![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
media
Watching: Now late in season 5 of Schitt's Creek.
Listening: Same music podcasts/shows.
Playing: Animal Crossing and enjoying the swimming update, and Pascal.
Reading: I got a copy of Incantations and Other Stories by Anjana Appachana, which I'd enjoyed when I was a preteen. Then when I read it again in my 20s, I think, I thought that these particular feminist Indian stories were too didactic and obvious. And then yesterday I read them all again, all in one go, and loved them again. Content note for abuse of various kinds and many sadnesses. But Mala Mousi's optimism makes me want to completely give up Twitter, so that's probably salutary.
I finished Sofia Khan is Not Obliged, a contemporary romance by Ayisha Malik. Not a good fit for me. I like contemporary romances, I like protagonists of South Asian descent, I like protagonists whose faith is important to them. But I don't like protagonists who are really bad at communicating and at noticing what they want and don't want, who jump to conclusions and make shit up in their heads about other people's feelings, and who blow off responsibilities they've signed up for.
I started the new anthology Consolation Songs which is billed as "optimistic speculative fiction"; the longer description of the book says the stories are "connected by a thread of optimism, and of hope: that we, too, will ride out this storm." I adored the first story, "Storm Story" by Llinos Cathryn Thomas -- it brought tears to my eyes, how perfect it was, start to finish. Then "Bethany, Bethany" by Lizbeth Myles was sort of melancholy. Then I thoroughly loved "Seaview on Mars" by Katie Rathfelder and thought about people to recommend it to. Then I read "A Hundred and Seventy Storms" by Aliette de Bodard and it was depressing and sad, and I lost some momentum and interest. "Low Energy Economy" by Adrian Tchaikovsky has a great ending, but "Four" by Freya Marske also didn't read as particularly optimistic. So now I've paused my reading because now I kind of don't trust that the rest of the stories will be fairly optimistic.... I think I just need to think of it as a collection where there aren't going to be any actual dystopias but it's not actually guaranteed that all the stories feel hopeful to me. Maybe I'll finish it soon and then make a list of the stories within it that I recommend.
I finished a reread of Zen Cho's Spirits Abroad (great, as ever).
Thanks to a recommendation from an acquaintance I picked up The Outback Stars by Sandra McDonald, which was escapist military sf in many ways but also jarring on gender and rape-related stuff (in a way that caused me to think, this book was published in 2007 and if this manuscript came to them today I think editors at Tor would ask for revisions), and I am a bit curious about how Indigenous Australians perceive McDonald's depiction of them and their beliefs.
I refresh your attention to my request for recommendations for fiction about ambitious space women, heavy on the meetings and cleaning up neglected work backlogs, and revise my request to say: please, very little to no romance and epic conspiracy.
Listening: Same music podcasts/shows.
Playing: Animal Crossing and enjoying the swimming update, and Pascal.
Reading: I got a copy of Incantations and Other Stories by Anjana Appachana, which I'd enjoyed when I was a preteen. Then when I read it again in my 20s, I think, I thought that these particular feminist Indian stories were too didactic and obvious. And then yesterday I read them all again, all in one go, and loved them again. Content note for abuse of various kinds and many sadnesses. But Mala Mousi's optimism makes me want to completely give up Twitter, so that's probably salutary.
I finished Sofia Khan is Not Obliged, a contemporary romance by Ayisha Malik. Not a good fit for me. I like contemporary romances, I like protagonists of South Asian descent, I like protagonists whose faith is important to them. But I don't like protagonists who are really bad at communicating and at noticing what they want and don't want, who jump to conclusions and make shit up in their heads about other people's feelings, and who blow off responsibilities they've signed up for.
I started the new anthology Consolation Songs which is billed as "optimistic speculative fiction"; the longer description of the book says the stories are "connected by a thread of optimism, and of hope: that we, too, will ride out this storm." I adored the first story, "Storm Story" by Llinos Cathryn Thomas -- it brought tears to my eyes, how perfect it was, start to finish. Then "Bethany, Bethany" by Lizbeth Myles was sort of melancholy. Then I thoroughly loved "Seaview on Mars" by Katie Rathfelder and thought about people to recommend it to. Then I read "A Hundred and Seventy Storms" by Aliette de Bodard and it was depressing and sad, and I lost some momentum and interest. "Low Energy Economy" by Adrian Tchaikovsky has a great ending, but "Four" by Freya Marske also didn't read as particularly optimistic. So now I've paused my reading because now I kind of don't trust that the rest of the stories will be fairly optimistic.... I think I just need to think of it as a collection where there aren't going to be any actual dystopias but it's not actually guaranteed that all the stories feel hopeful to me. Maybe I'll finish it soon and then make a list of the stories within it that I recommend.
I finished a reread of Zen Cho's Spirits Abroad (great, as ever).
Thanks to a recommendation from an acquaintance I picked up The Outback Stars by Sandra McDonald, which was escapist military sf in many ways but also jarring on gender and rape-related stuff (in a way that caused me to think, this book was published in 2007 and if this manuscript came to them today I think editors at Tor would ask for revisions), and I am a bit curious about how Indigenous Australians perceive McDonald's depiction of them and their beliefs.
I refresh your attention to my request for recommendations for fiction about ambitious space women, heavy on the meetings and cleaning up neglected work backlogs, and revise my request to say: please, very little to no romance and epic conspiracy.
no subject
Thanks for the Consolation Songs snapshot