal of the tour for the premieres of the film, along with information and behind the scenes images about the outfits that Margot Robbie wore for the various public appearances as part of the tour.

Which is probably why whoever had bought it originally sold it to that used store, as they had most likely paid as little attention as I did in buying it.  😅  (But since I got it used, I paid a small enough amount for it that it felt like an appropriate price.)

But it was still an interesting read and had lots of pictures of vintage Barbie outfits and photos of Margot Robbie wearing outfits either recreating those vintage outfits or at least heavily inspired by them.  So it was still interesting, even if it wasn't quite what I thought it was.

In any case, like the movie, it was definitely something that a doll collector like myself got more out of than someone with no history with the dolls would.  (Though the movie stands better on its own than this book would, I think.  Although someone more interested in fashion than I am might like the book without needing an interest in dolls.  Probably?)

Um.

Anyhow.

It is late.  I need to start relaxing my brain or I won't be able to sleep.

Original language:  English

Reading record 23.7(ish)

 Just finished reading the next artbook in the stack, Strange & Eerie Cryptid Creatures by Jessica Feinberg and Daniel Faccio.

I've been supporting Jessica Feinberg's Kickstarters for I don't know how many years now--I have so many oracle decks with her art on them at this point!  Anyway, this was her most recent oracle deck/artbook combo.

The format of the book is pretty standard:  each painting gets an entry with various information about the depicted creature.  Which in this case was cryptids, though in some cases I felt like the chosen being was definitely on the other side of the fuzzy line between cryptid and folklore.  (Things like the barghest, cu-sith, and kappa, for example.)  Despite obvious effort to make it as worldwide as possible, certain regions were under-represented (Asia) and others over-represented (the US, especially West Virginia for some reason), but I think that's because that's just how it is:  there's no way for an artist to change what people all over the world are seeing and thinking they've seen, ya know?

Anyway, significantly more text (and more pages, for that matter!) than the previous artbook, but less than the next one. (I chose this particular decimal point number for it because in a few weeks the next volume of a printed web comic is being released, so that will round it back up to even numbers. 😅)

Original language:  English

Reading record 23.2(ish)

 Maybe only 23.1?  There was almost no text whatsoever. 😭

Anyway, the book I finished reading (looking at?) just now was Legend of Mana - Art of Mana - 30th Anniversary SPECIAL ISSUE.  And yes, that whole thing is apparently the title.  What little text the book had was just image caption by Masaru Oyamada, the producer of the Seiken Densetsu series.

As an art book, it was actually more focused on the remaster/reissue of the game in 2021 than it was on the original release from 1999.  (The 30th Anniversary part must be for the series as a whole...which means at least three different major game series started in 1996, in addition to the two biggest JRPG series starting in...wait, really?  1986?  Dang, that's...I hadn't thought about just how early that really was.  (Though it took three years for the first Final Fantasy to be translated into English and released in the US.)  Back in 1986, I was still playing text-parser-driven adventure games like The Black Cauldron and the early King's Quest and Space Quest games...)  Wait, maybe the earlier book from 2018 was the thirtieth anniversary and that's why this was a "special issue"...?  'Cause there's no way both 2 and 3 would have been on the Super Famicom if the first one came out in 1996--the Playstation had already been out for at least year by 1996!

I really loved Legend of Mana back on the PS1, but I've never had the nerve to pick up the new version; I know it got a mew translation, and I'm afraid they wimped out and changed all the elemental's names back to the mistranslations and shortened versions they had on the SNES version of Secret of Mana.  Which may sound like a dumb reason to avoid the remaster, but...it was really frustrating playing Trials of Mana and hearing the Japanese voice work saying the proper names and then seeing the butchered SNES versions written on the screen.  Especially since I know the real names better, having played Legend of Mana so many times!

