#thespoot reads

[thespoot]

Reading Challenge Update - #20

Book number 3 goes to spot #20 A short story, one with less than 5,000 words. I read the whole collection of short stories, Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang, which certainly contained stories under 5000 words lol.

Why this book: This was part of my sci-fi language wishlist for books that use linguistics/language as a central theme or plot point. When I realized this had the story that the movie Arrival was based on, I was even more excited to read this collection.

Why this category: Last time I did this challenge, I got really hung up on trying to figure out how many words various books had. Kinda not caring as much this time, haha. Are there short stories? Sweet, probably under or about 5000 words I bet.

What did I think: This was an excellent collection of stories. I had two favorites. First, Division by Zero. Short stories are such magic - so few words and I care so much about Renee and her work and Carl and his poor choices lol. Second, Hell is the Absence of God. Good world-building, I easily identified with the main character and his ambivalence towards religion and belief. The ending of this, *chef's kiss*. I always enjoy a good ironic story about how cruel love/devotion can be.

Stories of Your Life was also great. I enjoyed Arrival, but I liked what the short story focused on instead of creating some wild threat to humanity. I also liked that there were more humans who understood the alien writing system - and more humans therefore who were going to experience this new way of seeing the universe with this "simultaneous consciousness."

My least favorite was probably 72 Letters - neat idea with industrializing the golem. But I felt like it got really bogged down in building the world and explaining the minutiae of making golems. It's a short story, you don't need to spend that many words suspending my believe. Let's hear more about the Kabbalist, the cultural impact of the golems, and what the elite British wind up doing when the plan comes to fruition. Overall though, great collection of stories and definitely recommend.

A quote or two:

"What he insists on is that they not love God under a misapprehension, that if they wish to love God, they be prepared to do so no matter what His intentions. God is not just, God is not kind, God is not merciful, and understanding that is essential to true devotion." ~ Hell is the Absence of God

"-'No one could actually experience such a thing; it's like believing six impossible things efore breakfast.' -'How would you know what I can experienced?'" ~ Division by Zero

"Brain damage is never a good idea, no matter what your friends say." ~ Liking What You See: A Documentary

Next books: On my Discworld journey, I finished Jingo and started Last Continent. I'm excited to see how many categories I can shove Discworld into lol. My kiddo recently started The Giver at school, and I finished that during a long night at the hospital. I had never read it before. I also still have Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky in the wings.

#thespoot reads #Stories of Your Life and Others #ted chiang #reading challenge #booklr

[readingbooksinisrael]

Check Up Tag

Thank you @anassarhenisch​ for tagging me :)

How has your day been?

It’s been okay. I’ve been awake for only two hours.

Last thing that made you smile?

Getting tagged in this.

One random fact about yourself?

I made almond flour pancakes yesterday. They were good.

What’s keeping you entertained these days?

Reading, rping, tumblr unfortunately, DS9 and B99, art, finding new things to do

Post a selfie if you’re comfortable.

No, but here’s a photo of one of my cats!

Tagging @books-are-portals​ @beem-of-the-books​ @whyamistillamuggle​ אולי זה יתפס בישראבלר @thespoot​

#tag games #cats #my cats

[chortling-dingo]

11 things about me

So I’m super slow, but here it finally is! Thanks @mellorad for tagging me!

Basically, share 11 things about yourself and then tag 10 people.

1. I have strawberry birthmarks all over my scalp! You can kind of see a few of them if you part my hair in the right places.

2. I’ve kept pet rats since 2010. My current two are girls named Marci and Vesper.

3. I’m asexual. I only really sorted this out about myself a couple years ago. One of the biggest indicators for me was that the phrase “but I have needs” that always comes up when one partner wants more sex than they’re getting is literally incomprehensible to me. I seriously don’t get it. 

4. I’ve never left the country! I’ve traveled through and/or lived in most U.S. regions, but I’ve never gone outside the U.S. border. So no Hawaii or Alaska for me either.

5. I have two siblings, and I’m in the middle. Despite this, I don’t identify with the middle child stereotype. I’ve never felt slided or ignored.

6. I lived with my parents until the summer after I turned 28! They let me live with them rent-free while I was in school, so I waited to move out until after I finished my graduate program (and got hired on full-time where I was interning). No shame in living at home, folks, if you can. Especially if your parents are like mine. Save that money!

7. I started participating in NaNoWriMo in 2005, my senior year of high school. I started meeting the 50K goal in 2012, and have met it for the last 5 years. 

