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Fri Apr 1st, 2016
 | 09:27 pm - But Easter was *last* week!
Not that I'm complaining that my addiction solitaire and my email both came back from the dead today. But April is the antsiest month and I'm sure I'll find other things to worry about, like 'why is one of my bank's identifying questions "What's the name of your oldest niece?" when I don't have any nieces.'
Am making myself antsier by reading
1. The uncanny reader: stories from the shadows which is, well, far more fantoddy than The Weird, if not up there with Manguel's Black Water anthologies
2. 1Q84 in English, which is both time-travelly back to 2012 and much more anxiety provoking than the Japanese
3. My Antonia, which should not fantod me at all but does. Maybe it's just April being April, even if we're on an express train back to winter. Considerable snow expected on Monday, the day I have to be several different places, none of which I want to go to by transit.
Smith, White Teeth
Bechdel, Are You My Mother?
Soyinka, Ake, the years of childhood
Moorcock, The Warlord of the Air
Lavalle, The Ballad of Black Tom
Lee, The G-string Murders
D.O. Fagunwa, Forest of a Thousand Daemons
Laye, The Radiance of the King
Tutuola, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
Humphreys, Shakespeare's Rebel
Tutuola, The Palm-wine Drinkard
Reading challenge-wise, that's one for Black Diaspora, one for Shakespeare, and two for African writers. If buying a book to read counts as 'reading what one has' and if the book contains two volumes, that might be four for African writers. And if library books count (I still don't think they do) then I've met my African challenge.
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There's a story there about your bank being in contact with alternate universes where you do have nieces... Shudders. Alternate universes look much less benign when one is reading 1Q84, with its oddities that barely go remarked by the protagonists. I should really reread Thief of Time for a more genial version of that. ![[User Picture]](https://l-userpic.livejournal.com/11690011/1379663) | | From: |  mvrdrk |
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| Date: | April 4th, 2016 02:55 am (UTC) |
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I hope it's just April being April. Allergies have gone into full swing here. I really enjoyed the Sorceress book, though I thought it needed more Malaysian in it. Ours have been dampened by snow for the moment.
Yes, much more Malaysia, rather fewer Georgian males. Mostly it needed more space for Malaysia and the Fae and a bunch of other things to operate in. | | From: | mvrdrk |
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| Date: | April 4th, 2016 11:22 pm (UTC) |
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Oh, excellent way to put it! I do wonder if the author assumed that the reader had more knowledge of Malaysian Fae than we actually do. Given her remarks about the English people she lives among, I can hardly believe that Zen Cho thinks yer average westerner has the first idea about Malaysian anythings. Not unless they've read Zen Cho's other works.
Sorceror has the feeling to me of a book whose editor insisted on cuts to make it a sellable length; but perhaps more likely, Zen Cho herself cut it or limited it so it would not, in fact, become the length of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Whichever, I think it a mistake: but I like that sort of stuff and the normal Regency reader is assumed not to.
Edited at 2016-04-05 01:30 am (UTC) | | From: | mvrdrk |
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| Date: | April 5th, 2016 01:44 am (UTC) |
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Oh, that makes a ton of sense! But it also made some of the story a bit arbitrary. |
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