Anyway, this art book was a little disappointing because it was mostly filling in gaps that had been left out of an earlier whole-series art book (of which I was unaware at the time and thus do not have) and focusing on the remastered art that hadn't been made yet during that earlier book.  Also, it has the dippy-looking male player character on the front instead of the awesome-looking female player character.  😭

Oh well.

An expensive chunk of brief nostalgia, I guess.

Original language:  Japanese

Reading Record 23

 So, today I finished reading Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett, the first of the City Watch sub-series of Discworld novels.

I read the novel for this month's book club meeting, which is on Saturday, so I'm left wondering if I should maybe not start the next book in the series until after the meeting to keep from accidentally confusing myself.  (I borrowed my brother's copy, ya see, which was a hardback of the "City Watch trilogy" which is pretty dating, since I believe there ended up being somewhere in the region of 6-8 City Watch books altogether.  But anyway it seems silly to return it after only reading one out of the three books within, yeah?)  Anyway, hilariously, this was a book I selected myself for the club to read, but I did so without so much as looking at a summary of what it was about, because I just knew I wanted to have us all read a Discworld novel, I thought the first in a sub-series made for a good jumping-on point, and I wanted it to be one I hadn't read before.  (Which left off the Rincewind, Granny Weatherwax and Death sub-serieses, so...books that actually fit those qualifications were a bit more thin on the ground.)  In any case, my total lack of research into the actual subject matter of this particular novel meant that I was quickly stunned to discover that it was the book that the first point and click adventure game had been (rather loosely) based on!

Obviously, since the game put Rincewind in the lead instead of a whole team of guards, most of it went quite differently, but the novel's final twist was still there, so...yeah, made for an odd experience.  (Though it has been so long since I played that game that I no longer recall if it went into any great detail regarding why that cult wanted to summon a dragon or what happened to the hooded brethren in the end.)  That game was my first exposure to the Discworld universe, so there's something weirdly appropriate, almost poetic even, about me having used this particular book to introduce it to however many others actually read it for the book club.  (Meetings have had varied turnout, based mostly on how many people actually decide to read the book.  If it hadn't turned out to be 800+ pages and I'd selected The Pickwick Papers, it would likely have been an empty house:  most people would have seen the name "Charles Dickens" and scurried away to hide.)

So.

Not really much I feel the need to say about it, ultimately.  It's a work of comedy-fantasy from the late 1980s, so some of it hasn't aged too gracefully, but most of it remains a solidly entertaining read.

I think to fill the time between now and the book club meeting, I'll read the three art-books I've gotten lately.  (One for a video game, one for a movie, and one just a general collection of folklore-adjacent art by an artist whose work I've been following for years.)

Original language:  English, and very British English at that

Reading record 22

 So, last night I finished reading After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz.

This book was a lot.

It's not terribly long, just very intense.

There were actually two things about this book that if I'd noticed them beforehand, I probably wouldn't have bought it. The first, which is more excusable for me to have missed it, is that it's basically in internet formatting:  unindented paragraphs separated by blank lines, a format that I absolutely detest on the printed page, where it sometimes actually gives me a headache.  The second, for which I have no excuse, is that in the list of prizes and awards the book won, the back of the book mentions that it was a "Finalist for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction."  Given my stress-related heart palpitations, I would have avoided anything labeled "political fiction" like the plague, but somehow I didn't notice that.

As usual, I feel that the back of the book still somehow managed to misrepresent the contents.  One of the central sentences of the blurb on the back says "Through a series of cascading vignettes, the intertwined lives of real feminists at the turn of the twentieth century are mesmerizingly reimagined" followed by a list of a few of the most notable of them.  (Which honestly probably shouldn't have listed Josephine Baker, since she basically just passes through the narrative in a single chapter.  But she's one of the only non-white people in the book, which is presumably why the back of the book was so eager to mention her.)  What it didn't mention--despite that the title of the book made it blatantly obvious--was that the vast majority of the real women depicted were not merely "feminists" but also lesbians/sapphics/whatever-other-name-you-can-come-up-with-for-women-who-love-women.  That reluctance on the part of the novel's own marketing is appalling.

