Victoria Janssen's Blog, page 25
August 21, 2015
June 2015 Reading Log
Fiction:
Archivist Wasp by Nicole Kornher-Stace starts off violent and world-weary and continues to be gripping but painful. It’s set in a post-apocalyptic world (isn’t everything, nowadays?) in which human cruelty and desperation take center stage. Wasp, the protagonist, is weary of it, and tries to do a good thing, but her attempt fails miserably and results in more hopelessness. …I’m not making this sound very appealing, am I? But the writing is great and it kept surprising me. I backed aw...
August 14, 2015
May 2015 Reading Log
Nonfiction:
A Companion to the Fairy Tale edited by Hilda Ellis Davidson and Anna Chaudhri is what is says on the tin. The introduction and the first couple of essays gave me a pretty good grounding in fairy tale scholarship as it stood at the time (2006), at least so far as I can tell. I had fun comparing arguments about how tales should be recorded with similar arguments I remember from my anthropology background about how ethnography should be recorded, and how methods of recording data af...
August 7, 2015
April 2015 Reading Log
Fiction:
Lone Wolf (Bluewater Bay Book 4) by Aleksandr Voinov and L.A. Witt is a male/male romance. I’d read one book previously in this series, which focuses on the creative personalities surrounding a series of werewolf books and the television series that follows (based on the two I’ve read!). This was the werewolf series author’s book, and it was great fun for me in particular because aside from the romance, it was all about fandom! And writing! The author, to relax, hangs out anonymously...
July 31, 2015
March 2015 Reading Log
Fiction:
Bring On the Dusk by M. L. Buchman – I’d read and enjoyed a previous book in this series, but this one ended up being a DNF, despite having a female military helicopter pilot as protagonist. I liked the neepery about flying and about climbing giant redwoods, but the romance bored me because it was too easy, and both characters were just too awesome, and they had too many awesome friends around from previous books in the series. I think you have to be in the mood for that sort of thin...
July 24, 2015
February 2015 Reading Log
Fiction: Partner by Lia Silver, the sequel to Prisoner; I know this author, though mostly online. I got an advance copy and read it all in one evening, and my only complaint was that it was not longer (it didn’t really need to be, I just wanted). Adventure! Angst! Music, some of which I suggested (in particular, Filipino artist Gloc-9)! I am especially happy that there are so many interesting secondary characters who could get their own books, because I am enjoying this series.
While I was wa...
July 17, 2015
January 2015 Reading Log
Fiction: Bone Rider by J. Fally features a romance between a human and alien symbiotic sentient armor…well, actually the male human’s romance is with another male human, and there is a plot involving the U.S. Army and the Russian mafia, but I was more into it for the sentient armor, which was totally cool. Really, do you need any more recommendation than that?
Nonfiction: The Regency Underworld by Donald Low – if you’re looking for a fairly short overview of this topic, this seems to be a goo...
July 1, 2015
Readercon 2015
I’ll be at Readercon in Burlington, MA next weekend.
Guests of Honor: Nicola Griffith and Gary K. Wolfe.
Memorial Guest of Honor: Joanna Russ.
Friday, July 11, 11:00 AM. G
Drift-Compatibile Fictional Characters.
Amal El-Mohtar, Victoria Janssen, Nicole Kornher-Stace (leader), A. J. Odasso, Navah Wolfe.
The film Pacific Rim created the idea of two people who are “drift-compatible,” able to live inside each other’s minds and memories without sustaining massive psychic damage. Let’s use this a...
June 26, 2015
December 2014 Reading Log
I was on vacation for part of December, so I got to read more than usual!
Fiction: Love Waltzes In by Alana Albertson – Contemporary romance in which the description of life as a dancer on a celebrity ballroom dance show, and the associated soap opera plot, was much more compelling than the romance, which totally failed to grab me. Heroine is a professional dancer who wants to have a family; hero was her partner and first love when they were teenagers, before he left the sport to become a mar...
June 19, 2015
November 2014 Reading Log
Fiction: Still Life With Murder by P.B. Ryan – First in the Nell Sweeney series, it’s a historical mystery set in Gilded Age Boston. The heroine has a terrible past and so does the man accused of murder, whom it isn’t a huge spoiler to say isn’t guilty, because he turns up in all the rest of the books in the series (I checked). Also, he is Strangely Attractive, so it’s clear he’s a potential unwise romantic interest for the heroine. It was fairly entertaining.
Nonfiction: I read a whole arra...
June 12, 2015
September/October 2014 Reading Log
I didn’t read very much beyond nonfiction in progress in September.
Fanfiction: London Orbital by merripestin (Sherlock) features Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Sally Donovan, and Greg Lestrade trapped together in a car all night, for a case. Snappy dialogue ensues.
October:
Fiction: The Duke of Snow and Apples by Elizabeth Vail is set in an alternate England that has magic, and felt roughly Regency to me in its social mores. It engages with a lot of things people complain about when they read...
