“weekly thread” was clearly a lie

  • Babel by R. F. Kuang, really enjoying it. I’ve been trying to learn a second language this year, and the idea that determining the relationship between languages can be a source of magic is very fun.

    Also, the Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin. I understand it’s a good faith attempt to examine 1969 America’s notions of gender and sex, but 50 years on, the age is showing. The default pronoun for all these non-gendered characters being ‘he/him’ scratches my brain continually.

    •  nyan   ( @nyan@lemmy.cafe ) 
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      1 year ago

      The pronoun thing bothered Le Guin a bit too. If you dig around, you’ll find a short story set in the same world, Winter’s King, that uses she/her pronouns instead. (I confess that I don’t remember much else about it, though.)

        •  nyan   ( @nyan@lemmy.cafe ) 
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          41 year ago

          Eh, I put it in the same category as spaceships with ashtrays, or spacefaring humanity still building giant 1960s-style batch-oriented mainframe computers even though they’ve reached distant solar systems. It’s something you have to be able to ignore to enjoy the older works.

          (It’s also better than James White’s solution of calling anyone who wasn’t a gender-distinguishable member of the speakers’s own species “it”.)

  • Not reading anything Fantasy right now. Unless we count manga, in that case, reading JuJutsu Kaisen. Just started it. Liking it so far.

    We also have a weekly thread (not a lie) at /c/books@lemmy.world. You’re all welcome to join in on the discussion. It’s about all books, so everything from Fantasy, sci-fi, romance, non-fiction, text books, all are welcome!

    • Heart-breaking and soul-flaying, but yes: very, very good. The third book puts such a beautiful cherry atop the whole series.

      I keep telling myself to read more N.K. Jemisin, but I keep not wanting to be depressed.

    • I read the ebook because I wanted to know what happened. It was great and now I’m seriously considering reading it again when the audio book comes out because they did such a good job.

  •  HSL   ( @hsl@wayfarershaven.eu ) 
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    1 year ago

    I’ve just finished cleaning up my Calibre library and switched to the Story Graph - I really like the filters for figuring out what to read next.

    Currently reading The Lefthanded Booksellers of London by Garth Nix. I’ve been trying to avoid YA content but picked this up as a palette refresh. So far, I’m enjoying the world-building and the snappy dialogue.

    I just blew through the Gild series by Raven Kennedy - it was a random Story Graph recommendation but apparently it’s huge on Booktok. I generally enjoyed it, particularly the world-building and character development. The fourth book dragged as there’s a lot of set up for the final book (to be published) in the series.

    And of course, Dungeon Crawler Carl, book 6! It’s getting very complex but the core elements that drew me to it are still there. How in the world is this going to end?

  • I am reading “Setite” which is a vampire the masquerade novel in a large series of novels. I bought the entire series as they came out and only read them once. They are a lot worse than I remember haha.