firecat

Not going out as much since the start of last week plus some extensive travel meant I packed a lot of reading in this week.

What I Finished Reading This Week

How To Dodge A Cannonball – Dennard Dayle
It takes a while for How to Dodge a Cannonball to find its footing; the first 100 pages or so are firmly (and intentionally) in idiot plot territory as the novel's teenage protagonist defects from the Union Army to the Confederate Army and back to a Union African American regiment. The narrative, characterization, and tone don't really feel like "Catch-22 in the Civil War" (as claimed by one of the back cover blurbs) but they are very reminiscent of Christopher Moore: Dayle writes with a similar snappy, irreverent voice; deploys similar satire with biting social observation lurking beneath; and also with evident love for his characters and their foibles. If you're a fan of Moore, you are going to enjoy this book.

Roses & Violets – Gry Kappel Jensen
Objectively, this is not a good book. The worldbuilding (such as it is) and broad plot beats are clearly cribbed from Harry Potter (sudden arrival of a letter to a magical high school in a castle that the protagonist's parents try to prevent her from receiving, a magical hat tree that sorts students into four groups, the stern female headmistress, the abrasive, dark-haired professor teaching the most unsavory magical subject; the secret werewolf who's presented as a mortal threat but turns out to be a lifesaving ally, and on and on). There's a similar lack of adult supervision or safety protocols, or internal consistency to the either the curricula or how magic is supposed to work in the first place. There is little character development. The plot (such as it is) is rushed and in places incomprehensible. Entire paragraphs are composed of bare-bones dialogue with no narrative description. The last 30 percent of the book leans heavily on sentence fragments and comma splices (it's unclear whether this is the work of the translator or the original author). The ending is ru But as reading material after an exhausting week at work has turned your brain to mush, or to kill time during a five hour trip, it's be hard to beat.

A Beginner's Manual – Aidan Meehan
This first volume in Meehan's Celtic Design series is one of the best: it clearly and succinctly explains how to draw step patterns, key patterns, spirals, uncial script, and illuminated capitals, and how to lay out pages for the above, as well as what drafting tools, paper, and inks are best suited. It's a stark contrast to some of the latter volumes in the series (I'm looking at you, Animal Patterns and Spiral Patterns), which leave one with the distinct impression that Meehan would prefer readers to never figure out how to draw these things at all.

Winters In The World – Eleanor Parker
This book examines how Anglo-Saxons thought about the passage of time, both linear (as in a human lifetime) and cyclical (as in the seasons of the year), through an exploration of their poetry. It's by-and-large well written and enjoyable, although benefits from the application of a critical eye: Parker has a tendency to present personal conjecture as objective fact, and not even in a consistent fashion. Still, the poetry (both in the original and modern English translation) and how it illuminates its audience's worldview is fascinating and worth the read.

Crown Duel – Sherwood Smith
It's not a perfect book, but it is a really, really good one that I reread every few years. There's an attention to detailed but subtle observation of nature and human emotions that's absent from a lot of recent YA (and even adult) fiction, and that I very much miss. I also love that the protagonist does what she can with the knowledge and capabilities she has, in the situations in which she finds herself, and that sometimes she is unsuccessful or even just plain wrong--a refreshing change from the current glut of main characters who singlehandedly carry the day in the face of others' incompetence and ignorance. And, you know, the whole "taking the battle to King Galdran" really resonates these days.


What I Am Currently Reading

Siege and Storm – Leigh Bardugo
I backburnered this one for Roses & Violets and The Chosen Queen.

The Story of Irish Dance – Helen Brennan
I only picked at this one this week.

The Chosen Queen – Sam Davey
I picked this one up yesterday and blazed through the first 25 percent. It's pretty obviously a take on Mists of Avalon, but a well written one.

Roses & Violets – Gry Kappel Jensen
What can I say? Sometimes, you just want to eat some Combos.

The Eagle of the Ninth – Rosemary Stewart
I only read a few pages of this before setting it aside for other options.


What I'm Reading Next

This week I picked up Forget Me Not by Gry Kappel Jensen, AP Computer Science A by Dean Johnson, Ballad of Sword & Wine vol. 2 by Qiang Jin Jiu, The Goddess and the Tree by Ellen Cannon Reed, and Beginning Programming for Dummies by Wallace Wang.

これで以上です。