sabotabby: (books!)
sabotabby ([personal profile] sabotabby) wrote2025-05-28 06:42 am
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Reading Wednesday

Just finished: Bad Cree by Jessica Johns. I really enjoyed this one, with the caveat that it was hyped to me as the most disturbing thing, read it before giving it to a student, etc., and it was a very different (if very good) kind of book. Though possibly my calibration for disturbing is way off. I did find it a very strong story about family and community vs. extractive industries and the MMIWG epidemic, and one of the best use of dreams in fiction I've seen since we all decided that kind of thing was gauche.

What Feasts At Night by T. Kingfisher. I enjoyed this one too. After barely surviving the events of the first book, our lead and ka (?) companions return to their home (fictional) country, where the caretaker of the estate has suddenly died. The villagers won't go near the place and claim that it's haunted by a creature that sits on your chest and sucks out your breath. So, they have to fight it, all while dealing with PTSD from the war. Fun stuff.

Two things I particularly liked about this: 1) it actually was disturbing as shit, especially the scene with the horses. 2) this is kind of the reverse of what I complained about with Someone You Can Build a Nest In in terms of queernormative fantasy settings. The imaginary country is integrated into the Serbo-Bulgarian War, but it is clearly a country with different norms, myths, and traditions. The novella has a nonbinary lead, and this identity is important and plays a role in their backstory, but it also has a different meaning and definition that in would have in our world (it's important to note that this is queernormative and Alex doesn't appear to be discriminated against in their society, but there are still gendered expectations and roles). It contributes to the worldbuilding as well, so there are different pronouns for both God and priests, and that adds interest rather than erases difference. Anyway, it is pretty cool.

Currently reading: The Siege of Burning Grass by Premee Mohamed. This one was also really hyped up and I can see why. There's a longstanding war between two empires: Varkal (which is kind of industrial-age but uses genetically altered animals as its technology) and Med’ariz (which has floating cities and more technologically based weapons). The causes and parameters of this war are deliberately fuzzy to the POV characters, but Med'ariz seems to be winning. Alefrat, the leader of the pacifist resistance in Varkal, is blown up, kidnapped, and imprisoned by his government, and let out on the condition that he travel to the Med'ariz front line, infiltrate them, and create the same kind of grassroots uprising that he did in Varkal. He's accompanied by Qhudur, a brutal soldier/prison guard. 

This is very good so far; it pulls no punches either in its depiction of war or its depiction of disability (Alefrat's leg was blown off before the story begins, and there's a bizarro doctor who had started to regrow it with wasps, and the entire thing is very nasty). It's definitely problematizing pacifism and its role in defanging political movements, though I am not sure where the author/narrative is ultimately going to fall on this. It feels like a slog, and this is intentional; every inch of the characters' journey is painstakingly fought for, and you feel it.
 
real ones by Katherena Vermette. I really liked the other book I read by Vermette; this one is better. It's about two sisters, June and lyn, whose father is Michif and mother is white. Said mother, Renee, is an acclaimed artist winning all the arts grants by pretending to also be Métis. When her identity is exposed, the sisters are not only faced with digging up the trauma of their childhood (this is nowhere near the only shitty thing Renee has done) but having their own identities, careers, and community ties thrown into question.

Pretendians are somewhat of a national obsession here, and I don't weigh into it much because it's not at all my business, and it's a source of pain for Indigenous folks that I don't want to accidentally aggravate. Besides just being a really good story, this is an amazing look into the psychology of someone who fakes Indigenous ancestry and how it affects everyone around her. I haven't seen this tackled in fiction at all and Vermette does it spectacularly. It's also weirdly relatable in the relationship that the sisters have with their mother—growing up with a mostly-absent conman father, I get how they can't bring themselves to cut off Renee entirely even when she wrecks destruction in their lives. 

Also the look at the media and arts landscape of Canada is just spot on. Perfect. It's so good.
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sabotabby ([personal profile] sabotabby) wrote2025-05-23 07:16 am
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podcast friday

You all deserve a break from *gestures vaguely at the rest of the internet* so have a completely wholesome podcast for once. "LARP Camp" on Normal Gossip is about two awkward gay counsellors, a neurodivergent evil genius of a child, and a ghost or two. 

It's been a challenging transition from Kelsey McKinney to new host Rachelle Hampton, but Rachelle has finally hit her stride with this episode (and the one after it)—it's very funny and her storytelling here does the thing where you're like, "and then what happened?" It helps that the subject matter is up my alley. Anyway, it is incredibly cute so take a break from doomscrolling and give it a listen.
sabotabby: two lisa frank style kittens with a zizek quote (trash can of ideology)
sabotabby ([personal profile] sabotabby) wrote2025-05-21 07:24 pm
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L&O season 2: Episode 10

The finale was...good, actually? Again, grading on a curve. It is still a bad show. But it's one of those bad shows where you get the sense that there is someone in the writers' room doing their best and sneaking all kinds of fun content in (see also: Archie singing IWW songs in Riverdale).

I had to check Reddit to see which case this was based on—it takes most of the episode to get to it. A seemingly unremarkable middle-aged travel agent drops dead in his driveway while his wife is out for a jog. It looks like a heart attack, but a cop in 44 Division suggests to Holness that she might want to get "her best" on it. Unfortunately the best that Toronto Police Services—sorry, TPD on the show for some reason—have are Graff and Bateman.

spoilers )

And that's a wrap. I guess I'll have to find some good show to watch now.
sabotabby: (books!)
sabotabby ([personal profile] sabotabby) wrote2025-05-21 07:20 am
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Reading Wednesday

 Just finished: The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley. I don't know what to make of this, and will definitely be checking out the Wizards vs. Lesbians episode on it (not that I always agree with them, but they do raise perspectives that are interesting). I would say overall the prose and characters carried it. I got to know these people, I fell in love with them in the same way that the narrator did. It was compelling, as the kids say.

But I don't think the ended quite landed and I'm struggling to think of why. In part (and this is confirmed a little in an interview that follows the book), it's hurt a bit by the first-person narration. Bradley is telling a much bigger story than the narrator sees, and while that thankfully rescues it from being a didactic Message Book, it might have swung too far towards the other direction where I'm not exactly sure what it was trying to say. It's one of those books that straddles the literary and genre, and I tend to prefer genre in a literary style than literary fiction exploring genre. 

That said, it was so relentlessly well-written that I feel like my ill-defined issues with it are kind of irrelevant because I highly enjoyed it.

Currently reading: Bad Cree by Jessica Johns. I'm almost done this one. It's almost the reverse—protagonists figuring out genre solutions to literary fiction problems. I was given a warning about this book and I'm yet to figure out why.

What Feasts At Night by T. Kingfisher. I didn't read the first novella in this series (What Moves the Dead) despite it having my favourite cover the year it came out. So it's taking some getting used to. On the plus side, the opening is suffused with so much gothic horror that I find myself turning into a young woman fleeing in a white gown across the moors, holding a candlestick.
sabotabby: (books!)
sabotabby ([personal profile] sabotabby) wrote2025-05-16 07:19 am
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podcast friday

 I hear some of you like podcasts and some of you also like books so why not have a podcast about a very good book that you can pre-order now. The latest episode of Wizards & Spaceships, "Blight ft. Rachel A. Rosen," celebrates not just the beginning of the podcast's second season (!!!) but the release of. Well. Tentacled queer magical Canadian anti-fascist fantasy. And the trials and travails of bringing such creative pursuits into reality. So go check it out (preferably on an app and not on the website), like, subscribe, share, etc.