8. Fantasy is my favorite reading and writing genre. I love urban fantasy, high fantasy, contemporary fantasy, magical realism, and basically all of it. I also write fanfic! I’ve got two ongoing fics on ff.net for Naruto and InuYasha (although the second is on hiatus while I figure out how to transition in this one spot), a couple Yuri on Ice one-shots on AO3, and probably 20 WIP in various other fandoms on my computer.

9. My favorite video games are long and sprawling RPGs. I’m a huge fan of the Tales franchise (Tales of Symphonia, Tales of the Abyss, Tales of Vesperia, etc), Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Final Fantasy, Elder Scrolls, and Legend of Zelda. Basically the more story you give me, the happier I am.

10. My favorite colors are in the blue and purple families, and I prefer a cool, pastel palette. I love watercolors and a splash of bright yellow to warm up the cool blues, teals, and purples.

11. I take absurdly long baths, if I’m able. I like to read in the tub (I have never dropped a book in the bathtub!) and I’ll keep refreshing the water if it starts to get cold so I can stay in as long as possible. I think my longest bath to date was 2.5 hours. I watched a movie.

So, there’s some info about me! 

@squirrellygirlart, @blue-gold-demigod-clouds, @missk80, @yallneedcheesus, @koifishes, @thespoot, @helloanimemanga, @somethingthatisntalreadytaken, @horanhabitat, @kitty-marie650, y’all are up!

#10 things about me #but really 11 #getting to know each other is super fun

[thespoot]

First time through Feet of Clay and I'm dying lol

“Nasty stuff,” said Doughnut Jimmy. “Has he been eating his bedding?”

“All the sheets seem to be here, so I suppose the answer is no.”

“How’s he pissing?”

“Er. The usual way, I assume.”

---

The Patrician opened his eyes. “You are a doctor, aren’t you?” he said.

Doughnut Jimmy gave him an uncertain look. He was not used to patients who could talk. “Well, yeah . . . I have a lot of patients,” he said.

“Indeed? I have very little,” said the Patrician.

#thespoot reads #discworld #feet of clay #i had to stop and explain to my wife why i was laughing so hard

[thespoot]

I love it when authors do this ❤️ This is one of my favorite tropes lol.

---

Later, when everything went sideways and the world broke in half, Robin would think back to this day, to this hour at this table, and wonder why they had been so quick, so carelessly eager to trust one another. Why had they refused to see the myriad ways they could hurt each other? Why had they not paused to interrogate their differences in birth, in raising, that meant they were not and could never be on the same side?

---

Hey, you know how you're really enjoying this heartfelt wholesome moment? This bit of golden summer and innocence? You know what would go great with it? Betrayal. Despair. Dread.

You're only a quarter of the way in, dear reader, and hoo boy am I about to torture these characters. *Chef's kiss*

(Really enjoying this book - but I swear every interaction Robin and Ramy have with someone new at Oxford I'm on edge like, are they going to be cool about us being different? Please be cool. Dammit, they weren't cool and now we're running.)

#booklr #thespoot reads #Babel #r.f. kuang

[thespoot]

Reading Challenge Update - #1

From 19 to 1, the second book of my reading challenge redo is #1 A book originally published in a language you do not know goes to Seven Empty Houses by Samanta Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell.

Why this book: I picked up this book from Wild Detectives in Deep Ellum (Dallas) on a trip with a friend. The summary looked really interesting. It had sat on my to-be-read list for a bit, but I picked it back up for a long flight.

Why this category: Embarrassingly, I didn't notice the translator credit when I first picked up the book. The original language was Spanish. I've been slowly learning Spanish over the past couple years. I think I'd like to try reading it in the original language.

What did I think: I really enjoyed this book. There are seven short stories in the book connected only by featuring emptiness and loneliness. Sometimes it's the emptiness of the house. Sometimes it's the emptiness of the people in the house. Some of the stories had a completely alien story (like the naked family or the whole thing with the sugar bowl), or some that were too familiar (the storage unit or the dementia). My favorite was the story of the old woman with dementia and dealing with the end of her life on her own. After each story, I sat and paused for a moment to look at the feelings the story had caused. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it as an airplane book because there are A LOT of feelings lol.

A quote or two:

I'll edit this later to add in the actual quote (physical book is not nearby) - but in the story of the old woman with dementia, there's a line that stuck with me about how death needs a push, but she had become too light and would seemingly float on forever.

