firecat: damiel from wings of desire tasting blood on his fingers. text "i has a flavor!" (Default)
firecat (attention machine in need of calibration) ([personal profile] firecat) wrote2013-06-19 11:15 pm

somewhat weekly reading meme

What are you currently reading?

A Letter of Mary by Laurie R. King (#3 in the Mary Russell series)

The Privilege of the Sword by Ellen Kushner (Riverside #2), audiobook narrated by Ellen Kushner, Barbara Rosenblat, and others

Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin

What did you recently finish reading?

Lilith's Brood, (aka Xenogenesis), Octavia Butler. I loved this so much even though I was seriously creeped out by it. Alien aliens! Real biology! Ambivalence, adaptation, allies, bonding, captivity, coercion, communication, conflict, consent, enemies, family, freedom, gender, genetics, genocide, healing, hierarchy, identity, knowledge, needing, reproduction, resisting, sex, symbiosis, telepathy, tribe, wanting, war, xenophobia.
These essays are linked from the Wikipedia page; I posted them before but I thought they were worth posting again.
"Dialogic Origins and Alien Identities in Butler’s XENOGENESIS" by Cathy Peppers
Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis Trilogy: A Biologist’s Response by Joan Slonczewski

August Heat by Andrea Camilleri (Montalbano #10). Audiobook. Montalbano is a Sicilian cop. Almost all the novels are about sex crimes, and I usually figure out the plot before the end, but I like them anyway. The translator and narrator are really good.

What books did you acquire this week?

The Wings of the Sphinx by Andrea Camilleri (Montalbano #11)
fyreharper: (Default)

[personal profile] fyreharper 2013-06-20 08:48 pm (UTC)(link)
I quite enjoyed The Privilege of the Sword. How is the audiobook version?
fyreharper: (Default)

[personal profile] fyreharper 2013-06-24 10:11 pm (UTC)(link)
Somehow I had missed that these characters had more books! I will have to look up Swordspoint, thanks.
striped: (studying)

[personal profile] striped 2013-06-24 08:50 am (UTC)(link)
Ooh, what do you think of Lavinia? I absolutely loved it, despite not being familiar with the original myth; it was one of those books that was not larger than life, but a small gem.
striped: (Default)

[personal profile] striped 2013-06-24 10:30 am (UTC)(link)
Yes! She's very perceptive and fine-tuned, and compassionate without trying to dictate emotions to the reader.

[identity profile] sarahmichigan.livejournal.com 2013-06-20 05:45 pm (UTC)(link)
Thanks for the Butler essay links. I'm half-way through the middle book and will come back to the essays when we're done with the trilogy. It's a re-read, but it's probably been 15 or more years since I first read the trilogy.