Talking about books
Dec. 16th, 2023 11:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lyornI have been browsing my archives, and I used to talk about books so much and now I ... don't, mostly.
It's not that I am not reading, although I have trouble sitting still, it seems that during my illness I had developed the tendency to regard "running around in circles, screaming" as a productive activity, and reading, not so much.
But as I'm trying to recover the parts of myself that I actually like (as far as my body will allow me): Talking about books.
Note re: Spoilers: I try not to, except in very general ways (i.e. "happy ending", or not), but if you really dislike spoilers, you might not want to read my reviews. Alas, I lost my spoiler masking code along with my LJ and am too lazy to re-create it.
Today I finished Travis Baldree's "Bookshops and Bonedust", and I feel like it would be more entertaining for me to talk about Baldree's first book "Legends and Lattes", but as that was on this year's Hugo shortlist it has probably been sufficiently talked about.
"Bookshops and Bonedust" is a prequel to "Legends and Lattes", taking place about two decades earlier in the life of the protagonist. In B&B Viv, the not-Tolkienish orc is still a young, somewhat cocky mercenary who, after getting overconfident when fighting a necromancer's hordes of undead, is parked into a sleepy seaside town by her company so she can recover from her wounds.
Viv is bored out of her mind before she's even back to walking without crutches. Sheer boredom drives her into the local, failing bookstore, where, with the aid of the owner, she takes up reading as a hobby, and attempting to make the bookstore thrive her mission.
Apart from the looming threat of the necromancer and the hordes of undead, this is a perfectly cosy fantasy in a generic D&D-ish world, with nice or at least reasonable people and modern amenities like muffins, printing presses, and boats that arrive on schedule.
Actually, even with the threat of undead it's just that. And not more. Everything the protagonists do succeeds, often at once and if not, after a very mild setback. Everyone is cooperative. Ideas work. Risks pay out. Lovers might be destined to part soon, but they are accepting this in good style. Skeletal homunculi animated by dark magic are people, too.
All in all, neither the "make the bookstore work" nor "defeat the necromancer" plot gripped me. If a character did something unexpected, it was more like "huh?" than, "oh, yes, makes sense, I should have seen this coming". No drama, no discoveries, and no doubt about it ending well for everyone except the necromancer.
I could have put the book away any time, except that is was such a nice place to live in for a while. And that it was doing perfectly well.
It's not that I am not reading, although I have trouble sitting still, it seems that during my illness I had developed the tendency to regard "running around in circles, screaming" as a productive activity, and reading, not so much.
But as I'm trying to recover the parts of myself that I actually like (as far as my body will allow me): Talking about books.
Note re: Spoilers: I try not to, except in very general ways (i.e. "happy ending", or not), but if you really dislike spoilers, you might not want to read my reviews. Alas, I lost my spoiler masking code along with my LJ and am too lazy to re-create it.
Today I finished Travis Baldree's "Bookshops and Bonedust", and I feel like it would be more entertaining for me to talk about Baldree's first book "Legends and Lattes", but as that was on this year's Hugo shortlist it has probably been sufficiently talked about.
"Bookshops and Bonedust" is a prequel to "Legends and Lattes", taking place about two decades earlier in the life of the protagonist. In B&B Viv, the not-Tolkienish orc is still a young, somewhat cocky mercenary who, after getting overconfident when fighting a necromancer's hordes of undead, is parked into a sleepy seaside town by her company so she can recover from her wounds.
Viv is bored out of her mind before she's even back to walking without crutches. Sheer boredom drives her into the local, failing bookstore, where, with the aid of the owner, she takes up reading as a hobby, and attempting to make the bookstore thrive her mission.
Apart from the looming threat of the necromancer and the hordes of undead, this is a perfectly cosy fantasy in a generic D&D-ish world, with nice or at least reasonable people and modern amenities like muffins, printing presses, and boats that arrive on schedule.
Actually, even with the threat of undead it's just that. And not more. Everything the protagonists do succeeds, often at once and if not, after a very mild setback. Everyone is cooperative. Ideas work. Risks pay out. Lovers might be destined to part soon, but they are accepting this in good style. Skeletal homunculi animated by dark magic are people, too.
All in all, neither the "make the bookstore work" nor "defeat the necromancer" plot gripped me. If a character did something unexpected, it was more like "huh?" than, "oh, yes, makes sense, I should have seen this coming". No drama, no discoveries, and no doubt about it ending well for everyone except the necromancer.
I could have put the book away any time, except that is was such a nice place to live in for a while. And that it was doing perfectly well.