Anyway.  As I said, this book was a lot.  It covers from about the 1880s or so (early chapters jump around in time a bit, and/or give dates that are more symbolic than anything else) to 1928, ending with the publication of Virginia Woolf's Orlando.  (Which is one of those novels where I loved the film adaptation, and so I am left wondering if reading the book would ruin the film for me, or if the deeper understanding would make it even better.)  That was not a pleasant time to live in, especially for women, and even more so for women who loved women, so a lot of what happens in the novel is distressing.

I don't usually read literary fiction, being someone who mostly prefers to read for escapism, so it's hard for me to know how to react to this book.  It was amazing, a real experience, and I'm not sorry I read it, but I didn't actually enjoy reading it.  But enjoyment was definitely never the point.

Original language:  English (but it contains a lot of quotes that the author translated out of French and Italian)

Reading Record 21

 So, this morning I finished reading How To Fake It In Society by KJ Charles.  Which part of me feels I ought to look at as a "guilty pleasure" and part of me is like "no, why should I feel guilty?"

Anyway.  Funny(ish) story about the impulse buy for this one.  There was a table that was half covered in Bridgerton novels, and half covered in similar period romances.  Spotting this one out of the corner of my eye, I was immediately struck by the question "wait, is that two men?"  And then I noticed the name of the author and knew that yes, it most emphatically was two men.  And of course I ended up buying both of the KJ Charles novels that were on that table.  🤣  Because I've read an earlier series of her novels that were sort of Victorian urban fantasy, I suppose is the way to describe them.  Absolutely adored them at the time, though I feel somewhat senile (despite only being 51) as I admit that I no longer quite recall the titles, except that they had to do with magpies.

In any case, this one had no fantasy elements, which makes it less like my "usual thing," but it was still delightful.  Heavily researched, and with a firm eye on being period-appropriate (to the extent that the author's note at the end included a strong defense of the use of the period-accurate spelling of "kanguroo" instead of the modern "kangaroo") but without making the characters stiff or too alien to modern sensibilities.  And I'm tempted to pick up a copy of the research book with all the info about the history of paints and colors, because just what was incorporated into this novel (the lead had earned his living making paints before suddenly becoming rich) was already fascinating, and it was necessarily just a fragment!

One thing I should say is that the title doesn't really fit the novel.  While it's hard to classify truly which of the deuteragonists is the actual "lead," the narrative does slightly lean more on the side of Titus, who is thrust into Society against his will when he suddenly becomes wealthy, but he isn't "faking" it as just trying to "survive" it.  If the narrative had leaned more on Nico's side, then the title would be more apt.  I mean, it's a great title, it's just a little off for the actual contents of the book.

A minor quibble, to be sure.  Because there really isn't any other kind to be had.  Maybe it's not "deep" or "meaningful," but I am not someone who demands that of her reading.  I wanted a pleasant story where the romantic leads are of the same sex, and that is what I got.  I even got a mini-lesson in some of the crazy things pigments used to be made of, in the bargain.  (Though I did already know about orpiment, because that featured at one point in The Apothecary Diaries.)

Original language:  English

Reading record 20

 Hmm.  Am I capitalizing the "r" in "record" or not?

Hrngh.

Well, it doesn't matter.

Anyway.  Last night I finished reading Field Guide for the Formerly Villainous by Autumn K. England.  (But it was late at night and I didn't want to take the time to post about it at that time.)

Another impulse purchase, because Barnes and Noble had it on a big table with a sign recommending it to fans of Stardew Valley and Studio Ghibli.  Naturally, that had caught my eye, and reading the back of the book definitely suggested that I would enjoy it, so I picked it up.  (Though I would not have done so if the back of the book hadn't made it clear that the lead is non-binary.  That assurance guaranteed a non-hetero romance (well, in the sense of not male/female; in the most technical sense "hetero" just means "different," and enby is different from anyone who is binary, but...maybe I should have phrased it as "guaranteed any romance would be LGBTQ+", since non-binary is typically also placed under that umbrella) so I didn't have to worry about it turning on me.)

