CJ’s Comments (group member since Oct 08, 2024)

CJ’s comments from the Beyond Reality group.

I'm reading Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Really enjoying it. Wasn't expecting it to be The Gulag Archipelago in space, but in hindsight, if there was an author who'd go there, it'd be Tchaikovsky.

Recently finished:

Translation State by Ann Leckie
A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark
Mechanize My Hand to War by Erin K. Wagner
Red Team Blues by Cory Doctorow
Return from the Stars by Stanislaw Lem
Your Utopia by Bora Chung

The first 3 I thought were phenomenal, while I was not as enthused by the Doctorow or Lem titles. The Bora Chung title is a collection of short stories and as short stories collections go, it was pretty good.

Currently reading The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells and Moon of the Turning Leaves by Waubgeshig Rice and rereading Homeland by R.A. Salvatore.

I'm Cade Joirie, or CJ for short. I live in the Southwest US, on the border.

Not married, no kids. 2 Siamese mix cats and a blue heeler.

- I'm a musician, a multi-instrumentalist. When I was younger I played woodwinds, but now in my later life I play mainly fingerstyle guitar and Renaissance lute. Got a mandolin just before I got sick with what turned out to be cancer, so I haven't had much of a chance to play it.

- I studied languages as an autodidact for many years after I left grad school. I'm advanced/fluentish in Scottish Gaelic and French, and can read German, which I actually learned in high school but let go to rust. Currently focused on improving my Russian and Irish. I know some Spanish from living and working in a bilingual city.

I'm doing slow reads of Anna Karenina (year-long) and Pride and Prejudice (monthish-long). Also I hope to get in a quick reread of Frankenstein plus I'm doing a project to read all of Shakespeare's plays over the year, so I've started that (I love Shakespeare so this is highly doable for me). I read so much genre fiction in 2024 and it was great fun, but I want to get back into some classic lit.

Not that I'm giving up genre fiction! Never! I've just finished Our Wives Under the Sea (didn't care for it) and am now reading An Unkindness of Ghosts. Also finishing up rereads of I, Robot and Network Effect, and a first read of These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart. My library holds for Those Beyond the Wall and Our Share of Night just came in and at some point this month my library hold for The Poppy War ought to come in as well. I'll be busy this month, for sure!

Just picked this up from my library, looks interesting. New author for me. I hope to start it as soon I am done with a couple other reads I've already started.

Kathi wrote: "I read a lot when I went through cancer treatment, but I had to be pretty selective about what I read. Lots of Terry Pratchett, as I recall. Sending good thoughts!"

Thank you! I have been avoiding nonfiction this year because my present reality is enough for me to deal with, and have just focused on fiction for the escapism. Shortly after my cancer dx earlier this year I looked for something specifically for the escapism and started the Legend of Drizzt series and then the Murderbot Diaries. There have been a couple of fiction books I DNF's over the year because I didn't want to subject myself to that book's depictions of things like body disfigurement or disability (looking at you, Joe Abercrombie). So yeah, I have been mindful.

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I'm currently reading an oldie, The Dark World by Henry Kuttner. His wife CL Moore isn't credited in this, but they collaborated a lot and I see her touches on the prose. It's an indulgent, pulpy fantasy with an older aesthetic that many readers would consider passé now but I find interesting.

Also reading Calypso by Oliver K. Langmead, which is SF told in verse. So far, it's better than I expected. It's a legit SF story and the poetry is well-written and accessible. I'm very interested in how the whole book shapes up.

My trick to having enough time to read was getting cancer. I don't recommend that. But I hope you get through your 10h days OK and can get some rest. Would hate for you to delay your Murderbot reread for too long!

I recently finished Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang and I only liked one story ("Story of Your Life") and struggled through the rest. I sometimes think I just do not like short stories as a medium.

Another recent read was Hardwired by Walter Jon Williams. Liked it a lot. It's one of the better works I've read so far for my cyberpunk/biopunk reading project.

Then today I read two great novels: Solaris by Stanislaw Lem and The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin. So glad that I made time to read them. These are the kind of novels that I want to google academic articles about them, because they give me so much to think about.

I recently DNF'd for now Paul Di Filippo's Ribofunk, a collection of short stories credited for helping launch the biopunk subgenre, because his writing comes across as if he's trying best cyberpunk writers like William Gibson or Walter Jon Williams and it's really annoying. I want to finish it, but I'll have to microdose on it next year sometime.

I DNF'd quite a few praised fantasy books this year: a reread of The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, and first reads of The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman and The Will of the Many by James Islington, because I am just bored to death of these bloated fancy books with tedious overpowered MCs who could be interchangeable.

Also DNF'd The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie because I wasn't willing to humor Abercrombie's depictions of a disabled and disfigured character (please don't try to defend him) and his throwing in an "albino" on top of that (one of my most loathed tropes--Moorcock did it death decades ago) was all I could take of that.

