An attempt at Reading Wednesday
Feb. 10th, 2016 08:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12I'm not sure I'm going to be able to manage it every week, but I'm going to attempt to post regular reading logs whenever I can. I tend to agonise too much about whether what I want to post about is worthy of blogging, and I'm trying to get out of that mindset. With that in mind, have my first Reading Wednesday of 2016.
Novels
Uprooted by Naomi Novik was something I'd been intending to read for a while, but I have to admit that it was Foz Meadows' extremely negative (and spoilery) review that bumped it up into a higher level of priority. What can I say? The id wants what it wants.
I loved the folkloric, fairytale quality of the book, coupled with its emotional intensity. And the idea of a malevolent, sentient forest was absolutely fantastic, and very cleverly realised. To my mind, European fairytales and folktales exist in this kind of nebulous, indeterminate, almost universal forest that spreads and covers the whole of their known landscape, a space in which the rules of the real world don't apply and operates under strange, inhuman rules of its own. (I think of it as the world's forest.) The idea to make this resonant, unstable forest space a living, conscious entity was inspired.
I only wish that Uprooted was going to be the first in a series, but I guess that would detract from the fairytale finality of its ending. In any case, we'll always have fanfic.
Short stories
I read and really enjoyed 'Good Girls' by Isabel Yap, which adds fantastical elements to a story of friendship and coming of age - and coming to terms with the monstrous. The mythology of the Philippines underpins this story, the latest I've read by Isabel Yap, who is fast becoming one of my favourite short fiction writers.
Non-fiction
I read a lot of blogs, online essays and commentary pieces - far too many to link here. Instead, I'll link you to two pieces which share an emphasis on writing as construction, on the ways their respective authors go about building their fictional worlds.
The first is Writing and Music Composition by Yoon Ha Lee. The second is The Map As Theory by Kate Elliott.
What have you all been reading this week?
Novels
Uprooted by Naomi Novik was something I'd been intending to read for a while, but I have to admit that it was Foz Meadows' extremely negative (and spoilery) review that bumped it up into a higher level of priority. What can I say? The id wants what it wants.
I loved the folkloric, fairytale quality of the book, coupled with its emotional intensity. And the idea of a malevolent, sentient forest was absolutely fantastic, and very cleverly realised. To my mind, European fairytales and folktales exist in this kind of nebulous, indeterminate, almost universal forest that spreads and covers the whole of their known landscape, a space in which the rules of the real world don't apply and operates under strange, inhuman rules of its own. (I think of it as the world's forest.) The idea to make this resonant, unstable forest space a living, conscious entity was inspired.
I only wish that Uprooted was going to be the first in a series, but I guess that would detract from the fairytale finality of its ending. In any case, we'll always have fanfic.
Short stories
I read and really enjoyed 'Good Girls' by Isabel Yap, which adds fantastical elements to a story of friendship and coming of age - and coming to terms with the monstrous. The mythology of the Philippines underpins this story, the latest I've read by Isabel Yap, who is fast becoming one of my favourite short fiction writers.
Non-fiction
I read a lot of blogs, online essays and commentary pieces - far too many to link here. Instead, I'll link you to two pieces which share an emphasis on writing as construction, on the ways their respective authors go about building their fictional worlds.
The first is Writing and Music Composition by Yoon Ha Lee. The second is The Map As Theory by Kate Elliott.
What have you all been reading this week?
no subject
Date: 2016-02-11 12:01 am (UTC)I have Uprooted on my to-read list - it seems to have an active, buzzy fandom around it.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-12 04:39 pm (UTC)I highly recommend Uprooted. I haven't investigated fic that much (or really its fandom in general), but it is very much the type of story that I feel fannish about, so the fact that there's an active fandom around is encouraging.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-11 10:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-12 04:36 pm (UTC)