Recommend me something to read

[conuly]

Ideally something I can get through the NYPL or the Queens Public Library (I haven't yet re-upped my Brooklyn Public Library card. I ought to go do that this weekend or the week after.)

I suppose I should set a good example and rec something to all of you first. Lemme see....

I did recently enjoy both Long Live Evil and How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying!

******************************************

I laughed a bit more than this joke deserves

I just looked up this poem again, so here it is

Dutch museum to display 200-year-old condom probably made from sheep’s appendix featuring erotic etching of a nun and three clergymen

Riding With Strangers: California Hitchhikers in the 1970s

Japanese Scientists Develop Artificial Blood Compatible With All Blood Types

When People Hear Voices, But Only When They Want To

“They say that all women have the same apprehension”: Anxiety and Isolation in Seventeenth-Century Pregnancy (This historical woman's family seems to have been pretty callous, I gotta say)

Caring Across Distance, One Call at a Time

Amelia Earhart’s Reckless Final Flights

The true cost of prisons and jails is higher than many realize, researchers say

Trump voters call president's pardon of corrupt Virginia sheriff 'a terrific mistake'

Immigration official defends tactics against criticism of a heavy hand as arrests rise nationwide

FEMA staff baffled after head said he was unaware of US hurricane season, sources say

Flamethrower attack in Colorado leaves eight injured at Israeli hostages rally

Senator Dismisses Medicaid Cuts Killing People: ‘Well, We're All Going to Die'

Ukraine’s Warning to the World’s Other Military Forces

Comments

[profiterole_reads]

Check out The Sky on Fire by Jenn Lyons

[conuly]

What's it about?

[profiterole_reads]

It's an f/f/m dragon rider fantasy stand-alone.

[lilysea]

I just finished a book that I really enjoyed by a British woman with Punjabi heritage

The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri

"A ruthless princess and a powerful priestess come together to rewrite the fate of an empire in this “fiercely and unapologetically feminist tale of endurance and revolution set against a gorgeous, unique magical world” (S. A. Chakraborty, author of the The City of Brass).

Exiled by her despotic brother, princess Malini spends her days dreaming of vengeance while imprisoned in the Hirana: an ancient cliffside temple that was once the revered source of the magical deathless waters but is now little more than a decaying ruin.

The secrets of the Hirana call to Priya. But in order to keep the truth of her past safely hidden, she works as a servant in the loathed regent’s household and cleaning Malini’s chambers.

When Malini witnesses Priya’s true nature, their destinies become irrevocably tangled. One is a ruthless princess seeking to steal a throne. The other a powerful priestess desperate to save her family. Together, they will set an empire ablaze."


[greenwoodside]

Ooh, that sounds like a good yarn. I'm not the intended target for the rec, but it's going on my wishlist anyway. Thank you!

[aurumcalendula]

Nonfiction: Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson

Fiction: Taiwan Travelogue by Yang Shuang-zi

[conuly]

Demon of Unrest is not fiction? What's it about?

[aurumcalendula]

It's about the ~5 months between Lincoln's election and the start of the Civil War. I wasn't aware of all the stuff that was going on in that period of time.

I liked Larson's use of primary sources (lots of excerpts from letters and diaries) and that he made a point of emphazing that the war was over slavery.

[greenwoodside]

Spiderlight by Adrian Tchaikovsky has some more meta-fantasy-comedy stuff, if that's what you're in the mood for.

For similar reasons: Dark Lord of Derkholm by Diana Wynne Jones.

[conuly]

I enjoyed Spiderlight quite a bit! Adrian Tchaikovsky is extraordinarily hit-or-miss for me, but I find that the more spiders he includes, the more likely it is that I'll enjoy his books.

[greenwoodside]

Lol-ing at the Spider Scale of Excellence.

Tchaikovsky would probably demand to know what's wrong with wasps and cephalopods. And *checks notes* genetically engineered corvids.

[conuly]

Note: I liked the last Children of Time book a lot less than the first. Too many corvids, not enough spiders.

[greenwoodside]

I accidentally started with book 2 of the trilogy (it was lockdown, I was wild (by librarian standards)), then read book 3, and still haven't read book 1.

Loved book 3 but I am very much a corvid person.

[mtbc]

I shall give it a try, thank you both.

[magid]

I love Dark Lord of Derkholm!

[greenwoodside]

It's wonderful!