I have submitted a couple of things (poetry) for publication in the past but haven't had anything accepted. I did use a pen name.

The first 4 Murderbot novellas are kind of their own complete series within the larger series. It seems Wells once thought she would just end the series there. The three books after that are a full-length novel that takes places after the first 4 novellas, a 5th novella that's sort of a stand-alone murder mystery and a 2nd novel that left the series open for Wells to return to if she chooses. It's not clear if she'll write more Murderbot at this point--she seems focused on getting back to her fantasy writing.

I have read all the Murderbot stuff I can get, including the 3 short stories available (one's in the anthology, Take Us to a Better Place and it's a kind of creepy story about the prototypes before SecUnits) and Witch King (I have the upcoming Demon Queen pre-ordered).

I personally love Witch King. I think it's one the best fantasy novels I've ever read. I wish other people loved it as much as me. It seems to resonate a lot with other queer people like me who have lived through a lot of trauma. The way the novel is structured is a bit challenging to some readers, as Wells just throws the reader into this new world and then inserts chapters of the main character's past so you learn bit by bit what he's been through. Wells avoids big exposition dumps, except for some stuff in the chapters about the MC's past, and instead makes seemingly every sentence count toward revealing her characters over the course of the novel. It's just masterfully written but sadly, a lot of fantasy readers want their exposition dumps and have gotten mad over this novel because they felt "lost" not knowing what was going on right away.

Dawn wrote: "If you liked Moon of the Crusted Snow, you will like the sequel. He is a good writer. I'm hoping for more books by him in the future.
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I just got approved for a card at another library in my state and their digital catalog has the sequel so I immediately put a hold on it. I'm baffled as to why my local library hasn't gotten it in yet--they are really good at getting in titles by Indigenous writers because there's a lot of local interest in those kinds of books.

I feel you with 1666. It's a hard read.

I too gave up on The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi. I tried like 3 times and then saw Booktuber/Booktoker Michael Kist's thoughts on it and decided to just give up. Really cool cover though. I have The Cloud Roads too--I hope to read that in 2025.

Dawn wrote: "CJ wrote: "Last month I started an Indigenous Writers reading challenge...."

Ooh, any standouts??"

Yes! Moon of Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice. A post-apocalyptic story that takes place in a First Nation community already on the outskirts. I'm told the follow-up novel, Moon of the Turning Leaves is even better.

I also really enjoyed Fevered Star by Rebecca Roanhorse; it's the second in her Between Earth and Sky fantasy series set in a pre-Columbian Mesoamerica-like world. And 1666 by Lora Chilton, a well-researched fictionized telling of the Patawomeck after encountering British colonists. A sad, difficult read.

I've had the ebook forever, so I plan on reading this as soon as I finish with a couple of library loans.

I'm about halfway through it and I'm just so impressed with Butler's creativity. She was incredible.

Reading Dawn by Octavia E Butler and rereading The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester.

Last month I started an Indigenous Writers reading challenge and am now down to my last two selections for that. Currently reading The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline and after that I will read As Many Ships as Stars by Weyodi Oldbear.

One of my earliest memories is of my dad giving me a book he got while on a trip. Sadly I do not remember the title of the book; it was a small, thick children's book of some kind. I was probably not yet 4 years old and I can only remember what it looked like in a general sense.

I had a relative who gave me various books over my lifetime, books he personally thought I ought to read. My family is deeply misogynistic, and do not accept my transness so I'm "female" to them and relatives like this have always thought they know what's best for me. While some of those books were clearly about indoctrinating me into this or that way of thinking, not all of the books this relative gave me were bad choices for me, but it left me with a tainted feeling about them and it really affected my reading habits for much of my younger life. But it's why now I would rather people give me a gift card than pick out a book for me.

As for a book I wish someone would gift me, I'd have to say any good scholarly book on SF lit, any good books in one of my other languages or Culture: The Drawings by Iain M. Banks.

I'm grateful for my current access to cancer treatment, despite genuine fears of the incoming Trump admin ending that (I know that's probably too political for people here but this isn't just my reality alone and I want people to know this).

I'm grateful that at least for now, I am healthy enough to spend a lot of what time I have left reading and learning.

And I'm grateful for the people in the world who are fighting against injustice and inequality. I try to spend what left of my life focused on people who give me hope for this world.

I am not the most socially outgoing person and I don't go to cons or book tour appearances so the only author outside of academics who also published non-fiction books in their field that I have ever met was the late poet Gwendolyn Brooks when she came to my uni to give a talk. She listened to students read our own poetry (I was among them) and gave us feedback. She was awesome. She signed my copy of the excellent anthology The Black Poets on which editor Dudley Randall consulted Brooks.

Jimenez, Harvey and Kitasei are all on my TBR so I'm down with all of those noms. They all (to the best of my knowledge) have the added benefit of being stand-alones.