Booknook

Name: hamsterwoman
Age Group: 40s

I Recently Finished Reading: Most recently, Bea Wolf by Zach Weinersmith (a graphic novel retelling of Beowulf with kid characters), which was an absolute delight.

A Book I Want to Reread: I usually don't reread much, but I've been reminded by the recent (Russian language) adaptation that I've been meaning to reread Master and Margarita for several decades. I should do that. (It is one of my favorite books of all time.)

Some Published Titles From My To Be Read List: Some random selections -- Malka Older's The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles (sequel novella to the ~f/f Sherlock Holmes on Jupiter), Kelly Link's Book of Love (I like her short fiction a lot, and was lucky enough to catch a reading of this book), Freya Marske's A Power Unbound (conclusion of the trilogy), Moniquill Blackgoose's To Shape a Dragon's Breath (partly for Hugos homework, partly because dragons, chemistry, and school setting sounds incredibly RTMI), Once Upon a Prime by Sarah Hart (nonfiction about math in literature, which I spotted randomly browsing at the neighborhood bookstore and was intrigued enough to check out)

A Book Not-Yet-Published I'm Excited About: I just got my most anticipated book of the year earlier this month (Steven Brust's Lyorn) and blazed through it in <24 hours. With than now behind me, I guess the next thing I'm waiting for is the next Rivers of London installment, which is The Masquerade of Spring (which is as far as I can tell the Jazz Age NYC novella with Nightingale and his friend)

Related Book News I've Got My Eye On: (adaptations etc.) This is odd, because it's not a book series I've read yet, but I've been meaning to check out Richard Osman's Thursday Murder Club books for a couple of years now, and the news of the movie adaptation in the works and who is starring in it (Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, and Ben Kingsley) has taken me from "oh, I should check those out at some point" to actually putting the first book on hold. But of things I've actually red, the Murderbot adaptation, I guess, and I'm hoping the Stephen Colbert Chronicles of Amber adaptation is still happening (it's been over a year with no news...)

My All-Time Favorite Book(s): Lord of the Rings, Master and Margarita, One Hundred Years of Solitude. And some favorite authors that didn't fit anywhere else in these questions that I wanted to mention: Terry Pratchett, Oscar Wilde, Ursula LeGuin (as an essayist even more than as fiction writer).

My Favorite Book Genre(s): SFF although my preferred subgenres within that broad field have shifted over time; I seem to have lost my patience for epic fantasy, and sort of burned out on urban fantasy (although there are still beloved series I'm following in each), and seem to be circling back to science fiction (the love of my childhood) as the primary subgenre.

A Book I Recommend in My Favorite Genre(s): Some all-time favorites: for sci-fi, Lois McMaster Bujold's the Vorkosigan Saga (the thing I've recced to friends with the most success, I'm pretty sure), for urban fantasy, Ben Aaronovitch's Peter Grant/Rivers of London books. Some recent favorites from last year's reading: Emily Tesh's Some Desperate Glory (flawed but very worthwhile) and Rebecca Fraimow's novella The Iron Children.

A Book I Don't Recommend in My Favorite Genre(s): Oh man, what a question XD I don't do anti-recs because it's all a matter of taste and I have friends who loved books I hated and vice versa, so, you know, to each their own. Let me answer it this way: 1) Generally speaking, the current "cozy SFF" trend is not working particularly well for me. It's not that I'm against "cozy", but I do want some actual character arcs in my books, and I feel like the "cozy" books often skip that because they skip conflict and/or nuance. And sometimes also present things that have troubling implications that, because of the cozy setting, just sit there unexamined. 2) Do you want some hot takes on Becky Chambers, Arkady Martine's Teixcalaan books, or Children of Blood and Bone (with charts!) -- I got ya :P

A Genre I'm Interested in Trying Out: I seem to be in the mood to read more nonfiction than I usually do, by which I mean "any".

Link to My Latest Book Review: I don't consider these "reviews" as much as write-ups -- i.e. these are places to put my thoughts and have discussion, not rate the merit of the books, but my latest is the one for Bea Wolf (with some bonus xkcd links and Taskmaster reactions).

Link to My Reading Log: I try to use the reading tag consistently on my DW, but don't always manage. I am generally pretty good at tagging books by author, so that's probably the best way to browse my write-ups.

Books/Genres I'm Interested in Discussing/Chatting About: Anything I'm reading, SFF in general. Also poetry, I guess.