chezmax

It's going to be a bit trickier to create this post while visiting at my Dad's place since my process involves three different windows (spreadsheet of reading notes, Dreamwidth entry, and database for finished reviews) which I can normally pull up on different screens.

A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher -- (audio) The plot is...well, let’s call it “allusive of” rather than “based on” the fairy tale of the goose girl and her talking horse. There’s a horribly abusive mother (whose comeuppance is similar to the climax of my fairy tale The Language of Roses), a sympathetic ingenue, and a lovely second-chance romance involving an older woman (a Kingfisher specialty). Big content notice for violence and coercion. It's a very painful story, so I'm not sure that "enjoyable" is the right description, but I'm glad I read it.

Murder in an English Village by Jessica Ellicott -- (audio) I was exploring some sale books to see if I could find any interesting historic mysteries and thought this book looked interesting. It’s set between the World Wars and involves two old school chums—-one an English spinster and one an American adventuress—-who stumble into several mysteries. It’s a pleasant enough mystery, though I was unwarrantedly hoping for a touch more sapphic subtext, along the lines of Miss Buncle’s Book.

A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf -- (audio) Picked up from an audiobook sale, in part because I'd done an interview where the interviewee made the assumption that of course every feminist has read Woolf and I realized I hadn't. A Room of One's Own is broadly about the difficulties of being a woman writer. Pair this classic with Joanna Russ’s How To Suppress Women’s Writing and then sink into a deep depression about how little has changed since those books were written.

All the Painted Stars by Emma Denny -- (audio) A pleasant enough medieval f/f romance with competent prose, but the historic grounding is exceedingly thin and occasionally annoying. Horses aren't cars. Parchment isn't post-its. Village brewers don't work at industrial scale. It wasn’t a matter of large inaccuracies, but of a constant flow of small details that kept distracting me from the endearing main characters. This book is a follow-on from her previous one which focused on a gay male couple. The two stories are connected by family ties.

The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles by Malka Older -- (audio) The second in a sapphic space-mystery series. These are novellas set in a colony constructed around Jupiter after humanity fled an uninhabitable Earth. Murder mysteries get solved by a detective and academic duo who are also negotiating a revival of their romance. The books are enjoyable and have a fun time grounding the mysteries in the worldbuilding.

The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker -- (audio) I finally got around to reading this highly praised book, which came out a number of years ago. The novel asks the question: can a naïve and brilliant golem who has lost her immigrant master on the voyage to America, and a metal-working Jinni newly freed from magical entrapment find their way together in early 20th century New York and foil the schemes of the sorcerer who wants to re-enslave them both? This was beautiful and heartbreaking and ultimately triumphant and I don’t know what took me so long to come back to it, given that I’ve owned a hard copy since it first came out.

Gentleman Jack by Anne Choma -- (audio) I don’t usually consume books for the lesbian history blog via audiobook -- it makes it hard to take notes! It made sense in this case because it’s more of a narrative history rather than a scholarly analysis. This is a narrative history of Anne Lister’s life between November 1831 and March 1834, the period covered by the tv series Gentleman Jack. The book was written specifically as a companion to the tv series, giving the actual details of Anne’s life during that period, which differ in various details from the tv series. (The tv series both omitted and invented significant details.) Interspersed in the narrative are extensive quotes from Anne’s diaries. The account is very readable and will give you a solid background of Anne’s life and times. It is neither a scholarly historical analysis (for that, you might try Jill Liddington) nor an extensive and contextualized survey of significant portions of the diaries (for which you want Helena Whitbread). But it hits a sweet spot for the general reader. And if you’re a fan of the tv series, it makes an interesting “compare and contrast” to understand how history gets adapted for the requirements of drama.

The Tomb of Dragons by Katherine Addison -- (audio) I think this finishes up the Cemetaries of Amalo series, set in the same universe as The Goblin Emperor. As with previous books in the series, there are a number of plot threads that braid together in the resolution. Our protagonist, a "witness for the dead" who can communicate with dead souls finds himself representing a murdered dragon. One of the other major plot threads about an escaped insurgent ties back in at the climax in a way that feels a little too convenient. And there's a surprising twist to a hinted-at romance arc that's been developing across the series.

The Suffragette Scandal by Courtney Milan -- (audio) I've read several Courtney Milan historic romances in the past, with mixed impressions. This one worked very well for me, centering around Victorian-era feminist movements and one of her favorite tropes: aristocrats who are desperately trying to escape their fate. But the reason I picked it up was for the very-much-background sapphic romance that has been slipped into the cracks of the main story.

I was originally going to do just January and February in this post, but then there were only two books I finished in March, and none in April, so it made sense to expand the official scope. (April was, of course, my last month on the job and I was a bit distracted.) Looking ahead in the spreadsheet, I may do another four-month set in the next post and then do one post each for the final four months of the year, based on numbers.