Next books: I finished Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang and finally Jingo by Sir Terry Pratchett. I've got Last Continent, the next Discworld book, as well as Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky started. Since I've been trying to get through all the Discworld books, I've also got Terry Pratchett's biography waiting in the TBR pile.

#thespoot reads #seven empty houses #samanta schweblin #reading challenge #booklr

[thespoot]

Reading Challenge Update - #19

All right! First completed book of my reading challenge redo. I'm claiming spot #19 A History book, fiction or nonfiction for Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution by R.F. Kuang.

Why this book: I have a wishlist that came from a librarian tiktok about sci-fi and/or fantasy books that use language/linguistics as a plot device. Babel was first on the list and my first new book of the year :D

Why this category: So many different categories this could (and maybe should) have gone into, but it really amused me to stick in historical. I also don't normally like historical fiction/nonfiction, so I can save those easier to fill categories for later in the year. I figured close enough since Babel very closely follows the course of the industrial revolution and references things that did happen in the time period. I loved the use of footnotes and got several reading recommendations from the neat things Kuang researched for this book.

What did I think: Oh how I loved this book. Scrolling through goodreads and tumblr, this does seem like a love it or hate it type book. Is it subtle? no. Is it a bit repetitive? sure, especially between dealing with the disaster in Canton and getting to the tower. But the characters, the silver system, the writing style itself, the overall story - fantastic. One thing I really enjoyed in the book was the transformation the definition of "translation" goes through. One of the professors begins by calling translation itself an act of violence, "Translation means doing violence upon the original, means warping and distorting it for foreign, unintended eyes. ... How can we conclude, except by acknowledging that an act of translation is then necessarily always an act of betrayal?" And though Robin teaches the reader the necessity of violence as part of change, there is hope in that the definition of translation shifts to one of bridging and listening. Translation may be an act of betrayal, but it is also vulnerability - "Showing yourself to the world, and hoping someone else understands."

A quote or two:

"Grief suffocated. Grief paralysed. Grief was a cruel, heavy boot pressed so hard against his chest that he could not breathe."

"The origins of the word anger were tied closely to physical suffering. Anger was first an 'affliction', as meant by the Old Icelandic angr, and then a 'painful, cruel, narrow' state, as meant by the Old English enge, which in turn came from the Latin angor, which meant 'strangling, anguish, distress'. Anger was a chokehold. Anger did not empower you. It sat on your chest; it squeezed your ribs until you felt trapped, suffocated, out of options. Anger simmered, then exploded. Anger was constriction, and the consequent rage a desperate attempt to breathe. And rage, of course, came from madness."

Next books: I recently finished Seven Empty Houses, which I'll eventually make a reading challenge post for haha. I've been reading Jingo by Sir Terry Pratchett off and on since December as part of my quest to read all the Discworld books. I've also picked up the short story anthology Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang.

#thespoot reads #babel or the necessity of violence #reading challenge #booklr

[thespoot]

I did a reading challenge back in 2017 from Reddit that I think I want to do again in 2023. While I only got half-way through the categories, there were some books I read that year that are still on my favorite list that I don't think I would have found otherwise.

I made some tweaks to categories from last time, but here's the list of 50 books I will try to read in 2023 :) -

A book originally published in a language you do not know

A book by an author from or in the same community as you

A book from the Horror genre

A book written by a nonbinary author

A book written before 1950

A book written by an author who identifies as a man

A book written by an author who identifies as a woman

A book in the Science Fiction genre

A book in the Fantasy genre

A book labelled as Young Adult

A nonfiction book

A book with a contemporary setting

A book by an author from or in a different community than you

A book published this year

A popular book, with at least 1 million ratings on any one website

An unknown book, with no more than 100 ratings on any one website

A book that was turned into a movie

A book that features a holiday

A History book, fiction or nonfiction

A short story, one with less than 5,000 words

A short book, one between 5,000 and 100,000 words

A long book, one between 100,000 and 250,000 words

An epic book, one with over 250,000 wordsA self-published book

An indie book, where the publisher is a small or niche house and not one of the top 6 publishers

A book published under one of the Big 6 publishing houses

A Biography, whether normal, Auto, or Memoir.

