Polostan was very good. The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. remains my favorite Neal Stephenson book, but this might be my favorite spy novel. Nevermind that I haven’t read a lot of spy novels… this one had the same situational craziness factor that several of Stephenson’s other books did, while both being historical and not getting bogged down in excessive details. I absolutely want to read the next one because I need to know how the protagonist gets out of her situation!
Lord of the Butterflies, one of the Andrea Gibson poetry collections, was also excellent. I can now say that I’m a person who reads poetry for enjoyment. I just need more experience at it. 🙂 The poems made me feel dread, grief, righteous anger, recognition, joy, triumph, whatever one calls responding to cuteness, and appreciation of skill. Wit, sarcasm, beautiful (or ugly but so real) images, clever turns of phrase, puns, clever formatting or line breaks that create the rhythm. Poetry is closer to music than I had previously suspected.
I’m inspired to write something about my own gender experience. Maybe that’s not very original of me, but I’ll still be writing from my own life and it’ll be my own creation, so it kind of is. 😛
I’ve just started reading Awakened by A.E. Osworth. Normally I have to get past the dedication page before I start loving a book, but:
And yes, the book is a subversion of Harry Potter tropes: trans characters, a magical awakening in adulthood, a secret world of wizards that does NOT have any schools or inherited vaults full of gold or Chosen One destinies, and no wise Dumbledore but rather someone who tries to help the protagonist adjust and fucks it up. That’s the first chapter. And might I say, much cleverer use of language and more engaging and dynamic dialogue than cartoon villain Joanne.
One of the poetry books I ordered through Alibris didn’t show up. The seller instead shipped me a 3-pound hardcover book ordered on Amazon.de by someone in the Czech Republic. It seems potentially interesting and I wouldn’t mind reading it, but I did what I thought was the right thing and contacted the seller. They said to return it via the Alibris website. So I started that process and… they won’t actually cover my return shipping fee, just a $5 expires-same-day store credit. Shipping (for me, without a business that could ship it as Bound Printed Matter) would be over $23. This is not going to happen. I wrote the seller again to see if they can send me a printable return shipping label, but haven’t heard anything back. If I continue not to… I guess it’s my book. I don’t want to rip anyone off, especially not an independent bookseller, but I also am not going to get stuck with the absurd shipping fee to fix their goof. (Oddly, the price of the book itself was only a little more than the small poetry book I actually ordered.)