Book round-up: June 2019
Jul. 23rd, 2019 05:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sixthlightThis is WAY behind, but I've read twenty-eight books in July and it's not even the end of the month yet (that's what three weeks without the internet will do), so we'll have to catch up on June first.
Sea People (Christina Thompson)
A history of the exploration of Polynesia, and changing Western perspectives on how, why, when, and by whom it was peopled. Extremely readable and a good overview, although for my money still a bit mired in Western historical narratives - it doesn't address, for example, any of the very good more recent work on the reliability of oral historical narratives in the region. Absolutely worth the read, though, and really gives a sense of the sheer scope of the Pacific/Te Moana Nui a Kiwa (and if ever an ocean deserved the adjective 'nui'....)
Unnatural Habits, Murder on a Midsummer Night, and Dead Man's Chest (Kerry Greenwood)
The last three books in the Phryne Fisher series that I plan to read, because I am deeply allergic to anything to do with Sherlock Holmes crossovers. Still lots of fun, but the series continuity does an abrupt shift towards TV continuity about the time the show began to be written, which is weird when you're reading a lot of them one after the other, and there's some deeply creepy racism towards Aboriginal Australians in the last of the three that I'm still boggling at more than a month later. DESECRATION OF STOLEN HUMAN REMAINS, WT ACTUAL F.
Raven Stratagem (Yoon Ha Lee)
Sequel to Ninefox Gambit; I gave up halfway through when it became evident a bait-and-switch had been pulled re: the series protagonist, or at least enough of one that I didn't care. Some Of These People Need To Fucking Like Each Other, etcetera.
Any Old Diamonds and The Henchmen of Zenda (K J Charles)
Victorian queer romances - the second being a behind-the-scenes perspective switch on The Prisoner of Zenda, if it wasn't obvious. Comfort re-reads, because they feature People Who Like Each Other, platonically as well as romantically (actually technically the second isn't a romance because the PoV character is aromantic, but, uh...I'm not sure how to describe it otherwise).
Good Omens (Pratchett and Gaiman)
I'd just watched the miniseries and I had a sudden and powerful craving, you know the drill. Still mad about the dove.
Sea People (Christina Thompson)
A history of the exploration of Polynesia, and changing Western perspectives on how, why, when, and by whom it was peopled. Extremely readable and a good overview, although for my money still a bit mired in Western historical narratives - it doesn't address, for example, any of the very good more recent work on the reliability of oral historical narratives in the region. Absolutely worth the read, though, and really gives a sense of the sheer scope of the Pacific/Te Moana Nui a Kiwa (and if ever an ocean deserved the adjective 'nui'....)
Unnatural Habits, Murder on a Midsummer Night, and Dead Man's Chest (Kerry Greenwood)
The last three books in the Phryne Fisher series that I plan to read, because I am deeply allergic to anything to do with Sherlock Holmes crossovers. Still lots of fun, but the series continuity does an abrupt shift towards TV continuity about the time the show began to be written, which is weird when you're reading a lot of them one after the other, and there's some deeply creepy racism towards Aboriginal Australians in the last of the three that I'm still boggling at more than a month later. DESECRATION OF STOLEN HUMAN REMAINS, WT ACTUAL F.
Raven Stratagem (Yoon Ha Lee)
Sequel to Ninefox Gambit; I gave up halfway through when it became evident a bait-and-switch had been pulled re: the series protagonist, or at least enough of one that I didn't care. Some Of These People Need To Fucking Like Each Other, etcetera.
Any Old Diamonds and The Henchmen of Zenda (K J Charles)
Victorian queer romances - the second being a behind-the-scenes perspective switch on The Prisoner of Zenda, if it wasn't obvious. Comfort re-reads, because they feature People Who Like Each Other, platonically as well as romantically (actually technically the second isn't a romance because the PoV character is aromantic, but, uh...I'm not sure how to describe it otherwise).
Good Omens (Pratchett and Gaiman)
I'd just watched the miniseries and I had a sudden and powerful craving, you know the drill. Still mad about the dove.
