Weekend Reading Roundup (26 June 2017)

[nanila]

Bon Monday, all. How did your weekend reading go? If you planned on anything specifically, did you read it?

Comments

[nanila]

I'm now about halfway through Alys Fowler's Hidden Nature, which is simultaneously a travelogue of paddling around Birmingham's canal network (aka "The Cut") and a memoir of coming out. As a travelogue it's riveting but I'm finding the memoir aspect a little tedious, mostly because it's pretty humourless and overly earnest.

[ayebydan]

I love travelogues! I especially love graphic novel travelogues. Have you ever read any of Guy Delisle's works? I really enjoy them.

[nanila]

No, I haven't. But I'll look them up, thank you!

[alexseanchai]

Bah, tedious :(

[nanila]

It's bearable, just about. I'm pretty sure I'll get through the whole book, but not without some eyerolling. :P

[ayebydan]

I got a few chapters done. I'm finding that Kevin Bridges is actually a really ... I don't know. He thinks far more deeply than I thought. For those who don't know him he is a Scottish comedian. His memoir is hilarious but also filled with scathing social commentary on the state of the nation as well. I'm enjoying only reading a few chapters at a time to allow me to spend longer on it. It has been a while since I've liked something to that extent.

[alexseanchai]

:)

[nanila]

Oh, very cool! I like it when a book turns out to be unexpectedly worth savouring like that.

[alexseanchai]

A hundred pages of Salt by Mark Kurlansky and a bunch of craft instruction pages relevant to restoring this here doll.

[nanila]

I enjoyed Salt! I can't now recall much about the actual text, although I remember coming out of it thinking, ALL THE HISTORIES DEPEND UPON SALT YESSS, but also knowing that this was a perspective that was entirely influenced by the narrative.

[fred_mouse]

I started reading 'The Drums Go Bang' which is an autobiography of authors Ruth Park* and D'arcy Niland** in the first few years of their marriage and writing careers. I'm loving the small details about where some of the ideas that became some of their famous works came from.

* Playing Beatie Bow; The Muddle-headed Wombat; The harp in the south
** The Shiralee

[nanila]

This sounds very cool indeed, especially if you're familiar with their works.

[fred_mouse]

Indeed! Ruth Park wrote one of my all time favourite children's series, being The Muddle-Headed Wombat (if you ever come across the chapter books, they are a fabulous introduction to the Australian Bush; there are children's picture books as well, but I didn't like them as much). So learning about where Mouse (probably for whom I was named), who was one of the three main characters, came from was just wonderful.

I kinda hoped that bits of family history would show up, but the years covered are too early for that to be the case.

[davidgillon]

I worked my way through an alt-history WiP that's mostly focused on Japan. It's interesting in places, Hirohito takes on the militarists rather than being dominated by them, marries FDR's daughter and then only has daughters, leading to a more liberal Japan. Some of the rest of it I'm not so sure of - Stalin as Socialist PM of Imperial Russia? The idea for a Zionist homeland in China actually taking off? I think it was the odd snippets of real-world history that kept me reading, with my favourite being The Great Emu War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu_War

[nanila]

Ah, it's good(?!) to know that the rationale for culling hasn't changed for decades. :/

[ironed_orchid]

I'm working through a re-read of the Vorkosigan Saga, and also read some poems by Warsan Shire as well as a chapbook featuring three local poets.

[nanila]

That sounds like a great selection. I need to revisit the Vorkosigan Saga at some point.

[ironed_orchid]

I'm trying to remember to read poems.

[fox_confessor]

Great community! I'm glad to have stumbled across it. I've spent the weekend reading Jon Krakauer's Eiger Dreams, which are essays about mountaineering. It definitely helped on my slightly claustrophobic train trip this weekend.

[nanila]

Thanks for joining us! I reading Into Thin Air years ago, though I can't remember much about it. I'm glad the essays proved a helpful distraction.

[singloom]

"City of Glass" by Cassandra Clare, "Trigger Warning" by Mike Hume (the latter of which deals with the subject of whether the fear of being offensive is harming freedom of speech or not.)

[nanila]

That sounds like an interesting pairing!