[redbird]

How about Everybody Lies, by H. J. Breedlove? It's a mystery set mostly in small-town Alaska, and about a despairing woman from the Lower 48 who went to Alaska intending to die, and didn't, and what she does instead. Chunks of the text are from Candace's journal, the introspective kind rather than the "took the cat to the vet" kind, and I liked getting to know her. There's also a slow-developing romance theme, if you want to avoid those.

[gatheringrivers]

Amusingly I just signed up for the online NYPL card. Do you know if I'll need to re-up that every year or something?

[conuly]

I think it's like every five years.

Also, I'm reasonably certain that their sign-up-online program was a pandemic thing and that sooner or later they'll go back to requiring people to apply in person with proof of address or else pay the out-of-area fee.

[gatheringrivers]

Well hopefully in five years I'll be in a better position to make that trip in person. :) I was expecting them to ask me to upload a photo of my license, but weirdly they didn't.

[kengr]

Senator Dismisses Medicaid Cuts Killing People: ‘Well, We're All Going to Die'

no link

[conuly]

Fixed, thanks

[hannah]

Funny Girl by Nick Hornby, where a woman's ambitions are celebrated.

[archersangel]

non-fiction;
The Devil in the White City, Isaac's Storm, Dead Wake all by Erik Larson.
(WW2 stories) Agent Zigzag, Operation Mincemeat, Double Cross, The Spy and the Traitor (cold war era), Agent Sonya all by Ben Macintyre.
Sin in the Second City, American Rose, Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy, The Ghosts of Eden Park all by Karen Abbott (now known as Abbott Kahler because there was a writer with a similar name)

for fiction i mostly like mysteries that lean towards cozy. which are not everyone's cup of tea, so to keep this comment on the short side i will not list the series & authors. unless you're interested in that kind of thing.

[conuly]

Cozy mysteries are my jam!

[archersangel]

the ones i like are all series & for the most part it's helpful to read them in order.

the mrs. murphy series by rita mae brown (note: animals as characters. i note this because not everyone likes that.)
the amelia peabody series by elizabeth peters (i didn't like the last one; the painted queen which was written after her death from her notes.)
the midnight louie novels by carole nelson douglas (note: animals as characters)
the sarah kelling books by charlotte macleod (not sure if the NYC library has a lot of these. i could be using the wrong thing to search.)

not so cozy mysteries (more violence, sex & drinking than typical cozy mysteries)
the roma sub roma (gordianus the finder) novels. set during the roman republic.
the sano ichiro books by laura joh rowland. set in feudal japan, mostly in the shogun's court.

[magid]

No idea what types of books you like to read; these are some of my favorites:
Word by Word (Kory Stamper), nonfiction, about writing dictionaries
Last Days of Summer (Steve Kluger), epistolary fiction during WWII in NYC (I love this despite there being so much baseball, which I have no interest at all)
The City, Not Long After (Pat Murphy), SF in SFO (Also, pretty much anything else by her)
Sunshine (Robin McKinley), baking and vampires (I don’t love the vampire genre in general, but love this; warning that there is no recipe section at the back, no matter how many times I reread it)
Ex Libris (Anne Fadiman), essays about books, the owning and reading of them, and language
Home Cooking (Laurie Colwin), essays about food and cooking by home cooks, from 1990s NYC

Let me know if any of these are hits or misses, and I’ll happily suggest others.

[conuly]

Oh, I'll read almost anything.

Though, weirdly, Sunshine is about the only McKinley I just could never get into. Kept bouncing off it hard, eventually gave up and DNF'd.

[larryhammer]

Some McKinley books are like that, and which are bouncers shifts from person to person.

[fred_mouse]

Looking at my five star reads for the last however long:

• Passing Strange by Ellen Klage - mostly a story of a group of queer women with a fairly strong romance plot, with some fantastical elements, set in San Francisco in 1940.
• The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen - graphic novel, about fairy tales, family tales, and being a Vietnamese immigrant in USA. I suspect it gets shelved as YA.
• Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison - kind of cosy mystery, fantasy, with quite a lot of bureaucratic nonsense. This is book 2, but in a way that doesn't seem to matter (I bounced hard off book 1, The Goblin Emperor for being more politics than story). The resolution of the main mystery is a bit flat, but that is very much my experience with cosy mystery.
• The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw - bit cautious on recommending this, because it is a dark reinterpretation of some fairy tale tropes, and it is heavy on body horror and gore.
• Points of View: Liavek Stories by Patricia C Wrede, Pamela Dean - interwoven stories, individually written, shared world - all set in the same fantasy city.

The first two I own in physical copies so I don't have a feel for how easy they will be to find; I don't remember where I got the third (ebook); the last two are in our local ebook library so presumably accessible where you are.