cyphomandra (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cyphomandra) wrote2016-08-19 09:35 pm
cyphomandra) wrote2016-08-19 09:35 pm
Entry tags:
Reading Friday
I wrote a pinch hit for a fic exchange this week, so I haven't finished any of the in-progress stuff from last week. Instead, I read bits of two books needed for the fic and an m/m romance on Kindle that had absolutely nothing to do with what I was writing.
Just finished:
The m/m romance, Off-Campus, by Amy Cousins. First in a series. Tom Worthington's (the third, I think) father is convicted of a ponzi scheme; Tom tries to finish college on his own terms, which means gypsy-cabbing and sleeping in his car between semesters. He ends up sharing a room with Reese, an out gay student with backstory trauma, Reese tries to scare him off by bringing back a series of guys to their room for blow-jobs, everybody oversteps their boundaries and romance ensues. I liked a lot of this - Tom actually does feel like he's struggling and studying, their back-up friends are interesting, the resolution isn't too over-the-top and Reese is also working on his problems independently of Tom pushing him. What I didn't like - towards the end there's a clutch of events that seemed oddly sequenced - possibly a formatting issue? There was a missing page break at one point that confused me for quite a bit - and the evil guy who persecutes Tom because Tom's dad ruined his parents *and* evil guy is secretly gay and in denial is really not a successful character for me. I see he is the hero of the next book, which possibly explains some of the characterisation contortions but does not incline me towards it.
In progress:
In addition to everything previous, I am a few chapters into Jeanette Winterson's Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, which is good but making me want to re-read Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. I managed to think of not one but two fictional angels I have actually liked (Aziraphale in Good Omens and Proginoskes in A Wind in the Door) so girded my metaphorical loins and am about 200 pages through Aliette de Bodard's House of Shattered Wings). From my point of view it is just not the sort of story I'm interested in - it reminds me a bit of a vampire novel, with everyone otherworldly and full of strange magic, and spending their days setting up rivalries with each other and being terribly elegant, and there's magic as addiction and so forth - but two of the characters, so far, feel real, and there are hints of tension in the overall set-up that are interesting. Also, there is an evil creature stalking people through mirrors, which is a set up that always terrifies me (I blame Gerald Durrell's short story The Entrance. If you haven't read it, don't).
I am also about 50 pages into The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle and I read the first three pages of the first Benjamin January novel before deciding that I really had to finish something else first.
Up next:
Finishing stuff.
Picture book section:
I have loved John Burningham's picture books since I was a small girl with too much imagination and read Come Away from the Water, Shirley and Time to Get Out of the Bath, Shirley, which are both about small girls with too much imagination. Recently I read It's a Secret, where a girl discovers where her sleepy cat goes to at night, and Aldo, about a child's imaginary friend, and they're both great. His art is fascinating - some of the landscapes in Aldo look apocalyptic, great abstract gouts of paint, and then these fine, minimalist line-drawings in the foreground. Aldo is also quietly heart-breaking; the narrator is a lonely child who is bullied, whose parents' fight, and whose sole consolation is her imaginary rabbit friend, Aldo. "Once I woke up in the night after a bad dream and Aldo was not there and I thought Aldo would never come to see me ever again/But Aldo had only gone to get a story which he read to me until I went to sleep."
Just finished:
The m/m romance, Off-Campus, by Amy Cousins. First in a series. Tom Worthington's (the third, I think) father is convicted of a ponzi scheme; Tom tries to finish college on his own terms, which means gypsy-cabbing and sleeping in his car between semesters. He ends up sharing a room with Reese, an out gay student with backstory trauma, Reese tries to scare him off by bringing back a series of guys to their room for blow-jobs, everybody oversteps their boundaries and romance ensues. I liked a lot of this - Tom actually does feel like he's struggling and studying, their back-up friends are interesting, the resolution isn't too over-the-top and Reese is also working on his problems independently of Tom pushing him. What I didn't like - towards the end there's a clutch of events that seemed oddly sequenced - possibly a formatting issue? There was a missing page break at one point that confused me for quite a bit - and the evil guy who persecutes Tom because Tom's dad ruined his parents *and* evil guy is secretly gay and in denial is really not a successful character for me. I see he is the hero of the next book, which possibly explains some of the characterisation contortions but does not incline me towards it.
In progress:
In addition to everything previous, I am a few chapters into Jeanette Winterson's Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, which is good but making me want to re-read Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. I managed to think of not one but two fictional angels I have actually liked (Aziraphale in Good Omens and Proginoskes in A Wind in the Door) so girded my metaphorical loins and am about 200 pages through Aliette de Bodard's House of Shattered Wings). From my point of view it is just not the sort of story I'm interested in - it reminds me a bit of a vampire novel, with everyone otherworldly and full of strange magic, and spending their days setting up rivalries with each other and being terribly elegant, and there's magic as addiction and so forth - but two of the characters, so far, feel real, and there are hints of tension in the overall set-up that are interesting. Also, there is an evil creature stalking people through mirrors, which is a set up that always terrifies me (I blame Gerald Durrell's short story The Entrance. If you haven't read it, don't).
I am also about 50 pages into The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle and I read the first three pages of the first Benjamin January novel before deciding that I really had to finish something else first.
Up next:
Finishing stuff.
Picture book section:
I have loved John Burningham's picture books since I was a small girl with too much imagination and read Come Away from the Water, Shirley and Time to Get Out of the Bath, Shirley, which are both about small girls with too much imagination. Recently I read It's a Secret, where a girl discovers where her sleepy cat goes to at night, and Aldo, about a child's imaginary friend, and they're both great. His art is fascinating - some of the landscapes in Aldo look apocalyptic, great abstract gouts of paint, and then these fine, minimalist line-drawings in the foreground. Aldo is also quietly heart-breaking; the narrator is a lonely child who is bullied, whose parents' fight, and whose sole consolation is her imaginary rabbit friend, Aldo. "Once I woke up in the night after a bad dream and Aldo was not there and I thought Aldo would never come to see me ever again/But Aldo had only gone to get a story which he read to me until I went to sleep."