Part of me wants to say this was successfully more "cozy" than the previous "cozy" book I read, but...I dunno, if it was truly "cozy" would I have spent so much of the last third or so of the book crying?  On the other hand, it never got stressful to read and certainly didn't trigger my heart palpitations like You Can't Spell Treason Without Tea did, so...🤷🏻‍♀️

Regardless of its coziness levels (and admittedly most of the book was decidedly cozy), this book was thoroughly delightful.  Mossley's Rest might actually be an even warmer, friendlier place than Pelican Town!  The warning that our protagonist was given, early on, that the town's entire unmarried population would soon be descending on them en masse in the hopes of winning a romance with the newcomer was also very cozy farming sim.  Well, except no one ever tells the player character that "we don't get much fresh blood in this town, so everyone is going to look to snag you asap" and it just sorta happens without anyone acknowledging why that's actually rather strange or wondering why none of those singles ever date each other.  (Okay, some cozy life sims have a few of their bachelors end up in relationships if the player doesn't get them first, but it does seem to be pretty rare in the post-Stardew Valley cozy farming sim boom.  I gather it wasn't unusual in the original Harvest Moon types (but I will admit that I have not yet played any Harvest Moon/Song of Seasons games...though I do own one of the latter that I haven't gotten around to playing yet) but when Stardew Valley inspired the wave of (mostly western) cozy farming sims, most of the new wave followed its lead, including no rival romances.)

...

Hmm.  I distracted myself by going off on a tangent about rival romances in cozy farming sims and now I don't remember if I wanted to say anything else about the book.

Well, I guess I can add it later if I remember anything else I wanted to say.

Original language:  English

Reading Record 19

 Hm.  19 since May 1.  That feels pretty small, doesn't it?

Oh well.

Anyway.  This morning I finished reading Golden Terrace, Book One, by Cang Wu Bin Bai.

So, this was absolutely an impulse purchase:  not long after that previous post where I said I was starting to feel weird about reading so many novels that had always been in English, I happened to go to the bookstore and once there I found myself actively looking for a new danmei to read.  (Instead of doing my usual thing of picking titles in advance by way of reading their page on the publisher's website.)

I had been pretty meh about this one when I saw it on the website, so I hadn't planned on picking it up, but seeing it right while I was wanting a new read pushed me over the edge to buy it.

And I'm glad I did!  If the second volume (it's only got two!) is as good as this one, it will probably end up on the short list of my favorites in the genre.  Although, speaking of the genre, I'm not sure quite what this one's other genre is.  Or rather, I have no idea what its other genre is called.  Since "danmei" is pretty much just an umbrella term for all Chinese webnovels (and other media?) with leads in a gay romance, each work is also in some other genre.  A lot of them are either xianxia or wuxia, Astrolabe Rebirth was sci-fi, Riverbay Road Men's Dormitory was a slice-of-life dramedy kind of thing, but this...?  The closest genre I know of would be "palace intrigue" but since this is centered around two military men outside the palace (though one of them works directly for the emperor, so the palace is visited repeatedly), that's definitely not right, but I don't know what is.  I'm sure it has a name (beyond "period drama") but I am ignorant of that name.

Anyway.  I really enjoyed the relationship between the two leads.  The back of the book oversold the "rivals-to-lovers" thing (unsurprisingly!), but that element is certainly there; I think their much more complicated situation is probably far superior to a standard rivalry situation.  I also find it both entertaining and very realistic that these two men who were forced to marry each other argue repeatedly about who will play which role when they finally consummate the marriage.  (One of them had known he preferred men for years, and the other was such a career soldier that he had never even thought about love and romance...but deep down he had definitely also already been gay (plus the uncle he admired highly who had practically raised him was gay, so he had that positive association) so the fact that they actually will end up happily married despite being forced into it (by a paranoid emperor who wanted to stamp out the one man's bloodline) is not super unrealistic.)

