sanae finished reading Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (Imperial Radch, #1)

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (Imperial Radch, #1)
On a remote, icy planet, the soldier known as Breq is drawing closer to completing her quest.
Breq is both …
This is mostly to keep track of books for my own interest. I hope to get back into reading novels and non-fiction which is of interest to other people at some point, but I've largely fallen out of the habit and mostly read to support other hobbies I have.
You can also find me at sanae@carfree.city.
I use the following rubric: 5 stars: one of my favourite books of all time 4 stars: loved this book, would recommend 3 stars: enjoyed this book, you might like it too 2 stars: did not like this book 1 star: did not like this book and would recommend that you not read it
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On a remote, icy planet, the soldier known as Breq is drawing closer to completing her quest.
Breq is both …
Content warning very minor spoilers, trying to keep them vague
3 stars: enjoyed this book, you might like it too
I liked the kind of fairy tale aspect to it - there's magic but not too much, a lot of the drama is very local and personal, focused on relationships between people. Most of the fantasy elements are familiar, but also enough of a new spin on things to be interesting.
The story is a bunch of people writing in first person with no labels as to who is who; you can generally tell immediately who is who, it feels a bit gimmicky though. Some of the characters are just a lot more interesting than others, and I often found myself impatient to switch back to a more interesting character. Some characters seem kind of redundant with each other and I started to confuse certain pairs near the end, some characters' perspectives seemed included mostly because it was needed for plot reasons, and I noticed that in more action-filled scenes it was usually the perspective of an outside observer to the scene that was narrating which I'm not sure always worked. I think it would have been better if one particular characters' perspective was not shown and you discovered his view of things more gradually over time.
There was also a thing that happened between the main character and another protagonist that seemed kind of morally dubious but the story seemed contrived so that it was ok for her to do that thing. Like most of the protagonists are anti-heroes to some extent but this felt kind of out of place.
Interestingly for a story revolving so much around certain marriages, it was distinctly un-romantic in a way I kind of liked. I feel like fantasy novels with female protagonists - especially ones who are more or less within medieval gender norms - tend to be very romance focused and this was much more about politics and intrigue.
I think I generally liked the first half of the book more when the story was smaller and more personal in scope and less about kingdoms and so on.
It didn't really have much to do with Rumpelstiltskin.
"A fresh and imaginative retelling of the Rumpelstiltskin fairytale from the bestselling author of Uprooted, called "a very enjoyable fantasy …
@graue Nothing immediately comes to mind, a lot of it I read more in my teens and it just kind of blurs together
It's not exactly the same but I liked The Bloody Chamber. Actually maybe I'm largely bored with Greek Mythology so no new take on it would seem that fresh
3 stars: enjoyed this book, you might like it too
It was cool, it was a fun read, I feel like I've read enough like feminist takes on mythology at this point that it didn't feel incredibly new. I do like the fact that it showed a lot of Circe's life and how she changed over the course of the story, as well as her perception of events.
4 stars: loved this book, would recommend
Public domain as of this year!
It has no words, so I wasn't sure if I wanted to track it. I came across it because I was looking for books that were public domain that have interesting images to use, and so I ended up reading through it.
It's a wordless novel, the precursor to graphic novels and comic strips. Apparently this was a whole thing in the 1920s and 30s. The art style is pretty cool - extremely dramatic woodcuts, making a lot of use of unusual perspectives, dramatic facial expressions and so on - I don't know enough about art to comment on it. I think it's worth a read (?) just because it's an interesting look at the very beginning of the medium.
Edit: you can read it here, though some of the images are split across PDF pages: commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Lynd_Ward_-_God%27s_Man.pdf
I think I liked it more when I read it in high school, maybe my French was better, but still pretty good.
It's a play, based on the Greek play Antigone, though modern things like "driving fast cars" are present. I'm not putting any spoilers for that reason.
Most of the play is a dialogue between Antigone and Creon about when to do the thing you believe in. Creon argues that order must be maintained at all costs, that he is the only one who sees clearly that hard decisions must be made to maintain order, and does his best to convince Antigone to help him cover up what she'd done so he would not have to have her put to death. If the original story is a straightforward story of heroism in the face of tyranny, this raises all the questions that might come up in the real world. …
I think I liked it more when I read it in high school, maybe my French was better, but still pretty good.
It's a play, based on the Greek play Antigone, though modern things like "driving fast cars" are present. I'm not putting any spoilers for that reason.
Most of the play is a dialogue between Antigone and Creon about when to do the thing you believe in. Creon argues that order must be maintained at all costs, that he is the only one who sees clearly that hard decisions must be made to maintain order, and does his best to convince Antigone to help him cover up what she'd done so he would not have to have her put to death. If the original story is a straightforward story of heroism in the face of tyranny, this raises all the questions that might come up in the real world. But what if actually dying really sucks and living is good and life is beautiful? What if you'll hurt the people you care about? What if you're scared? What if the thing you do may have no effect on the world? Is it still worth it, to say no to something you know is wrong?
And maybe more insidiously, what if your allies are sometimes shitty people, or your cause is flawed, or you can't do a great job of making a dramatic speech about why you're right? What if the average person actually hates you for the decision you've made, or maybe worse, doesn't care? What if deep down you don't totally believe in all of the symbolism behind what you're doing? What if maybe you are in fact a bit self centered and over dramatic and immature? What if it isn't actually possible for an ordinary human to maintain the narrative of a straightforward and flawless hero?
It's kind of more of an essay in disguise than a story. Most stories of this kind are about the physical courage of resisting the tyrant, and come with a satisfying conclusion where the hero wins some kind of victory and is seen as a hero even if there is a moment of tragic self-sacrifice. This is a story that kind of asks, for real though, let's talk about what this might look like in real life.
One thing that is interesting about this story is that Antigone never quite has great answers to any of Creon's well-practiced arguments. She does not, as people say, defeat Creon in the marketplace of ideas. He does successfully fill her with doubt. She still chooses to act, and, as she points out, is the only one with real agency in this play, because Creon, through his rationalizations, has long ago chosen not to have any.
An important piece of context about this play is that it was written and performed in Nazi-occupied France, under Nazi censorship.
5 stars: one of my favourite books of all time (actually probably my favourite)
This one is a collection of everything Borges wrote so I'm just rating the entire thing. If you haven't read Borges you need to go read Borges. All short stories so it's really easy to figure out if it's your thing or not. It's largely kind of science fiction adjacent - each story is about an idea - about reality, or infinity, or time or something.
copied from goodreads, read a long time ago
Copying over from Goodreads
The main thing I remember about this one is that it is basically The Best Ever Death Metal Band Out Of Denton in the form of a novel
3 stars: enjoyed this book, you might like it too
Read this a while ago, copying over from goodreads
Great for when you're looking for something that's fun and action-filled.