rogue_moravec

Perhaps controversial opinion, but I recently re-read The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and I found the core message to be something of a mixed message. Being responsible for what you domesticate isn't a bad takeaway, but I felt like domestication also extended to friendship and relationships in a problematic way. No spoilers, but it has an ending that can be read as a bittersweet faerie-tale or a deeply troubling message about failure and regret. It meant a lot to me when I read it as a teenager, and now I'm not sure what I think about it, at least not yet.

I am just under halfway through By the Sword by Mercedes Lackey. I've never read any of her stuff before, and I didn't realize this was part of a much larger, ongoing setting, but I'm enjoying it as a lighter read about a woman rejecting courtly roles for women and going full mercenary, with magic and psychic stuff for which I don't know the rules, and a magic sword with a mind of its own.

I only did one book per bingo card square, so this one is actually the the orange colour square - lots of orange leaves, and yellow-ish hair on the cover art.

I just finished reading Alias Grace, by Margaret Atwood, which I really enjoyed. I wrote a review on bookwyrm about this being a really insightful book on storytelling itself.

I only read the first Kushiel's book but I really enjoyed it, and I'm looking forward to getting my hands on more. How do you find the series holds up as it goes along?

Oo, I just finished reading the 4th book in that series for this year's book bingo. It was a blast and a half, and dense but so rich. I'd love to hear what you think when you finish that one. Are you reading Citadel of the Autarch as well, or are you reading the series in between other books? I wrote a spoiler-free review on bookwyrm here. Anyone else read this series?

Alternate laundry cat?

I'm currently reading Sword and Citadel, which is an omnibus of two books by Gene Wolfe; The Sword of the Lictor and The Citadel of the Autarch. They are the 3rd and 4th books in his series the Book of the New Sun.

It tells the odyssey of a man named Severian, traveling a world which is very old, very new, and utterly strange, on an evolving spiritual quest surrounding a mythical figure called the Conciliator. It's a dense book, and the way Gene Wolfe writes makes you feel like the text is undulating in your hands while you read it, so a passage you read a moment ago may have shifted since you last read it. Not unlike the way you can feel a snake move when you hold it. It's steeped in biblical and historical references, has wildly imaginative fantasy and strange-technology elements, and while I have needed to regularly look up a lot of new words, it's been a fascinating adventure.

This looks lovely, I'm so down.