Hmm...I feel like there was something else I wanted to say, but now I can't think what it was.

...

Hnrgh....

...

*sigh*

Oh well.

If I think of it later, I can add it in.

Original language:  Chinese

Reading record 18

 I decided to go ahead and finish up reading that ebook short story collection off Project Gutenberg.  There were only a couple stories left, so....

The collection is called The Golden Slipper, and Other Problems for Violet Strange by Anna Katherine Green.

The ebook itself doesn't say when it was written, and I've forgotten (and don't feel like bothering to look it up at the moment) but I'm wanting to say in the neighborhood of 1900-1910.  There isn't electricity, only gas lighting, and there's no mention of WWI, but there do seem to be automobiles, so...my detailed knowledge of the early years of the 20th century is too sparse to be helpful.  Or rather, too absent.  I have some general knowledge of that period, but very few details, because my interest in history has always been further away from the present than that.

Trying to pin down when it was written is also compounded by the difficulty that despite being set in New York, the author seems to have been English:  British spellings are used, and one man on surrendering himself for a murder asked if the procedure was to take him directly before the magistrate.  (Or something like that.  Key detail being that he said "magistrate" rather than "judge.")

Anyway.

Much better than the earlier ebook of mystery stories from about the same time period.  The mysteries themselves were not always particularly good or mysterious (one problem with a short story mystery is that when one extraneous character is introduced partway through the story, then you know that they're the culprit!), but despite the heroine's wealthy status, they were at least not particularly classist.  Racism had little to no opportunity to arise (though that in itself is actually rather racist), but there was still some internalized misogyny, though at least it wasn't too bad.

Honestly, my biggest problem with it was something also shared by the other one, by Baroness Orczy, which is that an "explanation" for the female detective was provided at the end.  An explanation and an end to her detecting:  she had a purpose, and having fulfilled it, she no longer needed to take on cases.  Frustrating, to say the least.  Male detectives in this period were surely never given an explicit reason to be taking cases (aside from it literally being their job, as I'm sure there were plenty of stories written about police detectives) nor a reason to stop taking those cases.  When a reason was provided, it would surely have been to serve justice or to prevent injustice, or similar aphorisms along those lines.  Not to seek the chance to prove her beloved's innocence (Baroness Orczy's Lady Molly) or to earn money to pay for something very expensive that was necessary for her disowned sister to regain a comfortable life (Violet Strange).  Maybe that was a necessity for writing about a female detective at the time.  I don't know.  But I do know that as a modern reader I found it frustrating.

Still, at least in this case the stories were okay and I don't regret having read them.

Original language:  English

[Hmm.  Been a lot of that lately.  I wonder if there's anything on my to-read shelf (other than 3/4 of a danmei novel that won't get its final volume until September) that isn't originally written in English?  I'm starting to feel weird about bothering to list that at this point, it's been so long since the last one that was originally in any other language...]

Reading record 17

 Finished reading another book today:  Bromantasy by Máire Roche.

The text on the back (and the tagline on the front) pushed this a bit too hard as comedy (when in fact comedy was merely one element, and not even the largest of them), and definitely spelled out too much of the plot, so I went in expecting something a bit different than it actually was.

However, it was still quite delightful.  Sweet and charming, for the most part.  Though some of the "fantasy versions of modern stuff" like talking about reading news scrolls as "scrolling" felt like some degree of forced or exceptionally dating or both.  But maybe that's just me.  🤷🏻‍♀️

Not sure which book off the to-read shelf I want to read next.

Or rather, what I most wanted to read next on my to-read shelf was a fantasy alternate history that promised (among other things) Napoleon leading an army of the dead, only it turned out to be book two in a series so I really need to get myself to a bookstore and find part one first.  😅  I really need to pay more attention to things like that in the future...

Original language:  English