User Profile

emma

emmaaum@ramblingreaders.org

Joined 1 year, 9 months ago

chronically fatigued (like long covid, wear your masks) trying to motivate myself to read more. goal for now is a book a week, but recognise it will be less, and sometimes the books will be crap and sometimes they'll be very short. when my brain's managing ok enough i like books from other parts of the world. if i was healthy i'd be an archeologist. or an anthropologist. or a historian. or an ethnomusicologist. but i'm not. wear your masks. please.

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emma's books

So. America

Anne de Marcken: It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over (2024, Norton & Company Limited, W. W.) 2 stars

maybe it's clever?

2 stars

Went looking for reviews and supposedly it's fantastic and funny, hilarious even. The closest i can find to humour is ungenerous digs at various characters. There's an ugly gruesome murder. There's maybe some profundity in the end, though perhaps not particularly original. by the time I got there I was tired from the details, so many details, many disjointed. If there was symbolism connecting them it's beyond me, other than a surreal nightmare. Images of grief, yes, The zombie apocalypse as ungenerous comedy horror as a metaphor for grief? I suppose. Well, it is a different approach. That's the most generous thing I can find to say about this. Others seem to love it so maybe I'm just thick. No catharsis or sense of understanding, being understood for me in this. I'm left feeling sad, sitting with my own grief, and thick.

commented on Magician by K. L. Noone

review from Mastodon: mastodon.social/@MythingPerson/111450928969059007 Magician, by K.L. Noone, is the gentlest, most lyrical romance fantasy I’ve ever read. A young Prince comes to ask for help for his small mountain kingdom from the world’s most powerful, and most reclusive, sorcerer and, in the process, teaches him to care again.

Warning: it does include several sex scenes that are hard to blindly skip past because they’re often funny. Choose wisely.

#HopePunk

Jon Fosse, trans Damion Searls: A Shining (Paperback, 2023, Fitzcarraldo Editions) 4 stars

original title: Kvitleik

who are you?

4 stars

this is a short story but as i haven't managed past the first chapter of anything in months and it's published as a stand alone, i'll let it be counted towards my goal.

it's moody and evocative, told as a single paragraph interior monologue of an experience the narrator/protagonist doesn't understand himself, but in the end it's perhaps quite simple.

Stephen West, Wilt L. Idema: The Orphan of Zhao and Other Yuan Plays (Hardcover, 2014, Columbia University Press) 4 stars

Worth the effort

4 stars

An academic text on a subject I didn't know anything about wasn't necessarily the wisest choice for me these days, but I've been watching a fair bit of Asian drama series, including some in historical Chinese settings and it's about the only non-mainstream book available through the e-book system our library uses so I wanted to give it some love in hopes of encouraging them to add more niche topics. I'm in no position to comment on accuracy. I found the contextual essays readable enough and I've learned bits and pieces of history and culture, like a section on filial piety, which have helped me better understand a few of the modern telly dramas. My impression of the longer versions of the plays is that they're prone to long Wagneresque narrative monologues rather than dialogue and action and it's all of course very male-orientated. The only play I enjoyed reading …

Caitlin Moran: How to Be a Woman (EBook, 2011, Ebury Digital) 4 stars

1913: Suffragette throws herself under the King's horse

1970: Feminists storm Miss World

Now: Caitlin …

Outrageous, as it should be

3 stars

The combination of outrageous memoir and opinionated insights on being a woman is more than the sum of its parts. Many nods of recognition, though not the outrageous parts :)

avatar for emmaaum emma boosted

To celebrate my books “going wide” (being for sale outside of Amazon) they’re all free until 31 July. Except on Amazon. I can’t make those free for amazonian reasons.

Science Fiction and Contemporary Fantasy set in alternate world South Africa.

*We Broke the Moon*
https://books2read.com/We-Broke-the-Moon

*Ray and the Cat Thing*
https://books2read.com/Ray-and-the-Cat-Thing
A friend called this book “like falling face first into a Ghibli movie.”

Linked Worlds Series: Someone here on mastodon called this “hard boiled and cozy” 
*The Babylon Eye*
https://books2read.com/The-Babylon-Eye
*The Real*
https://books2read.com/The-Real
*The Strange*
https://books2read.com/The-Strange

Crooked Word Series:
*Crooks & Straights*
https://books2read.com/Crooks-and-straights
*Wolf Logic*
https://books2read.com/Wolf-Logic

The Sisters Series:
*The Story Trap*
https://books2read.com/The-Stroy-Trap
*The Broken Path*
https://books2read.com/The-Broken-Path

More information on these books at https://masha.co.za/

 

Kamila Shamsie: Home Fire (2017, Riverhead Books) 4 stars

Isma is free. After years spent raising her twin siblings in the wake of their …

Difficult but intelligent

4 stars

Content warning Content warning

Lucinda Riley: Seven Sisters (2015, Atria Books) 2 stars

Relieved that's done

2 stars

Content warning sort of spoilers

Lucinda Riley: Seven Sisters (2015, Atria Books) 2 stars

Chosen as my first loan from the ebook service the library system uses, but mostly out of frustration because everything I had hoped to use it to read isn't available through it. Becky Chambers (solarpunk), which the central library has physical copies of, ok, that's niche. Hilary Mantel though? If I didn't have a deadline to be done with this one, read or not, I'd probably set it aside and who knows, maybe try again, or not. I'm 50 pages in and really only one thing has happened, the rest has been scene/relationship-setting. Ok, vent over :)