A book labelled as a Best-Seller from this year

A book about Politics and/or Religion

Listen to an Audiobook

A book on paper

A book that was, or currently is, banned by a government

A book in the Thriller or Suspense genre

A Mystery book

A book labelled as Dystopian

A debut book from this year

A book by or featuring a character that is LGBTQIA+

A book in the Paranormal genre

A book with pictures in it

A book you have read before

A book that’s been on your to read-list for more than a year

A book that features animals

A book where the main character goes on a journey

A book where a stranger comes to town

A book labelled as a Satire or Allegory

A book from the Self-Help, Health, Travel, or Guide category

A collection of poetry

A book in a series

A book that won a literary award

A book set in your country

A book not set in your country, but exists today

And bonus: Combining all the letters of all the titles of all the books you’ve read this year, complete the alphabet

#booklr #thespoot reads #reading challenge

[thespoot]

An artist, an engineer, a psychologist, a lawyer and his wife, a veteran, a college kid, a programmer, and a scientist encounter a tree...

A friend recommended this book to me as "It's a story about trees, but it's also not about trees. It's about people, but not just people."

This book... I'm going to be thinking about it for a while. I think this goes on my list of "books you wish you could experience for the first time again." It's a very slow start, and then a rush of story growth and branching, and then it slows again - not wholly unlike the trees that make up such a huge part of the story.

My only complaint, and trying to avoid spoilers as much as possible, would be not dealing head on with Dr Westerford's choice in her last speech. I feel it would have been a much more powerful end to her story for her end to be clearer, an unambiguous action, and without the weird Mimi's Magic Eyes scene. A clearer decision would have helped strengthen one of the book's themes that death sustains life (e.g. a rotting log becoming a seed bed), rather than the narrative looking away and giving you a choice as to what happened.

Overall, I loved this book so much. It made me think of The OA several times - and honestly if you loved that show, then you'll probably love this book.

#thespoot reads #the overstory #booklr

[thespoot]

Eeeeeee! It's here! It's here! I loved Unspoken Name so much. I'm very excited for this next book :)

#thespoot reads #booklr #the thousand eyes #the unspoken name

[thespoot]

I finished Stay and Fight by Madeline ffitch. That was ...a trip lol. I picked it up from a TikTok, so didn't have a lot of expectations going in. I loved the switching perspectives and voices in this modern Appalachian slice of life. Even though you occasionally got a rehash of an event from another view, the changing voice always drove the story forward.

I had read one review about how the story had ended about a chapter too early, and I think I agree. I was getting worried towards the end because A TON of things were finally happening, storyines coming to a *cough* climax, but not a whole lot of pages left. I'm ok not knowing ultimately how the custody battle with the state and all plays out, but there's one reunion in particular that I really really wish we could have seen more of.

Overall enjoyed :) I'll keep taking reading recommendations from booktok lol

#thespoot reads #stay and fight #booklr

[thespoot]

Wife: so, how are your orc lesbians?

Me, turning a page: she's about to die.

Wife: that's unfortunate.

Me: oh don't worry, I think there's about to be some Thrilling Heroics.

#thespoot reads #the unspoken name #spoilers #i was right. that was damn thrilling :D

[thespoot]

It took me a bit to get into Patron Saints of Nothing because of the "hello fellow kids" feel to the narrator's cultural references (see my WoW action figure? Look, I'm describing Horizon Zero Dawn. Now let's talk about Will Smith's legacy - though the Hitch reference was pretty funny) early in the book.

But then Randy Ribay comes in with something like,

He holds the silence like a knife

And just ah yeah, yes, this please. I'm glad I kept reading. It's been a while since a book made me really cry and the memorial service was just beautiful.

Having grown up the American kid who couldn't speak the rest of my family's language, moments like this also struck a chord-

It is a strange thing to mourn in another language, but I figure everyone will probably speak their own language tonight. And though I want to ask for translation, I won’t, because their words are not for me.

Excellent book :)

#thespoot reads #patron saints of nothing

[thespoot]

"We have more power and potential than we know if we would only speak, if we would only listen."

- Randy Ribay, Patron Saints of Nothing

#thespoot reads #patron saints of nothing #booklr

[thespoot]

"It's not blasphemy if you're all friends."

- Oranna // A.K. Larkwood, The Unspoken Name

#thespoot reads #the unspoken name #booklr

[thespoot]

I'm somewhere between a quarter and a third of the way through The Unspoken Name and loving it. But each time Csorwe gets hurt for Sethennai, I just want to shake somebody. You don't know anything about him???? Should he even be chancellor???? This isn't your fight???? You don't know these people???? Gahhhhh

K, thank you for going on that journey with me. Gonna go back to reading now.

#thespoot reads #the unspoken name #spoilers #booklr